#knee deep in ZDoom

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2007): Knee-Deep in ZDoom

Welp... I’m done with my rather short hiatus. After taking a break, I think I’ve come up with the idea of how not to experience another burnout. Simply, I will take at least a week-long break after every review/post related to Doom WADs. That will give me time to experience other games that I have in my Steam library or read some magazines.

And now, without any further to do, let’s take a look at, from my point of view, one of the more controversial WADs/partial conversions that came in the second half of the 2000s.

G6: Knee-Deep in ZDoom

Main author(s): Various (project lead by Tormentor667)

Release date: June 2nd, 2007 (original release)/December 27th, 2008 (version 1.1)/June 16th (version 1.2)

Version played: 1.2

Required port compatibility: ZDoom (obviously)

Levels: 10 (typical episodic structure plus one super secret map)

Knee-Deep in ZDoom – another case of trying to remake/reimagine the original first episode of Doom I, and quite possibly the most recognizeable one (for good and bad reasons).

Many of the WAD makers behind this one were encountered in my previous reviews. Among the people who were the core team behind KDiZD, there is Tormentor667, who was the project leader behind ZDCMP1 (likewise with this WAD); Graf Zahl, the creator of GZDoom; Pawel Zarczynski, who created the GZDoom port of 2000’s ZanZan; and Nick Baker, who helped with both Darkening installments, RTC-3057 and ZDCMP1.

The WAD’s development was in shambles for lack of better words, earning it not only the regular Cacoward but also the Mordeth Award for the WAD with the longest development cycle.

So what actually happened? From what I’ve gathered, the development went on for around three years, so I can only guess that it all started in 2004. It was originally supposed to be released somewhere at the end of 2005/beginning of 2006, but the ambitions of the team members made it constantly delayed, with the WAD’s release becoming a joke in the community. KDiZD was hyped to the level only Action Doom was capable of, with posters, testaments, and other similar stuff the other WAD did, but of course, it was more mocked rather than celebreated. There was even a time when the beta version of this WAD leaked. Not to mention new team members being added and dropped like flies.

The funniest thing about KDiZD is that when it was finally released, the biggest reasons why this WAD was delayed ended up as the biggest cons in the eyes of the Doom community.

Nowadays, it’s probably even more disliked/polarizing than it was back when it was released, but I will try to take a look at this WAD with my 2007 glasses. To see what a casual Doom WAD player would think about it without thinking about all of this controversy shit back then.

So, without wasting any more time, let’s finally take a look at Knee-Deep in ZDoom.

If there is one thing where this WAD is legitimately good at is the visuals. It looks great. It might get too far with tiny details and ambient sound effects in some places but by 2007, this was the shit. The best part is, of course, the locations from the original levels; they might look unrecognizable on the first look but for people who were sniffing Doom coke for over a decade at this point, it feels like how people in 1993 saw them for the first time.

Even the original locations that extend the maps aren’t half bad, whenever it’s the new techbase rooms, hellish corruption showing up much more frequently than in the original episode (if those were there at all), or the outside/underground areas.

There is even an option to launch this WAD with rotating sprites for items. Originally it was hard-coded, but since version 1.1, it’s in a separate file. Honestly, you can skip these since these sprites sometimes make it harder for an item to be found.

The music tracks are stocks from the original game, which makes sense since it’s another interpretation of Knee-Deep in the Dead. I still prefer playing this WAD without music since the original tracks feel too short for these extended maps.

There are, however, two custom tracks that play at the end of Phobos Anomaly Z; During the prologue to fight with Bruiser Demons and during the actual fight itself, and during the final boss fight. I recognize these two tracks since the first track was used in Scythe’s MAP26, but I’m not sure where I heard the second one (maybe it was in Scythe 2; I don’t know).

Now playing this WAD – this is where the bigger cracks start appearing.

As I mentioned earlier, the maps are now extended; there are completely new locations on each map, like the mine section in Toxic Refinery Z, or the tower in Central Processing Z.

Most of the time I was fine with these, but some of these, particularly the ones in the fourth and seventh map, overstated their welcome, feeling like I was walking in circles in another mangled maze.

On the other hand, each map has at least one interesting thing to offer, whenever it’s related to the level progression or finding secrets/items.

For a couple of examples, there is restarting the generator in the water where the water turns into toxic slime, using the keys to unlock the doors by flipping the switches in the center of the map rather than by using them on the doors, using a bomb on a timer to blow up some rocks, or turning off the other generator to deactivate force fields.

Since the original episode focused on a human base on Phobos, this WAD changes the skulls into silver, green, and orange keycards to make more sense tonally.

There are also two new items. The first one is a Megasphere from Doom II; it functions the same while looking different. The second one is completely original – Terrorsphere; it makes you see orange and enemies run away from you (they still fight back occasionally, though). I wish it was more frequent.

Now aside from remastered levels, there is a tenth one, super secret map – Penultimate Evil. And you can’t get there by finding a secret exit on one of the regular maps. There are two ways to get there.

