Homebrew WIP Odamex - A classic DooM multiplayer port for Nintendo Switch

[Ch0wW]

Latest version is 0.9.2 (28/05/2021).
WE ARE LOOKING FOR DEVELOPERS TO IMPROVE THE SWITCH BUILDS! PLEASE JOIN OUR DISCORD SERVER FOR MORE INFOS.

Odamex is a multiplayer-centric client/server source port originally based on Zdoom 1.22/csDoom. Despite offering many modern features and comforts, the engine is also capable of playing back many vanilla Doom demos. In addition to its strong netcode, other significant modern features include a truecolor software renderer, widescreen, uncapped frame rates, on-the-fly wad loading, and net demos with playback controls. So far, it has been reported to run on Windows, OSX, the common linux distros, XBox, Wii, Amiga.... And now the Nintendo Switch !

The port has been officially merged by the developers!

Screenshot:

Features :

Spoiler

• Full Client/Server multiplayer architecture with network compensation features (unlagged, client interpolation and prediction)
• Support for up to 255 players
• Various compatibility settings, to emulate vanilla Doom, Boom, or ZDoom physics and fixes
• Playback and recording of vanilla demos
• A fully-featured client netdemo record system with playback control
• Removal of most vanilla Doom Static limits
• Support for most Boom and MBF mapping features
• The traditional old-school style of Deathmatch and a Cooperative mode, but also other game modes such as Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag
• Support for Survival, Last Man Standing, Last Team Standing, LMS CTF, 3-WAY CTF, and Attack & Defend game modes
• Competitive-ready features, such as a warmup mode, round system, player queue, or playercolor overriding
• Several modern ZDoom additions, such as slopes, LANGUAGEv2 or MAPINFOv2 lump support
• An array of editing features, including the Hexen map format, DeHackEd and BEX patch support and ACS up to ZDoom 1.23
• Native Joystick support
• Several additional music formats, such as MOD and OGG
• In-Engine WAD downloader
• Allow on-the-fly WAD loading
• A 32-bit Color depth/true color renderer
• Full Widescreen support
• Ultra high resolution support (up to 8K)
• Uncapped and raised framerate
• Takes advantage of widely used libraries to port it to new devices with ease

Known bugs/problems :

• Loading times makes the game go faster, to keep with uncapped framerates. It could lead to desyncs online until it syncs back after a few seconds. The same behaviour can happen if you go to the home menu, or put the console into sleep mode.
• When starting the game, the keyboard will suddently appear. This is because of the way we currently handle the SDL2 keyboard.
• Partial invisibility is blending in red in 32bit color mode, not black.
• Quitting the game may give an error message that could make you unable to start any application, unless restarting the console.

If you happen to find additional bugs, do not hesitate to write a Bug Report.
Pull requests are also OK!

Installation:

• Unzip everything at the root of the SD Card.
• Add your WAD files (DOOM.WAD, DOOM2.WAD, FREEDOOM.WAD, ...) within /switch/odamex/wads
  
• Start Odamex in the HBL menu in full applet mode.
  
• Have fun !

Multiplayer:
Odamex fully supports online multiplayer and is fully cross-platform among PC, Mac, Linux or console users!
However, a launcher is currently in the works, but you can still manually connect to servers!

Syntax:

 connect IP:PORT <password>

Example:

connect 217.182.206.49:17013

If you need a list of servers, please go to https://odamex.net/servers in order to get a list with their IPs.

If you want to discuss, and request some multiplayer games, please go to the official Discord server located below.

Looking for Improvements
We are currently looking for developers to help us improving the port with these major issues:
- Improve performances in loading custom WADS
- Improve performances regarding higher resolutions
- Create a serverlauncher for Odamex with a compatible UI.

If you are interested in helping us, let us know or join the Discord server, located below.

Useful links:
Official webpage: http://odamex.net
Discord : https://discord.gg/aMUzcZE
SOURCE CODE : https://github.com/odamex/odamex

Credits to :

• iD Software, definitely for Doom.
  
• [B]@fgsfds[/B] for making the strong fondations of the port!
  
• The Odamex team for Odamex itself.

 

[Knucklesfan]

I'll just throw this in the pile of doom switch ports. But seriously, this looks SWEET!

 

[baxzxd]

The more Doom the better

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Know of any way to type in the chat in-game?

