ⓘ This regularly-updated guide will help you easily get started playing DOOM and 30+ years of community content by covering topics like where to purchase DOOM, how to play, how to install & configure GZDoom and Zandronum, and how to find & play community content.
Why DOOM?


The classic DOOM games are regarded as some of the best games ever made and have captured my attention ever since I saw the game being played on my grandma’s PC when I was just a few years old. DOOM is still worth playing after 30 years because of the addicting gameplay that blends survival, intense combat, and exploration.
The premise of the games is simple. You play as a space marine deployed to Phobos (one of Mars’ two moons) at the worst time possible: right as a space megacorporation’s teleportation research goes wrong and accidentally allows the legions of Hell to invade. Your goal is to escape and survive while shooting and punching your way through hellspawn.
Click here to read the DOOM story that was included in the original README.TXT
THE STORY SO FAR
you’re a marine, one of Earth’s toughest, hardened in combat and trained for action. Three years ago you assaulted a superior officer for ordering his soldiers to fire upon civilians. He and his body cast were shipped to Pearl Harbor, while you were transferred to Mars, home of the Union Aerospace Corporation. The UAC is a multi-planetary conglomerate with radioactive waste facilities on Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos. With no action for fifty million miles, your day consisted of suckin’ dust and watchin’ restricted flicks in the rec room. For the last four years the military, UAC’s biggest supplier, has used the remote facilities on Phobos and Deimos to conduct various secret projects, including research on inter-dimensional space travel. So far they have been able to open gateways between Phobos and Deimos, throwing a few gadgets into one and watching them come out the other. Recently however, the Gateways have grown dangerously unstable. Military “volunteers” entering them have either disappeared or been stricken with a strange form of insanity–babbling vulgarities, bludgeoning anything that breathes, and finally suffering an untimely death of full- body explosion. Matching heads with torsos to send home to the folks became a full-time job. Latest military reports state that the research is suffering a small set-back, but everything is under control. A few hours ago, Mars received a garbled message from Phobos. “We require immediate military support. Something fraggin’ evil is coming out of the Gateways! Computer systems have gone berserk!” The rest was incoherent. Soon afterwards, Deimos simply vanished from the sky. Since then, attempts to establish contact with either moon have been unsuccessful. You and your buddies, the only combat troop for fifty million miles were sent up pronto to Phobos. You were ordered to secure the perimeter of the base while the rest of the team went inside. For several hours, your radio picked up the sounds of combat: guns firing, men yelling orders, screams, bones cracking, then finally, silence. Seems your buddies are dead. It’s Up To You Things aren’t looking too good. You’ll never navigate off the planet on your own. Plus, all the heavy weapons have been taken by the assault team leaving you with only a pistol. If only you could get your hands around a plasma rifle or even a shotgun you could take a few down on your way out. Whatever killed your buddies deserves a couple of pellets in the forehead. Securing your helmet, you exit the landing pod. Hopefully you can find more substantial firepower somewhere within the station. As you walk through the main entrance of the base, you hear animal-like growls echoing throughout the distant corridors. They know you’re here. There’s no turning back now.
Listen to this awesome radio ad from 1995 and look at some of these classic screenshots to get the general vibe.
DOOM has dozens of communities that have kept the games alive and fresh since 1993 through level packs, mods, source ports, and more. Free community content keeps DOOM fresh New levels, weapons, enemies, and visuals.
Here are some of the many ways you can play classic DOOM:

When you buy DOOM + DOOM II, you receive almost 200 official DOOM levels to play alone or cooperatively. They are sure to keep you occupied for a while!
(Sigil / sigil.wad)
After you beat the official DOOM levels, there are thousands of free community levels that take you to new interesting worlds while keeping the same DOOM gameplay.
(Ancient Aliens / aa.wad)


Play PVP multiplayer games hosted on dozens of servers featuring arena-style Deathmatch, team games like Capture the Flag, and more.
(USQC Deathmatch)
Additional PVE multiplayer games are also available, including an Invasion mode where waves of demons invade, or cooperative survival.
(Delta Invasion)


DOOM is so extensible that it allows mods to completely change the look and feel and unlock even more fun!
(Megaman 8Bit Deathmatch)
Watch these cheesy 90’s commercials for DOOM and DOOM II to get even more excited!

