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bradharding

DOOM Retro v5.3 (updated March 3, 2024)

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Hi all! I have a question. In an attempt to make things easier for those new to DOOM and DOOM source ports, what I'd ideally like to do is distribute DOOM RETRO with DOOM1.WAD (DOOM Shareware's WAD). Can this be done in a way that is legal, or regardless of how I do it, would I be summoning the wrath of the Zenimax demons?

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Zenimax has in the past taken down at least one distribution of the Doom shareware. Most notably the JavaScript port that was hosted by Mozilla. So I guess legally it is only allowed to be redistributed in the form given by id.

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Blzut3 said:

Zenimax has in the past taken down at least one distribution of the Doom shareware. Most notably the JavaScript port that was hosted by Mozilla. So I guess legally it is only allowed to be redistributed in the form given by id.


Ah, ok. Thanks. I have found this though at https://github.com/ChrisJan00/WarrensDream/blob/master/doom-wad-shareware-license.txt:

...

The above license does not appear to grant distribution permission.  Email
from John Carmack of ID Software provided this clarification:

X-Sender: johnc@mail.idsoftware.com
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 20:01:30 -0500
To: Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net>
From: johnc@idsoftware.com (John Carmack)
Subject: Re: Doom shareware WAD license

At 08:02 PM 10/23/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Can you give me a definite license on the doom 1 shareware wad? I find certain
>things that say "freely distribute" and others that say "get vendor's license"
>... All I need to have is a license so I can package it up for Debian.
>Thanks.
>Joe

The DOOM shareware wad is freely distributable.  No Quake data is freely
distributable.

John Carmack
But then I guess Zenimax can and will overrule this, said 15 or so years ago...

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Hi all. I've just released DOOM RETRO v1.4. This version corrects a couple of nasty (and embarrassing) bugs, is much more well behaved with Vanilla DOOM mods, and introduces a few new features such as a low graphic detail mode, enhancements to the widescreen HUD, and most importantly: more blood. Visit doomretro.com to download, and pour over the release notes.

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Beautiful; easier than chocolate doom, but still nice and classic. If only I were actually old enough to have been able to compare this to the DOS/WIN-95 Doom.

Also.
I'd love you forever should that incredibly nice but subtle blood effect be ported for use in different engines. :^)

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I think I found a bug. When I started the game, I started e1m1 and pressed pause right away to look at the gray scale on the pause menu. When paused, the music continued to play. When I unpaused, the music stopped playing as though it were paused. I exited out of the game and went back in. Same thing. Music plays when paused, but stops when playing. I then went into Doom II, and again, the same thing. As of this post, I cannot figure out how to get the music playing normally again.

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Seeker_of_Truth said:

I think I found a bug. When I started the game, I started e1m1 and pressed pause right away to look at the gray scale on the pause menu. When paused, the music continued to play. When I unpaused, the music stopped playing as though it were paused. I exited out of the game and went back in. Same thing. Music plays when paused, but stops when playing. I then went into Doom II, and again, the same thing. As of this post, I cannot figure out how to get the music playing normally again.


Thank you for this! I've been using Timidity++ (which I recommend btw), and the problem doesn't occur. But having just uninstalled it, I can now see/hear the bug you're describing. Very strange! I'll look into it straight away. I'm guessing a reboot should bring the music back in the meantime.

...and it's fixed! It was due to a simple typo I made. The commit is here if you're interested. Could you please confirm that a reboot of your pc gets the music back for you?

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Burktross said:

Beautiful; easier than chocolate doom, but still nice and classic. If only I were actually old enough to have been able to compare this to the DOS/WIN-95 Doom.

Thanks!

I'd love you forever should that incredibly nice but subtle blood effect be ported for use in different engines. :^)

That would be up to other source port developers, if that's the way they want to go. Or you could always play... Brutal DOOM. :/

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bradharding said:

Thanks!

That would be up to other source port developers, if that's the way they want to go. Or you could always play... Brutal DOOM. :/

Brutal Doom turns Doom into Serious Sam. Though its nice for special occasions, its not as neat and fitting as the one supplied in DR.

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Burktross said:

Brutal Doom turns Doom into Serious Sam. Though its nice for special occasions, its not as neat and fitting as the one supplied in DR.


I agree. (Although I may be biased!) It's all about "balance", if that makes sense. And that's what I try to consider with every change I make to DOOM RETRO.

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bradharding said:

Could you please confirm that a reboot of your pc gets the music back for you?


I did not even have to reboot the PC. I just went on and played another game for a couple hours and when I came back to it, it started working fine.

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Will we be seeing easier IWAD and PWAD loading, possibly similar to Zdoom/Skulltag ports? (Selecting pwads and dragging onto .exe, then selecting an IWAD)

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Burktross said:

Will we be seeing easier IWAD and PWAD loading, possibly similar to Zdoom/Skulltag ports? (Selecting pwads and dragging onto .exe, then selecting an IWAD)


Possibly. I'm open to improving the WAD launcher, provided its kept minimal and intuitive.

