Play Doom, Heretic and Hexen with the Doomsday engine
A reboot to the original Doom, it used new graphics technology. Doom 3 was hyped to provide as large a leap in realism and interactivity as the original game and helped renew interest in the franchise. Doom 3 had its own expansion pack released in 2005, titled Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil. The average web page size of today is a heavy 2.3 megabytes, which makes it slightly heavier than the original Doom, a game known for its impressive lineup of exciting features that had gaming fans in raptures when it hit them more than two decades ago in 1993. Now, while 2.3 MB may not seem like a lot – especially even the nominal web user.
To play DOS games Doom, Doom II, Heretic or Hexen on a modern PC with Windows 10, Windows 8 and Windows 7, you can use DOSBox. But there is a better solution, to play these old 3D games with a much higher resolution (for example 1920x1080).
Latest version of Doomsday Engine
The tutorial below is for Doomsday up until version 1.15. In the meantime, the Doomsday Engine has matured considerably. The user interface of the latest version of Doomsday Engine as well as the manual online have been greatly improved. We at DOSGamers.com do not find it necessary to rewrite the manual, so go take a look at the official Doomsday Engine website!
Doomsday Engine 1.15
- Modern day graphics card
- Doomsday Engine 1.15.x (installation instructions below)
- Original .WAD file from (at least one of) the following games:
- Doom Shareware (doom1.wad)
- Doom (doom.wad)
- Ultimate Doom (doom.wad)
- Final Doom: Plutonia Experiment (plutonia.wad)
- Final Doom: TNT Evilution (tnt.wad)
- Doom II (doom2.wad)
- Heretic Shareware (heretic1.wad)
- Heretic (heretic.wad)
- Heretic: Shadow o/t Serpent Riders (heretic.wad)
- Hexen 4-Level Demo (hexen.wad)
- Hexen (hexen.wad)
- Hexen Deathkings of the Dark Citadel (hexen.wad + hexdd.wad)
- You can get the WAD file by installing the original game and copy the WAD file from the installation folder, or download one of the shareware WADs from zdoom.org.
- Want the original Ultimate Doom WADs? Download them from GOG.com!
- Looking for the original Doom II and Final Doom WADs? Download them from GOG.com!
- Need Heretic and Hexen WADs? Download them from Gog.com.
Optional latest addons for Doomsday 1.15.x and newer
- Doom - 3D characters + objects (download)
- Doom - High resolution textures (download)
- Heretic - 3D characters + objects and high resolution textures (download)
- Hexen - High resolution textures (download)
- Hexen - High resolution textures + 3D characters and objects (download) - if your weapons are not visible, try changing the field of depth in the Renderer menu to 70
- Hexen - 3D characters + objects (download) - not stable with V1.9.7 to V1.9.9. Please note that as of V1.9.10 most objects are disabled. To enjoy all 3D objects from this download, use Doomsday V1.9.6.
Installation and configuration of Doomsday
To get the Doomsday engine working with your favorite game, follow these steps:
- Download Doomsday Engine.
- Install the Doomsday Engine. In this example the program is in F:GamesDoomsday.
- Put your WAD files in the correct data folder. For example:
- doom1.wad in the F:GamesDoomsdaydatajdoom folder
- heretic1.wad in the F:GamesDoomsdaydatajheretic folder
- hexen.wad in the F:GamesDoomsdaydatajhexen folder
- Please note that these are shareware WADs
- In this image the WADs from Doom shareware (DOOM1.WAD), Ultimate Doom (DOOM.WAD), Final Doom (tnt.wad and plutonia.wad) and Doom II (DOOM2.WAD) are in the jdoom folder:
- Put all optional addons in the Doomsdaysnowberryaddons folder. Some addons come as resource packs; a folder with a lot of seperate files. Just put that folder into the addons folder (like the Doom resource pack jdrp.box):
- Start Doomsday and follow the instructions of the setup wizard. You can enter the setup wizard later by clicking on Tools - Show Setup Wizard.
