Does anyone play Dos Doom netplay?

I've been playing a lot of source port multiplayer clients (Zdaemon, Zandronum, Odamex) and while they're fun, I kind of want to play deathmatch or co-op on the original Dos version. I was wondering if there was maybe a group of people out there who set up Doom netplay events, maybe by using Dosbox or something. The odds are that there is already a post about this somewhere but I haven't been able to find one. And yeah, I know that the internet clients make things significantly easier, but I think it would be fun for purists' sake.

I haven't in a while but I'd be glad to go at it again. I don't have much free time but maybe we could set up a DOSBox game on Saturday or something.

Have you ever used APCI Doom?

I would also be down when I get time this summer. I actually still do lan play with vanilla doom when I find someone who will play with me. I have an old computer with DOS and win3.1 installed and I have doom, D2, hexen, heretic, final doom and duke nukem installed on it and I also had a laptop with doom2 installed on it (everything was on a cd except doom 2 which was on floppies and the laptop only had a floppy drive), so me and one of my buddies who was into doom as well would deathmatch via serial cable. He's now a marine and I'm in college so that doesn't happen anymore lol, so now im desperate to find a deathmatch partner for nilla, ill give DOSBOX a try if I have to lol.

I would, if I knew how to work DOS box in the first place.

Just make sure whoever you play with has low latency to you, that netcode really isn't optimized for internet use.

Dosbox has IPX>TCP/IP tunneling so it will do the job.

I only did once back in mid-2011 or so, with a friend who was eager to try it out. It wasn't too bad but it was pretty laggy. I think we managed to finish E1 in co-op, but I'm not sure anymore.

I did, with DosBOX a few times, about 2 years ago. Hardest part was finding people. I'd love to give it a try over the summer a few times. I should be a bit closer to a lot more Doomers then.

I'll play with anyone who has a decent connection and live in Europe, Middle East or sometimes the US. You can connect me in DOSBox By typing ''ipxnet connect 84.249.219.27''. Shoot me a PM if you want to see me in YANG or Hamachi.

Archy said:

I haven't in a while but I'd be glad to go at it again. I don't have much free time but maybe we could set up a DOSBox game on Saturday or something.

Have you ever used APCI Doom?

I have not, but I'm going to give it a try now that I've heard of it.

Sounds good. I'm kind of on the east coast of The United States if anyone's wondering. I don't have the best internet connection so I'd prefer not to host it if possible.

I recently wrote a standalone DOSbox packet server and I was thinking of running it as a continual dedicated server, but had doubts as to whether there would be much interest. Would this be interesting to you guys?

I can one run server in Europe and possibly one on the US east coast.

Obligatory: "Why don't you use Chocolate Doom instead?" as well of course.

I'd be up for playing Vanilla Doom in DOS sometime, if we could get four players. Make sure you specify a game, as I typically play Registered Doom 1.9. I'm a little surprised Doomseeker hasn't come up with a way to quickly initialize DOSBox and a vanilla game.

fraggle said:

Obligatory: "Why don't you use Chocolate Doom instead?" as well of course.

I can think of several, but Chocolate Doom is more of a testing harness for when you're in Doom Builder and can't be bothered to properly start up Doom via DOS. Play vanilla long enough, and the differences become pretty obvious (ie, the OPL2 emulator in Chocolate Doom is hideous.)

BlueFeena said:

I can think of several, but Chocolate Doom is more of a testing harness for when you're in Doom Builder and can't be bothered to properly start up Doom via DOS. Play vanilla long enough, and the differences become pretty obvious (ie, the OPL2 emulator in Chocolate Doom is hideous.)

I'm sorry to hear you think that. I certainly don't intend Chocolate Doom as just a "testing harness for Doom Builder". I'd very much like it if people felt happy using it for this exact kind of purpose.

Have you filed any bugs? It's really frustrating for me when people have reached these kind of conclusions, make these kind of comments but haven't bothered to even report that they had a problem.

If you can point to specific music tracks that are problematic that would be a lot of help. My goal when I wrote the OPL playback code for Chocolate Doom was that it should be provably identical in playback to Vanilla Doom (for some tracks I can prove this).

what's the point in playing dos doom? The source ports do a much better job.

BlueFeena said:

(ie, the OPL2 emulator in Chocolate Doom is hideous.)

It's a straight port of the OPL emulator in DOSBox, though.

Besides, being hideous is how you know the emulation is accurate. :p

BlueFeena said:
I can think of several, but Chocolate Doom is more of a testing harness for when you're in Doom Builder and can't be bothered to properly start up Doom via DOS.[/B]

This is the most ridiculous, baseless claim I think I've ever heard regarding Chocolate Doom. How about you name ONE THING that is different, except for the OPL code.

