Doom on DOS was one of the first PC games I ever played, a shareware version to be exact,
and my grandmother got it for me.
I’m not sure she ever realized what she got for me, to be honest.
But Doom hasn’t really let off the gas in its nearly 30 years of existence.
And now, the original can be enjoyed with glorious ray tracing.
Let me show you how to get it set up and how it looks.
Doom has been a staple in the PC gaming scene since way back and has been a trailblazer
in many aspects.
I mean, it really kicked off the first-person shooter genre.
No, it wasn’t the first, but it was the first to really light a fire under gamers
and developers alike.
There’s a reason so many games back then were called DOOM Clones.
Doom continued pushing the boundaries of gameplay and graphics with each major release, including
DOOM 3, a personal favorite of mine, all the way up to the latest release of Doom Eternal,
and it even got fitted with a sweet ray tracing upgrade a while back.
But the ray tracing treatment didn’t stop at Doom Eternal.
Thanks to a talented modder Sultim-T we have the ability to relive the original Doom in
glorious ray tracing.
Or rather path tracing in a technical sense.
Oh, if you're wondering what the heck path tracing is after hearing ray tracing so often,
and in the title here, it's pretty much the same thing it's more about the direction light
flows for the render.
Typically in Ray tracing the light emitts from the source and makes a path to the viewport.
Well, in path tracing light goes from the viewport into the scene and back to the viewport.
At the end of the day they're mostly interchangeable terms.
So how does it look and what’s going on here?
Looking at the original side by side with the mod it’s clear to say the change to
the look and feel of the game is quite stark.
I picked this scene to do a comparison with because it’s pretty clear just how impactful
moving from static lighting to a path traced solution really makes the barrels glow and
the shadows recede.
Since this is a mod there are obviously SOME changes to the way the game looks, like the
reverse directions on the wall grates.
Kinda weird but it is what it is.
If you want to check this out for yourself you’re going to need a few things in order
to get it up and running.
First and foremost you’re going to need an Nvidia RTX graphics card because this won’t
be running on Radeon cards - for now.
I’m just letting you know so please don’t shoot the messenger.
You’re also going to need to own a copy of the original Doom title in some form or
fashion.
And last but not least we’ll need the files from Sultim-T’s Github page, which is linked
in the description.
That gets things started, so now let’s move on to how to actually get it working.
First things first, we’ll need to gather everyone in one location.
Navigate to the github link and look under Download > Assets for a zip file called prboom-rt
followed by the version number.
As of this recording it’s on version 1.0.2 so I’m using that.
Now download Doom from Steam, GOG, or wherever you own it.
If you are like me and own the Doom 3 BFG Edition then it’s in there as well.
Now that we have everything downloaded, unzip the prboom-rt file and place it in an empty
folder anywhere you’d like.
Then navigate to wherever you’ve installed Doom and find the game’s .wad file which
holds everything in the game.
Place the Doom.wad file inside the empty folder where you put the prboom-rt file.
Additionally, if you want high high-quality music or the ability to use DLSS in order
to get more performance, links to those downloads are also on the Github page.
Download and place the files in the same folder as everything else to get those installed
- but remember it’s just optional and not mandatory to play.
Last but not least all you have to do is click and run the prboom-plus.exe file to get it
going and you are in, it’s that easy!
Playing the game in motion is where it becomes a real treat, and it certainly pulls the nearly
30-year-old game into the modern realm.
I mean, you’re still working with sprite-based character models and minimal polygons but
it’s still really fun to revisit Doom this way.
Well folks, that was fairly straightforward and I hope it was easy enough to follow if
you’re wanting to try out Doom with ray tracing.
I highly encourage it for fans of the series who already own the game and have an RTX graphics
card.
Is this something you’re interested in trying?
Have you tried it already?
Or could you care less?
Either way I’d love to hear from you on it down in the comments section, and while
you’re there hit that thumbs up button and make sure you’re subscribed here at PCWorld
for even more PC hardware and software goodness.