Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[NecroLord]

Gory excess and vulgarity working in concert on a Doom 2 chassis.

 

[ghardy]

Just a pointing-to.

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Demonfear

If you haven't played Demonfear, it's an old (year 1999/2000) WAD comprising of 32 levels, each of which is short but action-packed. No modern skullduggery in sight.

I liked the two secret levels that start off identically.

The one con I can immediately think of is MAP22's bridge. That's some smug nonsense.

But on the whole, Demonfear is a very good WAD.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Too bad that v22 has gameplay changes that only a crazy modder would think of, like halving the ammo capacity for many weapons and sticking to ultra-realism (like reloading a full-on empty weapon leaves the chamber empty, meaning one has to reload again to get full capacity).

Why? We already have Hideous Destructor for this

 

[Ol' Willy]

someone turned Doom 1 and 2 into Doom64 tone wise


https://gbatemp.net/threads/doom-64...f-doom-doom-ii-in-doom-64s-atmosphere.661833/

Doom 64 has surely being one of the most underrated games from the Doom franchise, and its setting, atmosphere, cacophonies and overall foreboding and dreaded tone is one thing that sets this title apart from all the others.

One point of interest from the original Doom 64 was that it recreated a lot of the original Doom and Doom II enemies in entirely new assets, be it the Imp, the Pinky or the nightmare-fuel that is the redesign of the Pain Elemental in this iteration. However, not all the monsters from the originals made the transition to the N64 game, as the Revenant, the Chaingunner, the Arch-vile and the Spider Mastermind sadly got axed.

But as always, you can expect the fandom to act upon it, much more so given how Doom is by far one of the most modded games, if not the most modded games, of all time.

DrPyspy has recently released a brand new mod for Doom & Doom II using the GZDoom engine to recreate both games in Doom 64 assets and behaviours, be it the weapons (adding the Unmaker too), the enemy design and behaviours, SFX and music (based on the PSX tracklist), and even an entirely new difficulty setting to bring the harder enemy placement from the PSX version into the original games.

Doom 64: Unseen Evil is a mod for GZDoom that brings the atmosphere of Doom 64 to the worlds of Doom and Doom II. Everything is entirely overhauled: from the player and their weapons, to the halls and the demons that stalk them.

All of the demons that were absent from the original Doom 64 have finally emerged from the deepest pits of hell, including the unsettling Revenant and the sinister Arch-vile. If you're looking for a new challenge, the exclusive Redemption Denied difficulty will bring some of the crueler monster placements from PSX Doom into the vanilla Doom maps.

Proceed with caution; there are many evils yet unseen.

The changes include the following:

• The full Doom 64 arsenal at your disposal, including the Unmaker
• All monster behaviors from Doom 64 recreated as faithfully as possible
• Missing monsters reimagined in the Doom 64 style: the Chaingunner, the Revenant, the Arch-vile, and the Spider Mastermind
• Quality of life improvements, including new sounds, new weapon animations, and customizable settings
• The Terraformer: a powerful system that comprehensively transforms any Doom/Doom II level into a Doom 64-style level
• Redemption Denied: an exclusive difficulty level that implements monster spawns from PSX Doom (and other surprises) into the vanilla Doom levels

they added some animations, cool

Doom 64 is an abomination

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

First, based on @Saint_Proverbius mentioning it, I tried out "Perdition's Gate". It's an older megawad that prefers to use the smaller monsters and gradually and slowly introduce the bigger monsters, with Arch-Viles being rarely used. One notable thing it does differently is that it uses the end-of-level and start-of-level screens to try to tell a story on a level-by-level basis, but then I noticed that the story jumped one over, so you get the next mission's storybit for the current map. But ultimately it's too old and progresses too slowly, and the maps are generally simple and uninteresting (and WTF was going on with the secret levels?) until, strangely, the final maps pick up the pace.

I liked it. Yeah, it's slow compared to most of the modern wads, though I would say it ramps up the difficulty a hair from Doom II. It's much easier than what was shipped with Final Doom, but I like the level design of Perdition's Gate quite a bit.

someone turned Doom 1 and 2 into Doom64 tone wise

Rats. This is what I was going to post about. It's actually pretty slick. It would be awesome if someone made a voxel pack for it.

