Don't own Doom legit? Buy for 99 cents.

[SonicIce]

Steam holiday sale. Ends Jan 2nd.

Ultimate Doom: http://store.steampowered.com/app/2280
Doom II: http://store.steampowered.com/app/2300/

ID Super pack $35: http://store.steampowered.com/sub/440

[Mithral_Demon]

Wrong place, and wrong thing to say, good bye.

[esselfortium]

Mithral_Demon said:

Wrong place, and wrong thing to say, good bye.

What? He's not offering warez.

[chungy]

Yeah, it's completely legal. The Doom II package includes Master Levels at no extra charge, and Final Doom is $8.99; you can basically get the entire classic series for $10.97 ;)

[Steeveeo]

I was gunna post this, but I guess I'm too much of a procrastina--ah I'll finish that later...

On another note, let's hope Enjay doesnt see this. :P

[Creaphis]

Yeah, I already saw this in news submissions and the super pack is tempting me. I can't decide if I *should* spend the money. Of course I shouldn't, because I'm poor, but... games! Cheap games!

I actually don't own Doom 3, so this would be the time to get it, but my computer can't run it anyway and I have no immediate plans to upgrade.

[SonicIce]

Mithral_Demon said:

Wrong place, and wrong thing to say, good bye.

wake up, man... :P

[Maes]

If you don't have a box and manual, it ain't really ownin' the thing, knowhatumsayin'?

And let's not even get started of how you're tied to a whole "wrapper" platform to even play the game....e.g. can you use this Steam "Doom" directly on an oldskool box with DOS and no netwotk? (without doing file management mumbo jumbo and activation on a "good" box, pal).

[Creaphis]

Well in the case of Doom on Steam you can just copy the wad file and use it wherever you want. If you bought a boxed copy of Doom you wouldn't want to run it with that engine either.

[Maes]

Maes said:

(without doing file management mumbo jumbo and activation on a "good" box, pal).

That was exactly my point. In the end it boils down in paying online for downloading a couple of WAD files (which you must also activate/decrypt/unDRM/whatever, assuming the original game's structure is visible/accesible. E.g. that's not the case with Trymedia games, which completely wraps the game's datafile even in "executable" form).

[CODOR]

Creaphis said:
Well in the case of Doom on Steam you can just copy the wad file and use it wherever you want.

I think all of the games in the super pack can be copied out of the Steam directory and run wherever one wants. (Certainly the DOS-based ones can. The games that require CD keys just have to be run once each from Steam's front-end to create the key files. The only ones I haven't tried elsewhere yet are Doom 3 and its expansion since the only system powerful enough to run them is the one I installed Steam on, but I suspect they'd work too.)

[chungy]

Creaphis: If you ever see yourself getting a computer powerful enough, you could prepare for it; though even with the sale, the price of Doom 3 on Steam is pretty hefty given that you can find boxed copies for less money. For nine more dollars, you could get all the other id games if you don't already have them ;)

Maes: When you download the games from Steam, they just run in an unmodified DOSBox with the original vanilla Doom EXEs and IWADs all untampered/unencrypted. It's quite easily possible to run it on a real DOS computer, so long as you can copy the files (by this, I mean you have a media *for* your ancient DOS machine, the files from Steam itself sit in the clear on your hard disk). Chocolate Doom even has code to take advantage of Steam purchases, and it can use IWADs from Steam with no copying required.

All of the id games on Steam are fairly easy to run wherever you want, although some of them it's tricky to get the CD-key out. For Quake 3/RTCW, you can just read the key file for seeing what the engines want you to type in, or you could copy the key file. For Doom 3, you can't just read it plaintext, but you can copy the key file to a new/different system (eg, to run on Linux I put it in ~/.doom3).

[Maes]

Hmm then Steam is apparently better than Trymedia and others, in that respect. I had a particular RTS game in mind, whose trymedia version was encapsulated and could not work with official patches or third party mods at all, since there was little left of the original game's file structure.

[Gez]

If you get the Id Super Pack, there are only two games that require that really require Steam to be active in the background to work: Doom 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

All other games can be run in ports or in DOSBox. Also, Steam only modifies the executables and doesn't encrypt the data. The games that are geared to work with DOSBox are not even modified at all.

Chocolate Doom isn't alone in being able to find IWADs in Steam's directories, ZDoom (and its children ports) can do it too. Probably others as well.

[chungy]

Gez said:

Doom 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Both of which are quite easy to work around by simply extracting the official patches (which contain the plain engine files out in the open).

[Udderdude]

Mithral_Demon said:

Wrong place, and wrong thing to say, good bye.

ZOMG IT'S SO CHEAP IT'S 99% CLOSE TO WAREZ!!!!!1

[GreyGhost]

So cheap it ought to be a crime. :)

[Creaphis]

Will patches and mods work with Steam's Doom 3?

[Bucket]

Yes.

[40oz]

I'm still baffled that there can be anyone who still wants doom but doesn't have it after 15 years of existence.

[chungy]

I know a few people that only have pirate copies... one of which just got legal copies through this sale :D

Not to mention the fact that some people may not have ever played Doom for whatever reason -- including people that were born after the game was released in the first place (there's a few of those on these forums, even).

[Gez]

Bucket said:

Yes.