How do I play?
Requirements
Buy DOOM + DOOM II


In order to start your journey into DOOM, we must first purchase a copy of the game.
Bethesda and ID Software have released a new official port of DOOM + DOOM II on August 8th, 2024 that improves on all of the modern ports of the game across all modern consoles and PC. It also is the most affordable way to collect all of the classic DOOM games.
This is the recommended modern way to purchase the classic DOOM games. Buy and download it from your preferred digital games storefront.




ⓘ If you prefer thrifting or physical purchases, you might be able find a CD-ROM for cheap called DOOM Collector’s Edition that contains all of the necessary classic DOOM game files you need. You might get lucky and find a copy at a thrift store or eBay.


While DOOM + DOOM II alone will provide hours of great fun, in order to unlock the full potential of the classic DOOM games, some additional software setup is necessary.


Before we get too deep, we just want to set some healthy expectations around what kind of computer will run DOOM best.
DOOM and the various other software we will be running have modest system requirements. You definitely don’t need a top-of-the-line gaming PC but I wouldn’t run it on a junky laptop either.
Here are some general hardware and software recommendations for the best possible experience.

⛧ Windows 11 is recommended. Make sure you are running the latest build (24H2 or later).
ⓘ Windows 10 is fine but will not be officially supported by Microsoft soon and software developers will eventually move away from official support as well.
ⓘ Full Administrator permissions in Windows are required for installing software and moving files around.
ⓘ Mac and Linux can be supported but this guide will be focused on Windows 11.

⛧ Modern CPUs with modest speeds, such as Intel Core i5 / AMD Ryzen 5 chipsets that have been released in the last 10 years.
⛧ 8 GB of RAM minimum
⛧ At least 5GB of hard drive space

⛧ Modern graphics hardware is recommended, especially with Vulkan/OpenGL 4.5/DirectX 12 support.
ⓘ OpenGL 3.3/Direct3D 9 are some minimum requirements if you are running older hardware.

⛧ Modern broadband internet is recommended.
Terms You Should Know


Before we get our hands dirty, we need to get a little nerdy~ ☝️?
There is some DOOM terminology you should familiarize yourself with so that the rest of this guide is easier to understand and follow. We will go over the basics NOW!

? Source Port – DOOM’s source code was made public in 1997 and fans have adapted the program to work on many operating systems and have added many features to the game along the way. Think of each source port we download as different software to run the same games, but with different features.
There are dozens of DOOM Source Ports available that all have different goals and features. We are going to download, install, and configure a few later in this guide!
? DOOM Map – Each level in the DOOM games is called a map inside the engine and the code. The modding community refers to levels as maps interchangeably. You may have already heard this term because it’s not unique to the DOOM games or communities.
? WAD – DOOM’s game data is stored in .wad files. The data includes the maps, graphics, sounds, music, and more. You will find .wad files in the game directories of your purchased version of DOOM.
? IWADs (Internal WADs) are official .wad files that contain the DOOM game data.
? PWADs (Patch WADs) are optional .wad files that contain new content that adds to or replaces IWAD data.
? ZIP / PK3 / PK7 – Some PWADs are not .wad’s at all. Modern source ports use these file formats as alternative structures to provide more modding flexibility. They are not meant to be uncompressed or extracted, but rather kept together as a single package just like the other .wad’s you are going to download.
ⓘ You can always play a DOOM IWAD without any PWADs, but you can’t play any DOOM PWADs without IWADs. The IWADs contain the core game graphics and much of the required data that allow the game engine to run!

Getting Started


Before we begin downloading any software or files, we should begin by getting organized.