You can activate "say" but obviously cant type as no keyboard prompt for switch

 

[Ch0wW]

Know of any way to type in the chat in-game?
You can activate "say" but obviously cant type as no keyboard prompt for switch

I've nearly finished support for chat as I just added support for chatmacros. I've also fixed a few stuff here and there, added hardcoded spectator keys (using LEFT/RIGHT on the DPAD to spectate between clients).
All I need to do now is to make a custom menu for the vote options, do some more fixes, and I plan to make a release in the next few days/hours since 0.8.1 is official since yesterday.

And a few "favorite" servers too because, why not.

EDIT : slightly updated the post to announce the official release of 0.8.1.

 

[Ch0wW]

A new update of the port has been released ! This one mainly fixes some user problems that I've encountered, and tried to improve it slightly.

This update is compatible with all 0.8.1 servers, now that the port has been officially updated !

Changelog
- Updated with Odamex 0.8.1's release.
- Added a very basic multiplayer submenu in order not to have some very specific binds in your config (like the votes, spectating, or to chat).
- Added support for chat/teamchat
- Added chat macros (more informations below)
- Added complete support for the automap (see below)
- You can now change faster your color
- As a spectator, DPAD-LEFT (previous player) and DPAD-RIGHT (next player) have been hardcoded to watch other player's PoV
- Added experimental values for the joystick that will make you closer to do SR40. You can enable it in the joystick menu.

Automap controls :

Spoiler

L Shoulder : Zooms the automap out
R Shoulder : Zooms the automap in
A : Adds a point on the automap
B : Clears the points on the automap
X : Grid mode
Y : Follow mode

CHAT & Chatmacros

Spoiler

DELETE YOUR EXISTING CHATMACROS in your odamex configuration !! I modified the hardcoded ones.

PRESS (-) and hold any of these buttons to send a pre-written message:

B : "Hello !"
A : "I'm ready to kick butt !"
X : "HELP !"
Y : "Good game !"
L SHOULDER : "No"
R SHOULDER : "Yes"
L TRIGGER : "Thanks for the game, see ya !"
R TRIGGER : "I'm on a Nintendo Switch, can only use macros."
(+) : "I'll take care of it"
R-NUB : "COME HERE"

if you don't use macros, press X to open up the virtual keyboard. Press then A to send the message.

Original post has been updated.

 

[Ch0wW]

A small (unofficial) update for Odamex has been made. It is minor depending on your current firmware version.

CHANGELOG:

• Updated with the latest libnx libraries, for 9.0 support.
• Automap is now bound by default to (-) instead of RSHOULDER.
• Fix for bug #1280 (forced colors after switching teams aren't properly refreshed)
• Fix team scores increasing during warmup
• Fix callvote arguments being case-sensitive
  
• <devs only> compiling Odamex is now easier since it is integrated within the CMake file.

By the way, we are looking for a few developers to fix and improve the Wii (random crashes, switches' texture disappearing after pressing them) and WiiU ports (black screen on startup). One of our goals is to make Odamex cross-platform, and any help is always welcome ♥ ! Please join our Discord (first post) for more infos.

 

[Ch0wW]

Major update alert, major update alert! We have entirely updated Odamex to 0.9.0!

There are so many things to say about the release as we have spent a lot of time adding unique features. But I'll let the devs do the talking:

Official Changelog :

Spoiler

New Gamemodes: 3 Team TDM and CTF
Green team joins the melee! Fragging the enemy team and capturing flags is a fair bit more hectic with three teams in play....and even more fun!

New Gamemode: Survival
It has been a long time coming, but Survival has finally arrived in Odamex! See if you can last through the best cooperative content Doom has to offer with a limited number of lives!

New Gamemode: Last Marine Standing
Cooperative is not the only place where you can lose your life. You have limited lives and a limited grace period at the start of every round to grab whatever weapons and ammunition you can. Once the round starts, it's kill or be killed. See if you can outlast your friends...or enemies.

New Gamemode: Team Last Marine Standing
Don't care to go at it alone? Have a buddy or two watch your back and see which team comes out on top!

New Gamemode: LMS Capture The Flag
We got so carried away adding lives-based game-modes that this just kind of...fell out the work we had already done! Add flags to TLMS...why the heck not! Throw in a third team if you want!

The Big Twist
We have added no new major game modes. There are still just four: Coop, DM, TDM, and CTF.

