Just barely a week since the last one, but already a small but meaty point release, DOOM Retro v1.5.2, is available for download! This version includes several obligatory bug fixes, as well as a couple of welcome new features. It may be downloaded here, and the changes are as follows:

• Monster targets are now completely restored upon loading a game, regardless of whether they were targeting the player, or they were infighting.
• A Boss Brain no longer needs to be in MAP30 for the monsters it spawns to telefrag the player.
• A bug has been fixed whereby monsters were allowed to be above or below other monsters after teleporting, when normally they wouldn’t be.
• Improvements have been made to the position of some elements in the menu and HUD.
• Optimizations have been made to the loading of maps, and the lighting of the player’s weapon.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the game could crash when trying to draw the player’s weapon in pitch black areas in some instances.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the CAPSLOCK key was not being turned off when quitting the game.
• Pressing CAPSLOCK during a game will now display an ALWAYS RUN ON/OFF message. If when quitting the game the CAPSLOCK key is still on, it will be turned back on the next time DOOM Retro is started.
• In the previous version of DOOM Retro, the default video driver was changed from Windows GDI to DirectX to help in improving performance in fullscreen mode. If DirectX wasn’t installed, DOOM Retro would exit with an error. Now, if one video driver fails, DOOM Retro will try the other driver before exiting with an error.
• All in-game messages are now output to stdout.txt, whether messages are enabled or not.
• Whenever the player or a monster is killed, a message is displayed in stdout.txt.
• Minor changes have been made to a few messages.
• A bug has been fixed whereby DOOM Retro would exit with an error if the IDDQD cheat was used to resurrect a dead player.

DOOM Retro v1.5.1 has been released! It may be downloaded here. This is a small point release and the changes are as follows:

• A splash screen is now displayed briefly when DOOM Retro is opened.
• Several optimizations have been made to improve DOOM Retro’s overall performance and reduce the size of its executable.
• DOOM Retro is now back to using the desktop resolution by default.
• If doom2.wad is selected by itself in the WAD launcher, nerve.wad will be automatically loaded if it’s in the same folder, and Hell on Earth will be preselected in the expansion menu. If nerve.wad is selected by itself, No Rest for the Living will be preselected instead.
• The DOOMWADDIR environment variable is now checked when automatically looking for IWAD files.
• No longer is anything output to the stdout.txt and stderr.txt files generated by SDL.
• A bug has been fixed whereby sometimes the press of a mouse button would register twice in a menu.
• The PAUSE key is now disabled on the title screen.
• The limit on the length of music in PWADs has been removed.
• A bug has been fixed whereby a crash would occur when changing to some levels.
• The sounds heard when selecting a skill level to start a new game, and using the IDCLEVxy cheat, will no longer be cut off.
• In Vanilla DOOM, when a game is saved, all monsters would lose their targets. This has now been changed so that if a monster has a target when a game is saved, when that game is then loaded, they will target the player.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the player could still switch to their fist even though they had a chainsaw if they had the berserk power-up in the previous map.
• A bug present in Vanilla DOOM has been fixed whereby the player’s fist would be selected at the start of a map even though they had a chainsaw and a berserk power-up in the previous map.
• doomretro.wad is no longer renamed to doomretro.wad.temp while the WAD launcher is open.
• Each time the player switches to their fist while they have the berserk power-up, the power-up sound will now be heard.
• The red palette effect of the berserk power-up is now slightly redder.
• Palette effects will no longer be displayed while a menu is on the screen, or while the player is dead.
• The player’s view will now lower if they happen to die while on top of something else.
• Further improvements have been made to how custom menu graphics from PWADs are displayed.
• DOOM Retro will no longer crash if the player walks over a very deep hole.
• The intensity of the vibration effect for XInput-compatible controllers when the player fires a weapon or is injured has been increased. Previously, the effect on the Logitech F710 controller could barely be felt.

To coincide with Quakecon 2014 and the reveal of a brand new DOOM, I’m proud and excited to finally set forth the release of v1.5 of DOOM Retro. This version sees an almost countless number of tweaks and optimizations, and a set of bloody effects that hopefully don’t come across as too “brutal”. 😉 You may download it for free here, and browse its ridiculously exhaustive release notes here.

