Freedoom

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Revision as of 21:09, 29 November 2024 by Technopeasant1994 (talk | contribs) (→‎Other derivatives: * The Weapons Mod for ''Blood'' features a [https://github.com/freedoom/attic/tree/master/sprites/scubasteve/sht2 double barrel shotgun] from the Freedoom attic)


Freedoom
Freedoom Logo.png
FreedoomMAP29.png

Freedoom: Phase 2 MAP29 by Patrick Kalinauskas (Amarande)

Developer(s) Simon Howard (Fraggle)
Mike Swanson (Chungy)
Initial release 0.1 (2003-04-16, 21 years ago)
Latest release 0.13.0 (2024-01-29, 10 months ago)
Development status Active
Target platform Any source port
License 3-clause BSD license
Website freedoom.github.io
Source Repository

(Git)

GitHub
IRC Channel OFTC #freedoom

Freedoom is a project to create free content replacement IWADs for the Doom engine. All material in the project is released under the 3-clause BSD license, so other projects may reuse any of the Freedoom resources for their own purposes. In fact, this is a secondary goal of the project.

Freedoom produces three independent IWADs:

  • Freedoom: Phase 1 is made up of four episodes, and is compatible with The Ultimate Doom PWADs as well as including Double Impact in its episode lineup.
  • Freedoom: Phase 2 is a 32-level campaign, and is compatible with Doom II and Final Doom PWADs.
  • FreeDM is a deathmatch game, containing no monsters in its entire mapset. Like Phase 2, it is also compatible with Doom II and Final Doom PWADs.

Freedoom after version 0.13 is vanilla-compatible with the exception of save game buffer overflows, before this version some Boom-dependent features were used.

Freedoom is still under active development, not having yet reached a version 1.0, which should signify a complete set of resources, including sprites, textures, levels, music, etc, and some form of quality control over all of the project. The game is also aiming for a more direct science fiction setting to differentiate it from Doom.

History

Freedoom was envisioned in 2001 by Captain Mellow on the Doomworld forums in a thread titled barn-raising: open iwad project. This had quickly raised interest in such a project, with Fraggle and Teppic taking charge as the technical leads of the project, providing web hosting space and building up a DeuTex tree to build the IWAD. At this time, Freedoom was only aimed at providing a Doom II-compatible IWAD, as the sole game of the project.

In 2003, Rellik had created a fork of Freedoom, a spin-off called FreeDM.[1] This had closely followed the main Freedoom development. However, development had been abandoned on FreeDM and rather than letting it die, Fraggle had merged its work back into the main Freedoom tree in 2006. Since Freedoom 0.5, FreeDM has been a regular component of the project as a whole. FreeDM was given an official logo on October 2, 2014, designed by CaptainW.

After the release of Freedoom 0.6.2 in early 2008, the project remained inactive for nearly the rest of the year, while Catoptromancy had accumulated a large amount of resources to contribute to the project, prompting Chungy to take up maintainership, converted Freedoom's main repository from Subversion to Git, and resumed activity on it in early December, finally releasing 0.6.3 on December 31, 2008.

Freedoom 0.6.4 was released, partly in reaction to copyright infringement discovered in the source tree, several music and sounds files being identified as plagiarized from Duke Nukem 3D and mods of that game.[2] The entire body of the plagiarist's submissions was removed as a precaution against the likely possibility that none of them were legitimate entries. Even though this release was largely a reaction to that discovery, and the version number reflected a minor update to the 0.6 series, it is still notable for introducing a third IWAD target to the project, tentatively named Ultimate Freedoom at the time, and would later become Freedoom: Phase 1.

On January 22, 2011, Freedoom released version 0.7, this version added support for maps using TNT: Evilution patches, as well as various fixes, changes for maps, textures, and sprites.

On January 1, 2014, Freedoom released version 0.8, which included a BEX patch now included as part of the IWADs allowing Freedoom to display custom message strings instead of potentially trademark-infringing Doom message strings, FreeDM being re-targeted for vanilla Doom compatibility, and episode 4 of Ultimate Freedoom being Double Impact, a Cacoward-winning nine-level episode previously released as a PWAD.

At the same time the official Freedoom repository moved to GitHub, with the site using the GitHub Pages Web hosting service.

On October 14, 2014, version 0.9 was released, featuring unique names for the singleplayer-focused IWADs, and new file names to go with them. Prior to this release, Freedoom had referred to both the whole project and the IWAD with a file name of doom2.wad, which became Freedoom: Phase 2 with a file name of freedoom2.wad in this release. Likewise, Ultimate Freedoom with the file name doom.wad was renamed to Freedoom: Phase 1 with a file name of freedoom1.wad.[3] A new font was crafted for this release, replacing the menu, message, and HUD fonts entirely with a new stylization. Several of the sprites saw major enhancements from raymoohawk, who took the liberty of remastering the sprite artwork in the game and fine-tuning them with attention to details.

On December 17, 2015, Chungy announced that the project goal of Freedoom had changed from Boom to vanilla.[4] By doing so, many changes were made to both Phase 1 and 2 to make them vanilla-compatible as much as possible, starting with converting legible Boom maps to vanilla. Inspired by the FreeDM logo, a new new main project logo was started in December 2015 by Jewellds and adopted in March 2017.

