Beautiful Doom

[Agent_Ash]

[UPDATED POST (originally there was a discussion/questions here)]

THIS THREAD WILL NOT BE UPDATED FURTHER.
I've posted Beautiful Doom on many resources, and manging updates on all of them is getting too difficult. This thread will still contain the link to the dropbox folder with all updates and the general information about the mod.
If you want to participate in the discussion about the mod, head to the mod's ZDoom forum thread.
You can also find the mod on the ModDB page.


BEAUTIFUL DOOM 6.1 IS OUT!

DOWNLOADS

* Beautiful Doom 7.x exists on Github: https://github.com/jekyllgrim/Beautiful-Doom/releases
* 6.1: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ulachff6zorv95w/AAA3OLR2hApKI9Iwe6WDlBIGa?dl=0 (choose the latest version for the appropriate port)

If you've never heard of it — here's a list of features and a trailer.

REQUIRED PORT: GZDoom 2.1.1 or Zandronum 3.0 or ZDoom 2.8.1

TRAILER!
New 6.1.3 trailer:

Older 6.1 trailer:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

FEATURES: (for those who've never heard of it)

Beautiful Doom is a GZDoom mod that remakes all objects and monsters in the game to look more impressive, cool, bloody, you name it, but it RETAINS 100% ORIGINAL GAMEPLAY.
It works with ZDoom too, however objects that use 'renderstyle Add' cause some noticeable lag. I recommend playing under this port with turned off debris and fire effects (see 'Beautiful Doom Settings' under Options in the game).

It has:
* Smoothly-animated weapons with smoke, empty casings, new sounds and stuff that have Doom's original performance
* A set of rebalanced weapons called 'Enhanced Guns': they have alternative attacks and provide more tactical variety
* HD weapon pickup sprites and hi-res main item sprites
* New deaths, animated blood, lots of special effects for monsters
* Physically accurate gibs, unique for every 'gibbable' enemy
* Interactive decorations: breakable lamps, killable impaled victims, etc.
* Light effects, halos, fire, smoke, whatever there is
* Footsteps, smooth water, and lots of other stuff

 

Edited June 15, 2021 by Jekyll Grim Payne : updated url

[GoneAway]

"..while my mod is all about keeping stuff as original as possible, just making it look good. And that's what this mod is going to be about"

This seems to completely disagree with a substantial number of your changes listed.

Of all the things, slowing down fist attack is the most egregious offence to me; that alone would make me never try this. Some of the other behaviour changes, like bullets getting stopped by trees, also seem unnecessary and negative to me. I'm just not sure why there are behaviour modifications in a mod that is trying to keep things as original as possible.

As far as invisibility, I like zdoom's default behaviour, where sometimes enemies are not alerted by your presence, but once alerted the behaviour is normal (I think?).

[Agent_Ash]

kraflab said:

"..while my mod is all about keeping stuff as original as possible, just making it look good. And that's what this mod is going to be about"

This seems to completely disagree with a substantial number of your changes listed.

Of all the things, slowing down fist attack is the most egregious offence to me; that alone would make me never try this. Some of the other behaviour changes, like bullets getting stopped by trees, also seem unnecessary and negative to me. I'm just not sure why there are behaviour modifications in a mod that is trying to keep things as original as possible.

As far as invisibility, I like zdoom's default behaviour, where sometimes enemies are not alerted by your presence, but once alerted the behaviour is normal (I think?).

You misunderstood the point of my post a little. The mod was originally posted years ago. In the post I'm mostly giving information about the features that are ALREADY THERE and giving some suggestions about how I could change them and if I should. That's the point of the post.

So, slower Fist was a minor development mistake that I'm obviously going to fix (although it's really not that noticeable). But other things were implemented mostly because I wanted to keep things 95% original and 5% logical. So making a tree stop projectiles AND bullets is a logical thing, for example. The point of the post is to see whether people share my view or would prefer things changed to vanilla in the new version of the mod.

I actually decided to add the Note section in the original post to explain better why I created this thread.

As for invisibility -- no, when monsters see you, they don't behave normally. Their aim is off, the way I described.

In any case, you could vote :) Like "1-a" or something.

