Doom II: Hell on Earth is an award winning first-person shooter video game and the second title of id Software's Doom franchise. It was originally released for MS-DOS computers in 1994 and Macintosh computers in 1995. The Macintosh version was developed in Austin, Texas by developers such as Brett Butler. This meant that running Doom wouldn’t be nearly as easy as it was when I got it running on my Keysight DSOX1102G oscilloscope, as that device still had a (mostly) full Explorer shell and command prompt. Windows.lnk shortcuts failed to work either, causing TotalCommander to just redirect to the system root directory – and forget trying to. The video above is a joke that some people seem to not be getting. RIffing off the 'you can put Doom on anything' meme, from graphing calculators to printers, YouTube user vexal put together this.

Jun 7, 2019

How To Install and Play DOOM on Windows 10 in Hi-Resolution

Introduction

In continuing with retro gaming we now will cover one of the games that started it all with DOOM. We will be installing DOOM on Windows 10 in Hi-Resolution. For this to work you will need to have a registered or purchased version of DOOM, the shareware version will not work. Head over to GOG.com and get a copy for a great price. I recommend Ultimate DOOM.

Installation

There are several pieces you will need to download.

GZDoom which you can download from https://zdoom.org/downloads. Select Windows 64 bit version 4.1.2 is latest as of this post.
Hoover1979 UltraHD Doom Texture Pack from Moddb. This is a big download and is a RAR file. You can extract the RAR file with 7-Zip if you do not have one.

Install GZDoom

Installation of GZDoom is straight forward. Just unzip the gzdoom-bin-4-1-2b-x64.zip to a directory and you are done.

Install DOOM

Follow normal installation process for DOOM. If you have purchased the GOG version then just install following normal process. After installation is completed just copy the DOOM.WAD file to the extracted GZDoom folder.

At this point you can just double-click on gzdoom.exe and start playing DOOM, but now lets add the Hi-Resolution Textures.

Extracting Hoover1979 UltraHD Doom Texture Pack

Use 7-Zip or winrar and extract the RAR file. Once the extraction is done just copy the contents to the GZDoom folder.

Playing in Hi-Res

The Hoover1979 UltraHD Doom Texture Pack includes batch files (bat) that you just double click on for Doom or Doom 2 to run. in the case of DOOM double click on Doom – UltraHD Texture Pack.bat and let the games begin.

Happy Retro Gaming!!

Thanks so much for this! I have been looking for a way to play this game on my computer for ages! You guys rock!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Step 2: Configuration
Step 3: Running DOSBox & Using the Command Line

What is DOSBox?

DOSBox is an emulator program which emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running a DOS operating system. Many IBM PC compatible graphics and sound cards are also emulated. This means that original DOS programs (including PC games) are provided with an environment in which they can run correctly, even though the modern computers have dropped support for that old environment. [Wikipedia] DOSBox is the standard way to play DOS games on modern computers. It has been compiled for Windows, Mac, Linux, and many other operating systems and platforms. It is free software released under a GNU General Public License.

Step 1: Downloading & Installing

Download DOSBox v0.74-2 for your operating system or platform:

Download official DOSBox Installer:Pre-configured .conf files:

Alternate Versions:

There are also some alternative versions of DOSBox available, based on the official source but improved with specific features:

DOSBox ECE (Enhanced Community Edition): Features include 3Dfx Vooodoo card emulation, enhanced pixel-perfect scaling (4x, 5x, 6x), improved sound emulation, and more. (Windows, Linux)

DOSBox SVN Daum: Features include save states, graphical shaders, vertical sync, CPU flags optimization, additional DOS commands (PROMPT VOL, LABEL, MOUSE, etc) and more. (Windows, OSX, Linux; the project has not been updated since 2015.)

Run the installation program; you will see a screen like this:

Note that this guide focuses on Windows, but the process is similar on Mac, Linux, and other computer-based operating systems. Simply click Next, then Next again (change the installation location if you want), then Install to complete the process.

DOSBox on Android & iOS devices: DOSBox is also available for Android and iOS for mobile devices. There are MANY versions available on the Android app store and each will work slightly differently, choose one that looks promising and try it out. The process for iOS is a bit trickier since Apple doesn't want you using programs like this. There is a Guide to installing DOSBox on iOS but I can't confirm that it works and be warned the process may be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing!

Step 2: Configuration

Without any configuration, DOSBox will run just fine and play most games. However its settings may not be to your preferences. DOSBox's settings are stored in the dosbox-0.74.conf file. On Windows this file is located in Users[your-user-name]AppDataLocalDOSBox. You can edit it by clicking the 'DOSBox 0.74 Options' link in your Start menu, or opening it in your favorite text editor. By default, the Start menu link will likely open the DOSBox configuration file in Notepad:

As you scroll through the file, there are numerous options that you can set. A line beginning with a hash (#) is a comment and is not executed, it's there for your information only. For full details of every option available, see the DOSBox.conf wiki page. For most users, the default options will work well, with the exception of the graphical display, CPU cycles, and autoexec (auto-mounting of drives). (CPU cycles controls how fast or slow DOSBox runs. Many old games will run too fast unless the cycles setting is set properly.)

DOSGames.com Pre-set Configs

If you'd prefer to not mess with settings, you can download and save one of these pre-set configuration files. These files assume your games are stored in the C:DOS directory; if not, modify the line right near the bottom to change it to wherever your files are stored.

Simply rename file to 'dosbox-0.74.conf' and place it in your Users[your-user-name]AppDataLocalDOSBox folder.

Video Modes

When DOSBox is running, you can press Alt-Enter to switch between full screen and windowed mode at any time.

Default to full screen: To specify that DOSBox always open in full screen, change the fullscreen=false line to fullscreen=true. You will also need to make sure that output is set to 'surface'. To always open DOSBox in full screen mode, the [sdl] section (at the top of the file) should be something like:

Window size: Depending on the resolution of your screen, the default in widowed mode of x2 size (so a game with a native resolution of 320x200 would be shown as 640x400) might be too small. To increase the magnification, first set the [sdl] values to something like this:

Then set the values in the [render] section to something like:

This would set the window size to x3 normal. There are other options listed for 'scaler' in the DOSBox conf file comments, you can try various values to see which one you like best.

Cycles

'Cycles' refers to the 'amount of instructions DOSBox tries to emulate each millisecond.' It's expressed as a number, so the higher the number, the faster computer DOSBox will simulate. The exact number of cycles to make a game run as intended will vary based on how fast your own computer is.

To change the number of cycles, you can use the CTRL-F11 (slower) and CTRL-F12 keys:

CTRL-F11: - Decrease speed (game goes slower)
CTRL-F12: + Increase speed (game goes faster)

You can also set the cycles at the command prompt, using the command cycles [value] where [value] is one of the following:

auto: The default, DOSBox tries to 'guess' at an appropriate number. Okay for most games.
m

Play Doom On Cmd