dhewm3 VS DIYDoom

The installation is different from what you might be used to from your typical mod. Download dhewm3_1.5.2_win32.zip from the githup page, unzip it, then copy, as instructed by the WHAT_TO_DO.txt files in the base and d3xp directories of the unzipped mod the .pk4 files from the game directory over (d3xp is only there if you installed the Resurrection of Evil add-on first). You can then uninstall the game from Steam.

I played through it with dhewm3 recently. Really enjoyed it.

There is a source port of Doom 3 if you want to play it on Linux or macOS.

if you are going to play it on PC, then get the original 2004 release, with the dhewm3 source port since it can get to widescreen easily and is friendlier on modern devices.

Why do you want to run old, buggy code through wine when you could use native dhewm3 to play the original (non-BFG) version of doom3 with Bugfixes, OpenAL audio and proper widescreen support? https://dhewm3.org/

for me go for the original Doom 3 + dhewm3 source port since the source port can get to widescreen easily and is friendlier on modern devices. BFG Edition aint that bad but its very easy and lacking other content that the original Doom 3 had (especially ROE) and it has less enemy count.

Don't sell yourself short, I imagine you could achieve a lot more than you think! It's just a case of breaking the problem down, simplifying accordingly and (probably the most difficult bit) finding the time to sit down and work on it. There are some DIY courses that could even be followed and mashed up to approximate a scriptable "3D" engine with a bit of creativity. You could familiarise yourself with building a simple compiler + VM for a little language by following "Crafting Interpreters" (https://craftinginterpreters.com). For the engine side of things someone recently posted this "DIY Doom" over @ https://github.com/amroibrahim/DIYDoom which looks like a bit of fun.

I mean it's a bit tougher to do it all completely from scratch, but I reckon most HNers could get quite a lot of the way there :)

see also a tutorial on writing a doom-compatible engine from scratch:

https://github.com/amroibrahim/DIYDoom

they also have a community forum, diyidtech, at https://discord.gg/a8n4Y2z

For reference, I want to convert this C++ code (https://github.com/amroibrahim/DIYDoom/tree/master/DIYDOOM/Notes001/notes)

see also: a series of posts (with accompanying code) on rewriting the doom engine from scratch:

https://github.com/amroibrahim/DIYDoom