In celebration of DOOM’s 21st birthday (and DOOM Retro’s first!), point release v1.6.4 is now available for download. Here’s a list of the changes it brings:

• Several optimizations have been made in an attempt to further improve the overall performance of DOOM Retro.
• DeHackEd files (*.DEH and *.BEX) are now displayed and can be loaded in the WAD launcher. CTRL-click to select them along with the WAD file(s) you want to load.
• When multiple PWADs are selected in the WAD launcher, and with no IWAD, every PWAD will now be checked until the IWAD required is determined, rather than potentially failing if the first PWAD checked contains no map data.
• The FPS counter will now work correctly when –DEVPARM is specified on the command-line.
• Problems with movement of the mouse have been fixed when starting DOOM Retro in windowed mode.
• Panning when follow mode is off in the automap is now back to working correctly.
• Several changes have been made so that the window caption is now updated correctly.
• Smoke trails and bullet puffs are now greyer then before, and displayed using 33% translucency rather than additive translucency.
• The player’s view will no longer be lowered further due to the footclip setting when standing in a self-referencing sector.
• Improvements have been made to switching weapons using a gamepad.
• For non-widescreen displays, the status bar is no longer displayed when in the automap if it isn’t displayed during a game.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the screensize setting was being reset at startup for non-widescreen displays.
• The “dead zones” of the left and right thumbsticks of gamepads can now be adjusted using the gamepad_leftdeadzone and gamepad_rightdeadzone settings in doomretro.cfg. They are 24% and 26.5% by default.
• There are now settings for every control in the automap, for both the keyboard and gamepad, in doomretro.cfg.
• The sfx_volume and music_volume settings in doomretro.cfg have had their underscores removed, and their values are now displayed as percentages.
• Smoke trails are no longer displayed for Revenants’ non-homing rockets, as intended.
• The menu may still be opened with the gamepad’s START button if gamepad_sensitivity has been reduced to 0.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the help screens wrongly indicated that the A and D keys were used to turn rather than strafe.
• The overall gamepad sensitivity has been increased even more, and the default of gamepad_sensitivity has now been doubled from 16 to 32.
• The player will now bob as intended when playerbob is greater than 75%.
• Changes have been made to the messages displayed when adding and clearing marks.

DOOM Retro v1.6.3 has been released and may be downloaded here. Although yet another point release, it includes a significant amount of changes, and they are as follows:

• Several internal optimizations have been made in an attempt to improve the overall performance of DOOM Retro.
• Decorative corpses are now randomly mirrored when a map is loaded.
• A potential overflow has been fixed if there was more than 32 characters in a savegame description.
• Cheat sequences can now be overridden in DeHackEd lumps and files.
• The bobbing up and down of floating powerups can now be disabled by setting floatbob to false in doomretro.cfg.
• The window caption is now updated when ending a game through the options menu.
• DOOM2.WAD savegames are no longer placed in the NERVE.WAD folder.
• A bug has been fixed whereby extreme slowdown would occur if a large amount of monsters (and blood splats) were on a moving sector.
• Pressing the window’s maximize button will now switch to fullscreen mode.
• The messages displayed when the player picks up ammo are now accurate, since the amount can vary depending on the skill level chosen and/or whether a monster dropped it or not.
• A bug has been fixed whereby monsters were not always remembering their last target when attacked by something else. This would affect monster infighting in some instances.
• Widescreen mode is now supported in windowed mode. Rather than displaying pillarboxes, the window will expand and contract horizontally as necessary when toggling widescreen mode on and off.
• The display of the “screen size” slider in the options menu is now fixed when in windowed mode.
• The width and height of the window are no longer set to be even numbers.
• A stretched cursor will no longer sometimes briefly appear in the center of the window when opening the menu in windowed mode.
• DOOM Retro should no longer crash when switching between fullscreen and windowed modes with ALT + ENTER, and when resizing the window.
• If NERVE.WAD is loaded, the window caption will now be updated to indicate the selected expansion when in the expansion and skill level menus before starting a game.
• Shadows are now saved in savegames, even when the shadows setting in doomretro.cfg is false.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the value of the bloodsplats setting in doomretro.cfg was always set to the default of unlimited regardless of what it was changed to.
• If a setting in doomretro.cfg that has a range of values is set out of range, it will be capped at the minimum or maximum, rather than changed back to the default.
• A mapfixes setting in doomretro.cfg has been implemented to allow the several hundred map-specific fixes that DOOM Retro applies to be enabled or disabled by type. The default is linedefs|sectors|things|vertexes.
• The weapon number keys can now be changed by altering the key_weaponx settings in doomretro.cfg.
• A bug has been fixed whereby some combinations of flags used by the corpses setting in doomretro.cfg weren’t being considered valid.
• Key settings in doomretro.cfg can no longer be set to function keys.
• The controls set by gamepad_prevweapon and gamepad_nextweapon can no longer be used when the game is paused.
• Faster switching to the next and previous weapons is now allowed.
• Improvements have been made to the menu in HacX: Twitch ‘n Kill.
• Smoke trails are no longer applied to Revenant non-homing rockets by default.
• Instead of just on and off, the smoketrails setting in doomretro.cfg has been changed to allow smoke trails to be enabled or disabled depending on who fired the projectile. The setting can be any combination of the following flags: player (smoke trails for player rockets), revenant1 (smoke trails for revenant non-homing rockets), revenant2 (smoke trails for revenant homing rockets) and cyberdemon (smoke trails for cyberdemon rockets). The default is player|revenant2|cyberdemon.
• A bug has been fixed whereby pressing the CAPSLOCK key on the titlescreen will cause the use of the key to then become inverted (that is, turning CAPSLOCK on would turn “always run” off, and vice versa).
• The display of the asterisk character is now allowed in a savegame description.
• The player arrow in the automap is now displayed correctly when zoomed in.
• A bug has hopefully been fixed that caused objects to sometimes disappear when standing on sector boundaries.
• Several changes have been made to improve DOOM Retro’s DeHackEd support.
• A bug has been fixed present in Vanilla DOOM whereby the vertical position of an arch-vile’s fire attack could be set incorrectly in some instances.
• There is no longer any small upward thrust when the player is receives an arch-vile’s fire attack while “no clipping mode” is on using the IDCLIP cheat.