All of the existing Odamex game modes work with a separate setting which turns on lives support. In addition, there is yet another setting to add support for multiple rounds. You can run a game mode with one, both, or neither of these settings, and the game mode will adjust accordingly.

The groundwork we have laid in 0.9 means that we should be able to support rounds and lives in all future game-modes when it makes sense to do so. More importantly, this is part of a larger strategy where we intend to introduce fewer completely distinct gamemodes, but with many ways to customize them. Such as...

New Gamemode Setting: Attack & Defend CTF
One team has to defend a flag, the other teams are trying to take it from them. All the defenders have to do is hold out until the time limit while preventing the attackers from scoring their flag. If rounds are enabled, the defending team changes every round. If there are three teams, one team is on defense, the other two are on offense.

This is also not a new major game mode, but an additional setting that is compatible with CTF. Like lives and rounds, the "sides" setting can be toggled independently, and could also be used with future gamemodes where adding sides makes sense.

And that's just gamemode settings. There's more in this release than just gamemodes.

In-client WAD Downloading Support
Who needs a WAD downloader in a server browser when you can seek WAD files directly from your client? New to 0.9 is a WAD downloading system that searches a collection of popular WAD hosting services and grabs the WAD file much faster than the old server-based downloader ever managed, with none of the extra server processing required.

Join Queue for Spectators
Want to join the game, but there's no room? Attempting to join will now put you in a queue that will let you join the game at the next opportunity. You can even set up the game to automatically boot the losers of a game and then cycle the queue.

Improved Mouse Code
Shoot with precision! The mouse code has been redesigned to reduce latency between moving the mouse and seeing the player camera change on your screen.

An Online-friendly Substitute for Voodoo Dolls
Our solution for fixing coop maps that use Voodoo Dolls is to not use traditional Voodoo Dolls. Instead, we've come up with a special object called an Avatar which occupies all voodoo spawns in the map. They aren't player objects, but they will activate player triggers, hand out any item it touches to all in-game players, and if you try to telefrag one it will kill you instead, leaving the Avatar unharmed.

Support for Modern MAPINFO
Our MAPINFO parser has learned quite a few new tricks and now supports a sizable chunk of modern MAPINFO in addition to the classic brace-less version. It even attempts to parse ZMAPINFO as well and understands a few settings from ZDoom 2.x.

Support for Modern LANGUAGE Lumps
The old ancient binary LANGUAGE lump has finally been kicked to the curb, in favor of the modern LANGUAGE lump most commonly seen. As a bonus, many WAD's that were missing strings entirely (Valiant) now work again!

Console Improvements
In our ongoing quest to freshen up the interface, this version comes with a new console font. The new font is courtesy of Team Eternity and should be a bit easier on the eyes with more gradients and fewer sharp edges. There is also a new auto-complete interface based on zsh that should do a better job of showing you possible command completions.

Support for Sprites with 16 Rotations
Just what it says on the tin - it works just like it does in Doom Retro.

Configuration Assistance
Need help configuring your game client or server? New to Odamex 0.9 is a cvardoc console command that will write an HTML file to disk that contains all console variables that Odamex (or Odasrv) knows about, along with documentation.

Of course, our sample server configs have seen an update as well, and can help setup a server in many common configurations.

Installs and Behaves like a Modern Windows App
The installer for the Windows version of Odamex now gives you the option if you want to install it for the current user or system-wide. Additionally, the installer will configure Odamex to save configurations, screenshots, and other files to Documents\My Games\Odamex like most modern games.

ZIP distributions do not have this behavior by default, but it can still be opted into by creating a text file named odamex-installed.txt in your program directory - contents doesn't matter.

What a Switch!
The most portable multiplayer port now runs on the Nintendo Switch! Is there anything else that needs to be said? Maybe not, but they say pictures are worth a thousand words, so let's let the picture do the talking.

More Bug Fixes Than You Can Shake a Stick At
Thanks to the magic of netdemos, crash dumps and Address Sanitizer, a significant number of bugs have been sought out and squashed. Netcode weirdness, crashes, indeterminate gamestates, maps that didn't behave quite right, HOM-filled demos, no bug was safe.

TL;DR changelog:
* Switch support is now official, meaning you can freely contribute to the project, with compilation instructions directly
* Odamex includes an even better compatibility with custom wads
* There's an ingame WAD downloader
* Joystick support has been improved
* Support of Survival, Last Man Standing and a new variant of CTF gamemode
* Massive, MASSIVE bugfixes.

