Is it still possible to buy DOOM RPG (for mobiles)?

[Patrol1985]

Hi,

First of all I'd like to apologize in advance as I'm a newbie when it comes to mobile gaming, so bear with all the stupid questions I might ask further.

I've never played any mobile RPG games by id Software, be it Doom RPG, Doom II RPG or Wolfenstein RPG. I always thought they were restricted to Apple iPhone devices, but having read a little I noticed that there are also versions of those games for "mobiles" so I assume a phone running the Android system would suffice. Is that correct?

Regarding the question in the topic - I browsed through "EA Mobile" store and noticed that "Doom II RPG" and "Wolfenstein RPG" are still there, but "Doom RPG" is absent. Does anyone know why? Is it still possible to obtain it legally somehow?

Some more questions:

1) I have "Samsung Galaxy A5", can this phone run the titles mentioned? (Doom, Doom II and Wolfenstein RPGs?)
2) How do I buy those games? Do I have to do it with my mobile? Does it work like Steam where I can redownload the purchased titles indefinitely?

[Maes]

AFAIK, the original Doom RPG was released only for the Java MIDP platform (aka the classic pre-Android "Java games"), as well as for the Symbian OS, which was used with some of the higher end pre-Android "smartphones".

Even if you find it, you'll need a "vintage" smartphone (e.g. a Sony Ericsson K750i) to use it, or an emulator for the Java MIDP environment.

As for buying them...in the olden days, you usually purchased those titles by sending an SMS to a specialized service, which then downloaded the self-contained .jar file to your phone, or found a torrent/CD with a couple thousand of Java games and tried them until you found one that didn't suck (by no means an easy feat).

I have no idea if there's still any active market for this technology.

[Patrol1985]

Bummer then.

Thanks for your reply Maes!

[Jaxxoon R]

I wonder if it'd be worthwhile to petition id Software to rerelease these things in some capacity.

[VGamingJunkie]

I managed to get it running on my Android tablet with a sort of java "Foundation" emulator but it was letter boxed to hell and a little awkward to control. It was also the "SNES Doom" edition that had no floor/ceiling textures.

[wildweasel]

  On 8/12/2015 at 1:16 PM, Jaxxoon R said:

I wonder if it'd be worthwhile to petition id Software to rerelease these things in some capacity.

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I'd imagine that the trouble with this is who technically owns the rights, since the Doom RPG series was published under Jamdat Mobile (now EA Mobile). I'd seriously love to be able to play them again, though. I'm kind of pissed off that the only way to get Doom 2 RPG and Wolfenstein RPG is through iTunes, since I don't own an iOS device...

[Maes]

  On 8/12/2015 at 4:48 PM, MetroidJunkie said:

I managed to get it running on my Android tablet with a sort of java "Foundation" emulator but it was letter boxed to hell and a little awkward to control. It was also the "SNES Doom" edition that had no floor/ceiling textures.

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I recall that only the Symbian version had textures, and that one is even harder to find and run.

[RunningWild]

  On 8/12/2015 at 5:33 PM, Maes said:

I recall that only the Symbian version had textures, and that one is even harder to find and run.

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I had (and still have) it on a Verizon Razr V3 and it has textures as I recall. The Razr also ran apps in BREW (native C rather than Java), so probably that was why. I'm charging it up and I'll verify when I can. (http://www.mobygames.com/game/brew/doom-rpg) (VERFIED - Celings and floors both have textures)

I actually kept that phone when I switched a while back to an iPhone purely for the games I had on it; Doom RPG 1 & 2, Orcs & Elves, and the Wolfenstein RPG (not as good as the other 3).

The sad part is none of those games are in their marketplace anymore, and some of them were pulled/went MIA even while I used that phone. If I deleted them I'd have no idea how to get them back.

Which makes me think... Is there anywhere you can post a notice other than here that you're looking for an old cell phone with these specific games on them? It'd be hellish to find someone with one, but the upside is it probably wouldn't be expensive.

[Maes]

Interesting, that site claims there also was a Blackberry version. Perhaps the Symbian/BREW/Blackberry versions (if they really are all different) used the same codebase, with minimal platform-specific wrapping?

