Gameplay enhancements

There are multiple gameplay settings that can be toggled from the Options menu. Some of them are visual enhancers that make the game look prettier, while others can change the way the game plays (beware, this could break certain maps!)

Game mechanics

• Strict vanilla mode: There are many small bug fixes that sometimes affect game mechanics more or less. By setting this option to "On", all fixes will be disabled for retaining 100% original game mechanics. No changes will be made to the values of "unsafe" gameplay options, they just be shaded to indicate their inactivity.

Graphical

• Brightmaps: This enables brightmaps for Game's textures, which makes certain textures with bright areas illuminate in dark areas. Disable this if you are playing a wad that replaces the textures to avoid any issues with brightmaps. The default behavior is on.

• Fake Contrast: Turning this off will make walls no longer appear lighter at certain angles, which mimics how the console ports of Doom typically render them. By default, fake contrast is off.

• Translucency: Turn this on to enable certain projectiles to appear transparent, making them see-through to a certain degree. The default behavior is on.

• Fuzz Effect: The specters and players under the influence of a Blur Sphere use an effect to give them a fuzzy appearance that makes them difficult to see clearly.

  • The "Original" setting is how vanilla Doom renders the effect.
  • The "Original (B&W)" setting makes anything behind the effect in grayscale.
  • Both the "Improved" and "Improved (B&W)" setting function the same, only instead of using Doom's regular fuzz effect, uses Russian Doom's fuzz effect that fixes bugs related to the effect.
  • "Translucent" gives the fuzz effect the same visual effect as the "Translucency" setting.

  By default, the setting is on "Improved".

• Colored Blood and Corpses: Turning this setting on enables certain monsters to bleed different colors other than the default red. The default behavior is on.

• Liquids animation/Swirling liquids: If this setting is set to "Improved", liquid textures such as water, nukage, or blood will be swirling slightly, giving it a more lively appearance. By default, the setting is on "Improved".

• Invulnerability Affects Sky: In vanilla Doom, getting an invulnerability sphere will turn the entire level geometry to an inverted greyscale, except for the sky. Turning this on will also affect the sky.

• Sky Drawing Mode: "Normal" sets the sky to the vanilla setting, while "Linear" makes the sky no longer "stretch" on horizontal edges (it's more noticeable on widescreen resolutions), which prevents the fish-eye effect that may bother some players.

• Randomly Mirrored Corpses: This setting enables dead monsters and corpses placed on the map to have a random chance of being mirrored, which can provide visual variety in the level, especially on a map with many monsters being killed.

• Flip Weapons: Turning this on will horizontally flip the weapons. This has little practical use other than making left-handed players more welcome.

Status Bar

• Extra Player Faces: Turning this setting on will give the HUD mugshot additional faces. This is most noticeable when an invulnerability sphere is activated.
• Show Negative Health: If this setting is on, instead of having 0% health on death, the status bar's health value will simply continue on to the negatives, showing, for example, -5% health.
• Colored Hud Elements: If this setting is turned on, numbers used to indicate health, armor, and ammo are color-coded. There is another setting that only touches numbers instead of the percentage sign. The colors used can be chosen from the "Coloring" section.
• Colored health gem: If this setting is turned on, Gem at the bottom of the Heretic/Hexen status bar is color-coded based on player's health. There are two variants of coloring: with brighter colors and with lighter once.

Coloring

• High Value: This is the color used for the HUD when you have more than 100% health or more than 100% (50% with a backpack) of ammo for your selected weapon. If an invulnerability sphere is in effect, the number for the health will always be white.
• Medium Value: This is the color used for the HUD when you have 100% or less health or 100% or less (50% or less with a backpack) of ammo for your selected weapon. If an invulnerability sphere is in effect, the number for the health will always be white.
• Low Value: This is the color used for the HUD when you have 66% or less health or 50% or less (25% or less with a backpack) of ammo for your selected weapon. If an invulnerability sphere is in effect, the number for the health will always be white.
• Critical Value: This is the color used for the HUD when you have less than 33% health or less than 25% (less than 12.5% with a backpack) of ammo for your selected weapon. If an invulnerability sphere is in effect, the number for the health will always be white.
• Armor Type 1: If you pick up green armor or an armor bonus, this will select the color used for the HUD. If an invulnerability sphere is in effect, the number will always be white.
• Armor Type 2: If you pick up blue armor, this will select the color used for the HUD. If an invulnerability sphere is in effect, the number will always be white.
• No Armor: If you have no armor, this will select the color used for the HUD. If an invulnerability sphere is in effect, the number will always be white.

Heretic ammo widget

• Draw widget: If this setting is set on "Brief", the ammo widget will only show the amount of player's current ammo. If this setting is set on "Full", the ammo widget will show both the amount of player's current ammo and the maximum amount of ammo player can carry.
• Coloring: If this setting is turned on, numbers used to ammo amount are color-coded.

Audible

• Sound Attenuation Axises: The default setting is "X/Y", which limits the sound origins to the X and Y axes only. "X/Y/Z" allows the Z axis to affect sound attenuation, which can be a bit disorienting for people more used to the vanilla setting.
• Play Exit Sounds: Regularly, exiting the game will cause a short sound file to play. This setting can skip that part allowing an instant quit to desktop.
• Sound of Crushing Corpses: When doors close on dead enemies, they will normally crush them without making any sounds. This setting enables the gibbing sound to play every time a monster is crushed.
• Single Sound of Blazing Door: In vanilla Doom, rapid opening doors can sometimes play the opening sound twice. This setting fixes that bug and makes it only play once.
• Monster Alert Waking Up Others: If this setting is on and monsters are alerted, any nearby monsters will also be alerted to the player's presence. The vanilla setting is off. This setting is suppressed by the "Strict vanilla mode" setting.

