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FreeDoom, OpenQuartz Help Recreate Classic WADs

Posted by simoniker on from the all-free-all-the-time dept.

Toddd writes "Everybody knows that the Doom and Quake engines are opensourced. But the game data (such as graphics, sound, and maps) are not. Therefore, if you want to check out the quality of today's source ports like Doomsday for Doom or Tenebrae for Quake, you either need to download the shareware versions or buy the retail boxes. However, what is less well-known is the existence of projects like the recently updated Open Quartz, offering 'GPL-compatible content - including models, maps, sounds and textures - which are required for a fully GPL game using the GPL Quake source.' FreeDoom also does similarly for Doom." We recently covered a new release of Doomsday.

22 comments

  1. Buy the originals? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are these games even sold anymore? I'm pretty sure they should be easy enough to find on Gnutella or some other P2P network. Just download the original game and rip the WAD files out. If you're going to buy the game then WTF is the point of using FreeDoom or some other version when you have the real thing?

    1. Re:Buy the originals? by PainKilleR-CE · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Are these games even sold anymore?

      I don't see Doom around much any more, but almost every game store that still sells PC games has a copy of Quake (full version) laying around for $5 or $10. Hardly the kind of money to justify piracy, even for those that can justify pirating games in the first place.

      If you're going to buy the game then WTF is the point of using FreeDoom or some other version when you have the real thing?

      The primary purpose of most of these releases is to extend the engine in one way or another. Often they add improved graphics and modifications to the control capabilities (especially with Doom ports, which may add mouselook and jumping, for example). In many cases you'll want to replace much of the original content anyway to take advantage of the additions to the engine.

      Then, of course, there's the fact that both of these games were originally written for DOS. Although Windows (and Linux, and Mac) versions were released, they can often be harder to find, while a source port may run better anyway.

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      -PainKilleR-[CE]
    2. Re:Buy the originals? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The "point" is that the other versions have updated graphics and controls and will get along with modern hardware and operating systems.

      Plus you're actually paying for the product and giving something back to the developers. It's not as if the Doom games are expensive; I was in HMV at the weekend and they had a pack containing Ultimate Doom, Doom II and Final Doom for 10 pounds.

    3. Re:Buy the originals? by JohnFluxx · · Score: 1

      Also I've bought doom and quake several times over by now. I keep losing the cd's, or want to install it on lots of machines, or want to install it elsewhere etc.

    4. Re:Buy the originals? by The+Other+White+Boy · · Score: 2, Informative

      yeah they're around. i picked up a Doom Collection at walmart for $9 two weeks ago, its Doom, Doom2, and Final Doom with win32 frontends so you can network em and whatnot without havin to revisit the archaic days of ipxsetup.

      but yeah they all work with Doomsday so it was a pretty good buy IMO. not sure about Quake1..i see Quake2 in stores still, sometimes in bundles. but havent seen the first one in a while really.

    5. Re:Buy the originals? by AvantLegion · · Score: 1
      yeah they're around. i picked up a Doom Collection at walmart for $9 two weeks ago, its Doom, Doom2, and Final Doom with win32 frontends so you can network em and whatnot without havin to revisit the archaic days of ipxsetup.

      PUSSY! Real nerds have old 486SX/25 rigs running an IPX network, with good old BNC cable running all over the den!

      "I wouldn't leave if I were you.
      DOS is much worse!"

    6. Re:Buy the originals? by OneHungLo · · Score: 1

      I've also seen the Doom Collection at Wal-Mart for $9.96, and I've seen Quake at Software, Etc. for $10 as well as the Quake II Quad Damage pack for $20. But, as most geeks won't set foot in these stores, you can buy the games directly from iD here. The Doom Collection is $30, and Quake is $25.

      I'll admit that I did go to Wal-mart and (Gasp!) Software, Etc. for the three aforementioned titles though. I couldn't pass up a $40 price tag for five kick-ass games and three expansion packs.

  2. FreeDOOM looks horrible... by Mitleid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No offense to the artists and developers of FreeDOOM, as I'm sure they work very hard, but I saw this a few weeks back and just thought it looks terrible. Personally I think some of the artistic concepts are pretty cool and interesting, but overall they just aren't professionally executed (at least not up to par enough to compete with DOOM and DOOM II, which I've seen on sale for 20 dollars or less at some places.)

