An extensive number of optimizations have been made to improve the overall performance and stability of DOOM Retro.

DOOM Retro is now compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2015. Visual Studio’s runtime library is now statically linked to the binary, meaning it doesn’t need to be installed.

DOOM Retro now uses a prerelease version of SDL v2.0.4.

DOOM Retro now supports BOOM-compatible maps with the following features:

• Deep water effects.
• Scrolling walls, floors and ceilings.
• Translucent walls.
• Friction effects.
• Custom colormaps.
• Support for the ANIMATED lump.
• Silent teleporters.
• Elevators.
• Generalized linedef types.

The lighting of the player’s weapon is now slightly darker and more dynamic.

Direct3D is now the default renderer, which does not have the flicker that occurs with the OpenGL renderer in fullscreen. As before, the renderer can be changed using the vid_scaledriver CVAR.

The pillarboxes and letterboxes on the screen are now cleared each frame.

Configuration files (with the extension *.CFG) may now be loaded through the WAD launcher.

If a CFG file exists in the same folder as a PWAD file with the same name, it will automatically be loaded.

Support has been added for maps with DeepBSP extended nodes v4 and ZDoom uncompressed normal nodes.

Several rendering anomalies in maps have been resolved.

Any flats that are missing in a map will now be rendered as sky, and a warning displayed in the console, rather than DOOM Retro exiting with an error.

Further improvements have been made to the support for DeHackEd lumps.

The translucency of the chaingun’s muzzle flash has been improved slightly.

The “always run” feature may now be bound to a key other than CAPSLOCK in the console by using the +alwaysrun action with the bind CCMD.

Movement of the player’s weapon is now interpolated to appear smoother.

Rather than using the standard animation, which is only updated every 125 milliseconds, a much smoother swirl effect is now applied to every liquid sector. It is on by default, and can be turned off using the r_liquid_swirl CVAR.

The speed of liquid sectors bobbing up and down has now been doubled.

Things in liquid sectors no longer bob in time with each other.

If the blockmap of a map is invalid or not present, it will now be recreated.

The position of keycards and skull keys in the widescreen HUD when the player has no armor has been improved.

The input in the console will now be restored after viewing the input history using the ↑ key.

The r_playersprites CVAR has now been implemented allowing the player’s weapon to be hidden.

Several changes have been made to the descriptions of CCMDs and CVARs when using the cmdlist and cvarlist CCMDs.

A new mapstats CCMD has been implemented that will show the following information about the current map: map title, map author, node format, if the blockmap was recreated, total vertices, total sides, total lines, if Boom-compatible line specials are present, total sectors, total things, map size and music title.

The r_maxbloodsplats CVAR has been renamed to r_bloodsplats_max. Also, when it is set to 0, it will now be shown as 0 rather than off.

The totalbloodsplats CVAR has been renamed to r_bloodsplats_total.

The r_mirrorweapons CVAR has been renamed to r_mirroredweapons.

The mapfixes CVAR has been renamed to r_fixmaperrors.

The spritefixes CVAR has been renamed to r_fixspriteoffsets.

A bug has been fixed whereby weapons spawned at the start of a map weren’t being randomly mirrored if r_mirroredweapons was on.

The format of doomretro.cfg has changed considerably, and is divided into two parts: CVARs and bindings.

Tall textures are now supported.

The wall texture between two liquid sectors (often an animated waterfall texture) will no longer rise and fall with those sectors.

The randomness of such things as mirrored corpses and the spawning of blood splats has been improved.

The positions of the numbers in the widescreen HUD are now improved when custom lumps are used.

The translucency of the elements in the widescreen HUD has been increased slightly.

The health, ammo and armor counts in the widescreen HUD will now flash briefly when the player picks up the corresponding items during a game.

The game will now exit with an error if no subsectors are present in a map.

Improvements have been made to the consistency by which blood splats are spawned when a monster is shot, and when a corpse slides along the floor.

A feature is now available that randomizes the pitch of monster sounds. It is disabled by default, and can be enabled using the s_randompitch CVAR.

If a PWAD is loaded, the window caption will now be changed to its filename while no map is loaded.

A bug has now been fixed whereby the operation of the mousewheel to select the previous/next weapon was reversed, and would no longer work at all if the user attempted to change it using the bind CCMD.

The console now opens and closes slightly faster.

The background of the console now has a slight diagonal pattern, and a drop shadow.

