Old school DOOM using mouse movement

[lv]

My husband and I enjoyed all versions of DOOM originally out on 3.5 floppies. Since none of that is supported any more, I thought I'd try Steam. I have DOOM II but what I miss and why I hesitated is we DO NOT use nor plan to use or can use controllers or AWSD keyboard commands. How can we get this version of DOOM to work like old school where you moved around the map using only mouse movement. Before you say go to 'controller' in the menu, I already did that. Move right, for example setting to move the mouse right simply keeps the same front view and just moves the guy to the right. Not spin him around to actually look to the right. Can someone please tell us how to get old school mouse movement back?

[NightmareGats]

get a proper source port like gzdoom or prboom +

[Nur Ab Sal]

Like nightmareGats says, better if you use any source port. Im using ZDL, and with something like this in the parameters launchers: "D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Doom 2\base\ZDL.exe" %Command% you can actually play any doom wads, and have the steam overlay and show like you are playing doom 2.

[AmethystViper]

I have a guide here on how to fix the version of DOSBox Steam ships with for the original Doom games with pre-made fixes for each game. Using these tweaks/fixes should fix the problems that the Steam version of the DOSBox-wrapped Doom games.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=479076280
After you have updated your DOSBox and its settings, make sure to select "Launch DOOM II (Original)" from the launch options when launching the game.

[Shallex]

you can play the original through DOSBox which works perfectly fine for your purposes

[SuperFly]

"Mouseglide" is the term you want to know, OP -- that's what the control scheme of vanilla DOS DOOM is called.

Mouseglide is alive and well in the DOSBox port that is included in this purchase.

[Covid Anal Swab]

i can't setup strafe on my right mouse button. it's maddening. same with quake 2

[lv]

Originally posted by Nur Ab Sal:

Like nightmareGats says, better if you use any source port. Im using ZDL, and with something like this in the parameters launchers: "D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Doom 2\base\ZDL.exe" %Command% you can actually play any doom wads, and have the steam overlay and show like you are playing doom 2.

Are there instructions somewhere? I'm not sure how to do this. it's been a while. I know we had something like zdoom before but it's been years since I set it up and don't remember what to do. I have both DosBox and ZDL downloaded but can't get the right configuration on how to use it and play. any assistance is appreciated. Thank you

[Shallex]

for the ultimate dosbox setup, you are going to need to set up a folder on your machine that you intend on using as your virtual C drive within dosbox, that dosbox will use as if it was its own C drive on a DOS machine.

so you could set aside a folder in Windows such as for example C:\dosbox (it can be anywhere and called anything you want, of course)

then you need to edit the configuration file that DOSBox uses, which you can read about and find the location of from here: https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf#Creation_and_Location

at the bottom of the configuration file, you need to go to the [autoexec] section which will execute whatever commands you put here upon launching dosbox, and you need to make dosbox automatically mount this dosbox directory that you made to set it as dosbox's own virtual C drive, so below the [autoexec] section you may add something like

mount c C:\dosbox
c:
cls

replacing "C:\dosbox" with whatever folder you made earlier. now any time you start dosbox, that folder will be the root of your emulated C drive, the c: drive will automatically be switched to, and the screen will be cleared of the dosbox startup message. so just put some games in that folder and start playing.

to make dosbox look and run better, you will ideally want to change some other options in the dosbox.conf as well, such as:

fullresolution=desktop (sets the fullscreen resolution to match that of your native res)
output=openglnb (gives the game the best sharp visuals possible, everything else is blurry)
aspect=true (scales the screen to emulate a proper 4:3 aspect ratio)
scaler=none (maybe necessary for best visuals? don't remember, but i have it set anyway)

blocksize=1024
prebuffer=25 (both of these are not strictly necessary to change, but lowering the numbers decreases audio latency, so theoretically you should set them as low as they can go before you start noticing crackles and pops in the audio)

i think that's it, now you can just copy games over to your dosbox folder and play them by running dosbox and changing to their directory without having to fiddle with dosbox settings every game like you do if you played these games on steam through each of their respectively-configured dosbox variants

[lv]

Thank you everyone for your replies. Unfortunately none of this worked to allow movement with the mouse. It still requires ASDW, so I was able to search all my old hard drives for a version that worked, and was able to give that one to my husband. Thank you for your help.