Classic Doom - New Update on Steam

[Blast_Brothers]

It's hard for me to be mad at id/Bethesda/Zenimax/whatever because all of their work has been done in a way that's been conspicuously easy for source port authors to add to their open-source projects. The Unity port improvements didn't take long to find their way into most ports. And a lesser team wouldn't be openly discussing the release of the spec documents for their newest, internally-developed additions. Doing so in other places would get you fired!

 

Reminds me a lot of Minecraft post-Microsoft. They've also tried to create their own walled garden by porting the engine to something cross-compatible and creating a framework for "add-ons" as opposed to mods. But they haven't made it harder for anyone to make and share mods the old way, and Minecraft is still a de-facto open-source game because of how easy it is to decompile it, even dozens of updates later. I don't know what more can be reasonably expected from a big company.

[plums]

7 minutes ago, Eevee said:

I've dropped it here since it seems like no one else is very interested in the subject

I've appreciated your posts here (and elsewhere, I sought them out) quite a bit, I have been trying to sort out my feelings on the matter and separating them from other things that are going on IRL.

 

Back when Microsoft acquired Id through the subsidiary chain I was disappointed, but thought "at least it doesn't really affect classic Doom at all." Welp.

[LuciferSam86]

17 minutes ago, Eevee said:

I've dropped it here since it seems like no one else is very interested in the subject, but I do take issue with this since it goes to the crux of where I'm coming from.

 

The distinction you're making doesn't materially matter.  The DOS and Windows releases would've only differed in OS interfaces, which (a) were specifically isolated from the rest of the codebase, (b) would not be used in a modern Windows release, (c) were obviously recreated by third parties without fundamentally altering the game, and (d) were only not released due to happenstance anyway:

That's Carmack, in the Linux Doom README.

 

So I don't agree that the commercial releases were meaningfully different.  The open source release we got was the last release of Doom — Final Doom support and all — and it just happened to be for a platform that didn't also get a commercial release.  Doom's legacy, the final state of its codebase for many years, was as an open source project.  That was even still true for 1.11, the Doom Classic release in Doom 3 BFG.  (The intermediate console-only releases would have, as noted earlier in the thread, been contractually unreleaseable.)  That means Doom was as open source as legally possible for twenty-two years — 1997 to 2019 — until Bethesda acquired it, made significant changes to the engine for the first time in decades, and made binary releases without accompanying source code.  Therefore, they bought an open source project and made it proprietary.  This is not a wild reach on my part; it is what happened.

 

I'm aware they behaved the same way with the Unity release.  That sucked, too.  It also sucks now.

Obligatory IANAL but:
IMHO there is some confusion here, Doom is still under GPL you cannot remove GPL from an existing project. Legally, otherwise, you find people like the EFF ready to bring you to court.

 

As the owner of the code, you can fork from there and then the new version changes the license.

For the code they don't own (see MBF(21) implementation) you can use the technique called "Clean room design".

 

There is no way to change the license retroactively, you would break the license.

[Eevee]

10 minutes ago, plums said:

I've appreciated your posts here (and elsewhere, I sought them out) quite a bit, I have been trying to sort out my feelings on the matter and separating them from other things that are going on IRL.

 

Back when Microsoft acquired Id through the subsidiary chain I was disappointed, but thought "at least it doesn't really affect classic Doom at all." Welp.

Hey, thanks.  It's been very weird and unexpected to get pushback against the mere notion of Bethesda releasing Doom's source code, when we're all only still here in the first place because that happened once before.

 

3 minutes ago, LuciferSam86 said:

Obligatory IANAL but: [...]

I know all of this and I'm not sure which part you think I'm confused about?
 

I don't think "fork" is a useful description here, though.  Bethesda also owns the name "Doom", so whatever they release is, by definition, the canonical latest version of the "Doom" codebase.  But they are not legally bound by the GPL on future iterations of their own code, no.

[mancubian_candidate]

Evening all, loving the new port so far! Could never have imagined being able to play so many custom wads on my PlayStation! 

 

However, I found one potential issue. I don't know if it's me but I feel like Hitscanners accuracy is tuned way up. I played the first map of Legacy of Rust as well as the first few maps of Nova: The birth and was getting wrecked by Zombiemen on regular UV 😂 Could be just me, would be interested to hear if anyone else noticed that!

[plums]

10 minutes ago, LuciferSam86 said:

IMHO there is some confusion here, Doom is still under GPL you cannot remove GPL from an existing project. Legally, otherwise, you find people like the EFF ready to bring you to court.

