Woolie Wool

Does anybody know how to set up the default MIDI device in Linux? GZDoom can address my hardware synth directly but other ports generally use something like "portmidi" or "midi port 0" and I have been unable to figure out what exactly this is or how it works.

I managed to fix the runtime environment problem.

That installer crashes too. I suspect it may be expecting SSE2 and thus would require a Pentium 4 or Athlon64.

It doesn't.

How many computers can actually run Woof and display 200p/400p resolutions? Such computers' CPU instructions would top out at SSE2 at most, and my Athlon doesn't even have that, and of course if it has a modern-ish OpenGL backend, that certainly won't work with old video cards. My Athlon under XP doesn't even recognize the 32-bit Woof build as a win32 application. Maybe if you put together your own toolchain to compile it with Visual Studio 2005 or something?

I'd say in groups the green demons from Eviternity test both your immediate spatial awareness and your time awareness by trying to box you in.

I use Roger Dean paintings as desktop wallpaper on all my machines, with a color palette that matches the desktop theme, so my Linux desktop gets this because it is brown, my Windows 10 desktop gets the Relayer art to match the Windows gray, and Windows 98 on the Athlon has a dark theme so it gets Tales from Topographic Oceans.

A Doom immersive sim would work, but it would have to commit to it completely, which was Tom Hall's problem in the mid-'90s.

Tom Hall's problem was his own design doc, which was a total mess that wasn't sure if it wanted to be an RPG, immersive sim, or Wolfenstein 3-D 2: Wolfenstein Harder. He had tons of ideas but lacked focus, and focus was what Doom needed to be a great game.

Map markers are extremely useful for finding your way around large, complex adventure maps, and I always have a wad that replaces the AMMNUM* lumps with brighter, more conspicuous ones in my autoload.

For the most part I hate dehacked monsters but I don't mind the Afrit all that much, its mobility huge AoE fulfills a tactical role that no other monster really fits into (the "general spatial awareness" side of Linguica's famous monster roles diagram): Only the cyberdemon fits here in regular Doom and cybers are very limited in their versatility. That said, I think the original form of the Afrit has way too many hitpoints and reducing his health makes him a lot better.

Then "slaughter-lite" like skillsaw's work, Counterattack, Rush, and the later parts of Epic 2 might work for you, especially since it's "lite" slaughter that usually ends up towards the end of non-slaughter wads, not proper challenge slaughter. Most of these are far less strategically demanding, and can often be beaten with what I call the "NASCAR" strategy of finding a loop around the arena and following without stopping, reversing, or blundering into a monster (some crowdshaping may be required too). They also make you feel like an absolute boss when the last monster drops dead and you survey the sea of corpses. Oh, and add Doom 64 for Doom II to the recommendation list.

They appear piecemeal in all sorts of things, but rarely as a full set.

Sadly, he died last year. I followed his blog for many years and was shocked to learn of his passing. Anyway, my list: Chris Couleur Absolutely loved his Eternal Doom maps, his sense of scale and adventure in a map, and his ability to get a whole lot of mileage out of surprisingly few linedefs and sectors. The Flange Peddler Had a really great sense of texturing and aesthetics, even if his maps didn't always play the best. Randy Estrella and Tim Heydelaar Doom 64 was an excellent level set, especially considering the limitations the game imposed, and I would like to see what they could do with a Boom compatible or MBF21 set. Anthony Czerwonka GothicSP has always been one of my dream wads. lupinx-kassman One of the all-time champions of visuals in Doom mapping. Michael Krause Really loved this guy's knack for huge, imposing architecture. Imagine if he made a slaughter wad... Jean-Paul LeBreton Professional level designers from the industry bring outsider ideas you won't find in the regular community, while still being able to uphold a high standard of quality. LeBreton's "Arcadia Demade" is no exception. iori His E1M7 for Doom the Way id Did was my favorite of that whole megawad, and I really enjoyed his map for BTSX E1 as well.

