Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[Wunderbar]

Afterglow is my GOTY.

Don't care if it is a mod, it's still better than 99% of commercial stuff released in 2021.

 

[Curratum]

Afterglow is my GOTY.

Don't care if it is a mod, it's still better than 99% of commercial stuff released in 2021.

I kept trying to persuade Vostyok to clean up the assets, package 2063 and Afterglow together and release it as a full commercial game. He still insists that the two episodes so far are just "shareware" for Episode 3, which he says will be much bigger and more ambitious than even Afterglow, and might be / will probably be a full commercial game, one day.

 

[Tacgnol]

I didn't realise there was another massive hub after the subway. Even some fairly minor choice/consequence effects and pathing depending on how you handle things in the 2nd town.

As Curratum says, he really needs to consider commercialising Ashes. If he did all this for free, I can't imagine what he could make with more resources at his disposal.

 

[toughasnails]

I kept trying to persuade Vostyok to clean up the assets, package 2063 and Afterglow together and release it as a full commercial game. He still insists that the two episodes so far are just "shareware" for Episode 3, which he says will be much bigger and more ambitious than even Afterglow, and might be / will probably be a full commercial game, one day.

If that's true, I'm struggling to imagine what he intends the next step for e3 to be unless he plans to turn the game into something like Stalker. E2 is already en route to that sort of semi open world design.

 

[Avonaeon]

I would gladly have paid money for both 2063 and Afterglow. GOTY sounds about right!

 

[Strig]

Afterglow is my GOTY.

Don't care if it is a mod, it's still better than 99% of commercial stuff released in 2021.

Absolutely. I'm on the verge of refusing to even call it a mod at this point, it's such a complete and different experience. The level design alone is excellent not only as world-building goes but also from a technical standpoint, I can't even count the times when I opened a door and it looped back to an earlier part of the level. The "huh, I'm really here" feeling is real.

 

[Tacgnol]

Afterglow is my GOTY.

Don't care if it is a mod, it's still better than 99% of commercial stuff released in 2021.

Absolutely. I'm on the verge of refusing to even call it a mod at this point, it's such a complete and different experience. The level design alone is excellent not only as world-building goes but also from a technical standpoint, I can't even count the times when I opened a door and it looped back to an earlier part of the level. The "huh, I'm really here" feeling is real.

The ending of Afterglow left me really wanting a sequel to advance the story. Been a while since a game has done that.

I was impressed that he'd done fallout style ending slides as well.

 

[robinox]

I'm on the verge of refusing to even call it a mod at this point, it's such a complete and different experience.

total conversion?

 

[Strig]

total conversion?

TC is technically still a type of mod. And I don't want to disparage mods in any way, it's more that I want to elevate Ashes 2063 in status for its excellent execution, because nowadays there are very few actual games that offer similar level of quality.

 

[destinae vomitus]

Ashes is great, though I think it would be even greater if at the end of the day you weren't just fighting reskinned zombiemen and what not. The combat is clearly meant to lean towards do-or-die lethality in the same vein as the stuff it has drawn influence from, but I find that the enemies make it miss the mark somewhat since most of them are ultimately still just Doom AI, i.e. not nuanced nor speedy enough to match what it's going for. At the very least that was my experience on apocalypse difficulty, it was fun but not as intense as I think it ought to be. I would hope to see the monster roster get a do-over of sorts if the inevitable follow-up is really gonna go all in and aspire to be more than just a mod.

 

[Curratum]

If you open up the game's files, you'll see nothing is really reskinned and actors have been rewritten entirely. Just the basic pistol thug enemy is around 150 lines of behavior and animation code, so I'd be hard-pressed to call that a reskin.

 

[lightbane]

The Dynamite Duchess sequel is out! And it has a walkthrough LP to boot! The dev has a shit computer that goes slow with literal Doom mods, so the videos might look underwhelming.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/38aaw41mz9f2cn4/detention.zip/file

Spoiler

Example video.

Like the first game, it continues to (un)subtly criticize nowadays' insanity, this time focusing on the brainwashing of students with inane education turning them into literal monsters, encourages ratting out your friends that misbehave for course credits, and how being fair-skinned means you're likely to be a criminal and you must pay for your ancestors' heinous deeds. The protagonist answers in a reasonable way and decides to take down the insane staff.

 

[toughasnails]

I would gladly have paid money for both 2063 and Afterglow. GOTY sounds about right!

