Freedoom



Freedoom is a project to create a free content game based on the Doom engine, which is also compatible with Doom and Doom 2 PWADs. All material in the Freedoom project is released under a modified BSD license, so other projects may reuse any of the Freedoom material for their own purposes as they wish. In fact, this is a secondary goal of the project.

Levels for the project are Boom-compatible; some use Boom extensions. As such, a Boom-compatible source port is necessary to play the game, and Freedoom cannot be played with the original source code, or ports lacking Boom compatibility.

Three subprojects exist; the first one is to create the primary 32-level campaign compatible with Doom 2. The second is to create a four-episode campaign equivalent to The Ultimate Doom, tentatively titled Ultimate Freedoom. The last subproject is FreeDM, which uses the resources of Freedoom to create a free deathmatch game.

FreeDM holds a special exception to the above Boom-compatible rules: it is the only IWAD currently in Freedoom which targets compatibility with vanilla Doom.

Freedoom and all its subprojects are still under active development.

History
Freedoom was started in 2001 and originally maintained by Simon Howard and Jon Dowland. FreeDM was originally maintained by Jim "Rellik" McDougald before merging back into the main project in 2006.

In December 2008, after nearly a year of inactivity, Catoptromancy begun to accumulate a large amount of patches, prompting Mike Swanson to take up maintainership and converted Freedoom to Git.

Easter eggs

 * Richard M. Stallman features as the replacement for the boss brain (sprites).
 * The texture SP_FACE1 is derived from pictures of prominent members of the Doom community (texture).
 * In versions up to 0.5, the pink fish popular in some Doom community forums is used instead of Commander Keen. The sprite was removed after 0.5 due to trademark concerns.

Commercial derivatives
The BSD-type license used by Freedoom allows reuse in commercial projects; and at least two different companies combined Freedoom with the Doom Classic port to create games sold for the iPhone or iPad.