 

[Dayyālu]

So, months later I get back to Ashes: Hard Reset. Did we get enough fixes?

Spoiler

I loved Ashes and Afterglow to bits. Dead Man Walking was a fun romp. Hard Reset leaves me puzzled.

Design-wise, I like how the weapon selection was handled. It has quite some misses (the lack of a 9mm SMG is felt, the Stoner 63 has far too few ammo for widespread use despite its theoretical flexibility, the grenade launcher is completely useless) but the crossbow and the shotguns were good enough. The battery-powered flashlight was an interesting idea that I hope to never see again.
The new enemies are.... Empties are good trash mobs. It's hard to design a good trash mob enemy and the empties manage to hit hard but be easily disposable, but they can surprise you and act in unison with the bigger Radiation Empties or whatstheirname. I liked the heightened variety in bandits but both the Gladiator and the Wendigo leave me puzzled. It's not that they are hard per se, it's simply that in Survival/Apocalypse difficulty you miss one of their jittery approaches with a burst weapon and you're simply done. There's nothing interesting in fighting them bar abusing the level geometry to get space and engage at your leisure. Missed chance.
Level design is great until it runs out of steam. I'd say the quality is great up until... the Mall. The Mall has a magnificent setup but the worms aren't simply that interesting to fight, and the following levels show clear signs of being rushed. The secret level has TYPICAL MODDER deviancy like having a shitton of detail and voice acting an' shit and then the combat encounters aren't simply interesting the the setup is a tired pseudo-Fallout pastiche, can't compete with the Soviet sub from Afterglow. But all the last levels have this rushed feeling, culminating in the last hub feeling incredibly rushed and the last level being almost a playable cutscene+end boss. The Hammer ain't even a bad boss fight, but it's essentially dropped on you out of nowhere with little build up, and the attempts at making you care simply didn't land on me. It's at least decently designed mechanics-wise with his attack patterns, but the arena is .... a recycled piece of a level. What.

Also, dubbing and character portraits. There's some nifty work in there, for example the ending cutscene is quite amusing and almost early 90ies-level of quality, but 80% of the dubbing is.... well, useless. I have the greatest respect for people who put their free time and voice on the line, but a shitton of lines are difficult to understand or quite amateurish even for mod standards. I feel there's nothing wrong in the Afterglow solution of a few higher quality voice lines with stronger and longer dialogues. It feels like another TYPICAL MODDER pit trap, sometimes less is more.

The plot is.... useless? I'm not exactly sure I like where some of the plotlines and ambience are going. Nothing wrong with big tiddies mutant ladies (whose art was replaced as soon as they could because "it did not fit" and replaced with an uglier version) but .... are the mutants now interdimensional invaders? What the fuck? What's exactly is going on with the Athena rewrite (wasn't it supposed to be a successor system to Zeus and now it's the other way around?) It has been years since I played Afterglow but some details struck me as retcons for unclear purposes. But it's also autism, no one really cares about the lore of a mod.

All in all, the lesser chapter of the Ashes mods. Clear there was some drama and burnout behind the scenes. We'll never know. Also chrissakes why the fuck Porcelain's portrait looks like a cheapo Zoe Quinn what the fucking fuck

 

[CHEMS]

I've been playing Brutal Doom for years, but today I learned something new.

There's a 'taunt'-command where Doomguy sticks out a finger and yells "Fuck yo'selves!". I use it because it works great as a aggro-ping mechanic, triggering monsters out of sight or reach.

The thing is, this taunt-command also uses the cursor: If you're 'looking' at some monsters while using the taunt, they get mad. Pinky gets mad and runs faster, but then I had the misfortune of taunting a cyberdemon. He got PISSED, he moved faster, fired more rockets (and with a greater spread) but most importantly the rockets go faster. Not even Doomguy at max running speed can outrun those...

Pissed-off Cyberdemon is a real threat.

Never tried Brutal Doom.
Have you tried it on big slaughter maps?
Just have to watch that framerate...

