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.

Freedoom's original goal was to create a single Doom II compatible IWAD. The goals of the project have since evolved; Freedoom now ships three separate IWADs, named: 'Freedoom: Phase 1' (Doom 1 compatible), 'Freedoom: Phase 2' (Doom 2 compatible) and 'FreeDM' (Doom 2 compatible, with deathmatch levels).

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. FreeDM is an exception: its levels target 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 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).

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.