Tag: id

Doom – How to play it nowadays

Alright, here comes one of the all-time classic 3d-Shooters probably everyone knows. Definitely one of my favorites too.

Introduction

Just in case you don’t know Doom:

Doom is a first-person shooter developed by id Software. It was first released in 1993 and is considered a pioneering game in the first-person shooter genre.

In Doom, players assume the role of a space marine who must fight his way through a series of levels infested with demons and other monsters. The game features fast-paced, violent gameplay and an intense atmosphere.

One of the key features of Doom is its use of 3D graphics, which were groundbreaking at the time of its release. Doom also introduced many gameplay mechanics that have become staples of the first-person shooter genre, such as the ability to switch between different weapons and the use of power-ups to enhance the player’s abilities.

Overall, Doom is remembered as a classic game that helped define the first-person shooter genre and is still played by many people today. It has spawned numerous sequels and spin-offs, as well as a number of imitators.

Doomsday Engine

So given it is 2023 and Doom is 30 years old, how can we bring the Doom game into the modern era? Yes, there are several ways. Lets start with one of my favorites, including a nice front end for all the various versions and mods. Can I introduce you to Doomsday Engine?

Doomsday Engine is a source port of the original Doom game. A source port is a modified version of a game that has been developed to work on modern platforms and devices.

Doomsday Engine was developed by Jaakko Keränen and is designed to be compatible with all of the games in the Doom series, including Doom, Doom II, Heretic, and Hexen. It features improved graphics, support for high resolutions, and many other enhancements.

One of the key features of Doomsday Engine is its support for 3D graphics, which allows the games to be played in true 3D with features such as dynamic lighting and shadows. It also includes many other features, such as the ability to create custom mods and play online multiplayer games.

Overall, Doomsday Engine is a popular choice for fans of the Doom series who want to play the games on modern devices. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The projects website can be found at https://dengine.nethttps://dengine.net/

How to install Doomsday Engine?

Prerequisites

  • Some Doom WAD files. You can grab the shareware version of Doom from anywhere on the internet or just from archive.org
  • For the full episodes you can buy Doom from Amazon, CDKeys or other any other place

Linux

If you are using Linux, the chances are very high that your package manager got a version for you ready. Head over to your Software Center, Apt repository or whatever your distribution calls it, search for Doomsday Engine and install it. Done. Find your menu entry to start the engine.

Windows

If you are using Windows, as most users probably do, do the following:

  1. Head over to the Windows downloads and install the latest stable release of DE. At the time of writing this was 2.3.1 and download “Doomsday 2.3.1 — 64-bit msi”. If you are using a 32-bit version, go and download that MSI.
  2. Once downloaded, double click the MSI file and install it to your desired location. Like c:\Games\Doomsday\ as example
  3. There should now be a Doomsday Engine entry in your start menu. Click it.

Where are the games?

  • Doomsday Engine should start. If you have Steam or GOG installations, these games should show up automatically on Windows.
  • If you got several WAD files stored in single folder, or you are using Linux (or Mac) click on “Select WAD Folder….” and navigate to that location. Now your games should show up.
  • From here you can simply click on a game you like to play and hit the “Play” button (triangle) to start it.

Enjoy Doom on modern hardware.

Settings

Of course Doomsday Engine gives you various options to amend your gaming pleasure. From changing the resolution, selecting audio plugins, network settings and more.

You should see a wheel in the bottom right corner that looks like in the picture below. If you, hit the “Esc” button, then it should appear.

There you can explore all the options the new engine offers. Play around with it and see what works best for you. High resolution, or high framerate, more or less effects, and more. We are not covering all the details here, so enjoy playing around with it.

Enjoy doom in the modern era.

Feedback and comments are very welcome. Something didn’t work for you? Let me know too.

ioQuake3 – Quake 3 Arena the modern way

You might have read my tutorial on how to play “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” using iortcw in a enhanced way. Quake 3 Arena is another classic shooter I like. As the source code of the engine is available as open source, there is also a enhanced version available for Quake 3: ioQuake 3.

