Jules451

Thank you for your work on this port. Ever since I've first tried it, it's become my go-to port for playing the vanilla Doom WADs along with any other non-GZDoom WAD. Having already tried out a decent amount of ports, I have to say that this is easily my favorite "Vanilla+" port of them all. I especially like the wide amount of customizations available in the options menu, the great implementation of a minimal HUD (kudos for the idea of making a minimal HUD by simply removing the background of the original one!) and Heretic/Hexen support, the latter being the reason why I had been looking for an alternative source port to begin with. If there's some minor advice I could give, I wouldn't mind seeing a way to choose a PWAD from some sort of in-game menu, rather than having to load it from the command-line. Not that I have any problems with the latter, but it would make for a nice addition if it's not too troublesome to implement. Hope you continue to support this!

I for one will kind of miss his Petty Thief series, though. I was a bit skeptical how well his style would mesh with the difference approach required by a game like Thief, but I feel like he pulled it off pretty well. I definitely wouldn't mind seeing him tackle Deus Ex or System Shock 2 sometime in the future. Still, he definitely does old FPS commentaries the best, and I'm especially glad that he's delving into more community work for classic FPSs. I certainly enjoy these more than his commentaries about less known and often somewhat mediocre FPSs from that decade since my knowledge about these is far more limited.

Yeah, what I was trying to say is that until the mid nineties Id Software was still mostly just licensing its engines to companies that it was either in close partnership with (Raven Software) or other companies it was in contact with through its publishers. It wasn't until Quake II that a real deluge of games running on the latest iD Tech engines started pouring in. But still, it seems like I was missing a fair amount of developers who had already licensed some of their engines in the first half of the nineties already. I had no idea that the Keen 4 engine was ever licensed, for instance. Thanks for pointing that out.

This, basically. I've played quite a lot of Goldsrc and early Source games and I have to agree that the "feeling" is very similar. This is especially evident in older builds of the Source engine, such as in the Half-Life 2 leaked beta. Besides, even a quick perusal at the publicly available code for Goldsrc and Source shows a lot of similarities between the engines. Heck, I even remember an article somewhere mentioning how there's still some leftover code from Quake in the Source 2 engine...ah, here it is. As for what OP asked...on the one hand, DMC was originally distributed as a free mod, so there probably wasn't any need for any special permission to do that. Besides, it's not like DMC reuses any asset from the original Quake, as it's all completely new work. On the other, however, the fact that it is being sold as a game of its own on Steam nowadays when it is so clearly based on Quake is a little bit weird. They must definitely have received some kind of permission for that. Anyway, there's admittedly little information online as to how the license was obtained and what the terms were. However, I remember a section in Kushner's Masters of Doom dedicated to describing the circumstances in which the Quake engine was originally licensed to Valve. It's especially interesting to read about since back then iD software had not yet begun to officially license its engines to third-party developers, so Valve could only get a license thanks to someone's recommendation (I don't recall who it was exactly at the moment).

That's nice! Here are the files, then. I've included both the 32-bit and 64-bit game libraries for all three official games, together with both 32- and 64-bit versions of the binaries and libraries for Xash3D itself if you need them. It's not the latest version, but I have compiled them about a month ago so they shouldn't be too old, either. As for the Blue Shift patched maps, I don't know if I can upload them here. In any case, the tool that I've linked in my previous post should handle it easily enough if you have Wine.

Out of curiosity, does Blue Shift start at all when you click on New Game? In my experience it should, the only problem is that you can't load maps from the console, load a save or change maps. Anyway, the tool you should use (and the one I've used myself) is this one. The old Blue Shift: Unlocked patch should also handle the conversion, though I'm not sure it it still works with the modern Steam version. If you'd like I can share the converted maps myself. Since we've already been talking about Xash3D, you might want to check out the rebuilt game DLLs from this repository, made by the same developers who work on Xash3D FWGS. If you're interested and have any experience compiling programs it shouldn't be too hard to follow the instructions to compile your own DLLs. You don't really need them, but I thought this might be worth mentioning since they're less buggy than the ones Valve provides. I'd share them myself, but I only have the Linux versions...