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I've just made a small point release of DOOM RETRO available for download that fixes a rather nasty issue with adjusting the sound volume, and includes a few new additional features that I managed to squeeze in. Visit doomretro.com to download.

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Nice release, the performance issues with the blurring are completely gone.

Strangely, I'm getting very jerky mouse movement when I try turning while holding the movement keys (I use the default WASD configuration for that). It seems to be jerking the opposite way I'm turning, not just that it doesn't respond.

I did want to note that the engine doesn't seem to respect my gamma levels. It saves the gamma level in the config file to what I set it to in-game when I exit, but it reverts back to 0.75 as soon as I boot it up again, and will overwrite gamma level in the config file if I don't change it every time before exiting. Why is it set to 0.75 by default, anyway?

Also wanted to make a suggestion. Have you considered using the statusbar face as the health icon instead of a medikit?

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Sodaholic said:

Nice release, the performance issues with the blurring are completely gone.

Strangely, I'm getting very jerky mouse movement when I try turning while holding the movement keys (I use the default WASD configuration for that). It seems to be jerking the opposite way I'm turning, not just that it doesn't respond.

I did want to note that the engine doesn't seem to respect my gamma levels. It saves the gamma level in the config file to what I set it to in-game when I exit, but it reverts back to 0.75 as soon as I boot it up again, and will overwrite gamma level in the config file if I don't change it every time before exiting. Why is it set to 0.75 by default, anyway?

Also wanted to make a suggestion. Have you considered using the statusbar face as the health icon instead of a medikit?


Not sure about the mouse movement issues. I have made some optimizations to the mouse movement code, but it does appear fine at my end. Have you changed the sensitivity, acceleration or threshold values? (I'll PM you a build with something that might fix this issue...)

As for the gamma, I'll look into it. (And just testing it... damnit... it doesn't save the gamma level...)

Setting the gamma to 0.75 is one of the key features to Doom Retro. A couple shades darker than Vanilla DOOM.

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Sodaholic said:

Also wanted to make a suggestion. Have you considered using the statusbar face as the health icon instead of a medikit?

I was just thinking about the same thing.

And now something completely different...

It would be nice if I could use custom music in mp3. Kinda like in Quakespasm or PrBoom+: user would put files with specific name in a folder (doomretro/music/doom2, for instance) and game would use them. There are some nice remakes (Steve Rot's comes to my mind at the moment).

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Krazov said:

I was just thinking about the same thing.

And now something completely different...

It would be nice if I could use custom music in mp3. Kinda like in Quakespasm or PrBoom+: user would put files with specific name in a folder (doomretro/music/doom2, for instance) and game would use them. There are some nice remakes (Steve Rot's comes to my mind at the moment).


I'm looking into the statusbar face thing. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad in the middle... Hmm...

As for mp3 files (or ogg would be better due to licensing issues I think): good idea! Shouldn't be too hard to do with SDL, although I'm guessing not on its own... Thanks!

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Fraggle recently completed a system for streamed audio replacement of MIDI music, it would be worth it to copy that code.

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I downloaded version 1.41 and started playing "Thy Flesh Consumed", saving very often. When I reached level 2 game crashes completely per every save ("doomretro.exe stopped responding").

And once my weapon disappeared and I couldn't shoot. Pressing 1 to 6 (I didn't have BFG yet) didn't work.

Unfortunantely, stderr.txt is empty.

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Krazov said:

I downloaded version 1.41 and started playing "Thy Flesh Consumed", saving very often. When I reached level 2 game crashes completely per every save ("doomretro.exe stopped responding").

And once my weapon disappeared and I couldn't shoot. Pressing 1 to 6 (I didn't have BFG yet) didn't work.

Unfortunantely, stderr.txt is empty.


Thanks for this. I'll look into it. So to clarify: the game crashes when saving in E4M2, or loading the savegame?
Also, strange question, but when the weapon disappeared, can you recall if you had just accessed the help screen?

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bradharding said:

Thanks for this. I'll look into it. So to clarify: the game crashes when saving in E4M2, or loading the savegame?
Also, strange question, but when the weapon disappeared, can you recall if you had just accessed the help screen?

Good clarification ain't no bad. I returned to repeat the error and... it's gone. 'Cause your question was, I believe, correct: it was rather while loading. However, I finished the map (Cyberdemon telefragged!) and haven't encountered the situation anymore. I tried loading game one after another for a few times and nothing. I played E4M3 for a while and it was saving and loading without any disturbance.

As for the disappearing weapon, I haven't accessed the help screen for years. So no.

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Krazov said:

Good clarification ain't no bad. I returned to repeat the error and... it's gone. 'Cause your question was, I believe, correct: it was rather while loading. However, I finished the map (Cyberdemon telefragged!) and haven't encountered the situation anymore. I tried loading game one after another for a few times and nothing. I played E4M3 for a while and it was saving and loading without any disturbance.

