How to play No Rest for the Living in source ports

This guide will teach you how to play the No Rest for the Living Doom 2 expansion in modern Doom engines with the proper music, level progression, and ending.

The Eternity Engine

The Eternity Engine[www.doomworld.com] is a feature rich source port which retains compatibility with the vanilla Doom engine. While its official website makes it look dead, it is under active development and new versions are posted on the Doomworld forums. It features a new software renderer, which looks authentic to the original but does not suffer from the rendering inaccuracies that the original Doom renderer does. Eternity was actually the first engine to support No Rest for the Living, back when the expansion was exclusive to the Xbox 360, by loading the .disk files that version of the game stored its WADs in. It has by-far the easiest method of loading the PC version.

• Download Eternity v3.40.37 "Gungnir"[www.doomworld.com] (or a newer version, if one is available) and extract it.
  
• Run eternity.exe. Choose "Doom II: Hell on Earth - BFG Edition" from the launcher and start a new game, you will see a "Which expansion?" menu where you can choose No Rest for the Living, exactly like the official Doom Classic engine in Doom 3: BFG Edition. If you have a normal copy of Doom II installed, you can also play No Rest for the Living with that in the same manner.

ZDoom

ZDoom[zdoom.org] is probably the most popular Doom source port due to its abundance of features, support for all Doom engine games, and large amounts of game-altering mods. These features come at the cost of compatibility with the vanilla engine, but for a casual Doom player, the differences will likely seem cosmetic. Notably, it features interpolation of Doom's 35fps movement, allowing the game to run at any framerate and appear smoother.

GZDoom[www.osnanet.de] adds an OpenGL hardware renderer to ZDoom. The advantage of hardware rendering is that it's faster than software, as it utilizes your GPU's 3D capabilities, is not limited to 256 colors, and can support various filters, lighting effects, and shader effects. The disadvantage is that some integrated GPUs have poor OpenGL support, which may actually make the engine slower, and a smaller issue is that hardware renderers cannot render sprites and certain hacky map features in the same way as software. GZDoom often recieves more official updates than ZDoom, as well.

• Download the latest version of ZDoom or GZDoom from the links above and extract it.
  
• In your Steam library, switch to the details view and right click on Doom 3: BFG Edition.
  
  • Choose properties and switch to the local files tab.
    
  • Click the browse local files button.
    
  • In the window that opens, open the base folder, then open the wads folder.
    
  • Copy NERVE.WAD to the same place where you extracted (G)ZDoom.
• Run (G)ZDoom, select Doom 2: Hell on Earth. When the game loads, select No Rest for the Living as an episode from the New Game menu.

PrBoom-plus

PrBoom-plus[prboom-plus.sourceforge.net] is a source port which is very popular in Doom's speedrunning community due to its ability to record and play back demos (gameplay movies) for numerous Doom engines, official and community made, via the use of command-line compatibility options. The engine features both software and hardware renderers (GLBoom-plus), and also has an uncapped framerate and interpolation option like ZDoom. Recent test versions also add support for No Rest for the Living, however running the expansion in this engine is more involved than Eternity or ZDoom.

• Download the lastest test version[prboom-plus.sourceforge.net] of PrBoom-plus and extract it.
  
• In your Steam library, switch to the details view and right click on Doom 3: BFG Edition.
  
  • Choose properties and switch to the local files tab.
    
  • Click the browse local files button.
    
  • In the window that opens, open the base folder, then open the wads folder.
    
  • Copy DOOM2.WAD and NERVE.WAD to the same place where you extracted PrBoom-plus.
• Run PrBoom-plus with the command line parameter nerve. Windows users can do the following:
  
  • Right click prboom-plus.exe or glboom-plus.exe, choose create shortcut.
    
  • Right click the newly created shortcut and choose properties.
    
  • In the target field of the properties window, add nerve to the end and click OK to close the window.
    
  • Run this shortcut. You can also add a shortcut to PrBoom-plus to Steam, and edit its target field in the same manner.
• PrBoom-plus does not offer the option to chose between standard Hell on Earth level set and No Rest for the Living - when run with the nerve parameter, only No Rest for the Living can be played.