What kind of features does ioQuake3 offer? Here are some features:

  • SDL 2 backend
  • OpenAL sound API support (multiple speaker support and better sound quality)
  • Full x86_64 support on Linux
  • VoIP support, both in-game and external support through Mumble.
  • MinGW compilation support on Windows and cross compilation support on Linux
  • AVI video capture of demos
  • Much improved console autocompletion
  • Persistent console history
  • Colorized terminal output
  • Optional Ogg Vorbis support
  • Much improved QVM tools
  • Support for various esoteric operating systems
  • cl_guid support
  • HTTP/FTP download redirection (using cURL)
  • Multiuser support on Windows systems (user specific game data is stored in “%APPDATA%\Quake3”)
  • PNG support
  • Many, many bug fixes

Yes, this is similar as iortcw of course, as the engine is based on it. Just in case you were wondering.

What do I need to install and play ioQuake 3?

  • An installation of the original game with patch (point release) 1.32c. I used the GOG version, which included all the patches already.
  • The latest test release for your platform (Windows for this tutorial). Grab it here.

In case you don’t own a legal copy of Quake 3 Arena yet, purchase a copy here and support the site. Thank you.

Apply the ioQuake3 engine

  • Open the test release file “Windows.zip” for Windows
  • Go to your Quake 3 installation folder, e.g. c:\GOG Games\ Quake III Arena
  • Extract all of the files in your installation folder and overwrite if prompted
  • That’s it. Enjoy Quake 3 Arena in the enhanced version by starting “ioquake3.x86_64.exe”

High-resolution textures installation

The project offers also higher resolution textures, which are definitely worth installing.

  • Go back to the project site to Extras
  • Go to “High-resolution textures“
  • and download the file “xcsv_hires.zip“
  • Open the archive and extract the file “xcsv_bq3hi-res.pk3” to your “baseq3” folder in your installation directory.
  • Start the ioQuake3 executable “ioquake3.x86_64.exe” to play.

Cosmetics

  • If you like to keep all your shortcuts, rename the file “ioquake3.x86_64.exe” to “quake3.exe”. Done.

Any question or feedback is always welcome.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein – iortcw

Finally found a way to play one of my all-time favorites “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” on a modern computer (and under Linux) with the engine port iortcw. After trying to get the game to run with WINE and PlayForLinux without success, iortcw finally started without any issues in impressive 2560×1440 resolution. Something we only dreamed about back in 2001.

iortcw is an enhanced RTCW engine – id software used to release the source code of all their games back in the day – with some features of the ioquake3 engine. Many features where implemented like the following (from their project site):

  • SDL backend
  • OpenAL sound API support (multiple speaker support and better sound quality)
  • Full x86_64 support
  • VoIP support, both in-game and external support through Mumble.
  • MinGW compilation support on Windows and cross compilation support on Linux
  • AVI video capture of demos
  • Much improved console autocompletion
  • Persistent console history
  • Colorized terminal output
  • Optional Ogg Vorbis support
  • Much improved QVM tools
  • Support for various esoteric operating systems
  • cl_guid support
  • HTTP/FTP download redirection (using cURL)
  • Multiuser support on Windows systems (user specific game data is stored in “My Documents\RTCW”)
  • PNG support
  • Many, many bug fixes

So how to install it? What do I need?

Lets start with what you need:

If you don’t own your copy of Return to Castle Wolfenstein for PC yet, you can purchase it from one of the below links (and support the site, thank you):

Installation

  1.  If you haven’t done so, install your original game and remember the target installation directory as you need some game files later
  2. Browse to the iortcw project release folder https://github.com/iortcw/iortcw/releases and grap the latest release files for your operating system. At the point of writing the latest version was v1.51c.
  3. Also grap the latest patch file from this site: This was this file as per now patch-data-141.zip
  4. Extract the latest release zip into a location where you like to have your installation going forward (like c:\Games\ioRTCW\ in Windows or /home/joe/Games/ioRTCW/ in Linux
  5. Go to the location of your existing original installation, go into the “Main” folder and copy the following files over to your ioRTCW “main” folder: pak0.pk3, sp_pak1.pk3 sp_pak2.pk3 sp_pak3.pk3. This is the game date for the single player mod.
  6. Then extract the content of patch-data-141.zip (or a newer version in the meantime) into your iortcw folder and merge its content into it
  7. And that should be it actually: Go to your iortcw installation folder and start either the “iowolfsp*” file for single player or “iowolfmp*” for multiplayer.

I recommend to go straight into the Option menu to tweak the settings for your system and your likening.

Enjoy. Comments appreciated.

Screenshot from one of my favorite levels where you have to escape from Castle Wolfenstein using a cable train: