Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[BLOBERT]

BRO I AM STILL AROUND

BRO MY LIFE IS CRAZY AS FUCK BUT I FEEL LIKE I AM IN OFFICE SPACE

I AM FUCKING CHILL QND UPPER MANAGEMENT MATERIAL

 

[Kutulu]

Played the first Episode + the first level of the second episode of Blade of Agony.

Its brilliant, yeah it aint classic doom or wolfenstein its way closer in playstyle to RTCW but its brilliant.
Theres like 15 Weapons, actual Stealth missions, multiple objectives per map, secrets etc
If you have ANY sense for exploration & dont play on babby skill levels its also 10+ hours of fun.


https://boa.realm667.com/

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I've been casually idling through Final Doom: TNT Evilution on an older version of Brutal Doom (Brutal Doom v21b).

Maybe it's because of Brutal Doom, but it looks to me that the Wad could use a do-over. I'm seeing scenery half-placed into the walls, and sometimes even pushed beyond them.

I could also just suck at this, but I've been through maps where I could not find some of the secrets for the life of me, even while using cheats.

Fun Wad though, I still like how it emphasizes the smaller critters instead of the bigger ones.

 

[lightbane]

shotgunner because he has a shield isn't exactly sensible game design.

That's odd, I don't remember this being a thing. It must be a new addition. Doesn't that mod have lots toggeable options? There should be something to remove that.
Also: Modders gonna mod.

 

[Astral Rag]

 

[Average Manatee]

The real question is why does a camera have speakers?

 

[Modron]

Because that is capable of capturing video? You can clearly see a record button...

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

The Doom Tribute Project

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/doomtrib

A really well made reinterpretation of Doom 1 (original 3 episodes without Thy Flesh Consumed) and Doom 2 combined in one huge pack. Due to the customized weapons and new enemies, I've played it without any gameplay enhancements. Because there is a lot of new monsters created by the community, a really nasty ones to be sure and with the new ambushes/traps it can result in our quick death. Luckily, there are some weapons added, like two pistol combo, or the railgun which is really great for crowd control during the bigger battles. Vanilla weapons feel different, probably from some brutal doom version. Alando1, who is the author of this wad, made the Doom 2 parts actually looking, like it is taking place on Earth. The levels are more organic and less abstract, and sometimes we got two maps merged together. There are some new textures and other stuff that wasn't seen in the original versions. When it comes to difficulty, it's surprisingly balanced for most of the time. The new traps, enemies placement might surprise you, but for a seasoned player it will be a great refreshing replay of both games. I think it's best played solo, because in co-op it would be too easy.

Spoiler

 

[Astral Rag]

Something evil this way comes. All the artifacts are now en route to Limited Run and packaging for SIGIL is imminent. Thanks, everyone, for your continued support.

We will be playing this in a week or so

 

[lightbane]

I dunno if it was mentioned here, but Memoirs of Magic is out and looks awesome! It doesn't need anything to play, extract and that's all.
https://strawberryoctii.itch.io/memoirs-of-magic

 

[JBro]

SOMEBODY UPLOAD THEIR SIGIL WAD

 

[Kutulu]

Anyone ever tried some ultra hard combination?
I soloed HR2 on UV with: Complex Doom & Legendary Creature Addon, that was really fun but also frustrating
as fuck cuz this goes beyond anything thats doable with just skill....

I mean you fight semi-immortal*, flying, golden spider masterminds that shoot multiple full-auto bfgs...


Is there some bestiary, difficulty addon thats not as crazy?




*takes like 20-30 BFG shots to kill

 

[LESS T_T]

Bethesda's spotlight of Winter's Fury: https://slayersclub.bethesda.net/en/article/4Szknt8NWodiVvVKETpAW5/nods-to-mods-winters-fury

Nods To Mods: Winter's Fury

“Everybody has a story...”

-and hot diggty damn does this guy have one to tell!

I should preface by saying that it’s hard enough to make a good level just to play deathmatch in. From the actual know-how required to use CAD tools, to making sure textures align, you had to think about having a few decent choke points, and at best nail your weapon placement. Believe it or not, all that stuff is pretty hard to do well.

And then you’ve got single player levels… Everything mentioned before, but now you’ve got layers of balance to factor into it. Not just simple stuff like placing demons, and health and ammo sprinkled here and there, but you’ve got to consider the flow that the player will experience. Over years, skilled level builders broaden their toolboxes with clever ways to not only give the player something to shoot at, but to masterfully control the tension + tempo and perhaps, hardest of all; surprise the sh%t out of said player.

