Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[lightbane]

I recommend waiting for the next Project Brutality release. Also, why copy the inferior game instead of regular Doom gameplay?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

While restoring my Doom to its proper glory, I noticed I had a downloaded WAD sitting around that I hadn't played, so I gave it a go.

"Back to Saturn Part 1" is a 26 Map megawad that looks pretty neat, sporting its own unique textures to give it a neat and futuristic sci-fi appearance that dominates the wad. Demonic/gothic architecture rarely makes an appearance, but left me impressed every time it did so. And some of the maps are well thought out in design, providing a mix of enjoyable arenas with closely-packed rooms. The secrets deserve a special mention as effort was put into hiding them - some of them don't show up on the computer map at all and offer little to no evidence to their existence in the first place. The map names also deserve a special mention, sporting such titles as "The Colossus Crawls West", "Cyclone Utilities (Remember Your Birthday)" and "Big Chief Chinese Restaurant".

The plot is that Doomguy is doing recon on a Saturn outpost that's gone dark, and quickly realizes the situation is demonic in nature. A running gag of the wad involves the local transit system, a map that pops up at least three times, sporting no enemies or items whatsoever. Eventually Doomguy is ordered to head to the dark side of Saturn to a secret research outpost, but it's en route to that location that this wad ends and offers a 'To Be Continued' message, along with a sinking feeling.

Namely, that sinking feeling that there's more of this. By the time I reached the final level I was thoroughly disgusted by this wad due to how it uses the enemies - namely in the dickiest way possible. Any doorway you pass through you can bet on having two enemies right up against the wall on either side, waiting to pounce. Tons of enemies are placed on high ledges far away to snipe you, especially Chaingunners. Monster closets become obvious and predictable, but the worst crime this wad commits is regularly closing you in while teleporting in a bunch of monsters, and does so in such a way that trying to retreat anywhere will lead you smack-dab into a wall of freshly-spawned monsters. The only good news is that the wad uses Spiderdemons and Cyberdemons sparingly (save for that one map with about 6 Spiderdemons) but instead goes all-out on Arch-Viles instead. Assume that every spawn will have at least one Arch-Vile, and at one point I was fighting six of them at once.

The dickiest map of them all is MAP31, where the regular exit involves a gauntlet where the player must either kill a Cyberdemon in a matter of seconds, or sit in a narrow corridor dodging rockets while an impossibly long door slowly opens to reveal a teleporter that will telefrag the Cyberdemon. Repeat two more times with the next Cyberdemon always a little closer each time - and there are no Invulnerability Spheres on the entire map. Good luck doing this with the Brutal Doom mod.

Aesthetics aside, I have a hard time recommending this wad. There's a second part out, but I don't feel like even looking at it.

 

[Curratum]

BTSX is one of the best looking wads of the past few years, I'm surprised you disliked the gameplay THAT much. Sure, it has a few quirks but I mean, come on...

Wait, did you play something different? I never got anything called just Back to Saturn, I always had the X in the name?

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, I have Back to Saturn X. Is it a refinement or something of what Unkillable Cat played?

Actually I think I've only played Episode 2.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The zipfile for the wad I played is named "btsx_e1.zip". Dunno what that X is doing there, I went by the title screen for the name.

 

[Tito Anic]

Doom Slayer Chronicles is released! | Level 1: Cemetery of Fallens [Brutal Doom v21 RC1]

Works with Freedoom - tested!

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Had some fun with a wad simply called "1Monster" - where each level is themed so that only one particular enemy is featured.

This wad actually starts out hard, then gets easier as more weapons get unlocked. I finished the first map with a grand total of 3 Health, but it wasn't long until I was cruising from map to map with close to maxed-out Health and Armor.

With a themed wad one would expect that mapmakers would get clever and creative. In some places they do, every map that features conveyor belts was at least entertaining, but some maps were clearly designed to maximize the enemy's strengths and the player's weaknesses. The Lost Souls and Chaingunner maps are prime examples of this. For me the most entertaining maps were the Shotgunner, Spectre and Mancubus maps. The Cacodemon map was easily the worst one of them all as you're up against 430 of them - that one gets tedious and boring really quick.

So yeah, fun for the novelty factor but little else.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Time for me to eat my words.

The most up-to-date release of Brutal Doom v21 has a nice little feature to disable those demon spheres AND the health bars, meaning that my biggest gripes with it are now gone.

Still gonna hold on to the older version, just in case.

 

[Curratum]

Don't play brutal doom. Only plebs play brutal doom.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Don't play brutal doom. Only plebs play brutal doom.

Or you mod Brutal Doom to make it the way you like it.
Don't like the death animations? Put your own sprites and Decorate code in.
Don't like the guns? Put better guns in.
Don't like the maps? Put better maps in.
Don't like the taunts? Take the taunts out.
Don't like the...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Don't play brutal doom. Only plebs play brutal doom.

I'm probably opening a can of worms here... but what do you propose I play instead?

 

[Curratum]

Don't play brutal doom. Only plebs play brutal doom.

I'm probably opening a can of worms here... but what do you propose I play instead?

Not so much a can of worms as a level-headed call for a more vanilla experience. GZDoom with texture filtering to None for that tasty pixel look, even if you apply all the SSAO you want, as it meshes really well.