The first one is speedrunner’s delight – finishing all levels under the par time. Perfect for people who are into this stuff.

The second one is aimed closer towards regular players – get at least 90% of kills, items, and secrets on all levels before E1M8, even on E1M9. Now I have a problem with this, particularly with collecting items. Not only you would have to waste some very valuable items that you would like to save for later, but you also need to lick every floor tile to be sure you won’t end up under 90%.

And I know that no person with a brain would like to suffer through going to all of the locations to search every corner of them just to find one tiny health/armor bonus that was under their nose when they were having the big fight with demons just to reach 90% of collected items. Sure, on (G)ZDoom, you can type summon [item] enough times to reach that percent but still.

...                                                                                      

The new intermission screen looks kind of cool though... and offers more than the regular one... even though it feels unneeded.

Coming back to Penultimate Evil, at least I can say it’s the best map in KDiZD. On the foundation level, it’s a Frankenstein’s monster made out of locations from the later episodes of Doom I, and yet everything fits in place. Asides from the E2M2’s crate maze that almost always sucks, I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this map was dragging out. If you ever want to try this WAD, you can at least play this map.

Now, how hard is this WAD? It’s kind of challenging but I wouldn’t say it’s hard. There are moments filled with bullshit like corridor fighting and hitscanning snipers here and there, but these were rather rare from what I’ve experienced.

Although, I wasn’t a fan of how ammo-starving the first 1.5 levels were, especially Z1M1. Even if you know where the secrets are, you will end up without shells, forcing you to kill enemies with your peashooter (at least it’s slightly faster here than in the original games).

Also, some numbnut decided to remove infighting in the WAD. Like, are fucking shitting me?! Infighting is hilarious in Doom WADs. There is at least one fight where it begs for some infighting but no. Whoever came up with this must be an asshole that wants to be threatened seriously but fails in at least 50%.

Oh, and by the way – hard-coded falling damage. Because fuck you.

Changing the subject, it’s time to introduce you to the new roster of enemies, at least doubling the amount of enemy types in the first Doom.

Starting with new zombie variants, we have Rapid-fire Trooper, who’s basically Wolfenstein SS if he was an actual Doom enemy; Chainsaw Zombie who requires no description of what he does, and Obituary’s Rocketeers, coming back to show you once again that they will kill themselves more frequently then you.

Oh yeah, Hoovies also join the fun, now looking like an aging old fart... great... -_-

As for the Imp variants... oh boy... we have seven of these.

We already met three of these variants in Cheogsh. Shadow (renamed Howler in that map) is the Class 2 Imp from STRAIN if he actually looked and sounded more like an original monster. Soul Harvester is basically a mini-me Revenant with projectiles that almost always hit you if there is no cover. And Nightmare is complete and utter bullshit filth to fight that thankfully only appears in two sections of Phobos Anomaly Z.

And as for the original variants, we have Stone Imp at the start; a slow, melee enemy that’s rather easy to defeat.

There are also three variants of the Dark Imp. The regular Dark Imp has yellow eyes and shoots homing projectiles (that turn slower than Revenant’s missiles). Skulltag Imp has red eyes and shoots much faster projectiles (it might feel like you were fighting regular Imp on Nightmare). And Void Imp has orange eyes and functions like Undead Warrior from Heretic, AKA has a chance to shoot a red projectile that deals much more damage.

Pinky aside from having Mauler whom we already met in Cheogsh (that charges at you like the Lost Soul), also has a variant titled Blood Demon, which is basically half-robot Pinky that is twice as tough to kill.

Hell Nobility has five additional variants in the roster. We already met Satyr, Hell Warrior, and Bruiser Demon AKA the one who’s a melee-type enemy, the one with the shield (that often uses it right as he’s about to get shot), and the one that’s basically a boss version of Baron.

As for the new variants, Hell Knight joins the game, now with a slightly different color and sounding different (for some unexplained reason). There is also Hell’s Fury, a tougher variant of Baron, that shoots red, faster projectiles and three homing projectiles (same ones as Soul Harvester). When he dies, his head comes off (it looks like a beta Lost Soul).

As for the original enemies, the last map introduces two of these. The first one is Hell Cube which is basically an enemy version of the summoning cube Icon of Sin spits out from his forehead.

The second one is actually a boss – Magmantis, who defends the portal to Deimos. He can summon portals that shoot fireballs or Lost Souls, and sometimes he dives back into lava, summoning Imps in between. He feels like a filler, not gonna lie. The final area with hell nobles felt more like a proper finale than he was. Not to mention how easy he is when you constantly shoot him with a BFG replacement.

To fight all of these new monstrosities, you get three new weapons to use:

There is the Super Shotgun, and at first, having this beast from Doom II added might make you think that it’s a Christmas miracle, but it feels like another pair of socks to the pile of these that your nanna bought you. It looks off, it sounds off, and the worst of all, it reloads slower than the original version! Like, come the fuck on man! Who’s coming out with these ridiculous nerfs in gameplay?!