The point is not "previous GPL software is no longer GPL", of course that can't happen. It's that development of a game that has been open-source for decades is now being developed under a closed license, by the people who currently own it through a series of corporate acquisitions. (The fact that the top parent company is Microsoft doesn't help anything in this regard.)

[Eevee]

While I'm here again, you know what else would be nice?  An open license on Doom assets, instead of letting a lot of modding work exist in a dubious legal gray area while Bethesda actively profits off of it.

[Muusi]

Wait what?! "The Unity port" got an update? Boom? Online? Nightdive? Oh my god it's too good to be true. 

 

If anyone reading this happens to work at Nightdive, please remaster PSX Doom pretty please! Or does Boom have the needed features to maybe recreate PSX Doom as a mod? 

[Shepardus]

17 minutes ago, Eevee said:

<snip>

The way I see it, I don't have a problem with the existence of a proprietary, closed version of Doom so long as it doesn't detract from the open variants, e.g. by piling on attractive new features that source ports can't hope to replicate. It does have the potential to go in that direction, but at least so far the devs have expressed interest in giving back to the community, if not the source code itself, at least documentation on the new standards (and many of the devs are part of the community).

 

Besides, even without Bethesda's involvement, there have been and still are closed-source source ports (e.g. ZDaemon).

[bobbie424242]

From what I understand, id Software always retained the rights to make how many closed source versions of Doom as they want.

Of course, they cannot take an existing Open Source port, modify it and use that without publishing the source. But that's not what they are doing as they do their own thing.

Edited August 9 by bobbie424242

[The Name's Plissken]

How do you guys feel about the online multiplayer? I think it's amazing that there's a more accessible way to play it, but I feel like it's a bit... laggy? Even on a 60ms ping server. Shooting has some latency, players are often teleporting around, and the movement feels janky too sometimes. It's peer-to-peer isn't it?

[Rexen²]

Speaking of multiplayer, it seems to break after one of those plot text screens. Like you get teleported to a random spot on the map and you can't do anything but quit.

[Lizardcommando]

It's not bad. I only got to play multiplayer on the Nintendo Switch but things ran relatively smoothly as far as I could tell (I played MAP07 on Doom 2). I wish the game would let you know if you killed someone or not just like in Skulltag/Zdaemon/Zandronum, unless this was something that was never present in multiplayer OG Doom.

[LuciferSam86]

6 minutes ago, Eevee said:

An open license on Doom assets, instead of letting a lot of modding work exist in a dubious legal gray area while Bethesda actively profits off of it.

Yup, that would be awesome and would solve a lot of dark areas, maybe with a non-commercial clause.

 

5 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

The way I see it, I don't have a problem with the existence of a proprietary, closed version of Doom so long as it doesn't detract from the open variants, e.g. by piling on attractive new features that source ports can't hope to replicate. It does have the potential to go in that direction, but at least so far the devs have expressed interest in giving back to the community, if not the source code itself, at least documentation on the new standards (and many of the devs are part of the community).

 

Besides, even without Bethesda's involvement, there have been and still are closed-source source ports (e.g. ZDaemon).

 

I was about to write the same thought, I totally agree with this.

[Dweller Dark]

2 minutes ago, Rexen² said:

Speaking of multiplayer, it seems to break after one of those plot text screens. Like you get teleported to a random spot on the map and you can't do anything but quit.

 

I got a similar thing, stuck seemingly on the outside of Dead Simple and not being able to do anything.

[Silverforte]

I remember having more fun on the XBLA multiplayer. Maybe because you could have only 4 players and you could also choose any map you wanted out of all the episodes instead of the limited selection we have now. At the same time it also felt smoother.

 

 

[Grungo]

wait so this new re-release also gives never before seen WIP levels too?

[Oxyde]

After a bit of single player playtime, I noticed that triggering some doors or specific actions sometimes causes your screen to twitch down for a few frames. Additionally, the usually stuck Cyberdemon in Plutonia Map32 in Coop (-solo-net), can shoot regardless or being stuck. Quite the surprise to be greeted with a rocket when he usually can't shoot.

[Trov]

15 minutes ago, The Name's Plissken said:

How do you guys feel about the online multiplayer? I think it's amazing that there's a more accessible way to play it, but I feel like it's a bit... laggy? Even on a 60ms ping server. Shooting has some latency, players are often teleporting around, and the movement feels janky too sometimes. It's peer-to-peer isn't it?

Even in the trailer it looks jittery. The first multiplayer clip is the player view struggling to move in sync with a lift, and in the very next clip you can see a player corpse appear out of nowhere for a frame and then reappear 20 feet away, and in the next clip the player view position is jumping all over the place as they strafe around the red player and then reverse direction. At least they can't be accused of cherry-picking multiplayer footage.