[joe-ilya]

Anything that replaces gameplay or graphics ahould be made vanilla.

Partial invisibility should be replaced with quad damage, though.

[scifista42]

My opinions:

Legend:
0/5 = I don't like it, please no.
(1-4)/5 = Bad/good depending on situation.
5/5 = I like it, please yes.

Fast weapon deselect: 3/5.
Faster pistol: 4/5.
Silent fist: 3/5.
Different attack rate of fist: 0/5.
SSG/CG alt attacks: 3/5.
Different plasma rifle sprite: 3/5.
Bullet-blocking decorations: 0/5.
Destructible decorations: 2/5.
New invisibility: 1/5.

Generally, I believe that keeping things as loyal to vanilla behaviour is a good movement. Don't underestimate how players (and not only the hardcore ones) are accustomized to the very exact nuances of vanilla behaviour, which they find natural and comfortable and rely on it while playing.

[Agent_Ash]

joe-ilya said:

Anything that replaces gameplay or graphics ahould be made vanilla.

Partial invisibility should be replaced with quad damage, though.

That's interesting. I'll keep that in mind, however, unless the Quad Damage idea gets immense support, I'm not going to implement it, because that would be overkill. Doom's weapons are generally very powerful as they are, and there are too many Invisibility spheres on vanilla maps to replace them with Quads.

scifista42 said:

My opinions:

Legend:
0/5 = I don't like it, please no.
(1-4)/5 = Bad/good depending on situation.
5/5 = I like it, please yes.

Fast weapon deselect: 3/5.
Faster pistol: 4/5.
Silent fist: 3/5.
Different attack rate of fist: 0/5.
SSG/CG alt attacks: 3/5.
Different plasma rifle sprite: 3/5.
Bullet-blocking decorations: 0/5.
Destructible decorations: 2/5.
New invisibility: 1/5.

Generally, I believe that keeping things as loyal to vanilla behaviour is a good movement. Don't underestimate how players (and not only the hardcore ones) are accustomized to the very exact nuances of vanilla behaviour, which they find natural and comfortable and rely on it while playing.

Nice feedback, thanks. Mostly that's what I'm thinking.
In fact I was only aiming to change things that feel bland and outdates. I mean we don't really care about Pistol very much, it's just an early stage weapon, but it feels a tiny little bit nicer when it's 2 tics faster. But perhaps I should go purist on this too.

I agree about behavior generally. Trees play an important part on Circle of Death level for example, where you can fight off Arachnotrons shooting at them from behind trees.
I am going to keep some interactive decorations though. That killable impaled twitching body looks way too good.

[Memfis]

Jekyll Grim Payne said:

It's going to have a new less cheesy name :)

Whyyy. :( Imo you should stick with it. Cheesy name or not, this is what your mod is known as, and changing it after so many years will bring too much confusion and also possibly damage its popularity (compare "what is this, yet another fucking mod?" vs "OH MY GOD BEAUTIFUL DOOM IS BACK I GOTTA DOWNLOAD"). IMO.

[Agent_Ash]

Memfis said:

Whyyy. :( Imo you should stick with it. Cheesy name or not, this is what your mod is known as, and changing it after so many years will bring too much confusion and also possibly damage its popularity (compare "what is this, yet another fucking mod?" vs "OH MY GOD BEAUTIFUL DOOM IS BACK I GOTTA DOWNLOAD"). IMO.

Well, if my mod actually has this sort of popularity :D
I'll think about it. You see, I sorta have a new slogan. Maybe I'll keep it a slogan. Or make something like "Beautiful Doom: <new title> edition". Thanks for the feedback anyway :)

[joe-ilya]

Jekyll Grim Payne said:

That's interesting. I'll keep that in mind, however, unless the Quad Damage idea gets immense support, I'm not going to implement it, because that would be overkill. Doom's weapons are generally very powerful as they are, and there are too many Invisibility spheres on vanilla maps to replace them with Quads.

There are almost no invisibility spheres, I checked the first episode of doom2 and found below 10 spheres.

[scifista42]

Partial invisibility would be best if you could turn it on and off anytime while it lasts, and if it caused monsters to attack less often while you have it on. Replacing it with a principially different item (like quad damage) would come off as random mediocre imbalancement, IMO. Particularly because many mappers use it meaningfully as is.

