RetroArch Liberto Prboom 2.5.0

[Helton342]

Due to recent complications and no access to a proper PC.

 

I've been trying my hand at seeing for any alternative options available to play doom or doom-likes on my phone.

 

Which lead me to a lot of places...

 

Atari jaguar Wolfenstein, Dark Arena lead by TNT Member: Paul Schmitz , GBA doom, Duke Nukem and the sort. But they somehow felt... Too ehh?. At first I thought: "maybe I should try to look for Doom ports that RetroArch can play." And out of all of them, the only one I really wanted to try was PSX Doom, but that one... Did not work. I even tried to use 64Doom, but that one kept crashing.

 

And then I found it. Inside the cores of RetroArch, there is the Dosbox executable. And The Liberto Prboom executable! Though it's an old version of PrBoom that's deemed obsolete by a lot of the Doom community. But it is the one available to me currently and I cannot express my joy to be able to play Doom again.

 

When it comes to performance. It's surprisingly beat for beat, no lag, no delay due to excessive sprites (When compared to the Jaguar Wolfenstein, which slogged to a halt if anything beyond 5 sprites was on screen)

 

The controls... I had to make my own custom controls, because the ones available in RetroArch for onscreen overlay, are... Limited. The closest ones to allowing for proper gameplay were the PSX control scheme, and the Genesis control scheme. Almost everything else is only useful for RPGs and platformers. So I had to go out of my way and make one of my own to play the game.

 

And it feels similar to playing with a controller. Enemies feel harder to dodge and to aim at.

 

But still, it is better than nothing. Any wad that doesn't require jumping'n'crouching should be playable.

Edited March 31 by Helton342

[taufan99]

Why not buy Delta Touch? More source ports including GZDoom, customizable buttons that are more efficient at playing id Engine 1 games, and many other features.

[Helton342]

12 hours ago, taufan99 said:

Why not buy Delta Touch? More source ports including GZDoom, customizable buttons that are more efficient at playing id Engine 1 games, and many other features.

Mainly because it's easily accessible right there in RetroArch, if I want to play anything else I can just hop from doom to that.

 

Also... I wouldn't really play anything above Ultimate doom on mobile or console... Because it just doesn't feel right. The lack of precision doesn't help, the slogged movement just makes you easy prey. So that's a no-no from me, I'm not facing a revenant, archvile or chaingunner on mobile when 2 shotgunners can punch atleast 3 shots into me if and i cannot do anything to counteract

 

Quote

Any wad that doesn't require jumping'n'crouching should be playable.

And also this. Anything I would want to play in zdoom ports would usually be wads that have these features, like brutal doom, golden souls, Super-Doom and the sort.

Edited April 2 by Helton342

[ObserverOfTime]

39 minutes ago, Helton342 said:

Also... I wouldn't really play anything above Ultimate doom on mobile or console... Because it just doesn't feel right. The lack of precision doesn't help, the slogged movement just makes you easy prey. So that's a no-no from me, I'm not facing a revenant, archvile or chaingunner on mobile when 2 shotgunners can punch atleast 3 shots into me if and i cannot do anything to counteract

 

If you can and it is supported, at least on Android, you should be able to hook up other gaming peripherals like an actual controller or keyboard and mouse even.

 

Delta touch at least can work with either, figuring out how to connect the input devices is the tricky bit. I had to get a USB-A to USB-C hub, once I had one of those it was a matter of plugging everything in and setting up the configurations for it. I'm not sure if RetroArch has similar functions, but in theory I don't see why it shouldn't work. An android phone is surprisingly capable in terms of playing Doom and a huge selection of pwads. If I had nothing else available I'd get one of those all-in-one keyboard and mouse devices (only one usb-c to usb-a adapter required) and just relearn to play keyboard-only.

[Helton342]

46 minutes ago, ObserverOfTime said:

 just relearn to play keyboard-only.

The very first time I played Shovelware Doom (Heretic and Hexen even for that matter) was keyboard only on a Dosbox emulator

 

It was a very novel feeling at the time. Even felt better than using a controller. Or in my current case a onscreen overlay. But I would rather not try to emulate what it feels like to play with a keyboard on a 17 centimeter long monitor when it is available to me as is.