DOOM

DOOM is easily (in my opinion), one of the most iconic games ever made. It is enjoyable to play even to this day. The best part of DOOM is the fact that it has been made open source under a GPL license. From this there have been many source ports of the original DOOM code. I particularly like gzdoom as it adds graphics rending features, but there are quite a few that all have their own unique additions. Id software was ahead of their time, in more ways that one. One of the amazements are at the WAD files. I am still new to the ports of DOOM, but everytime I play them, the fun and playability never cease.

In this blog I am going to show you how to setup your linux environment to play an entirely free version of DOOM called freedoom. The OS I am using is ubuntu 18.04, but should be similar if not the same across multiple distributions. There are only a few things needed to play DOOM on your local machine; install 9 OS dependencies, clone a source port (gzdoom in my case), and a DOOM WAD file. You can get shareware of non-official DOOM games like brutal DOOM or freedoom1/2. For this blog we are going to use the freedoom1.wad file

The OS dependencies that need to be installed are as follows.

• build-essential
• cmake
• git
• libsdl2-2.0-0
• libsdl2-dev
• libsdl2-mixer-2.0-0
• libsdl2-mixer-dev
• libsdl2-net-2.0-0
• libsdl2-net-dev

The source port we are going to use is gzdoom, a source port fork of another source port called zdoom.

To download the source port execute the following command in a bash terminal.

git clone https://github.com/coelckers/gzdoom

cd into the gzdoom directory and execute mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make.

This should create a build directory, then execute cmake and make. cd into build, and there should be a binary (file with no file extension) called gzdoom.

Now to get the freedoom1.wad, which can be downloaded for free at the freedoom website

To run type ./gzdoom, which will bring up a menu. Most likely it will show Cannot find a game IWAD. Execute cp <path to your freedoom1.wad> ~/.config/gzdoom. Run ./gzdoom again and select freedoom1: Freedoom: Phase 1.

That’s it. dOOOOOOOM on!