Hexbear Doom 2 Deathmatch: Round 2
It turned out to be a lot of fun last time,
so I think we should make this a (roughly) monthly recurring event. The setup
is the same - we will be using Odamex
12.2.0 with version
1.9 of doom2.wad. If you played last
time, there is nothing you need to change - just reconnect to the same server at
the scheduled time.
This time around, we will aim for two start times. An "Atlantic" session
beginning at 10:00 AM EDT (14:00 UTC) for players in Europe, Africa, or the East
Coast of the Americas. And a "Continental" session beginning 8 hours later at
6:00 PM EDT (21:00 UTC) for some East Coast-West Coast action.
The server will be hosted at the same address: phobos.matapacos.dog
The map list is yet to be determined, but we will play something more modern and
polished than Dwango5 (state of the art 1995 map design) this time around. Maybe UDMX. If the player count gets high enough (at least 8), we might switch to CTF mode.
I will update this post throughout the day with any more useful information I can think of.
Update:
Odamex 12.2.1 was released like 2 hours ago. I am still going to stick with 12.2.0 so I don't need to rebase my modified server on short notice, but 12.2.1 appears to be is officially compatible (I can connect to the server with it and explode some barrels)
Setting up Odamex
Odamex is a GPL-licensed Doom port which runs on many contemporary desktop
operating systems (Windows, Linux, MacOS, and then some). It replaces Doom's
original peer-to-peer network code with a client-server architecture, in
addition to many other multiplayer-focused quality of life improvements. The
most recent stable release (12.2.0) can be downloaded from their Shithub
repository.
Odamex ships with a GUI launcher application called odalaunch. This
application allows you to browse the server list and configure a couple
settings. Most important is your WAD search path. This setting tells Odamex
where to search for the third-party data files it needs to load (specifically,
doom2.wad, but also any other WAD files if you already have a collection and would
prefer not to re-download them)
doom2.wad is the 14MB file from the commercial release which contains all the
maps, graphics, and audio clips. It is fairly easy to find. Technical support
and live updates are available in the Hexbear Matrix
Space gaming channel. This file absolutely needs to be in your search path. The game will refuse to download it from the server. Other WADs can be downloaded automatically if they are missing.
You should start the game and adjust your key bindings and mouse sensitivity to your liking. This is also a good time to change your player settings, choose a color, make the most appropriate choice out of the three genders (male, female, or cyborg), and fiddle around with your MIDI settings.
Also, if you're taking the time to fiddle around with the Odamex client before the big day, consider flipping on the setting cl_autorecord so you can record a 'netdemo' of the game from your perspective.
The right version of doom2.wad
There are a few different historical versions doom2.wad floating around on the
web. Some are from beta releases. Others come from more modern re-releases and
console ports. The most common version which is used almost universally for
multiplayer is 1.9, which is the original file you would find on most physical
media.
Per DoomWiki (and confirmed by personal observation):
Version 1.9 is 14,604,584 bytes in size, is dated 1995-02-01, and contains 2,919 entries. It has the following hashes:
- MD5:
25e1459ca71d321525f84628f45ca8cd
- SHA-1:
7ec7652fcfce8ddc6e801839291f0e28ef1d5ae7
- CRC-32:
ec8725db
Mine is actually dated 1996-05-29, but the hashes are correct.
