Source port

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Revision as of 18:20, 7 October 2005 by Julian Hope (talk | contribs) (DOS)


Source ports are ports of the source code for the Doom engine. The term usually denotes a modification made by Doom fans, as opposed to any of the official Doom versions produced by id Software or affiliated companies.

The source code for the Doom engine was released to the public in 1997. Although Doom was originally created for DOS, the release was of the Linux version, and the source code had to be ported back to DOS and to other operating systems. Hence the term "source port", which out of custom also is used for those modifications which are not technically ports to another platform.

Source ports have been created for a variety of PC operating systems, such as the 32-bit Windows family, Linux and the BSDs. By abstracting away the x86-specific code, ports have also been created for a large variety of other hardware platforms: PowerPC/Macintosh; the Game Park 32, a Korean hand-held; the Nokia 7650 and 9210 cell phones; the Sega Dreamcast; and any POSIX environment with the X windowing system.

The original purpose of source ports was cross-platform compatibility, but shortly after the release of the source code, programmers were correcting old, unaddressed Doom bugs and deficiencies in their own source ports, and later began adding new features to alter gameplay.

The source code was originally released under a proprietary license which prohibited commercial use and did not require programmers to provide the source code for the modifications they released in executable form. As a consequence of the source code for GLDoom, the first port to add OpenGL graphics to Doom, being lost in a hard disk crash, the code was re-released in 1999 under the GNU General Public License after requests from the community (and all the original Doom source code on this Wiki is covered by the GNU/GPL too).

List of source ports

DOS

Windows

Macintosh

Unix/Linux

OS/2

BeOS

WindowsCE

Amiga

Console

Remakes

System management

Sources

External links