fraggle

It would be a good idea to add a gameplay video to the original post. Bit of a confusing name since it's the name of the Steam package containing the original games.

Probably everyone's following Doomkid already hehe. I have no idea. But they ought to be Some other channels I'm following: https://www.youtube.com/@THEBaratusII https://www.youtube.com/@Dwars https://www.youtube.com/@4shockblast https://www.youtube.com/@tatsurdcacocaco

@Doomkid's channel definitely deserves more attention than it gets. https://www.youtube.com/@DoomKid

... are you serious? Why?

Ho ho ho! Santa fraggle here, back (after a 20 year hiatus) to bring you the first release of The Vanilla Utilities, a set of DOS APIs and command line tools for doing unusual things with vanilla Doom (and other Doom engine games). It's rather niche but there may be others out there who find some of these useful. Download v1.0.0 here. Included in this first release are: ipxsetup and sersetup - bugfixed and expanded versions of the IPX and serial/modem drivers originally included with Doom. parsetup - parallel port network driver, derived from the version from the idgames archive metanet - networking driver that combines other networking drivers into a packet forwarding network. This allows, for example, three players on an IPX network to be joined by a fourth on a serial cable. solo-net - null/standalone network driver that starts a network game without any real connection. Replicates the -solo-net parameter found in many Doom source ports. (Updated version of the one I released on idgames). analogjs - PC joystick driver with analog control that is more precise than Doom's built in joystick support. replay - demo replay tool that uses the external control API, so that demos can be "continued" by recording a new demo from an old one. statdump - external statistics driver that can dump a text summary. (Updated version of the previous tool I wrote) Full Turbo C source code for all of the above, including C APIs for Doom's networking, statistics and external control APIs. I have plans for further expansion of the set of utilities and I'll be curious to hear people's suggestions.

This thread has been dormant for quite a while now, and there have been a whole bunch of changes since the last update, particularly this year. Version 1.2.0 added support for the xttl IPXSETUP extensions, improved PARSETUP's performance and added support for response files and baked-in command line arguments (so you can for example make a driver always run doom2.exe, like the original sersetup and ipxsetup) Version 1.3.0 added SIRSETUP (a network driver for Serial Infrared / IrDA ports) and added background call answering to SERSETUP, so you can launch the game before the other player has called. Took a while, but I released Vanilla Utilities 2.0 last night. There's a new utility named udpsetup that is essentially this (here's a thread about it).

udpsetup is a new Doom network driver that allows Internet play under Windows 9x and DOS. It does the same thing as ipxsetup or sersetup, but it communicates over the UDP protocol. I've just done the first full release of it (it's part of a suite of Doom engine programs that I call Vanilla Utilities). The program supports multiple network stacks. Most importantly, it supports the Winsock interfaces used on Windows 9x, so if you have a vintage machine running 95 or 98, you can use it on that (it even supports Windows 3.1!). But you can also play it under pure DOS using the MSClient TCP/IP stack. But the key feature here that I think people will find interesting is that I made a design decision to use the DOSbox IPX protocol. When you use this driver you're essentially running an "emulated" IPX game internally, just like if you were using ipxsetup. The result is that DOSbox can connect to udpsetup servers, and udpsetup can connect to DOSbox servers, so people with vintage/retro machines can play with people who just want to use emulation. You can see this in the video above (window at the top right is a DOSbox client) It works with all Doom engine games (Heretic, Hexen, Strife, Chex Quest, etc.) and most DOS source ports. If you want to play Rise of the Triad or BUILD engine games like Duke3D, there are also adapters so that you can use it with those (example video). Download and instructions Vanilla Utilities 2.0 (contains UDPSETUP.EXE; you may also need to use WS2PATCH.EXE on Windows 98) UDPSETUP-HOWTO: Detailed instructions on how to set up games

👀

Good news, you can now: udpsetup is a new DOS Doom network driver that communicates over the Internet using the UDP protocol. It works under Windows 9x (both Winsock 1 and 2) and even works on WfW 3.11 and under DOS if you use the MS Client TCP/IP stack. It uses the same protocol that DOSbox uses, so you can also play against people using emulators (the video above shows an example of this). It also means you can play against people using Dali to network their DOS machines, or people who want to use Chocolate Doom's experimental vanilla networking support. There's more work still to be done but the basics are now all in place.

