The gDoomsday project has been depreciated. The current version (1.1) is still usable and relatively stable but does have a few minor bugs that won't be fixed. I have set up a new project located here; it is currently the same code base as gDoomsday but under a new name and will have significant rewrites to fix the minor bugs of gDoomsday and add new features. Please visit the new site to download and use Enyo; this project page will soon be deleted entirely.
Description
gDoomsday is a GUI frontend for the Linux version of the DOOM source port Doomsday, written in C using the GTK+ toolkit. Its goal is to provide basic functionality for running Doomsday without having to use a commandline; therefore, it will not provide changing of advanced settings for Doomsday that can be easily changed from within the game using the Doomsday control panel. A screenshot can be found here.
The current version of gDoomsday is 1.1 ("The devil is real. I know: I built his cage.").
Its current status is depreciated. Please visit http://code.google.com/p/enyo-doom/ for its replacement.
Requirements
- You will need a working version of Doomsday. This can be obtained from the Doomsday homepage or through your distribution's package system.
- GTK+ 2.4 or higher. It may possibly work with a lesser 2.x version, but it is untested. You must, however, have a GTK+ version higher than 2.
- The Linux development toolkit (GCC, make, etc.) if you intend to compile from source. Note: you must have the -dev version of GTK+ from your distribution to compile gDoomsday from source. Most distros that provide binary packages split the runtime libraries from the development source and tools and append -dev to the development side of the package. (For example, you must install libgtk2.0-dev in Debian.)
You can download the latest version of gDoomsday from its Sourceforge project page. I attempt to provide a Debian package for releases whenever I can; however, I am not particularly proficient at creating Debian binary packages, so if something isn't quite right, or my package destroys your Debian install, I apologize.
Use any gDoomsday package at your own risk. I cannot claim any responsibility for any damage to your computer, your health, your pets, your plants, the environment, or to the fabric of reality.
gDoomsday is released under the GPL, which means you can do what you wish with it as long as you keep the source free. For the legally-binding description, please take a look at the GPL itself to see what you can and can't do.
Installing gDoomsday
To install from source:
- cd to the directory you downloaded it to
- tar zxfv gDoomsday*.tar.gz
- cd to the directory it created
- ./configure
- make
- su -c 'make install' (or sudo make install for Ubuntu-based Linux systems and any other that uses sudo for administrative access)
For Debian .deb packages:
- dpkg -i gdoomsday*.deb
Run gDoomsday with the command gdoomsday. You will need to add it to your desktop's menu manually, as there is no menu entry generated.
Configuration
To run Doomsday from the gDoomsday launcher, you will need to point gDoomsday to at least one DOOM .wad (game data) file. To do this, go to the Doomsday Launcher tab and choose which game you have the data files for in the selector at the top of the tab. Then, click the Find... button beside the Main WAD File: box at the right to pick the appropriate WAD file for that game. The correct name of the WAD will be printed in the title of the file chooser dialog; for reference, here are the default names of the WADs for each game type (note that the case may be different; e.g. doom.wad could be called DOOM.WAD):
| gDoomsday Game Type | Name of WAD File |
| DOOM | doom.wad |
| DOOM II | doom2.wad |
| TNT (Final DOOM, episode TNT: Evilution) | tnt.wad |
| Plutonia (Final DOOM, episode Plutonia) | plutonia.wad |
| Doom 1 Shareware | doom1.wad |
| Heretic | heretic.wad |
| Hexen | hexen.wad |
gDoomsday assumes that the doomsday binary is in your PATH. If it is not (i.e. simply typing doomsday from a terminal window returns that the command could not be found), you will need to point gDoomsday to your doomsday binary on the Global Options tab by using the Select... button beside the Path to doomsday binary: option, then clicking Save Options.
Extra patch WADs (pwads) that add levels, sounds, music, etc., can be enabled by gDoomsday by using the Add... button beside the Extra WADs... box in the main window. If you want these WADs to always be loaded when gDoomsday starts, click the Save Custom WAD Paths button. To return to having no extra WADs load, click Remove All; saving the WAD paths will then have no WADs load when gDoomsday begins. Each WAD set is specific to the game type you choose; also, selecting the shareware version of DOOM will disable adding pwads since it does not support them.
Under Global Options, there is a box to set Memory to allocate. By default, this is set to 128 (do not add "MB" after the number; this should be a whole number, with no spaces). This sets the maximum memory Doomsday will use, and should be set to at least 128, and at most your max system RAM. If it is set too low, Doomsday may crash with a message to adjust your maxzone setting; this is the setting that adjusts maxzone, so if you get that message, increase the amount of memory used here. Don't forget to Save Options if you adjust this setting. NOTE: This option is depreciated starting with the 1.9.0 versions of Doomsday, which means you may leave this option at its default if you are running this version or a later one (the option will be ignored by Doomsday).
Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory; just hit the Run Doomsday button at the bottom to start the game. If you have any problems running, make sure the output window is enabled (under Global Options) and view the output of Doomsday; it may provide a clue about what is not configured correctly. If you have difficulties, post (giving as much information as possible, including the output of Doomsday from the output window) on the Sourceforge Forums.
FAQ
Does gDoomsday run on other architectures besides i386 (e.g. AMD64)? BSD? Windows?
I doubt it will run on Windows, and Windows has a GUI launcher for its Doomsday version anyway. I have also gotten it to successfully compile and run on FreeBSD (version 6). Other architectures than x86 and other platforms than GNU/Linux and FreeBSD have not been tested, though I have tried to make gDoomsday as portable as possible; please post on the forum on the Sourceforge project page if you've tried to run it on a Unix-based system other than x86 Linux/FreeBSD.
Bugs
No major ones known at this time; please post on the forum on the Sourceforge project page if you've found any.
Todo
gDoomsday is now at 1.0. This means that I'm pretty happy with the overall stability and featureset of gDoomsday. It's not perfect, but it's definately mature enough to be considered 1.0
If you feel there is a feature you can't live without, feel free to post a suggestion, keeping in mind that configurations and options that are more easily set in-game need not be added to gDoomsday. Support for Doomsday's 3D models is not available in gDoomsday due to technical difficulties in implementation; it seems that it is required to change installed Doomsday core files to enable 3D models, which is beyond the scope of gDoomsday's policy of changing only user-level settings. If anyone has any insight on enabling 3d models (switching from standard sprites to 3d using a user-level option), please post on the gDoomsday Sourceforge forums.
For another Doomsday frontend for Linux, go view the Kickstart For Linux Doomsday script done by directhex over on the New Doom forums. This project is written in Perl and aims to closely resemble the Kickstart executable (the default Doomsday frontend) on Windows. The new Snowberry frontend included in the latest Doomsday 1.9.0 betas should also run in Linux, though I have not tried it myself.
gDoomsday ©2005-2007 Stephen D. Cofer. Released under the GPL. Final page update on 30 June 2010 (set "depreciated" status of project).
