May have just found something very weird.

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T

TheGameCube

DooM enthusiast.
Okay, so uh.

Time is like, 10PM, fucking bored as shit, loading SRB2 wads into doom. Suddenly, I have the very bright idea of loading 4.35 into DooM 2. So I did, and uh, yeah. Usual results happened, went through maps 01 to 04, and then, I go to MAP05, expecting nothing.

Oh boy was I wrong.

I loaded into a level with a poorly drawn chaos emerald infront of me, and then went through, feeling a bit odd. Then, I loaded MAP06, which I thought wasnt a map, as well.

Instead, I got thrown into what seemed like a VERY early version of DSZ1. I couldnt get anywhere, because there were large towers everywhere. Closed the game, then went into the ACTUAL demo 4.35.

But something was off. VERY off.

https://imgur.com/a/kNzYFZu

I've never heard of this before. I uhh, may have found something? I'll upload to mega if needed.

Alright, I'm going to head off to bed, now.

Edit: "Demo 4.32 *MISSING!*" Guess I've found a lost version, will upload to mega later.
 
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this sounds more like a creepypasta than an actual posting. would you mind actually posting screenshots so we can see what's going on?

inb4 someone says "every copy of srb2 is personalised" bc i KNOW someone will
 
TheGameCube said:
And no, this isn't a creepypasta. Just load demo 4.35 into gzdoom and this shit will happen.
Click to expand...
If this is so easily reproducible, would you care to post some screenshots for the sake of clarification?
 
Time to investigate! To the GZDoomMobile!

First, MAP05 with a poorly-drawn emerald? What's happening here is that Demo 4.35's srb2.srb file doesn't provide any data for MAP05... but Doom 2 does. Thus, the map that loads is actually simply Doom 2's MAP05 - The Waste Tunnels, but with SRB2 assets running around! The same happens if you try to load MAP25, MAP26, MAP27, MAP28, MAP29, MAP30, MAP31 and MAP32. Nazi Crawlas? In my Sonic game? It's more likely than you think.

MAP06 is a bit strange! This is what it looks like. It's not any sort of Deep Sea prototype, it's an unnamed multiplayer map that appeared in Demo 4 but was dropped afterwards. Sort of. It's still inside 4.35's srb2.srb file, but the game also loads update.upd, which replaces most of the maps with the 4.35 set. But if you don't load that file, like by loading srb2.srb by itself in a different game, heh, you can still play that map. Not that it works properly outside of SRB2, anyhow.
(I wonder how similar the Demo 4 and Demo 4.35 srb2.srb files are... I haven't investigated quite that far)

Lastly, the number on the title screen being wrong... that's known. They just never bothered to update it after 4.32, nothing more to it than that. I'm surprised you didn't mention THIS though. That is super neat.

Bonus trivia: While snooping inside the files I also found a list of title cards and what is this? Crystal Cave? Eggfactory? Freak Show? It also has Sweet Tooth and Hidden Palace, making it highly likely this is the original list of Super Levels and Hyper Levels intended for the game. We know Sweet Tooth is still happening, I wonder how much is left of the rest...
 
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Goldenhog said:
Bonus trivia: While snooping inside the files I also found a list of title cards and what is this? Crystal Cave? Eggfactory? Freak Show? It also has Sweet Tooth and Hidden Palace, making it highly likely this is the original list of Super Levels and Hyper Levels intended for the game. We know Sweet Tooth is still happening, I wonder how much is left of the rest...
Click to expand...
This list of level names is interesting, but I'm most curious about Slime Valley. Could it be that the goop gimmick was originally intended for that planned level before it was used in Techno Hill and Haunted Heights instead? I wouldn't doubt that a lot of textures and concepts designed for those levels ended up used in the main campaign instead, especially "Eggfactory" as Techno Hill started to get more heavy use of factory elements.
 
Goldenhog said:
Time to investigate! To the GZDoomMobile!

First, MAP05 with a poorly-drawn emerald? What's happening here is that Demo 4.35's srb2.srb file doesn't provide any data for MAP05... but Doom 2 does. Thus, the map that loads is actually simply Doom 2's MAP05 - The Waste Tunnels, but with SRB2 assets running around! The same happens if you try to load MAP25, MAP26, MAP27, MAP28, MAP29, MAP30, MAP31 and MAP32. Nazi Crawlas? In my Sonic game? It's more likely than you think.

MAP06 is a bit strange! This is what it looks like. It's not any sort of Deep Sea prototype, it's an unnamed multiplayer map that appeared in Demo 4 but was dropped afterwards. Sort of. It's still inside 4.35's srb2.srb file, but the game also loads update.upd, which replaces most of the maps with the 4.35 set. But if you don't load that file, like by loading srb2.srb by itself in a different game, heh, you can still play that map. Not that it works properly outside of SRB2, anyhow.
(I wonder how similar the Demo 4 and Demo 4.35 srb2.srb files are... I haven't investigated quite that far)

Lastly, the number on the title screen being wrong... that's known. They just never bothered to update it after 4.32, nothing more to it than that. I'm surprised you didn't mention THIS though. That is super neat.

Bonus trivia: While snooping inside the files I also found a list of title cards and what is this? Crystal Cave? Eggfactory? Freak Show? It also has Sweet Tooth and Hidden Palace, making it highly likely this is the original list of Super Levels and Hyper Levels intended for the game. We know Sweet Tooth is still happening, I wonder how much is left of the rest...
Click to expand...

Holy SHIT. I never thought someone would go looking into this so deeply. Damn, you put a lot of effort into this, I guess we might have found some previously unknown stuff. I thank you, kind stranger. We should get SSNTails to see this.

EDIT: fixed typo
 
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The reason for those extra names is actually easy to explain. It's been stated the original plan was to have a number of 'super' and 'hyper' levels with higher difficulty akin to the original SRB1, but that plan got dropped. What we see is likely the original zone names for some of those super and hyper levels.
 
I don't think the plan was really dropped, just modified with new stages getting in instead.
 
IIRC, a lot of places seem to mention it was modified to be general 'challenge levels' with a variable amount of them, rather than having 3 super and 3 hyper levels.

Given that the names describe at least 6 levels that don't currently exist, those being Sweet Tooth, Crystal Cave, Hidden Palace, Egg Factory, Slime Valley, and Freak Show, it's likely from when it was a set-in-stone 6 bonus levels.
 
And judging by that the order of levels listed is in order, then the first 3 unknown title cards would be super levels, and the last 3 are hyper levels.
 
Seeing that title screen, it would've been interesting to have indev versions of the Demo and Final Demo-era, but I guess they are lost in time and SSNTails doesn't have them anymore. Still, nice find though!
 
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