ZDoom LE (Legacy Edition)

[Rachael]

Like _mental_ said, you can install Linux on there, and even some of the more modern distros will run on it.

This is one article that I found on it.

Be aware that for GZDoom, the same render paths as for ARM are what are chosen for PowerPC due to a lack of SSE intrinsics on both platforms - so the code may be significantly slower, but it should still work. You will also have to compile it yourself, and that may take more than 10 minutes, but in the end you'll end with a very working copy of GZDoom on a more modern and secure operating system.

[drfrag]

Another alternative would be getting an old pc for free and you could play a lot of retro games there not just Doom. Someone could give you a 12 year old pc (or even something more modern), i've found several old towers near a trash container. Then you could install Windows 7 on it, it's crappy but not as much as you may think. I think you could use your Mac monitor since those were vga if i'm not wrong.

[3371-Alpha]

The problem with the Linux path is compatibility but with software this time. There are manny apps I've invested in over the years that I'll have to re-buy on Linux. Of course I'm not just talking about MS Office, also many games. I probably could dual boot it but that brings the issue of transferring data between the OSes; I believe both only read-only support for each other. Regardless of the direction I turn, it looks like I'm going to be stuck on this hardware for a while longer.
I've actually been aspiring to be a programmer of sorts, but I've been slacking lately. This may actually be good for me as it will force me to become good out of necessity (or at least desperation). I can't keep running away from compiling. There's this old quote: "Give a man is freedom and he wont know what to do with it. Give him a limitation and he'll tear his way past them." I have to tear my way through this limitation.

EDIT: Seams me and drfrag posted at the same time. Actually your idea's not bad, once found a excellent condition PowerBook G4 in the trash. But I still think porting your project to PPC would be good for me. Also my cinema monitor is DVI-D (DL), I don't think Apple ever use industry standard VGA but some other proprietary cable and even then stopped using them around 1999.

[Graf Zahl]

But I still think porting your project to PPC would be good for me.

You have to be a bit more realistic here. How many potential users are there for a Mac PPC version? Surely not many. Even for a port dedicated to legacy support any additional platform will mean added work that cannot be invested in other places where more people would benefit from it.

[drfrag]

I've done some investigation and it won't work, that's why i asked, official GZDoom never worked on PPC. There's the old _mental fork for mac from SEP 2016. That one should work If you are interested on the GL renderer.
https://github.com/alexey-lysiuk/gzdoom

However i've still been updating the win95 version without the GL renderer and that one should work right out of the box. Sure there's some windows code missing but nothing really important, instead of restoring all the code and fixing compilation with MinGW i did some cleanup there. Also bounds checking for ACS (but not stack checking) is missing since that version is oriented to extremely low end hardware.
https://github.com/drfrag666/ZDoom-LE

But then there's ZDoom32 and that one is from DEC 2016, i've also kept updating the non GL version in the original zdoom32 branch. That one should work out of the box as well provided the old truecolor renderer compiles, it should but AFAIK this has never been tested. If you get the USE_SSE2 option do not tick that one.
https://github.com/drfrag666/gzdoom/commits/zdoom32

@Graf Zahl: On your problems with FModEx have you tried setting snd_samplerate manually to 44100 or 22050? I get distorted sound @11025.

I plan to release a new ZDoom Classic version in the next hours, i ported the changes to the old repo and i've added some stuff to the new one. The old repo was a a badly created fork and that way i get contributions accounted for. There's an spanish ranking of developers or better said guys uploading random crap to GitHub and i'm in the top 200 of my region. Will that be useful for anything? Probably not.

[Graf Zahl]

@Graf Zahl: On your problems with FModEx have you tried setting snd_samplerate manually to 44100 or 22050? I get distorted sound @11025.

Thanks for the tip. That was indeed the problem. Fortunately I still have the config file that caused the mess. I only used it a few times for testing so it never was an issue that really bothered me, but since I tend to copy around these things, the bad setting got into every test I made with FMod 3.75...

[_mental_]

GZDoom versions from 2.3.2 to 3.1.0 inclusive were released with PowerPC binaries. Probably 3.2.0 can be built for PPC. ZDoom supported it too in a few releases.
How good GZDoom performed on PPC Mac is a completely different story. That’s the main reason I stopped bothering with it.

[drfrag]

I read the doomworld thread and i assumed those were released only for intel macs. 3371-Alpha mentioned he was stuck with the latest ZDoom SVN, then he could just use GZDoom 3.1.

[drfrag]

As announced i've released a new ZDoom Classic version, i thought it was dead. It's a minor update, i haven't ported the ACS stack checking since this is meant to run old mods and i think it wouldn't make sense. Also i've brought up to date the abandoned old version without the GL renderer.
Apparently this is actually useful to run very old mods. I've tested Hi-Tech Hell 2 - Alien Tech from 2005 and has problems in more recent versions, but scripts are admitted to be buggy in the readme. Regarding mod compatibility this is mostly equivalent to ZDoom 2.1.5, 2.1.6 and 2.1.7 crashed with MinGW (gcc 4.6.1) as stated earlier. Of course it won't run BD so don't even try.

See first post for full list of changes since 2.1.4.
Changes/features since 2.1.4a GL R2.1:
- Adjusted scaled status bar for 4x4 low detail mode.
- Fixed savegame comment size for the 640x400 resolution.
- Added light definition for megasphere.
- Added Deejay's par times for Thy Flesh Consumed.
- Added support for older versions of DeHackEd patches.
- A few more official fixes.
- Changed savegame list order, now they are sorted by slot number instead of alphabetically.

https://github.com/drfrag666/gzdoom/releases
https://github.com/drfrag666/ZDoom-CL/releases

As a side note the 3x2 low detail mode is not 100% right in all ports when decreasing screen size. This is a somewhat weirdo mode and adjustment is not perfect, could it even be? I planned to do a 3x3 mode but i couldn't get it to work.

[Graf Zahl]

I've tested Hi-Tech Hell 2 - Alien Tech from 2005 and has problems in more recent versions, but scripts are admitted to be buggy in the readme.

Where's the bug report? Remember: Any kind of regression should be investigated. So can you please open a bug thread where you list the problems you found? It may point to a programming error in the not intensively tested FraggleScript code.

[drfrag]

No bug report since i thought this could be one of those cases in which it's not supposed to work, the author mentioned the scripts were buggy in the readme. I'll investigate it anyway.

[Graf Zahl]

Buggy or not, if there's a regression it should be investigated. Although, last time I played the mod it still worked but I actually had to fix a few minor things in there. But that was over 2 years ago so further things may have changed.

[drfrag]

Done, everything is fine both in ZDoom32 and a recent GZDoom SVN. I was playing with BD.
I knew those blocking blue torches everywhere were caused by BD of course but also cameras went crazy and travelled outside of the map. Until one script failed with an invalid location object for camera error.

[Graf Zahl]

I was playing with BD.

Yeah, I don't call it Buggy Doom for no reason... #

[drfrag]

Sure but this time was the fixed version (by myself) without infinite loops.
I've reuploaded the CL release due to a crash with some old dehacked patches, i've reported the bug with the fix. GZDoom does not crash so it's a minor thing.