A Beginners Guide To Freedoom, Playing Custom WADs, & Achieving A More Doom-like Experience

[Sm0key]

#Introduction & Preliminary Talk

Hello fellow Doomers. I have somewhat recently gotten into the world of Dooming with the PC and the wild WADs to try out. In the past few days I have gone from knowing nothing about anything to having an absolute blast plug and chugging WADs. I like writing comprehensive guides and manuals for the people who come after me (or my forgetful future self) to use as reference.

This guide is aimed at people who are:
beginners to the PC doom modding scene
new to Freedoom and confused as to what its exact purpose is
have a hard time understanding how Custom WADs, IWADs, and source ports work
do not understand how to get their WAD to load into the game
People who would like to their Freedoom experience more OG doom-like while not infringing on ID Software or their copyright

##The Original Unedited Version
This guide was originally posted on my blog which can be found here: 
https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/tilde.team/~smokey/logs/2022-08-31-doom.gmi

I have cut several sections of paragraphs from the original guide for this doomworld post version. Mostly due to uncertainty in exactly what I am allowed to say/talk about. I would  rather stay uncontroversial as to minimize the potential for this thread to be deleted or my account striken. so many of my personal opinions and 'grey-area' topics can be found exclusively there.

On Freedooms support page it says that they don't accept donations and that 'the biggest way to help is evangelizing'. Consider this guide my submission of propaganda for new converts.

#A Guide To Playing Freedoom & Community Made Doom content in 2022

## Introduction To OG DOOM

There is a YouTube curator called AHOY, whom tends to make documentary level content about older games and real life weapon history. I came across AHOYs documentary on the original DOOM games a little while ago, and since then I have been slightly obsessed with OG doom. The history of games and computing in general is a fascinating subject which I enjoy learning about. The Documentary a great watch if you want to understand more about the context of original doom, or just get hyped to play it again.

=> https://youtu.be/6A4-SVUHQYI RetroAhoy: DOOM Documentary

=> https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB8ZMOyOSkcbuEg8zYepyMe6Fl0I2CETI 'Whatever Happened To Everyone Who Worked On Original Doom?' By UtterSpartan

I also like following speedrunning in games, and doom is a big speedrunning community. If you want to understand the history of passionate players pushing the bounds of the doom games, I recommend watching some videos by Karl Jobst on various doom speedruns and community achievements to really appreciate the rich history of doom.

=> https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB8ZMOyOSkcbuEg8zYepyMe6Fl0I2CETI Karl Jobst Doom Videos Playlist

Finally if you enjoy learning about the coding/programming side of games and the many internal quirks of dooms mechanics, Decino is a great curator who dives deep into all that. They also upload gameplay sessions of various doom WADs.

=> https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYZp53E4M0t_8HmPlV4m04vGKUcJIQc53 Decino's Doom Analysis Playlist

##So You Want To Play?
I was sold on the carnage. I wanted to play OG doom in all its old-school glory. I desired, no, needed to rip and tear the way God intended. But Alas I am low on money, and cannot spare even 5$ right now. Very fortunately,  There was a way to get the fix needed through several very awesome community projects!

#A Free And Open Doom Experience
Conventionally, to play OG doom you have to, well, buy one of the original games first. This is how most people start off with doom. Buut, there are some legitimate workarounds for those who don't want to or can't afford to spend 5$ on a 30 year old game.

## The Free & Open Skeleton Of Commercial Doom
The source code for the doom engine was released a LONG time ago, so that part is notoriously free. What *isn't* free is all the assets like sprites, textures, music, sounds, and other proprietary goodies that go into the visuals. Everything that makes a game besides its mechanical code.

What this means is that we are left with the bare bones skeleton of a game, with all its hard coded mechanics and physics engine, but no visual assets or map data that makes up a game. Plenty of commercial games from the late 90s run off some variant of the doom engine for this reason. But all these spin-off doom engine games are also, not free.

