Am I the only guy who likes Freedoom?

Let's get this straight right now, Doom is irreplaceable. But I can't help but feel weirdly nostalgic about Freedoom. I have only been playing Doom for a year. Freedoom was weird to me back when I got into modding. It seemed like a bad indie fps you would find on the app store in 2012. But at the same time, that's kind of its unique charm. Everything seems plastic. I played through most of Freedoom Phase 1 on this GZDoom port I had on my tablet, and it was so annoying and hard to play because a game like Doom wasn't meant to be played on a tablet. But I had a great time with Freedoom, and I don't know if that sounds like blasphemy or not to a lot of people. You gotta respect how much work they had to do to make Freedoom.

What do you think of Freedoom? Am I alone here?

I love Freedoom. You can tell because of my avatar. The levels are solid, the graphics are okay, and it works really well as a base IWAD for levels where vanilla textures are used.

I haven't seen any indication that liking Freedoom is considered blasphemy here. It's been contributed to by fairly high-profile members of the community, and there's an entire subforum for it. Freedoom is made with respect for the original Doom, but also with a love of free/libre/open-source software.

4 minutes ago, northivanastan said:

I haven't seen any indication that liking Freedoom is considered blasphemy here. Freedoom is made with respect for the original Doom, but also with a love of free/libre/open-source software.

Absolutely. I just didn't know if Freedoom fans were considered outcasts or something.

You're not the only one, I like it too. my first demos sent to the dsda were from Scythe using FreeDoom.

Not to mention the music, the fact that is compatible with most mods and wads... It's good.

It's like Doom's little brother, he has potential but he needs help to grow up.

Sometimes i play wads with FreeDoom instead of Doom for a change. I also currently work on a map which will target FreeDoom with it's additional textures.

I love Freedoom. Freedoom 2 MAP01 music is one of my all-time favorites.

I love the music, I love the textures. Heck, I even like most of the maps, too.

19 minutes ago, Antkibo said:

I love Freedoom. Freedoom 2 MAP01 music is one of my all-time favorites.

My favorite MIDIs from Freedoom are the E3 music, particularly E3M4. Excellent tracks that can compete even with Jimmy's best work.

freedoom is awesome

great music and sprites (though some enemies look a bit rough)

it has one of my favorite shotguns design in any game and i will say while i like doom 2 more the level design in freedoom is way better

Even if I personally dislike the levels in Fredoom (At least Phase 1), the new assets are pretty sick! The shotgun is just so cool-looking and chunky, I love it.

nah, sometimes I like to mix in freedoom with a WAD to see how different it looks in comparison to the original. and give the  game kind of a different feeling.

I love Freedoom too and I hope it is still being worked on.

I love freedoom so much that I am making a GZDoom version of all the freedoom levels. I have been forced to take a long break from the project though, since you know.. lot of stuff going on IRL atm..

link to my project

38 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

I love Freedoom too and I hope it is still being worked on.

Things are moving slowly, but there are people in the Discord who are working on future contributions to it

1 hour ago, northivanastan said:

My favorite MIDIs from Freedoom are the E3 music, particularly E3M4. Excellent tracks that can compete even with Jimmy's best work.

I definitely agree, the C3 midis from phase 1 are awesome, my favorites are C3M1, C3M3 and C3M6.

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

I love Freedoom too and I hope it is still being worked on.

Hopefully, as far as I know it's still unfinished, as there is no version 1.0

Hopefully, the sprite inconsistencies (e.g. naked hand for the pistol, gloved hand for the shotgun) get fixed in future releases. The Spider Mastermind replacement also could use new sprites, as it looks quite janky and unintimidating compared to its vanilla Doom counterpart.

Just now, Rudolph said:

Hopefully, the sprite inconsistencies (e.g. naked hand for the pistol, gloved hand for the shotgun) get fixed in future releases. The Spider Mastermind replacement also could use new sprites, as it looks quite janky and unintimidating compared to its vanilla Doom counterpart.

If you have the skill, try fixing them yourself! Like most free/open-source projects everyone is free to contribute.

1 hour ago, northivanastan said:

If you have the skill, try fixing them yourself! Like most free/open-source projects everyone is free to contribute.

I was afraid I would be told that. Unfortunately, I do not have such skill. :(

On 3/27/2021 at 9:43 PM, Rudolph said:

Hopefully, the sprite inconsistencies (e.g. naked hand for the pistol, gloved hand for the shotgun) get fixed in future releases. The Spider Mastermind replacement also could use new sprites, as it looks quite janky and unintimidating compared to its vanilla Doom counterpart.

The forums are pretty quiet these days but if you check recent posts in the other thread you'll know there's work on improvements going on, apparently more actively discussed at Discord than here.

FreeDM is lots of fun. Very good maps. I'm actually replacing all of the Freedoom-only textures in it to Doom 2 equivalents right now so that I can have my vanilla textures and sounds and also have the maps.

On 3/30/2021 at 4:45 PM, OkDoomer174 said:

FreeDM is lots of fun. Very good maps. I'm actually replacing all of the Freedoom-only textures in it to Doom 2 equivalents right now so that I can have my vanilla textures and sounds and also have the maps.