I've finally finished playing the first two episodes of Back to Saturn X. Going through them truly felt like an achievement. I had started them during the winter break, thinking I'd be able to finish them in a couple of weeks. Instead, it took me almost three months (with breaks in-between, of course)! My experience with WADs so far has been mostly limited to vanilla mappacks so BTSX felt like a really refreshing change. Just for fun, I have played a number of levels from both episodes using the original executable on DOS and I'm absolutely amazed how such detailed maps could be made to work with the vanilla game. The technical proficiency of many Doom modders never ceases to amaze me. My only complaints have to do with the fact that each episode has you go through almost thirty levels using mostly the same artstyle, which, while very well done, can get sort of tiring after a while. BTSX Episode 2 also features some levels with a lot of stone textures which made everything look a bit too gray at times. Again, though, these are just minor complaints. My real problem is that BTSX is just too damn hard. I make it a point to always play Doom on UV, since it's the difficulty level that feels the most right to me, but some (more like many) of the levels in BTSX, especially in the second episode, felt absolutely impossible on UV, both due to an almost comically high amount of high-tier enemies (I'm thinking about revenants and arch-viles in particular) and a lack of ammunition. Of course, it's worth mentioning that I made life harder for myself by pistol-starting each level, so I definitely went out of my way to make some of the levels really hard to play. Still, I've had a great time, and I can at last join other people in eagerly waiting for the third episode to arrive.

Atmosphere would probably play a big part in it. Doom was known to be a somewhat scary game back then, but it clearly isn't today. It might have heaps of demonic imagery but it's just way too colorful, with a cheerful MIDI soundtrack and silly-looking demons to be really scary. Doom 4 also kind of established the idea in the official lore that the actual threat aren't the demons, but rather the Doomguy himself with respect to them. He's the hunter, and they are the prey. Quake on the other hand really tried to emphasize its tense, horror(ish) atmosphere, with its dark visuals, otherwordly locations, atmospheric soundtrack, Lovecraftian monster design, and so forth. Unlike in Doom, you do kind of feel like you're the one being hunted, trapped in these strange dimensions with everything out to get you. Heck, Quake's monsters themselves are some of the most aggressive I know of in an FPS game. Fiends want to kill you that badly. All of this is something that still holds up really well in my eyes, along with the streamlined, fast and balanced gameplay (well, aside from the Spawns) inherited from Doom. Making a sequel with an emphasis on these elements would really have the potential to make a game with its own distinct personality, IMO.

Hm, I don't have Steam around to test this out but since all Steam does is simply launching hl.exe from the game folder, you might try installing the Xash3D files in the same folder and renaming the executable to hl.exe, moving the older one somewhere else. Again though, I can't really try this out myself. I used to be pretty disappointed at the fact that Valve haven't been updating the original Half-Life very well, but then I saw how other companies treat their older games (usually just shutting down their servers, but who's ever going to forget how Epic Games outright removed the entire Unreal series from every major game store?) and I'm grateful that there is at least a somewhat modern version with working servers for every Valve game. Yeah, I suppose a Nightdive remaster wouldn't be too bad, though like you said Valve is the kind of company that prefers to handle everything on their own. Besides, I'd honestly prefer the community to work on preserving and updating the game. There are already some interesting mods with the aim of modernizing the original game, and the icing on the cake would be a source code release, but sadly there's little reason to hope for that at the moment...

