Every now and then I get the urge to write about something, often passionately.
On this part of my site I like to post my ramblings in an uncensored fashion. These
posts are entirely my own opinions, do not represent the views of my employer and
they can get a little controversial. You have been warned...
04-05-2012
Introducing ezDoom
It's been a busy few weeks for me lately but I still wanted to make time to share
with you something I have been working on for the last few weeks:
ezDoom!
What is ezDoom? Well to put it simply it's the easiest way to play Doom for free
LEGALLY on Windows XP, Vista and 7. Just boot it up and press play and away you
go. I've always been facinated with doom and after I compiled my own version of
Chocolate Doom
I thought more about how to make it easier to play, without all the command line
or batch file malarky. I came up with the idea for an application that would launch
the game for you. Many already existed, but I wanted to make mine as simple and
easy to use as possible so that anybody with a reasonably recent version of windows
can play doom legally, safely and for free with the minimum of fuss.
To put it a bit more complicatedly it's a WPF app that uses the fourth version of
the .NET framework to install and control a version of
Zdoom, and it lets you choose which mods you want to use. For legal reasons
I couldn't include full versions of certain games so the program installs shareware
versions of Doom, Heretic, Hexen and Strife as well as the full version of
FreeDoom which will give you hours and hours of entertainment. If you own
the original games you can just choose the correct IWAD by pressing the add button
and then choosing it from the IWAD drop down menu. IF you want to run some mods
you can choose from a few included PWADS (Mario Doom is my personal favourite) or
choose your own, but remember that a PWAD needs the correct IWAD to run. FreeDoom
will work on most Doom PWADS if you don't have to correct IWAD to hand.
If you don't know what an IWAD or PWAD is, they are Doom Engine data files - IWADS
hold crucial game information (gun images, enemy sprites that sort of thing) while
PWADS contain new level data, but wikipedia
has a better explanation of how they work. If you think of IWADS as game files
and PWADS as mod/level files you won't go too far wrong.
I intend to update this application and as soon as I do, the updates will be applied
when you next run the application as long as you are connected to the internet.
If you have any questions or suggestions about the application please e-mail me
at:
I hope you all enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed making it, and happy "dooming"
to the lot of you!