Put an end to my suffering please!!

[doom432]

Let me just give some background info. Last time I played doom was many years ago (final doom). I don't own any gaming consoles I own just a computer but I don't own any doom games. Doom 3 coming out reminded me of all the fun of playing final doom in HS when I rented a PS just to play Final Doom. I read the news of doom 3 and reviews and decided to save the money as it is just like quake 2. They put an end to the fun and gun style of the classic doom which i loved (i bought quake 2 when it came out and was dissapointed).

I have read about wads/ports and sincerely I don't understand it! i'm a total newbie at this and there are no total newbie articles on how to get started. All I know is that I can play thousands of doom levels made by the many doom fans out there. This is all I want, But how?

Somebody put an end to my suffering and tell me what do I need to do to play all the thousands of levels out there for the classic dooms? do I need to buy doom 1, doom II, final doom? just tell me ill do it!

I have win 98. Tell me what do I need to read to get all this? I am new to all this stuff and I know many will think im some kind of noob that wants quick answers. Not so, direct me to articles I need to read, i just wanna play doom dammit! what do i buy? what do i read? what do i download? Put an end to my suffering please!

[larsboy]

You basically need two things to play Doom on the PC: Iwads and a Doom engine.

An iwad is a file with all the content of a Doom game, there's Doom.wad, Doom2.wad and two Final Doom iwads. These are the only thing you need that can't be downloaded for free (legally, at least). I believe you can buy a collection of all the Doom games quite cheap.

The original Doom engine (the software to play the games) is 11 years old and for dos, so you'll want to get a socalled port, which is a modernized and enhanced engine. Also, many user-made levels use enhanced features of ports. All ports are free. If you want a port that plays as many user-made levels as possible, get Zdoom, but there are many others, so you should experiment.

Once you have these working, you can download user-made levels. These come in wad-files too, called pwads. There are different ways of telling your port what to play, I have a zdoom shortcut on my desktop, and add parameters to the target-field. Add -iwad doom2 to use the doom2 iwad (most pwads use this) and -file followed by the pwad files.

This was a short introduction to get you going, hope it makes you able to search for more info or ask specific questions.

[doom432]

Thanks a lot for your help, I understand everything better now. Just 1 more question. I am thinking of buying the doom collectors bundle (has ultimate doom, doom ii, final doom) will the user made levels work with this, or do I need to buy a single doom game?

I ask this because sometimes when they bundle a collection of so many games they might come in one file, and maybe I won't have the right file to play the user made levels.

do you know if the collectors bundle will work for playing the user made levels?

[Donce]

Yes, it will work.

[Relica Religia]

Buy the Collector's Edition. Do it.

[Nagelfar]

Speaking of getting wads running, is there anyway to do it in game from the internal command prompt? (that the ~ key above tab and to the left of the !/1 key brings down?) I can't for the life of me remember any of the commands that work on that console and I can't find a FAQ anywhere giving a list of commands.

[larsboy]

Nagelfar, that's a port-specific question. The original engine had no internal command prompt. If you're thinking of zdoom, I don't think it's possible.

[Deathmatcher]

Relica Religia said:

Buy the Collector's Edition. Do it.

Do it! Do it!

I loved "Starsky and Hutch" :-)

[Relica Religia]

Nagelfar said:

Speaking of getting wads running, is there anyway to do it in game from the internal command prompt? (that the ~ key above tab and to the left of the !/1 key brings down?) I can't for the life of me remember any of the commands that work on that console and I can't find a FAQ anywhere giving a list of commands.

I think doomsdayhq.com]JDOOM can.