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Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs
- Thread starter AngryEddy
- Start date
Baron Dupek
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2013
- Messages
- 1,871,367
Since the Heretic custom wads aren't that many, I've decided to try them out.
I wanted to refresh original episodes first, with some gameplay mod. And voila, I found Walpurgis.
It basically turns the game into Hexen, with all the three well known classes available, plus Druid.
We've got 3 main weapons, plus fourth which we need to find parts for. There is no Tome of Powers, but instead we find universal upgrades.
There are three different attack type - the third one is hiding under "reload" key. We can upgrade once each one of them for every weapon.
The combat is great. We don't loose time fighting gargoyles like in the vanilla version. The duels are quicker, thanks to the bigger weapon damage, but monsters also have been changed. So it's easier to die as well, especially when we are ambushed. Lava and acid seems also more deadly.
When it comes to classes, warrior has the biggest hp pool, and he has a very strong melee weapons. Some of them can be used for ranged attacks as well. Cleric/Crusader is probably the most deadly one. He can fight with his mace, but his ranged magic is so good, that I'm using it most of the time. Wraithverge is now like a railgun with multiple shots perforating enemies at once. Mage is really fragile, and he needs some patience in the beginning. He starts with a weak air spell, but after finding fire/ice it gets better. But the real killers are lighting spell and the staff. You can clean rooms with them so quickly after upgrading! Druid women is interesting, but I think the hardest to master. She starts with weak dagger, and her second power is transforming into werewolf. She is strong, but the projectiles can end our life really quick. The Sceptre is great, and helps us keeping the distance and is effective even during boss fight. The magical bow is good for iron liches.
Overall great work, and I'm really enjoying the game more.
I wanted to refresh original episodes first, with some gameplay mod. And voila, I found Walpurgis.
It basically turns the game into Hexen, with all the three well known classes available, plus Druid.
We've got 3 main weapons, plus fourth which we need to find parts for. There is no Tome of Powers, but instead we find universal upgrades.
There are three different attack type - the third one is hiding under "reload" key. We can upgrade once each one of them for every weapon.
The combat is great. We don't loose time fighting gargoyles like in the vanilla version. The duels are quicker, thanks to the bigger weapon damage, but monsters also have been changed. So it's easier to die as well, especially when we are ambushed. Lava and acid seems also more deadly.
When it comes to classes, warrior has the biggest hp pool, and he has a very strong melee weapons. Some of them can be used for ranged attacks as well. Cleric/Crusader is probably the most deadly one. He can fight with his mace, but his ranged magic is so good, that I'm using it most of the time. Wraithverge is now like a railgun with multiple shots perforating enemies at once. Mage is really fragile, and he needs some patience in the beginning. He starts with a weak air spell, but after finding fire/ice it gets better. But the real killers are lighting spell and the staff. You can clean rooms with them so quickly after upgrading! Druid women is interesting, but I think the hardest to master. She starts with weak dagger, and her second power is transforming into werewolf. She is strong, but the projectiles can end our life really quick. The Sceptre is great, and helps us keeping the distance and is effective even during boss fight. The magical bow is good for iron liches.
Overall great work, and I'm really enjoying the game more.
gerey
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2007
- Messages
- 3,472
I am proud of the mod authors - it takes serious courage to challenge the mainstream narrative and acknowledge that the Holocaust is a complete fabrication.
On a separate note, I really liked playing through Abysm 1 and 2, pretty neat world exploration. I'm also eagerly awaiting the release of the Afterglow sequel, and not just because of Afterglow, but also to see one of the contributors go back and work on Iron Assault Remake.
Also, when is the full release of Trench Foot gonna be?
Riskbreaker
Guest
So I played a bit of Vomitoreum, commercial TC from the Shrine guy.
I'm mixed on it. The weapons are punchy, the movement is smooth, there is a fair bit of enemy variety. On the level of layouts and interconnectedness, the world is solidly designed. You've got your standard arsenal of metroidvania power-ups i.e. double jump, dash, health boosts etc.
