I am not a gamer. I have never been a gamer. But I did play a few games along the way. Doom was one. Call of Duty was another. I couldn’t figure out how to actually play Half Life. There was nothing there: No monsters, no opponents, nothing. I just wandered around until I got bored of hitting things with the crow bar. Battlefield 1942 was the same.
I decided to try FreeDoom Phase 1 this morning. Again. The problem I am having (and why I give up each time I install it) is that the doors to the next area and the elevator in the opening scene don’t open. The ones in the first area do work randomly at first then stop and you have to restart the game or use a cheat to walk through walls.
Surely, I am missing something. I have spent a couple hours hunting for some clue as to what I am doing wrong but all I am finding is videos of people blithely passing through doors that open for them.
Anyone got any ideas?
Maybe if I can figure this out I will install Half Life through Wine and see if I can figure that out. lol.
Oh, I am aware of Steam and Proton. But right now I just want to see if a simple nostalgic FPS is able to keep my attention. The difficulty in actually playing it, is.
I gave up on trying to get games going from an install long ago. Steam + proton does the job.
Once every few years, i have a look at some gog game and maybe i’ll buy it. Maybe.
OK. I just installed Phase 2 to see if it worked any differently. It doesn’t. BUT. I started mashing random keys as I stood at a door. It appears that when the manual says:
“By default, the keyboard cursor keys will move forward and backward, and turn left and right. The Control key fires the current weapon, and the spacebar will open doors and activate switches.”
What it means is:
“The ‘w’ key will move you forward, the ‘s’ key backwards and the ‘a’ and ‘d’ keys will move you side to side. The ‘e’ key will open doors for you. Your mouse will turn you and allow you to aim. You left click the mouse to fire your weapon. You select your weapon using the scroll wheel or one or the number keys.”
I haven’t found any switches yet so I don’t know what key does those (I assume ‘e’). The manual doesn’t actually give a list of keys for moving about, it just has the casual reference above, I assume because everybody knows these things.
My frustration here is that, because I don’t game, I don’t know what everybody knows. I remembered wasd and the mouse for panning and aiming from playing Call of Duty. Other (standard?) key assignments are new to me.
It is much more enjoyable actually being able to open doors. I’m going to play for a while now.
Yeah, I remember it from ~2009 when I played Call of Duty. Then the instructions were wrong so I didn’t look hard enough for the “action” key.
I am looking for my copy of Half Life but I am not finding it. I found Call of Duty and 1942, though. Maybe I will finally break down and add wine to the system.
Ooh. I like that idea. I know I bought a version on CD for windows. I’ll have to find it (I believe it is in a shoe box three feet from me holding up my laptop docking station) and see about that.
It turns out the Wolfenstein 3D disk is set up to install under Windows 95+. I did some playing and fiddling and I found if you copy the ‘wolf3d’ folder buried a few levels down on the CD into your /home DOSBox is more than happy to run it.
I also tried XP and 98SE VMs but they will not run the game. After install when you try to run the game it just gives you a black screen.
