Going Beyond the Code: Doom Source Ports

I have always been a huge fan of the Doom series since it came out in 1993 but when I found out that there have been source ports created off of the game, I wanted to get my hands on some of that. I don't know how it happened but I stumbled upon Zdaemon, a multiplayer port of the game.

The first thing that let me know that it was going to be a worthwile port was the fact that, though built to be mainly for multiplayer purposes, you can still start the game up in single player mode and play through any maps that the game can run. Along with this, if you are not the best Doom player in the world or you can't find anyone to play against online (which is very rare), you can start the game up with bots and blast away at each other.

Aside from the single player, the multiplayer part of the game is just amazing. One thing that I really enjoyed was the fact that you had to register an account with them. I found this useful because then someone can't steal your username or look bad by accidentally stealing someone elses name. Once I opened the browser, it didn't take me long to find a server with people in it. On my first few times that I started joining games, I would find that I didn't have the map. This wasn't a problem with a useful tool built into Zdaemon called GetWad. Whenever you needed a map, it would search all of the major wad hosting sites and if it didn't find it there, it would search google for it. As soon as it found it, it would automatially download it and extract it if its in a .zip format.

Once you actually get into the game, you find yourself taking a trip back to 1993. I was amazed to find that it actually sticks very true to the original Deathmatch of Doom. If you are one of those "New-Schoolers" that need to have all the trick weapons, jumping, mouse-look and other newer items, don't freak! If you look and find some of the other maps out there, you can find servers that allow "New-School" features. Plus, there is also a CTF mode that the creators of Zdaemon programmed in to the game which will take you away from deathmatch and put you in a world of Doom CTF.

A nice feature I found within the launcher is the tabs at the bottom for friends, the Zdaemon Chat, Zdaemon Homepage and Zdaemon Forums. This was very useful because you have the Zdaemon community at the click of a mouse and not having to clutter up your Ram with useless browsers and IRC clients.

There really was only one real negative I could find with this game. What I found is that there are a lot of hackers that just cant play the game unless they are a little crooked. There have been some malicious coders that have decided to make aim hacks, wall hacks or even as far as making bots flood certain rooms when there have been a certain ammount of people in the game. Like any other game, the developers are always one step ahead of them and prevent this from happening.

In conclusion, I highly reccomend this source port to anyone who wants to play Doom.