How to play Doom, Heretic and Hexen on Windows?

Play Doom, Heretic and Hexen with the Doomsday Engine 2

To play Doom, Doom II, Heretic or Hexen on a modern PC with Windows 10 or Windows 11, you can use DOSBox. But there is a better solution, to play these old 3D games with a much higher resolution (for example 1920x1080). In this guide we explain how to play Doom, Heretic and Hexen with Doomsday Engine 2.

Doom II with Doomsday Engine and HiRes Pack.

What do you need?

First of all, you need WAD files. These files contain all game data: maps, graphics, sounds, game scenarios. Get the original WAD file from (at least one of) the following games:

Download the game or WAD from the links above. If you downloaded the game from GoG.com, install the game and search for the WAD in the folder where you've installed the game. You'll leave the WAD file there for now, but remember its location; you'll need it in one of the steps below.

As an example, we've installed Ultimate Doom from Gog.com into the D:\Games\DOOM folder. The WAD file is here:

Ultimate Doom WAD file

Installation and configuration of Doomsday

To get the Doomsday Engine working with your favorite game, follow these steps:

Heretic OpenGL with High Resolution addons.
  • Download Doomsday Engine, for example 
    Doomsday 2.3.x - 64-bit msi. When you use Chrome, right click on the link and choose Save link as... and choose a location to save the file. When Chrome says the download is blocked, click the arrow next to the warning and choose keep. The warning shows because the link is served over http, which is not secure. The Doomsday peeps still need to fix this.
  • Install the Doomsday Engine by double clicking the downloaded file. In this example we will install the Doomsday application in D:\Games\Doomsday.
  • Navigate to the D:\Games\Doomsday folder and create a folder called wads. You'll end up with D:\Games\Doomsday\wads
  • Put all WAD files you've downloaded in the step above in this folder.
  • Start the Doomsday Engine. The shortcut will be in start menu under recently added. Otherwise, press Windows key + Q and type doomsday. When Doomsday starts for the first time, you'll see this screen:

Doomsday start screen

  • Press the Select WAD Folder... button and navigate to the folder with your WADs. In this example, that's D:\Games\Doomsday\wads.
  • When you've selected the WADs folder, Doomsday will auto detect all games that can be played with the Doomsday Engine. We've got some Doom, Heretic and Hexen WADs added:

Doomsday games

  • As you can see, in this example we've selected the DOOM 2: Hell on Earth game. To play the game, press the play button. Enjoy!

Tweak in-game video settings

  • When the game has started with Doomsday, enable the Doomsday taskbar by pressing Shift+Esc or by clicking Show taskbar in the options menu.
  • Click on the Settings icon, then the Video menu item, then check the selected resolution
  • Also make sure Antialias and VSync are enabled for the best experience:

Doomsday taskbar.

  • Please note that the fullscreen option in the screenshot above is disabled for the purpose of this tutorial
  • As of version 1.14 there's a guided tutorial available to explore all settings and options
  • To enable the tutorial, press Shift+esc to enter the taskbar, then press the Doomsday logo to enter the application menu and select Show tutorial:

Doomsday guided tutorial.

  • Press escape several times to exit the taskbar and start a new game!

Blurry graphics

Some of us don't like blurry graphics. We need those pixels to feel good about a retro game. We need clear, crisp, pixelized graphics. By default, Doomsday Engine renders the graphics with OpenGL. Which makes them look blurry. If you don't want that, this is what you do:

  • Press Shift+ESC to enter the taskbar
  • Click on the settings icon
  • Click on Renderer
  • Choose Vanilla (built in) at the appearance option
  • You'll end up like this:

Doomsday Engine: get clear, crisp, pixelized graphics.

Please note that with the Vanilla renderer, all lighting effects and 3D models are disabled...! It's as retro as you can get! If you want to keep all the lighting effects and 3D models, you'll have to dive deep in the renderer settings:

  • Set the appearance mode back to custom
  • Click on the gear icon next to the appearance mode, as indicated above and choose edit
  • Scroll down to Materials and click on it to open the options
  • Disable all bilinear filtering options: sprites, world surfaces and user interface
  • You'll end up with this:

Doomsday Renderer options: clear, crisp, pixelized graphics

Furthermore, you might want to change the aspect ratio of your weapon, the GUI and other things, so they look just like the original (as of version 1.15):

  • Open the taskbar by pressing Shift+ESC
  • Click on the gear icon
  • Click on video
  • Set all aspect ratios to original 1:1

Field of view

Doomsday allows you to change the field of view (FOV) in your game, as if you look through a huge wide angle lens. Default FOV of Doomsday is 95. In older versions of Doomsday you can't see your weapons anymore in Hexen. Also setting a very high FOV (like 160) in Doom results in disappearing weapons. To adjust FOV:

  • Press Shift+ESC to enter the taskbar
  • Click on the settings icon
  • Click on Renderer
  • Adjust Field of view:

Adjusting the Field of view (FOV) in Doomsday.

Multiplayer

As of version 1.10 of Doomsday, it is very easy to start a multiplayer game for one of the games that the Doomsday Engine supports (for example Doom II or Heretic).

Click here for a compact guide. We'll expand the guide in time, we'll keep you posted through Twitter.

Tutorial on Youtube

We've created a tutorial on YouTube, but it's about Doomsday Engine 1.15. It's still pretty nice to watch though.

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