Crosshair

• Draw Crosshair: Vanilla Doom has no crosshair for the player to use, but Russian Doom has the option of providing the player with a crosshair, which can help with sniping and general aiming.
• Shape: This option can set the crosshair's shape to one of:
  • "Cross" – Cross with space in the center.
  • "Cross/2" – Cross with connected lines in the shape of +.
  • "X" – X shaped cross.
  • "Circle".
  • "Angle" – Two straight lines to the right and bottom from the center.
  • "Triangle".
  • "Dot".
• Opacity: This setting can set the crosshair's translucency.
• Increased size: The crosshair's size can be increased using this setting.
• Indication: The crosshair has four different settings to choose from: "Static", "Health", "Target Highlighting", and "Target Highlighting+Health".
  • "Static" will just display the crosshair as is.
  • "Health" will have the crosshair be colored depending on the amount of health the player has.
  • "Target Highlighting" will have the crosshair change color if an enemy is directly on the crosshair.
  • "Target Highlighting+Health" combines both of the settings.

Physical

• Collision physics: If this option is set to "Improved" the following fixes will be applied:

  • BLOCKMAP bug fix.
  • No wall-running on horizontal walls.
  • Fireballs no longer fly through walls.
  • Speed drops after impact on solid map objects.
  • Smooth sliding and speed dropping after impact on two-sided blocking lines.

  This option is suppressed by the "Strict vanilla mode" setting.

• Walk Over And Under Monsters: In vanilla Doom, all monsters are infinitely tall, which results in oddities such as flying monsters blocking players even if they are underneath them. Turning this on will allow players to not only walk under them, but also walk on top of grounded monsters. Keep in mind that a lot of levels (especially ones built for vanilla Doom) were built with the limitation in mind, so this setting could potentially break those levels. This setting is suppressed by the "Strict vanilla mode" setting.

• Corpses Sliding From The Ledges: In vanilla Doom, when monsters are killed standing on a ledge, they will not fall down unless they are standing on the edge of the sector, or they are affected by momentum. This setting applies small amounts of momentum to monsters so that they are pushed off of the edge of the sector. This setting is suppressed by the "Strict vanilla mode" setting.

• SSG gibs enemies: When firing a Super Shotgun up close to a small enemy such as an imp, if this setting is on, there is a chance that the monster will gib. Normally, such an occurrence is impossible in vanilla Doom. This option is suppressed by the "Strict vanilla mode" setting.

• Floating Powerups: In vanilla Doom, powerups such as the Megasphere will stay in place. This setting causes them to bob up and down. This setting is suppressed by the "Strict vanilla mode" setting.

• Items Are Tossed When Dropped: If a monster drops an item on death, the item will be directly on the monster's corpse. If this setting is activated, items will be thrown and slightly scattered across from where the monster died. This setting is suppressed by the "Strict vanilla mode" setting.

• Weapon Bobbing While Firing: When firing, the weapon will stay in place as it does its firing animation. This setting will keep the bobbing as the weapon is fired. This setting also gives the chainsaw smoother bobbing.

• Floating items amplitude: This setting changes the amplitude of floating items vertical movement.

Tactical

• Notify of Revealed Secrets: In vanilla Doom, there is no indication of a secret area being entered. Turning this on and entering a secret room plays a sound effect and displays "A secret is revealed!".
• Infragreen Light Amp. Visor: By default, picking up the light amplication visor will only make the level geometry bright. With this setting on, the entire screen will become bright green, just like in beta versions of Doom.
• Horizontal autoaiming: Enable or disable Horizontal autoaiming feature of original Doom. This option is suppressed by the "Strict vanilla mode" setting.
• Show active artifacts: If this setting set to "All", indicators for "Torch", "Shadowsphere" and "Ring of Invincibility" will be shown on top of the screen additionally to "Tom of Power" and "Wings of Wrath".
• Artifacts timer: This option enables numerical timer under artifact's indicators and sets their color to: "Gold", "Silver", or "Colored" i.e., dependent on the amount of time left.

Gameplay

• Default skill level: Sets the skill level pointed by the cursor when first opening the skill level select menu.
• Fix Textures Of Vanilla Maps: If you are playing maps from retail Doom and have this setting on, there will be applied fixes to map that repair broken geometry or visual oddities. (ex. "The Courtyard" from Doom II has a small area that lacks textures; turning this setting on fixes it.)
• Flip Game Levels: Turning this setting on will flip the level geometry horizontally, which can act as a sort of "mirror mode" to seasoned players.
• Pistol/Wand Start Game Mode: When this setting is on, and you start a new level, you will start with only your default inventory, as if you start a new game. Although vanilla Doom doesn't have this feature, the maps made for retail Doom were built around the player starting with only the pistol.
• Imitate player's breathing: If this setting set to "On" screen will periodically slightly move up and down imitating player's breathing.
• Pain Elemental Without Souls Limit: Vanilla Doom has a limit of 21 lost souls before the pain elementals stop spawning additional ones. Turning this off removes that limit, but keep in mind that a few maps were built around this limitation, such as Hell Revealed's MAP19.

Demos

• Show Demo Timer: There are three settings for this option, and they all display a timer in the upper right corner of the screen. "Playback" only shows the timer when a demo is playing, "Recording" shows it when the player is recording a demo, and "Always" will show the timer regardless if the player is watching or recording one.
• Timer Direction: There are two settings for this option: "Forwards" will show the timer counting upwards, while "Backwards" will count down to the end of the demo.
• Show Progress Bar: This setting will put a time bar at the bottom of the screen when a demo is playing.
• Play Internal Demos: By default, demos will play when idle on the title screen for some time. If the player wishes, they could turn this feature off by toggling this setting.