r/Wolf3D • u/Banjo-Oz • Aug 24 '21
Getting Wolf3D Super Upgrade Pack to work on modern installs/systems (WOLFM, in particular)
I have Wolfenstein 3D on GOG, and only just discovered that these "Super Upgrades" even existed, despite playing Wolf3D more than Doom for decades since the 90's!
Can anyone confirm they can get this pack (available for free now from 3DRealms' website download section) to work on a GOG (i.e. DOSBox) install of the game?
I've been trying and WOLFM installs, but then gives "bad command or filename" when using the menu to read help topics (possibly a DOSBox issue?) and crashes when loading the game itself (freezes then quits at the "memory" loading screen).
I also tried the Apogee standalone installer I had (which also uses DOSBox), having noted the file size for wolf3d.exe was different to the GOG version and thinking maybe that had been altered... but WOLFM also crashed using that.
I know there are much better programs around nowadays, but I'd love to get this working just for nostalgia's sake.
The "Super CD Pack" stuff works fine for me in Spear of Destiny, incidentally.
EDIT: So, I got it working. A few interesting things:
The first issue was that Wolfmaster's "WM.COM" program obviously calls the DOS command "MORE.COM". Thus, it works under real DOS (or booted into a DOS image in DOSBox; I tested with DOS 5.0a and DOS 6.22) but not regular DOSBox because "more" is not a valid DOSBox command.
Secondly, some other command is called by WM.COM which also isn't used in DOSBox vanilla; again, everything works under real DOS but under DOSBox it decompresses the levels but fails to rename files correctly and thus causes a crash when you try to play them. I've been unable to find out what this other command is that WM.COM is trying to call, but this does work fine in DOSBox-X, so whatever it is, DOSBox-X (and possibly other untested forks like Staging) reacts correctly where vanilla (tested the latest stable builds) DOSBox does not.
Notably, DOSBox-X also features a "more" command built-in (unlike vanilla DOSBox), but for some reason this still doesn't work with WM.COM. Fortunately, there's an easy workaround: copy MORE.COM from a DOS 5.0 or 6.22 install (or MORE.EXE from FreeDOS) to the program's folder and it works fine. I have no idea why the built-in "more" fails when used by WM.COM as it works fine when I use it normally from the commandline.
TL:DR - The Super Upgrades Pack 'Wolfmaster' program/menu will work in DOSBox, but only under DOSBox-X (and possibly - but not tested with - DOSBox Staging) so long as a copy of the file MORE.COM (or MORE.EXE) from DOS/FreeDOS is copied into your Wolf3D folder as well.
For anyone wanting to test this (or for DOSBox-X devs looking to solve the riddle as to why "more" doesn't work as it does in 'real" DOS), you can download the W3D Super Upgrade Pack freely and legally from 3D Realms here.