Go to your C:\ drive and create a folder named DOOM.
- This gives you a folder you can quickly locate and return to while following this guide and when you end up playing DOOM in the future.
- It also gives us peace of mind about Windows folder permissions because we won’t have to wrestle with any permissions that may inadvertently effect other locations like Program Files.
ⓘ Information for advanced users ⓘ
ⓘ If you have a different location in mind that you want to use, feel free to adjust and create a DOOM folder in a more appropriate location or on a drive where you store games. Just make sure you are comfortable with troubleshooting any potential file and folder permissions issues that may arise.
If you do have a games folder/drive, go create a folder inside of it named DOOM.
- For example, if your games drive is D:\ then create a folder at D:\DOOM\
- If you have a Dropbox / Google Drive / OneDrive folder, you could also put a DOOM folder there and have it sync between your devices. My personal folder is located at C:\Users\Casey\Dropbox\DOOM\
Your DOOM folder will be our home for the remaining sections of this guide. Optionally, I recommend creating a shortcut to your folder on your Desktop for easy access, at least for the duration of this guide.
Gather your IWADs


Let’s create a storage area for your IWADs for safe storage and easy access. Create a subfolder in your DOOM folder named wads_iwads, ( for example: C:\DOOM\wads_iwads ).

Next, we need to locate the IWADs that you purchased in whatever directory they are located. You’ll know you are in the correct directory when you see files named doom.wad and doom2.wad.
ⓘ If you purchased DOOM + DOOM II on Steam, they are located here by default: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Ultimate Doom\rerelease
ⓘ If you have a custom Steam library location or need help navigating, we can use Steam to get to the folder quickly
① Navigate to Steam > Library.
② Filter your library with the word DOOM.
③ Right-click DOOM + DOOM II.
④ Left-click Properties.
⑤ Inside the Properties window, go to the Installed Files tab on the sidebar.
⑥ Click the Browse… button in the top-right corner next to the Size of installation information.
⑦ Open the rerelease subdirectory to get to the latest game files.



ⓘ If you purchased DOOM on another storefront or on CD-ROM, navigate the folder structure until you find the IWADs.
ⓘ On the DOOM Collector’s Edition CD-ROM, each IWAD is stored at the following locations:
- X:\Setup\Ultimate Doom\doom.wad
- X:\Setup\Doom2\doom2.wad
- X:\Setup\Final Doom\tnt.wad
- X:\Setup\Final Doom\plutonia.wad
Inside the DOOM installation directory, sort the folder by filetype so all the WAD files are grouped together.

Now copy the following files to your *\DOOM\wads_iwads sub-folder:
- doom.wad (The Ultimate DOOM)
- doom2.wad (DOOM II)
- plutonia.wad (Final DOOM: The Plutonia Experiment)
- tnt.wad (Final DOOM: TNT Evilution)
ⓘ PRO-TIP: You can easily select multiple individual files by using the Windows shortcut of holding CTRL and Left-Click the individual files. ☝️?
⚠︎ Make sure you only copy your IWADs. Moving, cutting, or deleting your IWADs will make the Steam version of DOOM + DOOM II not work properly!
Your *\DOOM\wads_iwads folder should now look like this:


PWAD Folder


Let’s create another subfolder named wads_pwads ( for example: C:\DOOM\wads_pwads ). This is going to be where we store all of our other downloaded WAD files that aren’t IWADs.

If you purchased DOOM + DOOM II, you’ll notice some additional WAD files where you found your IWADs. You should copy them to your wads_pwads folder.
- id1.wad (Legacy of Rust)
- id1-mus.wad (Legacy of Rust)
- id1-res.wad (Legacy of Rust)
- id1-tex.wad (Legacy of Rust)
- id1-weap.wad (Legacy of Rust)
- iddm1.wad (DOOM + DOOM II Deathmatch)
- masterlevels.wad (Master Levels for DOOM II)
- nerve.wad (No Rest for the Living)
- sigil.wad (John Romero’s Sigil)
Your *\DOOM\wads_pwads folder should now look like this:

We will revisit PWADs again once we have some other things setup and configured.



GZDoom is the most advanced source port due to its support for advanced graphics and custom scripting. It’s also the most flexible source port because it will allow you to play the widest range WADs, including the ones that weren’t specifically built with GZDoom support in mind. It’s mainly a single player source port, even though it recently got a lot of multiplayer support improvements.

Head on over to the ZDoom Downloads Page and download the latest GZDoom version for Windows.


Move the gzdoom-version-windows.zip file you just downloaded it to your DOOM folder and extract it into it’s own folder.
Once extracted, rename the folder to game_gzdoom ( for example C:\DOOM\game_gzdoom ).
Delete the gzdoom-version-windows.zip to clean things up.