As for the disappearing weapon, I haven't accessed the help screen for years. So no.


Hmmm... If it happens again, could you please do what I suggested in the email I sent you earlier? While I investigate what might cause loading a game to crash...
And I have no idea why the weapon was disappearing either... Question: Can you recall if the ammo in the status bar/hud changed when you pressing 1 through 6?

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There's a long standing memory leak in the load saved game function.

void P_UnArchiveThinkers(void)
{
    // remove all the current thinkers
    currentthinker = thinkercap.next;
    while (currentthinker != &thinkercap)
    {
        next = currentthinker->next;

        if (currentthinker->function.acp1 == (actionf_p1)P_MobjThinker
            || currentthinker->function.acp1 == (actionf_p1)P_BloodSplatThinker)
            P_RemoveMobj((mobj_t *)currentthinker);
        else
            Z_Free(currentthinker);

        currentthinker = next;
    }
    P_InitThinkers();

I suspect at some point in the past the function "P_RemoveMobj" called "Z_Free", but it no longer does so. As a result the structure gets orphaned from the linked list when "P_InitThinkers" is called.

One solution is to remove the 'else' and always free the memory.

There are also other issues with "P_RemoveMobj", it looks to me as though in nightmare mode it will respawn the monsters again later, although there may be something that stops this that I haven't spotted. In my version I have cleared the MF_SPECIAL flag just in case.

Jeff

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jeff-d said:

There's a long standing memory leak in the load saved game function.

I suspect at some point in the past the function "P_RemoveMobj" called "Z_Free", but it no longer does so. As a result the structure gets orphaned from the linked list when "P_InitThinkers" is called.

One solution is to remove the 'else' and always free the memory.

There are also other issues with "P_RemoveMobj", it looks to me as though in nightmare mode it will respawn the monsters again later, although there may be something that stops this that I haven't spotted. In my version I have cleared the MF_SPECIAL flag just in case.

Jeff


Thanks once again Jeff! I'll commit this straight away. I think I might have to scour your code for some more stuff... ;)

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bradharding said:

I think I might have to scour your code for some more stuff... ;)


You're only allowed to look at the well written, well commented bits - not the horrendous bodges!

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jeff-d said:

You're only allowed to look at the well written, well commented bits - not the horrendous bodges!


Well, you've seen my code: I'm good with bodges!

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This leaks as well.

            case tc_button:
                saveg_read_pad();
                button = (button_t *)Z_Malloc(sizeof(*button), PU_LEVEL, NULL);
                saveg_read_button_t(button);
                P_StartButton(button->line, button->where, button->btexture, button->btimer);
                break;

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bradharding said:

And I have no idea why the weapon was disappearing either... Question: Can you recall if the ammo in the status bar/hud changed when you pressing 1 through 6?


It was too hot (all those imps and cacodemons) and I died pretty quick. Next time, if it happens again, I'll try to gather more information.

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The development of DOOM RETRO is still going strong, and has no signs of letting up! After only 1 week since the last one, another small point release, DOOM RETRO v1.4.2, has now been made available! You may download it doomretro.com]here. And here’s what’s changed:

  • Several more limits have been removed, allowing larger and more detailed maps to be loaded without crashing.
  • DOOM RETRO will now try to fix some common map errors before loading a map.
  • Optimizations have been made to the loading of large levels, and the handling of gamepads.
  • The smoke trails of the player’s and Cyberdemon’s rockets can now be disabled by setting smoketrails to false in doomretro.cfg. It is true by default.
  • The limit on the size of savegames has been removed, allowing the game to be saved on larger maps without exiting with an error.
  • Several changes have been made to the HUD:
  • The HUD is now displayed in non-widescreen modes.
  • The drop shadows of the numbers in the HUD are now slightly lighter.
  • The HUD has been shifted downwards slightly.
  • Values in the HUD will now start flashing at 20 (rather than 10), and the speed at which they flash will increase the closer they get to 0.
  • When the player is invulnerable, only the red part of the medikit turns gold, and not the health value.
  • Keys are no longer seen to disappear from the HUD before wiping the screen when using the IDCLEVxy cheat to warp to a new map.
  • The positions of blood splats are now randomized better.
  • A memory leak has been fixed when loading a savegame.
  • A bug has been fixed where the gamma correction level was being reset to 0.75 each time DOOM RETRO was loaded, regardless of what it was previously set to.
  • A bug has been fixed whereby some users were experiencing jerky mouse movement.
  • A flashing HOM (“Hall of Mirrors”) indicator has been implemented. The screen will flash red in place of missing textures, but not when the player has enabled “no clipping mode” using the IDCLIP or IDSPISPOPD cheats.
  • When saving a game, the savegame description will only be updated to the current map name if it hasn’t been changed to something other than map name previously.

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