DosDoomConfigureable Gameplay FeaturesIncredible MusicRadius Trigger ScriptsDoom Definition FilesSprites-in-a-PWADFiles for DosDoomWrite to Captain MellowGet the Official Word HereDosDoom
Cheap DosDoom Tricks Mlook & Jumping Poll Keyboarder Repent! Doomcops Bots




Cheap (& other) DosDoom Tricks:
1. Deathmatch with monsters: Yes, it's a rather cheap trick, as the monsters are pretty stupid, but if you go into the options menu & set the monster repawning & item respawning both to ON, then you can play a level indefinitely like you would in a deathmatch. Health, ammo, weapons, monsters, etc. will continue to respawn as in a deathmatch.
2. Fly through the air: The jumping in DosDoom is much, much different than in Legacy. In DosDoom, you can get varying heights out of your jump, depending on whether you are using a step or ledge as a "launching pad", or just jumping in the middle of a sector. It is actually quite fun to see how high you can leap. If you really want major altitude, lower the gravity setting. Turning it all the way down will result in you hovering constantly up against the ceiling or sky.
3. Skip over lava & nukeage with umpunity: If you hold down the jump button while going over lava or nukeage, you will not take damage. This is a very cheap trick which will allow you to breeze through some levels & confound level designers. POWER TO THE PLAYERS! YEEHAW! Ahem. Of course, this is unethical. Shame on you if you do this. ;-)
4. Autoaim while mlooking: A rather strange effect you will notice while you are using mlook is that it will autoaim at targets. For example, if you are facing an imp, but aiming at the floor, your shot will fly straight at the imp rather than at the floor. Also, if there's no target around & you shoot an instant-delivery type weapon like a pistol, shotgun, or chaingun at the floor or ceiling, it will not hit the floor or ceiling, but rather the wall you are facing. Rockets & plasma/BFG shots WILL hit the floor or ceiling, though, & those close range rockets will give you a hotfoot.
5. Pretend you're playing Quake: With mlook & jumping enabled, playing cd music in the background, & running an RTS script that causes messages to pop up like in Quake, all that's left is to use notepad or edit.exe to edit a few DDF files to recreate the Quake monsters & weapons. Oh, whoops, you guys are still using 0.64...
TOP


Sprites-in-a-Pwad:

    DosDoom has support for running pwads that contain custom sprites and textures without using DeuSF. Using the following parameters in the command line will enable certain certain sprite pwads, unless the pwads are too buggy. Deusf is much more tolerant of the slop factor.
 
Players: 
The following parameters should be used in conjunction with the -file parameter to run the custom pwad (e.g. dosdoom -file your.wad -gfixspr). 

-gfixspr 
This parameter enables sprites in a pwad. 

-gignrot 
Try this parameter if the -gfixspr parameter gives you an error message complaining of a sprite having more than one lump mapped to it, or complaining of a sprite's rotations. It may crash DosDoom if the pwad is too buggy, but it's worth a try. 

-gfixflt 
Enables flats (i.e. ceilings & floors). 

-gfixpat 
Optimizes wall texture patches. 

-gfixsfp 
Enables sprites, flats, & wall patches all together. 

-gfixall 
This is like combining -gfixsfp & -gignrot. 

If none of these parameters work, then the pwad is just too buggy. You will have to run the patch the old fashioned way via DeuSF. 

NOTE: These parameters will soon be outdated in the next release, except for -gignrot . 
Map Makers: 
When you add custom textures to your wad, you should enclose the new graphics with 2 lumps called S_START & S_END: 

S_START 
TROOA1 
TROOA2 
TROOA3 
 . 
 . 
 . 
 S_END 

Add Flats between F_START & F_END like sprites.  Flats outside these markers will still work, but it is better between F_START + F_END (you'll find out why when DDF is finished).

Textures should go between P_START + P_END, but it is not important (just tidy). 

To do this, I recommend Wintex: 

1. Choose the pwad, and press Edit PWAD 
2. Press the display all button. 
3. Find the first sprite. 
4. From the menu choose Guru Only/New Entry. 
5. Type in the box "S_START" and press Okay 
6. Find the last sprite. 
7. Choose Guru Only/New Entry 
8. Type in the box "S_END" and press Okay 
9. WinTex will insert these entries before the selected entry.  This means the last 
  sprite will be outside the S_START/S_END lumps.  Use Edit/Cut and Edit/Paste 
  to paste it back into the right place. 

If you go File/Quit then Edit PWAD again, and click on sprites, the sprite entries
should appear.

 

TOP


 


Gameplay The Gameplay Options menu allows you configure a number of interesting features.
  Gravity: Have you ever wanted to jump just a little bit (or a whole lot) higher in DosDoom? Well, just adjust this gravity slider control, & you can do just that.
   Blood: This slider controls how long the blood stays on the ground.
    Enemy Respawn: Can be set to "teleport", "resurrect" or "none".
    Enemy Infighting: "high", "low", or "none". Besides causing them to fight each other, it also makes the monsters wander around the levels more, which makes the maps a little less predictable if you're used to the monsters' usual locations. They tend to congregate together in some areas of the map after they wander around for a while, which makes for some interesting crowd control situations.
    Monster Targeting/Zombie Targeting: "perfect" or "imperfect". Setting the zombie targeting to perfect turns these rifle- & shotgun-wielding busters into serious sniper threats.
    Item Respawn: "on" or "off".
  Teleport Missiles: "on" or "off".
  Teleport Delay: "normal", "fast", & "quickest".
  Spectre Ability/Lost Soul Ability: "none", "part visibility" (like the spectres in original Doom), "translucency", & "stealth" (completely invisible until they attack).