But the combat is insanely easy, not even the bosses posed any challenge whatsoever so far (and it's not that he didn't put any effort in them, you can tell that he did what with their animations and various attacks). And the weapon progression is such that once you find a new gun there's just no use for the earlier ones rather than them being designed in a way that they fill a specific role (plus they've all got infinite ammo, so you can spray and pray to your heart's content). So it that regard it's actually a step back from Shrine 2.
I'm mixed on it. The weapons are punchy, the movement is smooth, there is a fair bit of enemy variety. On the level of layouts and interconnectedness, the world is solidly designed. You've got your standard arsenal of metroidvania power-ups i.e. double jump, dash, health boosts etc.
But the combat is insanely easy, not even the bosses posed any challenge whatsoever so far (and it's not that he didn't put any effort in them, you can tell that he did what with their animations and various attacks). And the weapon progression is such that once you find a new gun there's just no use for the earlier ones rather than them being designed in a way that they fill a specific role (plus they've all got infinite ammo, so you can spray and pray to your heart's content). So it that regard it's actually a step back from Shrine 2.
Ol' Willy
Arcane
Doom meets HoMM
Riskbreaker
Guest
The Dutch Ghost
Arbiter
- Joined
- May 26, 2016
- Messages
- 685
Some new update screenshots on Ashes 2063 Afterglow
Last edited:
Curratum
Guest
They can't, that'd ruin GZDoom being also GrafZahlDoom and Graf would cry like a massive baby, throw a fit and threaten to leave the community.
Sjukob
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2015
- Messages
- 2,093
So I finished playing Auger;Zenith today. What a joy, just an excellent all around wad. There are 21 levels in total + one "thank you for playing" map. It's prime feature is cyberpunk theme with gorgeous visuals, there's some anime stuff, but it's very minor. You will go through a lot of city streets, buildings, slums, clubs, offices, there are even virtual reality segemtns, all are very well done and rich with details. The difficulty is pretty mild, with some occasional spikes here and there, crazy stuff is almost completely absent, but it has it's moments, like map 05 with it's spider mastermind, the last fight with Romero's head, the end of map 16 is a throwback to Sunlust's archvile carousel, only it's 100 times easier and map 15 is a one big gimmick.
The wad is pretty generous with ammo and weapons, expect a lot of rocket launcher and plasma gun action. The authors tried to implement some destructible environment similar to what you see in Build Engine games, of course, it's way more limited here, but it makes for some interesting moments. The maps vary in playstyle, some are very linear and other allow you to go wherever you want, despite the great number of detail I found them all easy to navigate, it unlikely that you would get confused and lost. My personal favoutive is map 17 which is a big "go wherever you want" type of map and it's very heavily cluttered with various stuff. Also, good usage of Streets of Rage music.
I strongly recommend everyone to play this.
I've already posted screenshots in the screenshots thread.
Here are some extra
The wad is pretty generous with ammo and weapons, expect a lot of rocket launcher and plasma gun action. The authors tried to implement some destructible environment similar to what you see in Build Engine games, of course, it's way more limited here, but it makes for some interesting moments. The maps vary in playstyle, some are very linear and other allow you to go wherever you want, despite the great number of detail I found them all easy to navigate, it unlikely that you would get confused and lost. My personal favoutive is map 17 which is a big "go wherever you want" type of map and it's very heavily cluttered with various stuff. Also, good usage of Streets of Rage music.
I strongly recommend everyone to play this.
I've already posted screenshots in the screenshots thread.
Doom Auger;Zenith
GREAT
very funny, and relaxing to play. I was killed by hell knight at the end of map1 (its the end i guess)...
i dont save
there could be more changes to weapons, but i think everyone has his own favorite weapon mod already
The Dutch Ghost
Arbiter
- Joined
- May 26, 2016
- Messages
- 685
Some new screenshots of Ashes Afterglow have been made public.
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2010
- Messages
- 10,881
I think the easiest way to do this would be to go and edit the IWAD itself, if you're talking about the original episodes, and replace the bosses with the mod's version for these levels only. It's very easy to do with SLADE or Doom Builder, provided you load the mod as one of the resources; if you have absolutely no idea what I just said let me know and I can make the modification myself, it'll only take a couple of minutes.