- When you have finished the setup wizard, click on the Shared Settings menu and click on the Settings tab. Here you can configure the settings that will be used by all games, unless you change those settings for a specific game.
- Take a look at display settings by clicking the Display button
- You can select whether you want to start the game in either windowed mode or fullscreen mode. By default, Doomsday starts in fullscreen mode
- Configure addons for your games by clicking on one of the games and then click on the addons tab. In this example we will configure addons for Doom:
- Check optional addons to use (jd*.pk3 files are for Doom). Be sure to get these here! In this example we use the 'jDoom Resource Pack', the 'Doom hi-res Texture Pack', the 'HQ DOOM SFX' and the 'User interface' addons for Doom:
- Next, click on the Settings tab again. Set the game data file if you haven't done that during the setup wizard. In this example the DOOM.wad file is used:
- Start the game by pressing the Play button at the lower right corner
Tutorial on Youtube
Still want to know how to get the Doomsday Engine working? Watch this, like and subscribe! Thanks!
Add custom WADs to Doomsday
Since Doom is released, tons of levels have been created by the community, as well as official expansion packs like Master Levels for Doom II and No Rest For The Living. You can add these WADs to Doomsday. Here's how.
Tweak in-game video settings
- When the game has started with Doomsday, enable the Doomsday taskbar by pressing Shift+Esc or by clicking Show taskbar in the options menu. Please note that the taskbar is available as of version 1.12
- Click on the Settings icon, then the Video menu item, then check the selected resolution
- Also make sure Antialias and VSync are enabled for the best experience:
- Please note that the fullscreen option in the screenshot above is disabled for the purpose of this tutorial
- As of version 1.14 there's a guided tutorial available to explore all settings and options
- To enable the tutorial, press Shift+esc to enter the taskbar, then press the Doomsday logo to enter the application menu and select Show tutorial:
- Press escape several times to exit the taskbar and start a new game!
Field of view
Doomsday allows you to change the field of view (FOV) in your game, as if you look through a huge wide angle lens. Default FOV of Doomsday is 95. As a result, you can't see your weapons anymore in Hexen. Also setting a very high FOV (like 160) in Doom results in disappearing weapons. To adjust FOV:
- Press Shift+ESC to enter the taskbar
- Click on the settings icon
- Click on Renderer
- Adjust Field of view:
Blurry graphics
Some of us don't like blurry graphics. We need those pixels to feel good about a retro game. We need clear, crisp, pixelized graphics. By default, Doomsday Engine renders the graphics with OpenGL. Which makes them look blurry. If you don't want that, this is what you do:
- Press Shift+ESC to enter the taskbar
- Click on the settings icon
- Click on Renderer
- Choose Vanilla (built in) at the appearance option
- You'll end up like this:
Please note that with the Vanilla renderer, all lighting effects and 3D models are disabled...! It's as retro as you can get! If you want to keep all the lighting effects and 3D models, you'll have to dive deep in the renderer settings.
- Set the appearance mode back to custom
- Click on the gear icon next to the appearance mode, as indicated above and choose edit
- Scroll down to Materials and click on it to open the options
- Disable all bilinear filtering options: sprites, world surfaces and user interface
- You'll end up with this:
Furthermore, you might want to change the aspect ratio of your weapon, the GUI and other things, so they look just like the original (as of version 15):
- Open the taskbar by pressing shift+esc
- Click on the gear icon
- Click on video
- Set all aspect ratios to original 1:1
Hexen - Deathkings of the Dark Citadel
If you want to play Hexen Deathkings of the Dark Citadel:
- You have Hexen running with the Doomsday engine with the instructions above
- Put HEXDD.WAD file in the jHexen folder
- Check HEXDD.WAD in the addons section at the Hexen settings
Original Doom Game Music
Multiplayer
Original Doom Game Free
As of version 1.10 of Doomsday, it is very easy to start a multiplayer game for one of the games that the Doomsday Engine supports (for example Doom II or Heretic).
Original Doom Game Controls
Click here for a compact guide. We'll expand the guide in time, we'll keep you posted through Twitter.