New utility for playing vanilla doom online multiplayer! UPDATE: FINALLY RELEASED

[Hypnotoad]

I've been working on a new utility, it lets you very quickly play vanilla doom online with up to three other friends, and requires absolutely no knowledge of dosbox, you don't even have to know that dosbox exists! Everything works out of the box: it comes with a special version of doom 1.9 properly set up, with a modified IPXSETUP.EXE (network device driver by Micah Nutt, more info here: http://psg.mtu.edu/pub/idgames/utils/network/master.txt) that allows for a master/slave relationship allowing the master to pass all parameters to the other nodes, rather than everyone having to specify the same parameters, which makes things a lot easier, along with being distributed with a version of dosbox, all set up ready to go. All that is needed is for you to add a doom/doom2 IWAD to the DOOMIPX folder, and any vanilla compatible pwads to the pwad folder. Then, simply specify the parameters in the GUI if you are the host and click start hosting, or to simply connect to another host just put in his ip in the connect tab and click connect to host, and that's it, you will get straight to the action! This has been verified to work with multiple different testers.




Actual name of the program tba

The utility will automatically set up everything in dosbox, including ipx emulation, directory mounting, correcting aspect ratio, passing on command line parameters (via a response file the program writes to) to the master and other nodes, and launching the game.

The only technical ability needed is for at least one person (the host) to have port 213 forwarded.

There is also a slimmed down version which does not include additional files, and allows you to specify your dosbox and doom file locations in a setup tab, however when using this method you must make sure you and the other players have the exact same pwad filepath if you are to use custom pwads.

Download coming soon, after a couple of polishes and when a proper name has been thought of, or simply contact me on irc if you want to test it out (find me, I'm known as Hypnotoad on quakenet and pretty much everywhere else doom related now) before then.

Update: so I stopped working on this for a year due to Visual Studio being an absolute pain and losing some of my files, plus general laziness, but today I finally decided I would finish off the project, and that I have done. You can find a download here, for now I have simply called it "VanillaDM" (of course coop and such is supported too):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fhw58x7thwe69k6/VanillaDM.zip?dl=0

edit: oh yeah, this is for windows only sorry :(, and may require .net redistributable, but you should have that already.

[exp(x)]

This looks like a great idea. I recommend making the port number adjustable, however.

[Hypnotoad]

exp(x) said:

This looks like a great idea. I recommend making the port number adjustable, however.

Which port, the one used by DOSBox?

[exp(x)]

If that's the one that requires forwarding on 213, then yes.

[Relic]

.

Edited October 14, 2021 by Relic

[joe-ilya]

Can't wait 'till this'll be an official utilty to play doom MP.

[Hypnotoad]

exp(x) said:

If that's the one that requires forwarding on 213, then yes.

Done:





Also have added a settings page where you can specify video options:

[40oz]

whooaaaa!!! Awesome idea! cant wait to record deathmatch and coop demos!

[Netherstorm]

Pretty nifty looking.

[DevilHunter]

Sweet, would love to beta test this :p

[Tenchu]

Pretty cool, looking forward to trying this out!

[Hypnotoad]

So I stopped working on this for a year due to Visual Studio being an absolute pain and losing some of my files, plus general laziness, but today I finally decided I would finish off the project, and that I have done. You can find a download here, for now I have simply called it "VanillaDM" (of course coop and such is supported too):

http://www4.zippyshare.com/v/51432472/file.html

edit: oh yeah, this is for windows only sorry :(, and may require .net redistributable, but you should have that already.

[Doomkid]

Fucking rad, man!

[Hypnotoad]

I've edited the download with a small update, the previous version had a silly error that prevented people from connecting with a custom port sometimes, if you couldn't get people to connect using a custom port despite forwarding it this was most likely why, sorry about that, it should now be fixed.

edit: oh and my OP did not make it clear that you need to add the DOOM/DOOM2 IWAD to the DOOMIPX folder for it to work (not the pwad folder) which caused a few problems earlier, the OP has been edited now to make this clear.

[Patrol1985]

Holy crap that's amazing! Good job!!!

[fraggle]

Just a reminder that there should still be an IPX server continually running at ipx.soulsphere.org port 10000 (located in the Netherlands, so if you're far away like Australia or the US West Coast, probably won't work so well).

[BaronOfStuff]

Definitely worth getting if you want to dick around with vanilla Doom yet find command-line stuff horrible, complex and alien in function (or if you're just plain fuckin' lazy, like me).