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Freedoom project news

0.13.0 (2024-01-29)

General

  • Improved vanilla compatibility.

    • Boom features removed.

    • Hall of mirrors greatly reduced.

    • Visplane overflows fixed.

    • Savegame buffer overflow errors remain.

Levels

  • Relevant Eureka warnings fixed.

  • New levels E1M9, E2M2, E2M3, E2M4, E2M7, E2M8, E3M5, MAP07, MAP21 and MAP27.

  • Various level renames.

  • Numerous vanilla fixes and aesthetic modernizations.

  • Fixed and standardized secret exits.

Manual

  • French and Spanish translations.

  • Sections added to highlight project mandate and additional accessibility options.

Misc

  • Adds automatic labeling to pull requests.

Monsters

  • New minigunner.

  • The hatchling, which replaces the deadflare.

  • The matribite, which replaces the summoner.

  • The octaminator, which replaces the dark soldier.

Music

  • Lots of new music including most of FreeDM music.

Sounds

  • New boss brain sounds.

Visuals

  • Colorblind-friendly keys and key indicators.

  • Various revisions to sprites and textures.

  • Improved kerning for menu text.

Weapons

  • Improved weapon sprites generally.

  • SSG replacement restored to updated take on older version.

  • Revised polaric energy weapon.

  • Double-barreled shotgun flash timing bug fixed in built-in DeHackEd.

Textures

  • Esa Repo (Espi)'s old STAR* textures are now included under ESPI*.

  • A STARBR1 texture is now included as a counterpart to STARBR2.

  • Numerous additional grey and METAL2-based textures also available.

  • Boss brain wall found to have Hexen resources and was re-done.

  • Wolfenstein replacements completely redone, designed to work as seamlessly with other textures as possible. A few are also added.

0.12.1 (2019-10-22)

General

  • The HTML documentation (eg, NEWS and README files) are generated with a style based on Freedoom’s own website, rather than the default AsciiDoc styling.

  • Phase 2’s internal DEMO1 has been replaced, thanks to some odd vanilla quirks that could cause it to desync in some (but not all) conditions.

Levels

  • The sailor monster type is formally banished from Freedoom’s own levels, and remaining uses of it were removed.

Manual

  • Incongruities between the actual game and manual have been fixed.

Build system

  • The make install targets have been consolidated to behave more similarly to how the pre-built zip distributions are: a split between FreeDM and Phase 1+2, rather than installing each of the tree IWADs independently (and thus getting their own /usr/share/doc directories, for instance).

0.12.0 (2019-10-10)

General

  • We now have a manual rendered to beautiful PDF format. Thanks to Simon Howard, the project’s founder.

  • A strong focus on vanilla compatibility has been sought for this release. Most, if not all, levels should work now.

  • Final Doom compatibility de-emphasized. Where it creates conflicts with Doom II mods or texture definitions, we prefer the Doom II side of things. Final Doom-specific maps and mods may never look completely right in Freedoom, as a result.

Levels

  • FreeDM has seen a major overhaul, with most maps being modified, with new additions and removals of the weaker levels. It now benefits from the use of Aquatex and Egyptian textures in some of its levels, giving a more vibrant feel than before.

  • Phase 1 gets a lot of mapping love in this round, fleshing out the levels and tweaking difficulty levels so easy, normal, and hard are all accounted for. There is a new C3M5 by Mortrixs.

  • Phase 2 MAP01 saw an overhaul, simplifying its design in significant ways to improve the flow around the level.

  • Two maps in Phase 2 were replaced due to being recreations of Doom II maps. Jayexetee and GooseJelly get credits for the new ones, in MAP06 and MAP26.

  • Maps in Phase 2 in general have had some slight re-arrangement based on difficulty levels and themes. A new MAP06 by Jayexetee is included, the old one taking the MAP18 slot.

  • All levels are now guaranteed to have co-op and deathmatch starts.

Graphics

  • New power-up (stealth, overdrive, and ultra-overdrive) sprites.

  • New necromancer (arch-vile) sprites by Urric.

  • Some weapon and ammo sprites have been tweaked and improved.

  • Completed and enhanced set of Evilution and Plutonia textures.

  • New skull-switches by MissLav.

  • New SKY4 based on an astronomy photograph.

  • Tweaked player sprites and HUD face by Ferk.

