
.H1 Doom Arena

Doom Arena is a waiting room for DOOM games.  People everywhere on the net can run Doom Arena and then start doom games with other people waiting to play.  It is a great way to help you waste more time playing doom.  This is good, because playing doom is very therapeutic and will make the time you do spend working much more productive.  Doom Arena is written in Tcl/Tk.

.H2 !!! Audio patch !!!

If you are running Solaris 2.4 on an SS4 or SS5 machine, you will need to apply a patch in order to get audio to work.  This patch can be found in doomarena/AUDIOPATCH/102125.tar.Z.

.H3 Doom Arena Mailing List

echo subscribe | mail doomarena-request@activesw.com

.H3 Some things to be aware of about DOOM
 
DOOM does not work under Solaris 2.3.  Upgrade to Solaris 2.4 or better to play DOOM.

You cannot join DOOM games already in progress.  All players in a game must startup at the same time.  Players may quit at any time, however.  

If you do not quit out of the DOOM in the normal fashion (Hit "escape" and then move the skull to the "Quit" line and hit return") the game will often hang or crash for all other players.  Therefore, if you are playing with other players, please do not kill the window by using "quit" in your window manager (from the window title bar menu).
 
The output from a doom session is written to /tmp/doom.out.  If you can't figure out why DOOM isn't running, you could try looking at /tmp/doom.out to see the doom output.


.H3 Useful additional features for DOOM

o  Mouse Support - The original version of Sun DOOM does not support the mouse, but Doom Arena does!  The "ScrollLock" key is used to toggle the mouse grab.  See the "Doom Mouse" help page for more details.

o  Frag matrix! - With Doom Arena the statistics from your DOOM game are always visible in the frag matrix.  You can also get statistics from other games by clicking on a game in players list.

o  Pause - If you are playing in single player mode, the pause key can be used to pause the game.  When the game is paused in this manner, DOOM's CPU usage drops to zero.  Pause is disabled for multi-player games.

o  Speed toggle - Normally, to run fast you need to hold down the shift key.  With Doom Arena, you can use either CapsLock or NumLock to turn speed on and off.  Much easier on the pinkie finger!

o  Audio keys - When you are playing doom, the Sun audio keys can be used to control the global audio levels.  Mute, raise volume, and lower volume are all enabled.  Mute is really useful if someone important who doesn't like DOOM walks in your office.


.H3 Toggles and menus and buttons - oh my!

These controls are distributed (unless you are in Solo mode):

o  Wad	Set the wad you want to play
	Silly feature:  Click on the "Wad" label to select a wad at random!
o  Skill	Set the skill level
o  Level	Set the wad level
o  Sublevel	Set the wad sublevel (only useful for original doom wads)
o  Turbo	Makes you run faster, but can really make you sick.

o  altdeath	Alternate (aka real) deathmatch: objects reappear after about 30 seconds
o  deathmatch	Normal (boring) deathmatch.

NOTE:  If neither deathmatch nor altdeath is set, then you will end up playing in wimpy cooperative mode (you'll end up shooting the other guys anyways, so what's the point?).

o  nomonsters	Starts you out with no monsters.  Wimp.
o  respawn	Monsters come back to life (just like you do!).  Very equitable to the monsters.

o  Start DOOM	Start a doom game.  This is the point.
o  WAKEUP!	Annoy the suspended people into playing with you.

These controls are not distributed:

o  Suspend	Being suspended is bad, because no one can play with you.
o  Mute	Mute those silly sounds.  But you can't mute the WAKEUP sound!
o  Solo Play	Let's you play by yourself.  Anti-social.
o  Alt Layout	Switch the messages and waiting lists.


.H3 Audio patch

If you are running Solaris 2.4 on an SS4 machine, you will need to apply a patch in order to get audio to work.  This patch can be found in doomarena/src/102125.tar.Z.

.H3 Wad Randomizer

Click on the "Wad" label next to the wad menu to select a wad at random.  Wads in the "lame" and "one-player" categories are excluded from consideration.

.H3 Frag Window

The "DOOM->Frags" menu item brings up a popup containing a frag matrix.  This is exactly the same as the frag matrix inside the main DoomArena window.  However, if you only have one display, the frag matrix popup will be visible when DOOM is started.  This is much more convenient than trying to reposition the DoomArena window so that the frag matrix is visible while playing DOOM.

.H3 Doom Setup

The Doom Setup panel allows you to configure the keyboard and mouse setup that is used by DOOM.  Also, the chat macros used to send cute messages between players is a networked game can be edited in this panel.

.H3 Properties

The properties panel allows you to configure stuff.  Anything you configure in the props panel is automatically saved in your $HOME/.doomarenarc file.

The "Screen Size" option controls the size of the DOOM window when you start a game.  The sizes are self explanatory.  Don't use the "Huge" size unless you want DOOM to go slow.  Also, you must have a high resolution display or your "Huge" window won't fit.  The "Small" or "Tiny" sizes should be used if you are on an SS2 or worse (otherwise everyone will get mad at you because the lag is so extreme).