I remember playing it when it was something new. It's amazing at first but gets old fast. Don't get it wrong, it is something very well done, and has inumerous forks and variations, definitely worth a try with some wads. As for slaughter maps, you will have so much damn particles that it will be unplayable. It can also break some wads with custom monsters too, but the same goes to other big overhauls too. Speaking of other overhauls, i used to play a lot Complex Doom. It changed a lot the game, added new weapons, upgrades, mechanics etc. Been years since i don't play those overhauls, a lot of stuff has been added

 

[Biscotti]

It's amazing at first but gets old fast

This applies to any gameplay mod in my case. Occasionally I'll fire up the old GZDoom along with a megawad and a gameplay mod, then curtail it back to Nugget Doom by map 15 or so. Once the novelty wears off I start wishing I was I playing plain old Doom again.

 

[NecroLord]

It's amazing at first but gets old fast

This applies to any gameplay mod in my case. Occasionally I'll fire up the old GZDoom along with a megawad and a gameplay mod, then curtail it back to Nugget Doom by map 15 or so. Once the novelty wears off I start wishing I was I playing plain old Doom again.

It's all those dumb features that "enhance" Doom to the point of feeling like you aren't playing Doom anymore.

 

[CHEMS]

It's amazing at first but gets old fast

This applies to any gameplay mod in my case. Occasionally I'll fire up the old GZDoom along with a megawad and a gameplay mod, then curtail it back to Nugget Doom by map 15 or so. Once the novelty wears off I start wishing I was I playing plain old Doom again.

It's all those dumb features that "enhance" Doom to the point of feeling like you aren't playing Doom anymore.

Yeah, the perfect vanilla setup for me was with smooth doom. It just made the colors, lightning, sprites and animations better and didn't touch anything else.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/69451-smooth-doom-update-41420/

 

[Kabas]

I like gameplay mods that turn Doom into something else.
The problem is finding WADs that would pair well with these gameplay changes.

 

[CHEMS]

I like gameplay mods that turn Doom into something else.
The problem is finding WADs that would pair well with these gameplay changes.

Complex Doom + LCA was a blast. I have a post on this thread recommending some personal favorite WADs of mine too. Just remember that playing mods that change or add monsters may break scripts belonging to the WAD you're playing, if it also have a custom monster. Exemple of this is Going Down wad, that has a custom final boss that won't spawn if you use monster changing mods.

 

[Ol' Willy]

It's amazing at first but gets old fast

This applies to any gameplay mod in my case. Occasionally I'll fire up the old GZDoom along with a megawad and a gameplay mod, then curtail it back to Nugget Doom by map 15 or so. Once the novelty wears off I start wishing I was I playing plain old Doom again.

It's all those dumb features that "enhance" Doom to the point of feeling like you aren't playing Doom anymore.

Yeah, the perfect vanilla setup for me was with smooth doom. It just made the colors, lightning, sprites and animations better and didn't touch anything else.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/69451-smooth-doom-update-41420/

I liked "beautiful Doom" which also ads altfire for all weapons. Smol, but useful feature, not intrusive

 

[CHEMS]

It's amazing at first but gets old fast

This applies to any gameplay mod in my case. Occasionally I'll fire up the old GZDoom along with a megawad and a gameplay mod, then curtail it back to Nugget Doom by map 15 or so. Once the novelty wears off I start wishing I was I playing plain old Doom again.

It's all those dumb features that "enhance" Doom to the point of feeling like you aren't playing Doom anymore.

Yeah, the perfect vanilla setup for me was with smooth doom. It just made the colors, lightning, sprites and animations better and didn't touch anything else.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/69451-smooth-doom-update-41420/

I liked "beautiful Doom" which also ads altfire for all weapons. Smol, but useful feature, not intrusive

Beautiful Doom is good too. The altfire can be turned off, if you really don't want it

 

[NecroLord]

It's amazing at first but gets old fast

This applies to any gameplay mod in my case. Occasionally I'll fire up the old GZDoom along with a megawad and a gameplay mod, then curtail it back to Nugget Doom by map 15 or so. Once the novelty wears off I start wishing I was I playing plain old Doom again.

It's all those dumb features that "enhance" Doom to the point of feeling like you aren't playing Doom anymore.

Yeah, the perfect vanilla setup for me was with smooth doom. It just made the colors, lightning, sprites and animations better and didn't touch anything else.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/69451-smooth-doom-update-41420/

I liked "beautiful Doom" which also ads altfire for all weapons. Smol, but useful feature, not intrusive

Even for the BFG?
Damn.

