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soner du

ROSS : my little FreeDOOM-based packages

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I've (somewhat) completed a little personal project : ready-to-play packages containing open-source data (FreeDOOM) and software (Chocolate DOOM), and a selection of classic WADs.

Those packages are less than 32MB (unzipped) and include a simple GUI, basically an exe which launches a .BAT menu.

There's also a WIP Blasphemer version.

 

URL https://osr-vf.itch.io/ross

and https://osr-vf.itch.io/freethinker (WIP Blasphemer)

(old Google Site removed)

 

All three packages include :

  • Chocolate Doom / Heretic
  • Random WAD generation thanks to SLIGE + ZenNode (SLIGE + dm2conv + BSP for Blasphemer)

 

First package, "ROSS - ultimate revelation", include :

  • Freedoom1 data + SLIGE maps
  • Two full megaWADs Switcheroom and Eternal Torture
  • Two shorter WADs : Crusades and UAC_DEAD

 

Second package, "ROSS - inferno earth", include :

  • FreeDOOM2 data + SLIGE maps
  • Two full megaWAD : DemonFear and Zone 300
  • Two shorter WADs : Null Space and Nostromo's Run

 

Third (WIP) package, "Freethinker - Shade of the Wyrm Tamers"

  • Blasphemer data + SLIGE maps
  • Two "full" megaWADs (3 episodes) : Unbeliever and HUMP mini
  • Two episode WADs : Shadowcaster (E5) and Malice (E1)
Edited by soner du : Freethinker updated 31/05/2023

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Self-Asked Questions :

 

Why have I done that ?

- Just because I wanted to spread love for (Free)DOOM all over the planet, and like to have a minimal (Free)DOOM on my USB key.

 

Why this choice of WADs ?

- Well, because I wanted vanilla and small-size (arbitrarily under 32 MB) stuff, and I actually love the WADs I've chosen.

 

Will the 2 packages change over time ?

- Yes, I'll probably follow the next ChocoDOOM and FreeDOOM versions. Maybe change the PWADs someday, or include some little cool tools (like adding The Populator into the random WAD generation process). Maybe update the IWAD when I'm skilled (intermission screens, title screen...).

 

Will there be other packages ?

- Probably not.

Edited by soner du

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1 hour ago, cambreaKer said:

why use slige, when you can use oblige?

 

Oblige does not create Vanilla WADs.

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I think it's a nice idea to have a library of PWADs to be played with Freed∞m, especially if those have themes that fit well with Freed∞m's art.

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I play most PWADs with FreeDOOM and everything looks good ;)

 

Except in UAC_DEAD, the evil(ish) mega-corporation seems to hesitate between two names : UAC or AGM ?

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A while ago I played a number of PWADs with Freed∞m and I was somewhat not quite comfortable if there was edited art from the original Doom but maybe it's just me. Perhaps I just wanted levels with different theme that would be more about aliens than infernal dimensions.

 

Anyway, I do believe that PWADs that focus on a more sci-fi theme, or generally themes that are different from Doom's default texture packs, are more interesting to play with Freed∞m.

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On 6/17/2019 at 3:58 PM, soner du said:

 

Oblige does not create Vanilla WADs.

I didn't know there is a fork of Oblige that creates vanilla wads. Interesting!

 

On a side note, why chocolate-doom? Why not crispy-doom? With Crispy-doom you can also play Freedoom phase 1 and phase 2 original campaing and almost all the wads out there, they are, practically, all for a limit-removing port. I really like your idea of a bundle to spread the love, and also, this serves as a good introduction to Doom and the modding community.

 

EDIT: I must be living under a rock, somehow, because i played a lot of Freedoom without knowing it is now vanilla compatible. Although that, i thinks its better to use crispy-doom for the limit removing issue almost all wads have by now. If you put a little how to add mods into the package, with choco, almost none of the wads will work because of the chocolate vanilla limits

Edited by P41R47

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12 hours ago, P41R47 said:

I didn't know there is a fork of Oblige that creates vanilla wads. Interesting!