...

At least it’s not completely useless... Good thing the other two weapons don’t feel like that.

The Grenade Launcher feels like a Super Shotgun answer to the Rocket Launcher. It fires slower, the blast radius is much higher, but the damage is around 1.5-2 times higher. It has two fire modes, each changing how far the grenade flies.

The Rifle, on the other hand, feels like if a hitscanner weapon became the BFG. Its bullets are as hard as rockets, it fires rather fast, can kill a couple of enemies in the line, and can easily stunlock them. The only thing that makes it not completely overpowered is the ammo capacity; you can hold up to 75 bullets only without a backpack. So use this gun only on the toughest bastards in tight areas.

Another pro about this WAD, is that it doesn’t have game-breaking bugs, only the visual ones (at least from what I remember).

Knee-Deep in ZDoom is a WAD that took a hit in quality due to the ambitions and questionable decisions made by the team behind it. With falling damage, nerfed Super Shotgun, worthless final boss, and infighting removed as some of the bigger cons of this WAD. It might be seen nowadays as a laughing stock by the Doom community... but I would be lying to myself if I didn’t say that I was having (at least) some kind of fun while playing it.

It’s not a bad WAD, but honestly, I think I would recommend other episode 1 reinterpretations.

Next WAD on our list is another community project. It’s the return of Community Chest. I wonder how many of the maps won’t bore me.

See you all in the future.

Bye!

[lunatic-harness]

my reaction to the airport bathroom in myhouse.wad was “AHHHH!!! oh hey bloodfiend haven’t seen you in a while”

[doomsthetics]

map19: z1m7: computer station

from knee-deep in knee-deep in zdoom (2022)

doomworld forums thread

-

good day everyone ! sorry for the sudden several month long hiatus, i had my main blog terminated for a brief moment way back in march and then i kinda forgot or got busy i think im not exactly sure

[be-beepkupo]

hellp

[cryptidrei]

The Butterfly Effect

This is Armageddon 2 Invasion, an old Doom mod from 2008. It adds a lot of new enemies, some of which are from other FPS games, like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, etc. I had to cheat a little for my playthrough since this is meant to be played on cooperative survival lol.

This is one of the most nostalgic Doom mods for me. I saw a video of this being played on youtube around 2008 when it came out and it introduced me to Skulltag, which was a sourceport made for multiplayer Doom (it has since been replaced by Zandronum). I didn't know english very well at the time, so I was completely out of the loop on sourceports and stuff like that. Prior to that I'd only play Doom on Doom95 because that's what came bundled with my pirated copy downloaded off of the internet lol.

This is the epitome of 2000's Doom moding on advanced sourceports. It just packs the maps with several monsters from several different sources, art style consistency is in no way a concern. And honestly, that's very charming! It was a more innocent time, when just being able to bring stuff from other games into the doom engine was novel enough to elevate a mod on it's own. You see a similar modding philosophy in stuff like Knee-Deep in Zdoom, and Aeons of Death, where it just bloats the mod with a billion custom enemies, and weapons because that was new and exciting.

But back to Armageddon 2 Invasion, I give it 100% credit for getting me into Doom modding, which became a big hobby of mine for a long time, though I severely slowed down nowadays, due to lack of time and also focusing more on other creative pursuits (and also a heightened ambition to make full on indie games instead of just mods). It also had a domino effect in my life! Through skulltag I met my first long-standing circle of online friends, and eventually my girlfriend! Life is funny like that. You see a cool mod on youtube that has all these crazy monsters in these Serious Sam-like invasion maps, and several years down the line you can trace you meeting your soul mate directly to that seemingly innocuous moment in your life. And that's not even mentioning everythign else that happened in between and since either. Friendships blossomed, and some died, several skills I've honed due to becoming a modder, dreams of making my own game, many a drama came and went, an interest in learnign more about programming and 3D modeling grew within me, and even more personal matters, like experimenting more with my sexuality and gender, since I felt much safer toying with those concepts around my rowdy friends than around my stick in the mud, conservative family.

It just goes to show, sometimes the most banal moment can completely flip the script. Maybe you're watching some random video on youtube (or tiktok nowadays for the younguns), or reading a post or fanfic, or anything really. Maybe it shows you something so cool, so amazingly kick ass, the literal coolest thing ever for your developing brain, that it completely changes the course of your life.

And that dear reader, is the beauty of life.

[doom-nerdo-666]

Even though Doom's setting is usually seen as goofy and not taken seriously, there are some interesting things to take when it's taken seriously or in a sincere way.

Because the premise is still cool and some media that inspired it (Like Aliens) was still sincere.

Plus, you have a lot of mods that take the setting seriously, not by making stuff more dramatic, but rather just treating the setting/premise as is and coming up with stuff that could fit it.