I've updated the main thread with all these new info.

Reporting issues & Improvements
We have updated our way to report issues: previously we required users to create an account on our website to report issues. Now, we fully transitionned from it to Github, making things easier for everyone.

Also, we are currently looking for developers to help us improving the port with these:
- Improve performances in loading custom WADS
- Improve performances regarding higher resolutions
- Create a serverlauncher for Odamex with a compatible UI.

If you are interested in helping us, let us know or join the Discord server, located below.

Final words
We would like to give a special shout-out to our Discord community that has been immensely helpful in not only helping us test, but giving us feedback and helping guide the direction of the port. You folks are amazing and none of this would be possible without you.

 

[Impossible_Igntiz]

Does this port have local multiplayer support as well?

 

[Ch0wW]

Does this port have local multiplayer support as well?

Unfortunately, it doesn't support local multiplayer. It could be a nice feature for the future (especially for the Home console builds), but we are currently focused on online multiplayer.

 

[Ch0wW]

An update for Odamex has been released.

Official post release (as seen on Doomworld)

Spoiler

Odamex 0.9.1 has been released. Download it from Sourceforge or Github.

For such a big release, 0.9.0's aftermath was relatively calm. This gave us headroom to roll a number of bugfixes into this next version, but then we realized we could throw in a few extra features at the same time. So we did.

Spawn Inventory

You can now give players almost any inventory you desire with a single console variable. Health, Green Armor, Blue Armor, weapon inventory, starting weapon, ammo, and even backpacks and berserk, all modifiable from all game modes with just a single console variable.

g_spawninv "health:100 armor1:100 rweapon:3 weapons:123a bullets:50 shells:16 berserk"
This will give you a shotgun (3) as your ready weapon, a chainsaw (a) in reserve, and the rest should be self-explanatory. Of course, trying to make spot updates to such a long variable can be a pain, so we also included a spawninv console command that can modify an existing variable. For example spawninv shells 8 will change the number of starting shells from 16 to 8 and keep everything else the same.

This variable is compatible with every game mode, from Coop to Attack & Defend LMS Capture the Flag. In game modes where you keep your inventory between levels, you will not get most of the inventory re-given between levels, but it will refresh your berserk.

WADs with Hashes

WADs can now have hashes in their filenames, and Odamex will allow you to join a server with a hashed filename as if you were using the original WAD file. No more getting mixed up between multiple versions of a WAD with the same name, you can now have many versions of the same WAD file on your hard drive at the same time, and Odamex will select which one to use depending on what hash the server sends it.

For example, if you join a server running the 29-map Scythe 2, Odamex will look for a WAD named either scythe2.wad or scythe2.0bade1.wad, with "0bade1" being the first six hexdec chars in the MD5 hash of the WAD. If the WAD with the proper hash is not found on your hard drive, Odamex will try to download the WAD file with the hash the server wants, and if found it will rename the WAD to the hashed filename (scythe2.0bade1.wad) and join the server with it.

Exactly six hex characters will always mean an MD5 hash. Any other count will not be recognized, and if we add support for other hashes, we will either increase the number of hex chars or add a prefix. The downloader will also only rename WAD files if you already have a WAD on your system by the original name, so you don't need to worry about all of your downloads having hashes, only the ambiguous ones.

Other New Features

• DEH Patches in PWADs can now coexist with externally-loaded patches.
• A new hud_bigfont setting which changes several fonts in the HUD to use a bigger font.
• A new cl_chatsounds setting which allows you to disable sounds made when someone else on the server talks.
• Resurrected Ghost monsters have now been reintroduced outside of demo playback, and there is a new co_novileghosts setting which can toggle the behavior.
• A new g_coopthingfilter setting, which can suppress multiplayer things from being spawned. It can also spawn everything except weapons.
• Dead players with no lives can now use spectator-specific buttons like mousewheel.
• A sv_weapondrop setting much like ZDoom which has players drop their weapon on death.

