Posted August 28, 2015
high rated
Since this helped a few forum goers here at GOG, I figured I'd also make a topic here to help others get more from playing Doom with DOSBox. From here I'll take snippets of guides found on Steam to help get more out your classic Doom experience. Thankfully, unlike the Steam release of Doom, the GOG release included the set-up programs for both Doom and DOSBox which makes things much more convenient to change settings.
-Disabling Vertical Mouse Movement-
Do you like playing Doom with modern mouse and keyboard controls but can't stand the vertical movements of your mouse getting in the way of looking or moving? There's a fix for that with NOVERT, a DOS program that disable vertical movement of your mouse. You can download it here at Doom World, then extract it with WinRAR, 7zip, or similar archive extracting program, and drop the "NOVERT.COM" file into your game's folder (e.g. "C:\GOG\DOOM" for Ultimate Doom). Once you have NOVERT in your game's folder, you'll need to edit one of the *conf files DOSBox with a text editor like Notepad or Notepad++ to launch the game with NOVERT. Open up the one *conf files with "single" in the file name, then add an extra line after the "C:" part and type "novert.com" in that line. Since I don't have the GOG version of Doom (yet), I'll be using the Steam version of Doom II as an example:
-Use the Doom95 Music (or Soundfonts) with Doom-
Unlike the Steam release of Doom, which forgot to include the SETUP.EXE for these games, you can easily change the settings within Doom with the set-up program. All you need to do is run the shortcut for Doom's SETUP program, go to the music card settings and change it to "General MIDI" and set MIDI port to 330. Now you should be able to play Doom with MIDI music used in Doom95 since it uses Microsoft GS Wavesynth.
However, if you want to up the quality of the MIDI playback, you'll need a MIDI synthesizer program such ([url=https://kode54.net/bassmididrv/archive/]archive) or VirtualMIDISynth to use them. Once you have your synthesizer installed, you'll also need soundfonts to use with the program. The links provided for the synthesizers should have some download links for some soundfonts to use like the Arachno and WeedsGM3 soundfonts, but some of those links may be dead (especially in the BASSMIDI page). After downloading your soundfont(s), make a new folder for your soundfonts and put them somewhere you can quickly access them like such as My Documents, then run the configuration program to add the soundfont(s) to your synthesizer (click "Add" for BASSMIDI or the "+" sign for VirtualMIDISynth) and apply the one you want to use. After that's done, you should have higher quality MIDI playback when you play Doom (or other MIDI-supported games on DOSBox). Of course the MIDI synthesizer isn't just limited to DOSBox, it's also usable on source ports such as ZDoom and Doom Retro.
Credit goes to rogeilor for the vertical movement fix and Alaan_ for the Doom95 MIDI music guide for the Steam version of Doom. If you guys want, I might throw something together for playing ZDoom with near-vanilla settings.
-Disabling Vertical Mouse Movement-
Do you like playing Doom with modern mouse and keyboard controls but can't stand the vertical movements of your mouse getting in the way of looking or moving? There's a fix for that with NOVERT, a DOS program that disable vertical movement of your mouse. You can download it here at Doom World, then extract it with WinRAR, 7zip, or similar archive extracting program, and drop the "NOVERT.COM" file into your game's folder (e.g. "C:\GOG\DOOM" for Ultimate Doom). Once you have NOVERT in your game's folder, you'll need to edit one of the *conf files DOSBox with a text editor like Notepad or Notepad++ to launch the game with NOVERT. Open up the one *conf files with "single" in the file name, then add an extra line after the "C:" part and type "novert.com" in that line. Since I don't have the GOG version of Doom (yet), I'll be using the Steam version of Doom II as an example:
mount c .\base
c:
novert
doom2.exe -config MOUSE.CFG
exit
Now you should be able to play Doom with mouse and keyboard but without the vertical movements getting in the way of the game. c:
novert
doom2.exe -config MOUSE.CFG
exit
-Use the Doom95 Music (or Soundfonts) with Doom-
Unlike the Steam release of Doom, which forgot to include the SETUP.EXE for these games, you can easily change the settings within Doom with the set-up program. All you need to do is run the shortcut for Doom's SETUP program, go to the music card settings and change it to "General MIDI" and set MIDI port to 330. Now you should be able to play Doom with MIDI music used in Doom95 since it uses Microsoft GS Wavesynth.
However, if you want to up the quality of the MIDI playback, you'll need a MIDI synthesizer program such ([url=https://kode54.net/bassmididrv/archive/]archive) or VirtualMIDISynth to use them. Once you have your synthesizer installed, you'll also need soundfonts to use with the program. The links provided for the synthesizers should have some download links for some soundfonts to use like the Arachno and WeedsGM3 soundfonts, but some of those links may be dead (especially in the BASSMIDI page). After downloading your soundfont(s), make a new folder for your soundfonts and put them somewhere you can quickly access them like such as My Documents, then run the configuration program to add the soundfont(s) to your synthesizer (click "Add" for BASSMIDI or the "+" sign for VirtualMIDISynth) and apply the one you want to use. After that's done, you should have higher quality MIDI playback when you play Doom (or other MIDI-supported games on DOSBox). Of course the MIDI synthesizer isn't just limited to DOSBox, it's also usable on source ports such as ZDoom and Doom Retro.
Credit goes to rogeilor for the vertical movement fix and Alaan_ for the Doom95 MIDI music guide for the Steam version of Doom. If you guys want, I might throw something together for playing ZDoom with near-vanilla settings.
