Wanted: "modern style" MegaWADs that are not mods at the same time

Hi there,

I am in a stuck situation: On the one hand, I love old-fashioned MegaWADs like Icarus, Memento Mori and the likes. Especially, because they only change the maps, add some new music and maybe a few textures, but leave the overall "feel" of the game untouched - it's all still Doom. On the other hand, I fell in love with what may be considered "modern style" mapping with a lot of detail and complex maps with a variety of settings and moods.

However, there is one thing that I can't stand about most MegaWADs that fall into the latter category: Often, they do not only change the maps and the music, but also the palette or some monster sprites or change the behaviour of some weapons via dehacked or whatever.

Can anyone recommend some MegaWAD with "modern style" mapping that leaves any other aspect of the game untouched? I don't want new weapons, new enemies or pinkies that don't fade to gray in the distance - I got used to that too much. I want some new beautiful maps, maybe some new music and at most some new textures - that's it. Regarding source port compatibility, it would be nice if it could run in Crispy Doom, but that's not a criterion for exclusion. Boom/MBF/PrBoom+ compatibility will be fine, but nothig beyond that, please.

Any recommendations?

Thanks!

 - Fabian

Doom 2, Final Doom, and Ultimate Doom

Speed of Doom

Unholy Realms

Hellbound

Going Down  

Japanese Community Project

Sunlust*

Plutonia 2

TNT: Revilution 

Concerned + Thy Flesh Turned into a Draft Excluder [alternatively Return to Hadron e1 and e2, and e3 when it comes out (spiritual overhauls of Concerned) + the latter]

No End In Sight

Some custom bosses can be found among those, but apart from that monsters are stock. 

*Has palette changes, but those are incidental, and I don't feel like omitting it. 

54 minutes ago, fabian said:

but also the palette or some monster sprites or change the behaviour of some weapons via dehacked or whatever.

What is our opinion on the BTSX wads. They have custom color palette, but no monster changes and they even run on vanilla.

Also there is Valiant: Vaccinated Edition (basically Valiant but without the custom monsters)

Not sure what you've played, but I thought of these right away:

Atonement (although work in progress) - vanilla

Good Morning Phobos -complevel 9 

The Nova series (II is linked; I've never played the original; III is in progress, I think) - limit-removing

Akeldama, whenever that gets finished, seems to fit the bill too.

Thank you very much for the suggestions so far! I think I'll give "Valiant: Vaccinated Edition" a first try, this sounds promising as I have already read much good about this WAD but was so far turned off by its monster and weapon modifications.

3 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

What is our opinion on the BTSX wads.

I didn't give negative examples on purpose, but this would be a prime one. BTSX has so wonderful maps and I could even live with their color modifications (actually, I like this "light blue with grass green" color scheme quite much), but I can't stand the fact that it basically includes duplicates of all IWAD assets converted to the new palette.

Oh, one thing I forgot to say: I have a solid aversion against slaughter maps, so these are out of question.

3 hours ago, fabian said:

I didn't give negative examples on purpose, but this would be a prime one. BTSX has so wonderful maps and I could even live with their color modifications (actually, I like this "light blue with grass green" color scheme quite much), but I can't stand the fact that it basically includes duplicates of all IWAD assets converted to the new palette.

BTSX's palette modifications were not possible without remapping the sprites to match it. I'm not sure what else to say to this. I guess you could delete the palette-remapped sprites from the wad and enjoy it instead with random color sparkles everywhere, if it's a problem.

Yeah, was gonna say -- that's a really weird line in the sand to draw. It's an implementation detail that's invisible to the end user -- it's like saying "I don't like this wad because it uses TEXTURE2 instead of TEXTURE1" or thereabouts.

23 minutes ago, Xaser said:

It's an implementation detail that's invisible to the end user

Call it a culture clash? Most people in the Doom modding community have no problem with redistributing modified IWAD graphics. However I can easily see how duplicating a majority of the proprietarily licensed doom2.wad would bother people who care about copyright as much as you have to when you package software for Debian :).

(Apologies to Fabian if this misrepresents his position)

Valiant: Vaccinated Edition still changes the darkest four colors in the red range to fade to black properly (which is fairly common practice).

28 minutes ago, RjY said:

Call it a culture clash? Most people in the Doom modding community have no problem with redistributing modified IWAD graphics. However I can easily see how duplicating a majority of the proprietarily licensed doom2.wad would bother people who care about copyright as much as you have to when you package software for Debian :).

