GZDoom successor UZDoom 5.0 is officially out now

What the report says

31 Aug 2026 at 10:11 am UTC | Last updated: 31 Aug 2026 at 10:11 am UTC By Liam Squires-HandSpawned from GZDoom, the successor project UZDoom just had a massive new release with version 5.0 out now. Not caught up on the drama behind GZDoom? Check out the original GamingOnLinux article on what happened. In short - UZDoom is what to go for now.
 The developer said
 
 "After an over year-long development cycle and a truckload of internal reworks, UZDoom 5.0 has finally arrived! Starring bone manipulations for IQM models, significantly improved controller support (including haptic feedback!), the overhauled multiplayer, ZScript debug support, and much more, we knew this version would need a full upgrade.

We appreciate everyone being patient since we know it took a while, but we promise it was worth the wait. With the updater being added, we can now make smaller releases more often so long periods of development like this should be an issue of the past. Our focus going forward will be on making releases as big new features are added."
 
 All of the enhancements should make for some interesting mods and games getting made with it.
 See their release trailer below:
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 General
 
 
 Improved localization support. Added support for Босански, Català, Hrvatski, Bahasa, Latina, Svenska, Українська, and 简体中文.
 Removed Discord RPC support. This allowed Discord to display information about the current UZDoom instance but was unfortunately causing crashes on launch. Since this library has been deprecated for over half a decade, its been removed until a new library can be found.
 Controller support has been improved significantly. Missing buttons e.g. paddles can now be assigned properly and analog stick curves have been tweaked to feel much more natural.

Key details

Binds for these have been cleared as a result in order to update all configurations to the new handling.
 Added haptic feedback for controllers.
 When auto-starting a game via e.g. -skill #, UZDoom will now use the first map in the first episode found. This should make starting games with unorthodox map setups more streamlined.
 When auto-starting a game, the default skill set in MAPINFO will now be the skill it defaults to.
 Alt tabbing while in fullscreen will now respect the relevant video cvars.
 Improved the crosshair graphics.
 Manually saving config files will now always save relative to the base config directory.
 Reworked double tap binds so they're now either/or instead of executing both.
 Allowed quit sounds to be longer (up to 5 seconds).
 Added the -episode # command-line argument for more easily starting from episodes rather than needing to know the map name.
 Added the -optfile command-line argument.

Files specified this way will ignore missing file errors by default.
 Added the -showlauncher command-line argument. Forces the launcher to always show up.
 Added the -help command-line argument (aliases: -h, /?). This will display a list of valid command-line arguments for UZDoom alongside a description of what they do. -help-all can be used to get fuller descriptions for each.
 Added RecursivePath= to the config for IWAD and file look up that allows all subfolders in the given directory to be searched as well. This won’t work for subfolders that act as files.
 Added support for Boom's multiple help screens.
 Added support for the multiplayer lobby and error windows on Linux.
 Improvements to serializing.

This should make both saving and loading a little faster.
 Fixed the auto language option not detecting the system language.
 Fixed multiple splashes spawning when falling in liquids in certain cases.
 Fixed explosions being able to damage outside of their radius in rare cases.
 Fixed locks not properly checking the player's inventory if a voodoo doll triggered the check.
 Fixed the SMF_PRECISE flag in A_SeekerMissile not tracking crouching players properly.
 Fixed A_LookEx not respecting the +LOOKALLAROUND flag in all cases.
 Fixed looping sound sequences not playing back correctly.
 Fixed the death cam not working with players that called A_SkullPop (e.g. when the player is gibbed in Heretic).
 Fixed a VM crash in Heretic when a player who fired a powered up Hellstaff leaves the game while it's active.
 Fixed a crash when opening the scoreboard in niche scenarios.
 Fixed a potential crash when saving.
 Fixed a potential crash when using railgun attacks.
 Fixed a potential crash when using HUD messages.
 
 Launcher
 
 Added a new updater!