 

[Baron Dupek]

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/148783-doom-cd32x-fusion/

 

[HansDampf]

So, months later I get back to Ashes: Hard Reset. Did we get enough fixes?

Spoiler

I loved Ashes and Afterglow to bits. Dead Man Walking was a fun romp. Hard Reset leaves me puzzled.

Design-wise, I like how the weapon selection was handled. It has quite some misses (the lack of a 9mm SMG is felt, the Stoner 63 has far too few ammo for widespread use despite its theoretical flexibility, the grenade launcher is completely useless) but the crossbow and the shotguns were good enough. The battery-powered flashlight was an interesting idea that I hope to never see again.
The new enemies are.... Empties are good trash mobs. It's hard to design a good trash mob enemy and the empties manage to hit hard but be easily disposable, but they can surprise you and act in unison with the bigger Radiation Empties or whatstheirname. I liked the heightened variety in bandits but both the Gladiator and the Wendigo leave me puzzled. It's not that they are hard per se, it's simply that in Survival/Apocalypse difficulty you miss one of their jittery approaches with a burst weapon and you're simply done. There's nothing interesting in fighting them bar abusing the level geometry to get space and engage at your leisure. Missed chance.
Level design is great until it runs out of steam. I'd say the quality is great up until... the Mall. The Mall has a magnificent setup but the worms aren't simply that interesting to fight, and the following levels show clear signs of being rushed. The secret level has TYPICAL MODDER deviancy like having a shitton of detail and voice acting an' shit and then the combat encounters aren't simply interesting the the setup is a tired pseudo-Fallout pastiche, can't compete with the Soviet sub from Afterglow. But all the last levels have this rushed feeling, culminating in the last hub feeling incredibly rushed and the last level being almost a playable cutscene+end boss. The Hammer ain't even a bad boss fight, but it's essentially dropped on you out of nowhere with little build up, and the attempts at making you care simply didn't land on me. It's at least decently designed mechanics-wise with his attack patterns, but the arena is .... a recycled piece of a level. What.

Also, dubbing and character portraits. There's some nifty work in there, for example the ending cutscene is quite amusing and almost early 90ies-level of quality, but 80% of the dubbing is.... well, useless. I have the greatest respect for people who put their free time and voice on the line, but a shitton of lines are difficult to understand or quite amateurish even for mod standards. I feel there's nothing wrong in the Afterglow solution of a few higher quality voice lines with stronger and longer dialogues. It feels like another TYPICAL MODDER pit trap, sometimes less is more.

The plot is.... useless? I'm not exactly sure I like where some of the plotlines and ambience are going. Nothing wrong with big tiddies mutant ladies (whose art was replaced as soon as they could because "it did not fit" and replaced with an uglier version) but .... are the mutants now interdimensional invaders? What the fuck? What's exactly is going on with the Athena rewrite (wasn't it supposed to be a successor system to Zeus and now it's the other way around?) It has been years since I played Afterglow but some details struck me as retcons for unclear purposes. But it's also autism, no one really cares about the lore of a mod.

All in all, the lesser chapter of the Ashes mods. Clear there was some drama and burnout behind the scenes. We'll never know. Also chrissakes why the fuck Porcelain's portrait looks like a cheapo Zoe Quinn what the fucking fuck

Sad, but I have to agree. Rushed or uninspired. That's how half of these levels feel. There are so many weird encounters with tedious melee, or enemies tend to clump up in spots because of Doom's AI pathing. Almost nothing is happening for long periods, and then you're attacked by 30 pit fiends. Crowbarring the new zombie enemies gets old fast. And the last level, I wouldn't even call it a playable cutscene. It's an empty map. You go on an extremely simplified key hunt, and then it unceremoniously drops the big bullet sponge boss onto you. Hard to believe this came from the same people that made Afterglow.

 

[Dayyālu]

There are so many weird encounters with tedious melee, or enemies tend to clump up in spots because of Doom's AI pathing. Almost nothing is happening for long periods, and then you're attacked by 30 pit fiends.

