DoomRL
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''DRL'' (formerly ''DoomRL''), short for ''Doom, the Roguelike'', is a
roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most ro ...
video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...
developed by ChaosForge based on the
first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...
s ''
Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (1934–2020), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitche ...
'' and ''
Doom II ''Doom II'', also known as ''Doom II: Hell on Earth'', is a 1994 first-person shooter game developed and published by id Software for MS-DOS. It was also released on Mac OS the following year. Unlike the original '' Doom'', which was initi ...
''. It has been in development since 2002, and was released for
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
,
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
and
OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
. Following a
cease and desist A cease and desist letter is a document sent by one party, often a business, to warn another party that they believe the other party is committing an unlawful act, such as copyright infringement, and that they will take legal action if the oth ...
notice from "Doom"
trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...
owner
ZeniMax Media ZeniMax Media Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded in 1999 by Christopher Weaver and Robert A. Altman as the parent company for Weaver's video game publisher Bethesda Softworks. ...
, the game's name was changed to ''DRL'' in 2016.


Gameplay

''DRL'' is turn-based, offers a top-down interface formed entirely of
ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
characters, and features a character leveling system with traits. As it is based upon ''Doom'', the game is more fast-paced and combat-oriented than usual for a roguelike, and relies heavily on ranged rather than melee combat. A limited player inventory, non-stackable items, and other design choices contrast with the often extreme intricacy of games in its genre. As of version 0.9.9.6,
Derek Yu Derek Yu (born July 2, 1982) is an American independent video game designer, video game artist, and blogger.tileset is now the game's default, offering an alternative to the more traditional
ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
rendering. ''DRL'' includes the entire ''Doom'' soundset and music library, with optional support for high-quality
MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...
s.


History


Development

The game was created by programmer Kornel Kisielewicz with
Free Pascal Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) is a compiler for the closely related programming-language dialects Pascal and Object Pascal. It is free software released under the GNU General Public License, witexception clausesthat allow static linking against it ...
, and uses art by
Derek Yu Derek Yu (born July 2, 1982) is an American independent video game designer, video game artist, and blogger.first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...
s ''
Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (1934–2020), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitche ...
'' and ''
Doom II ''Doom II'', also known as ''Doom II: Hell on Earth'', is a 1994 first-person shooter game developed and published by id Software for MS-DOS. It was also released on Mac OS the following year. Unlike the original '' Doom'', which was initi ...
'' universe. Since approximately 2002 in-development with first
beta version The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...
s, the latest stable release is from 2024.


Wordmark conflict

On December 2, 2016, Kisielewicz received a
cease and desist A cease and desist letter is a document sent by one party, often a business, to warn another party that they believe the other party is committing an unlawful act, such as copyright infringement, and that they will take legal action if the oth ...
notice from
ZeniMax Media ZeniMax Media Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded in 1999 by Christopher Weaver and Robert A. Altman as the parent company for Weaver's video game publisher Bethesda Softworks. ...
, concerning the use of the wordmark "Doom" present on game's website and name, which ZeniMax trademarked worldwide. To exclude "Doom" from the game's name, the title was changed to simply ''DRL'' on December 7.


Open sourcing

In addition, the game was made
open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
by Kisielewicz on December 6 the same year. Kisielewicz had planned on releasing ''DoomRL'' as open-source prior to receiving the notice at the conclusion of an ongoing
crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...
campaign on
Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...
for '' Jupiter Hell'', a sequel to ''DoomRL'' using the same assets, as a thank-you to his supporters. The notice only made him push up this change to an earlier date. The
source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...
was made available via
GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...
under GPL 2.0 or later and the game's assets under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bui ...
license. Kisielewicz anticipates that the open-source community will be able to provide support and improvements to enhance both ''DRL'' and ''Jupiter Hell''. For instance, a community
source port A source port is a software project based on the source code of a game engine that allows the game to be played on operating systems or computing platforms with which the game was not originally compatible. Description Source ports are often ...
of DRL to the
OpenPandora The Pandora is a handheld gaming computer developed and produced by OpenPandora, which is made up of former distributors and community members of the GP32 and GP2X handhelds. Originally released in 2010, it was designed to take advantage of exi ...
handheld A mobile device or handheld device is a computer small enough to hold and operate in hand. Mobile devices are typically battery-powered and possess a flat-panel display and one or more built-in input devices, such as a touchscreen or keypad. Mod ...
resulted already three days later.


Reception

In 2014 ''DRL'' was described by PCGamer as "a brilliant mashup of two classics" and named among the "Ten top fan remade classics you can play for free right now".


References


External links

*
Official source code page
on github.com {{Doom series Doom (franchise) Linux games Roguelike video games Windows games Open-source video games Free software programmed in Pascal Freeware games Fan games Creative Commons-licensed video games