Though i'm sure people associate mods taking Doom's setting a bit more seriously with stuff like Knee Deep in ZDoom or Brutal Doom.

This also reminds me of how modern Doom games associate themselves with the 90's Doom comic, which has a reputation of "so bad it's good".

I guess to some it's like what if Zelda had an official game inspired by CD-I Zelda memes or something in that vein.

This is also because we went through a sort of "post irony" age and now people are getting kind of sick of irony.

So you'll probably understand why some people say stuff like "no more irony" and want more sincere stuff.

Even if there's also "it's okay to be cringe" since a lot of irony can be related to that sort of stuff too.

D3 was probably the most serious Doom has ever taken in terms of story or tone, i guess.

Wolfenstein went further with MachineGames because the story in there doesn't just get serious, it gets emotional.

I'm sure some can mention the occasional "ping pong" tone shift in TNC or Youngblood but specifically TNO and Old Blood really seem like MG had the confidence of making something truly sad with a series whose FPS debut was rather cartoony and goofy ("FPS debut" being said like this, because we know 3D is not the first Wolf game considering the Apple/stealth stuff).

Not sure if Doom ever had something like this because in Eternal, Doomguy ever having a family is treated as a random photo you find in the Fortress of Doom and Daisy as a whole probably started as a cruel joke in the 90's and nobody at id put much thought into making it dramatic (Unlike the Daisy of John Wick, i suppose).

You also have that recent merch piece with her detachable head.

[the-adventures-of-square-o8]

the adventures of square doom mod

⭐ ⏩⏩⏩️ DOWNLOAD MOD - LINK 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 I'll list some Doom mods that I have played with: Gameplay mods: Argent Beautiful Doom Brutal Doom Cola 3. Combined Arms Death Foretold. Bienvenidos de nuevo a otro Homenaje a los mods de DOOM, una serie en la BTSX, The Adventures of Square, Deathless, Suspended in Dusk. The cult of Doom: la próspera escena mod detrás del clásico de id total de Doom, colorida y con estilo de dibujos animados, The Adventures of Square. El mencionado Adventures of Square se está desarrollando en ZDoom, uno de los source ports más populares, que contiene adiciones obvias como apariencia de. Descargar Doom & Destiny Advanced Mod para Android apk e iphone ios e versións posteriores … isto non é broma, é un paso máis arriba de Doom. Counter Strike [Mod Doom]. Juegos eLoader en. Mar, — Radamanthys. Quien no conoce este juego?, ahora en psp. - DOOM 64 EX. Incluye mods standalone: - Ashes - The Lost Episodes of Doom - D4V x Back to Saturn - Project Osiris -. El segundo es un megawad o episodio de mapas que recrea el famoso primer episodio de Doom Knee Deep in the Dead, pero con un diseño más.

[dac-dot-workshop]

The Cacowards just came out and among all of the writings in it saying that Knee-Deep in Knee-Deep in ZDoom is "played straight but never takes itself seriously" is probably the one that will stick with me for a while, basically saying yeah you don't have to be irony poisoned, you can put 100% of you in a shitpost and not only have something funnier, but also something better, hell also something that is more impressive on any technical level

[wadbot]

KDiP.wad: Knee Deep in Phobos MAP02: nuclear plant by Sniper 109 (2624, -464, 64) Author: Sniper 109 Date: 2009-04-28 Description: This is a remake of doom1 exclusively for doom2 because doom2 has more content then doom1 that is available. it also brings new,bigger,harder levels that when you play through you will feel the same emotions as the first time you played doom.in a addtion there will be a new boss!I already have 2 new weapons RIFLE and Machinegun! This wad is very similar to Knee Deep in Zdoom

[this-has-returned]

Almost done with my second map. Did a few gameplay flow polishes, trying to imagine the mindset of new players with experience in vanilla-style maps.

Mostly stuff that's pretty invisible and won't tamper with the decisions and actions of the player. Even included a few easter eggs specifically found if someone is using speedrunning shortcuts.

I kinda wanna post screenshots of what I got so far but I have a bit of stage fright about posting online, and it's gotten worse with time lol.

The main goal is I want to leverage scripting heavily to create unique experiences and level objectives, but I also don't want to make things so difficult to navigate and resolve as Knee-Deep In ZDoom. I use really expanded scripting to intelligently create a wide number of tiny, bite-sized hints and responses for certain scripted switches and objectives, depending on where the player has been so far and accomplished.

It's also as non-obtrusive as possible and doesn't hold your hand. The general rule is the hints should only come up when the player attempts an action that is missing prerequisites, but the hint should take the bare minimum amount of time to show up, much like keys and locked doors in vanilla. The player should independently problem-solve, but the map should be able to tell when something was misunderstood and also respect the player's time while responding.

It's a REALLY hard balance to strike, because you either take too long to explain or the player has no fucking clue what's going on and will peace out after a few minutes.

