Captain Muskrat

As enthusiastic as I am about the Freedoom project, being a GNU/Linux user and supporting Free Software, I feel there are a lot of problems with it from both a gameplay and design standpoint. Firstly, from my own experience, the game just doesn't feel as fun or as satisfying to play as regular Doom. Despite sharing all of the underlying code and behavior, the weapons and sound design just don't feel as impactful or visceral as Doom. I feel this the most with the game's shotgun. Doom's shotgun is iconic, we all know this. ID's sound design and animation really made that shotgun what it is, and despite firing it thousands of times it never gets old. You feel powerful when using it, yet it feels smooth and quiet. It almost has a relaxing sound to it, which is strange but that's the best I can describe it. Freedoom's shotgun on the other hand, and indeed it's entire weapon roster, just doesn't have that same appeal. The shotgun looks and sounds weak by comparison, and blasting away enemies just isn't as fun as it should be. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what I feel the problem is, but I would say it's a combination of both the animation and the sound design not really conveying the same sense of satisfaction as Doom. It sounds more like a toy than a shotgun. The enemies also leave a lot to be desired, I feel. They seem to lack the same visual clarity and appealing design of Doom's roster. A lot of the enemy sprites seem rather blurry and undefined, and coupled with the slightly less polished animations, makes them less enjoyable to blast away. A lot of the design decisions feel random and incoherent, one enemy appears to be a cybernetic soldier, while another appears more like a deformed squid, and another is a large pink worm. Doom's roster on the other hand felt a lot more consistent. The soldiers were zombies, and the demons felt like they meshed together more than a lot of the enemies in Freedoom and they embodiment their respective archetypes better. I feel the Imp replacements in particular are subpar, and I would rather they be redesigned into more of a "Creature from the Black Lagoon" type of monster. Better fitting the silhouette of Doom's imps, while being it's own thing. I also feel the chaingunners can be made into a similar creature as well, thereby cementing a connection of some kind. And the pink worms should be something akin to Pink Hulks, as if it were an experiment gone wrong. The level design has also been touched upon many times, and I too feel it's inconsistent, even moreso than the likes of Doom II. Some levels are just downright unfair, and throw dozens of enemies at you with no regard for pacing. I would love to see other wad creators try their hand at improving them. Overall, this is a fine effort, but there is a lot of room for improvement and I hope that one day Freedoom can be the ideal replacement for the non-free Doom.

Haven't played Machine Games' campaign yet, but they did a stellar job with their Quake one. I found that to be far superior to id's own efforts back in 1996.

Unfortunately I have not. I have also switched from Arch due to stability issues, and am now happily using Fedora Silverblue. I'll stick with it for the forseeable future, but unfortunately I have no way of playing Doom Retro anymore. If an Appimage is ever made, I hope it will solve the music issue.

I really like this mod, I hope an MBF21 version can be made someday as I'd love to try it on Doom Retro or Nugget Doom.

I hear GZDoom collects some telemetry on it's users, it's one of the reasons why I dislike it.

The sound that Pinkies make when being shot is rather annoying. Even moreso when multiple enemy types re-use it. That's one thing the Playstation version does better, but I'd rather they make no noise at all, or a soft grunt, or anything that isn't so grating.

I recently switched to an Arch-based distribution, Instant OS, and I have had the pleasure of finally getting to try Doom Retro via the AUR. I must say it's rapidly becoming my favorite way to play Doom, with some sensible quality of life and visual upgrades, akin to some alternate timeline if id Software had a few more months to work on the game. It's a direction that reminds me of "FNAF Plus" or a "Shovel Knight". Taking an existing game or aesthetic, but enhancing it further, and for Doom it really works well. I now see no other reason to use other vanilla-based source ports, this one takes the cake for me personally. Edit: Hmm, for some reason the game no longer has any music after booting it a few times. Aside from the sound effects which are fine, it's now dead silent. Any tips?.

I think I'll be switching to an Arch or Fedora based distribution in the near future, as this is starting to become a problem for me as I dabble in more niche software like this. I'll try to compile something and it'll just error out for one reason or another and I'm tired of seeing that bright red font in my terminal haha. Perhaps the hero we truly need is React OS.

That's a handy tip, thank you for letting me know. Unfortunately I tried make again and it gave me the same error as before. I'll assume it's the fault of Debian, because dependency hell has been a problem for me in the past, and why I strongly prefer Appimages to bypass all that.