GZDoom will automatically detect DOOM IWADs if you have installed them using Steam or GOG (source).
ⓘ Follow these advanced instructions if you’ve purchased your DOOM IWADs another way. ⓘ
Copy all of your IWAD files from your wads_iwads folder into your game_gzdoom folder.
ⓘ GZDoom will fail to launch if you do not provide at least one IWAD file in the same folder as gzdoom.exe
⚠︎ Make sure you only copy your IWADs. Moving, cutting, or deleting your IWADs will make our wads_iwads folder incomplete. We want to keep our IWADs handy in our wads_iwads folder forever just in case we need to setup additional source ports quickly and easily.


Let’s create a few shortcuts to GZDoom for quick access. Inside your DOOM folder, click New > Shortcut

Type the path to gzdoom.exe or click Browse… to find it manually ( our path is C:\DOOM\game_gzdoom\gzdoom.exe ). Click Next to continue.

Now name the shortcut GZDOOM or whatever you’d rather have it named. Click Finish to create the shortcut.

Copy and paste your GZDOOM shortcut into your *\DOOM\wads_pwads\ folder and your Desktop.


Double-click your GZDOOM shortcut to run it. You’ll be presented with a launcher that let’s you select which DOOM IWAD you want to play. The launcher has automatically scanned my Steam library to detect all of the DOOM engine games I own and downloaded and has presented them to me.
Click the Options tab to change any settings relating to video or language before we go further.


⚠︎ Make sure your Windows audio output device and volume settings are good before continuing. DOOM is a bit loud upon the first launch and you don’t want to hurt your ears. ⚠︎
Pick one of the DOOM games (we are going to pick DOOM 2: Hell on Earth) and click Launch Game.
You’ll be presented with the DOOM title screen and some introduction music.

⛧ At the title screen, any key will open the DOOM menu.
⛧ [ ESC ] – The escape key will always allow you to open and close the DOOM menu at any time.
⛧ ?️Mouse – Use your mouse to point and click in the menus.
⛧ [ ↑ ][ ↓ ][←][→] – Use arrow keys or your mouse to navigate the menu.
⛧ [ ENTER ⏎ ] – The enter key will allow you make choices in the menu.
⛧ [ ~ ] – The tilde key will always allow you to open the DOOM console that allows you input commands and read logging information.

Before playing, let’s tweak some things in the settings. Open the DOOM menu and go to Options.

Navigate into each Options submenu and tweak the following settings:
[Player Setup]
- Name – set this to your name!
- Color – change your armor to your favorite color!
- Always Run – ON
- This makes it so you don’t have to hold down the [ SHIFT ] key to run. It’s almost always a better option to be running in DOOM so this will give your pinky finger a break.
[Sound Options]
- Tweak your GZDoom volume settings to your personal tastes in combination with your Windows output volume.
[Display Options]
- Fullscreen – set to your personal tastes
- Texture Filter mode – NONE
- This option makes DOOM look more pixelated and crisp
- Anisotropic filter – OFF
- This option makes DOOM look more pixelated and crisp
[Scaling Options]
- User interface scale – 4
- This makes the classic HUD much larger so it fills the bottom of the screen
- HUD preserves aspect ratio – ON
- This makes the HUD unsquished
Thing should look a lot better, like this:


You can customize your controls in the Options menu at anytime. Here are the default controls that you’ll need to know in order to jump right into playing:
GAME CONTROLS
⛧ [ WASD ] – Move around
⛧?️Mouse – Look around
⛧ [ LEFT MOUSE BUTTON ] – Fire your weapon
⛧ [ E ] – Interact / Open
⛧ [ MOUSE SCROLL WHEEL ] – Select a different weapon
⛧ [ 1 ] through [ 9 ] – Select a specific weapon
⛧ [ SHIFT ] – Hold to walk or run
⛧ [ CAPS LOCK ] – Toggle your Always Run option
⛧ [ TAB ] – View the map
MULTIPLAYER CONTROLS
⛧ [ \ ] – View the multiplayer scoreboard
⛧ [ T ] – Start typing a message in multiplayer
ADDITIONAL GZDOOM MOVEMENT CONTROLS
⛧ [ SPACE ] – Jump
⛧ [ X ] – Crouch
MENU CONTROLS
⛧ [ ESC ] – The escape key will always allow you to open and close the DOOM menu at any time.
⛧ ?️- Use your mouse to point and click in the menus.
⛧ [ ↑ ][ ↓ ][←][→] – Use arrow keys or your mouse to navigate the menu.
⛧ [ ENTER ⏎ ] – The enter key will allow you make choices in the menu.
⛧ [ ~ ] – The tilde key will always allow you to open the DOOM console that allows you input commands and read logging information.