If you mean make it so that this change happens in every WAD that uses the same end of episode bosses as original Doom, then that'd be much more complicated. I think you can make this kind of swap be level-specific (eg "swap all Barons to Bruiser Brothers but only on E1M8 of every PWAD that has Barons") with Zscript but IDK enough of that to be able to do it (and this will only work if you use GZDoom)
If you mean make it so that this change happens in every WAD that uses the same end of episode bosses as original Doom, then that'd be much more complicated. I think you can make this kind of swap be level-specific (eg "swap all Barons to Bruiser Brothers but only on E1M8 of every PWAD that has Barons") with Zscript but IDK enough of that to be able to do it (and this will only work if you use GZDoom)
Morpheus Kitami
Liturgist
- Joined
- May 14, 2020
- Messages
- 2,697
I'm not 100% certain, but I think what you're suggesting might break certain triggers in those levels. Two barons dying in E1M8 is hardcoded to drop the line 666, and I'm not sure how mods usually link these changes, but manually changing an enemy on the map itself might not allow that to work.
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- Messages
- 10,881
It's a little more complicated than that. Actual doom.exe code for this is pretty wonky (perhaps by design), action on sector tag 666 isn't hard coded for the barons but for anything the game considers to be "bosses". Doomsday of UAC took advantage of this way waaaaaay back by having barons AND a cyberdemon on E1M8; killing all the barons will lower all but one of the tag 666 sectors, which exposes the cyberdemon, and killing him will lower the final sector 666 to allow you to grab a key. I actually don't understand how this works, since all the sectors have the same tag, but the engine somehow differentiates between them to allow this to happen in 2 steps. What it means for TBS is that, as long as the Bruisers have this same "boss" tag, and there are no barons on the map, the Bruisers' death will trigger lowering of tag 666 sectors instead.
In any case, if he wants to use GZDoom instead, this will be immaterial since you can set any action you want on tag 666 using any monsters you want, boss or not, using MAPINFO and without touching the actual map data.
In any case, if he wants to use GZDoom instead, this will be immaterial since you can set any action you want on tag 666 using any monsters you want, boss or not, using MAPINFO and without touching the actual map data.
Alex
Arcane
Hey everyone, sorry for the slightly off-topic question, but there is something I've been wondering about for a while. Do any of you know why Doom (and other games in the same engine) mods, TCs and maps are so numerous while, say, build engine ones are not nearly as common? Does this have to do with how popular Doom is? Or maybe the open source engine implementations? Is Doom simply easier or better for modding? Or something else entirely?
Curratum
Guest
Doom has always had much better tools. Even in the current day and age, in Build you need to use the autistic mapster32, which is absolutely horrible as an environment and tool.
Doom has always had vastly superior editing tools of all kinds and especially now more than ever, with ZSCript in GZDoom, you get unparalleled flexibility and the ability to basically make new games. That's also why so many projects like Selaco and that other cyberpunk Doom-engine thing are turning into standalone commercial games.
Doom has always had vastly superior editing tools of all kinds and especially now more than ever, with ZSCript in GZDoom, you get unparalleled flexibility and the ability to basically make new games. That's also why so many projects like Selaco and that other cyberpunk Doom-engine thing are turning into standalone commercial games.
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- Mar 2, 2010
- Messages
- 10,881
Combination of different things I think. The way the engine itself works makes it very amenable to editing, coupled with as Curratum said very powerful tools even back then (DEU came out before even the registered Doom I, BSP just a couple of months after DEU). Carmack released the source code so long ago too, so we've had 24 years of iterating and improving and refining and adding features for some ports or knowing exactly how to keep the experience close to the original for other ports.
I think the catalyst originally was the release of Boom, one of (if not the) earliest source ports, which made a lot of changes to the underlying engine logic to enable pretty much any generalized action to be possible, so mapmakers could do so much more, and more easily, but the experience for the user was still very much Doom. Within mere months Raven released the Hexen source code, which meant ACS scripting was now also possible, and there you have it. ZDoom became a thing around the same time too, and the way it converted hard-coded engine things into scripting languages that could be easily learned and allowed you to change pretty much anything (first DECORATE to replace most DeHacked mods, then Zscript to do pretty much anything), on top of integrating ACS, and now the sky's the limit. I think that's the greatest thing about (G)ZDoom, you can count the number of things that are hard-coded on one hand.