Bugfixes upon Bugfixes

These are the major things that we just threw in because we wanted to. The real meat of 0.9.1 is all of the bugfixes, and there's simply too many to list here, so let's just cover some of the big touchpoints:

• A glitch in the installed version of Odamex was leading to undesirable portable behavior even when installed, resulting in a strange and misleading error message about crash directories. This has been remedied.
• Netdemos recorded with 0.9.1 should no longer be missing critical initial state leading to crashes or strange missing data on playback.
• Big maps that have lots of teleport destinations in them should now load much quicker - most notably Sunlust MAP30.
• Connecting to servers should now be significantly more reliable on bad connections.

You can find the complete changelog here for now.

TL;DR changelog:
* A bigger stability in loading custom WADs and demos.
* Connecting to servers is way more consistent for unstable connections.
* Downloading wads that are known to have several "final" versions can be downloaded without trouble.
* More CVARs to customize the client (and server).
* Removal of recording vanilla demos (playback still works).
* Recording online demos shouldn't crash anymore on playback due to missed data.
* Once again, lots of fixes done to the port and WAD compatibility.

Downloads have been updated in the main thread, or you can get it below.

Please note this version does not have timidity support for midi files.

 

[mathew77]

An update for Odamex has been released.

Thanks for the new update that's compatible with Switch's OFW 12.0.2!

I've an issue with fire button though — when I am trying to configure it via main menu it works but the next time launching the app it's still the same, resetting to default.

Is there any sort of odamex.cfg file?

 

[Ch0wW]

Thanks for the new update that's compatible with Switch's OFW 12.0.2!

I've an issue with fire button though — when I trying to configure it via main menu it works but the next time launching the app it's still the same, resetting to default.

Is there any sort of odamex.cfg file?

There is an odamex.cfg that should be generated yes! However, you're right, save files didn't work upon quitting the game. I thought the issue was fixed, but it wasn't. I'll quickly find a solution or a dirty fix until I can truly correct that issue.

 

[nickskaven]

How can i manually connect to a server? I press all buttons but nothing happend

 

[Ch0wW]

How can i manually connect to a server? I press all buttons but nothing happend

Go to Options -> Open the Console. Then press X (or Y), and type "connect <ip>:<port>" (without the ").

We plan to have an ingame server-browser, but we need more developers that could help us doing so.

 

[Milenko]

How did I miss this? Keen to try online!

 

[Ch0wW]

The crashing issue is bigger than I've thought. The game never returns to the HBL, or it crashes due to the Zone rework. I have been unable to fix the issue ; I have then posted an issue on the github project HERE. If you're able to understand what's going on, and know how to fix it, feel free to create a pull request. I'd be forever grateful to you.

Anyway, I have posted a quick workaround for the game: I have added in the menu a "save configuration" option so that you can still manually save. As a bonus, it also includes the latest stable commit that fixes important issues with doors and more WAD compatibility support. Binary is updated in the main thread and below.

How did I miss this? Keen to try online!

Feel free to join our Discord server! We usually play the weekends, but there are still people that are willing to play.

 

[Ch0wW]

Alright, we figured out the cause of the crash on exit, and the build is, once again, updated (that's the last one before the next official update - or server launcher -, I promise). It'll still stay on a black screen, but at least the configs will be properly saved.

 

[mathew77]

Thank you!

this version does not have timidity support for midi files.

But how to turn on in-game music? I've my Roland SC-55 .OGG files, but don't know what's their right place on SD card unfortunately..

 

[Ch0wW]

Thank you!

But how to turn on in-game music? I've my Roland SC-55 .OGG files, but don't know what's their right place on SD card unfortunately..

Unfortunately, midi support is kinda difficult to get for the Switch release, and the requirement of Timidity makes things harder. It supports all other formats, but not midi/mus files yet.

However, since the Switch seems to support fluidsynth (what GZDoom seems to support), we might be able to use that audio subsystem for playbacking midi music. And since it's also a popular request, I believe we're planning to support this on the next major release of Odamex.

Anyway, there's a new update for Odamex (0.9.2)!

No gigantic feature drops this time, mostly just bugfixes and the return of the Mac client. Some of the more notable things to talk about:

• MAP08's sounds are no longer ear-splitting.
• Sounds no longer vanish when many sounds are playing using the default sound channel setting of 32.
• Many MAPINFO errors were squashed, allowing the loading of yet more WAD files with modern mapinfos.
• Many bits of broken behavior surrounding doors were fixed.
• Many sources of crashes were taken care of, particularly the ones that were causing severe instability in the Linux and unreleased (0.9.1) Mac client.

Full changelog is available here.