PortaDOOM - Cacowards bundles with included pre-configured launcher!

[Kroc]

PortaDOOM is a self-contained, portable collection of the best ever classic DOOM maps, presented as an early '90s MS-DOS disk-zine. Everything has been pre-configured to launch with just a press of a key.

 

It's intended as a single download that people can unzip and play on any computer, targeted at people who have either never played DOOM or anything beyond the official id canon and the thought of downloading, configuring and launching several different engines with all kinds of weird WAD files is putting them off trying stuff out.

PortaDOOM is about having a single executable where you press a few keys and hey-presto! you're playing DOOM WADs in the correct engine with the correct settings.

Downloads: https://github.com/Kroc/PortaDOOM/releases

 

Currently there are PortaDOOM packages for:

• Cacowards 2015 through 2019
• DOOM CE (PlayStation DOOM & DOOM 64)

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Kroc
Brand new release after 5 years!

[YukiHerz]

Kroc said:

What's Included?

• Commercial DOOM : DOOM1/2/Master/Final/NERVE, PSX & N64 (if you have the WADs; Steam & GOG installs detected automatically)

Wait, that's a bit unclear, sounds like you're giving out tje iwads for free.

[Kroc]

No, it does not contain any commercial WADs:

- If you have a relevant Steam / GOG copy of DOOM, the commercial WADs will be used from there
- Shareware DOOM is offered if trying to play Ultimate DOOM without a commercial WAD
- FreeDOOM is automatically used for playing PWADs if you don't have the commercial WAD
- You can copy your own WADs into PortaDOOM to negate any of the above

But to re-iterate -- PortaDOOM does not contain commercial WADs, but you can use them with it :)

[Maes]

To be entirely on the safe side, you should not even include the Shareware IWAD, if not in one of the official distribution forms -e.g. the DOS DEICE installer, or the Doom 95 installer. Any other form, including just the Shareware IWAD itself as a separate file, might attract unwanted attention from the copyright vultures. Yeah, that's inconvenient, but alas, distributing just the Shareware IWAD is a legal gray area, which has brought trouble occasionally.

[Kroc]

It would not be difficult at all to include the whole shareware folder, I can do this for the next release.

[Voros]

572 MB? Darn it. How about adding another mirror instead of just MEGA? That would be helpful to people.

Q: Which version of Freedoom? 0.10.1 or the Git build?
Q: What do you mean by "N64"? Doom 64?

[Kroc]

Any other suggestions for mirrors? Mega seems fine to me, but I've never had to share anything of this size before. This will never be a small project, once the complete Cacowards are in it could be 2 GB+!

Q: Which version of Freedoom? 0.10.1 or the Git build?

A: 0.10.1; I don't want to update it too often as it eats into the space-limit of my git storage.

Q: What do you mean by "N64"? Doom 64?

Yes, which reminds me that there's no commercial warning on the DOOM 64 page (the ROM/WAD isn't included, but I need to provide instructions for how to install it)

[Voros]

Kroc said:

Any other suggestions for mirrors?

Yes, which reminds me that there's no commercial warning on the DOOM 64 page (the ROM/WAD isn't included, but I need to provide instructions for how to install it)

Yeah. Mediafire, Dropbox, etc.

As for the instructions, isn't it just "run WadGen with the ROM"? But recently, I found out that Kaiser "integrated" WadGen with Doom 64 EX, but I'm not exactly sure what he means by that.

[Maes]

Kroc said:

Any other suggestions for mirrors? Mega seems fine to me, but I've never had to share anything of this size before. This will never be a small project, once the complete Cacowards are in it could be 2 GB+!

Beyond a certain size, AND assuming that all material included is legal, setting up a torrent might be a better option. Not only it avoids the usual multi-volume splitting trickery and hunting for mirrors, it allows selective file/folder download (if you don't set it up as a single file, that is).

[deadmanwalkin11]

How did you make this disk-zine?? I want to make my own.

[Kroc]

It's written in QB64, it's open-source, and you can get it here: https://github.com/Kroc/DOSmag

It's poorly documented though, you will likely have to read the source to know all of its capabilities.

PortaDOOM is a good example to look at though as it uses DOSmag the most.

[Kroc]

PortaDOOM Cacowards 2018 has been released!

https://github.com/Kroc/PortaDOOM/releases/tag/v20181231

 

This is a self-contained, pre-configured launcher and WAD collection of the 2018 Cacowards, presented with an early '90s MS-DOS 'disk-zine' UI!

[Kroc]

A brand new release after 5 years!

https://github.com/Kroc/PortaDOOM/releases/tag/v20231130

 

Want to try out the Cacowards releases, but its' too much to download all that stuff and configure it all? PortaDOOM packages up Cacowards into a self-contained, portable, pre-configured, launcher. Every compatibility quirk, specific engine requirement, configuration option has been handled for you. You just choose a WAD, press a key and it plays, flawlessly, first time.

 

 

An all new launcher has been written that automatically selects the compatible engine(s) for you.

 

 

Packages for the Cacowards 2015 through 2019 are provided and one for DOOM CE -- PlayStation DOOM & DOOM 64.

