So, I've been reliving my youth by blasting away the demons in the original DOOM.

The first thing I noticed is just how much I've forgotten - I can't get all the secrets! lol. That's what I get for not having played in 20 years.

Let me tell a bit of a story: 1993, I was entering my senior year in high school. Somebody passed me a 3½" diskette with "Knee Deed In the Dead" on it... and I was obsessed. We had all played Wolf 3D, of course, but this was something different. Right off the bat, the immersion was incredible. The snuffling and grunting of unseen enemies, the dynamic lighting, the oppressive mazes... this was a real world you were in. It was unbelievable. It was terrifying. It was magical.

To this day, DOOM is the only piece of shareware I have ever registered. I had to give my Dad the twenty bucks so he could write a check. It came a couple of months later in a skinny little box with a tiny booklet. (I have since lost that box - what a shame, it's probably worth something now.) When DOOM ][ launched, I was in my freshman year in college, and man, deathmatches ruled the dorm hallways. (56k baud modems and LAN cables ftw)

Fast forward to now.

I can barely make out the difference between the monsters and the walls. Is that an imp over there? Or just a brown wall? Maybe a palm tree? I can't tell. It's all a general mish-mash of pixels thrown up against a screen. That pinkie up in my face looks like... a shrimp, maybe? Just a pink smear, really.

I was pretty shocked at how rough this is. Don't get me wrong, I'm still loving going through this (and I never had Ultimate DOOM, so I'm really looking forward to that 4th act I never got to), but I have to believe it's due to nostalgia. I can't picture a seventeen-year-old kid today spending more than two minutes on this before shaking his head in disbelief. It would be like me trying to get impressed by "Pong" , and having some 55-year-old lecture me on how awesome it was back in the day.

I was thrilled to absolute pieces to have DOOM here, and couldn't hand my money over fast enough... but woo, these poor games just haven't aged well, lol.

Not gonna stop me, though. :)

Doom never ages. If you are running this in DOSbox you are doing it wrong. Run it in ZDoom, GZDoom or JDoom if you want 3D models. (Quake 1/2 era)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEiAFJxwi48

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGWGjxnM-JM

Amazing mods exist for Doom on these source ports.

Brutal Doom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSzYliSASKc

Not actually a big fan of Brutal Doom... mainly because I think the executions... just aren't Doom. Prefer Brutal Doom Lite.

Beautiful Doom also offers a lot of the features of Brutal Doom without the executions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLUV7j0eEa0

The ONLY time I launch Doom in DOS is as a reminder of how awesome it is to play these games under source ports.

First, seriously follow the GreasyDogMeat advice.

Secondly, I agree with you actually. But for a totally different reason: WASD + mouse look + always run makes your character much more agile than it was expected at the time of release and most on the levels become a joke even in Nightmare...


Edit: it really seems Brutal Doom (Lite) fixes, or at least reduces, this problems!

Hell.... I come to play! HEEELLLL!

Original Doom was played on small 14 inch monitors, so if playing on a modern 22+ inch monitor it will naturall look quite bad.
Personally i prefer the Doomsday Engine source port which has great graphics and mouse look.

Using gzDoom myself, mainly for controller support (I know, bad Flynn!) and having all my .wad based games in one spot. I haven't picked up the GOG versions yet as I still have my DOOM Collector's Edition CD. Heretic, Heretic and Doom 3 BFG I got from Steam, Strife from a co-worker and Chex Quest from the cereal box way back when and the developer's site for 2 and 3.

Flynn

There's an official Chex Quest 3 that has a remastered Chex Quest 1 and 2 in it (each one in a different episode slot). I used that the replace the multiple Chex Quest WAD files I had.

Yep, that's where I got my copy from. I was just kind of surprised when I was going through some old CDs to find I still had the disc from the cereal box stashed in my collection. =)

Another WAD file I really like is Eternal DOOM from TeamTNT (same guys behind Final DOOM). Nice set of levels with lots of interesting hacks and tricks. Most levels are quite huge. I just haven't figured out how to get it to work in gzDoom yet, so I have to keyboard it for now.