Level structure also affects this a LOT. I try to use tree-based mapping where everything you need to complete an objective is found somewhere in the rooms beyond the point where you learn of the objective.

Some maps I've played break this by putting way too much time or distance between goals and tools, or use a lot of looping corridors and rooms, causing the player to get lost really easily by running in circles, literally. So I'm using my experience as a player to inform my map design. Sometimes a shortcut gives the player the wrong idea about the map's completion steps.

I don't really have a lot of people to tell this to, so I'll post more updates here in the future.

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2008): Community is Falling 3

If you are a casual Doom WAD enjoyer, you have probably heard of Samuel Villarreal AKA Kaiser; a man who (with the help of others) created an unofficial PC port of Doom 64 that had additional content known as Doom 64: Absolution. Later in 2008, he did it again, but more streamlined, without the additional stuff the Absolution had.

But we won’t be talking about that port. Today, I have something else to offer.

Br2: Community is Falling 3

Main author(s): Samuel Villarreal (Kaiser)

Release date: March 10th, 2008

Version(s) played: ???

Required port compatibility: ZDoom

Levels: 36

In yet another case of a sequel that I played before the original WAD, we have Community is Falling 3; (probably) another case where you will laugh only if you were an avid user of Doomworld when the events that were used as a foundation of this WAD’s plot happened.

Being complete in over 2.5 years, this WAD made Kaiser never touch ZDoom again. This bad boy squeezes a shit ton of features from the source port it relies on, but, and I’m going to say it now, compared to filth like 007 WAD, it feels rather quaint; less obnoxious if you could say.

Its plot was based on events from 2006, when an unfinished version of Knee-Deep in ZDoom was leaked to the Internet; now dramatized and made more ridiculous than ever.

But... do I consider this MegaWAD funny? Well... why won’t we jump ahead, and surf on some Doom forums.

Quick announcement before that: This will be another unorthodox review from what I usually cook; it is based only on my unfinished, blind playthrough because there are still 12 other 2008 WADs to try (and AC: Valhalla in between these) and I don’t want to waste that much time on such a complicated beast of this WAD. So apologies if I forget about something related to the WAD and for the lack of screenshots.

For a shitpost WAD, CiF 3 looks rather good. Despite being almost nothing but techbases from what I’ve seen, they felt rather distinguishable. The biggest examples are usually the maps that take place in Newdoom and ZDoom forums respectively, with the former ones looking more simple while the latter being overloaded with details.

The music was fine but annoying. Many tracks are the rock ones that sound obnoxious to me; not to mention how LOUD they are. They might fit into the jokey nature of this WAD, but they tend to overestimate their welcome.

Would I call this WAD complicated? Not really. You basically go to one place to talk to someone, then to another place to talk to someone else when you are not fighting.

Sometimes you are in some hub-looking map, where you can buy weapons, inventory items (yes there is an inventory mechanics created by Kaiser before it was properly implemented to ZDoom), ammo, health, and armor.

The items you can use vary from typical armor/health stuff and grenades to the beacon that will allow you to summon friendly marines to help you.

Unfortunately, the farther I went to this WAD, the more obnoxious it has become. Even naming our protagonist at the very beginning was annoying due to the mechanics related to it. Dialogues were sometimes too long without any way to skip all of them at once, there was a time-based mission (oh, my favorite -_-), some of the other missions were annoying as well.

But nothing compares to the mission where you are defending some core and you have to destroy 9 beacons to stop the enemies from constantly summoning. They kept coming no matter how many marines I deployed and some of the beacons were in such obscure places that I had to cheat to actually find them (hey, it was either that, or using the jetpack); and I can’t do both of these things at the same time.

And speaking of jetpack, this is some next-level jank people. Despite knowing how to operate this junk, it feels sluggish and is hard to control.

And yet, despite all of the bullshit, and the boss that disappeared to the ground (probably), I was stubborn enough to get past this mission... and right in the next one the lemming I was supposed to escort ended up stuck in the rock after teleporting and couldn’t get out of it. That was the moment where I said Fuck it, and just stopped. Because it was either this or knowing that it might happen again.

And now... for the moment you all have been waiting for... How funny is this WAD?

the sound of blowing wind

Fuck if I know; I didn’t laugh even once while playing it. The most amusing part of the plot was when the ZDoom forums’ users were portrayed as a bunch of fart-sniffers who were addicted to their godly source port’s features and linedefs. There was also a marine playing Picard YTPMV, and the pink marine (I don’t remember his name anymore) complaining about the ZDoom addicts.

But aside from these, it’s just random nonsense sprayed with F-slurs. This feels childish even by 2008 standards. But still, it was a better effort at trying to make me laugh than the previous Mockaward winners (aside from How Not to be Seen).

The feelings I have towards the difficulty of this WAD are the same as its gameplay – it gets more and more annoying as I play. Props to Kaiser for giving the enemies an intelligence bump when they actually start dodging my attacks but it crosses the line with some of these (like hitscanners for instance).