Except Terminal Doom. :(

[Creaphis]

Bought the super pack.

I look forward to wasting all my time on games when I return to my personal computer.

[Akimbo_Commando44]

It's funny how the Doom Complete pack goes for $35 while the Super Pack is a dollar cheaper.

[Kyka]

JohnnyRancid said:

I'm still baffled that there can be anyone who still wants doom but doesn't have it after 15 years of existence.

...Or people like me who loan out games all the time and never see them again. Like time passes and then I forget which friend I loaned them to, they get lost, they get corrupted, they just vanish into some gaming black hole.

I have bought at least 10 commercial versions of Doom over the years. Doom, Doom2 Final Doom, Ultimate Doom, all purchased several times over at various times.

And to be honest, right now I don't even have copy of Ultimate Doom. Kinda miss it, haven't played episode 4 in years now.

[ReFracture]

I got the iD super pack for $60 a long time ago. Worth every penny.

It's also helped me develop my understanding of Dosbox. I just edit the conf file on steam a little bit to the settings I like, and play vanilla doom on steam. :P

Gez said:

Except Terminal Doom. :(

I think that issue is related more directly to Doom 3 1.3.1.

[Maes]

Where I live, the very concept of purchasing a video game through a regular store sounded like a "WTF?" till the late 90s, when video rentals started renting PSX and PC games.

First problem was that there was little or no choice, and no apparent point of contact between shops and newly released games: the few computer shops that existed had maybe a couple of boxes of obscure MS-DOS games from 1991-1992 (some still on 5"1/4 floppies!), and even in the mid 90s there was only one shop bringing in CD-ROMs, mostly Video CDs and shareware collections.

The situation was of course different in major cities, where you could actually walk into a shop and buy a game that you read about in a magazine, but unthinkable where I lived.

Elsewhere, including where I live, it was all about floppy sharing, copying, and yes, sometimes purchasing from pirates (that's how I and some of my friend got our first 4 floppies with Doom v1.1, for about 10 Eur in today's money). And of course, whenever you visited somebody else with a computer, it was always a good occasion to "exchange" some stuff. Sounds terrible? Well, tough cookie, if we didn't do it we'd have to pass the whole 80s and 90s video game-less.

Of course today the situation is different, but still there's a gigantic gap between an American teenager that actually has access to a credit card and can pay for gaming services, and a gamer here in Greece that needs an income certificate to even get issued a 1000 Eur limit credit card (and let's not even discuss broadband penetration and viability of such services etc.)

[Creaphis]

Maes said:

yes, sometimes purchasing from pirates

Wait, pirates that sell games actually exist? When I see a movie trailer's warning that "buying pirated X is stealing" I can't help but laugh. Who does that?

[CODOR]

Kyka said:
I have bought at least 10 commercial versions of Doom over the years. Doom, Doom2 Final Doom, Ultimate Doom, all purchased several times over at various times.

And I thought I was bad, with three copies each of Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 (boxed copies in 1995 and 1994 respectively, Collector's Edition in 2001, and the Super Pack earlier this year). I've never had a three-episode version of Doom (except for downgrades from the Ultimate Doom) but I have Final Doom twice. That's still only eight distinct copies, though...

Creaphis said:
Wait, pirates that sell games actually exist? When I see a movie trailer's warning that "buying pirated X is stealing" I can't help but laugh. Who does that?

Remember, kids: do your part in stopping piracy. Put the pirates out of business by downloading stuff instead of buying it from them.

[Maes]

CODOR said:

Remember, kids: do your part in stopping piracy. Put the pirates out of business by downloading stuff instead of buying it from them.

Creaphis said:

Wait, pirates that sell games actually exist? When I see a movie trailer's warning that "buying pirated X is stealing" I can't help but laugh. Who does that?

Yeah, when the Internet wasn't commonplace and BBSing with 14400 baud modems was hardcore stuff, there were a few dedicated software pirates around that actually sold software on a tot money per-disk basis (also on streamer tapes and optical discs upon request).

I don't know about the situation in other countries, but even up to the mid 90s it wasn't uncommon for "pirates" to openly advertise in the personals sections of computer magazines, usually with names such as "Tarkus software team" or "Software club" etc., offering "1000s of games and applications on disk, tape, CD, hard disk" at "unbeatable prices" for "Amiga, Mac and PC". Some even offered monthly subscriptions, with a new app/game being sent each month! Ah, those were the times...

Usually, if you were "interested" in a game you would ask "someone who knew this guy...." and pay a fixed amount per floppy required (less if you could supply your own floppies). I even actually visited such a "pirate" who was nothing more than a student, but equipped with the "latest" (for 1995) gear: a 486 DX4/133 with a SCSI 2x CD-R unit with caddies(!), and several cardboard boxes jam-packed with software on CDs, plus a database for retrieving software X from CD Y. He then either copied a whole CD or wrote zip/rar files to floppies, as appropriate. Yup, those REALLY were the times. Today of course, this would seem out of place as anybody can get a fast connection, a large HD and a DVD-RW...

I'd easily consider such "pirates" part of the computing subculture in my country: without them, the vast majority of commercial software would have been unavailable for years, as most software houses didn't consider Greece a serious market for a long time. To fully appreciate the situation back then, the first fully localized software I remember was Windows 95.