[Agent_Ash]

scifista42 said:

Partial invisibility would be best if you could turn it on and off anytime while it lasts, and if it caused monsters to attack less often while you have it on. Replacing it with a principially different item (like quad damage) would come off as random mediocre imbalancement, IMO. Particularly because many mappers use it meaningfully as is.

I agree that replacing it with a different powerup doesn't sound like a good idea.

I don't think I'm going to implement a way to toggle it on and off, because immediate activation and limited functioning is Doom's core mechanic for powerups, and I wouldn't like to move away from it in this way. I really wouldn't like to implement Hexen's inventory system, and without it any toggling is very very difficult and clumsy. Plus it seems generally weird to me: why would I create a toggleable powerup yet no other items have this feature? Some people suggested creating toggleable carriable medikits, but I don't think this is a good idea either, because all of those things would damage Doom's core mechanics. I try to preserve it.

As for monsters' attacks, that's more or less how it works in the mod now. You should try downloading the current mod version, and you'll see that Shadow invisibility makes monsters reluctant to attack you, although they are still somewhat aware of your presense. To me this is the most comfortable form of Invisibility, but I have to say that it may be considered a bit overpowered

I could make Invisibility have a cumulative effect though. So that the more spheres you take, the more powerful the effect is. At one sphere it would act as Doom's standard Invisibility, and at 2 spheres it would act as Shadow invisibility I'm currently using.

In fact I'll add it to first post as one of the options.

[joe-ilya]

Now I'm going scifista's way, scrap quad damage.

[scifista42]

Jekyll Grim Payne said:

I could make Invisibility have a cumulative effect though. So that the more spheres you take, the more powerful the effect is. At one sphere it would act as Doom's standard Invisibility, and at 2 spheres it would act as Shadow invisibility I'm currently using.

Alternatively, you would make the powerup impossible to pick up while you already have one. It should be as simple as removing the ALWAYSPICKUP flag, and it should only have positive consequences on gameplay - you actually don't want to pick up a powerup sphere while you already wear one, because part of duration of the effect would be wasted.

[Agent_Ash]

scifista42 said:

Alternatively, you would make the powerup impossible to pick up while you already have one (or two). It should be as simple as removing the ALWAYSPICKUP flag (slightly more intricate if you were going for cumulative effect of 2 spheres at maximum), and it should only have positive consequences on gameplay (you actually don't want to pick up a powerup sphere while you already wear one, because part of duration of the effect would be wasted).

Umm, I could think about it (although I don't see why it's a good idea to change Doom's default pickup behavior), but that's not really a suggestion on the Invisibility effect as it is, and that's what I'm thinking about.

Whether you can pick up one sphere or multiple spheres, I still need to make a choice of effect, and I see 3 best variants for now: vanilla, Shadow (more effective) or cumulative.

[Platinum Shell]

Oh boy, one of my first (and favorite) mods getting a new release? Well sweet. Is the Mancubus going to go with normal red blood like the rest of the monsters or are you planning on making his dark like it kind of already is (in wall decals anyway?) Regarding your questions, it seems a lot of them would be great as toggleable options like how Modes of Destruction handles it. Anyway:

I'm not really for or against faster weapon switch, but I think I lean a little bit more towards vanilla speeds.

I like the speeds BD (heh, most people probably associate BD with Brutal Doom but to me it was always Beautiful Doom) had, but I feel that as polished and "complete" as 5.3 is, changes that are closer to vanilla seem like a good change, especially with a fresher coat of paint for BD. So I'd have to say vanilla fire rate.

Fist silent until it connects with something punchable (wall, monster, etc) sounds ideal.

SSG and Chaingun alt attacks, hmm...to be quite honest, I'd leave them in the old 5.3 and not in the new. They're great in their own right but they did wind up becoming a little OP to use, namely the chaingun. Vanilla again for this one.

Totally fine with you keeping in the alt PR sprite. I'm guessing it's the same one from 5.3?