I'm not aware of any other source ports that support the DOSbox protocol. In theory I guess you could adapt PrBoom+ or one of its descendants to add support for it, since you need identical behavior to keep the game in sync between peers (it's the same problem as demo sync).

Yes, exactly. Though you have to use a special version from the vanilla-net branch.

I have a quiet, unofficial mission to connect as many things as possible with the DOSbox server protocol: https://github.com/fragglet/dali https://github.com/fragglet/ipxbox (it also allows Win9x machines to connect using either the native bridging or PPTP dial-in features) https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/IPX_protocol_support https://github.com/fragglet/vanilla-utilities (I'm currently working on a UDP-based equivalent of IPXSETUP, but the protocol it will use is the DOSbox protocol)

I hate to be the cynic here but how well do you really know this person? Maybe he really is the love of your life, but there are also people out there who will say these kinds of things to you to manipulate you. In particular you should be very skeptical if this person starts asking you for money for any reason whatsoever, including to buy plane tickets to come and see you. Here's a list of reasons they might give.

This is a mess and I'd like to give my position here as a mod: Here on Doomworld you're expected to be civil. That means not insulting other members and it also means that you shouldn't be tearing down other people's work. That doesn't mean that things can't be criticised but there's a big difference between constructive criticism and acting like a jerk. It's also not acceptable to break this rule because you saw someone else breaking it. "He started it" isn't a legitimate defence on the school playground, and isn't here either. You're expected to behave like an adult here. Use the report button, not the reply button. Thank you and we now return you to your regular Dooming.

He's describing the coordinate translation that happens as part of the rendering process. It's a silly way of describing it - nothing really moves around, it's just that an offset gets added to the world coordinates when the screen is rendered.

good to know

You should merge in redcres.wad too

Now that level names are autogenerated, it's trivial for us to change the names of Freedoom's levels. Let's come up with proper names for the levels instead of the current boring "MAP01" / "E1M1" names. Rules:You can suggest as many level names as you want. If you're the author of a level, you get to decide the name. Don't base your names on Doom's level names. We are not recreating Doom. Please play through the level before deciding on a name. As suggestions come in, I will add them to the list below. The person who came up with the name is listed in square brackets. If there's an asterisk, the author of the level named it. If multiple people give conflicting suggestions then I'll choose one based on popular opinion or my own taste. HUSTR_1 = HUSTR_2 = HUSTR_3 = HUSTR_4 = HUSTR_5 = HUSTR_6 = HUSTR_7 = Outer storage warehouse [fraggle] HUSTR_8 = HUSTR_9 = Mine HM09 [wesleyjohnson*] HUSTR_10 = HUSTR_11 = HUSTR_12 = Tertiary loading bay [fraggle] HUSTR_13 = Return to Earth [wesleyjohnson*] HUSTR_14 = HUSTR_15 = HUSTR_16 = HUSTR_17 = HUSTR_18 = HUSTR_19 = Castle [wesleyjohnson*] HUSTR_20 = HUSTR_21 = HUSTR_22 = HUSTR_23 = HUSTR_24 = HUSTR_25 = HUSTR_26 = HUSTR_27 = HUSTR_28 = HUSTR_29 = HUSTR_30 = HUSTR_31 = HUSTR_32 = Episode 1 is named ... HUSTR_E1M1 = Starport [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E1M2 = Communications Center [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E1M3 = Waste Disposal [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E1M4 = Supply Depot [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E1M5 = Control Center [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E1M6 = Training Center [fraggle] HUSTR_E1M7 = Research Labs [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E1M8 = Quarry [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E1M9 = Armory [Marnetmar] Episode 2 is named ... HUSTR_E2M1 = Ruins [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E2M2 = Power Plant [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E2M3 = HUSTR_E2M4 = Sample Holding Center [fraggle] HUSTR_E2M5 = Fortress 31 [fraggle] HUSTR_E2M6 = HUSTR_E2M7 = HUSTR_E2M8 = Containment Chamber [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E2M9 = Episode 3 is named ... HUSTR_E3M1 = Land of the Lost [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E3M2 = Infernal Caverns [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E3M3 = HUSTR_E3M4 = HUSTR_E3M5 = HUSTR_E3M6 = Igneous Intrusion [fraggle] HUSTR_E3M7 = HUSTR_E3M8 = The Lair [Marnetmar] HUSTR_E3M9 = [No E4 because this is going to be Double Impact] == FreeDM == DMHUSTR_1 = DM01: Tech Test [Protox*] DMHUSTR_2 = DM02: Tech Arena [Protox] DMHUSTR_3 = DM03: AGM Ammo Depot [Protox] DMHUSTR_4 = DM04: FreeDM Maze [Protox] DMHUSTR_5 = DM05: The Exile [Protox] DMHUSTR_6 = DM06: Energy Facility [Protox] DMHUSTR_7 = DM07: Main Stronghold [Protox] DMHUSTR_8 = DM08: Substation 45 [Protox] DMHUSTR_9 = DM09: Weapons factory [Protox] DMHUSTR_10 = DM10: Sacred Dead [Protox] DMHUSTR_11 = DM11: Primary Defense Fort [Protox] DMHUSTR_12 = DM12: Hazard Store [Protox] DMHUSTR_13 = DM13: Natural Station [Protox] DMHUSTR_14 = DM14: Water Recycling [Protox] DMHUSTR_15 = DM15: Tag Deathmatch [Protox*] DMHUSTR_16 = DM16: Fourplay [joe-ilya] DMHUSTR_17 = DM17: Flooded base [joe-ilya] DMHUSTR_18 = DM18 DMHUSTR_19 = DM19 DMHUSTR_20 = DM20 DMHUSTR_21 = DM21: Tomb of Ledemir [Protox] DMHUSTR_22 = DM22: Mansion yard [joe-ilya] DMHUSTR_23 = DM23: Up n' down canyon [joe-ilya] DMHUSTR_24 = DM24 DMHUSTR_25 = DM25 DMHUSTR_26 = DM26 DMHUSTR_27 = DM27: Punk tech [joe-ilya] DMHUSTR_28 = DM28: Last Gate [Protox] DMHUSTR_29 = DM29: Loss of Control [Protox] DMHUSTR_30 = DM30: Last Man Standing [Protox] DMHUSTR_31 = DM31: Single Barreled [Protox*] DMHUSTR_32 = DM32: All Green [Protox*]

