Voxel Doom

[Cheello]

Hi everyone, 

 

I've been working on a mod for Doom which replaces all monsters, weapons, items and props with voxel models. I'm pretty much done with all the assets for Doom 1/Ultimate Doom. 

 

Yesterday, I did a stream session with Nash Muhandes where we did a cursory playthrough of the original game and showcased the voxels. You can find that on Nash's channel here: 

 

The Doomworld forum seems like the ideal place to give updates on this project and get feedback from all of you. I hope to have version 1.0 released sometime this week. I am currently setting up the moddb.com page for the mod.  

 

I've also been making my own videos to track the progress of the mod, along with timelapse videos, a tutorial, and some playthroughs. You can find those here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1WkHfzyqhCMTOLCeBznygA

 

I'll be doing some final tweaks and fixes to the models as I get closer to releasing it. If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd be happy to hear from you. 

 

I hope this post falls within the rules of the Doomworld forums.

 

Thank you for your time.

 

Cheello

Edited August 15, 2022 by Cheello

[Shepardus]

Good to see you here! Many of us have been eagerly following your work, which you can see in this thread:

Looking forward to the release!

[holaareola]

Absolutely incredible work. This is one of the coolest things to come along for Doom in a long time for me. Most boosts in graphics fit really badly with the games aesthetics IMO, but this hits such a weird sweet spot since it's a huge upgrade and yet has the same visual quality and style from any given angle as the original sprites.

[Stupid Bunny]

We have all been so excited for this so it's awesome to see you here, especially with such good news.  These mesh so flawlessly with Doom and I can't wait to finally play with these in place myself.

[Biodegradable]

Welcome to Doomworld, @Cheello! I'd been quietly following your work on Twitter and watched how the project increased in power once Nash came onboard to help. Great to see you here on the forums.

[eqagunn]

Looks great! Hopefully it gets compatibility with Smooth Doom later on.

[hurleybird]

This is freaking amazing, and as contradictory as it sounds, is both totally transformative and totally genuine at the same time.

 

One observation is that this obviously gels better with texture filtering disabled. Texture filtering affects textures and sprites equally, but isn't applied to voxels, so with it enabled there's a bit of visual discrepancy. I tend to apply texture filtering even though I could easily live without it. Still, I wonder if there's a technical solution for source ports to either blend color data from adjacent voxels, dynamically extrapolate intermediary voxels as the player gets close to the model, or some combination.

[StalkerZHS]

Are there any optimal settings for running this?

When trying it out, I'll often get crashes saying something similar to "Render did not x within 5 seconds"

 

I run the zip file in zdoomlauncher without any other custom wads

[Nate42]

Great mod, authentic to the original look while being more immersive, and perfect for people who prefer to play with mouselook. Inspired me to play through ultimate doom again. PSA, you CAN play this with doom2 or doom2 based wads, its just that the doom2 only monsters aren't voxelized yet. Looking forward to when it's "finished" though.

 

To Stalker:  GZDoom 4.8.2 "just worked" for me on defaults, no special settings.  

[Redneckerz]

Update:

The people at Digital Foundry went on making a video about Voxel Doom. Alex Battaglia lists what makes this mod so good.

 

 

[DavidN]

Absolutely exceptional work - it's uncanny playing Doom with this, it's easy to forget you're playing with it because the monsters look absolutely perfect to the original sprites, until you step towards them and they suddenly have a third dimension! You've really done something momentous here :)

[Koko Ricky]

The instructions for running the mod are not clear in the readme. I placed the files into my GZDOOM folder, but there's nothing to run!

[TasAcri]

I noticed the voxelised enemies don't have a shadow underneath anymore when using the "sprite shadows" option in GZDoom, which i thought was a great addition. I assume they are not considered sprites anymore so that makes sense. But still, the lack of some sort of shadow makes them look like they float sometimes. Maybe there's a way for the voxels to work with these shadows?

[Garlichead]

Does anybody knows how to use this with a custom wad on Doom Launcher?

 

I can play the iwads just fine by dragging and dropping the file and selecting the game, but have not been able to get it work on DL.

 

**Edit**

 

I have managed to make it work with custom wads, but with bash files.

 

@ECHO OFF
START gzdoom.exe -skill 4 -warp 3 1 -iwad doom.wad -file %~dp0\Wads\cheello_voxels.zip  %~dp0\Wads\2002ad10.zip -savedir %~dp0\Savedir\2002

Loading chello_voxels.zip with the file parameter and then adding a pwad allows gzdoom to combine the two of them. I have tested it with both 2002 and 2022 Doom`s Odyssey and they appear to work fine. Leaving this edit here in case someone has the same issue as I.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Garlichead

[Shepardus]

 

[Daytime Waitress]

3 hours ago, Shepardus said:

 

 

Wake me up when July is over, gang.

[Nash]

Voxel Doom II will be releasing earlier than previously announced! Come hang out with Cheello and me on July 31st, 1830 (6:30 PM) PDT as we chit chat and play some Voxel Doom II coop for a bit. Full version of the mod will be released at the end of the stream!

[SyntherAugustus]

Having unused a voxel editor before, is it easy to recolor the voxel models or perhaps add an appendage or item to them? I'm curious about making simple monster mods for myself once this is out. 

[Metal_Slayer]

Yes, it is. It's just like editing a sprite, but in 3D. I think Cheello posted a tutorial on his channel about editing voxels in which he shows the software he uses.

[Mr Masker]

All the new voxels are great, nice to see this fully replace all enemies. Plus the fact that the decorations are Voxels too is a great touch.

 

This is a very impressive mod!

[Klear]

Oh hell yeah! I'm never playing with sprites again.

[Shawny]

I yet have to try it myself. The original is great IMO, there were some stuff that felt weird, but that may be just my brain.
Will probably test my mapset since in last update I tried to rotate all the sprites the proper way to be "voxel doom ready".
I am also surprised this was mostly just released without too much fanfare.
Regardless, looking forward to take it for a spin.

[SyntherAugustus]

Could we get an option to disable Keen and WolfSS? It screws with dehacked based map packs like Eviturnity.

[philcul]

The Voxel Icon of Sin looks really impressive!

[Metal_Slayer]

16 hours ago, SyntherAugustus said:

Could we get an option to disable Keen and WolfSS? It screws with dehacked based map packs like Eviturnity.

This is a good idea, being able to disable each voxel on the settings would help for wads with custom sprites. Unfortunately Cheello doesn't seem to use Doomworld, but sometimes he reads comments on social media, but not always. Maybe we could ask @Nashabout it.

[TasAcri]

10 hours ago, AdNauseam said:

The Voxel Icon of Sin looks really impressive!

 

I wonder how come it's the only voxel you can enable/disable in the options.

[Nash]

Because the Icon of Sin voxel is not replacing any actor. It's arbitrarily spawned in thin-air and the "toggle" is really just turning it visible or invisible.

Each monster, on the other hand, have their sprite assets physically replaced with a voxel. You can't really "toggle" the voxels on and off.

[Metal_Slayer]

It doesn't mean it is impossible to have it on GZDoom, it's just not as easy to implement. One of the reasons I thought a Doomsday engine port would be interesting was the menu which you can choose the models you want to use before launching the game. It can also be used to mix stuff from different mods without many issues. Well, maybe I should go back to it since I got all of the voxel tools working.