tkBoom

This document was last modified: Wednesday, 20-Nov-2002 01:41:12 UTC,
and is maintained by { tkboom (at) sunset-cliffs.org }

Overview

tkBoom is a GUI launcher for the game Doom (and all of it's various ports). tkBoom is written in Perl, and should run fine on most Unix (Linux, Solaris [Free|Open|Net]BSD, anything that can run Perl and X) and Windows systems, and possibly PPC Macintosh. The GUI is provided by the Perl::Tk module, but tkBoom DOES NOT require Tcl/Tk (another scripting language and GUI widget set) to run, only Perl and the Perl::Tk module. The original idea for tkBoom comes from an old DOS Doom launcher I used to use called 'Doom Control Center' (dcc) by Nold Software Engineering.

Boom is a port of the original Doom source code that was released by id Software in December of 1997. The port of Boom that I'm developing tkBoom on is called PrBoom, and is located at http://prboom.sourceforge.net. But in theory, it should work with any Doom port, some modification may have to be made for command line parameters of other ports.

Screenshots

On the Screenshots page.

Downloads

The current release as of March 20th, 2002 is v0.5.0. You can download the tarball or zipfile here at tkBoom's SourceForge Project Downloads page. Note that both archives (.zip and .gz) have the same set of files, so it doesn't matter which archive you download. Installation instructions for both Unix and Windows are in the file called INSTALL in the archive.

Requirements

Unix and Mac OS-X:

Perl, probably 5.005 or better, whatever will run the Perl::Tk module (Mac OS-X comes with Perl 5.005)
Perl::Tk module, available at your nearest CPAN mirror
A Doom port, this project will initially use prBoom (http://prboom.sourceforge.net), but I'll probably add in support for other ports at a later time
Xwindows set up and running, there's no requirement for a specific window manager, and there's no requirement for Tcl/Tk to already be installed on your system

Windows:

Perl, most likely ActiveState Perl, available at http://www.activestate.com/ActivePerl/download.htm. More Perl Windows ports are available at http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/ports/index.html#win32
Perl::Tk, available via the ActiveState binary 'ppm' that comes with ActiveState Perl
A Doom port, this project will initially use prBoom (http://prboom.sourceforge.net), but I'll probably add in support for other ports at a later time
A working copy of 32-bit Windows

Macintosh PPC

Sorry Macophiles, there's no Perl::Tk distribution for Mac OS9.x and below, so concurrently, there's no tkBoom for you either.

Misc

tkBoom is what powers PortaBoom, my complete bootable Linux distribution that runs off of CD-ROM. PortaBoom will let you play Doom on any Intel computer with a fast enough CPU and a CD-ROM drive.

I've got a Design Goals page going that outlines what I hope to get tkBoom to do. The Notes page is a collection of random thoughts and web links to other projects that I think may be of value to tkBoom. I've also got a Boom Port Features page that lists the capabilities of each port. There's also a WADfile specification page that details how you can tell what WADfile belongs with which version of Doom.

tkBoom is developed and tested under Debian GNU/Linux and Windows 95, so if you run into problems, I may or may not be able to help you out.

You can contact me (tkboom {at} sunset-cliffs.org) if you have any questions/problems with tkBoom. I keep a diary on Advogato, you can always get the latest project news there.

Much thanks to those wonderful people at SourceForge, for providing me hosting space