I think the catalyst originally was the release of Boom, one of (if not the) earliest source ports, which made a lot of changes to the underlying engine logic to enable pretty much any generalized action to be possible, so mapmakers could do so much more, and more easily, but the experience for the user was still very much Doom. Within mere months Raven released the Hexen source code, which meant ACS scripting was now also possible, and there you have it. ZDoom became a thing around the same time too, and the way it converted hard-coded engine things into scripting languages that could be easily learned and allowed you to change pretty much anything (first DECORATE to replace most DeHacked mods, then Zscript to do pretty much anything), on top of integrating ACS, and now the sky's the limit. I think that's the greatest thing about (G)ZDoom, you can count the number of things that are hard-coded on one hand.
Morpheus Kitami
Liturgist
- Joined
- May 14, 2020
- Messages
- 2,697
I dare say a part of it is popularity. Even at the peaks of both's popularity Doom always had more people playing and tinkering with it. Duke started out more more powerful than Doom. Duke's mods and TCs were more advanced than ones from Doom until people started experimenting with Zscript. Even today its not completely true that Doom has outpaced Duke. Room over room is easier in Build than it is in Doom, but in Doom you can have 3d models, or at least a hacky way of showing 3d models. And I think Doom doesn't have a map size limitation, while Duke does.
The real problem with Duke is that all the veteran map editors have gotten used to Mapster32, and nobody has bothered to make a different mapping system. It would have been nice in 1996 in DOS, but today it has a weird control scheme and you have to alt-tab constantly in order to check the key list, a tutorial, and all that stuff. You need to remember what a button does, what that button does when you're pressing shift, ctrl, and alt. You have to remember what number a particular sound is, so that a door opening isn't silent. It has a far steeper learning curve over Doom, and unless you really need to do something that only the Build engine does, you're probably not going to go for that.
The real problem with Duke is that all the veteran map editors have gotten used to Mapster32, and nobody has bothered to make a different mapping system. It would have been nice in 1996 in DOS, but today it has a weird control scheme and you have to alt-tab constantly in order to check the key list, a tutorial, and all that stuff. You need to remember what a button does, what that button does when you're pressing shift, ctrl, and alt. You have to remember what number a particular sound is, so that a door opening isn't silent. It has a far steeper learning curve over Doom, and unless you really need to do something that only the Build engine does, you're probably not going to go for that.
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- 10,881
Doom has a TON of limitations on map size and what you can put in it: number of lines, number of vertices, how many sectors are adjacent, number of planes, number of sprites, how many animations, number of switches... just look up Static Limits. A big part of what made many of the earlier maps impressive was the stuff they could pull off without hitting any of these limits. Many people aren't aware of most of these because every source port since the mid-90s has increased them to more manageable levels (except Chocolate, I think). Of course this begs the question: why didn't Build modders increase the limits the same way Doomers did?
I agree with you about Zscript, and in general I think Duke was initially more popular because it is a more powerful and advanced engine. But once things like slopes and 3D floors and so on started making it into the Doom source ports (I think EDGE already had them in the late 90s) Build lost most of its edge (pun not intended), and by the time UDMF came out that was that, you could do pretty much anything in a Doom map (though obviously those maps couldn't run under doom.exe)
I didn't really notice it at the time, so this might be unintentional revisionism (I'm interested in what others think), but looking back it almost looks like everyone was expecting Doom to give way to the more advanced engines around 1997, especially after Quake came out. Just look at how things like Hacx completely failed, why Requiem is named like this (they even spell it out the txt), and many of the original early geniuses moving away from Doom after 1998. Yet here we are.
Morpheus Kitami
Liturgist
- Joined
- May 14, 2020
- Messages
- 2,697
Which is why I put even today before that part. Though I admit, I did forget that Doom used to hard limitations like that. I was recalling more in terms of hard map size limits. Just size, not lines or sectors. You're limited in how big you can make a Duke map, even if you still have a huge area to screw around with, while in Doom you in theory have unlimited space to make your map. Its the kind of thing that wouldn't matter to 90% of map makers anyway.
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