Same. Between Afterglow, Hedon Bloodrite and Arthurian Legends, this was a p good year for the genre.

 

[destinae vomitus]

If you open up the game's files, you'll see nothing is really reskinned and actors have been rewritten entirely. Just the basic pistol thug enemy is around 150 lines of behavior and animation code, so I'd be hard-pressed to call that a reskin.

Good to know. The mooks with guns and common mutants just gave me the impression that they were zombies, imps and such mildly retooled, that's what they were in practice to me. Wishing for them to be on par with Build game enemies might be too much to ask for, but that's what I'd hope to see if the third episode is meaning to be even more robust.

 

[Curratum]

I would gladly have paid money for both 2063 and Afterglow. GOTY sounds about right!

Same. Between Afterglow, Hedon Bloodrite and Arthurian Legends, this was a p good year for the genre.

Someone mention Arthurian Legends again and there will be blood

 

[Curratum]

If you open up the game's files, you'll see nothing is really reskinned and actors have been rewritten entirely. Just the basic pistol thug enemy is around 150 lines of behavior and animation code, so I'd be hard-pressed to call that a reskin.

Good to know. The mooks with guns and common mutants just gave me the impression that they were zombies, imps and such mildly retooled, that's what they were in practice to me. Wishing for them to be on par with Build game enemies might be too much to ask for, but that's what I'd hope to see if the third episode is meaning to be even more robust.

Well, yeah. On the topic of new enemies...

99% of what you see in any Doom mod inherits some level of behavior from an existing (GZ)Doom engine actor and either builds on it or modifies it until it's not recognizable.

Even if you open the files of a commercial game like Hedon and look at a monster definition, you're greeted with this:

ACTOR Golem //replaces Revenant

Not trying to belittle or diminish the work done on Hedon in the least. This line is followed by EIGHT FUCKING HUNDRED more likes with multiple death animation per damage type definitions, enemy projectile definitions and all that jazz. What I'm saying is, on some level, almost every enemy you will ever see in this engine inherits at least a little bit of its behavior from a vanilla enemy.

I imagine with ZScript you can make wilder stuff but I'm not familiar with how that works and 99% of all mods and commercial games on the engine, Hedon included, use DECORATE for enemy and item definitions.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I imagine with ZScript you can make wilder stuff but I'm not familiar with how that works and 99% of all mods and commercial games on the engine, Hedon included, use DECORATE for enemy and item definitions.

Pretty wild stuff. I wish I could find the mod now, but among other things, allowed you to duel wield pistols that functioned completely independently of each other. You could fire one and reload the other at the same time. All with stock Doom assets. I think you can also do pretty complex stuff with AI in ZScript, but I haven't actually seen it used in a mod yet.

 

[Bigg Boss]

ZScript stealth AI was in the works last year so I wager people are doing more with it now.

 

[Sacibengala]

Did you guys knew about this? This is fucking epic!!!

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/103770-hexen-neural-texture-pack/

https://users.nexusmods.com/tos/continue

 

[Tacgnol]

Did you guys knew about this? This is fucking epic!!!

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/103770-hexen-neural-texture-pack/

https://users.nexusmods.com/tos/continue

There are neural upscales for most of the games. They vary heavily in quality.

The Doom one is generally better done because the AI upscale had more to work with (many of the enemies/weapons being based on digitalised photos and models).

Heretic/Hexen ones are a bit more hit and miss.

 

[robinox]

finished Afterglow, phenomenal.

 

[toughasnails]

 

[Baron Dupek]

Mmm, chainsword...

No "This is new *hit" like in the local GotY trailer tho...

 

[Ol' Willy]

Pretty wild stuff. I wish I could find the mod now, but among other things, allowed you to duel wield pistols that functioned completely independently of each other. You could fire one and reload the other at the same time. All with stock Doom assets. I think you can also do pretty complex stuff with AI in ZScript, but I haven't actually seen it used in a mod yet.

Brutal Doom/Project Brutality has this duh

 

[Alphons]

Ashes trilogy (2063, Dead Man Walking and a new version of Afterglow) were released on Moddb.

In other news Moddb's "Mod of the year" contest ends in just 5 days.
I'm not telling what mod you should vote for, but it would be a damn shame if certain post-apo DOOM TC and it's team didn't receive recognition they deserve.