 

On a side note, why chocolate-doom? Why not crispy-doom? With Crispy-doom you can also play Freedoom phase 1 and phase 2 original campaing and almost all the wads out there, they are, practically, all for a limit-removing port. I really like your idea of a bundle to spread the love, and also, this serves as a good introduction to Doom and the modding community.

 

EDIT: I must be living under a rock, somehow, because i played a lot of Freedoom without knowing it is now vanilla compatible. Although that, i thinks its better to use crispy-doom for the limit removing issue almost all wads have by now. If you put a little how to add mods into the package, with choco, almost none of the wads will work because of the chocolate vanilla limits

 

SLIGE is a kind of ancestor to OBLIGE, not the other way around.

 

I've hesitated between Crispy and Choco, but finally I've chosen Choco because I was aiming for the most authentic old-school feel and smallest size. I had to make a choice... If I wanted comptatibility with most recent WADs, I would have chosen GZDoom...

 

Being vanilla-compatible is a goal for FreeDoom, but AFAIK it's still not the case today. In my packages I'm not using FreeDoom maps, only FreeDoom assets ; the maps are SLIGE-generated.

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15 hours ago, soner du said:

 

SLIGE is a kind of ancestor to OBLIGE, not the other way around.

 

I've hesitated between Crispy and Choco, but finally I've chosen Choco because I was aiming for the most authentic old-school feel and smallest size. I had to make a choice... If I wanted comptatibility with most recent WADs, I would have chosen GZDoom...

 

Being vanilla-compatible is a goal for FreeDoom, but AFAIK it's still not the case today. In my packages I'm not using FreeDoom maps, only FreeDoom assets ; the maps are SLIGE-generated.

Crispy offers the same authentic old-school experience as chocolate doom, but its limit removing. The few extras that crispy add are toggleable in the option menu, and just aestethics things. Also, you don't need to worry for the size, Crispy, in zip, is just 200 kb bigger than Chocolate. But there are things you can delete for your pack, like the crispy heretic, hexen and strife .exes and save like 3MB of decompressed space.

I know that you are using Freedom as an assets pack, but its just strange that you don't offer the possibility to play Freedoom orignal campaings. There is a lot of effort put in those maps and is a shame that they all go to waste. They are pretty good.

The SLIDGE generated maps could be offered as an extra. I played ten maps, and eight of them were a variant of the first level. It could put off potential players as this generated maps are substantially lacking in the detail aspect and in the gameplay department.


I wouldn't have chosen GZDoom either, even with the setting to purist level, the experience isn't too''vanilla''.

 

As for me, i think that Crispy is the way-to-go to experience te Doom world as it is now. It offers the vanilla experience and the possibility to play new (not Boom compatible or ZDoom compatible) mods. For instance, i am playing ''STRUGGLE: Antaresian Legacy'' for Doom 2, a 2018 Cacoward winner, and ''No End in Sight'' for Ultimate Doom, a 2017 Cacoward winner with Crispy Doom. And they are totally old-school, albeit limit-removing.


Its your choice, i just suggest Crispy as a way to introduce new players to the classicl feel, with a taste of the modern standars, and as an viewpoint on how the doom world is today.

EDIT: Or also, DOOMRETRO, it offers the same as Crispy, but is limit removin and boom compatible. It can play Eviternity! On thf the finest new mapsets of today in all the old-school glory.

Edited by P41R47

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I've not updated my packages with the newer Freedom IWADs (from 0.11.3 to 0.12.1) because, for some reason (the newer SKY4 textures ?), the freedoom1.wad is now a few MB bigger. I can not more keep my packages under 32MB unzipped, as advertised...

 

I'll probably update my packages with the full Freedoom IWAD (including the maps, as they're fully vanilla now), and put bigger PWADs compared to the small-sized ones I've included previously (Dmonfear, Zone 300...). I'll try to keep a 64MB limit this time.

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1 hour ago, soner du said:

I've not updated my packages with the newer Freedom IWADs (from 0.11.3 to 0.12.1) because, for some reason (the newer SKY4 textures ?), the freedoom1.wad is now a few MB bigger. I can not more keep my packages under 32MB unzipped, as advertised...

