I am considering using Vavoom to run DooM, DooM II, Heretic and Hexen (game WADs for all these), but I would like to read some comments from current Vavoom users before I do so. More specifically, I would like to hear from users of the latest Vavoom version, 1.24. I am running Mandriva Free 2007.0, kernel 2.6.17-5mdv, on a Compaq Deskpro EN, Pentium III, 933 MHz. My graphics card is an Nvidia TNT2 Pro using the 2007.0 distribution's Nvidia driver.

I already have a copy of the latest source code (vavoom-1.24.tar.gz). Additionally, I have downloaded libSDL1.2-devel-1.2.11-3mdv2007.0.i586.rpm, which the game-engine's developer has told me must be installed first in order to compile the game's source code. He pointed-out to me that just having the SDL run-time libraries installed is not sufficient.

My first concern is overall stability of the game engine. My second concern is installation issues; I want a game engine that is relatively easy to install and maintain.

To sum it all up, I am looking for one game engine that will run all the games I have mentioned in a reasonably stable manner. Comments, please.

By the way, I have seen that Vavoom is now in version 1.7 beta development, but there is no news yet on when version 1.7 will see final release.

Vavoom user evaluations seem to be very scarce, leading me to believe that, although Vavoom has been in existence for seven years, it is far from being among one of the preferred Linux ports for DooM. I sincerely doubt, however, that it cannot be called an upcoming contender for one of the top spots. It might simply be that, because of its somewhat cryptic documentation, it poses some installation problems that most Linux users do not care to tackle.

I found the following post, among others, at "The Linux Game Tome" website.

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Vavoom ... posted by GregLee @ 128.171.66.32 on May 6 2004 7:23 AM

The games themselves -- Doom, Doom II, Doom III, Heretic, Hexen, Strife -- are great classics. And there are many variations on them around, as well. You need the "wad" files from the original games, but Doom, Doom II, and Strife wads can easily be found on the net. The Vavoom engine itself is a big software system, inheriting parts of previous efforts to make a free engine to run these great old games. It runs on several operating systems, including Win32 and Linux.

Vavoom produces very nice, smooth, OpenGL graphics on my 2D-accelerated, not-very-fast, i810 chip, on a Linux system. Some bit-mapped fonts and pictures from the games look pretty cheesy, but the dungeon rooms and monsters themselves look very nice.

I had no problem compiling, using the Allegro library or the optional OpenAl sound library. I did have a problem compiling against SDL using version 1.14 of Vavoom. But I fixed those problems myself and presumably the fixes will be in the next version of Vavoom. Using SDL, I can use both my joystick and all five buttons and the scroll wheel of my mouse, and all the controls are configurable.

The documentation is minimal. Just playing the games is no problem, but using a network server or exploring advanced capabilities of the system may need experimentation or reading the source code. I certainly haven't figured it all out yet. I've had a lot of fun with Vavoom, but then I like to fiddle with programs. It's rough around the edges. There's a support forum, and questions there do get answers.
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I don't know anything about the current version. The version I worked on SDL support for, years ago, seemed very stable -- it didn't always work right, but it didn't crash. Vavoom is a much more ambitious effort than the other Linux game engines for Doom-type games that I tried out (back in the day).