Original Doom for Mac OS

[wildweasel]

Further testing: I was able to complete the game using cheats to warp to Map29, hit the exit, then complete Map30 legitimately. No trial messages, no obvious time limits.

I did encounter an oddity with the Run key: it only applies to arrow keys pressed after the Shift key is held down. So with this, it's actually possible to turn left slowly while running forward, or walk slowly while turning fast.

[4mer]

If you check out the other "Demo" that is available from the same place you will find a similar situation. The other distribution appears to include the music for both Doom and Doom 2 believe it or not but they don't appear to be standard midi files.

[Maes]

Heh that's pretty fucked up. That other demo contains the full Ultimate Doom.

The midi files don't seem to contain anything else but instrument headers (they are too small), so perhaps the actual playback method was something more akin to external headers + internal MUS lumps?

After all, PC source ports need to perform the MUS to MIDI conversion somehow, right? This is probably just Lion's half-assed method of doing it (I wonder why they didn't just convert MIDI2MUS, it was public domain anyway).

I will try copying them over to the Mac and see if they will work.

Then again, Softpedia will copy ANYTHING: they even put Mocha Doom up for download, even though it's far from finished, and took actual screenshots for it ΧD. Too bad that they listed it as a "Windows 7/Vista" game. Bullshit, it works on anything with Java 6 :-p (well, it needs a small fix for OS X but I tested it and it works)

Edit: the Mac midis are actually expanded upon installation to full size. But just by inspecting the zip file you can't assemble them whole :-S Probably some other fucked up data fork at work again.

[Maes]

Update: the Ultimate Doom version is quite more polished than the "Doom 2 demo", and allows configuring keys -somewhat-, although it's far from the full customization you could do on DOS. Music does play, but it's painfully slow with music under Classic emulation.

However, there are no longer function key bindings so loading/saving/quitting etc. must be done through Finder menus or alternate keyboard shortcuts, and bring up open file dialogs -_-

They even removed the quit option from the main menu, FFS.

And no, copying the music to the "Doom 2 Demo" folder didn't work. It just doesn't have it implemented, however it DID have function key bindings. Overall, it doesn't feel like a very good port, considering it was to run on Power PC machines that totally smoked Pentiums of the same class -well most of the time at least. Any modern source port is preferable to this tripe -hell, Doom95 was nuch better in comparison.

[DoomGater]

The Doom2 IWAD seems to be full registered V 1.7!
(MD5 ea74a47a791fdef2e9f2ea8b8a9da13b)

[Orchid87]

So, it's even worse than Doom 95? Unbelievable :)
Vanilla DOS Doom is the king!

[Reisal]

Anyone got screens of the Mac version, or are they not worth?

[Maes]

Mr. Chris said:

Anyone got screens of the Mac version, or are they not worth?

Nothing you haven't seen for what regards the gameplay, other than a glitch that causes the lower part of the screen to not update properly. I have a few shots, it's a chore to get them out of the Mac though, and some look glitchy. Imagine a 640 x 400 Doom display in the mid of a black Mac classic desktop with an optional application bar on top.

There's only a static startup logo for the "Doom II demo" with a few Mac OS buttons, and, if you fiddle with the mouse while playing, you get an application bar with some options. The "full" version has a Lion entertainment logo, then an ID logo, and credit screen modelled after the E1 endlevel, and that's about it. Also, more menus are functional compared to the "demo" (which might be a demo only in the sense that it's incomplete).

Didn't check to see how Spectres look though...edit: Spectres look OK, unlike Doom 95. Also, they seem to use a high-precision visplane rendering function, as it doesn't lose precision to the right of the screen like vanilla DOS does but looks source-port quality.

Edit: just like Doom 95, the "Ultimate Doom for Mac" worked with the Doom 2 WAD by dragging it on the "executable", so this is as official as it ever got for the Mac. It will be interesting to see if it can play Final Doom too, or Doom II PWADs (I think you can only drag one WAD at a time).

[esselfortium]

Maes said:

Doom II PWADs (I think you can only drag one WAD at a time).

If I remember correctly, press "S" during the Lion/id/etc logo sequence for the single-player launcher, or "M" for the multiplayer launcher. I'm less certain on the multiplayer one, since I never used it. Either way, you can load wads and do other session setup stuff with those.

[Maes]

Yeah, through the S launcher you can add as many PWADs as you want, however to change IWAD you must drag in on the app's icon at launch. E.g. if I don't drag anything, it always has DOOM.WAD listed, unless I drag DOOM2.WAD on it. BTW, it apparently can play Final Doom IWADs too if you rename them to doom2.wad. Dunno if it will support the extra animation lumps though...

It also starts with shareware Doom1.wad, plays the first demo, but crashes if I try starting a new game.

I tried loading Doom II with Cybie WAD (which causes tutti-frutti and HOMs with vanilla) and this one got less tutti frutti and no HOMs, which suggests that some limits were lifted. Let's see if it can play the infamous Demonstrations Games ;-)

[esselfortium]

Hmm, that's interesting.