DOOM Retro v1.6.2 has been released and may be downloaded here. This is a small point release and the changes are as follows:

• A bug, inadvertently introduced in v1.6.1, has been fixed whereby the wrong colored keys would appear in the HUD.
• The default value for the saturation setting in doomretro.cfg has been changed from 0.75 to 1.00.
• The gamma setting in doomretro.cfg has been renamed to gammacorrectionlevel, and the alias off can now be used when it is set to 0.
• Blood splats will now appear in maps from PWADs that use a DeHackEd file or lump.
• The clipping of the bottom of things will now be updated when the sector they’re in changes to/from liquid.
• Spectres now have slightly lighter shadows than the other monsters, with fuzzy edges.
• Minor changes have been made to the values of settings in doomretro.cfg. The true/false aliases now appear as on/off, and the none alias now appears as a hyphen. Aliases yes/no may also be used.
• Setting the mouse sensitivity to 0 will no longer disable the gamepad as well.
• The range of gamepad sensitivity has been increased.
• Several minor changes have been made to the properties of pickups in HacX: Twitch ‘n Kill.
• The , and . keys can now also be used to strafe left and right, as they could in Vanilla DOOM. They are changed using the key_strafeleft2 and key_straferight2 settings in doomretro.cfg.
• Shifted characters are now allowed when entering savegame descriptions. (In Vanilla DOOM, pressing SHIFT + /, for example, would still display “/” rather than “?”.)

DOOM Retro v1.6.1 has been released! It may be downloaded here. This is a small point release and the changes are as follows:

• If a DeHackEd file (with a .DEH extension) is present with the same name and in the same folder as the selected PWAD, it will be automatically opened as well.
• Improvements have been made to when the player slides against walls.
• A bug has been fixed whereby the screen would not render fully after switching from fullscreen to windowed modes when pressing ALT + ENTER.
• Several compatibility fixes have been made when using DeHacked files and lumps.
• Savegames for Back To Saturn X are now separated by episode.
• A bug has been fixed whereby HacX: Twitch ‘n Kill wouldn’t load at all. Specific support has now been added for it.
• Fake contrast is now applied to outdoor areas again.
• Thing triangles no longer appear for the invisible corpses in Chex Quest when using the IDDT cheat in the automap.
• The default value of snd_maxslicetime_ms has been changed from 120 to 28. This is consistent with Chocolate DOOM’s default, and reduces the slight lag when playing sounds.
• The centeredweapon setting has been added to doomretro.cfg. Setting it to true will center the player’s weapon each time it’s fired (the default). If false, Vanilla DOOM’s behavior is used.
• A bug has been fixed whereby input would momentarily become stuck if the splash screen was skipped at startup.
• Blood splats are now green in Chex Quest as intended.
• A bug has been fixed whereby switching to and from the chainsaw using the number keys really quickly would cause either a crash, or the player’s weapon to disappear completely.
• The player’s weapon bob is now consistent with Vanilla DOOM.

In anticipation of New Hallows’ Eve, I’m proud to finally announce the release of version 1.6 of DOOM Retro. This iteration sees many, many new features, the most significant of which includes dynamic shadows, partially submerged objects in liquid, and DeHackEd support. 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 who “get” what I’m trying to achieve with this port, and for lending their support. My deepest gratitude especially goes to Jon Krazov for being my beta tester for this release, and Luke Jones for contributing some of his coding expertise. 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, or the DOOM Retro page on Facebook, 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 in 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.

Further enhancements have been made to DOOM Retro’s overall performance and stability.

Widescreen mode is no longer stretched horizontally on displays with a greater aspect ratio than 16:10.

Monsters, pickups, corpses and rockets now all cast dynamic shadows on the ground. These shadows are not cast when in or over liquid, nor when the player has either the light amplification visor or invulnerability power-ups. Shadows may be disabled by setting shadows to false in doomretro.cfg. Shadows are translucent, but if translucency is set to false in doomretro.cfg, they are solid black.

All objects are now partially submerged when standing in liquid. This feature may be disabled by setting footclip to false in doomretro.cfg.

The player’s view is now lowered slightly when standing in liquid. Setting footclip to false in doomretro.cfg will also disable this.

Less friction is applied to corpses and dropped items when in liquid.

Blood splats are now drawn regardless of how far they are away from the player.

The firing animation of the Heavy Weapon Dude when facing to the right is now smoother.

Since they all cast shadows now, the Lost Soul, Cacodemon and Pain Elemental are higher off the ground in DOOM II’s cast sequence.

Deaths are now randomly flipped in the cast sequence.

It is now possible to warp to episodes beyond episode 4 using the –WARP command-line parameter.