Not to mention many types of new enemies, including humans drawn in Paint (both melee and projectile ones), bipedal assholes (hurr durr), tiny, annoying drones, and super-fast carts. There are even bosses.

Of course, you get new weapons as well, like a meat cleaver that you can throw at enemies and a machine gun that looks like a party tube.

Aside from at least one bug that I mentioned earlier, I don’t think I encountered more of these. Maybe the glitched-out suits of some marines if that wasn’t intentional.

Community is Falling 3 feels like a WAD of its time; the plot being related to stuff that won’t really be enjoyed by someone who wasn’t a part of it, mostly juvenile humor, mostly annoying music, ridiculous gimmicks and missions, and so on. It might be a technical marvel by 2008 standards, and I played worse, but still, I wouldn’t recommend this WAD.

Since all the WADs from the Bronze League are now reviewed, there is nothing else to do but promote them to the Revenant Awards, with this one going to the Off the Wall category and Diaz going to the completely new category (that I still don’t have a name for) dedicated to the gameplay mods.

Tune in next time, people, as we will be checking out the first of the Eternal’s WADs from the 2008 roster.

Bye!

[lunatic-harness]

knee deep in knee deep in zdoom is fucking amazing but to appreciate it you have to understand doom sourceport limitations and features

[imx-doomer]

ZDOOM - Development has ceased.

As of today (January 7th, 2017), Randi (former ZDoom sourceport developer) has announced the immediate eschewing of the development and maintenance of the widely-used DOOM sourceport ZDoom, and has also mentioned that no further releases of said sourceport will be made.

ZDoom has become quite a solid reference when it comes to DOOM sourceports. It all started 18 years ago actually, of course not in the same level of advanced scripting that we all have witnessed over the years, but nonetheless, for a DOOM sourceport to last this much and to arguably become the most installed DOOM sourceport in this day and age it's not an easy feat.

Without ZDoom we certainly wouldn't have the Brutal Dooms, the Zen Dynamics, the Smooth Dooms, the Samsaras, the Knee-Deep in ZDooms, the Reelisms, the Demonsteeles, and all the cool modern gameplay mods people actively play this year.

ZDoom was also used as base for many other sourceports such as ZDaemon, Odamex (via csDoom), GZDoom (of course), Skulltag and Zandronum (via Skulltag, naturally). So you can't really say ZDoom hasn't had an impact in your DOOM life, especially if you play multiplayer DOOM.

Now, you may be asking: "with the stoppage of the development of ZDoom, does it mean that it is dead?" Hell no!

After all the information I've said previously, I would say that there is no way ZDoom is "dead" or will be "dead" anytime soon. It has ceased from being actively developed, just as any other piece of software, but unlike Windows XP, you can still have it and it will be completely functional for what it was specifically made (and safe from intruders, too!). You can still download and play with ZDoom, it's going nowhere!

If we were to compare this situation with Skulltag's departure, ZDoom is definitely staying around for a good while compared to the ill-fated destiny that the multiplayer sourceport faced back in the day. And boy, was that a mess.

The legacy of ZDoom will still continue thanks to GZDoom and the hot new QZDoom, and of course the most immediate member of the ZDoom family that has MP capatibilites - Zandronum! It will also take some time for modders to transition between ZDoom and the other actively maintained sourceports, so you might get to see a few gameplay mods be released after this that will work fine with the latest stable release of ZDoom.

ZDoom was the very first DOOM sourceport that I downloaded wayyy back when I started playing DOOM, I'm sure I'm not the only one that experienced (and will experience) the same situation.

It's going to take a good damn while until we get to see another sourceport in its place. Take a break, ZDoom. You did a great job.

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette: Revenant Awards 2007

300 REVENANTS AND THE WORLD ENDING PHOENIX – REVENANT AWARDS 2007 EDITION

And so, we once again reached the end of another roster of Doom WADs. And despite personal stuff making me change my breaks between each WAD to not experience burnout (and having more time to play other stuff that is not Doom-related), I would say that this roster was rather good.

Like with the 2006 roster, this ceremony will have three main events for the lack of better words; but instead of the Golden Spider award, it’s Pug-of-Pink one.

Without wasting any more time, let’s look at the first category.

SOLE SURVIVOR – BEST ONE-MAP WAD OF THE YEAR

Here, choosing the winner for the category was closer to being easy rather than hard, even though I feel like the maps here are good at best. The most disappointing map from 2007 was definitely The Dying End; the fact that it is a galore of almost every cheap, difficulty bump on a map based on the original MAP29 is already bad enough, but knowing that it was made by Christopher Lutz, who’s WADs from 2002 and 2003 I really enjoyed, hurts even more.

And as for the other two maps, Songs of the Damned and Outer Darkness, these two can be fun to play, but they don’t really stick out from the other standalone maps I’ve played before. And since one of them needs to win, I say Songs of the Damned wins the award, due to being a Doom II WAD unlike the other map (that is a Doom I WAD) and having no hitscanners on it; and for a Doom WAD/map, that’s very rare.