Add on top of that the insane dedication it takes to not only do all those things well, but to start stringing multiple levels together into a megawad. Of course, once you’re that committed, why not go full JUMP THE DAMN SHARK and just get custom graphics, sounds, music and full on crazy elaborate cut scenes to give the players a full story experience they can’t get anywhere else in the world?!? Right? Right.

These are level masters. They’re essentially building their own games on top of DOOM as the base for custom scenarios to their twisted mind’s content.

The wildman we’ll be focusing on for this month’s spotlight: Pyroscourge The MEGAWAD we’re featuring: WINTER’S FURY.WAD

NO PAIN ELEMENTALS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS WAD
What do you need to play this WAD? GZDoom TIP: Make sure you go to OPTIONS -> SET VIDEO MODE-> RENDER MODE and set it to: OPENGL-ACCELERATED

Standout Features: Grey + Silver + Icy Blue textures and work over existing enemy sprites with some having completely new / upgraded attacks. A wild amount of new custom enemies including bossesand even a few tried and true sprites from Raven Software titles and a 3D Realms title you may just recognize. You’re also going to love seeing some tried and true DOOM enemies taking on new forms with completely different attacks and some grounded boys aren’t so grounded this time around in this icetopian wasteland!

B-b-b-boss fights?!

Weapons, weapons, weapons: Total weapon replacements; top to bottom! Try them all out because he didn’t just use the default sounds and DPS per weapon! You’re going to love the heavy machine gun as it rips through your foes at rates higher than the tried and true Chaingun! And the light blue energy discharge dancing out of the new plasma rifle will feel right at home with this MEAGAWADS icy aesthetics. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ENEMY KNOCKBACK when you connect with any of this new arsenal? MY GAWD.

Just give the super shotgun a try pointed at pretty much anything and watch said enemy fly across the screen. Fun times to be had!

Cut Scenes: To quote Pyroscourge himself, "Complete with backstory, in game dialogue, and skippable cut scenes. Except for one and a half of them. Long story. "

Here goes nothing...

It takes a village to make a MEGAWAD, so be sure to check out the credits here.

We wanna know what you guys think! How much did you love it? How long did it take you? How many times did you die on boss fights? What was the hardest level / boss? Does your dad work for Nintendo? TELL US EVERYTHING WINTER’S FURY.WAD RELATED IN THIS WINTERS FURY COMMENT THREAD!

https://slayersclub.bethesda.net/en...ArTmtX/an-interview-with-winter's-fury-modder

An interview with Winter’s Fury modder Pyroscourge!

In case you missed it, we gave some major props to Winter’s Fury, the latest WAD to be highlighted in our Nods to Mods series. Flash-forward to today and we have a bonus treat for all you modders out there: an interview with none other than this frosted frenzy’s own creator!

Pyroscourge has been making mods since 2007, though you may also find some under their more current handle, ‘Pieruskwurje.’ A resident of Canberra, Australia, Pyroscourge was ironically spared by the real-life furies of winter while making the icy mod. “Outside of media, I have only seen snow three times in my life,” Pyroscourge says, “and two of those times it was just barely sleet.”

But enough idle chit-chat, let’s ask Pyro some Q’s!

Q: What got you into DOOM modding?

A: A friend of my brother introduced us to ZDaemon, an online platform to play DOOM that supported mods. My brother and I played through a bunch of mods like Destination Unknown, Drown in Blood and Invasion of UAC, all of which I thought were awesome. We instantly knuckled down to draw up a bunch of maps on paper for a coop project we had planned called ‘Hell Unleashed’ with a sequel subtitled ‘The Awakening Shadow’. We were very creative kids.

Q: How long did it take you to complete Winter’s Fury?

A: A bit less than 4 years. The mod was started in 2009, over ten years ago as of writing. Ironically, the basis of the mod was created from a speed mapping competition a friend of mine hosted, where we had a weekend to make a map. MAP01 of Winter’s Fury was that map, originally called Snow Moon.

Q: How big was your team to make this WAD?

A: I worked on the project alone, but it would be a complete fallacy to say everything was done by me. The DOOM community has been around for a long time, and some members are generous enough to have created an incredible variety of resources that they offer for others to use in their own mods, provided appropriate credit is given.

Winter’s Fury comes with a credits file (and a credit map at the end) that lists all of the people whose resources I pulled together to make the mod possible. I am deeply appreciative of these people’s efforts.