On February 16, 2017, version 0.11 had been released. This version marked the first release to be compatible in limit removing engines. Limit removing was chosen as an interim goal for version 0.11's release, and as a milestone for making version 1.0 vanilla-compatible, except for possible savegame buffer overflows of certain levels.[5]

Version 0.12.0 was released on October 10, 2019. This version added a manual, and improved compatibility with vanilla Doom. It also overhauled many campaign maps, and increased the Python dependency to Python 3.[6]

Version 0.13.0 was released on January 28, 2024. It improved vanilla compatibility, removing Boom-dependent features. It also added new levels, monsters, and accessibility features.[7]

On August 13, 2024, Fraggle announced a Freedoom version of id24res.wad for ID24, titled 'FD24',[8] with a branch on the official GitHub repository being created the same day.[9]

Levels

Monsters

Notes

  1. ↑ Previously wearing yellow shorts
  2. ↑ Previously shirtless
  3. ↑ Uses the same base as the player sprites, both of which are retouched as of 0.13
  4. ↑ Previously more cobra-like and termed a Footsoldier
  5. ↑ Originally a frog-like pink biped, and previously called the Slither-beast
  6. ↑ Previously the skull-like Skull/Deadflare
  7. ↑ Previously the Globe Fiend and Summoner
  8. ↑ Previously more crustacean-like called the Orb Monster
  9. ↑ Previously a tanned bulbous humanoid; a theropod design called the Nukeptile has been worked on
  10. ↑ Previously a pale bulbous humanoid; a theropod design called the Lavamander has been worked on
  11. ↑ Previously a gargoyle-like being called the Undead Servant and Dark Soldier
  12. ↑ Previously a skeletal figure called the Flamebringer
  13. ↑ Previously called the Hellslug. Sprite cleaned up as of 0.13
  14. ↑ Previously called the Mechabomination

Credits

Easter eggs

Derivatives

The 3-clause BSD license used by Freedoom allows reuse in other, even commercial, projects; several projects have re-used parts of freedoom:

Doom Classic-based

Several different companies combined Freedoom with the Doom Classic port to create games sold for the iPhone or iPad:

  • Doomsday: Hellraiser (by General Arcade)
  • Doomsday 2: Legions of Hell (by General Arcade)
  • Doomsday 3: Base Ganymede (by General Arcade)
  • Doom's Knight Lite (by MoaLab)
  • Gameception (by Nathaniel Herman. It includes a browser to download new maps on the fly)
    • The Final Judgment (by Jading Tsunami) does something similar, but appears to be free
  • Hell on Earth Lite (by iKreeda Games)
  • Hell on Earth 2 (by iKreeda Games)
  • Bastards (A western themed total conversion by Octavian Stirbel)

Freedoom assets were also used on MacOSX in the following titles:

  • Doom's Knight (by MoaLab)
  • Doomed Heretic (by MoaLab)
  • Doomed Freedom (by MoaLab)

Unlike the Doomsday games, MoaLab's releases rely on the OBLIGE level generator to generate new levels, which are then put up for release on the app store.

Gloomy Dungeons series

Freedoom assets are also used in the Gloomy Dungeons series of first-person shooters for Android devices, primarily for sound effects. This is also carried over into the fork FreakLabs series. The Hardcore version directly uses Freedoom graphics. Gloomy Dungeons is no longer accessible on the Google Play store on modern Android, but can be installed using F-Droid.

Undoomed: Dungeon Shooter

One of the more unusual applications of Freedoom assets is used in Undoomed: Dungeon Shooter. This is an old-skool game for Android devices running on Unreal Engine 4. It contains a map generator, similar to OBLIGE or SLIGE, to procedurally generate levels for the campaign and the arena for the survival mode, potentially providing endless gameplay. Because it uses UE4, you can have true three-dimensional room-over-room effects. Freedoom assets used here include various monsters and textures.

Cyber Griffin

A side-scrolling platform game by Kris Occhipinti made with the Godot engine that utilizes Freedoom assets available on itch.io. The game is released under the GNU GPL version 3.

Other derivatives

Some assets are used as placeholders or built upon in other projects, such as mods and stand-alone games:

Replacement IWADs:

Main article: Replacement IWADs

Multiple projects have been started inspired by Freedoom, with some either using it for placeholders, including attic assets, or building upon it:

  • Blasphemer (placeholders)
  • Freedom Scoops (replacement for Chex Quest)
  • GZFreePunk (utilizes GZDoom features)
  • Lastermaul (placeholders)
  • Satanic Infestation (aims to preserve a hellish theme)

Gallery

  • The old logo of Freedoom (December 2003 - March 2017)

  • The FreeDM project logo

  • MAP07 in version 0.5

  • MAP07 in version 0.9

  • MAP07 in version 0.10

  • MAP10 in version 0.11

See also

External links

Doomworld forums

References

  1. ↑ Bloodshedder (30 December 2003). FreeDM Emerges. Doomworld forums. Retrieved 1 November 2014.
  2. ↑ The Green Herring (15 June 2009). Musical plagiarism in Freedoom. Doomworld forums. Retrieved 1 November 2014.
  3. ↑ chungy (12 January 2014). "The commit The Great IWAD Renaming contains background and rationale." GitHub. Retrieved 1 November 2014.
  4. ↑ chungy (17 December 2015). Freedoom version 1.0 will be vanilla-compatible. Doomworld forums. Retrieved 14 February 2017.
  5. ↑ Catoptromancy (2 January 2017). Savegame buffer overruns. Doomworld forums. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
  6. ↑  (10 October 2019). "Freedoom 0.12.0 released." Freedom site. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  7. ↑  (28 January 2024). "Freedoom 0.13.0 released." Freedom site. Retrieved 30 January 2024.
  8. ↑ VL2M STUDIO (10 August 2024). FD24 (free replacement for id24res.wad). Doomworld forums. Retrieved 14 August 2024.
  9. ↑ https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/commits/fd24

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