Difference between revisions of "Doom95"

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(Doom95 was able to play more sound with more channels.)
(Differences between vanilla Doom and Doom95)
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* The sound effects are played back at a slightly lower pitch than in regular Doom played under DOS. Also, more channels played at the same time.
 
* The sound effects are played back at a slightly lower pitch than in regular Doom played under DOS. Also, more channels played at the same time.
 +
* Fireballs appear slightly translucent.
  
 
* The port handles its configuration differently from the DOS version, which in turn disables the [[Configuration file#Additional settings|always run trick]].
 
* The port handles its configuration differently from the DOS version, which in turn disables the [[Configuration file#Additional settings|always run trick]].
 +
* Fireballs from projectile-throwing monsters fly faster on the "[[Nightmare!]] " difficulty.  [[Demon]]s and [[spectre]]s run and attack much faster on this difficulty as well.
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* Spectres do not have the cascading effect and instead appear as dampened, see-through demons.
  
 
==Bugs==
 
==Bugs==

Revision as of 10:18, 11 January 2011

Doom95 is a port of Doom to Win9x operating systems included in some releases of the Doom games. This port was developed by Microsoft to serve as a flagship for their DirectX technology, and was released on August 20, 1996. It supports four screen resolutions; 320x200, 320x240, 640x400 and 640x480, which can all be used either in a windowed or a fullscreen mode. The port also has a launcher to configure options for external PWADs, player controls and multiplayer settings. It has a slightly higher visplane limit than the original Doom, allowing more complicated maps. Doom95 works with Doom, Ultimate Doom, Doom II and Final Doom. It also has cheat codes that are exclusive to it, such as the ability to kill all of the monsters in a level. Several additional command line parameters were also implemented into it.

History

In late 1995, Doom was estimated to be installed on more computers worldwide than Microsoft's new operating system Windows 95, despite million-dollar advertising campaigns for the latter. The game's popularity prompted Bill Gates to briefly consider buying id Software, and led Microsoft to develop a Windows 95 port of Doom to promote the operating system as a gaming platform. One related presentation to promote Windows 95 had Bill Gates digitally superimposed into the game.

The team at Microsoft who ported Doom to Windows was started by Gabe Newell [1], who later co-founded Valve Software and developed Half-Life, and headed by Alex St. John, the creator of the DirectX specification.

Differences between vanilla Doom and Doom95

  • Unlike the later DOS versions of the Doom games, Doom95 cannot play back true MIDIs, only real MUS files.
  • Some of Doom95's quit messages differ slightly from vanilla Doom, mostly by removing references to DOS.
  • The sound effects are played back at a slightly lower pitch than in regular Doom played under DOS. Also, more channels played at the same time.
  • Fireballs appear slightly translucent.
  • The port handles its configuration differently from the DOS version, which in turn disables the always run trick.
  • Fireballs from projectile-throwing monsters fly faster on the "Nightmare! " difficulty. Demons and spectres run and attack much faster on this difficulty as well.
  • Spectres do not have the cascading effect and instead appear as dampened, see-through demons.

Bugs

  • A bug in Doom95 prevents demo recording when starting the game via the Doom95 launcher. As soon as the game is launched (with instructions to record a demo), Doom95 quits and returns to the desktop with an error: "I_Error says: demo <demoname> recorded". An unofficial patch has been released that fixes this bug (by altering the file DOOMLNCH.DLL).
  • In resolutions above 320x240, the automap function for marking the current position with a number is extremely buggy. In addition to severe rendering bugs, the actual markers are not displayed at all or are displayed in the wrong positions. Adding the markers can even crash the game, though this is rare. The automap can be restored from the buggy state by moving the view away from the marker or by clearing all marks.
  • The screen is slightly stretched, horizontally. As a result, enemies look shorter, rocket explosions are oval instead of round, etc.
  • Less of the player's weapon is shown on screen when compared to the MS-DOS version.

Compatibility issues

  • By default the game does not launch on Windows Vista or 7 at all due to the lack of the file DPLAY.DLL. The issue can be fixed using this workaround.
  • Mice do not work with Doom95 under Windows 2000 and later Windows versions. This is because these operating systems do not support VXD files, and Doom95 uses the file DMOUSE.VXD to communicate with the mouse. An unofficial patch for this issue was released in 2010.
  • Most of Doom95's video modes do not work with modern video cards and Windows versions.
  • Due to a bug in its handling of certain types of graphics cards and DirectX versions, Doom95 does not render the partial invisibility effect in its original form. Instead of seeing directly through the sprite, with some cards the user sees a wall texture or other background "refracted" through the creature's body at a slight angle, as though looking at an object through a glass of water. This makes invisible enemies somewhat easier to see, especially in dark rooms; on the other hand, tracking the movement of non-invisible creatures behind them can be more challenging, especially when trying to aim one's weapon through a pile of invisible corpses (which can easily occur, for example, in E1M9: Military Base). On other cards the effect produces bright yellow and magenta pixels which make the affected things stand out very clearly. Both visual glitches can be prevented by disabling DirectDraw acceleration using the -emulate parameter.

How to run Doom95 on Windows Vista/7

To be able to run Doom95 on Windows Vista or 7, you need to obtain a file named DPLAY.DLL. This file can be found inside the Template:Ig2 in the DIRECTX folder. Another way to obtain the file is do download it separately via DLL-files.com. After you have the file, it should be moved over to the location of the Doom95 executable (doom95.exe). After this the game should launch normally.

See also

Sources

External links


Source code genealogy
Based on
WinDoom (Microsoft)
Doom95 Closed source