##Freedoom
This is where a very special game comes in. Freedoom is an ongoing collaborative effort by many individual sprite artist, game developers, and map makers to re-make *every* asset from doom and doom2 and use those free assets with the free doom engine to build a completely free and open game with everything published under a permissive GPL license. This project started in 2001, over 20 years ago, and particularly in recent years has made vast sprite overhauls and visual improvements. A lot of creative love and labor has gone into this project from many talented individuals all sharing one vision: A doom game Accessible to everyone.

### Why Freedoom?
Believe it or not, there are people with computers who can't afford to waste money games, or those who live in such poor and impoverished nations that the local currency is not accepted in online stores. The existence of free and open source software is the only alternative these people have short of straight up piracy. Its these people who need escapism the most. The very existence of Freedoom means that everyone and anyone who wants a classic doom-like experience can legitimately have it.

##Limitations?
"BUT Freedoom is just one game made by a couple of hobbyist right? Sure some of the maps might be serviceable and the sprites acceptable, but there can't much else content wise. Besides I didn't like how the sprites look when I tried it 5 years ago. So What else can freedoom do for me? What more can this *obviously* inferior doom clone accomplish?"

#The True Power Of Doom, Community Made Mods And WADs
The original doom games levels sure were good and all, absolute master classes in level design. but we would'nt still be talking about these games 30 years later if the commercial releases were all there was to see. Fortunately, very passionate community of doomers continue to contribute content long after development stopped. Doom was one of the first PC games to truly embrace the modding scene, and still is a bastion of the people all these years later. Some mods were actually released officially by ID as an expansion known by 'Final Doom' containing the Plutonium Experiment and Evilution custom episodes.

##Common People Can Make Quality Things
Many community made wads produced by hardcore fans come extremely close to rivaling IDs own masterful level designs. Some of them re-haul the game in completely new ways known as total-conversion mods. And all of those community made wads are ours for the playing thanks to freedoom. Yes thats right, any mod or wad made for vanilla doom 1 and 2 will work flawlessly with freedoom. Including total conversion mods which are like new games in themselves.

##Getting Freedoom Closer To OG Doom
 I think its a fair question to ask how close freedoom can get to og doom in terms of aesthetics and maps without straight up infringement or piracy. 'How close can a free clone get to the original while still being free'.

Heres the best way I found to get *very* close to emulating the original doom experiences without crossing that line of infringement using freedoom and a couple of very special WADs that luckily just came into being very recently.

##DTWWRI, Free Community Made Remixes
'Doom The Way We Remember it' and its sequel/counterpart 'Doom 2 The Way We Remember It' Are a duo of wads published last year in 2021 which act as full re-creations of all the original doom levels (and sounds) from memory. Many different members of the map making community came together for this project.

In practicality, these are free community remake maps of *every* map from vanilla doom 1 and 2 which largely stay true to the feel and design of the originals, while adding slight altercations in order to spice things up. The slight altercations are really fun to discover if you are already familiar with the og maps. It feels just like doom, but somethings off. I love the levels I played so far, and is just different enough from the officials to not infringe.
##Some Negatives

Criticisms of DTWWRI/D2TWWRI? Well, the levels are much simpler in geometry, and not nearly as play tested as the official doom maps which means there are times you might get stuck and frustrated due to a unintentional design quirk. I think thats mostly countered by the fact that these custom maps are made by passionate fans and not paid devs. The works of common people dedicating their free time and efforts with no compensation should not be held to the same standards of a well financed and focused development team.

###Reference links
=> https://youtu.be/xij6cu8LJbc Showcase Trailer for DTWWRI by Engired
=> https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/123289-release-doom-the-way-we-remember-it-v2/ DTWWRI fourm post on doomworld
=> https://youtu.be/YIH0650miwg Showcase Trailer for D2TWWRI by Engired
=> https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/126634-doom-2-the-way-we-remember-it-release-v8/ D2TWWRI fourm post on doomworld

#How to play DTWWRI/Custom WADs with Freedoom

##A Brief Explaination Of WADs

WAD files, which stand for 'wheres all the data?' are a very clever way which games that run on the doom engine are packaged for distribution. Instead of 10,000 different files all seperated out on your file system like most unity based games do, all the data for the game is bundled in one file. Like a early kind of .ZIP, all art assets, midi sound bytes, map data, and all the other things that make a game, a game. All bundled into one easy to distribute file.