I agree, it has good gameplay, especially with more than 4 players (You know, zandronum, odamex, I believe zdaemon supports more than 4 players too)

After a long hiatus, I checked the recent build of Phase 2 that was kindly pointed out by @northivanastan I must say that the levels have improved very notably. I love how MAP01 now incorporates parts of the old Hangar map, with more detail and interesting progression. Also nice to see the maps making good use of the Aquatex set in an organic way, without those textures standing out from the rest of the bunch.

TBH, when I first played Freed∞m for the first time (which was v0.7) I mostly used it for PWADs because I very strongly felt the contrast between the advanced Boom features that were used in many levels, and the somewhat simplistic art which was prevalent back then. Somehow the art felt more fitting for vanilla style map designs, even something like Needs More Detail maybe. Now, I think Freed∞m is pretty consistent in art style and map design, and feels like an original game in its own right.

BTW, what exactly are the differences between the regular builds and experimental builds? I was playing the experimental Phase 2 IWAD but failed to figure out what the experimental features were.

17 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

After a long hiatus, I checked the recent build of Phase 2 that was kindly pointed out by @northivanastan I must say that the levels have improved very notably. I love how MAP01 now incorporates parts of the old Hangar map, with more detail and interesting progression. Also nice to see the maps making good use of the Aquatex set in an organic way, without those textures standing out from the rest of the bunch.

 

TBH, when I first played Freed∞m for the first time (which was v0.7) I mostly used it for PWADs because I very strongly felt the contrast between the advanced Boom features that were used in many levels, and the somewhat simplistic art which was prevalent back then. Somehow the art felt more fitting for vanilla style map designs, even something like Needs More Detail maybe. Now, I think Freed∞m is pretty consistent in art style and map design, and feels like an original game in its own right.

BTW, what exactly are the differences between the regular builds and experimental builds? I was playing the experimental Phase 2 IWAD but failed to figure out what the experimental features were.

Basically Xindage tried to merge as many of the existing pull requests (proposed changes to Freedom) as possible in addition to the changes made since the release of the last version, 0.12.1. At the very least there are new maps for E1M9, E2M2, and MAP07, and there might be a few more. I also noticed a lot of new textures while playing, as well as new sprites for the Chaingunner and Revenant, and tweaked sprites for the Zombieman. There are probably more changes I didn't notice.

I'm pretty sure the changes to MAP01 were added in 0.12, by the way. So you might have been playing on an older version last time you played.

Thanks for clarifying that! Indeed I have not played in quite a while so I was not sure if the additions like the new improved chaingunner (haven't gotten to any levels with a revenant) were part of the main branch yet.

I also noticed that some existing textures received additional edits like cracks on many of those. They look nice.

Do you know if there are plans to add the Nukeptyle/Lavamander Baron replacement, at least in the experimental part.

2 minutes ago, northivanastan said:

I'm pretty sure the changes to MAP01 were added in 0.12, by the way. So you might have been playing on an older version last time you played.

That's true, although it seems to me that the current version has some more recent tweaks compared to the original v0.12 release, but I'm not certain.

For some reason I had this vague memory of someone also suggesting a tweaked palette, which I thought that maybe it was in the experimental build as well, but for now it seems both branches use the same palette.

3 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

Do you know if there are plans to add the Nukeptyle/Lavamander Baron replacement, at least in the experimental part.

Given that nothing has been merged into the master branch for a while, that is unclear, but for any similar experimental builds, I'm pretty sure someone was working on replacement sprites/improving the existing replacements.

3 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

That's true, although it seems to me that the current version has some more recent tweaks compared to the original v0.12 release, but I'm not certain.

Yep, there's 0.12.1, and there are also a few changes that were merged into the master branch in the following year.

this game is fine but glitches years dont fix

38 minutes ago, Freedoomguy said:

this game is fine but glitches years dont fix

Could you post an image of the automap where that is found?

I searched that on map22 for a week and couldn't find it anywhere while playing on Crispy Doom?

Have you tried on another source port? It could be a glitch on gzdoom.

Aside from that, i love Freedom, too. I'm not that active on the git recently, but i remember testing a lot of experimentals builds with changes.

I'm waiting for the Nukeptile and Octolauncher to be on the IWAD to make a little mod and use all the monsters of Freedoom on BTSX. As the demonic look of the original monsters detract a little from the story of BTSX ad there is no hell on it.

I love freedoom! I played a much older version back in the day (almost 10 years ago) and recently tried 0.12.1 and there's a lot that's just completely different from back then. I also like some of the map textures and sounds more than the original doom IWADs.

7 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

I'm waiting for the Nukeptile and Octolauncher to be on the IWAD to make a little mod and use all the monsters of Freedoom on BTSX. As the demonic look of the original monsters detract a little from the story of BTSX ad there is no hell on it. 

The Octaminator is in an experimental build here: http://www.geocities.ws/protox/FreeDoom/Build/experimental/

or, you can build this branch: https://github.com/Xindage/freedoom/tree/hmrocta