We can only speculate from what we're seeing, and we're seeing an already improved version (from this thread and old comments the first version was even rougher). I'd almost.... let's go level by level.

Spoiler

The School is a good, self-contained level. Empties may be trash mobs but you fight them in a level that heightens their threat and the limits of light and weaponry add to the mix. It's one of the stronger openings in a Ashes game, honestly.

Junction I&II aren't bad "town" maps, feel complete and with quite a bit of dialogue and detail.

The Anderson Farm is... middling, with the raider enemies failing to provide much of a challenge. It is noticeable that it's the start of an attempt at stealth-based gameplay, if you play smart you can sneak by some encounters. The Outskirts and Cordon are, IMHO, well-designed bar for the Wendigo enemies, there's enough well-made spooks, fights and the Cordon rewards you if you go for the stealth route thanks to the good Crossbow weapon.

Sommerville and Michonne circle, the follow-up "town" maps, signal when stuff starts to get weird. There's so many assets for so little content. Michonne is even worse with a good deal of essentially "generic merchant NPCs" selling you stuff with little dialogue. It feels like they had a lot of assets and voice work done and very little time to properly mix them in a coherent way.

The Green Line, the Mall, Death's Door and the City are were the cracks start to show. They're not bad levels, per se, but they're mediocre and often below the original Ashes 2063 even. As you noticed, a lot of time nothing happens and in other cases the enemies start getting stuck, particularly in The City where it's almost endemic. The soldiers you're supposed to be escorting jump around quite freely and appear as needed. I understand it's for ease of design because babysitting friendlies in a Doom engine game would be hell, but I feel like there were extra pieces or cut levels. I like a lot the idea of the Mall - parasites taking control of the mannequins and using them to attack you? A slow-burn level where things get stranger and stranger until the reveal? Amazing. But the parasites aren't simply fun to fight, they're boring melee enemies.

Choka World and Hard Reset are the true stinkers. Choka World is , pardon, chock-full of custom assets an' shit (the presentation video, the history tour, the dubbing of the crazy Scav) and the result is unbearably mediocre with two fights against mutants and the "end boss" that clearly had a lot of thought put into it (the location, the explosive traps, the fact that you should fight him on the scaffolding) and in the end you snipe him in two seconds and your reward is a half-baked Grenade Launcher that has no ammo for the rest of the game. Hard Reset I can't even be mad at, it screams so much cut content.... but then they had so many assets like voice lines and animations, the Hammer gets killed with a very nice custom animation that isn't deserved for a foe that you barely know and dropped out of nowhere.

To me it's clear that something broke down at the level design phase. Custom monsters/voice work/sprites/content was built with care, and then when the time was to mix it in a coherent whole something went awry after roughly half of the game. I've read somewhere there was supposedly a second expansion pack for Porcelain that got canceled for ??? reasons, and considering how drama-prone the Doom mod community is I wonder what exactly went wrong.

I hope that Ashes III gets done with all the quiet and time they want. I don't even *get* why they rushed Hard Reset out (exhaustion at a project they no longer liked?) but it's for sure the lesser child, despite being a Very Good Mod nonetheless.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I like gameplay mods that turn Doom into something else.
The problem is finding WADs that would pair well with these gameplay changes.

One of my favourites (which sadly seems to have fallen to the wayside) is Aeons of Death.

Simply described, it crams in every enemy from every FPS imaginable into Doom.

Hexen, Heretic, Strife? Sure.

Rise of the Triad and all the Build-engine critters? Yup.

Quake-engine critters? Oh yeah.

Might & Magic 7? OK... but they're there.

Source-engine critters? Oddly enough, they're there. The big zombies from L4D2, most of the classes from TF2, and some of the biggest hitters from Half-Life 2, they're all there.

Custom-made critters by the Doom-community through the years? Check.

A bunch of clown-tier nonsense monsters? Uhh... sadly yeah.

Each monster is assigned a tier, which corresponds to one of the vanilla Doom 1/2-monsters. Whenever that monster appears in the normal map, the AoD-mod rolls the monster chart and replaces the critter. (The original monster even sometimes makes an appearance!) It's crazy enough when we're dealing with the base critters, but the boss monsters are in a league of their own. Some boss critters are so tough they could go toe-to-toe against every other monster in the map... and win.