Q: What tools did you use to create this WAD?

A: Doom Builder 2 for mapping and SlumpEd for data management, for the most part. In the last year of development, I utilized the GZdoom mode plugin which allowed the user to visualize 3D floors, dynamic lights, slopes, and other things which make life much easier. These days I can’t imagine how I managed to work without it.

Granted, this software is very old now. There’s the far more advanced GZDoombuilder and DoomBuilder X for mapping these days, and Slade does both data management and mapping. SlumpEd doesn’t even seem to work on my computer anymore. The developers of all these tools did an amazing job, just like those who provided resources and I have them to thank equally for all the work they’ve done.

Q: What was your inspiration behind the enemies, including the new ones you made and the pre-existing ones you made edits on?

A: The icy variants were made originally just to suit the outdoor environments more but were eventually made relevant to the story. All the icy variants were intended to be stronger counterparts to their original but at some point early on, that idea was scrapped.

A few of them do still have stronger or at least modified characteristics, such as the ice Mancubus having a different firing pattern or the ice Archvile having more health and an extra attack. The ice Archvile was originally going to have an additional summon attack that created endless ice Hell Knights but was also scrapped based on ammo concerns.

The bosses were another thing all together. They were mainly coded by my brother (Maelstrom in the credits) since he came up with crazy attack ideas and could actually bring them to reality in DECORATE script, unlike myself. I’d have to ask him where his ideas came from next time I get the chance.

Q: Let’s talk about dat enemy knockback from weapons! How did you come up with that?

A: The knockback was created completely on accident. Beyond that, I never even looked into why it happens. I just thought it was awesome and moved on. This was the ultimate application of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

Turns out it’s due to a property called Weapon.KickBack that works with ZDoom derived ports. I don’t remember why, but I must have raised it to a number much larger than normal without realizing what I was doing and then never changed it back.

Q: What were the biggest challenges you faced making this WAD?

A: A big issue during testing and even after release was ammo balance. The mod does not feature any Backpacks in the harder difficulties, forcing the player to only have the original ammo limits. Combine this with weapons with unfamiliar damage numbers and players can face some trouble.

Putting Backpacks in may have solved any ammo balance issues straight away, but I wanted to try to make the player think about how much they overuse weapons and try to spread their ammo use out more. Whether or not this was a good decision, I’m still not sure.

Q: Any shout-outs you’d like to give before we go? No time like the present…

A: Thank you to anyone who played Winter’s Fury. I know it sounds a little stupid, but I really am happy that people had fun playing this mod. I hope that everyone who is yet to try it out is able to get some enjoyment out of it, and I hope to provide more mods you can enjoy in the future. The very near future, in fact.

I would also like to thank Jimmy, for carrying on a joke related to MAP08’s introduction text for longer than it deserved. I’m doing it here again now.

Thank you for your time, Pyroscourge! If you want a special look at Winter’s Fury, be sure to check out our upcoming stream where we’re tackling the icy mod. See you then, Slayers!

The stream:

 

[Luzur]

 

[Baron Dupek]

I'll pass and wait for Project Brutality 3.0
BTW. finished both Ashes 2063 and Dead Man Walking DLC, finger lickin' good WAD.

 

[lightbane]

Some Codexers mentioned P. B. is not worth it. Failing that, there's Guncaster Vindicated and Johnny Doom:

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Bug in Brutal Doom: If you activate the night vision scope on the Rocket Launcher, then Taunt, Doomguy will unzoom from the scope but retain the night vision. This lasts until Doomguy switches weapons.

Exploit in Brutal Doom: If you Use the corpses of friendly marines, you can often resurrect them. This works almost all the time on Blue Marines (Plasma Gun) and Red Marines (Minigun), sometimes on Grey Marines (Shotgun) but never on Green Marines (Assault Rifle).

Bug in Brutal Doom: The Evil Marine critter uses a monster slot that many other mods use for custom monsters. Most noticeably the Secret Boss in MAP32 in the "Doom 2 the Way iD Did"-wad is replaced by an Evil Marine, which not only makes the whole level a breeze, but börks the game as the death of the Secret Boss is supposed to trigger the end of the level.

As I have no means of contacting Sgt Mark IV maybe some Codexer could forward the above to him somehow.

