DOOM Retro v1.7.1 has been released! It may be downloaded here. This is a small point release and the changes it brings are as follows:

• Optimizations have been made to further improve the overall performance of DOOM Retro.
• The stray brown pixel in the super shotgun’s sprite has now been removed from all the frames that it appears.
• Red blood splats are now slightly darker.
• A warning is now displayed in the console when a map contains an unknown object.
• Warnings are now displayed in the console when the player enters a sector, crosses a line, or shoots a switch with an unknown special.
• Sounds are now made again when liquid sectors move up or down.
• The file doom2.wad is no longer autoloaded if the –FILE command-line parameter without –IWAD.
• A warning is now displayed in the console if the versions of sdl2.dll and SDL2_mixer.dll don’t match the versions that DOOM Retro was compiled with.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the game would crash when trying to render sprites that had been manipulated with DeHackEd.
• The “screen shot” string may now be changed with DeHackEd.
• Several further improvements have been made to DeHackEd support.
• The HOME and END keys will now scroll to the top and bottom of the console output, if the player has started scrolling up with the PGUP key.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the game would crash when using the bind CCMD to bind an action to some keyboard controls.
• save and load CCMDs have now been implemented.
• Savegames are now saved with a file extension of .save rather than .dsg.
• The new savegamefolder CVAR shows where savegame files are saved.
• The new totalbloodsplats CVAR shows the total number of blood splats currently in the map.
• The r_bloodsplats CVAR has been renamed to r_maxbloodsplats.
• If the player saves a game on one map, finishes that map and then starts the next one, if they then die without saving again, the savegame for the previous map will be loaded, rather than the player “pistol starting” on the new map.
• The Arch-vile’s fire attack is no longer clipped in liquid.
• A bug has been fixed in some instances whereby some objects were still being clipped and bobbing when the sector they were in was no longer liquid.
• The new thinglist CCMD will list all things in the current level, including their (x,y,z) coordinates.
• The new maplist CCMD will list all the maps available to the player.
• Graphics will now automatically be reset if the vid_screenresolution is changed to desktop.
• The player’s view height is now smooth when descending between two liquid sectors of different heights.
• The widescreen HUD will now remain on the screen while the player is dead. No ammo will be displayed, though, to be consistent with the status bar.
• The par time displayed on the intermission screen is now positioned better.
• The normal use of the CAPSLOCK key is now disabled in the console, and will toggle the “always run” feature on/off instead.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the value displayed by the totalkills CCMD wouldn’t take into account any Pain Elementals killed using the kill CCMD.
• The console is now automatically closed when using the endgame, exitmap, kill and map CCMDs.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the map name in the automap was displayed incorrectly when using ZDL to launch the game.
• The “fuzzy” edges of Spectre shadows are now paused while the console is open.

After almost 3 months of some pretty solid development, I'm proud to finally announce the availability of DOOM Retro v1.7. This is a major release, and contains many differences to prior versions, the most significant of which are:

SDL2 Support

DOOM Retro now uses SDL 2.0.3 for its graphics and audio. This brings significant performance improvements, as the screen is now scaled using hardware acceleration.

The Console

DOOM Retro now includes a console. It may be opened at any time by pressing the ~ key. The DOOM Retro Wiki will be updated in the coming days with instructions on the many different commands and variables that can be entered in the console, but in the meantime, try cmdlist and cvarlist.

Uncapped Framerates

DOOM Retro now has uncapped framerates, and through the use of interpolation, player, monster and sector movement is now much smoother, resembling the feel of more modern shooters. (Of course, you can always cap the framerate back to 35 FPS by changing the vid_capfps cvar in the console.)

You may download DOOM Retro v1.7 for free here, and browse its ridiculously exhaustive release notes here.

I would like to thank AnotherLife, Jon Krazov and Jeff Doggett for providing so many bug reports and suggestions over the past few weeks, AlexMax for his uncapped framerate code, Fabian Greffrath for his SDL2 code, and everybody else for their continued support. DOOM Retro has come a long way since its release on December 10, 2013, and although it may not be to everybody’s liking, it truly is my ideal version of DOOM. As always, if you have any suggestions, feedback, or bug reports, I encourage you to participate. You may follow @doomretro on Twitter, leave a comment on the DOOM Retro thread on the forums, leave a comment on this post, or raise an issue on the GitHub repository. And only if you want to, please consider giving a donation through PayPal by clicking on that button to the right.