DOOM Retro now supports DeHackEd files and lumps, including those with BOOM extensions. DeHackEd files may be opened by using the –DEH or –BEX command-line parameters. DEHACKED lumps will automatically be parsed unless –NODEH is specified on the command-line.

If a map from a PWAD is loaded, and no DEHACKED lump is present in the PWAD specifying its name, then the PWAD’s name will also be included in the automap.

The intermission screen is now displayed at the end of ExM8.

The amount of kills is now correctly capped at 100% on the intermission screen in all instances.

Walls are now drawn with even greater precision, fixing many graphic anomalies that may appear when the player stands on a line with a change in height.

Fake contrast is no longer applied to walls in outdoor areas.

The position of floating items has been raised off the ground slightly.

A message is now displayed in stdout.txt when an Arch-vile resurrects a monster.

The mouse controls that select next and previous weapons can now be set by changing mouse_nextweapon and mouse_prevweapon in doomretro.cfg. They are set to wheeldown and wheelup by default.

The use action may now be bound to a mouse button by changing the mouse_use setting in doomretro.cfg. It is set to none by default.

The maximum mouse sensitivity has been doubled from 64 to 128.

Mouse and gamepad sensitivity are now two separate settings.

Both the mouse and gamepad are now completely disabled when sensitivity is set to 0 and not in a menu. Previously, only the turning movement of both devices was disabled.

The overall gamepad sensitivity has now been reduced slightly.

Moving sliders in the menu with the gamepad is now faster.

When a game is loaded, including when a savegame is autoloaded after a player’s death, a message is now displayed.

A version number is now embedded in each savegame to avoid a crash when attempting to load an older and incompatible savegame.

Minor changes have been made to the help screen.

The red screen tint when the player has the berserk power-up has been reduced slightly.

All drop shadows in the menus, in the HUD and on messages are now solid when translucency is false.

Specific support has been added for Chex Quest:

• The window caption is displayed as “Chex Quest”.
• CHEX.DEH is automatically loaded if it’s present in the same folder as CHEX.WAD and –NODEH isn’t specified on the command-line.
• The episode menu is skipped.
• No obituaries are printed to stdout.txt.
• No items are dropped.
• No additional blood is spawned around map decorations.
• All blood splats are green.
• Since corpses are effectively invisible, there are no blood splats or crunch sounds made if an invisible corpse happens to be under a door.
• The screen will flash green rather than red when the player is injured.

Specific support has also been added for both episodes of Back to Saturn X:

• The window caption is displayed as “Back to Saturn X E1: Get Out Of My Stations” or “Back to Saturn X E2: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks”.
• DOOM Retro’s custom sprite offsets, previously only used with the official DOOM IWADS, are now used. This fixes a bug that caused some level decorations to “twitch” as they animated.
• If only BTSX_E2A.WAD is loaded from the WAD launcher, then BTSX_E2B.WAD is automatically loaded as well, and vice-versa.
• The map number in the message displayed when using the IDCLEVxy cheat is of the form “ExMyy” to match what’s displayed in the automap.
• To avoid a crash, you are no longer able to warp to a DOOM II map that is not replaced by a map in Back to Saturn X’s PWAD, using either the –WARP command-line parameter or the IDCLEVxy cheat.

The amount of blood splats produced when crushing corpses is now based on their width.

The edges of blood splats have now been softened slightly.

Decorative corpses can now be crushed.

Changes have been made to the text on the splash screen.

The splash screen now fades onto and off of the screen at startup.

The splash screen may now be accelerated by pressing a key or button.

Monsters will now try to move away from tall dropoffs.

When spawning blood splats around decorations when a map is loaded, blood splats will no longer be spawned on floors close to but higher than the decoration itself.

Textures RROCK05 to RROCK08, and SLIME09 to SLIME12, are no longer considered liquids, and therefore blood splats can now appear on them.

Further improvements have been made in detecting Mancubus fireball collisions.

Spawn cubes are no longer spawned when the –NOMONSTERS command-line parameter is used.

A bug has been fixed whereby a flashing skull key in the HUD would cause other keys next to it to shift slightly.

In the automap, lines won’t be shown as being teleport lines (that is, in dark red) unless:

• it is part of an obvious teleport by being adjacent to a floor with a GATEx texture,
• the player has been teleported by it, or,
• the player is using the IDDT cheat.

All settings in doomretro.cfg are now validated at startup. If any setting is found to be invalid, it will be reset to its default.

Improvements have been made to the smoke trails of player and Cyberdemon rockets, and Revenant projectiles. The smoke will take slightly longer to dissipate, and is better randomized.

The heights of Revenants and Arch-viles have been restored to their lower defaults. Many maps rely on this, and so therefore this fixes instances whereby sometimes these monsters would be stuck and wouldn’t attack the player.

A monster will no longer go fullbright when firing a projectile if they are facing away from the player.

A bug has been fixed whereby if an action was assigned to the I key, it wouldn’t work since “I” is the first character of every cheat.

The patch offsets for textures SKY1 and BIGDOOR7 have been corrected.

Long map titles in the automap and when saving a game, as well as player messages, are now truncated and followed with an ellipsis.

The read-only xinput setting has been removed from doomretro.cfg.

A read-only version setting has been added to doomretro.cfg.

If doomretro.cfg was deleted, and then regenerated by running DOOM Retro, the defaults for the corpses and videodriver settings are now correct.

The DOOM Retro icon is now always used in the window caption.

