The Vanilla Utilities
This is a collection of DOS utilities for interacting with Doom's external driver APIs. Specifically it includes improved versions of Doom's network drivers (IPXSETUP and SERSETUP) along with APIs for the network, control, and statistics interfaces.
Design principles here are:
- Composability - it is possible to combine multiple tools and use them together.
- Reusability - the codebase has clearly-defined APIs for interacting with Doom's command line interfaces, so that making new tools is straightforward.
Utilities
- udpsetup - network driver for Internet play over the UDP protocol. Multiple network stacks are supported including Winsock1, Winsock2 and the DOS MSClient stack. The protocol is the same as DOSbox's IPXNET protocol, so it can connect to DOSbox servers and play against emulated machines. Example video; see UDPSETUP-HOWTO for more information.
- ipxsetup - bugfixed and expanded version of the driver originally shipped with Doom. Supports the extensions from xttl's version with further enhancements (not all players need specify the -dup or -player parameters).
- sersetup - bugfixed and expanded version of the serial/modem driver originally included with Doom. Supports background answering, which allows the game to launch before the incoming call is received.
- parsetup - parallel port network driver, derived from the version from the idgames archive. Performance has been significantly improved.
- sirsetup - driver for running over a half-duplex serial infrared (SIR) link (aka IrDA), as commonly found on many late '90s laptops.
- metanet - networking driver that combines other networking drivers into a packet forwarding network. This allows you, for example, to build a a four player game from daisy-chaining null-modem cables. See METANET-HOWTO for more information.
- solo-net - null/standalone network driver that starts a network game
without any real connection. Replicates the
-solo-netparameter found in many Doom source ports. - analogjs - PC joystick driver with analog control that is more precise than Doom's built in joystick support.
- replay - demo replay tool that uses the external control API, so that demos can be "continued" by recording a new demo from an old one.
- statdump - external statistics driver that can write a text summary.
- vcommit - adapter that converts a Doom network driver into a 3D Realms COMMIT driver, as used for Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior and various other games. This means that all of the above network drivers can also be used with those games. Example video.
- vrottcom - adapter that converts a Doom network driver into a Rise of the Triad ROTTCOM driver. This means that all of the above network drivers can also be used with ROTT.