Gez said:

It's a straight port of the OPL emulator in DOSBox, though.

Besides, being hideous is how you know the emulation is accurate. :p

No, BlueFeena has a valid point. It's certainly not the OPL emulation code that's the problem (that comes from DOSbox), but probably the OPL playback code which I reverse-engineered from Vanilla Doom (via black box testing). It does have some known issues that I ought to get round to fixing, but if there are specific tracks that sound particularly bad then I want to know about them.

It's really just frustrating more than anything. I don't mind people having opinions about my port but I really wish they would report the problems they find. I can't fix them unless people tell me about them.

Hi Fraggle, I'll send you a PM so as not to take this thread where it doesn't belong.

I prefer using Chocolate over vanilla. It's much more future-proof and convenient to use.

As for OPL, have you considered adding a filtration system? As is (I think) common knowledge, many OPL cards ran the result through various filters to try to make it "sound better." I know that many cards used different methods, but perhaps the most common ones could be options, such as a SB16's filtration.

A quick search revealed this video:

Sorry to revive an old thread here but I just got another old machine donated to me and it has windows 98 SE which should be able to connect to the internet and I assume dosbox and original DOS would be compatible but I'm not sure. Does anyone know?

Dosbox does not actually support the IPX protocol that the original .exe uses in the same sense that playing on a real dos computer would.

It tunnels the IPX traffic into TCP/IP.

So no, you cannot play vanilla Doom with real IPX support from the OS and network it with vanilla Doom inside of dosbox.

Mike.Reiner said:

Dosbox does not actually support the IPX protocol that the original .exe uses in the same sense that playing on a real dos computer would.

It tunnels the IPX traffic into TCP/IP.

So no, you cannot play vanilla Doom with real IPX support from the OS and network it with vanilla Doom inside of dosbox.

I think I've played Dos Quake with Dosbox Quake, but that's Quake, and I also think it was through serial connection.

Mrs. Nesbitt, Archy and any other who want to play DosBox online - please PM me, or find me in one of the Doom IRC channels. I love the thought of Vanilla Dooming online, even considering the lag.

fraggle said:

I recently wrote a standalone DOSbox packet server and I was thinking of running it as a continual dedicated server, but had doubts as to whether there would be much interest. Would this be interesting to you guys?

I can one run server in Europe and possibly one on the US east coast.

Obligatory: "Why don't you use Chocolate Doom instead?" as well of course.

I've always wondered if it's even possible to have a dedicated DosBox server that would work for Doom - I don't know too much about the technical aspects of this stuff.

I'd love to use Choco Doom online as well, but the problem for both Vanilla and Chocolate is that I can never find anyone who wants to play it anyway. Hell, it's hard enough finding a populated DM server on the modern source ports, let alone the old stuff! But I'm keen, I hope others are too.

Doomkid92 said:

Mrs. Nesbitt, Archy and any other who want to play DosBox online - please PM me, or find me in one of the Doom IRC channels. I love the thought of Vanilla Dooming online, even considering the lag.

I'm actually really looking forward to doing this.

I would be willing to give this a try, especially with someone open-minded about trying weird old PWADs outside of the usual suspects that "everyone" plays.

ETTiNGRiNDER said:

I would be willing to give this a try, especially with someone open-minded about trying weird old PWADs outside of the usual suspects that "everyone" plays.

I'd be open to any suggestions. Even terrible wads can be a lot of fun if you have the right people.

Well for those interested it isn't particularly difficult.

The host will want to put in the command:
IPXNET STARTSERVER PORT

Port being the UDP port you want to host with, then clients will type:

IPXNET CONNECT IP PORT

The IP and port are to have a space between them, not a : like you'd expect these days.

That's it really.

A dedicated server like fraggle was mentioning probably isn't a bad idea if it is placed between the players in such a way that they all have pretty comparable latency, though this would probably be a bigger concern for DM than coop. Then again I'm not sure if the way the networking code works for the original game would make the 'first' player have 'host advantage' regardless.

Mike.Reiner said:

A dedicated server like fraggle was mentioning probably isn't a bad idea if it is placed between the players in such a way that they all have pretty comparable latency, though this would probably be a bigger concern for DM than coop. Then again I'm not sure if the way the networking code works for the original game would make the 'first' player have 'host advantage' regardless.

Server is now running: try:

ipxnet connect ipx.soulsphere.org 10000

The server is located in Amsterdam, so if you're not in Europe you're probably going to have a bad time.

Connected. Waiting for a UDoom game in dm.

fraggle said:

The server is located in Amsterdam, so if you're not in Europe you're probably going to have a bad time.

I ping around 122 to it, is that worth a shot?