All trademark symbols have been removed from the window caption.

Multiple PWADs may now be selected in the WAD launcher without an IWAD.

Monsters will no longer go to sleep after killing a monster and not seeing the player anymore.

All palette effects are now removed while a menu is displayed or the game is paused.

Improvements have been made to the translucency of the blue armor in the HUD.

The player can now still pass under solid hanging corpses if there is sufficient room.

A bug has been fixed whereby the , key was being incorrectly mapped, causing it to act like the - key if it was bound to anything.

Use of the ALT and CTRL keys in the menu has been disabled.

Empty savegame slots may no longer be selected in the load game menu.

Only update savegame descriptions of the form “ExMy” in DOOM games, not DOOM II games.

The text caret in the save game menu is now better positioned when using a PWAD with a custom character set.

A bug has been fixed whereby the position of the skull cursor could be misplaced when exiting and then returning to the menu using the gamepad in some instances.

The number of characters that can be entered in a savegame slot is now calculated correctly.

If the CAPSLOCK key was on before DOOM Retro was run, it is now turned back on as necessary when quitting.

Player messages and the map name in the automap are now translucent and have drop shadows when using a PWAD with a custom character set.

A bug has been fixed whereby an Arch-vile could resurrect a monster for it to instantly become stuck in another monster.

The player’s screen will no longer flash red if they are hit by a projectile while already dead.

A bug has been fixed whereby the game would crash when using the –NOSFX or –NOSOUND command-line parameters.

A bug has been fixed whereby you could switch weapons when zooming in the automap if both actions were set to the gamepad’s left and right shoulder buttons.

Skies with heights other than 128 pixels are now rendered correctly.

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.

And here we go once again! Announcing yet another small point release, DOOM Retro v1.4.3! Many small bugs have been fixed in this one, along with the introduction of a new and interesting feature if pixel art happens to be your thing. You may download it here. And here’s a list of what’s changed and fixed:

• The screen size can now be adjusted correctly in the options menu when not in a game.
• The size of the pixels when the graphic detail is “LOW” can now be changed by editing the pixelwidth and pixelheight settings in doomretro.cfg. Both are set to a default of 2.
• A bug has been fixed whereby pressing ENTER to save a game in an empty savegame slot wouldn’t clear that slot and replace it with the name of the current map.
• Barrels are no longer randomly mirrored when they explode.
• Some settings in doomretro.cfg are now sorted differently.
• A bug has been fixed whereby graphic anomalies could appear in some parts of some maps.
• The correct graphics will now be used for the titles of the load and save game menus, if custom graphics are present in a PWAD.
• If there are custom sprites present in a PWAD, they will now animate correctly.
• nerve.wad is now correctly recognized by the –FILE command-line parameter.
• –PWAD is now allowed as an alternate to the –FILE command-line parameter.
• Checking what things are on a floor that raises or lowers is now more accurate.
• Optimizations have been made when drawing the sky.
• The sky is now flipped vertically when repeated, as originally intended.
• A bug has been fixed whereby randomly colored pixels would appear along the very top of the screen when drawing the sky in some instances.
• There are now two settings in doomretro.cfg that control how many blood splats appear. bloodsplats_total (previously known as just bloodsplats) controls the total number of blood splats spawned in a level. It’s default is still unlimited. bloodsplats_visible is a new setting that specifies the number of blood splats that will appear on the screen at any one time. It’s default is 1024.
• A bug has been fixed whereby use of the –EPISODE, –SKILL and –WARP command-line parameters would cause the game to silently crash.
• Gamepads now work correctly.

The development of DOOM Retro is still going strong, and has no signs of letting up! After only 1 week since the last one, another small bug-busting point release, DOOM Retro v1.4.2, has now been made available! You may download it here. And here’s what’s changed:

• Several more limits have been removed, allowing larger and more detailed maps to be loaded without crashing.
• DOOM Retro will now try to fix some common map errors before loading a map.
• Optimizations have been made to the loading of large levels, and the handling of gamepads.
• The smoke trails of the player’s and Cyberdemon’s rockets can now be disabled by setting smoketrails to false in doomretro.cfg. It is true by default.
• The limit on the size of savegames has been removed, allowing the game to be saved on larger maps without exiting with an error.
• Several changes have been made to the HUD:
  • The HUD is now displayed in non-widescreen modes.
  • The drop shadows of the numbers in the HUD are now slightly lighter.
  • The HUD has been shifted downwards slightly.
  • Values in the HUD will now start flashing at 20 (rather than 10), and the speed at which they flash will increase the closer they get to 0.
  • When the player is invulnerable, only the red part of the medikit turns gold, and not the health value.
  • Keys are no longer seen to disappear from the HUD before wiping the screen when using the IDCLEVxy cheat to warp to a new map.
• The positions of blood splats are now randomized better.
• A memory leak has been fixed when loading a savegame.
• A bug has been fixed where the gamma correction level was being reset to 0.75 each time DOOM Retro was loaded, regardless of what it was previously set to.
• A bug has been fixed whereby some users were experiencing jerky mouse movement.
• A flashing HOM (“Hall of Mirrors”) indicator has been implemented. The screen will flash red in place of missing textures, but not when the player has enabled “no clipping mode” using the IDCLIP or IDSPISPOPD cheats.
• When saving a game, the savegame description will only be updated to the current map name if it hasn’t been changed to something other than map name previously.