GZDoom’s launcher is great for selecting what IWAD to play, but what about PWADs? The simplest way to launch GZDoom and have it load additional WADs is to select those WADs and drag-and-drop them onto the application itself.
Remember that GZDOOM shortcut we made and copied into our wads_pwads folder? It’s about to make a whole lot of sense.
Test out your shortcut by dragging nerve.wad (No Rest for the Living for DOOM II) onto your GZDOOM shortcut. It should launch the GZDoom IWAD selection screen. Select DOOM 2: Hell on Earth to continue.

You’ll be presented with the title screen of No Rest for the Living if everything was done correctly:
⚠︎ Make sure you run the corresponding IWAD when you play PWADs. Certain WADs were made with certain base games in mind. For example, nerve.wad will only pair with doom2.wad as your IWAD, and sigil.wad will only pair with doom.wad.



Zandronum is the most advanced multiplayer source port. It is based on a slightly older version of GZDoom so it allows most GZDoom WADs to be played online with friends. It is also the spiritual successor to the very popular Skulltag source port that no longer exists. Overall, it combines the best of many different DOOM worlds and will allow you the most online interaction.

ⓘ As of last updating this section on 3/3/2025, the best way to play Zandronum is to skip the latest release (that is over 3 years old) and go straight to the Development Builds. If things change later on, this guide will reflect that.
Head on over to the Zandronum Downloads Page and download the Development Build – Archive for 64-bit.


Move the ZandroDev3.2-241030-1744windows-x86_64.zip file you just downloaded it to your DOOM folder and extract it into it’s own folder.
Once extracted, rename the folder to game_zandronum ( for example C:\DOOM\game_zandronum ).
Delete the ZandroDev3.2-241030-1744windows-x86_64.zip to clean things up.


While Zandronum will automatically detect DOOM IWADs if you have installed them using Steam or GOG just like GZDoom does, I’ve found that it will skip the IWAD selection menu and only launch The Ultimate DOOM. It is NOT recommended to allow Zandronum to find your IWADs, but rather provide them manually using these steps:
Copy all of your IWAD files from your wads_iwads folder into your game_zandronum folder.
ⓘ Zandronum will fail to launch if you do not provide at least one IWAD file in the same folder as zandronum.exe nor have a Steam installation of a DOOM game.
⚠︎ Make sure you only copy your IWADs. Moving, cutting, or deleting your IWADs will make our wads_iwads folder incomplete. We want to keep our IWADs handy in our wads_iwads folder forever just in case we need to setup additional source ports quickly and easily.


While Zandronum superseded Skulltag, the additional maps, skins, announcers, items, and bots are still very handy on their own and also enable backwards-compatibility.
Make a new subfolder inside *\Doom\Zandronum\ named skins. Files in this subfolder are automatically loaded at startup each time you launch Zandronum.
skulltag_content2.1a.pk3 contains all of the legacy Skulltag content.
Download skulltag_content2.1a.zip and extract one copy of skulltag_content2.1a.pk3 to *\Doom\Zandronum\ and another copy to *\Doom\Zandronum\skins if you want to automatically load it each time you launch Zandronum.
STAnnouncerPack.pk3 contains some of the most popular Skulltag announcer voices from over the years. STSkinsV2.pk3 contains all of the skins that Skulltag came with.
Download and extract STAnnouncerPack.pk3 and STSkinsV2.pk3 to *\Doom\Zandronum\skins

Let’s create a few shortcuts to Zandronum for quick access. Inside your DOOM folder, click New > Shortcut

Type the path to zandronum.exe or click Browse… to find it manually ( our path is C:\DOOM\game_zandronum\zandronum.exe ). Click Next to continue.