As for the game itself, I recall it being interesting, yes, but not particularly challenging. Your "Doomguy" pretty soon grew ridiculously powerful, to the point where you could kill cacos with the hand axe in one hit (!) and once you learned which weapons damaged which monsters the most, you could kill them all in the first attack pretty much consistently. Unless I played it on an easy difficulty setting or something...

[Varis Alpha]

i recall finding the first Doom RPG being downloadable from EA, of all things, using some kind of cellphone emulator to run the thing. however, it seemed to be time-restricted, as suddenly the game would stop and i couldn't play it anymore. now i wouldn't know how to play it again, but i definitely remember liking it.

[Maes]

  On 8/14/2015 at 4:50 AM, RunningWild said:

Which makes me think... Is there anywhere you can post a notice other than here that you're looking for an old cell phone with these specific games on them? It'd be hellish to find someone with one, but the upside is it probably wouldn't be expensive.

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Well...if there's enough demand (and willingness to pay for international postage plus some expenses), I could gather as many working J2ME-capable phones I can find from local thrift stores, pre-install the Doom RPG on them (still have the .jar somewhere...), and ship them anywhere in the world.

FWIW, I recommend the Sony Ericsson K750i, from the "golden" era of Java games. Good phone overall, well-built, and easy to find (both units and batteries/chargers) ;-)

[RunningWild]

  On 8/14/2015 at 11:49 AM, Maes said:

As for the game itself, I recall it being interesting, yes, but not particularly challenging. Your "Doomguy" pretty soon grew ridiculously powerful, to the point where you could kill cacos with the hand axe in one hit (!) and once you learned which weapons damaged which monsters the most, you could kill them all in the first attack pretty much consistently. Unless I played it on an easy difficulty setting or something...

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Yeah, and the axe you get in the beginning remains a nasty weapon throughout the entire game. One harder part I found was finding all the secrets. The environment supported 45-degree walls and random obstacles which made it a bit more awkward than say Wolf3D for scrubbing the walls for a secret.

[fraggle]

Doom RPG is great. Worth buying an old phone for IMO.

[SavageCorona]

Are the developers still around to make an Android port?

[Quasar]

  On 8/16/2015 at 10:05 PM, SavageCorona said:

Are the developers still around to make an Android port?

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Bethesda took a battle axe to id Mobile and cut off most of the relationships they had with third party devs.

[VGamingJunkie]

Guess the closest we could get is someone to make an imitation for (G)ZDoom since Doom Touch for Android just so happens to include GZDoom.

[Maes]

Or decompile the various .class files with JAD. While it almost surely won't produce usable code for any other platform, it may help with getting the logic mostly right.

[Frano35]

  On 8/14/2015 at 4:50 AM, RunningWild said:

I had (and still have) it on a Verizon Razr V3 and it has textures as I recall. The Razr also ran apps in BREW (native C rather than Java), so probably that was why. I'm charging it up and I'll verify when I can. (http://www.mobygames.com/game/brew/doom-rpg) (VERFIED - Celings and floors both have textures)

I actually kept that phone when I switched a while back to an iPhone purely for the games I had on it; Doom RPG 1 & 2, Orcs & Elves, and the Wolfenstein RPG (not as good as the other 3).

The sad part is none of those games are in their marketplace anymore, and some of them were pulled/went MIA even while I used that phone. If I deleted them I'd have no idea how to get them back.

Which makes me think... Is there anywhere you can post a notice other than here that you're looking for an old cell phone with these specific games on them? It'd be hellish to find someone with one, but the upside is it probably wouldn't be expensive.

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Is there any way you could provide download link or sell it if you still have it?

[Gerardo194]

  On 8/21/2015 at 1:27 PM, MetroidJunkie said:

Guess the closest we could get is someone to make an imitation for (G)ZDoom since Doom Touch for Android just so happens to include GZDoom.

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This, as you must know my brothers and I are working on The RPG games for GZDoom and I was wondering if there was a source port for android capable of running Doom with GZDoom features.

[Sharpie]

  On 1/10/2017 at 3:49 PM, Gerardo194 said:

This, as you must know my brothers and I are working on The RPG games for GZDoom and I was wondering if there was a source port for android capable of running Doom with GZDoom features.

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D-GLES and D-Touch are good. Though I've heard that D-Touch is better. I'm on an android that has the Google Play store, so I can't get it normally.

