Simplest way to make a Doom game or a TC

[Doom_Meister_69]

New girl here, wanna make a TC or a 'game' based on Doom.

What is the least demanding way (performance wise) of making a TC of Doom? I'm talking about software and how to go about it. Would it be a combination of something like Doom Builder for maps and Dehacked with Slade? I'm not interested at all in all that gzDoom stuff. I would like to run this TC then on old PCs without problems. When I talk about TC I mean a 'new game'. Custom graphics, customs sounds/musics.

Do you guys have an answer?

Best regards,

Jessica

[rouge_means_red]

You could ask @Revae what he used for REKKR

[OceanMadman]

7 minutes ago, rouge_means_red said:

You could ask @Revae what he used for REKKR

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure they just used DeHacked for it.

[Doom_Meister_69]

43 minutes ago, rouge_means_red said:

You could ask @Revae what he used for REKKR

REKKR was my inspiration. I know he used DeHacked but was that all? If so, mighty impressive!

 

36 minutes ago, OceanMadman said:

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure they just used DeHacked for it.

Yep, that's what I heard, too.

[ramon.dexter]

If you want to make a game, first thing is to find a engine for it. 

 

For a new game or TC, just avoid dehacked. You want to make a new game, not hack behaviour of already existing engine.

 

So, my advice is to grab gzdoom and learn zscript or decorate, at least. 

Edited January 11, 2023 by ramon.dexter

[SilverMiner]

On 1/10/2023 at 3:22 PM, Doom_Meister_69 said:

I would like to run this TC then on old PCs without problems.

In 2016-2018 I had a somewhat puristic need for my wads to be able to run in DOS, and at some point I thought that Boom 2.02 hadn't had the features I wanted, and I scoured the topic and compiled my exe mod of Boom 2.02 (also MBF 2.04, but Boom was enough) in order to make rocket guys drop rockets, change sky on some level, and make the game end at map24, if I didn't forget something, that's it.

 

So that you wouldn't have to deal with such weird stuff, which I did, and I liked it a lot by the way, the best source port for DOS I would use, would most likely be MBF 2.04.

 

MBF has enough powerful dehacked, in particular allowing you to use like Spawn codepointer to make custom drops.

It's a good thing I hadn't thought of it then, because I felt pretty good when I compiled Boom 2.02, especially under DOS and for DOS. It was my first experience of compiling a C program.

 

For MBF modding I'd use:

• Whacked 4 (I use beta 1.2.0), you'll want this for dehacked stuff
• GZDB, UDB, whatever you want (I use GZDB 1.14 cuz of some feature, that was called bug and fixed later, but it never broke anything for me)
• Slade (I use 3.1.1.5 for some reasons regarding heretic skies)

As for other DOS source ports, I'm aware of existence of SMMU, Fusion and Doom Legacy, but it is likely that finding a source port for modern systems that supports all the features they do is gonna be problematic heh.

 

In short:

• SMMU has FraggleScript (Zdoom 2.8.1 supports it) including mbf features
• Fusion has a few thousands of frames for dehacked including mbf features iirc
• Doom Legacy (some DOS builds) should have 3d floors and FraggleScript iirc

 

If not MBF, I'd choose SMMU. Just for scripting, and also it should support MBF dehacked stuff. MBF's dehacked is quite limited, but it seems rich when compared to vanilla, and for vanilla I remember there was a Batman TC (it just gives an idea that it's possible to make a good TC even under such limits)

 

Unless shenaniging with code and compilers, personally, I'd try

• MBF 2.04 (it should be still being maintained on VOGONS, and if you like find a bug or something, if you report it I think it'll be fixed)
• or SMMU (But I'm not sure it's stable. It's been out of maintainment for a long time)

Also, if it'd be enough for you that Zdoom 2.8.1 runs on Win98, you might consider using that source port

[Doom_Meister_69]

On 1/12/2023 at 2:18 AM, SilverMiner said:

In 2016-2018 I had a somewhat puristic need for my wads to be able to run in DOS, and at some point I thought that Boom 2.02 hadn't had the features I wanted, and I scoured the topic and compiled my exe mod of Boom 2.02 (also MBF 2.04, but Boom was enough) in order to make rocket guys drop rockets, change sky on some level, and make the game end at map24, if I didn't forget something, that's it.

 

So that you wouldn't have to deal with such weird stuff, which I did, and I liked it a lot by the way, the best source port for DOS I would use, would most likely be MBF 2.04.

 

MBF has enough powerful dehacked, in particular allowing you to use like Spawn codepointer to make custom drops.

It's a good thing I hadn't thought of it then, because I felt pretty good when I compiled Boom 2.02, especially under DOS and for DOS. It was my first experience of compiling a C program.