DOOM Retro v1.4.1 has now been released. It may be downloaded here. This small point release fixes a rather nasty bug when adjusting the sound volume, and includes a few new additional changes. The release notes are as follows:

• A bug has been fixed whereby the sound would become disabled if adjusting the volume through the menu or pausing and then unpausing the game.
• The visplane limit has been removed, allowing for more detailed levels to run without crashing.
• A sound will now be heard if a wrong selection is made in the WAD launcher and it needs to reopen.
• When a Heavy Weapon Dude is killed, their corpse is no longer randomly mirrored.
• Projectiles will now pass through map decorations like they do in Vanilla DOOM. (Please note that this particular change means savegames from previous versions of DOOM Retro won’t work with DOOM Retro v1.4.1.)
• If music can’t be loaded for a particular map, that map will still load without music rather than the game exiting with an error.

DOOM Retro v1.4 is now available for your downloading pleasure! This version corrects a couple of nasty (and embarrassing) bugs, is much more well behaved with Vanilla DOOM mods, and introduces a few new features such as a low graphic detail mode, enhancements to the widescreen HUD, and most importantly: more blood. You may download DOOM Retro here.

Once again, many thanks to those on Twitter and the Doomworld forums for providing their support. Your help truly makes this hobby/obsession of mine all the more worthwhile. If you have any suggestions, feedback, or bug reports to give, please feel free to participate. As always, you may follow @doomretro on Twitter, leave a comment on the DOOM Retro thread on the forums, leave a comment on this post, help out with the DOOM RETRO Wiki or raise an issue on the GitHub repository. And if you’d like to earn my undying, unconditional love(!), please consider giving a donation through PayPal by clicking on that ever so enticing button to the right. C’mon. You know you wanna.

Several optimizations have been made that improve the overall performance of DOOM Retro.

When DOOM Retro is opened for the first time the following message is now displayed:

There are now 2 levels of graphic detail, “HIGH” and “LOW”, adjustable through either the options menu or by pressing the F5 key. The “HIGH” level has the same graphic detail as in previous versions of DOOM Retro. It has an effective resolution of 640×400 (or 640×336 in widescreen) and is the default. The “LOW” level is new, and has an effective resolution of 320×200 (the resolution used in Vanilla DOOM).

When the title screen is displayed, it will now alternate with the credits screen.

The gray text in the status bar is now twice the resolution when the graphic detail is set to “HIGH”.

DOOM Retro’s new enhanced status bar. Click to zoom.

A bug has been fixed whereby the sounds of Revenant and Cyberdemon projectiles would become corrupted in some instances.

The file default.cfg has been renamed to doomretro.cfg.

The background when a menu is displayed or the game is paused is now in grayscale, as well as being blurred and darkened. This may be disabled by changing grayscale to false in doomretro.cfg.

The menu background’s blur is now calculated differently, and should resolve the performance issues some users were experiencing.

Minor corrections have been made to the drop shadows and kerning of text in the menus.

Menus are now always centered vertically.

Many changes have been made so that custom graphics in PWADs are now handled better, when previously they may have either ignored completely or misaligned.

When changing the music using the IDMUS cheat, the name of the music will be displayed.

When changing the map using the IDCLEVxy cheat, the name of the map will be displayed.

When using the IDBEHOLDx cheats, the message displayed will indicate if the power-up is being toggled on or off.

In doomretro.cfg, menublur has been renamed to just blur, show_messages to messages, usegamma to gammalevel, and screenblocks to screensize.

When the player’s health, ammo or armor drops to 10 or less, those values will start flashing in the widescreen HUD as a warning.

When the player is invulnerable (either by having picked up an invulnerability power-up or using the IDDQD cheat), their health will be displayed in gold in the widescreen HUD. This corresponds with the gold eyes of the player’s face in the status bar.

There are now 31 different gamma correction levels between 0.50 and 2.0 inclusive, in increments of 0.05. Gamma correction level 0.75 is still the default.

The first press of the F11 key will now display the current gamma correction level. Further presses of the key before the message disappears will then increase the level (or decrease the level if the SHIFT key is held down).

Autorepeat is now allowed for the F11 key.

The gamma correction level is now saved the moment it is changed.

The weapons dropped by Shotgun Guys and Heavy Weapon Dudes when they die are now mirrored horizontally at random, independent of their corpses.

A bug has been fixed whereby the player was unable to pick up stimpacks or medikits in the BFG Editions of DOOM or DOOM II.

There is now slightly more blood.

Because of some significant improvements to the drawing of blood splats, the number of blood splats that may be in a map is now unlimited. The bloodsplats setting in doomretro.cfg may still be changed from unlimited to a value between 0 and 32768 inclusive.

Blood splats are now mirrored horizontally at random for some additional variation.

The blood and blood splats from Spectres, as well as the player when they have the partial invisibility power-up, now appear with the same “fuzz effect”.

Blood splats are now drawn first and no longer overlap other sprites, making them appear closer to the ground.

When the mouse sensitivity is set to 0, the mouse is disabled. (And similarly, when a gamepad is in use, it is also disabled.)

The translucency of blue and green blood has been reduced slightly.

doomretro.wad no longer appears in the WAD launcher.

Any PWADs selected with doom1.wad in the WAD launcher will now be ignored rather than displaying an error.

nerve.wad can now be selected without doom2.wad in the WAD launcher, even when another PWAD is selected with it, and doom2.wad will be looked for automatically.

A bug has been fixed whereby the keys the player had previously found weren’t being restored when loading a savegame.