    This is a pretty consistent problem with "free" software, though. Most of the time the graphics just aren't up to snuff enough to compete with professionally developed games. While the coding seems pretty solid, it's obvious that the art needs some work. It'd be interesting to get some input from artists who use computers as a medium: why is quality art in open-source or free games so lacking? What draw isn't there for good artists to pick up a project and help out? Inspiration? Income concerns? Inquiring minds want to know!

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    Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
    1. Re:FreeDOOM looks horrible... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Way to generalize your experiences to all open source projects. There are quite a few free software projects with nice graphics. Freedoom is not one of them, of course.

    2. Re:FreeDOOM looks horrible... by Mitleid · · Score: 1

      Quite possibly flamebait, but I'll bite.

      You actually bring up a good point that I should rectify, and that is that I don't feel that all open source software has horrible graphic production, just a great deal. Maybe I was unclear, or maybe you didn't read my post closely enough, but my intent wasn't to a make negative generalziation about the graphics in open source projects.

      With that said, I'll also say that I think open source projects take a lot of work, and I give credit to EVERYONE involved. It's just certain applications (in this case games) take a bit more effort from an interface/aesthetics standpoint, and often times this is a facet in which open source projects are often lacking. But this point has been raised before...

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      Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
    3. Re:FreeDOOM looks horrible... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quite possibly flamebait

      You actually bring up a good point

      So it isn't flamebait. Can people please stop labelling comments as flamebait or troll just because they make negative points or aren't written in a nice style with lots of conditionals like 'oh, but I still like it' or 'not trying to troll'.

      You're not 'biting' anything.

  3. What about duke nukem by JohnFluxx · · Score: 1

    Duke nukem is open source, but doesn't have any free graphics. Is anyone working on this?

    1. Re:What about duke nukem by rylin · · Score: 1, Funny

      I know a bunch of people pushing content for Duke
      They're taking forever to publish something though.. ugh

      please, kill me now

    2. Re:What about duke nukem by mobby_6kl · · Score: 1

      Check this out. It's an OpenGL Build engine port for DN3D (works with Duke it out in DC, Caribbean, Nuclear winter, etc). Seems to support resolutions up to 1280x1024. There's also a high-res texture pack (abot 60 megs) availible as a torrent dl.

  4. Re:Shareware Quake + Tenebrae by ymgve · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's impossible. The shareware version doesn't have the datas for the other chapters.

  5. Try FreeDM by AlexMax2742 · · Score: 1
    FreeDM is basically FreeDOOM, but the guy who has worked on it has edited some of the content so stuff like textures tile better.

    It also omits the notoriously bad looking enemies, which you don't really need for DM anyway. Plus the download is smaller.

    There are FreeDM servers running on ZDaemon from time to time. I don't know about now, but I'll try and convince some server admins to run some. ZDaemon Capture the Flag is something that everyone should experience, and projects like FreeDM makes it loads easier.

    FreeDM: http://discharge.gginc.org/freedm/
    ZDaemon: http://www.zdaemon.org

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    I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
  6. win xp? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what about playing quake 1 or 2 on xp?
    i wouldnt mind picking up these great games at their current bargain prices if i could find a patch for them to play on xp. i've glanced at id's site before but came up with nothing.

    1. Re:win xp? by OneHungLo · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't know about other people's experiences, but I've had no trouble at all getting Quake 2 to run in XP, as long as I used the "setup.exe" installer on the CD instead of the Autorun frontend.

      Also, there's two native Windows executables on the original Quake CD. "Winquake.exe" is a win32 native software rendered Quake (which I've never tried in XP), and "GLquake.exe", which uses hardware-accelerated OpenGL, and worked just fine for me in XP.

      Of course, there's also other modifications of the GPL Quake/Quake II sources that you might try out if you have a fast-enough machine. I like JoeQuake, Tenebrae, and QuakeForge for the original Quake, and Quake2Forge for Quake II. These Quake engine ports are available for Windows and Linux. I don't know about OSX though, because I never bothered to look into it.

    2. Re:win xp? by Bloodlent · · Score: 1

      WinQuake does, indeed, run in XP. It does for me at least.