 

For MBF modding I'd use:

• Whacked 4 (I use beta 1.2.0), you'll want this for dehacked stuff
• GZDB, UDB, whatever you want (I use GZDB 1.14 cuz of some feature, that was called bug and fixed later, but it never broke anything for me)
• Slade (I use 3.1.1.5 for some reasons regarding heretic skies)

As for other DOS source ports, I'm aware of existence of SMMU, Fusion and Doom Legacy, but it is likely that finding a source port for modern systems that supports all the features they do is gonna be problematic heh.

 

In short:

• SMMU has FraggleScript (Zdoom 2.8.1 supports it) including mbf features
• Fusion has a few thousands of frames for dehacked including mbf features iirc
• Doom Legacy (some DOS builds) should have 3d floors and FraggleScript iirc

 

If not MBF, I'd choose SMMU. Just for scripting, and also it should support MBF dehacked stuff. MBF's dehacked is quite limited, but it seems rich when compared to vanilla, and for vanilla I remember there was a Batman TC (it just gives an idea that it's possible to make a good TC even under such limits)

 

Unless shenaniging with code and compilers, personally, I'd try

• MBF 2.04 (it should be still being maintained on VOGONS, and if you like find a bug or something, if you report it I think it'll be fixed)
• or SMMU (But I'm not sure it's stable. It's been out of maintainment for a long time)

Also, if it'd be enough for you that Zdoom 2.8.1 runs on Win98, you might consider using that source port

Oh this is great! This is EXACTLY what I was looking for.

Everything noted. It would appear to me my hunch was correct as to what software I should be using. Slade, whacked and a doom builder, yep, that's it.

Your post was incredibly informative. I am fascinated by your intrinsic puristic need as you put it. In my case, it is not any of that. I am simply dissapointed by the requirements some of those mods have and just want to shake my head in disbelief. Back in 94 I had a modest PC and everything ran just fine. Some of those commercial releases nowadays (and I'm mostly talking about what the public describes as boomer shooters) demand you to have a pretty powerful PC and yet can still chug, yikes! That is, in my eyes, contradictory to not just what I believe in but to the design philosophy of the John Romero himself - he was all about speed and skill. Just listen to his interviews; even today, as an older man. Not to mention John Carmack's brilliant brain inside his head. But enough about what brought me to partake in this endevour.

Yes indeed I remember in the mid 90's a Batman TC of Doom! They were making TC's back then, those pioneers. Perhaps a cowboy-themed TC was made back then, too. Not sure about the date, though. But it was a proper TC, like - it had everything changed, mostly.

 

On 1/11/2023 at 6:12 PM, ramon.dexter said:

If you want to make a game, first thing is to find a engine for it. 

 

For a new game or TC, just avoid dehacked. You want to make a new game, not hack behaviour of already existing engine.

 

So, my advice is to grab gzdoom and learn zscript or decorate, at least. 

There's software available and I have already found IT! Your advice is sound, but not for me. I will never use that source port.

 

In conclusion, I'd like to thank all of you for your insight. Regardless of our differences, let's just continue making Doom content. And if the content is to our liking and on top of that happens to be well optimized - that's only for the better!

Best regards,

Jessica

[ramon.dexter]

May I know why most people on doomworld hate gzdoom? Because it has features? Because it allows to do more than old dehacked? Because it allows to run nearly everything? Or because it fixes old bugs, that became ways of 'making' impossible stuff?

[dasho]

10 hours ago, ramon.dexter said:

May I know why most people on doomworld hate gzdoom? Because it has features? Because it allows to do more than old dehacked? Because it allows to run nearly everything? Or because it fixes old bugs, that became ways of 'making' impossible stuff?

 

The initial post explicitly says "not interested in GZDoom", so there's that. Also, the request to "run on old PCs." Old PCs are definitely not the target for modern GZDoom by any stretch of the imagination.

[Gez]

The simplest way to make a Doom game or TC is still to make it for GZDoom due to how easy it is to change so much, and how it is where you will have the easiest time finding a wealth of examples and documentation. There's a reason GZDoom so utterly dominates the indie games page on the Doom Wiki. For a REKKR-like purist TC that can run in the original engine, you will need to have a lot more technical knowledge simply because it's just a lot more constrained and complicated all around. Of course, that's not a reason not to do it; just so long as you're aware of this.

 

I would recommend @MTrop's DoomTools for this endeavor, notably because they allow to adopt basically the same simpler and more convenient workflow as you'd use for a GZDoom project, keeping your development data in forms that are easily modified with generic editors and automatically handling the format conversion and code compilation for you. If nothing else, DecoHack is invaluable because it allows you to define actors in a rather straightforward manner and let the machine handle the stealing and repurposing of frames for you, as that is probably the most tedious, frustrating and exasperating part of DEHACKED.