PUG-OF-PINK – BEST 2-7 MAPS LONG WAD OF THE YEAR

Finding a winner for this award was easier than I thought since one WAD decimated the other three. My memories of both Demons of Problematique and Genesis of Descent are rather muddy at this point but I think these WADs were rather good to play through. As for Sine Die… that was just okayish; still, I would rather play something else.

At this point, it shouldn’t be surprising that Epic wins the award for this category. It might be unpolished in some places but the fact that one of the Eternal’s earlier WADs managed to outclass the other WADs is an achievement on its own. Play this WAD. You won’t be disappointed.

OFF THE WALL – BEST PARTIAL/TOTAL CONVERSION OF THE YEAR

All of these WADs are related due to many enemies from the Monster Resource WAD being used in each of these.

Starting with Knee-Deep in ZDoom, it was a WAD (that I personally think is rather good) filled with useless and/or questionable ideas that it became a joke among the community (I guess); a WAD tarnished by the ambition of the team behind it. I could say the same thing about Ultimate Torment and Torture, with the difference of it being more of a solo project and with pretentious cutscenes.

And so we are left with the winner of this category: Cheogsh. It’s not a perfect map; the catacombs section is horrible and the cutscenes with marine ghost go on, and on, but aside from these, this map is incredible. It’s like something finally snapped in place and didn’t go overboard with ambitiousness. Play this map too; you won’t be disappointed.

OTHER AWARDS

And now for the WADs that won an award by default.

The Platinum Revenant award (10-19 maps) goes to It Only Gets Worse. I completely forget/don’t know what to think about this WAD aside from being funnier than the Mockaward winner from 2006.

The Full Deck of Diamonds award (30-32 maps) goes to Community Chest 3. But don’t have high hopes for this compilation, people. It might have better quality control than CC2 and is less of a mixed bag due to that, but it’s not as memorable as its predecessor.

And the Big Fucking WAD award (at least 33 maps) goes to Wonderful Doom. A perfect choice for someone who wants to replay Ultimate Doom but slightly different; with all of the pros and cons that the original game has.

CONCLUSION

And that’s all for the 2007 roster of Doom WADs. There are still two things related to that year, but I’ll take care of them in the near future. For now…

sigh

I have 007 WAD’s locations to take pictures of. But at least I won’t force myself to play through all of this filth.

Speaking of filth, thank you all for reading, and I’ll see you next time.

Bye!

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2007): Sine Die

Gee, ain’t I lucky? Went from one Doom WAD extreme that I don’t like to another. Ain’t life funny people?

G5: Sine Die

Main author(s): Didy

Release date: October 19th, 2007

Version played: ???

Required port compatibility: Boom

Levels: 2

From the difficulty bullshit to switch-hunting bullshit, we have Sine Die, a WAD created by Didy, who we meet in Cacowards 2005 with their For Whom the Bells Toll runner-up WAD.

Today, we will be looking for three skulls that will destroy whatever demonic presence summoning Hell’s denizens this time.

With this WAD author, I thought their previous WAD was rather good for the second WAD/map they ever created. In this case, though? I will not be as merciful as I was back then. So without any further to do, let’s see what Didy has to offer this time.

Not gonna lie, this WAD looks good. It’s kind of similar in quality to Didy’s previous WAD when we talk about something released in 2007. Lots of details in both maps, although, I prefer the second one; the first one is too brown for my taste.

There is one, new music track in the first map (slightly modified and supposedly from something called Aliens (probably not related to the Xenomorph franchise)) and it’s fine to listen to. At least it’s not stock from Classic Doom like in the second map (which at least it’s not from Doom II).

Like For Whom the Bells Toll, Sine Die is kind of a confusing mess at best. It might actually be worse than the previous WAD, since there at least, there was no unmarked, hidden door required to get the red skull in the first map.

But at least this WAD ends with shooting three skulls at Icon of Sin; don’t worry, you don’t fight it at all.

Sine Die isn’t really hard. It has some bullshit moments once in a while but overall, you won’t really have trouble with this WAD.

And... that’s probably all for Sine Die. It’s just fine. It’s not a terrible WAD but would prefer playing other ones that are 2-7 maps long. It’s kind of a nothing burger, where there isn’t really anything interesting to talk about.

Next on the 2007 roster is Knee-Deep in ZDoom, but honestly, folks, I think I will take an indefinite hiatus because I am experiencing burnout again. I guess after getting the job, you want to experience something more than just constantly playing Doom WADs over, and over again. And there is a shit ton of stuff, games or not, for me to try out.

I’ll see you all next time.

Bye.

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2007): Cheogsh

G2: Cheogsh

Main author(s): Shadowman

Release date: August 2nd, 2007

Version played: ???