The location of GUS patches can now be specified using timidity_cfg_path in doomretro.cfg.

Rotate mode is now enabled by default in the automap.

Some minor changes have been made to the help screen.

Screenshots are now saved as Untitled.bmp if taken while in the help screen.

Messages will now timeout when the help screen is displayed.

The lighting in maps is now calculated differently slightly.

The small ‘3’ and ‘8’ digits used for marks in the automap, and the small ‘3’ digit in the status bar, have been altered slightly.

There is now a chance that the super shotgun may gib a monster when fired at point blank range. (This idea has been taken from Fabian Greffrath’s Crispy DOOM.)

After one month of some insanely rigorous coding, I’m proud to present DOOM Retro v1.3! This release continues to improve on the game’s stability and performance, fixes several bugs, and introduces a new widescreen HUD! Check out the long list of release notes for a full account on the changes. You may download DOOM Retro here.

Thank you to all those on Twitter and the Doomworld forums for providing their support. (A BIG “ありがとうございます” to 倉敷楠花 (Nanka Kurashiki) for allowing me to use an example of her freakin’ adorable fanart in this post.) I’m only just getting started with DOOM Retro, and if you have any suggestions, feedback, or bug reports, please feel free 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, help out with the DOOM Retro Wiki or raise an issue on the GitHub repository. And if you’d like to help out even more, please consider giving a donation through PayPal by clicking on that ever so enticing button to the right.

An extensive number of optimizations have been made that improve the overall performance of DOOM Retro.

A heads-up display (HUD) is now shown in widescreen mode.

Each element of the HUD is slightly translucent.

An additional press of the + key, or move of the “SCREEN SIZE” slider to the right in the options menu, will hide the HUD.

The HUD isn’t displayed while the player is dead.

If the player has the berserk power-up, and has his fist selected, the berserk power-up will replace the medikit in the HUD.

The keys that the player has picked up are displayed in the order they were found, from right to left.

If the player attempts to open a door they don’t have the key for, that key will flash in the HUD.

If the player has no armor, the keys are displayed along the right side of the screen.

The type of armor the player has (either green or blue armor) is displayed.

The background is now blurred when in a menu or the game is paused. This effect may be disabled by changing the menublur setting in default.cfg to false.

The green blood of Hell Knights and Barons of Hell is now slightly darker.

A bug has been fixed that existed in Vanilla DOOM that caused monsters to be able to see the player through walls, or not see the player when they should have, in some instances. Thank you to 倉敷楠花 (Nanka Kurashiki) for bringing this to my attention.

The PRINTSCRN key and ALT + ENTER have been added to the help screen.

The “HELP” title has been added to the help screen in DOOM II to be consistent with the other versions of DOOM.

The player’s weapon is no longer displayed in the help screen’s background.

Switching between widescreen and non-widescreen modes is now much cleaner. The status bar will no longer briefly appear at the bottom of the screen.

Several bugs have been fixed whereby some IWADs and PWADs would sometimes fail to load from the WAD launcher.

If the selection made in the WAD launcher is incorrect, it will reopen rather than exit with an error.

By popular demand, default.cfg is now saved in the same folder as doomretro.exe. To make it clear where the settings are, a copy of default.cfg is now included in the distribution.

The settings in default.cfg are now sorted alphabetically.

DOOM Retro is now less likely to crash if certain settings in default.cfg are set incorrectly.

The bloodsplats setting in default.cfg is now a number rather than true or false, and is 1024 by default.

A bug has been fixed whereby over 700 different level-specific fixes (replacing missing or incorrect textures, moving stuck objects, etc.) weren’t being applied.

Tweaks have been made to the animations of Zombiemen, Shotgun Guys and Mancubi.

Screenshots are now saved as a 256-color Windows BMP, reducing their size in kilobytes by more than 66%.

Pillarboxes are no longer saved in screenshots.

The PRINTSCRN key now no longer saves the screen to the clipboard when taking a screenshot.

Rotation in the automap is now more accurate.

A bug has been fixed whereby the crosshair could still decelerate from panning while the menu was displayed.

The red crosses in stimpacks are now darker to be consistent with medikits.

If a sprite is replaced with a custom sprite in a PWAD, any translucency will be removed and custom offsets won’t be applied.

The width of pickups are now calculated differently such that they are less likely to be suspended in midair when close to a change in height.

The TEKWALL1 texture (for example, as used on the green armor platform in E1M1: Hangar) is now displayed the same way as in Vanilla DOOM.

Windows accessibility shortcut keys are disabled during the game.

The WINDOWS key is now also disabled when in a window.

The pistol sound is now used when toggling messages in the options menu using the ← and → cursor keys.

Changes have been made to how mouse sensitivity is calculated such that it is now exactly the same as Chocolate DOOM.

The default mouse sensitivity has been increased.

Blood splats no longer appear on RROCK0x animated flats.

A bug has been fixed whereby if the “reject matrix” in a PWAD is empty, it will create an overflow and cause monsters to behave strangely. Thank you to jeff-d on the Doomworld forums for providing a solution to this.

The berserk power-up may now be toggled off using IDBEHOLDS cheat.

A bug has been fixed whereby the Lost Soul wouldn’t rotate correctly in DOOM II’s cast sequence.

Translucency may be disabled by setting translucency setting in default.cfg to false.

The fuzz effect is now applied to the muzzle flash of the player’s weapon when they have the partial invisibility power-up.