[Voros]

The GZDoom present in D-Touch is 1.8.6/2.1pre. It's a bit outdated, lacking many updates present in the current builds of GZDoom. D4D, Adventures of Square, Argent, HDoom (well it has a small bug) and whatever else I can't think of right now, don't work. I don't think it even has ZScript.

Just saying, if Doom RPG is "ported" to D-Touch via GZDoom, be prepared to let go of ideas you want to implement.

[Gerardo194]

If there is no problem, I will talk to my brother Erick194 if it is possible to get D-touch, maybe he could make a ported version of the RPGs on this D-touch port for a future when we finish them. He's the programmer not me. I think we won't have any trouble if we do this, will we?

[VGamingJunkie]

Getting GZDoom 1.8.6 may be the best bet for testing, or perhaps 2.1pre if 1.8.6 doesn't work. Here's 1.8.6 if I'm not mistaken:

http://gzdoom.drdteam.org/archive/bin/gzdoom-bin-1-8-06.zip

[Gerardo194]

Remember my brother is working on with a GZDoom 1.9.1 adding some new stuff to it, even Doom64 stuff such gradient wall lighting, mirrored textures and that sector lighting that I don't remember its name, maybe he could add it to D-touch as well as a possibility. I hope he agreed.

EDIT: we looked for D-touch just now, we can buy it but the bad thing is we don't have its source code, that's a pity. Sorry friends, we will continue working on the PC version then.

[printz]

Why not just make your own game, with original graphics and plot, that just happens to remind everyone of some Doom-like RPG? It would be win-win. How did the Doom RPG play? Turn-based, real time? Text-based, dialog-based or with full graphics? Were you a character that moved around and collected treasure and useful items to beat the demons?

[Voros]

  On 1/11/2017 at 9:51 PM, Gerardo194 said:

EDIT: we looked for D-touch just now, we can buy it but the bad thing is we don't have its source code, that's a pity.

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https://github.com/emileb/OpenGames/
https://github.com/emileb/MobileTouchControls

[Gerardo194]

I feel stupid now, I didn't know the source code was there, thanks Voros. If we can make the RPG games run in this, we will announce it.

  On 1/11/2017 at 11:12 PM, printz said:

Why not just make your own game, with original graphics and plot, that just happens to remind everyone of some Doom-like RPG? It would be win-win. How did the Doom RPG play? Turn-based, real time? Text-based, dialog-based or with full graphics? Were you a character that moved around and collected treasure and useful items to beat the demons?

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Making games is a dream we always have had, but working on a accurate Doom RPG project is something that my brother wished and he got it now. Doom RPG played this way: turn-based mode, text-based and the gameplay was the same thing you said.

[hex11]

  On 8/14/2015 at 4:50 AM, RunningWild said:

I actually kept that phone when I switched a while back to an iPhone purely for the games I had on it; Doom RPG 1 & 2, Orcs & Elves, and the Wolfenstein RPG (not as good as the other 3).

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Orcs & Elves (but not the others) had a Nintendo DS release. The game sounds rather short though, from the description. I mean compared to The Dark Spire and other related stuff.

[Maes]

  On 1/11/2017 at 11:12 PM, printz said:

Why not just make your own game, with original graphics and plot, that just happens to remind everyone of some Doom-like RPG? It would be win-win. How did the Doom RPG play? Turn-based, real time? Text-based, dialog-based or with full graphics? Were you a character that moved around and collected treasure and useful items to beat the demons?

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That's what I was gonna propose. If your brother has the skills required, as you seem to suggest, and you're gonna reimplement much of the game's logic anyway (unless you manage to at least partially decompile the original JAD), why not make it a standalone game? The engine needed shouldn't be too complex.

OK...kinda contradicting myself here, but piggybacking on an already existing ZDoom source port will not only give you a way to decouple engine and level design from the game's logic: trying to put something called "Doom RPG" on Google Play now will probably give you A LOT of legal trouble. However, distributed as a cross-platform PWAD/PK, requiring Doom to be played, it's another story.

[VGamingJunkie]

How about a reimagining that follows the original Doom RPG to a certain extent but completely amps things up? It could retain the weapons/enemies/plot/etc but allow for things that mobile phones at the time had no hope of being able to do.