Skulltag
The discontinued multiplayer source port (2000–2012) that once lived at this domain — carried forward by Zandronum. An independent history; this site is not connected to the original project.
Skulltag was a multiplayer-focused Doom source port created by Brad Carney (Carnevil) and later maintained with Torr Samaho, first released on June 11, 2000 and discontinued on June 7, 2012. It bolted arena-shooter energy onto classic Doom — new game modes, new weapons, bots and medals — and its final release, 0.98d, became the foundation that Zandronum was forked from. The domain skulltag.com was the port’s home until the project ended. This page is an independent history of that port; the site you are reading is not affiliated with it.
What Skulltag was
Skulltag set out to answer a simple question: what would Doom multiplayer look like with the pace and presentation of a late-90s arena shooter? Built on ZDoom — and using the GZDoom renderer for hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics — it kept classic Doom underneath while layering on a client–server multiplayer architecture, dedicated servers, and a game-mode roster that owed as much to Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament as to id Software’s original deathmatch rules.
The port’s gameplay has been described as essentially a hybrid of Quake III Arena and Doom, and that was the point. Where most source ports of its era chased fidelity or modding depth, Skulltag chased the lobby: bots with personalities, achievement medals awarded mid-match, power-up spheres that froze time or doubled your speed, and enough game modes that a server browser full of Skulltag servers rarely looked the same twice.
What it added to Doom multiplayer
- Game modes — beyond Deathmatch and Cooperative: Capture the Flag, One-flag CTF, Team Deathmatch, Last Man Standing (solo and team), Terminator, Invasion (wave-based co-op against monsters), Instagib, Buckshot, and its namesake mode Skulltag, in which teams capture the enemy’s skull and score at skull pillars.
- New weapons — the minigun, grenade launcher, railgun and BFG 10K, each slotted alongside its closest Doom equivalent and sharing its ammo type.
- Bots — reworked in 0.97c: deathmatch bots with personalities and chat lines, including tributes to Doom community figures.
- Medals and spheres — mid-match achievement medals, plus limited-time power-ups like the Turbosphere and the time-freeze sphere.
- Broader game support — Heretic, Hexen, Strife and Chex Quest ran under the same roof, with most ZDoom features (deep water, skyboxes, DeHackEd patch loading, partial DECORATE support) intact.
The end — and the handover
On June 3, 2012, the development team forked the project into Zandronum; four days later, on June 7, 2012, Carnevil announced on skulltag.com that Skulltag’s development had ended. The final release remained 0.98d, based on ZDoom 2.3.1.
That handover is why Skulltag’s ideas are still playable today. Zandronum carried the mode roster, the content and the multiplayer architecture forward, and it remains the most active way to play this style of online Doom. Our hands-on review covers it: Zandronum.
About this domain
skulltag.com is an independent Doom site published by BullSEO. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Brad Carney, Torr Samaho, the original Skulltag project or the Zandronum team. The domain was registered after it had expired; the original project ended in 2012, and its final announcement is preserved in the Internet Archive (see Sources). This page is an independent history of the port, not its official site. Skulltag remains the work of its original developers.