My old operating system vs. that Doom port I want to run

I finished editing and releasing my latest Doom map. That's the time I get to play again. Over the last several months, I'd collected some maps others have made to play "when I've finished my damn job!". One of those most recently downloaded requires GzDoom. I don't have that one on my Linux box but do have it on my, now unneeded for editing maps for the time being, Windows XP machine. Well, I couldn't get this map to load. I look at the accompanying .txt file; sure enough, map01 & map02 ~ don't need to switch to Doom 1. But each time I attempt to load, I get Doom 2's Entryway.

I take a look at the startup screen in the drop-down display; "What version of GzDoom am I running?". No surprise to me at all to find that I'm running a copy that's dated Christmas Eve, 2012! Yah. Maybe I should download something a little newer. But which version? Seeing as how I'm also not running Microsoft's latest and greatest operating system, maybe I should look up when the system requirements exceeded my installed Windows XP.

In my search for this information, I found the neatest little chart by DosFreak buried at the Microsoft Software Forum Network. The original is at
https://msfn.org/board/topic/183038-gzdoom-for-windows-xp/
if you desperately need to verify but I'm pasting the abbreviated contents of that forum post here so that I may be able to reference it easily when needed. Even the comments outside of the chart have juicy-juicy useful information in them. Like, how to get your copy of Doom95 to work on a modern system using DxWnd. Too, it could disappear from Internet in the future and I just hate when that happens! I also removed people quoting each other to ease readability. I found the entire exchange to be fascinating as well as entertaining.