TOP


Sound

The dosdoom.cfg File: This file gives you full control of DosDoom's sound card features, & a few other things. This one has lots of comments explaining all the parameters. Unzip it into your DosDoom directory, taking care not to overwrite your existing dosdoom.cfg, though you may want to overwrite your old one with this one. Check it out first.

Superior Music: DosDoom's music code is without peer among the current Doom ports. I want to show you how easy it is to enjoy the very best Doom music around. You can also  get the  MP2/3 Doom music at  http://www.doomworld.com/music/index.shtml& use it in DosDoom!
  DosDoom supports DIGMIDI. This means that DosDoom can play music in a software wavetable synthesizer . Even on a crummy old FM synthesized soundcard! However, you do need to get an additional file that contains the samples. After you download it, just unzip it into your DosDoom directory & edit your dosdoom.cfg to add the "patches patches.dat" parameter. It's also a good idea to add a line that says "cache_all_patches 1" to your dosdoom.cfg if you have 16 meg ram or better. Then fire up DosDoom, & you will be amazed at how great the music sounds! If you want to, you can even make your own unique patch file using any soundfont or GUS files you want. That takes a little hacking, though. First, you'll need to unzip this into a directory. Then, put whatever soundfont you want (let's call it your.sf2) into that directory. Then, run: pat2dat -8 -c your.sf2 your.dat & it will output a file called your.dat that you should move to your dosdoom directory. Then you need to edit the "patches patches.dat" line in your dosdoom.cfg so that it says "patches your.dat". If you choose GUS files, well, you'll have to dig around in the docs a little bit to find out what to do. Stick with the Soundfont, as it's much easier.
  DosDoom plays MP3 (& MP2) files. MP3 files are high quality compressed digital audio files that stream from the disk. Playing them is very CPU-intensive, though, & the performance of DosDoom does take a hit. But if you want to hear some jaw-dropping music, then put your favorite mp3's or mp2's (you can get some great ones here ) in your dosdoom directory. Then unzip this file into your dosdoom directory & run playlist.exe to select a level & add some mp3 music to it. Playlist.exe will ask what iwad you're using (e.g. Doom.wad, doom2,wad, etc.), ask for the mp3 files, & then will kick out a wad called output.wad, which you then play like any other pwad (e.g. dosdoom -doom2 -file output.wad). You can write a playlist for all the levels, though I will explain that later....
  DosDoom plays CD audio. Just like in Quake, you can play your favorite cd as you play DosDoom. Unlike Quake, you can also play cd and the normal music at the same time. This would be for when you are using an atmospheric track like the Quake cd or something like that. You can either set this up in the dosdoom.cfg file or run it from the command line using either -cdaudio or -cdatmosphere. You can use Bobby Prince's Doom Music CD   (which has been "sonically enhanced") as background music!
  DosDoom plays any midi you want. All you have to do is rename the midi to match the map you want to hear it in & then use the -file parameter. For a Doom 1 map, you would name the midi file D_E1M1.mid, for a Doom 2 map, you would name it D_MAP01.mid. Then you run DosDoom with the -file parameter like this: "dosdoom -doom -file D_E1M1.mid", & so on.

TOP


Scripting
    If you dig around in the DosDoom docs, you will find one called radius.htm. This little document describes another one of DosDoom's exciting features: radius trigger scripting. With a mere text editor, you can make incredible changes to any map. Radius.htm has a few examples that will work with Doom 1 & 2, respectively. Here are the scripts so you can try them out:
  Doom1.scr just jumps you back & forth between  E1M1 & E1M4, but it sparks the imagination as to what kinds of things can be done in designing a megawad, like a start map as in Quake. Put Doom1.scr in your DosDoom dir & run "dosdoom -doom -script doom1.scr". When you start up in E1M1, just walk straight forward onto the blue floor in the middle of the room, & you will jump to E1M4. When you get to E1M4, open the secret door on the left in the starting hallway & go inside--you will jump back to E1M1.
  Doom2.scr has alot of interesting things happening, so I won't go into much detail. If you read the script, you can figure a lot of it out. Try going for the chainsaw in map1 heheheh. Just wander around the level & see the different effects.
    NOTE: Dosdoom doesn't care what the extension is on your script files. I just named them *.scr because "scr" are the first 3 letters in "script". However, Win95 uses scr for screensaver files, so it will not let you edit them from Explorer by double-clicking them. Also, Dave Leatherdale's DosDoom setup/launcher program will expect scripts to have an "sfg" extension, so for compliance's sake you probably should name them with an "sfg" at the end.
Contest: Send in your scripts, & we will see who can make the most interesting changes or enhancements to a map. Entries will be featured & reviewed here.
Dominushas sent in a script for E1M1 that really enhances the level, adding some great effects as well as some messages that make the level more interactive. Great work!


DDF: Doom Definition Files
    Friends, Doomers, fellow gamers, I have come to bury dehacked & to praise DDF! (sorry, Bill) Dehacked is still viable for the other ports, but DosDoom 0.65 has boldly left it behind & gone on to DDF, which absolutely smokes dehacked.

Fanatic has compiled a very helpful collection of DDF information at his Asylum which is very much worth checking out. He does tech support work, & it really shows!


ANIMS.DDF
ATTACKS.DDF
CREATURE.DDF
ITEMS.DDF
LEVELS.DDF
LINES.DDF
MISSION.DDF
SCENERY.DDF
SECTORS.DDF
SOUNDS.DDF
SWITCH.DDF
WEAPONS.DDF

TOP


Files