If you want to distance yourself from the craziness of the world around and happen to be a computer geek, only a few things are more satisfying than blasting hordes of demons on Doom. Here is how to install GZDoom - an OpenGL port of Doom released under the GPLv3 license - and a mod called Brutal Doom on Fedora 31.

Gzdoom gameplay

Install GZDoom #

At the time of writing, GZDoom is available as a flatpack or as a Fedora Cool Other Package Repo. Here is how to enable the COPR and install the package (as the root user):

dnf copr enable pkgsatore/gzdoom && dnf install gzdoom

The system path to the game resources is /usr/share/doom/. Then, we need to install the game assets. They are available on archive.org. Download them and move them to the resources directory:

echo 'https://archive.org/download/DOOMIWADFILE/DOOM.WAD https://archive.org/download/doom2wad/DOOM2.WAD' \
    | tr ' ' '\n' \
    | parallel -j 2 wget
mv *.WAD /usr/share/doom/

Install the Brutal Doom mod and launch the game #

Brutal Doom is a mod for Doom adding several enhancements to the game such as visual effects, the ability to look up / down, new weapons, a reload system, recoil and more. Download the mod from this page and some Metal Soundtrack. The mod is archived in a .rar file, therefore you need to install the unrar utility which is not a free software. Extract the downloaded files and move them to the GZDoom resource path:

dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-31.noarch.rpm && dnf install unrar
unrar e brutalv21.rar
dnf autoremove unrar rpmfusion-nonfree-release-31
unzip DoomMetalVol5.zip
mv brutalv21.pk3 DoomMetalVol5.wad /usr/share/doom/

You can now play the game with:

gzdoom -iwad /usr/share/doom/DOOM2.WAD \
       -file /usr/share/doom/brutalv21.pk3 \
             /usr/share/doom/DoomMetalVol5.wad

To automatically load mods and customize the settings, you can edit the configuration file ~/.config/gzdoom/gzdoom.ini. The game documentation is in a wiki. Have fun!

Create a desktop shortcut #

For ease of use let’s now create a launcher for the game. We create the script starting the game and make it executable:

cat << EOF > /usr/share/doom/doom.sh
#!/bin/bash
gzdoom -iwad /usr/share/doom/DOOM2.WAD -file /usr/share/doom/brutalv21.pk3 /usr/share/doom/DoomMetalVol5.wad
EOF
chmod 755 /usr/share/doom/doom.sh

Download an icon:

wget http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/logopedia/images/a/a0/1838409561doom2-logo.png -O /usr/share/doom/doom.png

Create the entry:

cat << EOF > /usr/share/applications/doom.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Doom
Categories=Game;ActionGame;
GenericName=Doom
Exec=/usr/share/doom/doom.sh
Terminal=false
Path=/usr/share/doom/
Type=Application
Categories=Game
Actions=Fullscreen;Standalone;
Icon=/usr/share/doom/doom.png
EOF

Be ready for hours of fun at the click of a button!