''DRL'' (formerly ''DoomRL''), short for ''Doom, the Roguelike'', is a

roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing game, role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedural generation, procedurally generated level (video gaming), levels, Turns, rounds and time- ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

developed by ChaosForge based on the

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...

s '' Doom'' and ''

Doom II ''Doom II'', also known as ''Doom II: Hell on Earth'', is a first-person shooter game by id Software. It was released for MS-DOS computers in 1994 and Macintosh computers in 1995. Unlike the original '' Doom'', which was initially only availabl ...

''. It has been in development since 2002, and was released for Microsoft Windows,

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

and

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

. Following a

cease and desist A cease and desist letter is a document sent to an individual or business to stop alleged illegal activity. The phrase "cease and desist" is a legal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not dis ...

notice from "Doom"

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from oth ...

owner

ZeniMax Media ZeniMax Media Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Rockville, Maryland, and founded in 1999. The company owns publisher Bethesda Softworks with its development unit Bethesda Game Studios (developer of ''The Elder Scrolls, ...

, the game's name was changed to ''DRL'' in 2016.

Gameplay

''DRL'' is turn-based, offers a top-down interface formed entirely of

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...

characters, and features a character leveling system with traits. As it is based upon ''Doom'', the game is more fast-paced and combat-oriented than usual for a roguelike, and relies heavily on ranged rather than melee combat. A limited player inventory, non-stackable items, and other design choices contrast with the often extreme intricacy of games in its genre. As of version 0.9.9.6,

Derek Yu Derek Yu is an American independent video game designer, video game artist, and blogger.tileset is now the game's default, offering an alternative to the more traditional

rendering. ''DRL'' includes the entire ''Doom'' soundset and music library, with optional support for high-quality

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

History

Development

The game was created by programmer Kornel Kisielewicz with

Free Pascal Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) is a compiler for the closely related programming-language dialects Pascal and Object Pascal. It is free software released under the GNU General Public License, witexception clausesthat allow static linking against i ...

, and uses art by

Derek Yu Derek Yu is an American independent video game designer, video game artist, and blogger.first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...

s '' Doom'' and ''

'' universe. Since approximately 2002 in-development with first

beta version A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impr ...

s, the latest stable release is from 2013.

Wordmark conflict

On December 2, 2016, Kisielewicz received a

notice from

, concerning the use of the wordmark "Doom" present on game's website and name, which ZeniMax trademarked worldwide. To exclude "Doom" from the game's name, the title was changed to simply ''DRL'' on December 7, 2016.

Open sourcing

In addition, the game was made

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

by Kisielewicz on December 6, 2016. Kisielewicz had planned on releasing ''DoomRL'' as open-source prior to receiving the notice at the conclusion of an ongoing

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance. In 2015, over was rais ...

campaign on

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...

for ''Jupiter Hell'', a sequel to ''DoomRL'' using the same assets, as a thank-you to his supporters. The notice only made him push up this change to an earlier date. The

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

was made available via

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...

under GPL 2.0 or later and the game's assets under the

CC BY-SA 4.0 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...

license. Kisielewicz anticipates that the open-source community will be able to provide support and improvements to enhance both ''DRL'' and ''Jupiter Hell''. For instance, a community

source port A source port is a software project based on the source code of a game engine that allows the game to be played on operating systems or computing platforms with which the game was not originally compatible. Description Source ports are often cr ...

of DRL to the

OpenPandora The Pandora is an operating system, handheld game console and mobile personal computer originally released in 2010. It is designed to take advantage of existing free and open-source software and to be a target for homebrew development. It inclu ...

handheld A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

resulted already three days later.

Reception

In 2014 ''DRL'' was described by PCGamer as "a brilliant

mashup Mashup may refer to: * Mashup (culture), the rearrangement of spliced parts of musical pieces as part of a subculture * Mashup (education), combining various forms of data and media by a teacher or student in an instructional setting * Mashup (mus ...

of two classics" and named among the "Ten top fan remade classics you can play for

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

right now".

References

External links

*
Official source code page
on

github.com GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuo ...

{{Doom series Doom (franchise) Linux games Roguelike video games Windows games Open-source video games Free software programmed in Pascal Freeware games Fangames Creative Commons-licensed video games