I think it's very important that you shouldn't ignore what happened yesterday. Depression is an illness like any other. I didn't understand myself just how true this was until I became clinically depressed myself. Just like any other illness you should seek medical help to properly treat and manage it. If you're in the US please call 988 for free to be put through to someone you can talk to. For other countries there's a list of organizations here, their websites and phone numbers: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/11181469 Help is out there, you do not need to feel this way and things can get better. I can tell you from my own personal experience that this is the case. I can't repeat enough, this is an illness. If you broke your leg or were injured you would go to see a doctor. It's not the same kind of illness but the action you should take is the same.

How small can an IWAD be? That's the task I set myself when putting together miniwad.wad. To clarify the aim, I set myself two additional goals: Doom II compatible, and "vaguely playable". It's not intended to look pretty, but you could in theory play the game this way. Featuring: File size is less than 250 KiB, and only 45 KiB when compressed. BYOL (Bring Your Own Level). The idea here is that you take any of the well-known megaWADs from idgames and play one of those. Otherwise you get 30 levels of the same tiny stub room. Usable menus. No music. Flat shaded walls and floors. There's a palette of eight colors; the textures from Freedoom were processed and each assigned to one of the eight. Mid-space "fence" textures do appear correctly. A tiny handful of sprites. All weapons are the same black rectangle; all monsters are the same creepy black silhouette; all items look like the same grey unlabelled box; all obstacles look like the same pillar. Multiplayer is supported. Players will look like a black silhouette wearing a vest. Two sound effects - gunshot and "pip". There are PC speaker versions of the same. Final Doom textures are included, so you can play WADs like PL2.WAD with this. BSD licensed, like Freedoom is. So, why do this? I had the idea for a while, but a discussion with Linguica prompted me to see what I could achieve. It's mostly a technical challenge just to see how small an IWAD could be, but it is potentially useful to have such a WAD. For example, if you're developing a source port or Doom-related tool and need an IWAD for running automated tests, you can use this - it's small enough that it won't take up lots of space in your Git repository. You can also distribute this as a fallback IWAD, knowing that it will only add 45 KiB to the download size of your tool. Although this is intended as a technical exercise, the result is still kind of interesting from an artistic perspective. This is still Doom, stripped down to the bones and barely recognisable. Nothing about the game's behaviour has changed, but without any of the usual artwork it looks barren. With the heavy reuse of sprites it seems very monotonous: you're exploring a place; there are monsters, they shoot you; you have guns, you can shoot them back. How did I do this? The whole thing was created from the start with wadptr in mind. This is a tool I wrote years ago to compress WAD files. Specifically, it can merge identical lumps and make graphic lumps smaller if there are identical columns. That's why the textures are all flat-shaded and use a limited palette: every 128x128 red wall texture is merged together inside the WAD for example, and since every column is identical, it squashes down to only 653 bytes. A lot of the sprites are symmetrical for the same reason (repeated columns). I have some ideas about how it might be compressed even further but for the time being I'm reasonably satisfied; wadptr reduces the file size by 97%. The "heavy lifting" was done with some Python scripting using the Pillow library to analyse the Freedoom texture set and generate the flat-shaded textures. Sprites were assigned from a set of templates using DEH 9000 to walk through Doom's state tables.