 

I'll probably update my packages with the full Freedoom IWAD (including the maps, as they're fully vanilla now), and put bigger PWADs compared to the small-sized ones I've included previously (Dmonfear, Zone 300...). I'll try to keep a 64MB limit this time.

I would vote to keep Demonfear included, personally. It's a very smooth and satisfying little Megawad, and showcases an elegant simplicity and high entertainment value.

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Have you considered making custom builds of the IWADs? There are some extra textures in the default build which are likely not used in any of the PWADs that you provide anyway (like the AquaTex set), but still take up space.

 

Also perhaps you'd add the Nukeptyle/Lavamander boss? (it is my understanding that it kind of went in a limbo in the main branch) and maybe some other alternate variations of certain sprites and stuff that are lying around?

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Currently working on a third package, I'll probably call it "ROSS - Cult of the Wyrm", "Ross - Schism" or something.

Based on BLASPHEMER, all-vanilla (SLIGE + dm2conv), some vanilla PWAD (UnBeliever at least...)...

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On 2/18/2021 at 5:20 PM, soner du said:

Currently working on a third package, I'll probably call it "ROSS - Cult of the Wyrm", "Ross - Schism" or something.

Based on BLASPHEMER, all-vanilla (SLIGE + dm2conv), some vanilla PWAD (UnBeliever at least...)...

Looking forward to this. If i recall, i did cover your work for the Doom Wadazine last year :)

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I love the idea of this. It looks like a quick and easy way to run doom on the go using something like a flashdrive. I dont travel a lot but this could be useful for something. Could also be great for newer doomers to introduce them to sourceports and pwads. I might try it out some time later. :)

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ROSS has been unavailable for a few months.... I had accidentally erased one of the file on the Google Drive it was previously hosted...

 

Now the files are back online, hosted on itch.io, there : https://osr-vf.itch.io/ross

(and if you absolutely want to use Google, everything is on https://sites.google.com/view/ultimate-ROSS/accueil)

 

Also, the itch.io downloads are now 100% compatible with the itch.io client ! (.itch.toml manifest files were previously missing)

 

And I'll work again on a third package devoted to Heretic Blasphemer, called "Schism".

Everythings looks OK, except the SDL2.dll in the latest chocolate heretic is apparently detected as a virus ? (or something like that)

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On 4/20/2022 at 12:06 PM, soner du said:

ROSS has been unavailable for a few months.... I had accidentally erased one of the file on the Google Drive it was previously hosted...

 

Now the files are back online, hosted on itch.io, there : https://osr-vf.itch.io/ross

(and if you absolutely want to use Google, everything is on https://sites.google.com/view/ultimate-ROSS/accueil)

 

Also, the itch.io downloads are now 100% compatible with the itch.io client ! (.itch.toml manifest files were previously missing)

 

And I'll work again on a third package devoted to Heretic Blasphemer, called "Schism".

Everythings looks OK, except the SDL2.dll in the latest chocolate heretic is apparently detected as a virus ? (or something like that)

Many thanks for this. I tried this out and it says what it does on the tin - It brings you a easy-to-use Doom-like experience.

It should be on the Wiki and it will be, in time. So thanks for linking these :)

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On 4/20/2022 at 12:06 PM, soner du said:

And I'll work again on a third package devoted to Heretic Blasphemer, called "Schism".

Everythings looks OK, except the SDL2.dll in the latest chocolate heretic is apparently detected as a virus ? (or something like that)

 

It's almost finished, I'm still playtesting when I have time...

 

For WADs I've chosen "Unbeliever" and "HUMP mini" for megaWADs (3 episodes each), and "Valley of Saints" and "The Crypts" for single-map WADs.

The IWAD is the DM version of Blasphemer (maps not actually played in the ROSS:Schism package).

 

For random WAD generation, I'm using SLIGE (with " -levels 43" options, which actually create 47 levels), then dm2conv (for Doom2 => Heretic conversion, it creates E1M1-9 E2M1-9 E3M1-9 E4M1-9 E5M1-8 E6M1-3 but not E5M9 for some reason, so if you warp to E5M9 it's a DM level), then BSP51 (ZenNode isn't Heretic-compatible).