I’d like to thank those on Twitter and the Doomworld forums for lending their support. My deepest gratitude especially goes to Simon Howard, Jeff Doggett and Jon Krazov, who have each gone out of their way to help me make DOOM Retro what it is today. DOOM Retro isn’t perfect... but I most certainly want it to be! If you yourself have any suggestions, feedback, or bug reports to give, I urge you, please, to participate. As always, you may follow @doomretro on Twitter, leave a comment on the DOOM Retro thread on the forums, leave a comment here on this post, help out with the DOOM Retro Wiki, or raise an issue on the GitHub repository. And most importantly, please consider giving a donation through PayPal by clicking on the button at the top right of this page.

An extensive amount of enhancements have been made to DOOM Retro’s overall performance and stability.

By default, DOOM Retro will now try running at a resolution of 1280×800. If that isn’t available, the desktop resolution will be used.

The following changes have been made to corpses:

• Corpses, hanging corpses, and pools of blood and/or guts that prepopulate maps are now each surrounded by an additional pool of blood.
• Corpses (including those that prepopulate maps) will now slide in reaction to the blasts from projectile and barrel explosions.
• The masses of some of the lighter monsters have been increased so they slide more realistically.
• As corpses slide, blood will now be smeared on the ground. In previous versions of DOOM Retro, blood splats were only ever produced when monsters were injured by hitscan weapons, but now, since corpses tend to slide from the force of impact, blood splats are produced when they are injured by projectile weapons as well.
• Corpses (and dropped items) now have torque applied to them, allowing them to slide around more realistically.
• Arch-viles can now resurrect corpses that prepopulate maps.
• Blood will no longer be produced as monsters are being crushed by a moving sector, but when they do finally die, instead of a small pile of blood and guts, a larger pool of blood in the correct color is produced. The same happens for corpses under closing doors.
• These various new corpse-related changes can be toggled on and off by using any combination of flags with the new corpse setting in doomretro.cfg. It’s set to mirror|slide|smearblood|moreblood by default.

A bug has been fixed whereby mouse movement wasn’t smooth for some users.

The lower mouse sensitivity settings are now slightly slower. The default setting has been increased from 12 to 16 to accommodate for this.

Blood splats will no longer be spawned on additional animated flats present in PWADs.

Weapons dropped by Shotgun Guys and Heavy Weapon Dudes when they die are no longer randomly mirrored by default. This feature can be reenabled by changing the new mirrorweapons setting in doomretro.cfg to true.

Blood is now randomly mirrored.

The limit has been removed on the number of monsters a Boss Brain can spawn.

A bug from Vanilla DOOM has been fixed whereby spawn cubes would miss east and west targets. See the DOOM Wiki for more information.

A bug has been whereby shooting at a monster being raised by an Arch-vile could cause the game to crash.

Floating monsters (Cacodemons, Pain Elementals and Lost Souls) can no longer get stuck together.

The corpses of Cacodemons will no longer sometimes get suspended in midair.

A bug has been fixed whereby a frame in the Cacodemon’s death sequence wasn’t displaying correctly.

Elements on the intermission screen are now positioned better if custom graphics from PWADs are used.

The player’s bob has been reduced by 25% to correspond with the latest official versions of DOOM. A playerbob setting has been created in doomretro.cfg to change this. The default value is 75%.

The player’s weapon bob is now slightly smoother, and is centered when a shot is fired.

XBOX 360 controllers will now vibrate when a weapon is fired, and also when the chainsaw is idle.

The limits on the number of moving ceilings and platforms in a level have been removed.

The message displayed when DOOM Retro is run for the first time has been updated to indicate that “additional PWAD files may also be selected by CTRL–clicking on them” in the WAD launcher.

PWADs can now be selected without an IWAD in the WAD launcher. DOOM Retro will first look for the required IWAD in the same folder as the PWAD, and if it isn’t found, will then look in the last folder an IWAD was loaded successfully.

Similarly, PWADs can now be specified on the command-line without an IWAD. If no –IWAD command-line parameter is present, DOOM Retro will first look for the required IWAD in the same folder as the PWAD, and if it isn’t found, will then look in the last folder an IWAD was loaded successfully.

A bug has been fixed whereby DOOM Retro may have crashed silently after selecting a WAD in the WAD launcher.

The command-line parameter –EXPANSION may now be used. Use –EXPANSION 1 to autostart DOOM II: Hell On Earth, and use –EXPANSION 2 to autostart DOOM II: No Rest For The Living (if NERVE.WAD is specified using –FILE or –PWAD).

The value that can be specified by the –WARP command-line parameter can now be of the form “ExMy” or “MAPxy”.