Except it's not a copyright problem in this case. The Doom EULA expressly allows this as long as the PWAD still functionally requires Doom2, which it does.

Super Mayhem 17 is good fun, but it doesn't use Doom-like textures and primarily uses vibrant textures from the Super Mario series. There's a lot of variety in atmosphere in that mapset. The rules for the project keeps heavy slaughter away (no more than 256 things), but there are encounters of a lighter nature sprinkled about. Maps are in Boom format and uses a new color palette.

Doomer Board Project wads isn't quite megawad territory in terms of individual releases, but all nine wads together makes it more than 32 maps. Each release focuses on specific texture/atmosphere usage and they make fun levels out of it. I recommend DBP3: Forest Swords due to its forest biome theme and caves. Maps are limit-removing and does not change the color palette. I'm not sure if the other DBPs have palette changes or not.

Has anybody recommended going down or hellbound?

Edit: somebody has, my bad. I second the recommendation tho I really like both wads.

I think this might work for you. Vanilla assets, textures and gameplay (a little harder than the original). Combination of old and new style mapping and new music. 32 maps :)

Think Reverie and Jenesis were only new textures and music? I haven't played them yet (I played an earlier version of Jenesis when it was only episode 1).

13 hours ago, fabian said:

However, there is one thing that I can't stand about most MegaWADs that fall into the latter category: Often, they do not only change the maps and the music, but also the palette or some monster sprites or change the behaviour of some weapons via dehacked or whatever.

 

Why not just load the offending .wad in Slade and delete the stuff you don't like? Problem solved, surely?

I remember stripping out the garbage sprite replacements in Hell to Pay so it would be more recognizably Doom-y and enjoy the levels more.

2 hours ago, NiGHTMARE said:

Why not just load the offending .wad in Slade and delete the stuff you don't like? Problem solved, surely?

Because the wad itself would be explicitly designed around that altered content. If the wad alters the behavior of weapons/enemies, removing those alterations immediately leaves the wad imbalanced, and in some cases could end up breaking level behavior/progression.

Also y'know, asking a player to manually remove content they don't like* is so unnecessary, compared to simply finding and playing wads that have been made for vanilla gameplay/visuals.

* This is different from a player actively making the decision to do that for themself, of course

I was pointing out that players can choose do this for themselves, not suggesting that .wad authors tell players to do it. After all, countless players choose to play with weapon and/or monster mods, which is also going to drastically alter the gameplay. Choosing to reinstate vanilla weapons and monsters appearance and behavior is really no different to those, and in many cases is actually going to affect gameplay less.

If you refuse to pay a level set just because of some altered content in the .wad, you're going to miss out on some truly excellent levels.

26 minutes ago, NiGHTMARE said:

I was actually pointing out that players can choose do this for themselves, not suggesting that .wad authors tell players to do it.

Right, I know you weren't suggesting the latter, but I think you're missing the point. Suggesting that players can remove those gameplay modifications from wads, is a suggestion that doesn't fit with the spirit of the thread: Wads that make full use of "modern" detailing/features/techniques/etc, that are designed specifically for vanilla assets and for unaltered gameplay.

In the same way that a player may prefer to play maps with specific gameplay mods enabled: If a player isn't interested in playing certain mapsets because of altered content, then they aren't interested. That's their preference, it's as simple as that.

Once the game is in the hands of the player it becomes their game now.

Along the same lines of rdwpa's suggestions (same structure), and what source ports you can use for each:

NOVA: The Birth (Crispy)

Moonblood (PRBoom+ cl9, custom final boss though)

Hadephobia (PRBoom+ cl9)

The Journey (Crispy)

THT: Threnody ( PRBoom+ cl9)

Doom 2 Reloaded (Crispy)

Baculus (Crispy, still RC1 but it's fully playable as far as I know)

Plutonia Revisited CP (Crispy, plutonia.wad)

Heroes' Tales (Crispy, tnt.wad)

Wish I knew other UDoom megawads that aren't plain old-school or too classic, or simply single episodes, perhaps Base Ganymede but I can't tell how it plays. 

@Lila Feuer Jenesis indeed includes one extra enemy that barely affects the gameplay, you won't even register this dude outside of a couple instances maybe. There's also a monstrosity of a final boss. Other than that, I think it suits what Fabian is looking for.

2 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

perhaps Base Ganymede but I can't tell how it plays.

Plays like harder Doom 1, with very restrictive pickups on UV.