Freedoom IWAD

[MidnightMage]

Just out of interest, does anyone else use Freedoom (either Ultimate or D2) instead of the standard Doom Wads as their default IWAD?

[raymoohawk]

i dont use it now, but i plan on using it as my main wad when im done with the sprites overhaul :-)

[Catoptromancy]

Since all the multiplayer ports now support freedoom, I have been using it constantly for everything.

[frithiof]

I use it as my main IWAD.

It seems to have all the noticeable textures, sprites, and sounds in it nowadays, with the exception of the arch-vile. And it works with just about all of the maps and mods, except for Brutal Doom (for reasons that would be pretty obvious if you tried to use it with Freedoom).

And raymoohawk is overhauling the sprites, which means it will eventually look a lot better. Click here to grab a wad that shows off his current progress with the zombie. I dare you to say that isn't an improvement over the old zombie.

His work will almost certainly bring more (positive) attention to Freedoom.

Actually, my only beef with the project, aside from the arch-vile, is the insistence on using boom maps instead of vanilla maps for some unknown reason. Why not try to make it compatible with all source ports?

[raymoohawk]

actually urrick started a really cool archvile, he hasnt finished it, but i plan on eventually attempting to complete it if he doesnt
you can see his progress here
http://s24.photobucket.com/user/UrricHammersong/media/asd/cw45L.gif.html

[Catoptromancy]

I forgot about that archvile. It is awesome. Even the electro attack is pretty cool.

[MidnightMage]

I usually use the Freedoom IWAD as a default but when using certain mods I will use the Doom2 standard IWAD to prevent graphic glitches. Unfortunately, certain WADS use the Wolfenstein SS and I hate the current SS model existing in Freedoom more than words can explain, both in sprite form and in sfx. Other than that I love the concept of Freedoom and enjoy the fan made content in some cases more than the originals.

[Xindage]

i use freedoom intead of doom in duel games in odamex (i dont like of using freedoom in coop mods) i have played All out of war 2 (zandronum mod) whit freedoom too and i like.

[soner du]

I use the FreeDM IWAD, to run vanilla PWAD's on Chocolate Doom.

[raymoohawk]

playing psx doom with freedoom is awesome

[fraggle]

I often try running mods with Freedoom just to check if they work properly. But developing Chocolate Doom means that I have to use the original IWADs regularly for testing purposes. And even though I've put loads of work into Freedoom I do still love the original game as well.

That said, it's really inspiring to hear that people are using Freedoom as their main IWAD(s). It's nice to know that all that hard work (by me, and everyone else) has paid off.

[raymoohawk]

speaking of testing i was using btsx with freedoom the other day and was surprised to see that it showed the original doom sprites instead of the freedoom ones. i added smooth doom to see if it worked well and it did, except for a few wrong colors in some firing frames

[Gez]

BTSX's custom palette is not entirely compatible with Doom's, so they had to include all the sprites (updated to new palette) in addition to using only custom textures.

That's why it makes no real difference playing BTSX with the Doom or Freedoom IWADs. It's also why if you use mods with custom sprites in addition to BTSX, you'll get visual oddities.

[fraggle]

raymoohawk said:

speaking of testing i was using btsx with freedoom the other day and was surprised to see that it showed the original doom sprites instead of the freedoom ones. i added smooth doom to see if it worked well and it did, except for a few wrong colors in some firing frames

Yep. That's because BTSX replaces the palette with a new palette (you may have noticed how there are those brighter shades of blue that you never see when playing Doom). Because the new palette is incompatible, they had to replace all of the sprites and graphics so that they don't get messed up.

EDIT: Gez beat me to it.

Gez said:

That's why it makes no real difference playing BTSX with the Doom or Freedoom IWADs. It's also why if you use mods with custom sprites in addition to BTSX, you'll get visual oddities.

I haven't tried BTSX in Freedoom, but I guess the only thing that's different is the sound effects?

[Gez]

fraggle said:

I haven't tried BTSX in Freedoom, but I guess the only thing that's different is the sound effects?

Yes (except boss brain sounds, BTSX2 contains silent DSBOS* sounds). Also if you're using GUS or OPL emulation, the GENMIDI and DMXGUS lumps will differ. But graphically, no differences. All 1381 sprites from Doom II are replaced.

To make it clearer why BTSX's palette is incompatible, have an animation:


The issue isn't that the colors have been tweaked, it's that the ranges have been modified. Notice how most of the yellow range and the whole magenta range, plus one additional color in the middle of another range, have been sacrified to create a purple range that is spread in several little parts. Then there's the very light red that are turned into very dark red to get a fade to black instead of replacing reds with browns in the COLORMAP. It's this kind of change that causes wrong pixels, not tweaking the blues to be lighter or the like. Most custom palettes preserve the ranges, BTSX doesn't.