I get this error when I try to do so:

Tried compiling this but got the following error, not sure what dependency I might be missing:

I find Appimages to be superior to both Flatpaks and Snaps. For one thing they are extremely portable and decentralized, you can copy and paste them as much as you like, save them wherever, and use them regardless if you decide to switch distributions or not. They are self-contained also, containing everything your application needs to run in one neat little box, so dependency hell is no longer a problem which is a Godsend for games. And Appimages don't mess with your system like Flats and Snaps sometimes do, and Flats are not very secure despite what people might tell you. https://flatkill.org/2020/

I'd love to try Doom Retro, unfortunately I don't use Windows and attempting to build/compile binaries myself is always a trying experience. If it's at all possible, I'd love to see an Appimage produced for this port. Appimages can be used across all Linux distributions, and they really are stress-free. Even if it's an occasional release compared to the primary Windows version, it would be a great addition. https://docs.appimage.org/ https://appimage.github.io/appimagetool/

I don't really understand why prBoom+, DSDA-Doom, Woof! and Nugget are separate projects. I believe they all do the same thing and are compatible with the same complevels. It always seemed like their differences are very minor, and it'd be nice if some of them merged just to focus resources better and confuse newcomers less. Because I was confused, for sure. I'd wager some of the younger gamers who are interested in trying Doom may be put-off by how many forks there are.

This is the sort of comment I truly dislike. I do not need to show you a 10 page document detailing all the little differences there are and why I personally don't like them, this isn't a term paper or an essay. And you can dislike something without being involved yourself. It's like a chef in the restaurant rebuking your criticism of his food by saying "Oh yeah?, why don't you come in the kitchen and make it yourself then?". That isn't a valid argument. As it is a community project, I reserve the right to criticise the decisions being made and offer my own input. Which I did in the initial post. Maybe in the future the new crop of Doom modders will take it upon themselves to contribute assets, and I hope they do. There's a lot of great custom content being made, but they're being made for non-Free Doom, which is unfortunate.

I didn't know that!. I tried the earlier versions and although it sounds different, I still put both on the same level. Decent, but not good.

There needed to be a cohesive direction for the project, as I agree, you can tell there are a lot of conflicting ideas here. A project like Freedoom can very well surpass the original Doom one day, as the lack of a restrictive license on the assets makes it very enticing in the long term. But Free assets mean little if they aren't appealing to begin with.

Anyone who prefers TNT over Plutonia has to fight me, that's right, anyone who prefers Plutonia over TNT is a dead man!.

It may be a Windows-only command then, as when I try it on Debian it says "No such option DOOMWADDIR". I try the basedir variable as well, which is more common on Linux, however that doesn't seem to work either. I tried it on Woof! and indeed, DOOMWADDIR does nothing for me. If any Unix aficionados are here, please let me know what you did.

I've been learning more about the terminal, and I actually find it easier to start wads using it!. However, I was wondering how I can set the WAD directory for Nugget doom through the terminal?. I believe Woof! allows you to use the "DOOMWADDIR" variable to do so, but I couldn't get it to work with Nugget. I'm on Debian 12.

I think ambient tracks age better than loud, bombastic ones. If you play Doom enough times, you begin to really tire of it's loud soundtrack. From what I've heard of PSX Doom, it's music is enough to set the mood but not enough to annoy you on repeat playthroughs.

Interesting project. If you were to up the settings enough to resemble the original version of Doom, would it actually run better?. Is it better written than the original Doom?.

Doom's level design was better more often than not compared to Doom II, and I feel that new enemies like the chaingunners, the revenants and the arch vile were annoying to fight and turned an already challenging game into a borderline sweat fest. The roster of baddies just seemed a lot more balanced to me in Doom, and I found myself really abusing the super shotgun in Doom 2 to the point where I barely used anything else. It really threw a monkey wrench in the heirarchy of weapons, and because it made short work of pinkies they had to introduced tougher and more annoying enemies to compensate, like the ones I mentioned. Some people will disagree and that's fair enough, but I seldom play Doom II at all nowadays. The lack of the episodic format means I'd have to play from start-to-finish all the time too, unless I used a console command/cheat which really doesn't count. I'd imagine Ultimate Doom + Sigil offers a more compelling experience for more people.

I think Knee Deep in the Dead will always be my favorite 'Doom' experience. It's simple enough, has a fast pace, and great action. The later episodes just failed to capture that same spirit, and became too complex and visually cluttered. I've never enjoyed Doom II for the same reason, and the introduction of the super shotgun pretty much means you have to spam it in order to tackle a lot of the game's new enemies, which seem more annoying to fight than they are fun. The Arch Vile and the Revenant?, never cared for em'. A part of me wishes John Romero would retool the rest of Doom's episodes into being more like Knee Deep in the Dead.