Required port compatibility: GZDoom

Levels: 1

And now, for the first partial conversion of the 2007 roster, and, probably, the first real banger of the 2007 roster, we have Cheogsh. Created as a tribute to the author’s passed best friend, in around 1.5 months (counting a break). And while there is no written plot in the textfile, there is some stuff in the map itself talking about fighting the titular hell lord.

I’m running out of stuff to stay, so let’s see what this map has to offer.

Let’s start by saying that this map looks great. While it’s mostly covered in red, black, and brown colors/lightning, the map still manages to look incredible and has many distinctive locations. I don’t know if this is the prettiest-looking map I’ve seen up to this point (ignoring the maps/WADs that were released in the following years), but at worst I would consider it pretty close to that position.

The soundtrack is also great. I don’t know if it is the original track or was taken from other media, but its epicness on every level (even the parts that are calmer) is worth taking a listen to.

Asides from one shitty location to play through, this map isn’t really complex. Now let me tell you what you do on this map (I would warn you about spoilers but this is a 15-year-old map; bite me).

You start on the beach shores near some ruins. As you explore them, you notice a temple. You go in, you kill doormen, and you use teleporter.

You suddenly end up in a cage with fellow marines. You break out, and after a while, you end up in some kind of demonic community area with a tavern, pool, huts, etc. As you go around doing shenanigans, you eventually end up in the catacombs. These are the worst part of Cheogsh; a fucking labyrinth full of ghosts and skeletons (if you know what I mean) that has barely enough light and you can’t even see the layout on the map. I legitimately hate this area.

Anyway, after dealing with that filth, you finally get the yellow key which you use to get the blue key. Doing this takes you to some human house (based on and created by the passed friend of the author’s) to grab the hidden BFG.

With BFG in your hands, you go back and through the blue door to the underground cavern where you find the red key. With this key, you get access to Cheogsh pentagram. This thing must be turned off by pressing five switches, each dedicated to one beating heart that powers the demon lord. You do that, and you are finally allowed to fight the titular demon. After turning him into mush, you go back to the shore to notice that the sky is now blue. The corruption has been lifted. You won.

Now changing the subject, aside from catacombs, there is another thing in Cheogsh that I don’t like (although, not on such a magnitude) – the unskippable cutscenes. Not the ones where Cheogsh talks (where Korax’s voice lines are used), but the ones where are forced to stop and listen to some ramblings (with some broken English) either from you or Casper the rambling marine. Sure, it’s not as horrible as 007 WAD, and it happens only three times, but I honestly believe there should’ve been a skip button to not waste everyone’s time.

Cheogsh isn’t exactly a hard map. It suffers from the hard pistol beginning that every map has, where you have nothing but a pea shooter, but it gets easier and it overall ends in-between on the difficulty scale. I can at least say it’s harder than Genesis of Descent and it rarely has hitscanners.

What doesn’t make this map a complete pushover is the new enemies. These were originally introduced in Knee-Deep in ZDoom, a WAD released a few months before Cheogsh. And since that WAD also won a Cacoward in the same year as this map, try not to act surprised when I’ll be talking about these mofos again when I get to KDiZD:

Starting with three, new Imp variants – Howler, Soul Harvester, and Nightmare. The first one is basically if Class 2 imp from STRAIN was more unique. In that case, we still have a fast Imp-like enemy that functions as a weaker Arachnotron but is now slightly tougher than a decade ago.

Meanwhile, Soul Harvester is like a smaller cousin of Revenant, in that he shoots homing projectiles. These are much harder to dodge (they will usually turn around and still hit you almost all the time), but at least they can only scratch you... I guess?

Nightmares... just suck. They act like ZDoom stealth enemies, you can only hit them when they attack you, and as soon as you spot them, you almost always get hit... hard. At least they appear in the catacombs section and can be seen with night goggles.

From 2002’s Nimrod, we have Mauler, the Pinky variant that for some reason can launch at you like a freaking Lost Soul. At least it has a better design and is still as tough as the regular Pinky.

The Hell Nobility also earned two additional variants – Satyr and Hell Warrior. The former runs around after snorting a line of coke trying to rip you apart. Thankfully, he’s melee-only.

The latter one comes from 2004’s ZDCMP1, but now it has a lion head and his shield can shoot projectiles too (I don’t remember him doing that in the original project).

We can’t forget about the titular Cheogsh, of course. Dressed as the bruiser demon, he can fire a single projectile, a volley of these, and a barrage of floor fire. Fighting him isn’t really hard, just annoying since he’s three times tougher than Cyberdemon and the last attack makes him teleport.

I haven’t encountered bugs in this map, but the Doomwiki article mentions how the blue key has a chance to appear under the platform it lies on.

Cheogsh might have the baffling catacombs area, and some of its cutscenes outstay their welcome, but it is still a great map worth checking out.

I can only hope that other single map WADs/partial and total conversions keep up the fun factor this map has.

See you next time.

Bye!