S.U.P.E.R Natural: Demo

S.U.P.E.R Natural

Everybody has a story. Sometimes, these stories are part of a larger whole, a piece of history in the making. Sometimes, we even remember the people's names, and what they did. Perhaps these are the people who lived life to the fullest. Perhaps they will be the only ones who have maintained a purpose even after they are gone.

But regardless, everybody has a story, as simple as it may be. Inside each larger one there are countless smaller ones waiting to be told. Sometimes these stories have a bigger impact than anyone will know. But sometimes, just sometimes, regardless of what happens, a story will make no change.
Their story is not important. It is nothing at all.

Sometimes, our stories have no meaning.
And sometimes, our stories mean something to us, and us alone.

Sylvius Leonard left his home, with no story, and with no intention of making one.
So tell me again, how does his story go?



So I've been developing this for a year and a half over on the ZDoom forums with video teasers and other weird cryptic posts, but recently I released a demo for it, and now I'm just looking for more feedback from you guys. But first of all, an introduction.

Inspired by the likes of TCotD:A, RTC-3057, and Rain, S.U.P.E.R Natural is a free roam single hub, designed to be full of survival horror elements, for GZDoom. Horror isn't the easiest thing to make, and even harder in Doom, so I've focused more on the atmosphere of the mod rather than trying to make you scared. Hey, it might work anyway, but that really depends on the player.

Like most games of the same kind, you have no weapons. Your only way of survival is running and hiding, or maybe, if you're lucky, being a bit clever with your surrounding environments. The small number of enemies you face are (usually) randomly generated, and will attempt to kill you in just a few hits. Health is regenerating, as enemies are technically infinite too. Just from this paragraph, you can probably tell if this mod is something you would enjoy, considering this is a Doom forum. If you're not really a fan of these things or the genre in general, you can try it out anyway, if you feel like it.

The hub is planned to be 20+ maps, with the demo having 5 (6???) areas accessible. In the demo, you play an introductory section of the mod, taking you through a linear path of nonlinear maps to finish a small story segment. At the end of the introduction, you would be taken into the main part of the game, where you can choose to go anywhere, do anything, and trust anyone.

S.U.P.E.R Natural has a story to follow, with only a bit of it seen in the demo. If anything, the introduction just hints to what you can expect from the full game, introducing many of the supernatural entities you may or may not be familiar with already. It's set in the same universe as Winter's Fury, and in fact acts as a prequel to the events at Mount Baphomet, all occurring after the events of Doom 2.

Over the development of S.U.P.E.R Natural I came up with some story ideas I wanted to put into place, which combined with my hate for some of the earlier levels in Winter's Fury, caused me to do the big update to it last November. If you haven't played that update and are interested, you can get it from the thread here.

Anyway, like I halfheartedly indicated in the paragraphs of text at the start, I can't tell you any story from this mod. It's up to you to create your own story depending on what you do, where you go, and who you trust. What this means is that the mod has multiple endings, so three cheers for replay value. Obviously, you can't really do much of this in the demo intro, so you'll have to wait a bit for this.



So, that's all well and good, but much like any other mod I make, there are some problems:

- This mod is big. File size big. Much like Winter's Fury, I've taken full advantage of some of the features GZDoom gives you and that has caused a radical increase of file size. The UDMF format maps are pretty large too, surprisingly. Regardless, the ZIP file itself is almost 100MB, so make sure to download it knowing it can knock a bit off your monthly limit. I should add that the ridiculous file size isn't because of ludicrous mp3 additions (there's only, like, two pieces of music), but because of other crucial aspects of the mod. I apologize in advance.

- This mod is big. Map size big. Which means once again, your frame rate will hurt sometimes, regardless of how good your system is. If you could comfortably play Winter's Fury (30+ FPS most of the time) then you should be able to play this. I'm working on some other ways to improve frame rate, but they aren't in the demo (you can turn off reflective flats though, because those eat up so much frames it isn't funny).

- This is a mod based on the aspects of Horror. If you don't like the genre, you should play it anyway, and tell me what you think. I'm always open to suggestions and improvement, even though I'm horribly lazy and probably won't change anything but texture misalignments. You never know though! To emphasize further, this is survival horror, with less focus on the horror, and more on atmosphere. You don't get any guns and have regenerating health, so I don't really blame you if that puts you off.

- The mod is dark. Well, not really. Make sure to edit your brightness settings accordingly, there's even a screen before you start playing which helps you do just that. Try Sector Light Mode 'Bright' and then mess with gamma level for some good results, but it may not be the same on all your monitors.


And I can't think of anything else to add. The download is below. Note that you need the latest development version of GZDoom to play.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qzxprhsa8579jol/S.U.P.E.R%20Natural%20Demo.zip?dl=0

Alright, don't forget to tell me what you think of the mod after you've played. Or before you've played. Good luck.



Screenshots below. They might be a bit dark on some monitors. Sorry.

https://i.imgur.com/Nnd3QgK.png
https://i.imgur.com/uiSUKI3.png
https://i.imgur.com/KvXnh1S.png
https://i.imgur.com/Uu7FLSN.png
https://i.imgur.com/3DqtpKN.png
https://i.imgur.com/6gG8Zo2.png
https://i.imgur.com/pA1Oetl.png
https://i.imgur.com/GJawdco.png

Hooray, Doomworld thread!
Obliged to repeat what I've said about a million times already on ZDF, that I really can't wait to play this. Amazing looking stuff.

