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PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 5:13 am
by Kroc
A self-contained, portable DOOM launcher and WAD collection presented as an early '90s diskzine:
- Screenshot of PortaDOOM Cacowards 2018
- portadoom_cacowards2018.png (7.34 KiB) Viewed 12123 times
It's intended as a single download that people can unzip and play on any computer, targeted at people who have either never played DOOM or anything beyond the official iD canon and the thought of downloading, configuring and launching several different engines with all kinds of weird WAD files is putting them off trying stuff out.
PortaDOOM is about having a single executable where you press a few keys and hey-presto! you're playing DOOM WADs in the correct engine with the correct settings.
Downloads: https://github.com/Kroc/PortaDOOM/releases
Source Repository: https://github.com/Kroc/PortaDOOM
Currently there are PortaDOOM packages for:
- Cacowards 2018, 2017, 2016 & 2015
- PSX DOOM TC
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 12:18 pm
by wildweasel
Kroc wrote:What's Included?
- Commercial DOOM : DOOM1/2/Master/Final/NERVE, PSX & N64 (if you have the WADs; Steam & GOG installs detected automatically)
This is a bit unclear to me so I feel the need to ask: your download does not actually include commercial Doom WADs, does it? Or does it only contain the definitions needed to use them if the user supplies their own?
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 1:16 pm
by Kroc
It does not contain commercial WADs:
- If you have a relevant Steam / GOG copy of DOOM, the commercial WADs will be used from there
- Shareware DOOM is offered if trying to play Ultimate DOOM without a commercial WAD
- FreeDOOM is automatically used for playing PWADs if you don't have the commercial WAD
- You can copy your own WADs into PortaDOOM to negate any of the above
Hope that helps
It doesn't contain commercial WADs but will work with them and try to work around them as much as possible.
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 1:18 pm
by wildweasel
Cool, that answers my question as thoroughly as possible, now I don't need to download it to make sure it's in accordance with the rules.
I'm guessing this is mainly for Windows, though? I've got a Linux machine in the other room that my nephew uses mainly for Doom stuff, and I think a really nice launcher with a lot of preloaded goodies would help him out a lot. He currently uses a build of Rocket Launcher, if I remember right.
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 1:44 pm
by Doomenator
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 3:01 pm
by Kroc
@Doomenator: neat.
@wildweasel: The disk-zine side of it is written in QB64 which will compile natively on Linux, but the part that launches the engines is a complicated 1200+ line Windows Batch file that normalises behaviour between a number of DOOM engines: GZDOOM / ZDOOM / prboom+ / chocolate-doom & DOOM 64 EX. Perhaps I can convert this to bash or redo it in QB64 but that's a lot of work for a platform where most users know what they're doing and can use an existing launcher. Maybe further down the line when there's more demand -- I've only just released this after 4-ish months of development and feedback will be slow due to the download size.
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 4:07 pm
by wildweasel
Fair enough, heh. I imagine there's a bit of dissonance between the age and relative computer experience of my nephew (he's just turned 11 this year) and the platform I've installed on his computer, so it's probably quite crazy of me and doesn't match the use case at all. That said, he does at least know how Rocket Launcher works, so he'll probably be content with whatever. Thank you for the information, and I wish you luck on your project.
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 5:39 pm
by DemonSlayer
Very cool, I have to try this out.
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 4:07 am
by Wiw
Well, colour me interested! What's this made with?
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 4:37 am
by Kroc
Fittingly, QuickBasic (QBasic), or rather: QB64 a modern re-implementation of QBasic. It's open-source as is PortaDOOM's code and content.
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 12:57 pm
by Zhs2
Pro mode: A tool that can spider idgames ftp (any of preferred choice, default fu-berlin.de) and grab a directory's worth of WAD contents (i.e. idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/), obviously at the user's discretion - warning on bandwidth use. Bonus points: also pull readmes, ratings, sync to discover any updates to said directories, ...
I should wonder if the same could be done with the Cacowards pages.
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2017 5:42 pm
by DoomRater
As someone who browsed LoadStar Magazine in the past, this seems like a crazy kick in the pants. The fact it's QB64 means maybe I shouldn't be so quick to write off my friend's attempt to get me back into programming by learning QB64 himself.
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 10:35 am
by MrDowntempo
Zhs2 wrote:Pro mode: A tool that can spider idgames ftp (any of preferred choice, default fu-berlin.de) and grab a directory's worth of WAD contents (i.e. idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/), obviously at the user's discretion - warning on bandwidth use. Bonus points: also pull readmes, ratings, sync to discover any updates to said directories, ...
I should wonder if the same could be done with the Cacowards pages.
This would make this one of the best ways to carry Doom around on a USB drive!
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sat May 13, 2017 10:08 pm
by Armaetus
Do remember my Maps of Chaos sets, namely mapsofchaos-ok.wad will update in the future via the ModDB page.
Re: PortaDOOM - A portable WAD disk-zine!
Posted: Sun May 14, 2017 6:42 am
by Kroc
Where possible, I try to ensure that all WADs are updated before I push a public release. I'm aware that some projects are updating regularly and I've been placing URLs on every page so I can check. The next update will include a ton more polish and the inclusion of the 2016 cacowards.