Doom and Doom II

The original Doom and Doom II games were released in 1993-1994 for DOS. Fortunately, our friends at Id usually released the source code for the games. The open source community took the source and continued to develop it, adding features such as strafing that were never in the original Doom. The current project is called Prboom.

The version of prboom I used was prboom-2.2.2-1, but newer versions are available. It can be downloaded from prboom.sourceforge.net. There should be rpm and tarballs. After installing, I had to create a /usr/local/games/doom directory, and copy the .wad file in that I wanted to play. For example, use doom.wad to play the original doom, and doom2.wad to play doom2. You need a copy of the original retail games to get the full .wads. Or, you can download the shareware or any public domain .wad to play. There are many on the net.

To run the game, type prboom at a command prompt. There are many options that can be set from the menu.

Quake

The first Quake game was one of the more difficult games to get working. The reason is that Id released a Linux version right after the commercial Windows version came out, but they have not updated it since then. Id actually released several versions, including an OpenGL version, but it only works with 3Dfx Voodoo video cards which where popular at the time. In addition, since the Quake source has been released, there are several open source versions in development. However, most of the newer ones focus on multiplayer and may or may not work in single player mode.

I tried a few different versions, but the one I got to work was the generic X11 version from Id. You can download it from ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/unsup/unix. The name of the file is quake-x11-1.0-i386-unknown-linux2.0.tar.gz. This archive contains two files: quake.x11 and readme.x11.

The quake.x11 was linked against the older libc5, so I had to hunt that down and install it. The package in SuSE 8.0 was called shlibs5-2001.7.29-40. This took a long time to find. Hopefully, you can find the same library for your distribution. I haven't tried to run it in a long time.

Here were the steps I used for installation (as root):

1. Create /usr/local/games/quake and /usr/local/games/quake/id1 directories. Make the id1 directory world writable so the config files and save files can be written by normal users
2. Untar/ungzip the binary into the quake directory. The executable file is called quake.x11.
3. Copy the two *.pak files from the Quake CD to the id1 directory.
4. Start quake as a user with ./quake.x11 -winsize 800 600 (or different window dimensions).

The X11 version runs in a window. Performance will suffer on slow CPUs, but on faster CPUs (>1Ghz), performance is very good.

 

Quake 2

Id software also released the Quake 2 source code. They have a glibc version available for download. Get the quake2-glibc.rpm from ftp.idsoftware.com or a mirror. Quake II requires a 3D accelerated video card and driver (like nvidia or ati).

Though I could get Quake 2 to run, I was only able to get smooth sound with the 2.4.18 kernel and higher. Before that kernel version, the sound was choppy.

Here were the steps I used for installation (as root):

1. Install the rpm. It created the game directories in /usr/local/games/quake2.
2. Copy the Quake2 files from the CD with this command (or equivalent for your set up):
   cp -r /mnt/cdrom/Install/Data/* /usr/local/games/quake2/
3. Remove unnecessary dll and exe files.
4. Create the libGL.so link needed by Q2 (if needed). The rpm installs a symlink link called libGL.so to a mesa library. Delete that link and create one to your real libGL.so.
5. Edit the /usr/local/games/quake2/baseq2/config.cfg file to add bindings to grab the mouse with "m" and release it with "n". Here are the lines to add:
   bind m "windowedmouse 1"
   bind n "windowedmouse 0"
   This is needed so you can use the mouse in the Quake 2 window (place the mouse over the window and press "m"), and release it back to X (press "n") when you want to take a break.

 

Here is the startup command I used, but you will probably need to tweak it for your hardware:
./quake2 +set vid_ref glx +set gl_driver libGL.so +set sndchannels

Quake 3

Most of this quake 3 information came from Loki FAQ. Quake 3 is the best supported version of quake on Linux. Again, our friends at Id released quake 3 engine binaries soon after the commercial release. Again, you need a 3D accelerated video card and the commercial CD to get the game content. Get the latest version of the quake 3 linux binaries from ftp.idsoftware.com.

The version I used when this was written was linuxq3apoint-1.31.x86.run. There is probably a newer version available. The .run file is a combination install script/binary which you need to execute as root to install.

Here were the steps I used for installation (as root):

1. Create directory /usr/local/games/quake3 and /usr/local/games/quake3/baseq3.
2. Copy file "pak0.pk3" from the CD to /usr/local/games/quake3/baseq3.
3. Download and install the current Linux point release. You should have a startup shell script in /usr/bin/quake3.

 

Quake 3 on Linux supports single player, multiplayer and has all the same features as the windows/mac versions. Quake 3 runs full screen.

The latest point release also supports Quake 3 Team Arena. Team Arena is an add-on product that adds many new team deathmatch games and maps. To use it, all you have to is create a missionpack subdirectory under /usr/local/games/quake3, then copy the pak0.pak and pak3.pak files from the Team Arena CD to the missionpack directory. Then, you will have a new option on the main menu to start Team Arena. When Team Arena first came out, I could not get it to run on Windows and had to play it in Linux.

Hexen 2 and Portal of Praevus mission pack

Hexen 2 was published by Raven software using a modified Quake engine. Because it has multiple character types and smart puzzles, it is my all time favorite FPS game. It requires a 3D accelerated video card and driver.

It is still under active development, and the latest Linux packages can be downloaded here.

After unpacking the tgz file in my home directory, I simply copied the two pack files from the orignal CD (pak0.pak, pak1.pak) to the data1 subdirectory and was ready to go.

The Linux package includes a handy launcher, h2launcher, that makes it easy to manage the startup options without using command line switches. Hexen 2 can be run full screen or in a window.

The same binary supports the mission pack, Portal of Praevus. Just copy the pak3.pak file from the CD to the portals subdirectory and select the Praevus radio button from the h2launcer program. It works great!

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Following the pattern of quake 3, the linux binaries came out shortly after the commercial release. You can download them at ftp.idsoftware.com.

When this was written, the latest version was wolf-linux-1.31.x86.run. There is probably a newer version available now. It is another combined install script/binary and will create /usr/local/games/wolfenstein when run.

Once the install is done, there is very helpful INSTALL file to guide you through the rest of the install which consists of copying several files from a Win32 install of wolfenstein to the linux partition.

I was very disappointed about this effort on the part of Id. The only way to get the game content is to copy it from a full Windows installation, which means you have to have Windows to unpack the content so you can copy it to Linux.

The good news is that the game runs well under linux, with all options for single and multiplayer. Like all recent Id games, you need a 3D accelerated video card to play.