Undoomed: Dungeon Shooter - FreeDoom assets in UE4 and randomly generated levels

[Redneckerz]

Introduction:

So back a few years several iOS related projects got released that merged the Doom Classic codebase with FreeDoom assets and levels. Examples include:

Spoiler

• Gameception
• Doomsday: Hellraiser HD for iPad (by General Arcade). Has some modified non-Freedoom levels, too. -
• Doomsday 2: Legions of Hell (by General Arcade)
• Doomsday 3: Base Ganymede (by General Arcade)
• Doom's Knight Lite (by MoaLab)
• Hell on Earth Lite - by (IKreeda)
• Hell on Earth 2 (by IKreeda)
• The Final Judgment (by @JadingTsunami)
• Bastards (A western FPS)

 

Some of the Doomsday ones include some custom levels and they have custom made menu's. Gameception had the option to download wads, as does The Final Judgment.

Freedoom re-usage also was on MacOSX, by MoaLab in particular. Whereas General Arcade and IKreeda would atleast use some user made levels and Gameception's and The Final Judgment's angles were on providing a way to download new levels, Moalab's efforts simply contained pre-generated maps by Oblige. These include:
 

Spoiler

• Doom's Knight
• Doomed Heretic
• Doomed Freedom

There is also a FreeDoom app for Android (Which is quite excellent, i must say, if you just want to play a quick level.) but i digress.

I came across a project that uses FreeDoom assets (Monsters) in a slightly different way. Enter Undoomed: Dungeon Shooter.
 

Screenshots:
 

Spoiler

So what is Undoomed: Dungeon Shooter?
Its an oldskool FPS (Duh), but unlike the aforementioned Doom Classic/MacOS clones, this uses Unreal Engine 4. Two modes of play are provided:

• A campaign, consisting of endless short levels with FreeDoom assets (and i reckon some more aswell)
• A survival mode, where you are dropped in an arena and have to survive waves of enemies.

The game is free-to-play and comes with ads that you can remove. But beyond the usage of UE4, what struck me most is that both the campaign and the survival mode rely on a procedural map generator. Stray Light Games, the maker of Undoomed, seems to favor usage of this mechanic and has implemented it here aswell:

Quote

''...The play map randomizes on every play turn, and that is made my a set of map pieces.''

Conclusion:
Having tested this (80 mb for Android), its definitely playing differently than my FreeDoom app. The generated levels are rather samey and seem deliberately designed for some coffee break like gameplay (so 5 mins or less). The enemies are also quite poor; The FreeDoom monsters do very little in terms of interaction. Weaponry and fists do not seem consistent with the art, aswell. The survival mode looks rather lackluster

Nevertheless, its an interesting effort. Being that it uses UE4, you use true 3D with rooms over rooms and what not. Being that it contains no actual FreeDoom levels and instead relies on generated maps means that you could technically endlessly play this. To remove the ads, a 2.40 euro cost is attached. In practice however, the ads didn't do me much trouble.

There is definitely some interesting concepts to be found in here and a rather unique take on using FreeDoom assets this way (And i am not sure if its usage is perfectly legal... i found no license, let alone for the other assets). The campaign is best served as a lunch break type of game, or as an additional way to play Doom like levels without relying on the actual Doom WAD (or Delta Touch/FreeDoom app, for that matter).

Find Undoomed on Android here.

It reminds me a little of the underutilized ROSS project, that uses Chocolate Doom and FreeDoom with Slige and Zennode to generate a new mapset every time you use the menu, along with some authors favorites, but applied to Android using UE4. The author of that project @soner du made a DW thread in 2019:
 

EDIT: Okay... this turned out longer than i expected and it became not only a history of Freedoom stuff and open source packages, but also became a small review :P

[masterneme]

Installs 100,000+, not bad, I wonder how do people find the game with all the clutter there's on the Play Store.

[boris]

On 5/17/2020 at 2:23 PM, Redneckerz said:

And i am not sure if its usage is perfectly legal... i found no license, let alone for the other assets

If there's no license and they are not crediting Freedoom then it's not legal. No surprise though, just more addition to the long string of illegal Freedoom asset users (if they are not adhering to the license).

[Redneckerz]

10 minutes ago, boris said:

If there's no license and they are not crediting Freedoom then it's not legal. No surprise though, just more addition to the long string of illegal Freedoom asset users (if they are not adhering to the license).

I missed this, but they do credit FreeDoom on the Android app page:
 

Quote

''This game uses the some Freedoom project sprites sounds and textures.
Freedoom is licensed under the BSD license.''

But that line is not mentioned on its official page.

[andrewj]

On 5/17/2020 at 10:23 PM, Redneckerz said:

So what is Undoomed: Dungeon Shooter?

A piece of trash, imho.

[Gez]

Yeah, it looks like low-effort garbage. The way the engine just rotates the sprites like billboards is especially jarring, the gameplay looks abysmal, and there are ads too? If I played games on my phone, I'd rather get Delta Touch.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

Huh, have been intrigued to install this for a while back when I didn't have any money to grab Delta Touch. Thank you for saving my time from trying out a piece of garbage I guess.

[Redneckerz]

26 minutes ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

Huh, have been intrigued to install this for a while back when I didn't have any money to grab Delta Touch. Thank you for saving my time from trying out a piece of garbage I guess.

The ads aren't that bothersome however and they don't appear often. There are worse examples to make.

 

Its not exactly great (Then again, i never said it was) but garbage lacks any nuance. Like i said, i can see a purpose for this for coffee break like intermezzo's, because playing this for longer than 10 minutes and you will start to notice the samey appearance of levels.

 

Typical case of interesting concept, flawed execution.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

1 minute ago, Redneckerz said:

The ads aren't intrusive whatsoever. There is just an option to remove them.

  

Its not exactly great (Then again, i never said it was) but garbage lacks any nuance. Like i said, i can see a purpose for this for coffee break like intermezzo's, because playing this for longer than 10 minutes and you will start to notice the samey appearance of levels.

 

Typical case of interesting concept, flawed execution.

Imo, if I want to play a coffee break roguelike, I would play DoomRL (which is available on Android) or its successor Jupiter Hell instead.