 

20 hours ago, Doom_Meister_69 said:

Back in 94 I had a modest PC and everything ran just fine. Some of those commercial releases nowadays (and I'm mostly talking about what the public describes as boomer shooters) demand you to have a pretty powerful PC and yet can still chug, yikes! That is, in my eyes, contradictory to not just what I believe in but to the design philosophy of the John Romero himself - he was all about speed and skill.

Beware the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. Doom chugged on a modest 1994 PC. Cf. this thread:

And especially the video herein where someone benchmarks Doom on various period-accurate PCs and only get more than 20 FPS in the start room of E1M1 on 486DX2 computers with a VLB video card. Those were fairly high-end at the time. A modest PC would be something with an ISA video card and maybe at most a simple 486DX instead of DX2; and Doom just wasn't really playable in these conditions...

[ramon.dexter]

59 minutes ago, dasho said:

 

The initial post explicitly says "not interested in GZDoom", so there's that. Also, the request to "run on old PCs." Old PCs are definitely not the target for modern GZDoom by any stretch of the imagination.

Oh, my bad. 

[Amiga Angel]

as someone who played a lot of doom in the 90s I can confirm that 20 fps was considered smooth back then and 30 fps was almost crazy talk (back then nobody knew 60 fps would be the minimum requirement that most modern gamers expect today)

 

to do a TC there will be alot of stuff to replace.... sprites (monsters, projectiles, ammo, hud weapons, decorations, ...), graphics (wall textures, floor flats, UI stuff, decals, ...), sounds (music, sound effects), maps, dehacked stuff, ...

 

when mapping for pure vanilla dos doom you will need to be very aware to avoid visplane overflows... there are some tools to help you check for that but I forget their names at the moment. But there is a program that loads a wad and checks and there is a source port with some debug info enabled for that purpose

Edited January 13, 2023 by Amiga Angel

[Noiser]

Answering OP: It's totally doable to make a vanilla TC and, to be honest, I find GZDoom harder due to all the script learning and the other things\parameters you need to know in order to create a full experience. For me at least, I got a much better pace once I shifted from ZDoom modding to vanilla. But that's my own experience.

All you need for a TC is learning how to use Slade (the resource editor) and Whacked (the windows version of Dehacked). If you are aiming to vanilla, I recommend getting experience making maps for Doom at first and testing it on Chocolate Doom. Example of wads are REKKR, Harmony, Chex Quest and Hacx. You can use them to learn some new tricks or gather experience.

But you can also go limit-removing and use Crispy for Windows or even Doom Plus for DOS as an executable. I don't have much experience with Boom\MBF but I guess Silverminer got all the important stuff on his post.

Here's some tutorials on the subject:
https://aspectsweb.co.uk/dehacked/
 

 

Edited January 13, 2023 by Noiser

[dasho]

I'll skip the self-promotion, but as a far more mature port I'm surprised Eternity never comes up in these conversations. Seems like a good compromise between targeting lower-end hardware and not 'sacrificing' the customizability that Decorate or ZScript affords. It does rankle me a bit that it's always presented like an either/or scenario, as in "Either you use ZDoom and UDMF or you must do everything with Dehacked patches and etch your linedefs into a stone tablet."

[MFG38]

On 1/12/2023 at 8:40 AM, ramon.dexter said:

May I know why most people on doomworld hate gzdoom?

 

I doubt most people on Doomworld hate GZDoom, but for the ones that do, I'd wager a guess it's one or all of the following:

• Sacrificing vanilla accuracy for its extensive feature set.
• Lots of things working differently as opposed to other (more vanilla-accurate) source ports.
• The addition of jumping.
• The addition of crouching.
• The addition of freelook.
• The default config that makes it look ugly as sin and they don't know how to set up "correctly".
• Just the simple fact that it's arguably the most popular source port.

[Amiga Angel]

For the record, my favorite sourceports include GZDoom, K8Vavoom and Chocolate Doom... I'm not a huge boom fan because the advanced boom stuff is very confusing to me and looks very tedious to use, but that may just be me having zero boom knowledge.

 

I like Chocolate Doom Plus because I like the vanilla map format (not the visplane limit that the original exe and certain ports can have though)... 

I like the feature set the original doom had ... minus some of the limitations...

 

And then I like GZDoom and K8Vavoom because of their feature sets... I sometimes wish K8Vavoom was more popular.

I think I need to try and make a K8Vavoom map at some point... but getting the usual tools configured to do that seems a bit tricky though.