[fraggle]

Great demo, thanks for the GIF.

I've sometimes wondered if it would be nice to tweak Freedoom's palette to give it a fresher, more unique look, like BTSX does. Obviously in the BTSX case, the palette diverges enough to be completely incompatible, but a potentially more subtle change could remain compatible. The red and blue ranges in the the GIF you've provided are examples.

[Catoptromancy]

fraggle said:

I've sometimes wondered if it would be nice to tweak Freedoom's palette to give it a fresher, more unique look, like BTSX does.

I agree, just some tweaks so it is still compatible but much more noticeable.

[raymoohawk]

if the pallete swap happens do notify me so that i can adequately edit the sprites im working on

[Da Werecat]

The FD palette must be fully compatible with the original one. Ideally, I'd say the art assets should be quantized to Doom palette, but tested with FD palette (or vice versa).

In other words, they shouldn't depend on the palette at all.

[Blastfrog]

I vote for not changing the palette at all.

[Da Werecat]

I would tweak the palette for the sole purpose of improving the lighting, but it's hard to pull off on a good level without breaking compatibility. PalPlus has a few noticeable problems, for example.

[esselfortium]

Da Werecat said:

I would tweak the palette for the sole purpose of improving the lighting, but it's hard to pull off on a good level without breaking compatibility. PalPlus has a few noticeable problems, for example.

Yeah, unfortunately the areas where Doom's palette has the most room for significant improvement are things that can't be changed without totally breaking compatibility with resources intended for the stock palette.

If FreeDoom were a standalone free Doom-engine game project rather than an IWAD clone aiming for PWAD compatibility, it would be possible to dramatically improve the PLAYPAL and COLORMAP and virtually eliminate Doom's color-shifting artifacts from it. As-is, though, its palette has little choice but to retain all of Doom's inefficiencies and mistakes, though it could still potentially tint a couple of the highlight-color ranges differently to change the aesthetic a bit.

[frithiof]

I think it would be interesting if Freedoom had its own palette.

Is Freedoom meant to be a strict 1:1 clone of Doom, or can it be something different, something better than Doom?

And while this is wildly off-topic, I think it would be interesting if it were possible to add sprites to Freedoom, on top of the ones that exist (you would still have your zombies/imps/arch-viles/etc). Like maybe add angelic/heavenly sprites that you can fight (or not). Instead of having Freedoom be somewhat like Dante's Inferno, why not also add a little bit of Purgatorio and Paradiso?

If we were to use the Bible as supporting evidence, it is clearly implied that agents from Heaven were responsible for various plagues and genocides. Maybe we could have the hero attempt to prevent something like that in modern society.

...that might be a little too ambitious, though.

[raymoohawk]

a while back i had posted in the zdoom forums my wish for a heaven based tc where you would fight angels and the like. the thing to remember here is that freedoom aims to be compatible with as many pwads as possible, so we cant just go and add stuff doom never did. also freedoom is not hell related like doom, its monsters being aliens rather then demons

[frithiof]

raymoohawk said:

a while back i had posted in the zdoom forums my wish for a heaven based tc where you would fight angels and the like. the thing to remember here is that freedoom aims to be compatible with as many pwads as possible, so we cant just go and add stuff doom never did. also freedoom is not hell related like doom, its monsters being aliens rather then demons

But is it possible to add resources to freedoom in addition to the ones that are Doom compatible? You could, for example, add an eighth weapon, but if mappers are making Doom compatible maps, you would never see the eighth weapon unless you IDFA or something.

Maybe rename the additional resources so that they would only be called up by mappers that know about them, thus retaining compatibility and allowing for mappers to go beyond what is normally available in Doom.

Someone posted some time ago about adding additional resources in order to create snow levels...

[raymoohawk]

that sounds like a good idea, lets see what fraggle or capto have to say about it

[Catoptromancy]

A fork can always be made and you can create whatever you want with it.

[Pencil of Doom]

Once it reaches 1.0, then i might use it as my default wad.
Until then i stick with doom2.wad as it has more mod support than FD.
And also because it's the most prefered wad for playing.

[chungy]

New textures are simple to have, there's already a few that don't exist in Doom.

New weapons and monsters and other ambitious ideas require engine support, which would break Freedoom's objective of remaining Boom-compatible (vanilla-compatible in FreeDM's case). Indeed a fork can always be made, but you may rather think if your mod can be better supported with a PWAD :P

[Death Egg]

I was thinking recently they if he cool if freedoom would have now resources based on the skulltag resource wad, since a lot of pwads use that.