Also, I used to own a download-purchased (imagine that, in the 1990s!) Mac Final Doom. It included two executables along with the wads (and music folders), if I remember right; one for Evilution and the other for Plutonia.

But regardless, unless they screwed with the way animations are loaded, the Doom2 app shouldn't have any problem with Plutonia's and TNT's animations. They were all set up by hacking around the ones defined for Doom2.exe (using the unused WFALL1-4 slot, as well as sticking extra frames in between the defined first/last frames of other animations to make them longer).

[Maes]

Yeah, seems to play even those just fine, other than the hardcoded Doom II music (I supposed you could swap the MIDIs for the appropriate ones). So overall it had some interesting features for the time, even though it was developed independently (?) from Doom95. However it's pretty unpolished under some other aspects (screen output, sound consistency etc.)

The way the screen buffer is updated also seems weird: I can see interlacing/shearing artifacts during fast motion, at least when using the high quality mode. Probably a way to accomodate for interlaced monitors at the time?

A rather weird limitation is that it can't load .WAD files with more than 8 charachers in their name....on a Mac. OK....

[wildweasel]

Maes said:

However it's pretty unpolished under some other aspects (screen output, sound consistency etc.)

I was noticing this - the Super Shotgun sounds don't get downsampled, just slowed down. Sounds kind of weird...in a cool sort of way.

[esselfortium]

If I remember right, it also had difficulty recognizing wads if the .WAD extension wasn't capitalized.

My guess is that Lion Entertainment coded in their own format-recognition method rather than relying on classic Mac OS's type/creator codes, in order to be able to load wads made with DOS utilities, but they half-assed it. Or something.

Anyway, like I mentioned earlier, the graphic updating glitches are the fault of something in Classic emulation disagreeing with it. There were no such problems running it on the actual intended OS.

[Maes]

Let's not forget that it was probably not meant to be ran on -what would then be- future versions of Mac OS Classic: it's made in 1995, so it might only work 100% correctly under System 7. It will be interesting to set up a physical Mac OS 9. I'll just copy the already installed and setup folders from the OS X desktop though, as I don't want to risk a non-installation scenario.

Regarding WADs: it doesn't seem to mind extensions or capitalization, only number of characters in the name.

Regarding the SSG sound: yup, the reloading sounded quite weird but with more "presence" to it.

[LogicDeLuxe]

I compared the Ultimate Doom download with the Mac CD of my id Anthology. WAD and executable are identical, so it is indeed the full version.
I wouldn't be surprised, if this is also the case with Doom II, except the download is an outdated version, which comparing to the CD would be pointless, obviously.

[Steve D]

As an old-school MacDoomer, I can offer a few memories.

Music in MacDoom, IMO, was better than in PC Doom up through Mac OS 7.5.3. This was especially true of the music for E1M3, which was very creepy, parts of it sounding like human voices. With OS 7.5.5, Apple updated their Sound Manager, which added some MIDI instruments and, in my view, degraded the music in some levels, most notably E1M3. Years ago, I bought a PowerMac 9500 just so I could hear that music again on 7.5.3, and record it onto a PC, but it died on me. :( I still have the machine, so I'll see about getting it repaired.

A handy feature in MacDoom's pull-down menu is Turbo. You could go in and out of Turbo mode as desired. I've never heard of this being available in any DOS/Windows version of Doom, so if it is, please let me know and tell me how it works, because I designed levels with this feature in mind. As I mentioned in another thread, this led to a design error in Map 23 of Realm of Chaos, where in an outdoor area, after you go up a wood tower and kill some Barons and a Pain Elemental, you can jump over an outer wall and land in a secret area. At least, you can make this jump if you're in Turbo! ;D I watched the speedruns that Heretic and Hitherto did for RoC, and Heretic managed the jump on that level, so it must be possible, even though I personally have never made the jump since I last played MacDoom, in 2003 or so. ;D

I'm going to start another thread for Mac mappers and Hellmaker.

[esselfortium]

As a kid, I used Turbo because I didn't know how to Run.

[Steve D]

esselfortium said:

As a kid, I used Turbo because I didn't know how to Run.

I used Turbo because I was scared of the monsters and wanted to escape at maximum speed. ;D

Nowadays I never use Turbo and I only Run when I want to get across large areas. After being away from Turbo for a long time, I turned it on once and found myself constantly falling into nukeage pits and so on. I had lost the skill. ;D

[yellowmadness54]

SteveD said:

I used Turbo because I was scared of the monsters and wanted to escape at maximum speed. ;D

Nowadays I never use Turbo and I only Run when I want to get across large areas. After being away from Turbo for a long time, I turned it on once and found myself constantly falling into nukeage pits and so on. I had lost the skill. ;D

I always have run on, but after just started playing again I find my self out of control.

I never liked the slowness of movement.

[Steve D]

yellowmadness54 said:

I always have run on, but after just started playing again I find my self out of control.

I never liked the slowness of movement.

