FastDoom. A new Doom port for DOS, optimized to be as fast as possible for 386/486 personal computers!

There are a bunch of source ports that support 640x400 resolution, most forked from Chocolate Doom. I'd take a look at this one - Doom MBF (Doom 'MBF' for DOS, Maintenance release 2.04) ,

Thanks, problem is neither fastdoom or doomMBF support free looking - can only look from left to right with the mouse.

I had tried zdoom-dos 1.17c which is good except that there are quite a few audio glitches and no music (at least for me!) and again, only supports 320x200

Doom Legacy

It seems like you are trying to solve different problems at once.

320x200 stretched on widescreen TFT has nothing to do with DOOM or with any port; it will look the same in every game, unless you set up the screen properly.

There are many DOOM ports indeed. The DOS ports are not nearly as maintained or feature-rich as Windows ones, but some of them are good.

For a good looking port supporting some advanced features, but still mostly true to the original experience - MBF, due to the high resolution and BOOM compatibility.

Looking up and down is not a feature that original DOOM is designed for, but if it's important to you - then DOSDOOM, DOOM Legacy and ZDOOM all support that + higher resolutions. The DOS version of ZDOOM has no music support, though, as far as I recall.

The thing is, you can't properly play Doom on resolutions higher than standard 320x200 Mode X unless you'll jump all the way up to 640x400. Pixel scaling is completely wrong on sub-SVGA resolutions, except weird 320x400 mode. But unfortunately it would be slideshow on 486 133 with Cirrus Logic GD5428 VLB card. That system is barely enough to play Doom as it is.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-10-24, 23:46:

That system is barely enough to play Doom as it is.

Those specs are borderline excessive for Doom, it'll certainly handle all the Zdooms prior to the FmodEx audio backend.

I'll give dosdoom a go.
PC runs 'stock' doom and doom 2 fine.

DoomMBF runs nicely but no freelook
ZDoomDos 1.17c runs well but sound glitches and no music (and lets face it, the music is a bit part of doom!)
DoomLegacy has freelook, music but runs slowly!
FastDOOM runs well but doesnt have freelook

Know the scaling issue is my monitor but it is the monitor I have so have to work around it - was hoping could find a launcher that would offer eg 320x240 which my monitor does scale to 4:3 but that might just to too much to ask for 😉
Running 640x480 is certainly going to be a slide show!

(Just as an idea, Duke3d runs pretty well at 320x200 and quake is 486-playable at 320x240)

Did you tried one of this?

Doom Plus (SVGA, crouching/jumping, mlook with up/down shooting, new statusbar):
http://www.doomworld.com/3ddownloads/ports/dplus06.zip

Boom:
http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames/themes/Team … oom/boom202.zip

MAZter wrote on 2020-10-25, 13:27:

Boom:
http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames/themes/Team … oom/boom202.zip

MBF is BOOM + highres + a few extra tweaks, making the original BOOM pretty much irrelevant. Besides, it also has no freelook, which is important to OP.

DosDoom is looking very promising!
Allowed for 320x240 resolution so scales to 4:3 on my TFT (400x300 also works but starts to get a bit choppy on framerate)

Looks like should allow midi music but cant quite get that working currently - the instruction text file isnt exactly clear on how to enable it!
Dont suppose anyone knows how?
Text file says:
"-New music and sound code
Support for MUS, MOD and MP3 music files (see music.htm)" but music.htm doesnt exist in the docs folder

and

" -MIDI support is now in DosDoom - just use the midi file in place of the
mus file"

but as far as I know, the music is contained within the wad?

Thanks!

Yes, there are MUS files in the WAD, and FWIW, DOSDOOM plays them just fine without me having to tweak anything as I recall.

I'm attaching my DOSDOOM DOCS folder; looks like it has MUSIC.HTM and perhaps some other files you are missing.

dr_st wrote on 2020-10-25, 19:10:

Yes, there are MUS files in the WAD, and FWIW, DOSDOOM plays them just fine without me having to tweak anything as I recall.

I'm attaching my DOSDOOM DOCS folder; looks like it has MUSIC.HTM and perhaps some other files you are missing.

That's very kind - thanks!

Yep, that's done it!
Needed to create the dosdoom.cfg file with the sound card parameters for midi and works like a charm!

So there you go - if you need a dos-based doom source port with free mouse look, multiple resolution choices, decent speed and working music, DosDoom 0.653 + a bit of config work is the way to go

Thanks all!

If you want to play original Doom, then use version 1.1 in my old experience, it was bit faster than 1.2 and those 1.6+ Doom2 added code executables. Thath 1.9 added episode Thy Flesh Consumed is more or less unplayable on a slower 486 anyway.

Well, the problem with 1.1 is that it's too old with many bugs and missing features. It's only redeeming quality is that -left and -right support.