This produces decent (though somewhat unbalanced) 5-episode megaWADs.

 

I hesitate keeping the name "Schism" because I've discovered there's a PWAD already named like that.

But the full name is actually "ROSS - Schism of the Wyrm" so I'll probably keep it.

Edited by soner du

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23 hours ago, soner du said:

Hey, I've found a good, original name for the medieval ROSS : FREETHINKER !

Any plans to expand this even more? I know Steam allows a fully free game to be there.

 

With Oblige however, maybe there is legal cheese.

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I'm not that ambitious !

 

I'm not using Oblige but SLIGE(+dm2conv) ; I may use Obsidian in the future but Vanilla Heretic WAD generation is not offered for the moment.

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On 6/7/2022 at 1:33 PM, soner du said:

Freethinker is out !

(but still a work-in-progress)

https://osr-vf.itch.io/freethinker

 

Freethinker updated :

  • Blasphemer IWAD updated from v0.17 to v0.18
  • single-map WADs (Valley of Saints and The Crypts) replaced by full episodes (Shadowcaster and Malice)

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Nice, congrats on the release!

 

Would be cool to have a DOS-based binary to run this as well. A while ago I tried HeXetic to run vanilla Blasphemer, but it crashed after a few minutes into E1M1.

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"Vanilla" Blasphemer IWAD requires a limit-removing port...

The Deathmatch variant is truely vanilla (AFAIK), though.

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On 6/3/2022 at 7:06 AM, soner du said:

I'm not that ambitious !

 

I'm not using Oblige but SLIGE(+dm2conv) ; I may use Obsidian in the future but Vanilla Heretic WAD generation is not offered for the moment.

shot05.png.aa9c21dfc4107fc980b3ac41800d79eb.png

 

shot06.png.bbc785f3ea36b1ee2ffbdbe2222b8dcc.png

 

Not ready for primetime yet, but I've got the basics of Heretic SLUMP generation in Unstable at the moment.

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ROSS : February 2024 update (software upgrade, WAD change)

 

The main reasons for this update are upgrades :

  • Freedoom data : upgrade from v1.1.3 to the fresh (january 2024) v1.3.0 : four monsters are changed, etc.
  • Chocolate Doom engine : upgrade from v3.0.0 to v3.0.1 : mostly a minor security upgrade

Also :

For different reasons (changed skies, changed monsters...), the Freedoom WADs are now significantly bigger, especially Freedoom1.wad that gained nearly 5MB.

So that the packages have approximately the same size, I've changed one of the pWADs in the "ROSS: Inferno Earth" package : the very excellent 1-map "Null Space" is replaced by the hyper wonderful 4-map "Suspended in Dusk".

Now the unzipped packages are slightly under 36MB, instead of slightly under 32MB : 35,7 MB each, approximately.

 

https://osr-vf.itch.io/ross

 

Happy slaughter everyone !

 

 

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On 2/16/2024 at 4:21 PM, soner du said:

ROSS : February 2024 update (software upgrade, WAD change)

 

The main reasons for this update are upgrades :

  • Freedoom data : upgrade from v1.1.3 to the fresh (january 2024) v1.3.0 : four monsters are changed, etc.
  • Chocolate Doom engine : upgrade from v3.0.0 to v3.0.1 : mostly a minor security upgrade

Also :

For different reasons (changed skies, changed monsters...), the Freedoom WADs are now significantly bigger, especially Freedoom1.wad that gained nearly 5MB.

So that the packages have approximately the same size, I've changed one of the pWADs in the "ROSS: Inferno Earth" package : the very excellent 1-map "Null Space" is replaced by the hyper wonderful 4-map "Suspended in Dusk".

Now the unzipped packages are slightly under 36MB, instead of slightly under 32MB : 35,7 MB each, approximately.

 

https://osr-vf.itch.io/ross

 

Happy slaughter everyone !

 

 

For one i am glad that you keep on updating these. They are great plug and play packages.

Perhaps one day one could also make a multiplayer focussed one. I know FreeDoom + ZDaemon (Or Odamex/Zandronum) gives you access to a ton of multiplayer stuff for nothing.

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