Doom source port
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A Doom source port is a source port of the Doom engine, the game engine used by the computer game Doom. The term usually denotes a modification made by Doom fans, as opposed to any of the official Doom versions produced by id Software or affiliated companies.
The source code for the Doom engine was released to the public in 1997. Although Doom was originally created for DOS, the release was of the Linux version, and the source code had to be ported back to DOS and to other operating systems. Hence the term "source port", which out of custom also is used for those modifications which are not technically ports to another platform.
Doom source ports have been created to allow Doom to run on many different operating systems, including Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, GNU/Linux and Mac OS X.
The original purpose of source ports was cross-platform compatibility, but shortly after the release of the Doom source, programmers were correcting old, unaddressed Doom bugs and deficiencies in their own source ports, and later on added more features to add new features and alter gameplay.
Ports have also been created to allow Doom to run on different types of machines. One of those is a port to the Game Park 32, a Korean hand-held. Also, a British company called WildPalm has produced a port to the Nokia 7650 and 9210 cell phones. There is a port to the Sega Dreamcast as well.
The source code was originally released under a proprietary license that prohibited commercial use and did not require programmers to provide the source code for the modifications they released in executable form. As a consequence of the source code for GLDoom, the first port to add OpenGL graphics to Doom, being lost in a hard disk crash, the code was re-released in 1999 under the GNU General Public License after requests from the community.
List of source ports
- ADoom (AmigaOS/68k)
- ADoomPPC (AmigaOS/PPC)
- AmiDoom (AmigaOS/68k)
- Amiga Doom (AmigaOS/68k)
- DoomAttack (AmigaOS/68k)
- Doom Legacy
- DoomX (Xbox)
- Boom
- Eternity
- GLDoom
- JDoom
- Marine's Best Friend (MBF)
- PMDoom (Atari ST)
- PrBoom
- PsiDoom (AmigaOS/68k)
- Skulltag
- Smack My Marine Up (SMMU)
- Vavoom
- VDoomPPC (AmigaOS/PPC)
- ZDoom
- ZDoomGL
- ZDaemon
- ZhaDoomPPC (AmigaOS/PPC)
External links
- Doomworld -- Source ports (http://www.doomworld.com/classicdoom/ports/)
- A genealogy of Doom source ports (http://www.doomworld.com/10years/ports/)
- Doom for the Dreamcast (http://files.frashii.com/~sp00nz/Doom/index.php)
- GamePark 32 Port (http://www.gp32us.com/doom.htm)
- Nokia cell phone port (http://web.archive.org/web/20030210160355/www.wildpalm.co.uk/doom7650.html), via the Wayback Machine (the page no longer exists on Wildpalm's website (http://www.wildpalm.co.uk))