Unless you get into true challenge slaughter, a lot of "slaughter" in mainstream wads is nowhere near as hard as it initially appears. You can hold your own against a huge number of monsters if you simply don't panic.

I wish Night Dive had added a Descent-style 3D automap to Quake II's remaster, Quake II could have really used it, and it would have felt less like cheating than when I used the Compass a few times in The Reckoning and Ground Zero. Call of the Machine seems to be able to give or take away power shields on a per-monster basis. Yeah, but I'd like one without the Gunner Commander's gimmicks and oversized health pool.

Neither are painful, but aggressively sour things (Warheads, pickles, hot wings, etc.) taste nasty while chili peppers are awesome. When I use hot sauce, I'll gravitate towards extremely hot sauces like Blair's Death Sauce or mustard-based sauces because vinegar in high concentrations is disgusting.

If the gameplay logic were not in C, I'd love to do a Quake II gameplay mod. The remaster does a lot to make it more challenging, but there is much more that could be done, especially regarding making the Strogg's attacks far more lethal but easier to avoid, so it's less about attrition and more about movement skill. I'd buff Enforcer damage significantly but make their aim lag further behind, give the Gunners nailguns, the Icaruses (Icari?) slow-moving homing projectiles (basically making them flying revenants), give the Gladiators a targeting laser showing where their railgun will hit (but perhaps buff their damage from 50 to 75), replace the Tank's machine gun with a plasma beam sweep that can be ducked but will fuck you up if it connects, totally replace Iron Maidens with the homing rocket version, make Medics a serious threat, double or even triple the energy consumption of the Power Shield, etc. Rogue's tastes in gameplay were always perverse, from Strife through Dissolution of Eternity and then Ground Zero.

There is no answer to this question. Every user has a different use case and priorities, which is why there are so many choices to begin with.

So what exactly will I need to do for this? Will I need to download a specific branch from github and compile it manually? Currently I'm using the Arch AUR build script which I think is just straight from github master.

I could use portmidi, but ALSA is definitely better--it has less of a chance of introducing errors (e.g. hanging notes) when playing midis, and I do not have to open helvum to run a patch from the UM-ONE adapter (which runs to the Sound Canvas) to "Midi Through Port 0", as the low-level ALSA interface seems to detect my UM-ONE immediately.

I forgot you had forked from WinMBF instead of PrBoom and thus there never was an original Linux version to add features back from. SDL does have midi but I have no idea how to assign it a device under Linux. PrBoom-plus has both SDL and ALSA midi as well as OPL and (I think) FluidSynth. I know some soft synths like Timidity present virtual devices so if you did add ALSA midi you would not need hardware to test with.

Guess I'll be using prboom-plus under Linux then and have to forgo the HRTF and other fancy things Woof has, at least for now. Is there any possibility of this being added back? Especially if you can address MIDI devices directly like GZDoom instead of making me fuck around with patchbays every time I want to play Doom (and I still haven't figured out SDL midi on Linux).

Set your resolution to 320x200 (4:3) or 426x200 (16:9) in prboom-plus, it is an older port than Woof and might give you better performance. However, don't expect an old computer to play just any map. On my single-core Athlon XP rig there are many maps I cannot play, and I have the advantage on the Athlon of being able to use native 320x200 with a CRT under a legacy prboom version that has much, much less overhead than modern ports--the code that lets low resolutions display on modern-ish displays and GPUs has a performance cost. Things like "Kythraessos" from Legacy of Heroes or "God Machine" from Sunlust are still unplayable unless I switch to my modern Ryzen rig. I would strongly consider getting a better computer, even a used laptop that is a few years younger would be a significant improvement and will cost much, much less than a new computer. E: in general (though there are of course exceptions) older versions of source ports will generally give you better performance. Features add overhead, and overhead is the enemy of low-spec computers. If that means you have to live without modern amenities like HRTF audio or rewinds or other newfangled features, and miss out on MBF21 wads, so be it.