Today is DOOM’s 30th birthday! This also means it’s DOOM Retro’s 10th birthday! To celebrate this, DOOM Retro v5.1 is now available to download as either a 32 or 64-bit Windows app. Here’s a list of what’s changed since the last version:

• DOOM Retro is now built using v17.8.3 of Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2022.
• DOOM Retro now uses SDL v2.28.5 and SDL_image v2.8.0.
• Support has been added for John Romero’s newly released SIGIL II.
• Several changes have been made to text that is output to the console.
• The automap is now also shown in low detail when the r_detail CVAR is low.
• A bug is fixed whereby the effects of changing a color CVAR for the automap wouldn’t be immediate.
• Explosions from rockets fired by the player and cyberdemons are now randomly mirrored.
• These changes have been made when vanilla mode is enabled:
  • Extra blood is no longer spawned when a monster is injured.
  • Blood and bullet puffs are no longer randomly mirrored.
• Monsters now only become non-solid at the end of their death sequence rather than at the start.
• When the r_shadows CVAR is on, if a monster is fullbright when they attack, the shadow they cast now momentarily becomes slightly lighter.
• The player’s crosshair now displays correctly when the crosshair CVAR is cross and the r_hud_translucency CVAR is off.
• Minor improvements have been made to the parsing of DEHACKED, MAPINFO, MUSINFO and BRGHTMPS lumps.
• The -dog parameter, as well as -dogs 1 to -dogs 8, can now be used on the command-line to spawn one or more MBF-compatible helper dogs at the start of the game. Those dogs that survive each map will then follow the player into the next.
• These changes have been made when pressing the TAB key to autocomplete text in the console:
  • The case of the autocompleted text now always matches the text that’s already been entered.
  • Any text to the left of a semi-colon is no longer cleared.
• The border of the menu’s background is no longer displayed if the vid_fullscreen CVAR is off and the vid_widescreen CVAR is on.
• The spin of the player’s view in the menu’s background can now be disabled by changing the new menuspin CVAR, which is on by default.
• The help screen can now be shown when the menu is open by pressing the F1 key.
• The window’s caption now includes the current episode or expansion when playing a game.
• DOOM Retro no longer remains paused once its window regains focus.
• A bug is fixed whereby the main window would lose focus and the splash screen would be corrupted if an external automap was successfully created at startup because the am_external CVAR was on.
• When the animatedstats CVAR is on:
  • The player’s health now animates correctly if they are telefragged.
  • The player’s health, armor and ammo now animate correctly when loading a savegame.
• A bug is fixed whereby numbers in the alternate widescreen HUD could be positioned incorrectly in some rare instances.
• Minor improvements have been made to the support of Chex Quest, Chex Quest 2, Harmony Compatible and REKKR.
• A bug is fixed whereby monsters would respawn only once when playing on Nightmare! or if the respawnmonsters CCMD was used.
• The “Map explored” stat displayed by the playerstats CCMD is now accurate.
• The mapstats CCMD now shows the number of voodoo dolls in the current map.
• The play CCMD now also accepts a music title as its value, such as atdoomsgate or runningfromevil.
• A bug is fixed whereby screenshots taken by pressing the PRINTSCREEN key would become corrupted in some rare instances.
• Actions may now be bound to the numeric keypad using the bind CCMD with a value numpad0 to numpad9.