If a FREEDOOM IWAD is loaded in DOOM Retro, a message is displayed explaining that “FREEDOOM requires a BOOM–compatible source port, and is therefore unable to be opened”. This message won’t be displayed if the IWAD is loaded with an additional PWAD, so FREEDOOM can be used as a resource for the maps present in that PWAD.

Further improvements have been made when using custom graphics in PWADs, particularly if FREEDOOM is being used.

A bug from Vanilla DOOM has been fixed whereby corrupt texture names would be displayed in the error if a texture couldn’t be found. See the DOOM Wiki for more information.

A bug has been fixed whereby pressing the ENTER key or the left mouse button when in the help screen wouldn’t restore widescreen mode.

The speed of turning with the gamepad’s right thumbstick when holding down the left trigger to run has been reduced slightly.

The screen is now a constant tint of red while the player has the berserk power-up and their fist selected.

The blur and grayscale settings that control the menu background have been removed from doomretro.cfg. The menu background will now always be blurred and gray.

A bug has been fixed whereby the position of some items would be affected by moving platforms nearby.

To better replicate the look of CRT monitors, which are/were not as bright as current LCD monitors, desaturation is now applied to DOOM Retro’s graphics. Changing the saturation setting in doomretro.cfg to 0 gives a grayscale effect, 1.0 is normal saturation, and 0.75 is the default.

gammalevel has been changed to just gamma in doomretro.cfg.

A bug has been fixed whereby non-solid hanging corpses would drop to the floor when above a moving sector in some instances.

ALT + F4 will now quit the game instantly without prompting.

A bug has been fixed whereby the music on certain maps wouldn’t loop correctly.

Monsters of the same species are now able to infight using projectiles when the player dies.

The map names Keen and IDKFA in DOOM II (BFG Edition) are now correctly identified when saving a game.

To allow neater sorting in the Pictures\DOOM RETRO folder, determiners are now put at the end of screenshot names. For example, the file The Inmost Dens.bmp becomes Inmost Dens, The.bmp.

MUS_DDTBLU is now played instead of MUS_DDTBL2 when using the IDMUS09 cheat in NERVE.WAD.

The lighting of sprites has been changed slightly.

The edges of the automap have been darkened slightly.

Sounds are no longer cut off once an object has been removed. For example, rocket and barrel explosions are now slightly longer.

When exiting a level, the exit switch will now be updated before toggling widescreen mode off.

Brightmaps can now be toggled off using the brightmaps setting in doomretro.cfg.

A bug has been fixed whereby the IDKFA cheat would still register when the player already had everything the cheat provided.

Armor will no longer flash in the HUD when it is low.

The clip graphic in the HUD has been shifted upwards by 1 pixel.

Monsters are now smarter, and will avoid crushing ceilings and other damaging areas.

The game will no longer crash if bloodsplats is set to 0 in doomretro.cfg.

Translucency effects are now improved for white objects on a blue background.

A homindicator setting has been added to doomretro.cfg. It is false by default.

A bug has been fixed whereby the screen wouldn’t flash red if the player received only 1% damage.

The smoke trail of Revenant projectiles has been positioned better.

The bloodsplatsvisible setting has been removed.

Widescreen mode is now retained the next time DOOM Retro is run if it happens to crash in a 4:3 mode.

The chance of the super shotgun gibbing a monster at point blank range has been increased slightly.

If a screenshot is taken with the PRINTSCREEN key when not in a game, the resulting file will be named accordingly: Title.bmp, Help.bmp, Intermission.bmp or Finale.bmp.

The CAPSLOCK key is turned off if on when quitting the game.

Some of the less-used mouse controls from Vanilla DOOM have been reimplemented. Disabled by default, they can be reenabled using the following settings in doomretro.cfg:

• Set novert to true to allow vertical mouse movement to move the player forward/back.
• Set mouse_forward to a mouse button to move forward.
• Set mouse_strafe to a mouse button to strafe.
• Set dclick_use to true so double-clicking the mouse buttons set by mouse_forward and mouse_strafe above will perform a use action.

A bug has been fixed whereby the values middle and right representing mouse buttons in doomretro.cfg were switched.

Now pressing a key the first time on a finale text screen will display all the text, and a second press will then advance to the next map.

A bug has been fixed whereby pressing the SPACEBAR to advance a finale text screen would carry over to the following map, and cause the player to use a switch if they started directly in front of one (such as is the case for MAP07: Dead Simple in DOOM II: Hell On Earth).

The flashing key in the HUD will now be updated if the player tries opening another locked door that requires a different key to the one currently flashing.