Your English is perfect.

I've been sitting on this long enough that I figured I should probably just make a thread about it already and gather some wider feedback. I've been putting together a Dehacked/vanilla-compatible port of Perkristian's smooth weapons mod. While this has been ported to most source ports, as far as I know this is the first vanilla-compatible version, and I had to invent new tooling to gather together enough extra animation frames to make it work. Download here. I'll upload to idgames once I get enough feedback. Features: Replaces all weapons with versions that have more animation frames. I've made this as conservative as possible so that this is just "more animation frames" - you won't find any black gloves or extra fanciness here. Entirely vanilla-compatible and can be literally played with vanilla Doom (batch files are included in the .zip), and Chocolate Doom as well of course. Demo compatible with vanilla Doom - you can play back vanilla demos and they won't desync. Or you can record vanilla demos with it loaded and it shouldn't make any difference. It's been tested against over 9,400 demos from the Compet-N archive which all play back without desyncing (using statcheck). Palette compatible with major mods like BTSX using my limited palette hack (see video below) Source code for the Dehacked patch can be found here in the DEH9000 repository. Yes, that really is the source code.

My opinion: if someone offers to sell you a "sealed mailorder" it's probably a scam (reseal). I like to try to imagine the scenario through which a thing would exist in 2022. Why would someone spend $40 (>$80 in 2022 money - very much not cheap) to buy a game via mail order and then just put it away in a closet without opening it? Seems ludicrous. With other big box games you at least have occasional troves of old stock games discovered from shops that closed, but this is mail order, it wasn't sold in stores. I'm also not entirely sure that the mail order copies even came shrinkwrapped.

