Multiplayer

[Tijn]

#159

I’ve never played a multiplayer game of Doom, but I’d like to try. Perhaps we can organise something with the club?

Apparently Dosbox has IPX and modem emulation to make this happen: https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/connectivity

Who’s up for a game of online Doom?

[rnlf]

#160

I’m in! We’ll just have to figure out how to link my 486 to the Internet. I assume I’ll have to use a second computer for tunneling IPX through the Internet…

[toasty]

#183

Ooh, count me in!

[voxel]

#184

Thank you for the highly authentic LAN experience. Sorceress and I managed to ‘start’ a game but it turned out that we had different versions and so it quit out. But at least we know it should work in theory?

[Tijn]

#185

Man, that was… not great, haha.

Let’s try again tomorrow.

[rnlf]

#186

voxel is right though, it was authentic LAN feeling 😀

Maybe all the problem we had in our late 90’s LANs were not entirely due to our lack of technical understanding 😀

[Tijn]

#189

Ok, we managed a successful multiplayer session yesterday with sorceress, toasty, dollarone and myself \o/

We played the first level of the first episode and despite notable difficulties it was actually quite fun! And congrats to sorceress for winning the game, with 11 frags 😀

The problem with this though, as kdrnic pointed out on IRC, is that Doom is not intended to played over the internet at all. It synchronises the game on each frame and waits until it’s full synced before moving on to the next frame. That means the framerate is effectively equal to the highest ping between any two players. As you can imagine, with members spanning across the globe, this leads to a less than ideal experience.

Nonetheless we got it to work and despite everything, it was also pretty fun. I had a big smile on my face the whole time, so well done everyone!

[watchful]

#9391

For the revisit of Doom, may I recommend Zandronum? While a modern port, you can dial the graphics back to close to the original.

Of course there is the new Kex-based re-implementation on Steam. It doesn’t have vertical mouselook, and allows both local and Internet play.

[patrick_wd]

#9392

There’s also the odamex multiplayer port, which I’ve heard has good latency tolerance which should help for the large distances between club members.

In any case, I’m down for all of it. There’s plenty of different modes to try, like the co-op mode where you have to survive as a team against waves of monsters.

[Martli]

#9396

I was going to suggest Skulltag and realised it hasn’t been around since 2010… shows how long it’s been since I’ve played Multiplayer…

[Wesbat]

#9433

I’d love to have my first game of multiplayer Doom, if this happens, please count me in 🙂

Rather than modern source ports that diverge from the original, how does everyone feel about sticking to ports that give the closest feel of classic Doom multiplayer?

I second Odamex, it has the benefit that there are already dedicated servers running. It comes with a Launcher app to browser online servers and shows your ping time to each.

Chocolate Doom also comes to mind – although that has a 4 player limit (as did classic Doom).

[sorceress]

#9434

One of the difficulties we had back in 2017 was with ping, since doom was designed for lan play, not internet play.

Clients would wait between for player data to come in before advancing to the next frame. So if you weren’t within a few 100 km of your playmates, the game would both became a slideshow, and unstable.

With friends all in western europe, it was tolerable. When outsiders were added (brazil, australia?) it was a completely different experience.

If you want to try playing online again, I’d recommend a source port that is built for internet play.

If you want a more authentic experience (original builds + dosbox + an ipx tunnel) then be prepared for the above!

I also said that this was “one of the difficulties” – there were others, such as compatible engine versions, and having people available to play at the right time.

That said, I would enjoy playing this again online with the club, as it was fun and memorable.

I also fondly remember twice doing a full coop playthrough with club member bitrot/byterot. We were both skilled at the game, so it was breeze, but it still meant a 4 hour marathon and a late night to get through the 30+ levels. Good times. :o)

[patrick_wd]

#9435

Yeah, I’ve always felt that co-op is an underappreciated mode in any game. It’d be a blast to get a few people together and attempt pistol-start nightmare survival co-op to see how far we can get.

[dr_st]

#9437

>>> Clients would wait between for player data to come in before advancing to the next frame. So if you weren’t within a few 100 km of your playmates, the game would both became a slideshow, and unstable.
>>> With friends all in western europe, it was tolerable. When outsiders were added (brazil, australia?) it was a completely different experience.

Yes, this is a problem I experience sometimes when trying to play Duke Nukem 3D via DOSBox IPX emulation. Sometimes it works and is smooth enough and sometimes it’s a slideshow as you say, or desyncs entirely.

>>> It’d be a blast to get a few people together and attempt pistol-start nightmare survival co-op to see how far we can get.

Well, since levels don’t reset upon death in multiplayer, you could get as far as you want. Is the goal of ‘survival’ to not let any player die even once? If so, that would be tough indeed!

[patrick_wd]

#9438

Modern source ports have an option to cap the number of times you can respawn, so in effect you have a limited number of “lives”, which is what survival mode does. If everyone runs out of lives the level resets and you have to attempt it again.

[dr_st]

#9455

Ah, nice! A bit like “Extra Life” mode in Doom Eternal.

[watchful]

#9473

Alright, I got Odamex server running on my home server (75.118.69.125), in case folks want to try it. I’ve loaded Hordamex which is a horde-mode survival mod that looks fun.

Just run OdaLaunch and look for “DosGameClub” to find my unofficial server. You can drop in or leave at any time, it’s a dedicated server.

If folks want to do Skulltag then I’d recommend (Q-)Zandronum, my personal favorite and the spiritual successor. Q-Zandronum in particular has client-side prediction, and optionally more Quake-like movement. IME, QZ feels the best since projectiles appear immediately (client-side) then syncs periodically with server.

EDIT: Odamex had a new release yesterday, yet website downloads still going to v10.6. To get v11 you can use this SourceForce page.

[Wesbat]

#9481

Ah very nice! I am able to connect to it via the Launcher.