This makes modding the core doom games absurdly easy. Really the first time the average player had such convenience compared to almost every other game. Want a new community curated expansion full of expertly curated maps on par with the official product? Want to make a complete graphical overhaul to the base texures? Want to change the way everything looks to be kid friendly and ship kid-friendly doom inside cerial boxes? Want to throw out the shooty bang bang gamelplay completely and make a whole new RPG game with the visual aesthetics of super mario?

Just download the appropriate WAD file then plug and chug. Its as easy as that.

## IWADs vs Custom WADs

One more thing about WADs, there are two kinds, as far as I can tell. IWADs and custom WADs. IWADS are the base asset files that the doom engine requires for anything else. IWADS are the bedrock for everything else to be built off of. All the skin and flesh that goes on top of the metaphorical skeleton that is the source engine.

Regular custom wads are not standalone and require an IWAD to build off of. The vast majority of all WADs are this type. Things like custom maps, re-textured sprites, even total conversions. This makes sense after all, just the custom map data means can do nothing without the rest of the other asset data to work with.

###Examples of IWADs, Custom WADs, And Source Engine Ports

doom.wad, doom2.wad, freedoom1.wad, and freedoom2.wad are all IWADs, or standalone games that contain complete asset data.

DTWWRI.wad, D2TWWRI.wad, plutonium.wad and tnt.wad all count as standard custom WADs that contain partial custom data that overrides some of the IWAD data.

##Explaining Source Ports
Source Engine Ports like prboom+, GZdoom, chocolate doom, are all different community maintained ports of the original doom engine that was open sourced after release. The Doom Engine is responsible for all the nitty gritty mechanics of game physics, spawning mechanics, map building algorithms, and all other forms of mechanical and mathematical logic that complex games must simulate and continuously re-calculate during gameplay.

###Why Source Ports Exist

Source ports exist because the original doom engine is *veery* old. Like, Its so old that the engine was designed by ID to run on MS-DOS computer systems. Theres really no need to get into what MS-DOS is/was, its dead and completely irrelevant in 2022 outside of the retro-computing community. The short of it is that Microsoft killed support for MS-DOS in windows operating systems after windows 2001, thus making the original DOS doom engine un-runnable in modern computers without the use of virtual software emulation with a program like DOSBox which is a much worse experience than if played with native hardware acceleration.

Many attempts have been successfully made by different parts of the doom community in the mission of porting the DOS doom engine to more modern hardware so that it can be run natively with hardware acceleration.
Some of these ports remain as true as possible to vanilla doom and its intentional limitations and programming quirks with no further changes or touch-ups.
Some of these ports completely overhaul the source to implement a huge set of new features and visual overhauls to the 3D engine, The Doomsday Engine is a good example of this extreme.
Most ports are somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, providing a vanilla doom experience aesthetically with some modern luxuries mechanically and a touch up to the source code base where ID messed up.

If you would like more knowledge on the many kinds of source ports and what their differences are, I found this video helpful.
=> https://youtu.be/HzauoLqk_9U 'A Subjective Look at Dooms Source Ports' by Dwars

Source ports are still just the engine though, the mechanical foundation of the game that has no data to work with on its own. You must provide it with at least an IWAD.

#Step-By-Step To Get Custom WADs Running With Freedoom

##User Experience May Vary
I use a unix based system, specifically ubuntu drived, and prboom+ is the default source port engine installed with it through the package manager. You might be on windows or bsd variant OS so installation process and location of internal files will be different. You might need to use some common sense and google a thing or two at some point. Good luck!

##Step 0: Install freedoom & A Source Engine

Installation is most easily done from the package manager for most linux systems. prboom+ (the engine) *should* be installed automatically along side freedoom as a dependency. Don't forget that the choice is yours if you want to use a different engine like chocolate doom or GZDoom instead if its easier to install those on your native system.