As for the Gold release, I've yet to come across the Revolver in it during normal gameplay, but it has been updated. In normal fire mode it uses shotgun shells and functions like a sawed-off shotgun, doing great damage at extremely close range, but barely any damage past that. It also has an alternate fire mode where it uses standard bullets instead and functions much more like a standard revolver, but not enough to justify its presence.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Exploit in Brutal Doom: If you Use the corpses of friendly marines, you can often resurrect them. This works almost all the time on Blue Marines (Plasma Gun) and Red Marines (Minigun), sometimes on Grey Marines (Shotgun) but never on Green Marines (Assault Rifle).

The revival mechanic is there intentionally, iirc.
My memory is fuzzy, but the reason it doesn't always work is because at least one damage type may cause a final death, so to speak... Bullets, probably?

 

[Luzur]

 

[Luzur]

LOL what

 

[Baron Dupek]

I got some cases of "old games illusions" myself but this is weird

 

[Luzur]

I got some cases of "old games illusions" myself but this is weird

I think soy got to alot of people if that is what they see when playing doom?

 

[Darth Slaughter]

I got some cases of "old games illusions" myself but this is weird

TBH it actually looks like a shirtless Kurt Hectic from MDK. With scoliosis.

 

[Sjukob]

So I tried playing this, I wanted to write a wall of text about it, but I'm too lazy to do it and this game just doesn't deserve it, here's a quick breakdown instead.

1. Unnecessarily huge locations that waste a lot of your time on walking, this is especially annoying if you play a slower character.
   
2. Enemies are absolutely overly annoying to fight against: huge damage, extremely fast projectiles, stupid on hit effects - if you get slowed in the middle of the crowd you're dead, it doesn't matter how much health, defense etc you have; poison = insane damage for one missed attack, does it matter that you can not cure poison until you complete at least half of the game (or start as monk or priest) ? Nope, lol. Some of them come with invincibility or restoration mechanics, missed a 2 second window to finish off/attack the bastard ? Ooops try again, but now they have full health.
3. Because enemies are so amazing you can forget about melee, it's suicidal to get close to enemies, when they can drain 1/3 of your life in a single hit, damage isn't worth it too, magic and guns hit harder.
4. Theoretically you can go wherever you want, but most of the areas are gated behind arena fights with tough monsters and traps, so you have to become stronger to beat them. It means that realistically game's progression is linear, and because you have to go to new areas to get new equipment and upgrades, all build variety gets thrown away.
5. Retarded ammo/health/mana replenishing system. Only 2 characters in the game can craft potions that restore ammo/health/mana in big amounts, others have to buy them in shops (too expensive and you really need money for the upgrades) or consume raw ingredients, which you amass in hundreds. Are you injured ? Eat some roots that restore 10hp per one root, oh you need your 300 hp back ? Well it wouldn't be to much of a trouble to press one button 30 times, lol. What's that, you also need to replenish your ammo by 500 ? Have some gel that restores 10 ammo per use, hahahahah ! Imagine doing it in combat, there are no quick buttons for this, so you have to rummage through your inventory constantly.
6. Retarded spell casting system. Each tome gives you 3 various spells, but to get 2-nd and 3-rd spells you have to charge the tome for some time and that time is way too long. Why the fuck does it have to be like that ? Thanks to that you can shove your defensive spells up your sorry ass, because when you get in a bad situation and think "TIME FREEZE, RIGHT FUCKING NOW!" the game tells you "Oy friend, you have to charge up your tome for 5 seconds first", needless to say that you will either get killed or damaged to the point where it doesn't even matter.
7. Overabundance of traps and complete lack of shortcuts. So you get into some dungeon, you go into some hallway with traps that really require you to pay attention to what you're doing, you get to the end of it and activate a switch. Now you have to go all the way back through the same traps, because there's no teleport to the beggining. Congrats, you have completed 1/4 of the dungeon, now there are only 3 more hallways with the same amount of traps left and once you get to the end of one of those hallways, you will have to backtrack too. Combine this with issue described in point 1 for maximum amount of fun.
8. Lots of stuff that humpers your controls: slow effect, very strong pull in effect on some enemies attacks, water corridors that only allow you to swim in one direction, sudden flood during a fight to slow you down massively etc etc.

There might some other stupid things that I missed, but those mentioned above are the most annoying. Pretty sad it turned like this, because exploration is pretty good in this game and characters have some pretty interesting unique features, that could've been complemented by a good upgrade system that allowed you to buy whatever and wherever you want, bosses are mostly good and you can even morph into some of them to wreck everything. There's also some other neat stuff, but it's too small to talk about. I haven't finished the game, only got through 3/5 of it or something.