The "Doom Display" option controls which display the DOOM window will map to when a game is started.  This isn't of any use if you only have one display.  But if you are lucky and have more than one display, you can run Doom Arena on a different display than DOOM, and then you get a better view of the frag matrix.

The audio controls work the same as the controls for audiocontrol.  "Mute" will disable all audio on your machine.  The volume control and balance affect all sounds played on your machine.  The volumes levels for the Doom Arena sounds are scaled according to the main volume setting.  The audio configuration shows which devices are enabled for audio output.  The DOOM audio configuration lets you choose which devices will be enabled while a DOOM game is in progress.  This way you can have the audio switch to the headphones automatically when a game is started.

The volume levels for each category of Doom Arena sound effects can be adjusted in the properties panel.  The displayed number is a percentage of maximum.  A value of 0 will turn off the sound entirely.  A value of 100 plays the sound at twice the value of the main volume.  A value of 50 plays the sound at the same level as the main volume.  The button next to the slider will play a sample sound at the currently adjusted level.

The wakeup sound is slightly different from all the other sounds.  It is played in the following situations:
1) DoomArena is muted but not iconified
2) DoomArena is not muted (regardless of whether it is iconified)

All other sounds are played only if DoomArena is not iconified and not muted.

.H3 Wad Map

Look in the DOOM menu for the Wad Map panel which will display a map of the currently selected wad.  Use the middle button or the scrollbars to move the map.

.H3 Wad Info

Use the "DOOM->Wad Info" menu item to get information about wad files.  This feature is especially useful for wads in the FLAGS subdirectory, because those wads have special rules of play.

.H3 Contribute Wad

Use this panel to add a custom wad file to the wads menu.  The "submit" operation copies the new wad over to the server and adds an entry for the wad to the "contrib" submenu.  The "contrib" submenu will update dynamically as soon as the submit operation has completed.

.H3 Boss Alert Key

The "Stop" key acts as a boss alert.  When you press the "Stop" key, audio is disabled and DOOM is iconified. If you are playing by yourself, then the game will be paused as well.  When the window is de-iconified, audio is restored and the mouse is grabbed (and DOOM is unpaused for single player).

.H3 Game Timer

The game timer shows how long a game has been going on.  The game time is displayed in the lower-right corner of the frag display.  Times for other games can be obtained by clicking on them in the list of games.

.H3 MOTD

The "Announcements" popup will appear when Doom Arena is started.  It contains information about new features, bug fixes, etc.  It will not appear if there haven't been any changes since the last time you read it.  The motd will also pop up every day at 4:00 am if there have been any changes.  Announcements can be viewed at any time via the "Help->Announcements" menu item.

.H3 Multiple servers

This feature allows the Doom Arena client to attach to different servers.  The "DOOM->Servers" menu item brings up a panel that allows you to specify alternate servers, and switch between them.

.H3 Bugs/Comments

Having a problem?  Send us your bugs and comments.  These messages are sent to the original authors of Doom Arena, so contact your local Doom Arena administrator with the problem before sending it to us.



.H3 Advanced Features

o  Command line interface

DOOM can be run from the command line.  Just run the script /tmp/doomarena/bin/doom (or doom2).  To test a wad file, use the -file flag with the command line interface.  For example: "/tmp/doomarena/bin/doom -file mywad.wad".  Save games are placed in the directory ~/.doomsave or ~/.doom2save, depending on the version of DOOM you are playing.  

o  Demo record/playback

Demo games can be recorded using the "doom" script with the "-record filename" option.  To end the recording, press the 'Q' key.  DO NOT exit from the game the normal way, or the demo will not be saved.  To play back the demo, use the "-playdemo filename" option.  Demo games are saved in ~/.doomsave or ~/.doom2save.

o  Audio/Framebuffer permissions

Playing DOOM as a different user than the one logged in on the console requires some extra effort.  The following commands will give all users access to the audio and framebuffer devices:

% su
# chmod 666 /dev/sound/*
# chmod 666 /dev/fbs/*

To make these permissions permanent, edit your /etc/logindevperm file.

o Benchmark

To run the DOOM benchmark:

PARENT is the parent DoomArena directory (for example: /net/bds/export/doom)
CHILD is the child DoomArena directory (for example: /tmp/doomarena)

cp $PARENT/doom1.wad $CHILD/doom1.wad
cd $CHILD/bin
ln -s doom doom1

Set up the DOOM window:
 o  Run DOOM by typing "./doom1 -warp 1 1"
 o  Press the "+" key a bunch until the DOOM window is as large as possible
 o  Press the "-" key exactly twice so that there is a small green border
      around the DOOM display area.
 o  Quit DOOM

Make sure that there are no stray processes eating CPU cycles!

./doom1 -1 -timedemo demo3
./doom1 -3 -timedemo demo3
./doom1 -1 -mp -timedemo demo3
./doom1 -3 -mp -timedemo demo3

The rating for your machine is ((35 * gametics) / realtics).  It is best to run the benchmark twice, and then use the second number.