Regarding decorations...didn't 5.3 have all decorations block hitscan attacks or was that only for destructible ones that weren't fully destroyed? Either way, I'd like to see some consistency in behavior, so both the idea of non-interact-able ones that function like they do in vanilla and the idea of destructible ones (hopefully more types to destruct as well) that 100% block both hitscans and projectiles, are solid concepts. I'd be fine seeing either.

Blurspheres in BD were pretty great to be honest, though I agree that they did last quite long for how good they are. Instead of 60 or 30 seconds...why not meet in the middle with 45?

Whatever you wind up doing with the mod is still probably going to be something I greatly enjoy, it's just cool seeing a resurgence in this project. Kudos man!

[Agent_Ash]

Platinum Shell said:

Oh boy, one of my first (and favorite) mods getting a new release? Well sweet. Is the Mancubus going to go with normal red blood like the rest of the monsters or are you planning on making his dark like it kind of already is (in wall decals anyway?) Regarding your questions, it seems a lot of them would be great as toggleable options like how Modes of Destruction handles it. Anyway:

I'm not really for or against faster weapon switch, but I think I lean a little bit more towards vanilla speeds.

I like the speeds BD (heh, most people probably associate BD with Brutal Doom but to me it was always Beautiful Doom) had, but I feel that as polished and "complete" as 5.3 is, changes that are closer to vanilla seem like a good change, especially with a fresher coat of paint for BD. So I'd have to say vanilla fire rate.

Fist silent until it connects with something punchable (wall, monster, etc) sounds ideal.

SSG and Chaingun alt attacks, hmm...to be quite honest, I'd leave them in the old 5.3 and not in the new. They're great in their own right but they did wind up becoming a little OP to use, namely the chaingun. Vanilla again for this one.

Totally fine with you keeping in the alt PR sprite. I'm guessing it's the same one from 5.3?

Regarding decorations...didn't 5.3 have all decorations block hitscan attacks or was that only for destructible ones that weren't fully destroyed? Either way, I'd like to see some consistency in behavior, so both the idea of non-interact-able ones that function like they do in vanilla and the idea of destructible ones (hopefully more types to destruct as well) that 100% block both hitscans and projectiles, are solid concepts. I'd be fine seeing either.

Blurspheres in BD were pretty great to be honest, though I agree that they did last quite long for how good they are. Instead of 60 or 30 seconds...why not meet in the middle with 45?

Whatever you wind up doing with the mod is still probably going to be something I greatly enjoy, it's just cool seeing a resurgence in this project. Kudos man!

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

I'm strongly leaning towards returning all weapon values to vanilla, except I really like the idea of Fist being silent unless hitting something. It seems logical and I don't think it'd break the gameplay. Although I have seen a great speedrun of Deus Vult where the player actually used the fist to alert monsters and make them spawn in the area more quickly. But I think it's such a specific case that I could forget about it.

I really like SSG and Chaingun attacks. Actually, I'm not the only one, because some time around version 3.5 I actually removed them and I got some messages requesting to get them back; at the same time I got no messages requesting to remove them. I'm guessing people who didn't like them simply didn't use them. I think that maybe I should keep them but add a special ACS toggle function that would turn them on and off (like I have functions for blood, gibbing, etc.). Hopefully that would satisfy everyone.

In fact, maybe it's a good idea to stick all mild alternatives I have -- silent fist, alt.attacks, alternative Plasma rifle sprite -- to that function. Just one little key stroke at any time, and you get those options. Press again, and it goes back to vanilla looks entirely. It would be off by default of course, to appease purists.


Almost all shootable decorations block hitscan and projectiles in BD. Those that can be killed stop blocking bulelts after they're dead (quite reasonable that a thin empty pole doesn't block bullets after the impaled body is destroyed). I'm thinking that there is one option that would be perfect:
1. Make behavior like original (hitscans pass, projectiles don't), but keep the destructive animations (they would be activated by projectiles, giving nice effects yet keeping fully original behavior),
2. But in addition to that also make a key that would allow to toggle the hitscan interaction: if it's on, bullets will hit decorations; if it's off, they won't.


Blurspheres actually work for 40 seconds in Beautiful Doom, and I think it's too much. 30 seconds of effective Invisibility is actually than enough to slip through many fights.