If you wish to run in vanilla Doom II compatibility mode, also add the parameter -complevel 2 to the command line/target field.

Other source ports

NERVE.WAD is a standard PWAD, like any other custom content for Doom. As such, it can be loaded into any engine with the -file command line parameter. Note, however, that No Rest for the Living's unique behavior will no be retained when doing this. It will use Doom 2's level names and music, the secret exit in level 4 will not work, the standard Doom 2 intermission text will be displayed after level 6, and level 8 will lead to 9 (and 9 to 10) rather than ending the game

Additionally, the expansion's maps are significantly more detailed than the original DOS executable (and ports which retain its limits, like Chocolate Doom) can handle. You will encounter rendering errors and crashes when trying to run it in these engines.

[Dr. Engineer]

Pro-Tip: If you have the rerelease version of DOOM 2. you can get it as an addon which you can then convert the addon file to a wad file. Do note that this wad file is not automatically detected as an IWAD by LZDoom (which yes actually counts it as an IWAD along with SIGIL) due to it having a possibly different file size and different hashsum. However, the addon file is also considered an IWAD so loading it as a PWAD may break some graphics. So, create a shortcut of your source port executable and give the command line parameter of:
-iwad <name of your NRFTL file>.WAD
however as stated in the Other Source Ports section. the amount of detail in the maps is enough for ports like Chocolate Doom to crash. Ports like Crispy Doom will work however but may have some issues.

[keencommander]

Mine was saved in the following path with no "WAD" file extension at all
"C:\Users\< usernamehere >\Saved Games\id Software\DOOM Classic\WADs\3\3"
You could tell it was the expansion because some NERVE JPG images were there also

[MasterOfTheMoon]

I'm doing what you said with GZDoom, but when I start the game the standard Doom II soundtrack plays instead of the proper music. What am I doing wrong?

[ChozoSR388]

It works on bog standard versions of Doom 2, too. You just have to launch the game with '-file nerve.wad' in the target field of the shortcut. You'll get a message saying that your game has been modified, but it'll run No Rest for the Living just fine. You just don't get the episode selection if you run doom2.exe by itself, which is unfortunate.

[OveWanKenobi]

Hey. i could need some help fixing doom i have doom bfg edition and bfg is running fine but the doom 1 and 2 are running slooow with huge lag what do i have to do?

[TAW|REA]

For GNU/Linux users who want to run No Rest for the Living with GZDoom :

- Install GZDoom via the Debian/Ubuntu repo of DRD Team ;
http://debian.drdteam.org/

- Place DOOM.WAD , DOOM2.WAD and NERVE.WAD of Doom 3: BFG Edition in /home/YourUserName/.config/gzdoom folder;
GZDoom will succesfully detect Doom and Doom II; however it will fail to show No Rest for the Living.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6SKgsSuH2qQNFAyLW9XSXh2Ymc/

- Start GZDoom with following command via terminal; gzdoom -iwad DOOM2.WAD -file NERVE.WAD
Doom II will be started; you will be able to choose No Rest for the Living in New Game menu.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6SKgsSuH2qQWndKUE5EYTB5YzA/

- You may make a launcher to avoid using terminal eveytime;
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToAddaLauncher

Have fun!

[[CPC] Koma Nouragan]

Ok I figured it out !

It works but ONLY with the modded DOOM2.WAD from the BFG Edition. When you use this WAD and the NERVE.WAD it works together in GZDoom.

But you cannot access the Episode if you use a classic DOOM2.WAD because of its original content uncut (the 2 secret maps) and the unexistence of a menu to select the episode.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Hmm, you're right. I thought they had automated loading it. You've still got to drag the file onto gzdoom.exe. I'll upload the guide when I'm not busy.

[[CPC] Koma Nouragan]

Sorry man but your method with GZDoom doesnt work at all. Adding the wad in the GZDoom folder like any elses doesnt add it up on the main screen.