Flynn

Remember, you're now playing on a screen that has a much higher native res (and consequently makes things in lower res look a mess). At the time, you would have had a monitor that went to 1024x768 at the most, and I remember the old CRT screens being a lot more forgiving when you got them to render a 320x200 screen.

Well, I downloaded the full package of Eternal Doom (the 9MB file) and unzipped it to the same location as my DOOM2.WAD, Plutonia.WAD and TNT.WAD. I then used DOSBox to mount the folder as C: and ran the Eternal.bat file to install it. This created the ETERNAL.WAD file which is supposed to contain all the resources, levels, etc. So I then deleted everything except ETERNAL.WAD and put that in my GZDoom installation (keeping the DOOM2.WAD, Plutonia.WAD and TNT.WAD of course).

I then ran GZDoom using the ETERNAL.WAD. I use a command line to do this (so that I can specify individual GZDoom config files and save folders) but you should just be able to drag both ETERNAL.WAD and DOOM2.WAD onto the GZDoom executable.

The game loaded up fine with the Eternal Doom III menu background and the first level started up fine (see my screenshot). However, I did notice a number of errors in the GZDoom console on launching it, stating something about unknown patches for some textures and saying that these patches were therefore not applied. No idea if that affects the gameplay in any way, but I managed to play through the first map.

Oy, I feel a little silly now. Same procedure I used to get Doomed Space War to work. Looks like some of the sky textures are missing or incomplete (no star field outside the windows of the first level for example). Otherwise, it looks and plays well. Make sure you grab the CSweeper.wad file - that has the Cyber Sweeper level - Minesweeper with Cyberdemons, heh.

Edit - On second thought, it has dependencies elsewhere - likely in the Eternal.wad file. Most of the textures are missing, including the hints. So, that may still need to be played in regular DOOM ][? Have to work on that later though.

Flynn

I don't agree with that. Doom's enemies are very distinct from their environment and from each other; you just need to play in a larger resolution, by using a source port. You can also try specifically a port with an OpenGL renderer, like Doomsday, GLBoom+, or GZDoom.

I don't have missing starfield textures when looking out the windows on the first level. The only WAD file I'm using is the ETERNAL.WAD that was compiled by the .BAT file using the original game WADs. Are you using that or are you using the ETERNALL.WAD from the downloaded Zip file (which is only part of the files, it needs compiling with the others).

EDIT: Just taken a look at Doomed Space Wars and that is just a ready to use WAD file, no compiling needed, which is probably why that one works fine for you.

EDIT 2: Just started up the first level again and actually there are no stars, just black space. Then I checked YouTube and found someone playing it on PRBoom and that has no stars either, just black space. Are you sure the lack of stars isn't how it is intended? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSRU2RJc8ww

Interesting. Wonder why I remembered it with a star field? I just fired up my original copy (Eternal.bat running under DOOM ][ using D-Fend Reloaded) and there is no star field. No music either, but that was because the default sound device is an SB AWE. Once I changed it to plain SB, the music works fine.

I did play with some of the other settings in the shell, but didn't really uncover much else. Still, it's nice that it works well in gzDoom and I can use the controller again. Thanks for the help and patience. =)

Flynn

No worries. My only concerns with Eternal Doom running in GZDoom are the unknown patch errors as I don't know what effects they are supposed to have (and therefore what is missing in GZDoom).

I only looked into Eternal because you mentioned it, otherwise I'd not have known it even existed. There is also an Eternal Doom IV (appears to just be a 7 level demo as it wasn't finished). I'll probably get that and add it into my custom batch file that I use as a launcher.

Darn it. Replaying DOOM II with Hi-rez textures in HD now.

DOOM . NEVER . AGES .