For the sake of experiment, I'll try Run mode. Maybe I can make that Map23 jump in Run, instead of holding down the Shift key.

[hex11]

Well they have Chocolate Doom on there for download also, so it's pointless to try to use that old binary (I mean for real gaming, not just to check it out).

That site also has packaged versions of Freedoom (not sure with what engine) called Doomed Heretic and Doomed Freedom. But they're listed as commercial and you can't just download them, unlike the real Doom or Doom II. How's that for ironic?

They have other old games as "freeware" also, so it's not just Doom. But that reminds me, I should get Lemmings setup on my NDS so I have something to play tomorrow (that game is more fun than like 95% of real NDS stuff...)

[Phil1984]

I know I'm late to the party but I thought I'ld share my experiences of growing up with Macdoom.

Firstly here is a picture of MacDoom in action



Surprisingly it looks much like Dos Doom only in a 640x400 resolution ;)

Which of course was MacDoom's 'big' improvement over the original exe. The higher resolution really did improve visibility although you did need a powerful machine at the time to run it at a decent FPS. Low and Medium graphics were available for those with lower end PowerPC's or 040's though.

In terms of Wad support it supported most vanilla wads just fine although with some cavets. Dehaked stuff was hit or miss as I'm pretty sure the mac equivalent 'Demacked' (hah! totally witty name I know) did not support as many features. Having said that the most advanced Dehacked Wad imo, Batman Doom, was developed on the Mac so clearly for most things it was not a problem. Other problems was a lack of MUS support, meaning that if an author had gone to the effort of improving the atmosphere of their level with a music replacement, mac users missed out. I got very sick of the default music in Doom during the 90's I can assure you! Finally, if the wad developer had bundled it up in some kind of install program (I *think* Eternal Doom was like this), it made it very difficult to get it to work on the Mac app.

Running wads was pretty easy as it was drag and drop. Although you did need a little program that would change the Type/Creator codes (macs used an internal code to tell a file what program it belonged too rather than a three letter extension like Dos) so it would work. Key support was limited although the freely available DOOM II Keys extension fixed that problem. There was no Demo support, both playback and record which was frustrating to me as a young doomer wanting to see how the 'Pro's' did it!

The mac also boasted what IMO was the best doom editor right up until the release of Doom Builder in Hellmaker. Which, while buggy, was a very user friendly level editor that was a joy to use.

So overall, it wasn't a bad port. It did its job and for many 'casual' doomers I'm sure it would had been superior to running it on Dos due to its user friendliness and higher resolution. It sure did have its limitations though!

[Mr. T]

printz said:

How hard would it be to use the Cocoa framework to make a Mac OSX editor from scratch? If only I were a learning programmer and not a learning hardware guy...

Just run DB2 in Virtualbox, it should work

[sirjuddington]

Blzut3 said:

The Makefile doesn't seem to be set up to find the gl headers on Mac OS X. (And I have no interest in touching Makefiles.)

The slade3 codelite project has an osx configuration, it compiles and runs fine for me at least on 10.6.

[chungy]

I'm holding out that maybe, just maybe, someday Romero releases the DoomEd source code and we can have a decent native Linux (via GNUstep) and Mac OS doom editor :P

[natt]

Phil1984 said:

I know I'm late to the party but I thought I'ld share my experiences of growing up with Macdoom.

Firstly here is a picture of MacDoom in action


Surprisingly it looks much like Dos Doom only in a 640x400 resolution ;)

Perhaps macdoom has a 640x400 mode, I don't know; but that isn't it. That's 320x200 doubled in both directions.

chungy said:

I'm holding out that maybe, just maybe, someday Romero releases the DoomEd source code and we can have a decent native Linux (via GNUstep) and Mac OS doom editor :P

It's a nice goal, but a release of the DoomEd source wouldn't help much towards it. DoomEd was a primitive tool compared to any half-modern editor. You'd be better off starting with a windows editor as your baseline and porting the gooey to <whatever>.

[hex11]

Well I for one am much more interested in the real deal (DoomEd) than a DB2 port. It can't totally suck since it was used to make the IWADs. Romero also seemed quite proud of his "sector inspector" feature. I think Carmack also mentioned in some interview that the editor was fairly powerful and let you manipulate all entities without switching modes. Yadex has an alpha/buggy option that might be similar (global mode), but AYM warns against using it. :D It might have also been in the DEU 5.23 beta release.

[Csonicgo]

chungy said:

I'm holding out that maybe, just maybe, someday Romero releases the DoomEd source code and we can have a decent native Linux (via GNUstep) and Mac OS doom editor :P

We need more support for SLADE then. I really like how it's shaping up and 3 is getting a map editor at some point.

[Maes]

natt said:

Perhaps macdoom has a 640x400 mode, I don't know; but that isn't it. That's 320x200 doubled in both directions

Macdoom has 3 detail levels: a "low" that's actually like DOS's low detail mode, a medium detail (which is what you see in the screenshot) and a high detail one, which is actually 640x400 hi-res.