Doom, Doom II and Heretic

What are these games?

If you don't know anything about Doom, Doom II and Heretic (how did you come to this page?), then you should spend some time in the Games section of DoomGate .

Frankly, I cannot believe that there is someone on Earth (with a computer and network access) who does not know what Doom is. Where have you been in the last two years? And why are you looking at this page?

Newsgroups

There are five groups dedicated to Doom and games based on the Doom engine. If you are looking for the latest information about these games or the add-ons written for them, then read these groups. If you want to post an article, please read the Posting Guidelines first.

rec.games.computer.doom.announce

If you can only read one RGCD newsgroup, keep up-to-date on this one. This is where any announcements of general interest to DOOM players appear. In this group, you will find all FAQs and other informational postings about Doom, Doom II and Heretic. This is the only moderated group in the RGCD hierarchy and the traffic is not too high.

rec.games.computer.doom.help

Need help? Take a look here! This is the home of the Doom Help Service. If you have read the FAQs and cannot solve a problem, then post your question here. Experienced Doomers will do their best to help you. Possible questions are: setup problems for DOS and non-DOS versions of Doom, how to upgrade Doom to the latest patch level, how to solve a particular map,...

rec.games.computer.doom.playing

Here you will find everything about playing Doom, Doom II and Heretic levels and user-written PWADs (secrets, strategies, bugs, where to get specific PWADs, etc.). You will also find PWAD reviews and lists of modem/Internet opponents in this group.

rec.games.computer.doom.editing

This is where I feel at home! This group is the meeting room for PWAD authors and people who want to get more from Doom, Doom II and Heretic. Common topics include: hacking the EXE file, editing saved games and LMPs, PWAD design techniques (how to do this, how was that done, etc.), design problems or limitations (HOM, Medusa), questions about the popular editors (where to get, bug reports, etc.).
[Note: Comments or questions about playing user-written PWADs (opinions, keys, secrets, etc.) should not be posted here. Post them in .playing instead. Thanks.]
If you have a question about DEU, post it on this newsgroup instead of e-mailing me. I read this newsgroup quite often (I volunteered for coordinating it) and if I'm not there, chances are that someone else will be able to answer your questions.

rec.games.computer.doom.misc

This should cover all conversations which are not covered by one of the other groups, including discussions about piracy, Quake, Doom the Movie, etc.

An important note about the newsgroups (help me!):

The first Doom newsgroup was called alt.games.doom. Last year, the majority of the readers of alt.games.doom voted for the creation of the five rec.games.computer.doom.* newsgroups described above, using the usual RFD/CFV procedure (see news.announce.newusers if you are not familiar with those terms). The RFD also stated that alt.games.doom and the other a.g.d.* groups would be removed as soon as the traffic would have dropped down significantly. Unfortunately, the traffic is still high, mainly because new people keep on coming to this group (it is listed before the other ones, in alphabetical order, so it is easier to subscribe to it).

This is annoying, because alt.games.doom is now populated mainly by beginners who cannot answer the questions that are posted on this group. As a result, people resort to e-mail and send their questions to people like me. This is a waste of time for all well-known Doomers who receive the same questions again and again.

The only way to solve this problem is to encourage the people who are still posting in alt.games.doom, alt.games.doom.ii and alt.games.doom.newplayers to move to the new groups, as all experienced Doomers have done last year. I don't have enough time to reply to all articles that are posted on a.g.d, so I need your help: if you see someone posting there, please tell him to move to the new groups. If he is asking some question and you know that the answer can be found in the RGCD FAQ or in another periodical posting, then tell him that ``the best answer can be found in section XX of the RGCD FAQ (posted weekly in rec.games.computer.doom.announce)''. But do not post the complete answer, because people who find the answer on a.g.d will not feel the need to move to the new groups.

If enough people do this, then maybe the traffic in a.g.d.* will decrease. And it will probably not increase much in the r.g.c.d.* groups, because most of the questions that are currently posted in a.g.d are answered in the RGCD FAQ. Hopefully, the people who move from the old groups to the new ones will read the FAQs and find the answers to their questions. Lots of people have already thanked me for pointing them to the new groups which are better organised and on which it is easier to find an answer to most questions. The ones who are still posting on the old groups haven't read my articles and don't know about the new groups. They should be helped too, and I hope that you will tell them that they should move to rec.games.computer.doom.*.

Thanks in advance if you can help...

Editing Doom, Doom II and Heretic

• The official DEU page.
• Preview of DEU 5.3.

Other stuff

• Quake RFD. The Call For Votes (CFV) for Quake newsgroups has been issued. If you like Doom and Heretic, you will certainly like Quake, id Software's next game. Here is your chance to support Quake: vote for the creation of the new rec.games.computer.quake.* newsgroups! Read the official RFD and CFV if you want to know how to vote.
• The wadtoiv home page.
• Tricks of the DOOM Programming Gurus.