A modern Doom engine written from the ground up with a focus on performance.
Content creators have created maps that struggle to render at high framerates with even the latest and most expensive hardware. With Helion, Doom’s most complex maps are no longer stressful on modern GPUs and playable on old hardware that was previously impossible.
Helion uses static rendering with a state management system to reconcile dynamic map changes in Doom. In contrast to the typical BSP tree rendering that requires significant CPU processing, Helion is able to manage dynamic changes and optimally utilize the GPU resulting in dramatic performance increases.
Helion supports WADs targeting vanilla, Boom, MBF, MBF21, UDMF (partial support), and ID24.
Minimum requirements are Windows 7 (x64), Linux (x64), or MacOS (ARM64) and an OpenGL 3.3 compatible GPU or IGPU.
Doom E1M1 - True Color Mode
Doom E1M1 - Palette Color Mode
Eviternity MAP26 - Automap Overlay
Knee-Deep in Knee-Deep in ZDoom Z1M1
PUSS X Summer of Slaughter MAP31: No Living Land (MAP32 in SOS_BOOM.wad)
Sunlust MAP28
Eviternity II MAP32
We support Windows (x86-64), Linux (x86-64), and MacOS (ARM 64-bit, M-series devices only). Our latest stable release is here. Nightly experimental builds are also available here, but may contain additional bugs or half-finished features.
Helion uses the Microsoft .NET SDK. All of our official releases (including nightly builds) provide their own runtime and should not require additional components. Linux users will need to ensure that libsndfile and mpg123 are present (they generally are, on most "desktop" distributions).
For information on setting up and playing, see the bundled game documentation. Note that you will need to provide an IWAD (game data file); we do not distribute these. Options include Doom + Doom II, Doom shareware, and Freedoom.
If you want to compile from source, see the build instructions, which cover all three supported platforms.
If you want to talk about the game, follow development, or get involved, we have a Discord server as well as a thread on the Doomworld forums.
If you encounter issues using Helion and would like to report a bug, you can do so either here on GitHub Issues or in the Doomworld thread above.