Doom 3 Help/Questions

Nems · Post by **Nems** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 7:51 pm

So as I was backing up some classic Doom files one night onto my portable HDD I forgot that I had backed up my CD Doom 3 and RoE installs from my old WinXP machine to this portable HDD. I decided to upload them onto my current Win7 Pro machine and play them again.

Is there anything I need to do to make Doom 3 and RoE run in Win7 Pro without too much hassle? I know it's probably not a good idea to run it from Desktop (even though that's what I do with classic Doom at the moment - I really need to fix that). Do I need to run Doom 3 and RoE in WinXP SP3 compatibility mode or can it run normally without that mode?

Thanks in advance.

wildweasel · Post by **wildweasel** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 9:34 pm

Nems wrote:So as I was backing up some classic Doom files one night onto my portable HDD I forgot that I had backed up my CD Doom 3 and RoE installs from my old WinXP machine to this portable HDD. I decided to upload them onto my current Win7 Pro machine and play them again.

Is there anything I need to do to make Doom 3 and RoE run in Win7 Pro without too much hassle? I know it's probably not a good idea to run it from Desktop (even though that's what I do with classic Doom at the moment - I really need to fix that). Do I need to run Doom 3 and RoE in WinXP SP3 compatibility mode or can it run normally without that mode?

Thanks in advance.

As far as I've seen, it runs without that much problem even on Windows 10. Where you're going to run into potential hurdles, though, is widescreen resolutions and getting it to accept "Ultra" video quality if your card is so new that it thinks it's too old to support it. More information on those issues and how to fix them are at the PC Gaming Wiki: https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Doom_3

leileilol · Post by **leileilol** » Sun Oct 21, 2018 11:31 pm

There's also that EAX problem- Doom3 sounds best on the higher EAX versions (Audigy2+) common onboard audio still doesn't support as Creative has a monopolistic stranglehold on it all unless you buy Alchemy from them for that to work again. Probably some deal nastiness with them owning the Carmack's Reverse patent going on...

Post by **Chris** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:53 am

leileilol wrote:There's also that EAX problem- Doom3 sounds best on the higher EAX versions (Audigy2+) common onboard audio still doesn't support as Creative has a monopolistic stranglehold on it all unless you buy Alchemy from them for that to work again.

Alternatively there are Doom3 source ports, like Dhewm3, which ported the EAX code to the more standardized EFX that's supported by OpenAL Soft. It's notable though that even though it may sound better with EAX/EFX, it doesn't make particularly great use of it. From what I'm told, id Software understandably wasn't happy about being forced to use OpenAL+EAX4 as part of the deal for retaining use of Carmack's Reverse, so didn't put much effort into it to take advantage of what could've otherwise been possible. No occlusion/obstruction, no dynamic environments, no multi-zone environments...

Post by **Enjay** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 7:45 am

Chris wrote:Alternatively there are Doom3 source ports, like Dhewm3...

Oooh, thank you. I was unaware of that. I just installed it and it works very nicely on my machine - sounds great. Proper support for widescreen too. I haven't had a Creative sound card for a while and it's nice to get EAX-like sound effects back in Doom3. (I went through two apparently quite decent (and expensive) ones that both, ultimately, proved unreliable and stopped working - so I've just stuck with my onboard RealTek.)

Discussions of Doom3 as a game split to here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=62342

Unfortunately, it's also served to remind how mediocre, borderline bad, Doom3 is as a game (IMO of course). So much potential just seeping away to boredom and frustration every time I play.

Post by **Chris** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:12 am

Enjay wrote:Back to the original question, I noticed that Nems mentioned Classic Doom. One thing that the Dhewm page says is that it doesn't support mods that need their own game dll.

Technically it is possible to get some of those mods working. Generally speaking, if you can get the source to the mod's game dll, they can be rebuilt for Dhewm3. In particular, Classic Doom can work with Dhewm3, although it will require you to be able to build it from source yourself, unless some kind soul is able to provide a prebuilt game dll for you.

ZDoom