OldSchool38	Posted October 17, 2021
	I love the old game doom and doom 2, however the newest builds for that source port don't support Windows xp anymore, does anyone know the last version that does? Or if it's possible to hack a newer version to work with XP?
UCyborg	Posted October 17, 2021
	Last XP compatible version: gzdoom-bin-4-1-2b.zip Relevant topic on official forum
OldSchool38	Posted October 17, 2021
	Thanks for the information! reads thread linked....Yikes!, some of those folks over there need to put their arrogance in check-not everyone wants to use microsoft's latest spyware!
TrevMUN	Posted October 17, 2021
	Wow, you weren't kidding. People like that Rachael admin are a massive turnoff. I've had the displeasure of seeing people like that well before Microsoft ended support for Windows XP, but as soon as tech journalists began trumpeting the "death" of the OS it seemed like they turned out in droves. It's really irritating to see such attitudes involving old games, too, such as DooM. (The most obnoxious example I recall was in 2014ish when the 90's SNK arcade run-and-gun Metal Slug got ported to Steam, but did not support XP. Some doofus snarkily mocked disappointed XP users with "What about MS-DOS support?! What about Windows 3.1 support?!!!" even though, y'know, the game was ahem "ported" to such OSes in the past.) By comparison Graf Zahl at least provides some rationale for the decision, even if I disagree with it. You could try seeing if XomPie would get the newer versions of GZDoom running on XP, though from what it sounds like the real solution would involve the projects to implement the API/libraries/features in the newer Windows versions.
j7n	Posted October 17, 2021 (edited)
	Do you really need Doom updated to enjoy it? The work of GZ was complete when the game was ported. Original games don't receive many patches and can continue to be played. Problems sometimes arise if you want to run them on very new systems, which XP is not. I don't understand the hatred expressed towards older Windows by developers who work on even more obsolete games. They wouldn't appreaciate posts on their forum saying how Doom sucked.
TrevMUN	Posted October 17, 2021
	I think that will depend on if GZDoom implements more features in the future. The source ports for Doom are known to add extra bells and whistles which have been taken advantage of by mod and map makers. For example, GZDoom has an OpenGL renderer which allows for fully 3D floors including slopes (which the original Doom's engine can not handle) as well as reflective floors, dynamic lights, brightmaps (so, for example, demons' eyes can glow in the dark) as well as a bunch of other modernizations like 32-bit colors so that sprites aren't limited to the original Doom's palette. So you get maps that look like this rather than like this.
UCyborg	Posted October 17, 2021
	The changelog is looong and there's a lot of things related to scripting. The engine is very much oriented towards modding and its renderer uses OpenGL 3.0+ features, Vulkan backend is also implemented. It's not the kind of engine you pick if you want to play Doom like in 1993.
j7n	Posted October 17, 2021
	Oh I've never been interested in mods, only for the nostalgic value of the game itself. OpenGL looks nice on Windows with anti-aliasing, and modern controls such as strafing and jumping. And it works with modern video cards where Doom95 doesn't. I see that 4.1.2 already has some funky sound engine that is incompatible with E-MU 0404, and sounds like a constantly firing machine gun. Did they really need 128 sound channels for Doom... lol.
TrevMUN	Posted October 18, 2021
	Maybe not for the original game, but it does come in handy for mods/maps with a lot of action happening at once!
gerwin	Posted October 18, 2021
	I agree that GZDoom was already one of the most mature and polished games many years ago. Especially for playing the classic contents. And as for dated operating systems, I worked on this one in 2014: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MBF And here is another recent one for MS-DOS: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/FastDoom Some people from the ZDoom/DRDteam websites contacted me about MBF about a year ago. If their wiki entry was OK to me. No problem.
UCyborg	Posted October 18, 2021 (edited)
	DxWnd can make it work. They key setting is Renderer set to primary surface in the game's profile (which you have to create) settings on DirectX tab. There's also a mouse patch which you'd need to make mouse input work since it normally uses VXD driver (:blink:) for reading mouse movement. Doom95 is probably mostly interesting for historical reasons for some doomers since it was considered a bit sloppy even when it was new. It was Microsoft's attempt to promote DirectX in Windows 95.
MontanaSlim	Posted October 18, 2021
	There's also LZDoom, which apparently had it's last XP compatible release on github earlier this year... version 3.87c - note the "XP fix" file too. https://github.com/drfrag666/gzdoom/releases and https://github.com/drfrag666/gzdoom/releases/tag/3.87c Tried the newer versions and get the "not a 32-bit app" dialog.
j7n	Posted October 19, 2021 (edited)
	LZDoom works (without sound) if I patch the subsystem version to 5.1. It doesn't complain about any missing imports. I have no idea how complete it with regards to mods. Apparently they changed the sound engine from Fmod to OpenAL some time ago since version 3.0 for licensing reasons, which genereated some controversy at that time. Nothing with OpenAL works for me. I have to remove the DLL when playing Euro Truck Simulator.
DosFreak	Posted October 19, 2021 (edited)
	The below are the highest versions that work on each OS the last time I tested: DOS eternity-dos-v33920-7 FastDoom 0.8.7 MBF 2.04 95 Zdoom LE 2.8.1f 98SE-ME Chocolate Doom 2.3.0 Crispy Doom 3.2 Doom Legacy 1.48.8 PrBoom+ 2.5.1.4 Rude 2.5.0c ZDoom32 2.8.6 98SE-ME (KernelEX) chocolate-doom-20210726-win32 crispy-doom-20210725-win32 PrBoom+ 2.5.1.7um Rude 3.1.0pre Woof! 6.2.0 2000 (BWC) Crispy Doom 4.3 2000 (BWC) - XP 32 LZDoom 3.88a 8-8-2021 (change major version) XP 32bit chocolate-doom-20211019-win32 crispy-doom-20211019-win32 Doom Retro 4.3 10-15-2021 Eternity-x86-4.03.00-pre-412-g47dcc309 10-18-2021 gzdoom 4.1.3 6-8-2019 PrBoom+ 2.5.1.7um 6-16-2019 Rude 3.1.0pre11 10-31-2020 Woof! 7.0.0 9-27-2021 dsda-doom 0.21.3 8-30-2021 Vista 32bit gzdoom 4.4.2 k8vavoom 4.1 PrBoom+ 2.6um Vista 64bit gzdoom 4.5.0 If you are interested in mods try gzdoom 4.1.3 first, if video card not supported then try lzdoom.
j7n	Posted October 25, 2021
	For discontinuing support for older systems, the developers give the reason that they prefer to use new MSVC or C++17. Why are developers motivated to switch tools, when they, like all other programs, need to be learned again and put more demand on computers?
Mr.Scienceman2000	Posted October 25, 2021
	That is million dollar question. I could understand optimisation, but why on purpose move codebase away from supporting it. I guess part of it got to deal with Microsoft similar to making softwares depend on IE for no good reason and contract that required use atleast one Microsoft Internet Exploder api exclusive feature when using Microsoft utilities. I really would not be surprised if MS would do something shady again to push them use it. And at the end who needs cloud features on complicer? Good example of wide support is retroarch. Not it can only be used down Windows 95, but it can run even on PLAYSTATION 2. That console never had as wide homebrew scene as original xbox but is still ported to obsolete platform released in year 2000. And other devs claim they cannot give support to OS last updated in 2008? We are not talking about new software we are talking old software dropping support
UCyborg	Posted October 30, 2021
	Pretty sure advanced users of these tools would be able to list other things that they find beneficial. Recently came across recommendation on Chromium build instructions to use VS2019 for debugging rather than VS2017 due to handling of large debug information files.

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