Xash3D is actually a pretty fine choice. I have played almost every possible version of Half-Life out there (original retail version, the Steam version over the years and Xash3D FWGS recently) and, in my experience, Xash3D provides the smoothest experience nowadays. Xash3D has been explicitly built for 100% vanilla Half-Life support so you'll likely not even notice the difference while playing standard Half-Life. The vast majority of mods also work without any modification, and you'll get none of the technical jank that is present in the official version, so no soundtrack cutting off, no menu music still looping once a map has been loaded, no dynamic lighting framerate drops, and so on. The only "problem", but this really affects only a handful of mods (the only ones having this problem that I'm aware of are Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat), is the lack of a VGUI2 implementation (it's the system that draws the interactive in-game menus in some mods), which means that Xash3D simply cannot start those mods. You can always revert back to the official version if you feel like playing CS. So yeah, definitely go for it. It's pretty sad that Xash3D gets relatively little attention and that other source ports don't exist at all, since it really stifles the community's modding potential, but that's just how things are... The only problem I know of is that the Blue Shift maps in the Steam version don't use the standard BSP map format that every other Half-Life mod uses, since they were quickly ported from what was supposed to be the Dreamcast version of Half-Life. This isn't too noticeable an issue with the Steam version, but with Xash3D it means you can't load any map from the console (although you should still be able to start a new game). There's an easy way to patch them though, if need be.

I've been following this project for some time, it's fantastic to finally have a way to preserve Dark Forces outside of DOSBox. It's one of the most unique shooters of that era and it really deserves this treatment. I can't wait for Outlaws support to be a thing, though. I've had my eyes on that game for quite some time and have held back from playing the original version so as to play it on a source port. That being said, I haven't tried this port out myself yet. Seeing that Linux support is one of the next things to be implemented, I'll wait some more time for that. Also glad to hear Linux/Mac support will be one of the next things to be implemented. I'll probably wait for that before trying out this port myself.

You definitely have a point there. There was a minimum amount of technical savviness that everyone was required to have back then to use a computer, which certainly had a positive effect on the userbase. Smartphones are the biggest problem, though. There's practically no barrier of entry in using them, and they're cheap and easy to carry, making them absolutely ubiquitous and a constant presence in everyday life. Computers require you to be at home or at the office or some other such place and, you know, actually sit down at a desk to use it. It's a more laborious process and that's by no means a bad thing. As for 2000s-era Internet...I have only begun using the Internet in the late 2000s, so I don't have any first-hand experience. However, I have used the Web Archive to explore old websites from that era a lot. I'm kind of embarrassed to say I've spent way too much time exploring old gaming websites, Gamespy with its Planet Network in particular - I just love browsing the pages of those old gaming communities. I suppose I just have some sort of indirect nostalgia for it all, even if I haven't lived through it. My first computer had been for years a W98 PC with no connection on which I played old games from the late '90s, which kind of explains it.

You guys sure are doing a good job, I've never heard of any of those titles before. I don't know a lot of obscure games, to be honest! Retro gaming pretty much sums up almost my entire gaming tastes, but I usually tend to play historically significant releases, rather than little known games. I think Gunman Chronicles might fit the bill, though, even if you'd probably be aware of it if you've got some experience with Half-Life mods. Here's the website: http://gunmanchronicles.com/ (look at that early 2000s design!). It's IMO among the last old-school shooters from the post Half-Life era with a really unique feeling to it. I've never seen any other game with such a strange combination of Western and Sci-fi visuals. The Half-Life engine jankiness only adds to the flavor. It also has this novel feature of every weapon having multiple customizable firing modes, something I've never seen in any other straight FPS, which can often be surprisingly effective if you have the patience for it.

Reading the comments here reminds me of how, years after having first played Doom, I've never actually tried playing the original DOS version. I should try that out once, just for curiosity's sake... I had first started out with GZDoom like most people nowadays, then moved to Chocolate Doom once I had found out that GZDoom didn't offer the real vanilla experience. It wasn't long before I settled on Crispy Doom as my go-to purist port though. Love the additional QoL features. I'm going to mention International Doom while I'm still at it. Although I still slightly prefer Crispy Doom, in the case of Heretic and Hexen there doesn't seem to be an established vanilla+ port (the Chocolate versions are just too basic for my tastes), and International Doom is one of those that comes the closest in offering that experience. Plus, being able to bind Hexen inventory items to a key is just so handy!