But what about Doomguy? Surely he's not gonna kill hundreds of different monsters with just a shotty and a prayer? All the monsters are just one half of the mod. The other half is that all the weapons from the aforementioned game (plus more) are in the mod. We're talking 100+ guns, some magic spells, some grenades, and some top-of-the-line-Kills-Everything-Onscreen Superweapons.

This mod can get WILD at times.

Sadly everyone and their grandmothers in the Doom-community hate this mod with a passion, and they finally seem to have killed it off as GZDoom 4.9.0 is the last version that runs it successfully.

But if anyone can endeavour to get it running, I recommend the following wads:

Alien Vendetta
Gothic Movement 1 and 2
Hell Awakened
Hellbound
Hell Revealed
Jenesis
Kama Sutra
Plutonia: Revisited Community Project
Scythe 1 and 2
Speed of Doom
Sunder
Sunlust
UAC Vinur Prime Research Base

 

[NecroLord]

I like gameplay mods that turn Doom into something else.
The problem is finding WADs that would pair well with these gameplay changes.

One of my favourites (which sadly seems to have fallen to the wayside) is Aeons of Death.

Simply described, it crams in every enemy from every FPS imaginable into Doom.

Hexen, Heretic, Strife? Sure.

Rise of the Triad and all the Build-engine critters? Yup.

Quake-engine critters? Oh yeah.

Might & Magic 7? OK... but they're there.

Source-engine critters? Oddly enough, they're there. The big zombies from L4D2, most of the classes from TF2, and some of the biggest hitters from Half-Life 2, they're all there.

Custom-made critters by the Doom-community through the years? Check.

A bunch of clown-tier nonsense monsters? Uhh... sadly yeah.

Each monster is assigned a tier, which corresponds to one of the vanilla Doom 1/2-monsters. Whenever that monster appears in the normal map, the AoD-mod rolls the monster chart and replaces the critter. (The original monster even sometimes makes an appearance!) It's crazy enough when we're dealing with the base critters, but the boss monsters are in a league of their own. Some boss critters are so tough they could go toe-to-toe against every other monster in the map... and win.

But what about Doomguy? Surely he's not gonna kill hundreds of different monsters with just a shotty and a prayer? All the monsters are just one half of the mod. The other half is that all the weapons from the aforementioned game (plus more) are in the mod. We're talking 100+ guns, some magic spells, some grenades, and some top-of-the-line-Kills-Everything-Onscreen Superweapons.

This mod can get WILD at times.

Sadly everyone and their grandmothers in the Doom-community hate this mod with a passion, and they finally seem to have killed it off as GZDoom 4.9.0 is the last version that runs it successfully.

But if anyone can endeavour to get it running, I recommend the following wads:

Alien Vendetta
Gothic Movement 1 and 2
Hell Awakened
Hellbound
Hell Revealed
Jenesis
Kama Sutra
Plutonia: Revisited Community Project
Scythe 1 and 2
Speed of Doom
Sunder
Sunlust
UAC Vinur Prime Research Base

Good wads all around.
Sunder can get ridiculous (as all slaughter wads tend to) with maps like "The Furnace".
Sunlust will crush your balls.

 

[Average Manatee]

Doom mods go really weird with Doom levels because the best levels are all very tightly controlled in how enemy balance interacts with the level design, which is obviously thrown out hard as soon as an RNG algorithm starts throwing completely new replacement monsters in all around. I've tried a few mods but never really found them better than just the best Doom levels played straight.

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

One of my favourites (which sadly seems to have fallen to the wayside) is Aeons of Death.

I'm not going to say that one is outright bad, but I do note that there's a lot of "meh" energy to this one. Because of its nature, its very easy for it to break the balance of itself. But outside of that, I got the feeling I was getting a bunch of different games gimmick weapons, and I suspect that might have something to do with people's differing enjoyment of the game.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Pick up Trailblazer (or that Dragon mod from the same team) and some harder megawad and you good to go

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS PLEASE TELL MODS TO STICKY THIV THREAD

DOOM MODS ARE ONE THING THAT DISTINWISHWS TRUE GAMING BROS FROM PLEBIAN SLOPSHIT