[OnionTaco22]

I just played a couple matches of Deathmatch and it was fun. My only problems with the new port is that you still cannot make it use your midi device and there also doesn't seem to be any easy way of loading wads that aren't uploaded to the mod page in-game (unless I'm just stupid).

[Eevee]

8 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

The way I see it, I don't have a problem with the existence of a proprietary, closed version of Doom so long as it doesn't detract from the open variants, e.g. by piling on attractive new features that source ports can't hope to replicate. It does have the potential to go in that direction, but at least so far the devs have expressed interest in giving back to the community, if not the source code itself, at least documentation on the new standards (and many of the devs are part of the community).

 

Besides, even without Bethesda's involvement, there have been and still are closed-source source ports (e.g. ZDaemon).

Releasing the source code is insurance that they can't do that, as well as proof that they didn't do that.

 

What happens if the documentation is slightly vague, or the Bethesda implementation has bugs?  What's canonical?  Will the bugs be fixed, or will existing projects have to reverse-engineer them?  Trust me, the Doom community has had it great for decades — you do not want to be in the position of reverse-engineering a proprietary system in pursuit of bug-for-bug compatibility.

 

The beauty of source code is that you don't have to cross your fingers and hope for an indefinite trickle of corporate goodwill.  And by not releasing their current source code, they've already clearly demonstrated that their goodwill has limits.

 

 

It's not like a source release would cost them anything.  What's going to happen?  People might be able to play Doom for free?

 

The question isn't "why should they release their code", but "why did they stop?"

[Antroid]

10 minutes ago, Oxyde said:

After a bit of single player playtime, I noticed that triggering some doors or specific actions sometimes causes your screen to twitch down for a few frames.

I think I experienced something similar in the new e1m2, when I went through the building, went on the roof and activated the staircases. My camera definitely jumped vertically for a few frames, only I think it jumped up instead.

[LuciferSam86]

Anyway, this part leaves me dubious:

Quote

The DOOM + DOOM II service may be discontinued, and content modified, disabled, suspended or removed, at any time.

I kinda understand the servers might not be always available for the next 100 years, and they can remove some content (maybe the user content uploaded) , but still leaves me with some bitterness in my mouth.

[Quizno]

I'm going to be very picky about organization here and I felt this way when they renamed Ultimate Doom to Doom (1993), but I really wish they just made a new Steam app ID for this and de-listed the original rather than overwriting Ultimate Doom. When you have all the old versions in your games list this one just looks awkward. On top of that the game installation directory is still Ultimate Doom.

 

Other than that I'm excited to unlock these achievements. I was hoping Doom would get some achievements after Quake got them.

[SilentMRG]

I have a wad of Master Levels for Doom II extracted from a compilation released for the PS3. The positive side of this wad is that it is a single wad with all the maps that can be played consecutively, that is, without the need to load them one by one manually. Well, in the DOOM + DOOM II relaunch, the MLforDII wad has a skybox with stars and the menu is themed with the wad's name. In that PS3 wad, the menu is that DOOM II and the skybox is just clouds, appearing like a day. I also noticed a stronger color palette in the re-release wad. Anyway, it sounds silly, but I thought these artistic changes were cool. =D

[Faceman2000]

19 minutes ago, Grungo said:

wait so this new re-release also gives never before seen WIP levels too?

Yep! It has the maps pictured in the top three images on this page, plus a Doom Alpha version of Refueling Base and The Spirit World.

[Grungo]

Just now, Faceman2000 said:

Yep! It has the maps pictured in the top three images on this page, plus a Doom Alpha version of Refueling Base and The Spirit World.

how does one access these maps? are they ingame or are they secret and you gotta dig thru game files?

[plums]

Just now, Grungo said:

how does one access these maps? are they ingame or are they secret and you gotta dig thru game files?

find Common.kpf and copy it to common.zip, and then unzip it. They will be in vault/maps/ from where you unzipped it.

[Faceman2000]

Just now, Grungo said:

how does one access these maps? are they ingame or are they secret and you gotta dig thru game files?

They’re in the Common.kpf along with all the unused sprites. I don’t believe there’s any way to access them in-game.

 

Oddly enough, the cut Mancubus rotations in the id vault aren’t in Common.kpf with the rest of the cut sprites.

[Grungo]

2 minutes ago, Faceman2000 said:

They’re in the Common.kpf along with all the unused sprites. I don’t believe there’s any way to access them in-game.

 

Oddly enough, the cut Mancubus rotations in the id vault aren’t in Common.kpf with the rest of the cut sprites.

thank