A bug has been fixed whereby some floors weren’t rising or lowering when they should. Thank you to Jon Krazov for bringing this to my attention.

key_prevweapon and key_nextweapon will no longer work when in a menu.

Savegame descriptions are no longer updated to the current map’s name when the player saves a game if they have previously edited it.

The correct skill level is now saved in savegames.

The ENTER key on the numeric keypad can now be used wherever the main ENTER key can be used.

DMENUPIC is now used on the intermission screen in DOOM II (BFG Edition).

There are no longer any overlapping drop shadows in the menus.

Keys are now positioned correctly in the status bar.

Version 1.2.1 of DOOM Retro is available to download now! This version contains a large number of obligatory fixes and enhancements, as you can see in the ridiculously extensive release notes, the most important of which is a considerable improvement in stability. DOOM Retro should no longer crash. (But if you happen to experience that it still does, please let me know!) You may download it here.

To sait people’s blood lust, DOOM Retro now includes a “blood conservation” feature. Every drop of blood that usually disappears in DOOM, as if by magic, will now pool on the floor! Feel free to make a mess...

I would like to thank all those who have helped me make DOOM Retro what it is today, and those who can appreciate it for what it is. I’ve worked very hard to make this my ideal DOOM experience, and intend to continue to mold and shape it well into the future. I urge those with feature suggestions, bug reports, etc. to please get involved by commenting this post, participating on the forums, or on Twitter. And once again, if you would please consider sparing a few dollars to assist with the continued development of DOOM Retro, I would be forever grateful! You may donate securely through PayPal by clicking on that button to the right.

DOOM Retro is now compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop.

DOOM Retro is now distributed with version 1.2.14 of SDL.dll and version 1.2.12 of SDL_mixer.dll.

doomretro.exe now has a new icon.

If no IWAD file is specified using the –IWAD command-line parameter, a standard Windows dialog box entitled “Where’s All the Data?” will now appear where one IWAD, and optionally one or more PWADs, can be selected.

DOOM Retro is now considerably more stable. The game will no longer crash when a Spectre is on the screen in some instances.

Many internal optimizations have been made.

A bug has been fixed that was present in Vanilla DOOM whereby bullets would pass through monsters in some instances.

Much greater mouse sensitivity can now be selected in the options menu.

Minor visual tweaks have been made to the status bar.

The game will no longer switch to widescreen mode in the options menu if the screen slider is moved all the way to the right and no game is being played.

The + and – keys, as well as moving left and right on a gamepad, can no longer be used to toggle messages on and off in the options menu.

When default.cfg is created for the first time, the keyboard control variables will now be saved as their actual character values rather than their scan codes.

Blood splats are now left on the ground wherever blood falls. (They may be disabled by setting bloodsplats to false in default.cfg.)

The fuzz effect of Spectres now looks better while the game is paused or a menu is displayed.

A bug has been fixed whereby the chainsaw could not be selected by the player unless they also had a berserk power-up.

The screen will now be wiped at the same speed in widescreen mode.

If a value is out of range in default.cfg, the default for that value will be used rather than the closest valid value.

The usegamma value is now checked that it is in range when the game starts.

When the player stands where there is a change in height (either on the floor or ceiling), that edge is now drawn more accurately.

When in a confined area, Pain Elementals no longer try to spawn Lost Souls in the wrong places only for them to explode straight away.

When Lost Souls are killed, they now explode on the spot, rather than their explosion sometimes drifting upwards.

When Pain Elementals are killed, their explosion is now centered better.

A bug has been fixed whereby messages weren't always being cleared before taking a screenshot.

The state of flickering lights, active switches and moving platforms are now saved in savegames. This means that savegames from previous versions of DOOM Retro will no longer work.

When a monster is killed, there is a better chance of its corpse being mirrored horizontally if the corpse of the last monster to be killed wasn't mirrored.

When more than one monster is killed at exactly the same time, there is now a chance that they will fall randomly out of sync.

Settings are now saved to default.cfg the moment they change, rather than when quitting the game, so if the game crashes or exits with an error, those settings will be restored.

The player’s weapon now isn’t as distorted at reduced screen sizes.

A bug has been fixed whereby the muzzle of the super shotgun was translucent in some instances.

33% alpha translucency rather additive translucency is now used for the SoulSphere, MegaSphere, Invincibility and Partial Invisibility power-ups.

The + and – keys can no longer be used while the help screen is displayed.

In those levels that require one or more monsters to be killed for a sector to move to complete the level, if the –NOMONSTERS command-line parameter is specified, those sectors will now automatically move.

Replicating what happens in Heretic and Hexen, the remaining monsters in the level will turn on each other once the player has been killed. The player will face their killer when they die, but unlike those games, their view won’t continue to follow their killer around.

A bug has been fixed whereby DOOM’s episode menu would be displayed when pressing the ESC key on DOOM II’s skill level menu.

The IDCHOPPERS cheat will now be cancelled (by removing the invulnerability power-up and the chainsaw) when the player switches to or picks up a weapon other than the chainsaw.

Many monsters are now positioned and animate better in DOOM II’s cast sequence.

Monsters now can’t be rotated in the cast sequence until they are actually on the screen.

Z-coordinates are now taken into account when telefragging.

Arch-viles no longer resurrect monsters such that they become stuck in other monsters, or under doors.

A bug has been fixed whereby the game may crash when an Arch-vile resurrects a monster after a savegame has been loaded.

The boss in MAP30: Icon Of Sin at the end of DOOM II: Hell On Earth will now still make its alert sound when the level starts if –NOMONSTERS is specified on the command-line.

