DOOM

http://gr0x0r.no-ip.org/mediawiki/images/0/0b/Doom.png

Before playing DOOM, you'll need a copy of the .WAD files needed to play the game. Hopefully you purchased these back in the day. If not, I'm sure you can find them if you look hard enough.

Previously, the best DOOM experience was thanks to the doomsday engine. This engine turned DOOM's original 2D world into full 3D using java, modelling, transparency effects, and more. Sadly, the state of the project degraded to the point where the package became masked in portage due to security concerns and instability. A lack of support and documentation for the doomsday engine prompted me to post my own howto for doomsday on the Gentoo forums. However that howto is no longer applicable.

After evaluating many alternatives, I found the best solution to be prBoom, a native linux port based on the Boom engine. To enable sound in prBoom, you'll need a midi interface, such as timidity, so let's add that to our /etc/portage/package.use.

$ sudo nano -w /etc/portage/package.use

Make sure the file contains the following directive:

media-libs/sdl-mixer timidity

Now we emerge prBoom.

$ sudo emerge -av prboom

After the emerge completes, you'll need to copy your .WAD files to /usr/share/games/doom-data/. Navigate to the folder where your .WAD files are, then issue

$ sudo cp *.wad /usr/share/games/doom-data/

When run the first time, prBoom will create a .prboom folder and config file in your home directory. However, you'll need to be sure you are a member of the games group before running any native games in Gentoo. To check your group membership

$ groups

If you see games listed, you're in business. If not, you'll need to add yourself to the games group.

$ sudo usermod -a -G games username

These settings won't take effect until you log in and log off, but to add yourself to the group temporarily for a terminal session

$ newgrp games

To run the original DOOM using prBoom from the command line

$ /usr/games/bin/prboom -iwad /usr/share/games/doom-data/doom.wad

You can change your prBoom settings in-game via the menu or by editing the config file. You'll be the owner of this file so you can open it in gedit using Thunar or via nano, whatever you prefer. These are some key settings you may be interested in:

use_fullscreen                0 # play the game in a window
mouse_sensitivity_vert        0 # disables mouse on vertical axis to emulate freelook

By default, prBoom doesn't create any shortcuts.