ABOUT ZOOM

ZDoom represents an advanced lineage of Doom engine ports tailored for contemporary operating systems—compatible with Windows, Linux, and OS X. It incorporates novel features absent in the original games by id Software.

Earlier ZDoom versions can be freely utilized and shared without charge. However, no financial gain is permissible through its sale. Starting from version 3.0.0, GZDoom and its successors are governed by the GPL license, subject to the stipulations outlined in the new license.

The inception of ZDoom is credited to Randi Heit, utilizing sources from id Software and various contributors. Presently, GZDoom and QZDoom, its evolutionary offshoots, are upheld by a collaborative effort involving Christoph Oelckers, Alexey Lysiuk, Magnus Norddahl, Rachael Alexanderson, and Braden Obrzut.

Why would I want to use ZDoom instead of regular Doom?

Consider all these features that ZDoom has that are not found in the standard Doom originally released by id:

• It runs well under all modern versions of Windows, from Windows Vista to Windows 10. If you have Mac or Linux, it works with that too.
• Can play all Doom engine games, including Ultimate Doom, Doom II, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, and more.
• Supports all the editing features of Hexen. (ACS, hubs, new map format, etc.)
• Supports most of the Boomediting features.
• Features complete translationsof Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Strife and other games into over ten different languages with Unicode support for Latin, Cyrillic, and Hangul so far.
• Many more all-new editing features such as:
  • Colored lighting.
  • 3D floors.
  • Portals.
  • Advanced polyobjectsfree from the restrictions of their original implementation in Hexen.
  • Custom monsters, weapons, items, player classes, and other entities.
  • High resolution textures and sprites.
  • Translucency (regular and additive).
  • Many, many extensions to ACSthat were not present in Hexen.
  • More music formats: Ogg Vorbis, MOD, XM, IT, S3M, MIDI, and MP3 as well as old-fashioned MUS all work.
  • More sound formats: FLAC and WAVE can both be used for sound effects.
  • More texture formats: PNG and JPEG are both useable for artwork.
• All Doom limitsare gone.
• Several softsynthsfor MUS and MIDI playback, including an OPL softsynth for an authentic “oldschool” flavor.
• High resolutions.
• Quake-style consoleand key bindings.
• Crosshairs.
• Free look (look up/down).
• Jumping, crouching, swimming, and flying.
• Full-featured joystick/gamepad support under Windows.
• Up to 8 player network games using UDP/IP, including team-based gameplay.
• Support for the Bloodbath announcer from the classic Monolith game Blood.
• Walk over/under monsters and other things.

With thanks to…

id Software / John Carmack

These are the people who developed Doom and later released the source code for the Linux port. Without them, there would be no ZDoom. Some of the functions from their Quake2 game DLL source were also used.

Raven Software

Portions of Heretic and Hexen were used in ZDoom.

Team TNT / Chi Hoang

Responsible in one way or another for Boom, which provided a significant codebase for ZDoom. Information about Boom can be found on the Doom Wiki at DoomWiki.org.

Xaser Acheron

Development and support of the new website.

Rachael Alexanderson

Creator of the QZDoom source port which merged in Norddahl’s True-color software renderer in with GZDoom. Keeps ZDoom.org afloat and helped spearhead the recent site upgrades.

Sebastien Bacquet

Created qmus2mid which was used to determine the structure of DOOM’s MUS lumps so that the game would have music.

Benjamin Berkels

Major contributions to GZDoom’s model code, and also helped integrate the texture resampling code. Also the lead developer of Zandronum (and formerly, Skulltag), from which some code has been used.

Brad Carney

Creator of the Skulltag source port, whose code has also been used in many places throughout ZDoom.

Martin Collberg

Creator of the Cajun Bot.

Daniel “Tormentor667” Gimmer

Graphic design and initial mockup of the new website.

James Haley

Creator of the Eternity Engine source port, helped design the specifications for the Universal Doom Map Format and allowed the use of some parts of his advanced polyobject code to be used in ZDoom.

Marisa “Randi” Heit

For creating ZDoom and maintaining it for nineteen years.

Simon Howard

Creator of the SMMU and Chocolate Doom source ports, allowed code from both of them to be used in ZDoom.

Lee Killough

For all his brilliant work on both Boom and later MBF. Portions of MBF were used in ZDoom, primarily to fix Boom bugs.

Kostov

For organizing GZDoom’s Russian translation and developing Unicode-based fonts for the port’s other translations.

Bernd Kreimeier

Packaged up id’s Linux code for the initial source release.

Greg Lewis

Released his DeHackEd source, without which adding DeHackEd support would have been much harder.

Alexey Lysiuk

Creator of the original GZDoom-Mac project, which was later ported over and merged into to GZDoom proper. He has been instrumental on assisting with fixing a lot of GZDoom bugs, particularly with non-Windows platforms, and also for the wtfi.exe utility which allows GZDoom to run properly with the broken drivers on older Intels on Windows 10.

Julian Nechaevsky

Developer of the Russian Doom source port, which has been used as a base for GZDoom’s Russian translation.

Magnus Norddahl

Creator of QZDoom’s true-color software renderer, as well as adding in post-processing and flexible window scaling support to both ZDoom and GZDoom. He is also responsible for a huge number of graphical enhancements, improvements, and innovations that have occurred since ZDoom 2.8.0 and GZDoom 2.0.0, and has also been helping the community understand and use many of his new features since their implementation.

Christoph Oelckers

Most of the DECORATE support as well as numerous bug fixes. Also, for the OpenGL renderer, as well as advancing ZScript along to the point where it is today.

Jimmy Paddock

Assistance with GZDoom’s Unicode-based fonts.

Chris Robinson

Maintainer of OpenAL-Soft, and developer and maintainer of ZDoom’s OpenAL backend support. He is a big part of the reason why GZDoom was able to transition away from FMod and go fully GPL compliant, today.

Ken Silverman

Creator of the “Build” Engine, and for giving special permission to relicense his voxel code as GPL for GZDoom’s software renderer.