=> https://freedoom.github.io/download.html freedoom IWAD official download
=> https://prboom-plus.sourceforge.io/ prboom+ documentation

## Step 1: download DTWWRI and D2TWWRI wads from these links

These are links to the WAD files for the two 'Doom The Way We Remember It' remixes.
=> https://www.doomworld.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=141182 Doom The Way We Remember It (v2)
=> https://www.doomworld.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=165185 Doom 2 The Way We Remember It (v8)

## Step 2: Moving The Files To The Right Place

After downloading the zips, extract the .wad files to the appropriate location where doom wads should go on your computer. For me using an ubuntu based distro, this location is

```
/usr/share/games/doom
```

The freedom1 and freedoom2 wads should already be here too. These are the core IWAD files for freedoom phase 1 & 2. The DTWWRI wads we just added to this folder will serve as the custom files loaded on top of the IWADs.

##Step 3: Launching The Game
In the terminal, use these commands respectively

For Doom 1:

```
prboom-plus -iwad freedoom1.wad -file DTWWRI.wad
```

For Doom 2:
```
prboom-plus -iwad freedoom2.wad -file D2TWWRI.wad
```

If all went well, the game should boot up with the custom maps using freedooms assets. Congratulations, you are winnar!

### A Short Explaination Of The Command
The command is fairly self-explainitory. prboom-plus is the engine, -iwad freedoomX.wad is an argument telling prboom that freedoom is the main IWAD to be used as a base for graphical assets and resources.

 -file DTWWRI.wad is the custom file loaded on top of the base assets, usually things like maps but some mods also add their own textures and assets which over-ride the base ones provided by the IWAD.

##Step 3.A: GUI Option If Terminals Scare You
If command line terminals scare or confuse you, which is perfectly fine if your just an average person who knows nothing about how computer software actually works under the hood, then your best bet is to download a program which acts as a simple, easy to interact with Graphical User Interface (GUI) that lets you load different doom wad profiles with the easy click of a button.

The example that comes to my mind for prboom+ is Prboom-launcher. Im sure every popular source port has its own little GUI launcher on github, happy hunting for one that works for your needs.

=> https://github.com/DerTodIstEinDandy/PrBoom-Launcher PrBoom Launcher on GitHub

##Getting Doom Assets Without Direct Piracy
Many full conversion mods for doom basically have the full original IWAD data packaged inside just slightly altered shades. While on first glance this seems legally dubious, in practicality just slightly editing the textures is enough to avoid being lawyer bait. If WAD makers have gotten away with it this long, they probably will keep getting away with it. I guess better for PR to turn a blind eye to this very obscure and grey form of slightly-altered data distribution than go the full nuclear option and posting DMCA strikes.

So in summary freedoom IWAD + some full texture conversion mods = looks just like regular doom in most aspects. This is the way to go if you really want that official doom aesthetic and still don't want to buy the commercial releases.

#Conclusion
That marks the end of this guide type thing. I hope that some of you in the future will find it a useful resource in your own Dooming pursuits. Please let me know if I did help you out or if you spotted a place where the guide needs correcting. Thank you for reading and have a nice rest of the day.

[MrFlibble]

I like your text overall, but I think you're somewhat downplaying the value of Freed∞M as a stand-alone game on its own. Personally I much prefer the art and aesthetics of Freed∞M to that of the original Doom, with all due respect to the classic game.

 

Back in 2012 when I started playing Freed∞M, I did not like many of the levels and looked for some custom PWADs with maps that would be more in the style of the original Doom, including a greater emphasis on secrets and more complex level layouts. Here are some which I found to be a nice "retro" experience to go with Freed∞M (these are mostly for Phase 1):

• CH Retro Episode
• Simply Phobos
• Phobos Revisited
• Phobos Outpost
• NJ Doom
• The Ultimate NMD
• Wonderful Doom

[dasho]

I agree with MrFlibble, you should pick a lane and either make a either true "Beginner's Guide to Freedoom" or a "How to imitate Doom using Freedoom" guide. You also stray into some tangents and opiniated stuff that won't really age well for a guide.