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samiam

I'm very pleased with Freedoom's progress

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I declared Freedoom dead half a decade ago.

I'm really pleased to see that I was wrong. Back then, Freedoom didn't even have all of the sprites done, much less all of the levels present. Now, not only does Freedoom have all of the monster sprites, and the shotgun carriers finally have had their graphics improved, but also the maps are mostly, if not completely, finished (and even have difficulty levels). Impressive.

The only regression I have found in Freedoom 0.9 is that the older 1.8.3 version of Doomsday crashes when trying to load the Freedoom wad (the game loads fine in the current 1.15.0 build 1606 version of Doomsday, but needs to use either random or third party maps, since Doomsday still doesn’t support Boom extensions).

For anyone who still uses Doomsday 1.8.3, I have made a version of Freedoom 0.7 (the last version to load with Doomsday 1.8.3) with random maps (because there is no Boom support in Doomsday, and because I don’t have free time to make 32 open-source vanilla compatible maps):

http://samiam.org/slump/

http://samiam.org/slump/ObHack-FreeDoom-0.7.zip

This has been my only Doom contribution since 2012; I will probably make my next Doom contribution in the late 2010s. :)

The zip file also includes the generator and parameters for making the random maps.

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Both the Freedoom1.wad and Freedoom2.wad files from Freedoom 0.9 work in Doomsday 1.15.0 build 1606 (To be accurate for the lurkers out there: The core wad works, but third party or random maps have to be loaded in a PWAD to actually play the game).

It’s only in Doomsday 1.8.6 from 2005 that Freedoom 0.9 crashes (the last version of Freedoom to work with this old version of Doomsday is Freedoom 0.7, which has sprites for all of the monsters, so is a drop-in replacement for the commercial Doom 2 wad). If Freedoom 0.9 works in Vanilla DOS Doom(2) (using third party wads without Visplane overflows and what not), the bug is in Doomsday, not Freedoom, and the fix is to update Doomsday (or downgrade Freedoom to 0.7, if you absolutely must use Doomsday 1.8.6).

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Progress has been particularly good over the past couple of years I think. Feels a bit like we're in a Freedoom renaissance.

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I think one of the reasons we’re starting to see a lot more interest in Doom and Freedoom is because of the “Two decade effect.” As a given generation gets older, they start fondly remembering the culture of their youth, two decades before, and there starts being a lot of nostalgia for that time period.

For example, in 1988 Time magazine did a cover story about 1968. In the 1990s, 1970s Disco was very popular music to play at parties. In the “oughts” (first 2000s decade), radio stations playing 1980s music popped up.

And now, in the 2010s, there’s a lot of nostalgia for 1990s video games, such as Doom, which explains why FreeDoom now has more contributers and why, after languishing in the mid to late oughts, with the project nearly canceled, there are finally enough contributers actively contributing levels and what not for FreeDoom to finish up and be on the verge of a 1.0 release.

It also helps that, when FreeDoom 0.7 was released in 2011, all of the monster sprites finally were drawn and level makers did not have to worry about monsters being “Freedoom graphic missing” black squares any more.

So yeah, looks like FreeDoom will get finished up. Hopefully the same will happen to Blasphemer, but that has a longer way to go (very few levels, almost no monster sprites) than FreeDoom did in the oughts (many monster sprites done, uneven but fairly large number of levels).

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As an update, I have updated my version of FreeDoom with random maps:

  • Changed the title screen to make it clear this is not an official version of FreeDoom and uses random maps
  • Updated the Zombieman and Shotgun Guy graphics to use the FreeDoom 0.9 versions
The URL has been updated:

http://samiam.org/ObHack/ObHack-FreeDoom-0.7.1.zip

There is also, for what it is worth (FWIW), a PGP sig:

http://samiam.org/ObHack/ObHack-FreeDoom-0.7.1.zip.asc

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And another update:

Since SMITA0 is very commonly generated in the version of ObHack (The update to Oblige 1 Fritz and I worked on between 2007 to 2012) I used to make this map, this improvement merited a version bump:

http://samiam.org/ObHack/ObHack-FreeDoom-0.7.2.zip

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I've updated the music to replace some of the, in my humble opinion (IMHO), bad sounding themes with music from other levels:

  • MAP03 (d_countd) copied to MAP13 (d_doom2)
  • MAP09 (d_in_cit) copied to MAP21 (d_count2)
  • MAP17 (d_stlks3) copied to MAP27 (d_romer2)
  • MAP28 (d_tense) copied to MAP08 (d_ddtblu)
Updated download link:

http://samiam.org/slump/ObHack-FreeDoom-0.7.3.zip

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I hope to have enough time to get around to updating those sprites in the next few weeks (the issue is a minor, but significant issue).

One thing that’s annoying is that I don’t know of a convenient way to just say “take all of the resources in PWAD foo and make it part of IWAD bar.” I’m pretty sure deutex has a way of doing that, but...while deutex does have a man page, it’s pretty terse, and I haven’t found a really good “use deutex the way the FreeDoom developers use it” documentation resource out there.

So, what I do instead is use SLADE to import the resources. I just take PWAD foo.wad, and in SLADE, make each and every resource a separate lmp file. Then I have SLADE open the FreeDoom IWAD file, search through the huge resource list (by hand! Slade doesn’t even have a “search for resource name” functionality that I can find), and then import each of those lmps, one by one, in to my fork of the FreeDoom IWAD.

This is why it will probably take me a couple of weeks to get around to making the IWAD file with the shorter Imps (err, Serpentides). The slightly-too-tall Serpentides are a lot better than the cobra imps FreeDoom has had for years; while I don’t mind the Cobra shape too much, I do mind the fact that, when looked at from the side, the old Cobra imps jump around in an ugly manner; it was not possible to correctly target them.

And, yes, I am really looking forward to the improved hellknight/baron. That’s the last really bad looking monster sprite in FreeDoom.

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im not sure how soon ill finish them, but i use all my spare time on spriting (and mlp XD)

i actually think ill get to finish them more quickly when the semester starts, we are going to have an animation class, so hopefully the teacher will let me do the sprites in class.

as for the last bad looking monster in freedoom, that would have to be the archvile, the good news is that urric is working on a really good replacement

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OK, I have released ObHack-FreeDoom-0.7.5:

  • Waterfall texture in fountains fixed to use ObHack texture (no more red waterfall in DOOM2.WAD file)
  • ObHack markers in DOOM2.WAD now use pictures I took of a fire last year (ObHack.exe still generates Neon "Oblige" sign)
  • Verified that the Imp is latest version of Raymoohawk's serpentide
  • Update MAP12 music (D_THEDA2) to use scragadelic/reflection_scrag.mid (DM10 music in FreeDoom)
http://samiam.org/obhack/ObHack-FreeDoom-0.7.5.zip

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raymoohawk said:

im not sure how soon ill finish them


No hurries. FreeDoom has been, and remains to be a very playable and enjoyable game.

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Sorry for bumping this, but I have two questions:

1. Will the generated levels work with other (newer) versions of Freedoom?

2. What ports are the resulting maps compatible with? Do they require that specific version of Doomsday you have uploaded, or will work with Boom/anylimit-removing port/vanilla?

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I can answer those:

1. should work fine with newer Freedooms (only potential issue is how some of the Oblige/Obhack graphics are added, as raw patches, that would break if Freedoom has changed how certain textures are composed of patches).

2. Obhack levels probably work fine in any limit-removing port (I don't know if Obhack has a engine setting, or if any port-specific features were added since forking from Oblige). Vanilla or Chocolate Doom is not supported because there is no way to guarantee there won't be any visplane overflows in the map.

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