Now name the shortcut ZANDRONUM or whatever you’d rather have it named. Click Finish to create the shortcut.

Copy and paste your ZANDRONUM shortcut into your *\DOOM\wads_pwads\ folder and your Desktop.


Double-click your ZANDRONUM shortcut to run it. You’ll be presented with a launcher that let’s you select which DOOM IWAD you want to play. It also gives you some Video Settings.
I recommend always running Hardware mode to enable the most compatibility with community WADs.
I recommend turning off Fullscreen, at least initially, because sometimes Zandronum will become fullscreen on a monitor that isn’t your primary monitor, but rather the “#1” monitor in Windows and requires a console command to move i t.

⚠︎ Make sure your Windows audio output device and volume settings are good before continuing. DOOM is a bit loud upon the first launch and you don’t want to hurt your ears. ⚠︎
Pick one of the DOOM games (we are going to pick DOOM 2: Hell on Earth) and click Launch Game.
Windows SmartScreen may block Zandronum from running. Click More info and Run anyway.


Windows Firewall may popup and ask you to allow Zandronum. Click Allow.

You’ll be presented with the DOOM title screen and some introduction music.

⛧ At the title screen, any key will open the DOOM menu.
⛧ [ ESC ] – The escape key will always allow you to open and close the DOOM menu at any time.
⛧ ?️Mouse – Use your mouse to point and click in the menus.
⛧ [ ↑ ][ ↓ ][←][→] – Use arrow keys or your mouse to navigate the menu.
⛧ [ ENTER ⏎ ] – The enter key will allow you make choices in the menu.
⛧ [ ~ ] – The tilde key will always allow you to open the DOOM console that allows you input commands and read logging information.

Before playing, let’s tweak some things in the settings. Open the DOOM menu and go to Options.
Navigate into each Options submenu and tweak the following settings:
[Player Setup]
- Name – set this to your name!
- Zandronum lets you set custom colors for your name as well using \c color codes. The colors take effect as soon as you press [ ENTER ] when you are finished typing
- For example, you can set your whole name one color
- You can also set multiple colors as well
- Here are all of the colors that Zandronum currently supports:
- Some additional notes:
- \cl will give you the font’s default color
- \c- will give you the default color
- \c+ will give you the default screen message color
- \c* will give you the default chat color
- \c! will give you the default team chat color
- Troubleshooting:
- Zandronum only supports \c (lowercase) and not \C (uppercase
- Zandronum only supports \ (backslash) and not / (forward slash)
- Zandronum requires two backslashes when using color codes in the console, like \\c
- Color – change your armor to your favorite color!
- Skin – change your online appearance!
- ⓘ If the other players don’t have your specific skin files, they won’t be able to see it, but you will on your client side.
- Always Run – ON
- This makes it so you don’t have to hold down the [ SHIFT ] key to run. It’s almost always a better option to be running in DOOM so this will give your pinky finger a break.
[HUD Options]
- Default Crosshair – set to your personal tastes
- Message Options
- Text Scaling
- Enable Text Scaling – ON
- Use Screen Ratio – YES
- These options make otherwise unreadable text messages larger.
- Text Scaling
[Sound Options]
- Tweak your Zandronum volume settings to your personal tastes in combination with your Windows output volume.
- Announcer – SKULLTAG 97D ANNOUNCER
- While it won’t have a voice line for every team-game action (for example, 4-way CTF), this is still my favorite announcer voice that I recommend for everyone.
[Display Options]
- OpenGL Options
- Texture Options
- Texture Filter mode – NONE
- This option makes DOOM look more pixelated and crisp
- Anisotropic filter – OFF
- This option makes DOOM look more pixelated and crisp
- Texture Filter mode – NONE
- Preferences
- Sector Light Mode – DOOM
- Ambient Light Level – set to your personal tastes
- Texture Options
[Video Mode]
- Fullscreen – set to your personal tastes