Yes, about time you made a thread for this over here. I have been keeping up to date every now and then when I access the ZDoom boards. It definitely needed some more attention. I will give it a try but I will not be able to fully experience it at this time, not until I can get some money to upgrade my desktop. Good luck though.

man how do you do that. those shots blow me away

Well, color me intrigued. I'm a vocal naysayer when it comes to survival horror in Doom, but that you acknowledge the genre is inherently tricky as well as the divisive potential of features like regeneration and infinite enemies gives me confidence you may just have enough intuition to make this work where so many others have failed. Nice pitch, thumbs up for that alone.

Plus, preeeetty graphics. :)

Springy said:

I will give it a try but I will not be able to fully experience it at this time, not until I can get some money to upgrade my desktop.

Yeah, for me, this wad is definitely going on my "things to try when I have a better computer" list. I only got through the first few maps of Winter's Fury before I gave up due to excessive frame drops, and this sounds like it will be the same. Sure looks great though!

cool stuff! Winter's Fury was very inspiring visually. I still drift through in -nomo on occasion, just to ooh and aah at some tasty architecture. I'll be looking forward to perusing this as well.

I remember that "Smile" video, that you posted on zdoom forums and, uh, I don't want to play this. I don't like screamers and jump scares, and it looks like there's plenty of them. Still, I gave it a try and stopped in part where fire was extinguished. I'd better wait for someone to record a playthrough for this, heh.

...oh god, I remember how I met creeper and yurei for the first time. Fuck it.

Gave it a try and it was wonderful overall. Legitemately spooky (not ghoul forest tier bullshit) because of pretty immersive experience (which does not happen in Doom often). Detailing is top notch and there a few especially tasty visual effects (dat holographic map). Didn't play through it all because I got killed but now I'm eagerly waiting or the full version.

There're only two things I can complain about:
- Brightness. Changing brightness mode does not help much so I had to tune gamma correction (which I'm not a fan of) but only indoors because outdoors everything was visible without gamma correction.
- One very out of place monster. It kinda ruined atmosphere for me. It might be a good "cameo" but I don't think it belongs here.

xnv said:

One very out of place monster. It kinda ruined atmosphere for me. It might be a good "cameo" but I don't think it belongs here.

I know what this is without playing it XD
I remember making myself look pretty stupid on ZDF over that...

Fucking hell, those screenshots look superb!

*Sigh*

Don't have time currently to play Doom maps. But I will find it. For this. Winter's Fury was so so good.

Well, I finished the demo. There was no such unexpectable things as I thought. But gameplay... I didn't get any gameplay experience. Enemies in game are not making game scarier or more atmospheric, they are just annoying, they push me away from exploring. Seriously, I don't remember any good survival horrors without weapons and puzzles. Strong side of games like Penumbra and Amnesia are quests and puzzles, but I don't remember anything like that in this wad. Strong side of games like Resident Evil is tight ammo control and puzzles. And I think that it would be so much more awesome, if you add some simple weapons like hatchet, pistol and shotgun. Adding more puzzles would be amazing too. Oh, it's just my opinion, of course, it's not supposed to be objective.

Everything else is just awesome.

Btw, why can't I return to previous areas? Didn't I have to control the main character?

Those screenshots are amazing, They show how far the doom engine has been pushed graphically since its start in the 90's. I wish i could play this tough...
my good gfx card fried itself recently... :/

Has this continued? This is so massive it's unplayable on my laptop but only thing I can do is just be amazed by the all the detail and atmosphere! And the scale of the maps is just mindblowing.

11 hours ago, Jaska said:

Has this continued? This is so massive it's unplayable on my laptop but only thing I can do is just be amazed by the all the detail and atmosphere! And the scale of the maps is just mindblowing.

Agreed! I hope that this will be finished/revived as from what I remember playing, it had a lot of potential and felt like a unique and often terrifying experience!

On 1/4/2020 at 8:41 PM, Jaska said:

Has this continued? This is so massive it's unplayable on my laptop but only thing I can do is just be amazed by the all the detail and atmosphere! And the scale of the maps is just mindblowing.

Perhaps it would've been better to PM the guy making it, instead of bumping a 5 year old topic.

But I agree, from what I can see in the screenshots, it certainly looks.. well, Super.

Unfortunately it won't run on GZDoom at the moment.

I'll see if a bug report can solve this Just a problem with my autoload actually.. :P

Kinda glad this thread got bumped. Wouldn't have ever heard of it otherwise. Got it running just fine and this stuff is beautiful. Really looking forward to diving into all this.

Giving it a play right now.

Edit: I very much enjoyed every aspect of it, I sure hope this is still being worked on.

Ah, this only recently got bumped on ZDoom forums as well. What's going on right now, did the search term supernatural go up in popularity or something?

That aside, the mod unfortunately had some problems around 2016/7 where the GZDoom engine started making some big changes I'd never thought we'd see. The mod still works, but a lot of the code in it is really hacky and was only bound to get worse as the mod increased in size. The introduction of ZScript inspired a big rewrite of many of the features along with other new additions such as eternity style portals. This takes a long time. It's still being worked on, but I will be honest and tell you to not hold your breath for the time being. I've been working on another project that's nearly finished lately so I hope that can tide over the eternal wait for this. 

I'm glad you all enjoyed the demo. I really hope you all get to play the final version one day.

I'm so glad you managed to get back to us on this and are planning on, at some point, resuming this mod after you've been doing other things.

As for "Eternal Wait", well.. I'm sure it won't be as long as we've been waiting for RTC-3057.

    I can run it only repacking .zip w/o folder inside (gzdoom 4.10)

What a beautiful game! I never play such horror Doom mod before! It is absolutely outstanding! I wish this mod will be a completed game somehow.