Too bad that the author is apparently autismo-maximum and doesn't understand simple things, Memoirs of Magic is another case of "modders gonna mod" scenario.

 

[Sjukob]

I gave DoomRL Arsenal a go, to this day that mod never really caught my attention, but I found it to be pretty alright. The idea of selecting your own equipment, upgrading it how you want, finding new and rare stuff and choosing a class that supports your desired playstyle and arsenal, seemed like a great idea to me, but there's one serious problem about that mod. And I write this not to talk about the said mod, but the issue it has and shares it with a lot of others mods - it's about lack of balancing or making the player overpowered.

Over the years I've tried many different Doom modifications and a lot of them suffer from this, they turn the gameplay into power fantasy, by giving you OP equipment and not bringing enemies to the same or relative level of power, even the monster randomizers, which mostly add demons that are way stronger than the original versions, can't handle the awesomness of the player. It's really sad seeing mods with cool guns or interesting mechanics suffering from this, because gunplay and mechanics have to support the good difficulty to really matter and if there's none the game quickly becomes stale, no matter what you do you would win, no need to improve your skill or knowledge of the game. This might seem ridiculous, when in the post above I complained about enemies being too good, but that was the case of opposite scenario, where enemies were strong and player's tools weren't adequately designed to handle them (if that still doesn't convince you, then I recommend you to download Memoirs of Magic and play it enough to get to the water temple or ifrit boss).

And the same thing happened to DoomRL Arsenal, all of those items, monsters and other shit can go fuck itself, when already at level 7 (or about that) you can craft OP gun that will chew through everything and of course you always have enough ammunition for it, so there's no need to ever switch weapons. The same issue applies to the most other mods created for Doom: everything by pillowblaster (Guncaster Vindicated tried to balance things out, but failed and player still remains incredibly OP, especially with power suit); everything by Combine_Kegan; High Noon Drifter - find basilissa mask, wipe out the whole map with it's altfire; every mod that adds nu-doom stuff, once you get enough upgrades (happens about 10-14 maps in) nothing can stop you; Lithium - cybermage is broken, marine is unplayable; everything about Complex Doom (and it's knock off HXRTC project) is broken OP; Psychic - get enough upgrades and become immortal; Aeons of Death - a huge mess and is completely broken; Magitek Doom is alright until you find ways to oneshot every enemy in the game (use plasma rifle's charged fire, son) etc. I'm just giving you examples and I'm sure you can add many more.

At the same time it's popular among people to hate Brutal Doom for some reason, I have no idea why though, I believe there was a lot of drama during it's development, but I really don't care about that. Anyway, Brutal Doom is one of those rare mods that features pretty decent balance, while the player is way deadlier, but so are the enemies and there's no stuff that makes you OP. I guess purists don't like it, because you can't really run and gun in this mod, but if one of you is reading this, tell me do you not like Blood too ? The problem is that I've been playing Brutal Doom for a long time and I want to try out some other stuff, unfortunately there's almost none and everything new coming out repeats the same mistake I've described here, even the various addons for BD do that, the most infamous one is Project Brutality. The only other mod that I enjoyed, which doesn't turn you into a god is Final Doomer.

You might wonder "Lol fag, y don't u play with vanilla weapons ?! R u gay or something ?!". I have to admit that I've never really liked the classic Doom loadout (so fuck me, I guess), there's quite a lot of reasons for that, but I don't want to talk about it now. So all those Vanilla+ mods are not doing it for me, and even though I like Final Doomer I don't play it much, because it still tries to simulate the feeling of the original weapons.





But you know what's scarier ? The same thing is true for most of FPS games, even the classic ones and those "retro type" of shooters that come out today, they are still too easy: too much health/ammo, not enough enemies and they are not placed tightly enough, OP weapons or items etc. Duke, Blood, Shadow Warrior are all pretty trivial (Blood's first episode is good in terms of difficulty, I'll give it that), I finished Dusk and it was a cakewalk. Recently I started playing beat'em'ups (see my signature) and one of their distinctive features is high overall difficulty, you really have to be on your toes most of the time to not die, there are a lot of things for you to learn and improve upon and high difficulty only simulates the process. So why aren't FPS games the same ? I really don't know guys, am I not getting something ? It's just that I haven't given it a thought until very recently.

So skacky how's your game doing in terms of difficulty ? Is it a complete faceroll up untill very last and gimmicky option, where enemies kill you in one hit or something (see Dusk), so you can tell players to fuck off, if they complain about the game being too easy or is there a plesant surprise awaiting everybody ?