You can customize your controls in the Options menu at anytime. Here are the default controls that you’ll need to know in order to jump right into playing:
GAME CONTROLS
⛧ [ WASD ] – Move around
⛧?️Mouse – Look around
⛧ [ LEFT MOUSE BUTTON ] – Fire your weapon
⛧ [ E ] – Interact / Open
⛧ [ MOUSE SCROLL WHEEL ] – Select a different weapon
⛧ [ 1 ] through [ 9 ] – Select a specific weapon
⛧ [ SHIFT ] – Hold to walk or run
⛧ [ CAPS LOCK ] – Toggle your Always Run option
⛧ [ TAB ] – View the map
MULTIPLAYER CONTROLS
⛧ [ TAB ] – View the multiplayer scoreboard
⛧ [ U ] – Taunt
⛧ [ Y ] – Start typing a message in multiplayer
⛧ [ T ] – Start typing a message to your team in multiplayer
⛧ [ PgUp ] – Vote Yes
⛧ [PgDn ] – Vote No
⛧ [ F12 ] – Spectate in Co-Op
ADDITIONAL GZDOOM MOVEMENT CONTROLS
⛧ [ SPACE ] – Jump
⛧ [ CTRL ] – Crouch
MENU CONTROLS
⛧ [ ESC ] – The escape key will always allow you to open and close the DOOM menu at any time.
⛧ ?️- Use your mouse to point and click in the menus.
⛧ [ ↑ ][ ↓ ][←][→] – Use arrow keys or your mouse to navigate the menu.
⛧ [ ENTER ⏎ ] – The enter key will allow you make choices in the menu.
⛧ [ ~ ] – The tilde key will always allow you to open the DOOM console that allows you input commands and read logging information.

Zandronum’s launcher is great for selecting what IWAD to play, but what about PWADs? The simplest way to launch Zandronum and have it load additional WADs is to select those WADs and drag-and-drop them onto the application itself.
Remember that Zandronum shortcut we made and copied into our wads_pwads folder? It’s about to make a whole lot of sense.
Test out your shortcut by dragging nerve.wad (No Rest for the Living for DOOM II) onto your Zandronum shortcut. It should launch the Zandronum IWAD selection screen. Select DOOM 2: Hell on Earth to continue.

You’ll be presented with the title screen of No Rest for the Living if everything was done correctly:
⚠︎ Make sure you run the corresponding IWAD when you play PWADs. Certain WADs were made with certain base games in mind. For example, nerve.wad will only pair with doom2.wad as your IWAD, and sigil.wad will only pair with doom.wad.


The DOOM HUD looks wonky due to some graphics not supporting widescreen. Hopefully a new version of Zandronum will address this.


Doomseeker is an application that will help you connect to multiplayer DOOM servers around the world without having to go through Zandronum’s built-in server browser.
Head on over to their downloads page and download their latest package for Windows.

Extract the doomseeker .zip file to *\DOOM\doomseeker\ and delete the .zip afterwards. Create shortcuts for your DOOM folder and your Desktop as well.

Launch Doomseeker. You’ll most likely receive another Microsoft Defender SmartScreen popup. Select More info > run Anyway. You’ll also get another firewall prompt where you should click Allow.
You’ll most likely have a prompt alerting you to available updates. Click Download & Install and Restart & Install.


If you get a User Account Control prompt, click Yes.

Once Doomseeker is open again, go to Options > Configure

Under Games > Zandronum, configure Doomseeker to point to zandronum.exe and also give it a subdirectory for testing releases as well.

Under File paths options, configure a path to your DOOM wad folders and check the Recurse checkbox so you don’t have to add any potential future subfolders.

Under Wadseeker options, point it to download PWADs into your wads_pwads folder. When you connect to a server that uses additional PWADs, they will now be downloaded here for you.

In the bottom-right corner, deselect the icons for the source ports you are not interested in. The following setup will hide DOOM servers for all source ports except for Zandronum.


Use the Get Servers button to retrieve a list of all Zandronum DOOM servers and sort them by how many players are actively joined. When you find one you want to join, double-click it. Doomseeker will use Wadseeker to download any missing wads you don’t have and automatically launch Zandronum with you connected to the server.



Coming Soon!



















