User talk:Chungy/How to download and run Doom

Draft
This is, of course, a draft that I intend will replace the How to download and run Doom article. The many issues of the current article are already outlined on its talk page. With that in mind, I have tried to keep a few rules to myself:


 * Technical terms like IWAD and source port are expressly forbidden. Even "shareware" is unusual these days and should be avoided.
 * The millions of possible ways to obtain Doom don't belong, especially not in an article with download in the title. On PC, Steam is presently the only legal download channel for Doom, which simplifies things a great deal here. Also, many ports automatically detect and load IWADs installed via the Steam releases. For Windows users, this is a great help.
 * The millions of operating systems and permutations thereof that Doom can run on is also right out of the question. There are only three big ones: Windows, Mac, and Linux. Focus on them.
 * Source ports are a very opinionated and difficult subject. Like the How to play Doom on modern Windows systems article, I have chosen Chocolate Doom as the simple solution for getting up and running. While (purposefully) lacking in features, it presents the game well in its original format. There are no overcomplicated menus or demo compatibility issues.
 * The Doom franchise encompasses both the classic games and Doom 3, treat them in equal measure.

Doom 3 is actually providing an interesting challenge at the moment. I would actually like to recommend Doom 3: BFG Edition to newcomers, as it's a rather complete release with all the expansion packs and even Ultimate Doom and Doom II included (compatibility issues of those IWADs is left out of this page again: most source ports, including Chocolate Doom, have workarounds for it). RBDOOM-3-BFG is pretty much the way to run it on Mac and Linux, although major distributions do not package it and the only official binary is for Windows (not even Mac!). We may need to just list the original Doom 3 release as well, and recommend it for Mac and Linux users; it has a binaries available on both the platforms that make running it rather easy.

Comments, questions, complaints are all welcome. --Chungy (talk) 06:34, 14 June 2015 (CDT)