Have you tried Doomsday?

in short: thnx 😉

The answer should have been, "Have you tried a source port that is not Doom95?"

http://www.doomworld.com/classicdoom/ports/

I personally recommend PRboom and Zdoom. Prboom is careful on game logic, and zdoom is all-don't-care moddability.

Man, I really wish I could help you, but Google-ing the SW1PANEL error brought up nothing useful. My advice would be to post about the error either at the Doomworld forums (http://www.doomworld.com/vb/source-ports/) or at the New Doom forums (http://forums.newdoom.com/forumdisplay.php?f=68) and see if anyone there is a bit more knowledgeable about PrBoom than I am.

Rest assured that PrBoom is probably the most accurate (and best) source port, outside of Chocolate Doom. I actually finally bet UDoom, Doom II, Final Doom and the Master Levels on Ultraviolence using PrBoom (made easier, I think, by the greater viewing distance that comes with higher resolutions). 😁

Seems I remember you mentioning running vista in another one of your posts, if that is the case, I think DirectPlay does not work in vista.

Again, thanks everyone.
It's working now; I got Doomsday.
leileilol: I guess you read fast or something, prboom was what I tried in the first place, but again, it's working now and I've deleted prboom.
However, I now have a different problem: when I play Ultimate Doom in fullscreen, well basically it won't let me leave. When I pick "Quit Game" (or "End Game" in "Options") I can press n or Esc to get out of it, but it won't recognize y at all. I checked the setup and y isn't reserved for anything.
side note: I have a scroll-wheel mouse; does anybody here know how I can use it as a three-button mouse (in Doom)?

You could also try this method that I've described in another thread. It converts the doom games in Doom Collector's edition to their dos versions and you can play them in dosbox.

In fact there is a way of getting a DOS version of the Doom Collector's edition. All you need to do is download doom 1.9 shareware from ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/ , then copy your original .wad file from the collector's cdrom, then download doom 1.9 patch again from ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/ . Then run the patch and you will have doom and doom2, and final doom dos versions which you will patch each in its separate directory. The only thing missing is final's doom setup.exe (which shows final doom in the setup menu title) but you can still live without it.

I tried it again and it worked (don't you love the consistency of Microsoft Excel 2007 multiplication bug?[edit: don't think it's MS's fault, but I also don't think it's id's fault]). However, after that I got an error closing it with "END GAME" under "OPTIONS", then it didn't work ("END GAME"), then it worked, then it didn't work and I got an error, or something like that, I wanted to be thorough, and now I got an error from "QUIT GAME", in other words, more intermittent erring than I've ever encountered before, but again, no sleep lost, I can play the game.
It told me about the error after I quit. The attached file is the log it pointed me to in case someone here is desperately bored.

doomer: I think I was typing this as you posted, as I said, no loss of sleep; if it continues, I'll see what other people say and maybe go with your suggestion.

Now I've somehow accidently reassigned Enter, so I can't reassign it again, and apparently I reassigned Ctrl too, so I can't shoot. 😠 What file are the key bindings (or whatever they're called) in?

I just restarted it and it's working fine. I'm assuming it loaded what the key assignments were from the file and it failed to save the new assigments last time because I got out of it with Ctrl-Alt-Del.
whatever
If I keep having stuff like this happen to me, I really think I'll take doomer up his/her suggestion, but anyway, right now it's working; and I'm pretty sure I did the reassignment, which would make it my fault, but again, whatever.
One minor thing, though: I unchecked the box for music, and I moved the music volume slider all around, but there wasn't even a slight change in volume. I haven't played with music before, and maybe it's a little better than I expected; anyway, I'm a little more freaked out than I was playing Doom II; I suspect the music is having an effect; anyway I'd like at least having the option of no music (with sound effects).

It turns out it was processing my mouse fine, I just had the scroll-wheel button (M3) set to strafe and the right button set to nothing; I've set the left button to fire (which it was already), the right button to speed, and the middle button to strafe. Yes, I've heard you need to be insane to play any Doom game with the mouse, but I've tried before, and the setup seems pretty nice, so I'm going to try again-- although, does anyone have a way I can set a mouse button to forward movement (or maybe even-- dare I say it-- the scroll wheel for back-and-forth movement 😎)?
also, I've only gotten an error once or twice again, but I still feel a little leery about it

general_vagueness wrote:

Yes, I've heard you need to be insane to play any Doom game with the mouse,

In fact you should be insane to play doom without the mouse, especially if you consider playing deathmatch. After switching from keyboard after playing doom for so many years, the mouse made the game three times more dynamic for me, and five times as fun. 😉

doomer, you were faster than me... 😁

I was going to recommend using mouse look and assigning strafe movement to the left and right keys... It's a whole new experience, almost like a new game! 😎

Thanks, I'll try that. 😀
still waiting for a way to turn off music though

Start the game with -nomusic?

It's possible I'm an idiot,:sweatdrop: but maybe not, because as I said I'm using Doomsday and I don't know if it supports command-line arguments. If anyone can definitively say that I should go with a different engine program, please feel free; until then I'm going to stick with what I've got.

"-Nomusic" worked, and I may stay with it, but maybe not; anyway I'd still like to be able to change the music volume and not the sound effects volume; this has taught me you don't know what you like until you try it, but I think low music and med-high SFX is what I really want.
once again, no big deal, if someone wants to help, please, by all means...
also I've updated the post of that log file (please see above), in case it could possibly help
I just read it and realized that it's the same thing several times 🙁

I prefer the ZDoom sourceport, and use it with the ZDL launcher. This launcher allows you to easily add in command-line arguments like -nomusic.

IIRC, I could tweak Doomsday to hell and back with real option menus, no command line necessary... I mean, when you're playing the game and press ESC, access the options/configuration, you have more settings to tweak than any other game I remember.

However, I'll check this when I get home later today and post a screenie if I do find the option...