Wolf3D source ports?

Okay, I've been seriously out of the loop on Wolfenstein 3D ports. I'm running Win7 X64, is there anything out that's reliable to run the game on my system? I know I could use DOSbox but I wouldn't mind some sort of minor enhancements and such, possibly with an easy loader to run user content(but that's optional)

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=wolfenstein+3d+source+ports

There's NewWolf, Wolf4SDL, and WolfRedux.

WolfRedux seemed to me to be the one that's built on the soundest principles: before playing, you run a WolfExtractor program that converts all the Wolf resources to sane formats. It's the port that Carmack chose as the base for the iPhone port.

However, the Wolf modding community seems to be mostly using the vanilla exe, or their own custom builds of the original source code. This makes sense when you know how the Wolf code works (imagine how Doom modding would be if you had to recompile the exe whenever you added a new lump in the IWAD...) but it hampers source ports from really taking off.

On a quasi-related note, the Xbox 360 port has to be the sloppiest port of any game I've seen in quite some time. It indiscriminately culls sprites when there's too many on screen, which makes surviving levels with a ton of enemies in front of you impossible; secret walls move funny, like the coders assumed you'll only ever see a secret wall move in to a wall rather than alongside it; I'm pretty sure the hit detection is wonkier than it was in the PC original...

(I still played it through)

GooberMan said:

It indiscriminately culls sprites when there's too many on screen, which makes surviving levels with a ton of enemies in front of you impossible; secret walls move funny, like the coders assumed you'll only ever see a secret wall move in to a wall rather than alongside it;

And both are very true for the vanilla PC Wolfenstein 3d, too, goddamnit.

The problem with NewWolf is that after beating the boss at the end of the 8th floor of any episode, you have to start a new game since the ending sequence doesn't happen to take you to the episode screen.

Gez said:

WolfRedux seemed to me to be the one that's built on the soundest principles: before playing, you run a WolfExtractor program that converts all the Wolf resources to sane formats.

Personally I find it crazy to expect people to convert the data with an external program. That's why my port (SVN source code only) based off Wolf4SDL does it on the fly. In fact it uses ZDoom's resource code. If only I had time to work on it.

Mr. Chris said:

The problem with NewWolf is that after beating the boss at the end of the 8th floor of any episode, you have to start a new game since the ending sequence doesn't happen to take you to the episode screen.

Running it, I had to disable full screen mode with the command prompt just to run it because it minimized. After that I had to manually set video res, reset full screen and then run. Auto run was on by default, there's no mouse sensitivity setting and as you said, the episode doesn't end.

Can anyone link me to the others? Google seems to be giving me random links to anything besides dedicated pages for them.

Gez said:

WolfRedux

This is the best source port. I just downloaded it and it works perfectly from what I can tell. Just make sure you correct the screen resolution. If you set it too small, then everyone runs around the stage like Duke Nukem just gave them steroids. :)

I found A download for WolfRedux but I think it's not right... all it had were a BAT file and a PK4 file, which I can't run as wolf3d.exe is 16-bit and that's not happening on an X64 OS.

Never mind. seems the actual port's name is Wolf3DRedux. http://wolf3dredux.sourceforge.net/download.html

So Wolf3DRedux is basically unplayable for me. Even at 1152 x 854 the game runs too fast and I can't use the higher resolutions it offers. The status bar and weapon hand shrink the higher the res and weapon cycling doesn't work.

diosoth said:

So Wolf3DRedux is basically unplayable for me. Even at 1152 x 854 the game runs too fast...

That happens to me as well in Windows with v0.1k. It was fine at v0.1j but I don't think I kept the file and no older versions are kept on sorceforge. :(

Sounds about how ZDoom keeps breaking old features with each new update. I can't run Happy Time Circus in the current builds or find an old copy that it will work under. And forget running Massmouth 2 correctly.

I'll tell the ZDoom developers to look for bug reports in threads about Wolf3D source ports, because it is obviously the best place to put them.

Gez said:

I'll tell the ZDoom developers to look for bug reports in threads about Wolf3D source ports, because it is obviously the best place to put them.

My point still stands.

And I still haven't found an option to run this game properly under Win7, partly because it looks like many of the ports haven't seen any recent work.

I'm running Wolf3DRedux on Vista and it works fine for me.

I downloaded it from this website, if it makes any difference.

I have no problem running Wolf3dRedux either. I don't know why it would run too fast... ?

Redux works at correct speed; but it doesn't capture mouse movements... Also, it doesn't reset the music to level music when you resume playing after visiting the menu.

diosoth said:

My point still stands.

Mine does, too. Happy Time Circus is repaired with ZDoom r3008.

diosoth said:

Sounds about how ZDoom keeps breaking old features with each new update. I can't run Happy Time Circus in the current builds or find an old copy that it will work under. And forget running Massmouth 2 correctly.

Correction: It breaks badly made maps that contain mapping bugs which slipped through on older releases. The map has one very badly constructed teleporter that only worked in the old version because there was a serious bug in the destination search logic.

But well, why do I bother explaining such things to people like you who can't be bothered to file a bug report but instead complain about non-functional maps elsewhere?

Graf Zahl said:

Correction: It breaks badly made maps that contain mapping bugs which slipped through on older releases. The map has one very badly constructed teleporter that only worked in the old version because there was a serious bug in the destination search logic.

But well, why do I bother explaining such things to people like you who can't be bothered to file a bug report but instead complain about non-functional maps elsewhere?

Maybe if you had a report form instead of making people sign up at your forums to make such reports? Just saying. As much as I appreciate the effort you put into GZDoom, I do think that was a bit needless. I'll let it slide though.


I may stick to DOSbox for running Wolf3D since it's unlikely the ports will ever be updated again and they don't work right under Windows 7.

diosoth said:

Maybe if you had a report form instead of making people sign up at your forums to make such reports? Just saying.

...are you seriously complaining that zDoom bug reports are accepted at the zDoom forums?

Plus you can post in the bug report forum without registering -- anonymous posting is enabled there.

Gez said:

Plus you can post in the bug report forum without registering -- anonymous posting is enabled there.

Precisely that. And bugs nobody who could address them knows about can't be fixed, right?