 

Where's Cacowards 2020-2022? It takes a couple of weeks to make each package and I've been working for three weeks solid to get everything finalised for this release -- the remaining Cacowards will come eventually, particularly if there's good interest and feedback.

 

Please consider spreading the word on your social media via #PortaDOOM

[Trar]

I really like this. I went to the trouble of downloading all the cacoward winners myself so I could play them with my own configuration, but this is still very good. I feel like it would be simple to do the Top 100 Wads from '94 to '04 and the first ten years of the Cacowards considering how simpler things were then.

 

Is there any specific reasoning behind including Prboom+ and Doom Retro over, say, Crispy Doom or Woof?

[Kroc]

26 minutes ago, Trar said:

I feel like it would be simple to do the Top 100 Wads from '94 to '04 and the first ten years of the Cacowards considering how simpler things were then.

 

Yes, this is the plan, to eventually cover all the Cacowards. I've been playing catch up ever since I started this project :P I doubt the 2023 awards will make the job easier -- they're getting larger every year and I'm literally running out of disk space :P

 

27 minutes ago, Trar said:

Is there any specific reasoning behind including Prboom+ and Doom Retro over, say, Crispy Doom or Woof? 

 

Crispy-doom is included and is used as the default vanilla engine; DOOM Retro is only used when a WAD requires boom/MBF. Because of the long history of WADs, I try aim for stability and using the engine that the WAD was originally tested on as per its .txt file. This means I have every version of GZDoom from 1.0 to 4.11 and only the required versions get bundled in the final package. In the next release I intend to upgrade to PrBoom+ to DSDADoom and include VKDoom as a more efficient version of GZDoom where a specific version is not required (i.e. vanilla/boom/mbf WADs without g/zdoom-specific code)

[RushupDen]

Can this be working on a Mac or a Raspberry Pi maybe? 

And also include Sunder? 

 

Spoiler

Please :) 

 

[Kroc]

There's no hope for it to work outside of Windows -- it's literally clobbered together with a ton of batch files and loose executables, including every version of GZDoom from 1.0 to 4.11; it's unlikely that binaries for these even exist for Linux (let alone ARM!) and even then, the likelihood of a 10-year old executable working on modern Linux is zero to none. It's just the nature of the beast of corralling all these old WADs together and getting them to run as originally intended.

 

Sunder will appear with whichever Cacoward it appears in, and if it's not too large (a few MB) then it might just be added anyway to wherever it's referenced in later Cacowards. I wanted to keep the download size as small as possible, which is getting increasingly difficult as the years go by...

[Trar]

Sunder's in the Top 25 Missed Cacowards. That counts, right?

[Andromeda]

On 11/30/2023 at 10:16 PM, Kroc said:

Little mistake, Eviternity requires MBF (the Cacoward writeup says "Boom-compatible" but I believe the boss monster uses MBF codepointers).

[Kroc]

The .txt says it works with PrBoom+, and that there are "A few enhancements for GZDoom utilising ACS and ZScript", if that's what you mean? Still, the base game should work in PrBoom+ as that's what I completed it with at the time.

[Firebert]

16 hours ago, Kroc said:

The .txt says it works with PrBoom+, and that there are "A few enhancements for GZDoom utilising ACS and ZScript", if that's what you mean? Still, the base game should work in PrBoom+ as that's what I completed it with at the time.

I believe they're referring to the "Requires" text field. Boom and MBF are compatibility levels, PrBoom+ supports both of these. you could fix this by replacing "Requires: boom" with something like

"Requires: PrBoom+" or

"Requires: MBF"

[Insaneprophet]

I would love to check this out. It sounds like a massive undertaking deserving of respect and attention. BUT, when I go to your latest link I become confused on what I should be clicking/downloading. Do I need to go to all the asset links at the bottom? Is there a simple download button somewhere that I am missing? Is it all one package or are there more than one file I need? Would greatly appreciate some help walking me through this. 😀😀

[Kroc]

PortaDOOM comes as a set of self-contained packages -- you can download any one, or, all of them; none rely upon each other, choose which you want based on the contents described in the release notes. Download any of the assets (except "source code") under the most current release "v20231130". Each is a 7-zip compressed archive. Install 7-zip if you don't have it to unpack the archives. Each will decompress to a folder for the given name, e.g. "PortaDOOM_Cacowards2015"; don't merge them all together! Inside is a "PortaDOOM.exe" to run and that's it! I hope that helps!

[Trar]

Something I didn't think to ask before: will this also include runners-up and honorable mentions, or is it only for Cacoward winners?

[Kroc]

Edit: The latest release page on GitHub lists every WAD included

 

It includes everything that will fit / can be supported, runners up and all. All text from the awards is provided but multiplayer WADs are excluded and usually the gameplay mods in the older editions -- I have added minimal support for gameplay mods in some of the newer packages. WADs that are 500+MB are typically excluded to keep each package size reasonable.

Edited February 23, 2024 by Kroc
Just see the release page

[Gifty]

This is a really awesome and cool idea!