[clarry]

Although I have seen a great speedrun of Deus Vult where the player actually used the fist to alert monsters and make them spawn in the area more quickly. But I think it's such a specific case that I could forget about it.

This is actually a fairly common trick (sometimes very useful) and not only in speed runs.

Perhaps if you make the fist silent, you should add an alternate fire mode that uses the middle finger with a loud "fuck you"? ;-)

[Agent_Ash]

clarry said:

This is actually a fairly common trick (sometimes very useful) and not only in speed runs.

Perhaps if you make the fist silent, you should add an alternate fire mode that uses the middle finger with a loud "fuck you"? ;-)

No, I think that would look out of place. Most likely I'll just create a script that will allow to toggle between fully vanilla weapon mode and an enhanced behavior.

The middle-finger is not a completely bad idea though... I mean I wouldn't do that, but I could add a loud knuckle-flexing as a secondary attack in silent mode. Or a sort of 'come here' call.

[joe-ilya]

Call this "sexy doom"

[Platinum Shell]

Right, I agreed with silent fists until they hit something (monsters, but wall hits waking them up would be cool too) The alt fires for the SSG and Chaingun would be cool as in game options though, yeah.

[Gifty]

I remember Beautiful Doom being my cherry-popping Doom mod experience, glad it's coming back! The only things I remember really bothering me were the way the chaingun sprites were shrunk down messily and the muzzle flashes were kind of garish. Oh yeah, and the HSSSSSSS/SPLLOOOOOSH of blood loudly hitting the water. :P

Still though, I'm super excited to see whatever comes next!

[Agent_Ash]

Slightly off-topic: how the hell do you create a poll here? I could see the option when I was making the thread, but no fields or boxes to fill with poll topic and variants appeared.

Gifty said:

I remember Beautiful Doom being my cherry-popping Doom mod experience, glad it's coming back! The only things I remember really bothering me were the way the chaingun sprites were shrunk down messily and the muzzle flashes were kind of garish. Oh yeah, and the HSSSSSSS/SPLLOOOOOSH of blood loudly hitting the water. :P

Aww, that's sweet :) I'll try not to disappoint. BTW good point, I can make the blood hit the water without splosh sound.

[boris]

Every Doom is beautiful!

[Agent_Ash]

boris said:

Every Doom is beautiful!

Well, that's true.

But for now I need opinions on Invisibility sphere, because that's the topic I have most doubts on.

[ducon]

boris said:

Every Doom is beautiful!

Every Doom is sacred!

[Kontra Kommando]

Jekyll Grim Payne said:

Well, that's true.

But for now I need opinions on Invisibility sphere, because that's the topic I have most doubts on.

Here's some food for thought :

Would you consider making some items randomized? For example, if you do make the invisibility spheres cumulative; a random amount of them throughout a map-set would be the best way to go about it IMO. Say if you made every power-up replaced with a random spawner; 1/4 of the time (or what ever rate), it could be an invisibility sphere. Though, that would mean having a chance of reducing the spawn rate of other items, give or take. It would make the game play experience different every time you play. This was how I went about adding in new power-ups in Occultic Doom

[Agent_Ash]

Kontra Kommando said:

Here's some food for thought :

Would you consider making some items randomized? For example, if you do make the invisibility spheres cumulative; a random amount of them throughout a map-set would be the best way to go about it IMO. Say if you made every power-up replaced with a random spawner; 1/4 of the time (or what ever rate), it could be an invisibility sphere. Though, that would mean having a chance of reducing the spawn rate of other items, give or take. It would make the game play experience different every time you play. This was how I went about adding in new power-ups in Occultic Doom

I'm all for randomizing items and even enemies, but not for this mod. It's against the vanilla gameplay preservation policy. Slightly changing the behavior of the powerup is as far as I'd go with this. And I'm only talking about Invisibility sphere at all simply because it's the least important and effective powerup in Doom.

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

One thing that I always disliked about Beautiful Doom's gore is the lack of shading on blood. You use a single blood color to draw everything and it just looks wrong. This can be improved pretty easily; you just need an editing program that supports alpha pixels (Photoshop, Gimp, Fireworks, etc.). Them used the drawing tool and give it a transparency effect. Stabilish a direction from where you suppose that the lightning is coming (usually from 90°), add some brighter red pixels on the top areas, and darker red pixels on the lower areas. If you learn to do this right, you will be able to do some neat effects such as shades of pink realistically representing broken and exposed bones.

