FreeDOOM README

IMPORTANT: You MUST read this file before submitting anything to the project as it contains important information.

Intellectual Property

We know most people hate legalese, but this is important. This applies to everything which is submitted - all the graphics, sprites, textures and sounds.

You must be incredibly careful when basing on existing graphics or sounds. Most doom projects are incredibly lax on reusing intellectual property - there are plenty of wads out there which contain modified doom sprites, for example. However, due to the nature of this project, we do not have the same liberty to rip as we please.

The general rules go as follows:

  • Everything you submit must be 100% your own work. You must not base upon resources from doom or any other game. You may not even rip textures from wads you have downloaded (if you find a wad with textures in which look useful, let us know - that way we can contact the author)
  • Be especially careful of "free texture" (or "free sound", or "free graphic") sites. Although these would appear at first look to be okay to use, many are only free for "non-commercial use". One of the things we want to be able to do is put this on linux cds (which are sold - "a commercial use").
  • If you find a source which looks useful, the best thing to do is email fraggle, who can confirm it for you. If you do have a good source, we can also link to it, as it may contain other useful material that other people may be able to reuse.
  • The main exception is that you may of course reuse anything in the FreeDOOM deutex tree. Infact, this is encouraged, as reusing material will give the wad a more consistent feel.
  • We also have a directory containing "clipart" (skulls etc) that you may use in textures.

Graphics

This refers to all the flat graphics which are used in the game - the status bar, font, menu graphics etc.

Graphics should be the same colour and roughly the same size as the originals. They should not use the doom font.

Textures

Our current main aim is to replace all of the Doom 2 Textures. Before starting work, check patches_list and flats_list for the status of the patches (wall textures) and flats (floor/ceiling textures). If there are textures you particularly want to do then email fraggle who can edit the list files marking you as "assigned" to those textures (to stop duplicated efforts).

The textures should be the same dimensions as the originals. They should be similar to the originals but not identical (to avoid IP infringement) - infact they should be as different as possible while keeping to the general theme of the texture. Critically, they should tile the same (for example, in a brick texture, the cement lines should be in the same place).

Some textures contain the letters UAC or references to the UAC. This is a intellectual property of id (trademarked). Instead, use the letters AGM in your textures.

One thing we want to do while remaking these textures is to create high- res versions - in the future doom ports may be made which support high resolution textures and we may be able to use the high res versions. It is advised that you work in double resolution (twice the size) and 16-bit colour, and scale down your images (although you are not required to work this way, and may simply work in the original low resolution if you wish). If you submit high resolution textures, modify their name to reflect their status, eg. mwall4_2_2x.gif (double resolution), mwall4_2_full.png (true colour 16-bit version), mwall4_2_full2x.png (double resolution, true colour). True colour versions should be in .png format (.gif only supports 256 colours).

Crucially you should always make sure that you test your new textures in the game before you submit them as this may reveal glaring errors (wrong brightness or not tiling properly for example).

Sprites

Before starting work, be sure to check sprites_list to stop duplicated work. If you want to do one sprite in particular, email fraggle and ask to be assigned to that sprite. If you want to do a sprite with a large number of frames (eg. a monster) then you should definitely do this.

Monsters should be roughly the same size and shape, but different to the originals. The doom monsters are ids intellectual property (which unfortunately means no imps, cyberdemons etc :( ). The new monsters will behave in the same way as the originals, but will be totally new.

Sounds

Before submitting new sounds, be sure to check sounds_list to avoid duplicated effort. If you want to make one sound in particular then email fraggle and asked to be "assigned" to that sound.

Levels

We need replacements for all of Doom2's 32 levels. The levels should follow the Doom storyline and level names (these are defined in the exe and cannot be changed). If you want to make a level, it is highly suggested that you email fraggle and ask to be allocated to that level so that we know you are working on it and to avoid duplications. You can check the status of the levels here.

While working on levels it is useful if you periodically upload your latest version so that other people can follow your progress - it makes the project feel more lively if we can see the levels as they develop. You are under no obligation to do this of course, but it is suggested.

You may use BOOM effects in your levels and take advantage of the lack of limits that this provides, as almost all modern ports support BOOM editing options. However, you may not use any other port specific options (zdoom, edge etc features).

Guidelines: You do not HAVE to follow these but it is appreciated if you consider them:

  • Keep It Simple: complicated and detailed levels can become incredibly large. We want to keep the IWAD a reasonable size. Also, complicated scenes can run slowly on some machines.
  • Try to avoid special effects which exploit the quirks of the doom engine to work - eg. deep water HOM tricks. We want FreeDOOM to be able to run fairly well on the OpenGL ports as well as under the original renderer.

Musics

Before submitting musics, be sure to check The musics list file to avoid duplication. At this stage it probably doesnt matter which level your music is used on, as we probably will have to reshuffle the musics later on to fit the level themes better.

Submitting

To submit something to FreeDOOM, place it in a .zip file along with a text file containing your name and email address and upload it to ftp.despayre.org/incoming/freedoom/.

Note: If you are not experienced with using FTP you may want to read this document, a short explanation of how to upload your submissions to the FreeDOOM FTP :)

  • ALL graphics should be in non-interlaced .GIF format. Sorry about this: we know that there are objections to the format but it is the only format which is appropriate to all of our needs. True colour versions of textures should be in PNG format. If you cannot save in GIF format, you can submit them in BMP or PNG, but this is an annoyance as they have to be converted by hand. You should NOT use JPG for submitting ANY graphics as it is a lossy format and will lose details from the image.
  • Please do not dump files naked into the upload directory, you must zip them up. If you do not put them in a zip file then nobody can tell who submitted them. If you are using windows, a good program to create zip files is winzip.
  • When naming your zip file, prefix it with your name, eg. Bob_newflats.zip. This makes it easier to see who has submitted the material without having to extract the text file.
  • If you want to submit updated versions of textures, this is fine but please submit updated textures and new textures seperately (avoids the trouble of having to fiddle about working out what's new and what's updated).

 

It almost goes without saying, but everything submitted must be free. To clarify:

  • You should have no problems with people redistributing what you submit.
  • People should be able to reuse what you submit in their own wads and games etc. One of the main aims of this project is to create a large free texture/sound resource for people to use. However, we plan to license the FreeDOOM wad in such a way that requires credit to be given to the FreeDOOM team by people who reuse work.
  • Everything submitted should be free for commercial use (ie. can be sold). This doesnt mean we're going to box up FreeDOOM and sell it in shops but we want to be able to include FreeDOOM in compilations - eg. CDs of wad files, Linux Distributions, Magazine Cover CDs.

Following Progress

Be sure to check the FreeDOOM message board every now and then to see what is happening. If you have any problems or queries then feel free to ask on there or email fraggle.

You can follow the progress of textures here

We build new wad(s) at least once daily as new material is submitted. At the time of writing we have 2 wads containing new sounds and graphics. As the project grows this will be divided up more (sprites wad, texture wad, sounds wad etc.). You can download the files here.