CatacombGL

Games: Catacomb 3-D → (DOS, 1991) · The Catacomb Abyss → (DOS, 1992) · The Catacomb Armageddon → (DOS, 1992) · The Catacomb Apocalypse → (DOS, 1993)

CatacombGL: a source port of Catacomb 3-D: The Descent (id Software, 1991) and Softdisk’s Catacomb Adventure Series (The Catacomb Abyss, The Catacomb Armageddon, and The Catacomb Apocalypse, from 1992 and 1993), the four MS-DOS games whose source code Flatrock Software released under the GPLv2. The originals drew in 16 colors in a 320×200 view window; CatacombGL draws them with OpenGL, at widescreen resolutions, with an adjustable field of view and an uncapped frame rate, and moves the player, projectiles, and monsters with floating-point precision. It has configurable keyboard and mouse controls shared by all four games, an automap with four styles (one based on Catacomb 3-D’s debug automap), an option to slide along walls, the camera slightly behind the player as in DOS, and optional music in the Adventure Series, using the Bobby Prince track their data already contained but never played. Sound comes from ReflectionHLE’s, with OPL3 emulation. A selection screen lists the games and detects the Catacombs Pack if you installed it with GOG’s installer. The latest release is 0.5.7 beta (January 4, 2025), for 32- and 64-bit Windows and Linux; since then the code has moved to SDL3 and added controllers, macOS compatibility, and Catacomb 3-D version 1.00, and work is underway on reading DOS saved games. The repository includes, for each game and version, the compression dictionaries for its EGA graphics.

You needThe data files from your own copy: GOG’s Catacombs Pack, with all four games, or, in the code after 0.5.7, Catacomb 3-D version 1.00 from Romero Games’ 2024 physical Big Box releases. The Catacomb Abyss 1.13 is free shareware and is enough to play that game; the project says it differs from the commercial release only cosmetically. Plus Windows 7 to 11 or Linux; macOS, by building it.

How it gets to PC

Port of the released source code

Original studio

id Software / Softdisk

Year

1991

Author

ArnoAnsems

Stars

197

Last activity

2026-10-27 · 4 days ago

License

GPL-3.0

Language

C++

ReflectionHLE See all →

ReflectionHLE See all →

ReflectionHLE See all →

ReflectionHLE See all →