The scrollbar track and dividers in the console are now translucent.

If a PWAD is loaded that uses a custom character set, the color of the player messages in the console will now reflect the color of those characters.

Widescreen mode will now be enabled or disabled correctly when setting the vid_widescreen CVAR.

The contents of the window now updates dynamically as it is being resized.

A bug has been fixed whereby the screen size couldn’t be adjusted in the options menu when not in a game.

The mouse pointer is now released while the console is open.

The window caption will no longer be reset to “DOOM RETRO” when the graphics subsystem is restarted by entering certain CVARs.

The blink rate of the text caret in the console is now the same speed as the Windows setting.

The window is no longer reset to a 4:3 aspect ratio at startup.

The position of the window is now restored correctly at startup, and when switching from fullscreen mode, if using multiple displays.

The minimum size that the window can be resized to is now 320×240.

The console is now closed when pressing the close button in the window’s title bar.

If a masked texture is used on a one-sided line, the transparent parts will now be displayed as black rather than randomly-colored pixels. Code by Fabian Greffrath.

Autocomplete and input history are now reset if a character is deleted in the console.

The output in the console is now correct when the music and SFX volumes are changed in the menu.

The graphics subsystem will now be reset when the vid_display CVAR is changed, so displays can now be switched during a game.

If the vid_display CVAR is found to be invalid at startup, it will no longer be restored to its default, in case the display it points to happens to be off. Instead, a warning will be displayed in the console, and display 1 will be used.

An acronym for the screen resolution, and the correct aspect ratio, will now be displayed in the console at startup.

Whether Windows is 32 or 64-bits will now be displayed in the console at startup.

A small amount of ammo is now given to the player when using the give backpack CCMD, to be consistent with what the player is given when picking up a backpack during a game.

A bug has been fixed whereby an additional character could be entered into a cheat sequence in some instances.

The use of a TiMidity configuration file is now displayed in the console at startup.

MAP05C and MAP16C in Back To Saturn X Episode 2 may now be loaded using the map CCMD.

Monsters will no longer be alerted when the player makes a noise while “No Target” mode is on using the notarget CCMD.

The s_maxslicetime CVAR has been removed.

Since it produces the same result as using linear, the anisotropic value for the vid_scalefilter CVAR has been removed.

A bug has been fixed whereby the kill CCMD wasn’t killing the player when they had armor.

A bug has been fixed whereby pressing the media keys on some keyboards would cause the player to change weapons.

The showitems, showkills, showmapped and showsecrets CCMDs, as well as the maptime CVAR, have all been combined into one playerstats CCMD.

The com_showfps CVAR has been renamed to vid_showfps.

The com_showmemoryusage CVAR has been removed.

The r_liquid_animatedheight CVAR has been renamed to r_liquid_bob.

A bug has been fixed whereby bobbing items could be pushed below liquid sectors in some instances.

Text entered into the console can now be selected, with the following keyboard shortcuts being implemented:

• SHIFT + ←: Select the character to the left of the text caret.
• SHIFT + →: Select the character to the right of the text caret.
• CTRL + A: Select all of the text.
• CTRL + C: Copy the currently selected text to the clipboard.
• CTRL + V: Paste text from the clipboard.
• CTRL + X: Cut the currently selected text to the clipboard.
• CTRL + Z: Undo the last change that was made to the text.

A bug has been fixed whereby no evil grin would be displayed in the status bar when the player picked up a new weapon.

warp can now be used as an alternative to the map CCMD.

A feature has been implemented that causes corpses to be moved slightly if a monster walks over them. It is enabled by default, and may be disabled using the r_corpses_nudge CVAR.

A bug has been fixed whereby monsters would sometimes fall off tall ledges.

Friction in liquid is now only reduced for corpses.

Active crushers will now be active again when loading a savegame.

Improvements have been made to the player using a switch, lift or door if very close to another.

The display of the value of the r_lowpixelsize CVAR has been fixed.

There is no longer any blue or green blood or blood splats in Freedoom.

A bug has been fixed whereby no maps were listed by the maplist CCMD in Freedoom.

Blues are now emphasized better in translucent sprites.

The console now automatically closes when using the map CCMD or the idclev cheat.

The HOM inidicator is now paused while the console is open.

A bug has been fixed whereby warnings weren't being displayed in the console.

The WINDOWS key is now only disabled during a game, and not while the game is in a menu, paused, in the console, or on the title screen.