A “rotate mode” is now available in the automap. Toggled on and off using the R key, it will dynamically orientate the level such that the player is always pointing towards the top of the screen. Rotate mode is off by default, and whether it is on or off is remembered between games.

Only one instance of doomretro.exe can be run at a time.

The player arrow in the automap will now be translucent while the player has a partial invisibility power-up.

In DOOM II (BFG Edition), since TITLEPIC isn’t present in the IWAD, the otherwise unused DMENUPIC is now used instead of INTERPIC.

It’s been only six short weeks since the debut release of DOOM Retro, and yet already I’m glad to announce a new version! DOOM Retro v1.1 contains several bugfixes and enhancements, (many of which were suggested by members of the DOOM community on the Doomworld forums), as well as a few new surprises. You may download it here, and see what has changed in the release notes here.

I would like to sincerely thank everyone for supporting me in creating a DOOM source port that is new and fresh, and perhaps heading in a different direction to all else that is currently out there. Please keep your feedback coming, either by commenting this post, participating on the forums, or on Twitter. And if you would consider sparing a few dollars to assist with the development of DOOM Retro, I would be forever grateful! You can donate through PayPal by clicking on that button to the right.

The source code is no longer distributed with DOOM Retro itself, and has instead been made separately available in a GitHub repository. Please visit this site to follow the latest daily developments, and report any issues that you may encounter.

The correct and complete version information is now displayed when right-clicking on doomretro.exe and selecting “Properties”.

The –FILE command-line parameter may no longer be used with DOOM Shareware’s WAD file, DOOM1.WAD.

If a default.cfg file is present in the game folder, it will now be used in preference to the default.cfg saved in AppData\Local\DOOM RETRO for the current Windows user.

While still maintaining backwards compatibility, the values that may be specified in the default.cfg file are now much more readable, and easier to edit manually. Click here for an example.

Gamepad controls can now be customized by editing the default.cfg file.

A bug has been fixed whereby the game wouldn’t be rendered correctly for displays with an aspect ratio less than 4:3 (that is, displays that aren’t widescreen).

In fullscreen mode on a widescreen display, increasing the screen size with the + key to the maximum will now show a widescreen mode without the status bar, and without any of the horizontal stretching prevalent in many other source ports. DOOM Retro will revert to the standard 4:3 aspect ratio when on the title, intermission, finale and help screens.

A bug has been fixed whereby parts of MAP01: Entryway and MAP02: Underhalls in DOOM II: Hell On Earth would become corrupted when using older versions of DOOM2.WAD. Two barrels and a Shotgun Guy were missing from MAP02 as well. (Credit goes to Jon Krazov for his assistance.)

For a majority of translucent or partially translucent objects, their translucency is now calculated using additive blending rather than alpha blending, resulting in them appearing considerably brighter.

The blue lights in tall and short techno floor lamps (MT_MISC29 and MT_MISC30) are now translucent.

The red and green lights in all switches, as well as the exit signs and many computer terminals that appear in most levels are now consistently bright regardless of the surrounding light levels, and the distance from the player (that is, they are “fullbright”).

Some minor cosmetic changes have been made to the status bar.

The corpses of Cyberdemons are no longer flipped horizontally at random.

When the player ends a level by flicking a switch, that switch will now turn on before the screen is wiped.

If the player has both the invulnerability and the light amplification visor power-ups, and the invulnerability power-up runs out first, the screen will now flash correctly between the inverted grayscale palette and the “fullbright” palette.

If the player has both a chainsaw and a berserk power-up, pressing the 1 key will now directly switch to either the chainsaw or the fist, depending on which weapon was selected last, rather than always switching to the chainsaw. This selection is also remembered when saving a game.

If the SHIFT key is held down when the CAPSLOCK key is on (or vice-versa), the player will walk instead of run, as originally intended.

Monsters can no longer pass through tall level decorations.

A bug has been fixed whereby it took approximately twice as many rockets to kill the boss in MAP30: Icon Of Sin at the end of DOOM II: Hell On Earth.

Like what can be done at the end of DOOM 64, each monster can now be rotated using the ← and → cursor keys during the cast sequence in DOOM II.

The Lost Soul in the cast sequence in DOOM II is now partially translucent.

The explosions when the Lost Soul and the Pain Elemental die in the cast sequence in DOOM II are now translucent.

A bug has been fixed whereby the cast sequence in DOOM II could not be advanced by pressing the CTRL key.

The help screen has been updated to include the new controls for the keyboard, mouse and gamepad, and fixing several inconsistencies. (Credit goes to Robin “FrightNight” Reisinger for his assistance.)

The text on the help screen now has drop shadows.

The help screen’s background is now a low resolution snapshot of the game screen with a dark blue tint.

The controls for selecting the plasma rifle and BFG 9000 are no longer present on the help screen in DOOM Shareware.

When using a PWAD, screenshot filenames will now be of the format ExMy.bmp or MAPxx.bmp rather than incorrectly use the name of the map this map replaces in the main IWAD.

When a screenshot is taken using the PRINTSCREEN key, any messages are now cleared from the top of the screen first.

A bug has been fixed whereby if a game is saved while a platform is moving, it could potentially cause the game to crash when that savegame is loaded.

When using the IDCLEVxy cheat, keycards and skull keys are no longer removed from the status bar before the screen is wiped.

The correct message is now displayed when entering the IDKFA cheat.