LZDoom

LZDoom
Codebase	GZDoom 3.3, GZDoom Vintage 3.8.2
Developer(s)	drfrag
Initial release	3.51b1 (2018-09-30, 6 years ago)
Latest release	3.88b (2022-02-26, 2 years ago)
Development status	Active
Written in	C++
Target platform	Cross-platform
Available in	English (United States)
License	GPLv3+
Source Repository (Git)	GitHub

LZDoom is a fork of the GZDoom source port centered around lower-end computers by drfrag. LZDoom follows GZDoom's feature set and has a few enhancements of its own. It employs an OpenGL 2 based renderer, as GZDoom moved away to OpenGL 3 as a hardware requirement. LZDoom targets users still running with OpenGL 2.1 compatible graphics cards but who want to stay in touch with the latest in GZDoom development.

History

LZDoom was originally started as another legacy oriented build of GZDoom, built around version 3.3. Eventually, another one of drfrag's ports, GZDoom Vintage was merged into the existing codebase to create one new unified port under the same name. The first version of LZDoom as result of this merging was version 3.82, released on July 19, 2019, seven days after the last Vintage release.

Future developments

Starting from LZDoom 4.5.0, the port will move to a more recent GZDoom build, dropping the OpenGL 2.1 renderer altogether in favor of the SoftPoly II renderer, a full 3D polygonal renderer that runs on the CPU on a hardware accelerated back-end.

Features

• All features from latest version of mainline GZDoom (ACS, ZScript, ZMusic etc)
• All ZDoom features
• Rudimentary support for Doom Legacy (to run existing Legacy mods like Ni'mRoD - IXNAY on the HOMBRE)
• Support for the DEHEXTRA standard
• OpenGL 2.1 based renderer (OpenGL 3.3+ recommended):
  • Full 3D floors (including slopes)
  • Reflective floors
  • Dynamic lights, brightmaps, glowing flats, custom hardware shaders
  • Quake II and Half-Life-style skyboxes in addition to regular ZDoom skyboxes
  • Optional High-quality (HQnX) rescaling filters for graphics, sprites and textures
  • MD2, MD3 and DMD model support
• 4 player splitscreen (LZDoom-exclusive)
• Options to switch between Direct3D 9 and DirectDraw rendering for software (Worldsim, backend)
• Several fixes to mods to maintain compatibility

Merged features from QZDoom

The QZDoom codebase enhancements partially also found their way into LZDoom, courtesy of Magnus Norddahl (dpJudas) and Rachael Alexanderson (Eruanna). These include:

• Polygonal, 3-point perspective truecolor software renderer ("Softpoly")
• Truecolor support for the classic 2-point renderer
• Vulkan renderer backend
• Proper windowed mode support (i.e. you can freely resize the game window)
• Correct ZDoom software light mode for the hardware renderer
• High resolution correct version of the software fuzz, for both software and hardware renderers

External links

• LZDoom binaries, hosted by GitHub
• LZDoom Development thread at Doomworld forums
• LZDoom 3.88b thread at ZDoom forums
• LZDoom 3.87c thread at ZDoom forums
• LZDoom 3.86a thread at ZDoom forums
• LZDoom 3.85 thread at ZDoom forums
• LZDoom 3.84 thread at ZDoom forums
• LZDoom 3.83a thread at ZDoom forums

Source code genealogy
Based on	Name	Base for
GZDoom 3.3	LZDoom	Active
GZDoom Vintage 3.8.2