Music

  • New tracks in C1M2, C2M3, C2M8, MAP03, MAP12, MAP22, MAP25, MAP26, MAP27, DM03, DM06, DM09, DM17, DM24, DM31, and DM32.

  • All files in-tree have been renamed from *.mus to *.mid. The file format must always be MIDI. This makes it easy on music composers to actually work with the files.

Unix script and metadata

  • Metainfo (formerly appdata) and desktop files have been brought up to the latest standard specifications and recommendations, using reverse-DNS for the project identifier, and a self-evaluated content rating.

  • The launch shell-script changed the PORT environment variable to DOOMPORT to avoid conflicts with the genericly-named PORT. It also builds a sensible default DOOMWADPATH environment variable to assist ports that do not have a hard-coded fallback.

  • The script no longer tries to look for boom, zdoom, nor prboom by default, as these are ports no longer maintained.

Build system

  • Freedoom’s build system now has a hard dependency on Python 3, in anticipation of Python 2’s end-of-life.

  • We have moved from ImageMagick to Pillow, a Python library for graphics manipulation. It provides faster build times as well as API stability.

  • GIF files have been replaced with PNG files. True PNG file format transparency is used instead of a cyan background.

  • ASCIIDOC and ASCIIDOC_MAN variables have been added to the Makefile to control the AsciiDoc implementation used to generate HTML and man page files.

0.11.3 (2017-07-18)

  • Builds with DeuTex 5.0 and newer.

0.11.2 (2017-03-15)

  • Missing multiplayer starts have been added to several levels.

  • A few mapping errors were repaired by changing sector heights. Speedrunners can better appreciate smooth flow through the levels.

  • Easy and normal difficulty levels have been tweaked.

  • Par times for Phase 1 have been added.

  • Cleaned up the title screen using the Freedoom font for “Phase 1” and “Phase 2” on-screen.

0.11.1 (2017-02-22)

  • 1% armor bonus picks are recolored from red to green. They were too easily confused for health pickups.

  • New TNT: Evilution compatible textures.

  • New pain bringer and pain lord sprites, replacing old concept art-derived ones.

  • A few mapping errors are fixed, including misaligned textures, leftover Boom specials, and it should no longer be possible to get stuck between a rock and a tree in Phase 1 C1M1.

  • Brand-new Phase 1 C3M1, replacing the old Doom-inspired level.

  • Widescreen statusbar for ZDoom removed. This created incompatibility with some mods.

0.11 (2017-02-16)

  • Freedoom is now a limit-removing game rather than using Boom specials.

  • Lots of new music.

  • New levels, including a new C1M1 for Phase 1.

  • Aquatex: over 200 new textures for mappers to use.

  • New intermission screens.

  • Some new weapon sprites: new pistol and new pickups.

  • New medkit and armor pickup sprites.

  • New project logo

0.10.1 (2015-12-23)

  • Repairs an incompatibility in Phase 1 C3M7 with Boom 2.02.

  • Fully-completed sprite set for the flame bringer.

0.10 (2015-12-16)

  • Brand new status bar.

  • New sprites for the serpent and orb monsters.

  • New HUD graphics for the single- and double-barreled shotguns, missile launcher, and SKAG-1337.

  • New pain sounds for many monsters and the player.

  • New maps in Phase 1 and Phase 2.

0.9 (2014-10-14)

  • New file names that no longer conflict with Doom’s

    • freedoom1.wad is Freedoom: Phase 1 — compatible with The Ultimate Doom.

    • freedoom2.wad is Freedoom: Phase 2 — compatible with Doom II and Final Doom.

  • FreeDM and Phase 1 have grown out of the shadows of the project and have seen rapid advances, largely led by Xindage, our prominent Brazilian contributor.

  • New text font from Mechadon to replace the old one in all menus, in-game text, and status-bar HUD.

  • New zombie, shotgun zombie, and assault tripod sprites by a skilled pixel artist, raymoohawk.

  • New sounds for the dark soldier by jewellds.

  • More complete support for Final Doom mods, adding many more textures missing to support mods for both TNT: Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment, thanks to fraggle and AXDOOMER.

0.8 (2014-01-01)

  • Ultimate Freedoom’s episode 4 is now the Cacoward-winning Double Impact.

  • Many maps have been updated

  • Improved sprites and sounds

  • FreeDM is now vanilla-compatible and has quite a few new maps.

  • A BEX file is included in the IWADs, which allows compatible source ports to replace many strings in the game, such as level names, weapon pickups, and intermission text.