Here is what I run with all customs I play:

currydoom.wad is just a custom imp fireball I extracted from god knows where and I use all the time now.

I can settle for some visual sexiness but I like to keep the overall thing as close to vanilla as possible in terms of gunplay, monster behaviors and interactions.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I played vanilla Doom to death back in the day, it has nothing more for me to offer.

 

[lightbane]

I recommend Project Brutality. It should update soon after BD.

 

[Anomander Rake]

release those pk3 in a .rar archive so I can experience your same experience Curratum

 

[Curratum]

I played vanilla Doom to death back in the day, it has nothing more for me to offer.

I've been playing vanilla Doom for 20 years and I'm still not fed up with it. Granted, I don't play it every month and go on occasional sprees but yeah.

release those pk3 in a .rar archive so I can experience your same experience Curratum

With pleasure! Do let me know how you feel about it all sometime later.

Mods: http://www.filedropper.com/tweaks

 

[aweigh]

What is the best "HD" version of Doom 1 and Doom 2 that I can play on PC? I was just playing Doom 64 EX, which is a Windows port of the N64 doom in 1980p and I have the Doom itch for upscaled HD sprite-dodging!

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Also might as well make this post do twice the work and flat-out recommend you immediately download Doom 64 EX and play it if you haven't. The soundtrack is fucking amazing.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

You need to try brutal doom 64 aweigh. I've played the EX version, and it really makes the game better, and considering the monsters numbers/spawns it doesn't brake the flow of the original.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/dont-play-with-hell-black-edition

I finished prologue episode of "Don`t play with Hell - Black edition". It needs one of the latest GzDoom to work, and on top of the normal game it has already Brutal Doom included as well. It's a really long introduction, which shows us all the new features that can be used by level creators. With all the added effects textures and sounds I was afraid it will be a slideshow but to my surprise everything is optimized properly. Everything is consistent, when it comes to color palette and doesn't feel out of place. I didn't play BD version for a very long time, and while I don't see myself trying to finish some old custom campaigns, I feel that with proper designing it can really shine like here. The enemies are really deadly, and even sergeant is a worthy opponent. The whole thing starts slowly and ends with quick and awesome duel with Arch-vile.

Spoiler

 

[aweigh]

What I most want is to be able to play the Doom 1 and Doom 2 campaigns in high resolution, like Doom 64 EX. Never played Brutal Doom, is it what I want?

EDIT: And yes, those pictures look very pretty. Are the Doom 1 and Doom 2 campaigns included in that?

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

EDIT: And yes, those pictures look very pretty. Are the Doom 1 and Doom 2 campaigns included in that?

It's a standalone campaign so unfortunately no.




I never used custom texture packs to make Doom more HD, source ports like Zdoom or GzDoom with high resolution options are more than enough for me.

There are a couple of options here:

DHTP - https://github.com/KuriKai/DHTP
Alternate DHTP - https://zandronum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6132
DHTP Alterations - https://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom/addons/dhtp-alterations

https://imgur.com/a/OisxD - you can judge yourself which one you do like the best. Personally, I would go for the last option and it won't kill your framerate.

Cacodemon pack - https://www.moddb.com/mods/cacodemon-textures/downloads
This one is really odd, and tries to do it's own thing when it comes to Doom visual presentation and make it more "dark".

 

[aweigh]

So I downloaded DHTP along with latest ZDoom and the Freedom wad and got it running and it is basically exactly what I was looking for! I'll try out the other two, DHTP Alterations and Cacodemon Texture Project later, and I assume the Cacodemon one replaces the enemy sprites, right? Which would be why it's so huge.

Now my only other question is: what's Brutal Doom about? I've never played it. Oh, also ZDoom has way too many options... I spent more time configuring than playing. They should really just put a "Make everything look pretty and use standard WASD controls and PLAY!" preset option.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Now my only other question is: what's Brutal Doom about? I've never played it.

Blood, gore, melee takedowns and some weapon tweaks. Later additions throw in graphical enhancements. What the mod does is "speed up" the gameplay, and makes melee an interesting alternative. The full mod also comes with its own custom campaign, Extermination Day.

Basically Brutal Doom is the template from which Doom (2016) is made.

 

[Curratum]

Brutal Doom is a sodomization of the core gameplay of Doom to make it more appealing to edgy teenagers.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Now my only other question is: what's Brutal Doom about

https://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom/addons/project-brutality

It's a total overhaul mod, when it comes to monsters behaviour and their strenght/attacks. Plus it changes the way weapons work and adds some extra gear that you can take from dead monsters.
There is a mod called Project Brutality which has 3 options of playing - vanilla, Brutal Doom V.2.0 and Project Brutality. That should give you the most easy way to test the difference between them.

There is also Beautiful Doom, which tones down the changes, but still makes the game more interesting and difficult. I use it for almost every wad.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/beautiful-doom-6100/downloads

Spoiler

 

[aweigh]

Brutal Doom is pretty cool! Is there any way to remove the super annoying blood spatter that fucking covers the entire screen?

2nd Q: is there any way to make it play the regular Doom 1/2 music instead of the music tracks it is playing by default?