Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[Astral Rag]

SGI Workstations? Yeah, they run Doom.

During the summer of 1994, Id programmer Dave D. Taylor somehow convinced Silicon Graphics to lend the studio an SGI Indy workstation so he could port Doom to their IRIX operating system. You know, for funsies.

You can do things like that when you work at 90s-era Id Software.

Spent $50 on a former multi-million dollar Top500 supercomputer, 4 days later it runs DOOM in my garage.

Unlike most systems to have graced the Top500 list, this machine has graphics, so here it is running Doom.

Backstory:

I picked up a SiliconGraphics Onyx (codename Terminator) supercomputer for $50 on Friday. It was originally bought after being de-commed in '03 by a private individual who had it stored in Bend Oregon. He never fired it up.

I live in Seattle and found the machine by pure dumb luck while browsing Portland Craigslist during a visit for a bachelor party.

For background, the Onyx product line started as a desk side visualization system with 1-4 CPUs at $250,000 in 1993, and configurations went up from there- peaking at around 20 CPUs in a double-fridge-sized chassis in the $millions range.

According to my SGI price book (which was confidential) this SKU would have been $2.2 million+ (or about $4 million today)

This one was totally maxed out with all the options and an early '94 manufacture date- it originally came from University of Minnesota- some of the CPU boards were dead so I'm down to only 16 CPUs.

If my research is correct- this EXACT machine was, in June 1994, ranked as the 491st fastest



System specifications:

20x 150 MHz MIPS R4400 CPUs on 5 boards - one board disabled due to failure )':

3x 2200 watt power supplies (one disabled because summer heat)

3x RealityEngine2 Graphics Pipes, 5 boards each, 12x 75mhz Intel i860 RISC CPUs in each pipe to handle Geometry (2 pipes disabled because summer heat)

2 GB ram across two boards (upgraded from 1.5 GB) on a 256-bit wide system bus.

Approx. 900 LBS

5x HVD SCSI hard drives

SiliconGraphics IRIX 6.5 OS

Audio output option (VME, w00t w00t)

A keyboard/mouse port for the local console

Two big fucking squirrel cage blowers to keep it all running

(I played Doom on a humble 25MHz 386 with 4MB RAM in those days)

 

[Riskbreaker]

Oh, fraggle got the award for lifetime achievement! I didn’t see that one coming.

Article is well worth reading too, guy has a pretty impressive Doom-resumé.

Speaking of him, his creation just got itself a fine standalone game designed exclusively for it:
https://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/85043-cybershade-20151212/
Only four maps so far, but 'tis definitely worth a try. Environments, speed and inclusion of platforming remind me of Wrack - only, unlike Wrack, this is actually fun! It's fast, frantic, weapons fell crunchy and satisfying, enemies are (so far) of either melee or projectile variety. Great stuff.

 

[tormund]

Speaking of him, his creation just got itself a fine standalone game designed exclusively for it:
https://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/85043-cybershade-20151212/

That looks pretty cool. Looks alot like Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch, at least visually.

 

[Riskbreaker]

Link

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/72927-story-behind-this-picture/

Did you know that the infamous (and well-documented here!) 3DO port of Doom was planned to have live-action Full Motion Video cutscenes? At least one supposed (and gory!) image has popped up in magazines from the time. According to Rebecca Heineman, only some still images were produced to try and bring in investor money. However, a newsgroups post from 1995 claims to have seen footage at the 3DO Conference…

Another shot from the filming of test FMVs has surfaced recently and, well, I think it speaks for itself!
https://twitter.com/burgerbecky/status/675578504352673793

 

[ghostdog]

Alien 3 : The Doomening

That's some of the best Ripley and Michael Biehn lookalikes I've seen!

All these pics makes me wish the FMVs had happened.

 

[tormund]

"I might be a demon but I still have my needs... man's needs!"

 

[PeachPlumage]

"I might be a demon but I still have my needs... man's needs!"

https://www.literotica.com/s/craving-demon-cock

 

[Astral Rag]

Here’s what id Software’s PC port of Mario 3 could have looked like - Nintendo rejected this early demo, leaving id to make the Commander Keen games.

 

[Astral Rag]

Even Barons of Hell aren't immune to the dreaded Bloaty Head Disease.

 

[ghostdog]

These barons look stupid as fuck.
If anyone wants an HD baron spite he should look here: http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=30879&sid=2ec2959006d6946ba7ded3febeae318b

 

[Excidium II]

These barons look stupid as fuck.
If anyone wants an HD baron spite he should look here: http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=30879&sid=2ec2959006d6946ba7ded3febeae318b

Disgusting.

 

[ghostdog]

 

[Excidium II]

Spoiler

DOOM edition

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

There are also cool Heresy Lords or Afrits which I call djin barons. I've played with Astral when they were used in later levels and they were really tough to beat. When you were hit with the projectile attacks of Afrits it usually ended with the death scream.

 

[ghostdog]

Cool sprites

 

[tormund]

IIRC those afrits have nasty attack that leaves lots of ground in flames for some time, and keeps spreading for a time too. I think I first encountered them in Threshold of Pain (cool episode done in style of PSX doom), I remember it because they came out of nowhere, with no buildup, and turned out to be massive pain the ass.

 

[PeachPlumage]

What wads feature those tasty cyber barons?

 

[ghostdog]

What wads feature those tasty cyber barons?

A lot of stuff by Tormentor. Start with The Ultimate Torment & Torture

 

[PeachPlumage]

Thanks, ghostdog.

 

[Riskbreaker]

You'll learn to hate those custom monsters, eventually. Some folks love to just grab some of them from Realm667 repository and just cram them into their maps, unedited and with little or no consideration for balance. And, some of those bastards are beyond OP.
Hell, even Tormentor goes overboard with them in some of his maps. Note: don't even think about playing his remake of D1's Refinery, unless you really love frustration, save-scumming and traps consisting of most annoying custom hitscanners.

 

[PeachPlumage]

You'll learn to hate those custom monsters, eventually. Some folks love to just grab some of them from Realm667 repository and just cram them into their maps, unedited and with little or no consideration for balance. And, some of those bastards are beyond OP.
Hell, even Tormentor goes overboard with them in some of his maps. Note: don't even think about playing his remake of D1's Refinery, unless you really love frustration, save-scumming and traps consisting of most annoying custom hitscanners.

Thanks for the heads up, Riskbreaker.

 

[Astral Rag]

Shitty balance is the biggest problem I have with many modern wads. Mappers often seem to go for style over substance these days.

I frequently find myself really enjoying the first few maps of some super detailed, beautiful megawad only to become frustrated midgame because there simply is not enough ammo to kill all monsters. Custom enemies can aggravate this issue because they tend to have more HP.

I do enjoy encountering some of those new critters but only when they fit the theme and only when they're placed intelligently. Lords of Heresy are awesome.

sv_doubleammo 1 can make those unbalanced megawads a lot more enjoyable and it's pretty much mandatory if you use mods like the Random Imp mod I posted on the previous page.

 

[ghostdog]

The final version of UT&T is pretty balanced thankfully. Those fuckers are always hard, but in that wad tormentor usually had them in places where you could battle them efficiently and there weren't many of them.

 

[PeachPlumage]

What's with all this controversy with the Brutal Doom mod creator Sergeant Mark IV?

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

What's with all this controversy with the Brutal Doom mod creator Sergeant Mark IV?

He recently released a shitty megawad that features missing textures and rest being of mixed qualities in addition to not being aligned well, ripped maps from freedoom, shittier versons of his own previous maps and end of episode screens popping up in the wrong place.