It's time once again to post the Red Cross Medikits FAQ Some background The Geneva Conventions are a series of international treaties signed by most countries which establish international law for humanitarian treatment during times of war. One detail of these conventions is the establishment of the red cross as a common symbol for neutrality on the battlefield; along with the red crescent, red crystal and red lion and sun, the symbol is used to identify non-combatants such as battlefield medics who should never be targeted for attacks. Because of the importance of these symbols as symbols of neutrality, most countries have laws restricting the use of them to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross and related societies. Using these symbols without permission can be a crime; see Title 18, subsection 706 of the US federal code, the Geneva Conventions Act in the UK, and the Canadian Trade-marks act (section "prohibited symbols") for examples. Many games, including Doom, have historically used the red cross on in-game powerups items to indicate that the item provides a health boost. Often this is inaccurate since real life health kits do not usually use a red cross; ISO 7010 E003 defines a white cross on a green background as the symbol for health. In 2006 the Canadian Red Cross began to actively campaign against the misuse of the red cross symbol in video games: <http://www.redcross.ca/about-us/about-the-canadian-red-cross/red-cross-emblem/it-may-just-be-a-game-to-you-but--it-means-the-world-to-us> The 2012 release of Doom 3: BFG Edition included a re-relase of the classic Doom games, with the medikits changed to replace the red cross with a red and white pill symbol. This WAD contains these modified sprites so that they can be used independently with any version of Doom by anyone who so wishes. Frequently asked questions Q1. How can the red cross claim copyright or a trademark over such a simple, abstract symbol? A1. The red cross symbol is not a copyright or a trademark; it is actually explicitly protected by international law (the Geneva Conventions). This is reflected by individual laws in many countries. If you used a trademark (eg. Coca-Cola logo) without permission you could be sued; in the case of the red cross, in many countries you could actually face criminal sanctions. Q2. This sucks - the red cross is a symbol of healing and a pill isn't! A2. That's not actually true. Firstly, the red cross is a symbol of neutrality, not healing - it is also used by battlefield chaplains for example. Secondly, the standard (ie. ISO 7010) symbol for healing used on real life medikits is a white cross on a green background, not the red cross. So the red cross used on the original medikit sprites is not even accurate or correct. Q3. Plenty of other games use the red cross. The red cross is a standard symbol of healing in video games and this should continue. A3. Lot of other games do use the red cross, but many other games are now making efforts to eliminate usage of it. For example, the 2010 iPhone re-release of Wolfenstein 3D replaced the red cross with a heart instead. The red cross is a pretty important symbol in terms of international law and deserves to be protected. Video games have traditionally used all kinds of symbols to indicate health - hearts, the letter "H", soda cans and turkey meals, to just name a few. The idea that the red cross has some special importance is pretty silly. If it's really essential, the white cross on a green background can still easily be used for the same result. Q4. You're some kind of medikit symbol nazi! Why are you telling me to replace my medikit sprites? A4. First of all, Nazi Germany was actually a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, so if you don't respect the red cross symbol, in some sense you're actually worse than the Nazis. But I'm not actually telling you to do anything. I mostly just find it interesting that the BFG Edition of Doom changed the medikit sprites, and there is a lot of confusion every time this subject comes up, so I wrote this FAQ. Q5. The original berserk pack has a red cross but it is on a black background instead of a white one. Was this still illegal, and if not why have you replaced it? A5. It may indeed have been okay for the berserk pack. The US law protecting the red cross symbol (US code title 18 subsection 706) references "the Greek red cross on a white ground" as the symbol that is protected. I'm not sure if this is the case in all countries though. Regardless, the BFG Edition replaced the red cross on the berserk pack too. Q6. Why is this such a big deal? It's just a stupid cross. It's only a few pixels on a sprite. A6. Why indeed? Respecting the red cross symbol is the right thing to do. For some reason a lot of people seem very upset about how id changed the medikit sprites in the BFG Edition re-release. As you said, it's only a few pixels and really a rather inconsequential change to do the right thing. Q7: Isn't this "censorship"? A7. I don't think so, and I think complaining it is is pretty silly. Although the red cross is not a trademark (see Q1 above), you can make an analogy between the red cross and a trademark; it would be silly to think that game developers are being "censored" because they can't use the McDonalds or Coca-Cola symbols in their games without permission, for example. id made this choice of their own volition to comply with international law; as far as I know, no game developers have ever faced actual prosecution or lawsuits for using the red cross symbol. Even if you still believe this is somehow "censorship", it's still probably not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things. Q8. I'm actually searching for WADs which violate the Geneva Conventions. Can you help? A8. Apart from the obvious answer of "the original doom.wad or doom2.wad", you might want to check out redcres.wad (in /graphics in the idgames archive), which changes the medikits to use the Red Crescent symbol used in middle eastern countries. Q9. I am for some reason fascinated by this entire subject. Where can I read more about it? A9. An introduction, from Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emblems_of_the_International_Red_Cross_and_Red_Crescent_Movement> The ICRC's pages on the red cross symbol: <https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/emblem-history.htm> Red Cross of Canada: "It may just be a game to you but, it means the world to us": <http://www.redcross.ca/about-us/about-the-canadian-red-cross/red-cross-emblem/it-may-just-be-a-game-to-you-but--it-means-the-world-to-us> Past discussions within the Doom community: <https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/62584-does-the-red-cross/> <https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/90083-red-cross-changes/> <https://www.doomworld.com/vb/freedoom/54863-medikits-shouldnt-use/>

Well done, this is very silly.