This is how a quick edit using 50% of bright red, and 25% of pitch black can make this sprite look like:


Using some random shades of bright red, black, and pink on one of your imp gib sprites:


You know, I used a lot of assets from your mod on the earlier versions of Brutal Doom, so if you want to take some assets from v20 when it comes out next month, just feel free to do it.

Jekyll Grim Payne said:

In fact I was only aiming to change things that feel bland and outdates. I mean we don't really care about Pistol very much, it's just an early stage weapon, but it feels a tiny little bit nicer when it's 2 tics faster. But perhaps I should go purist on this too.

I suggest making two player classes, one that features a "Purist" Marine which has exact 1:1 gameplay and weapon look based on Vanilla Doom, and a "Beautiful Marine" that can have all the gameplay modifications you want to do, without worrying about people saying that your mod deviates too much from the original gameplay. This would be pretty simple to do, just create a inventory item, and give it to the "Purist Marine", then at the start of every animation, use a A_JumpIfInventory function to detect if the player is playing with the Purist Marine by having this inventory item, and then jump to a state that looks and plays like the original weapon.

Jekyll Grim Payne said:

I agree about behavior generally. Trees play an important part on Circle of Death level for example, where you can fight off Arachnotrons shooting at them from behind trees.
I am going to keep some interactive decorations though. That killable impaled twitching body looks way too good.

You should handle this with CVARs. With choices, everyone wins.

[Platinum Shell]

Nice sprites Mark. I agree the Beautiful Doom gore could use some shading. And yes, menu options and CVARs for various player tastes is always the best route IMO.

[Agent_Ash]

Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

One thing that I always disliked about Beautiful Doom's gore is the lack of shading on blood. You use a single blood color to draw everything and it just looks wrong. This can be improved pretty easily; you just need an editing program that supports alpha pixels (Photoshop, Gimp, Fireworks, etc.). Them used the drawing tool and give it a transparency effect. Stabilish a direction from where you suppose that the lightning is coming (usually from 90°), add some brighter red pixels on the top areas, and darker red pixels on the lower areas. If you learn to do this right, you will be able to do some neat effects such as shades of pink realistically representing broken and exposed bones.

Well, of course. I know how it works, I was just too lazy to do it when I was releasing the last version. That's one of the main things I'm working on. It's just that the head sprite is blown up a dozen times in size in that image. In the game it can barely be seen this way (especially considering GZDoom sprite clipping), the blood pool behind it is 1 sprite wide. Torsoes and bigger body parts now look totally different, and I pay more attention to gibbing assets of original Doom (they have some nice ribcages for example). You can see the difference of Live Stick and zombieman torso, can't you? BTW, the torso can barely be seen in the gibbing explosion, so even this sort of detail is not that much necessary.

Here are some more examples:



I believe generally they look better than before :) Unfortunately, the animation cannot be seen in detail so I'm concentrating on the last frame.

I also need to find/develop some more generic gibs, which I'm going to do. More organs and stuff.

Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

I suggest making two player classes, one that features a "Purist" Marine which has exact 1:1 gameplay and weapon look based on Vanilla Doom, and a "Beautiful Marine" that can have all the gameplay modifications you want to do.

Yes, I have thought about it. It would be pretty easy to do and perhaps it's a better idea than using another button-script for it. It's just that I'm striving to find a unversal solution, because choices sound nice but too many of them make stuff confusing. I want the player to be able to just load the mod and play. But perhaps I'll go for 2 classes after all.

But I don't think I'll add any choices for decorations. In fact in 5.3, as I have checked recently, I already removed those decorations that added nothing but just blocking bullets. There wasn't a single person who cared about the fact that trees blocked bullets and then at some version stopped to :) Well, obviously it doesn't mean much, but I think it's best to stick to not changing the shootable properties. I still add killable bodies, but they only block bullets for a couple of shots, which I don't think is going to be a problem. I also think it's best to remove shootable animations of column with a skull and column with a heart because it felt like it wasn't fun or necessary.