Lotan's Tomb - a free and libre first person shooter

A free and libre first person shooter

A long time ago, id Software released the source code for the Doom engine as free software. But only the program was released: the stuff for the game itself was still proprietary, meaning whatever corporation owned the rights could stop selling it forever, or pull it for being too politically inconvenient (or at least set up a centralized corporate mod whitelist and then memory hole the inconvenient stuff), or sully its memory through the "your dad catches you smoking so he makes you smoke the whole pack at once" business model, or anything else, and there'd be no (above-the-table) way for anyone to do anything about it.

A lot of people got together over the years to fill in the rest, so that you could have an entire Doom engine game available as free software.

They succeeded. In fact, they were so successful at getting more stuff to make the game there was a lot of stuff left over, and people couldn't agree on what should stay and what should go. So some people started taking advantage of that whole "free software" thing and made their own versions with what they wanted.

Lotan's Tomb is one of these versions.

(There's no actual Lotan character in the game—the name's just allegorical, per Hobbes.)

Differences from upstream Freedoom

Non-GitHub repository using a "main" branch!
Single-episode demo IWAD for running Doom on unusual machines!
All new E2M8, E3M2, E3M8 and Map30.
Visplane crash fixes, new alternate non-linear routes, aligned textures, modernized aesthetics and other incremental QoL improvements on numerous other maps.
Minigunners use proper minigun sounds thanks to DeHacked.
New (and old) sprites for spider mastermind, pain lord, some pickups, fireballs and explosions, and the SKAG.
Key types that conceptually unify shape and colour.
Rearranged music selections.
New, more detailed lore, terminology and manual.
Additional textures not found upstream:
- MCSTAT1 to MCSTAT9: non-animated version of the green-brown MC Plutonia textures.
- PANEL5A to PANEL5E: PANEL5 but instead of Bouguereau's Birth of Venus it's details from Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People.
- AQMETF16 to AQMETF17: flipped versions of AQMETL16-17 so that the chains can be made to look consistent when placed in areas the player can move around.

Download

tl;dr if you're completely new at this: Download the pre-build and extract the .iwad files, then in Windows drag lt1.iwad onto your sourceport's .exe file, or in Linux go into the folder in your terminal and type <your sourceport name> -file lt1.iwad.

All releases and source will be posted at the repository.

Manually updated pre-builds as of 2024-09-15 are also available:

Email me at verdantdregs at shaw dot ca to pester me to update this if that date is looking a bit too venerable.

Under Construction

And, of course, you'll need a source port as well. Crispy Doom is a good start, or you can try Chocolate Doom for a more authentic oldschool experience. (Lotan's Tomb works with GZDoom too, but you might want to consider setting r_vanillatrans 1 to better see the smoke effects.)

Licence

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of the Freedoom project, the Lotan's Tomb project nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.