Hexbear Doom 2 Deathmatch: Round 2 (Sunday)
(thelemmy.club)
From a certain perspective, the BFG is a lawnmower
43
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.
In a lot of the developing world, personal computers are a lot less common than they are in the US / Europe. Portable devices like smartphones and tablets are the primary way a lot of people access the Internet, or do any computing at all. There is a high demand to port software which conventionally only ran on PCs to these platforms. Even things like Godot (the full editor, not just exported games) have been ported to Android. Over a million people have installed it through Google Play.
I think in general, the term "collectivization" is a lot more useful (and accurate) than "nationalization." The point is to expel the rent seeking monopolies and place infrastructure under democratic control. Nationalization emphasizes putting infrastructure in the hands of the state, and under a dictatorship of capital it is difficult to pitch this as a beneficial thing. NOBODY likes Comcast, but you will have a hard time convincing them that the Great Satan itself would provide a better, more trustworthy Internet service. On the other hand, collectivization emphasizes putting infrastructure in the hands of the people. It implies a transformational process of democratic control while nationalization only implies a shallow change in ownership.
While it doesn't happen frequently in the present era, nationalization is not a distinctly Communist process. Industries have been nationalized under Capitalist governance. We nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008, but it had nothing to do with placing the financial system under democratic control. More recently, the US government acquired a 10% stake in Intel, but this is done for the purpose of boosting a US-aligned monopoly and supplier of vital components for the military industrial complex, not to impose democratic mandates or regulations on the development of computer chips.
You can make single use shared cyphers
These are called one time pads for anyone who isn't familiar. It is actually an incredibly simple technique which can be done with pencil on paper if needed.
71
Hexbear Classic Doom 2 Deathmatch (done, demo available)
(thelemmy.club)
I would like to organize a community Doom 2 Deathmatch game (potentially a series if the first one goes well). I'm aiming for 2:00 PM EDT (18:00 UTC) today, May 24th.
Preparation
Source Port (Odamex 12.2.0)
While a number of Doom source ports inherit the networking code from the original game, this network code uses a P2P architecture designed to run over IPX and LAN networks. It has many limitations and is not very practical for casual games.
There are a number of ports designed specifically for multiplayer with a client/server architecture. The "active" ones are Zdaemon, Zandronum, and Odamex. Of these, Zdaemon is proprietary and only supports Windows. Zandronum supports Linux, but has a hard dependency on FMOD, which makes it a nuisance to build.
Odamex on the other hand is fully GPL licensed and lacks this dependency hell, plus it is available as a FlatPak, in addition to Windows installers and some distro packages. So we will be using Odamex 12.2.0
(Heads up, the Odamex website still links to 12.1.0 for some reason. This version uses a network protocol which is not compatible with 12.2.0. You can grab 12.2.0 from the Github Releases page (all platforms), FlatHub (Linux), or possibly your distro package manager (mainly looking like Arch 🤏️, Gentoo 😎️, and Nix 😐️).
Files
You will need a copy of doom2.wad. This is the file from the commercial game which contains all of the maps, textures, sprites, audio clips, music, etc. It is easy to find back-ups on the Internet in case you've scratched your retail CD, or you are unable to read the file from your retail CD because computers don't have CD drives anymore. Technical support may be available on Matrix for people who are struggling to insert their CD into the computer.
A few different versions of this file have existed. Version 1.9 (1995) is the latest. The correct MD5 / SHA256 sums of this file are 25e1459ca71d321525f84628f45ca8cd /10d67824b11025ddd9198e8cfc87ca335ee6e2d3e63af4180fa9b8a471893255
OdaLauncher
Odamex includes a program called OdaLauncher. This is a GUI application which serves as a server browser / configuration tool. Specifically, you need to point it to odamex(.exe) (the game itself), and a directory where you store your .wad files (including doom2.wad, in addition to the unzipped .wad files of whatever map set we're playing).
Map set / Rules
I have an inkling to keep things simple and just run the DWANGO 5 mapset, but I am completely open for suggestions. Brit11 is also a solid option. Keep in mind, the maps must be vanilla/boom/mbf compatible. A lot of maps designed for Zdaemon, Skulltag, or Zandronum use advanced Zdoom / Hexen features which are not available in Odamex. This limitation doesn't impact the majority of deathmatch maps though.
The Odamex client has an included feature which will download .wad files from well-known sites, so as long as you have doom2.wad, the other wads should be fetched automatically if you don't have them.
As far as rules go, 25 frags, no time limit seemed to work well. Difficulty is set to Nightmare (as customary for multiplayer).
Server
The server is running at phobos.matapacos.dog, or you can also find it in the server list as "Hexbear Community Deathmatch"
A correction will appear in tomorrow's print edition:
"A headline with an article on Friday about President Trump’s threats to leave NATO misstated the full name of the body. It is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, not the North American Treaty Organization."
Top minds over there.
66
Bluesky announces $100M Series B after CEO transition
(techcrunch.com)
The round, led by Bain Capital Crypto, was closed in April 2025 but had not been disclosed until now.
8
Important Misskey / Sharkey security update
(sharkey.team)
If any of you host a Sharkey or Misskey instance, make sure to apply this update when it lands. If you use either, or are friends with someone who hosts one, pester your admins.
45
KDE Connect
(kdeconnect.kde.org)
Folks, if you don't know about it, check it out! KDE Connect is an application you can install on your phone (Android, iOS, and others) which allows you to pair your phone with your PC and do various things, like send SMS messages from your PC, use your phone to do remote input and media control, transfer files back and forth, etc. It's killer.
My wife was trying to watch some YouTube videos on the TV today and they were absolutely killing us with ads, so we plugged in the Fedora laptop (which has Firefox with uBlock Origin) and she was able to run it from the couch.
Funny thing is, we don't even use KDE. There is a Gnome Shell extension called GSConnect which is fully compatible with the mobile KDE Connect apps. The iOS app doesn't have as many features as the Android app, but remote mouse and keyboard input is there.
Along these lines, she asked if there was a way to make the mouse cursor larger, and I was like UHHHH (knowing from experience that the solution to this problem was going to be fucked up). So I did a web search and figured out there's a GSettings key you can tweak, SSHed into the laptop, but before I could run the command she said she figured it out. It's in the accessibility settings. 
Observe: a fascist openly admits that an un-moderated environment of absolute free speech actually has the potential to squelch conversation. A rare sight.
I still haven't forgot about my $600.
Now that we have amassed "300,000" IDF troops on the border of Gaza, we are shutting off the cameras. Have a nice day.
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It is pretty wild to see them openly saying that Socialism must be defeated. Normally the liberal rhetoric is that social democracy isn't bad per se, but we need to be pragmatic and incremental and pearl clutchy about things.