Xfing

1) Does the berserk power-up from having all 3 talismans in Veteran Edition stack with the stamina implant, or does it set your punch damage to a certain value that's not amped up further by the implant? 2) What would it take to mod the game to replace the instantaneous stat rewards you get in the late portion of the game with vouchers? There is dialogue with Gerard and Feris that's clearly still there and there are obvious further versions of the implant/more training lessons which you never get. I can undersand the devs wanted to minimize backtracking in the final portion of the game, but I think it'd be more immersive to get vouchers instead of automatic boosts - the only one that makes sense is the one from the training facility.

I opened the conversion chapel level in Doombuilder for instance and it does let you select from among premade "actions", for instance the action that gives you health & stamina and many other things is assigned to the wall where the big switch to disable the converter is. What would it take to add more actions or edit the existing ones, though? Doombuilder definitely doesn't let you do that. I was thinking of modding the game for my personal use with disabling the final 3 automatic stat rewards by removing those portions of the events that grant them, and placing voucher pickups somewhere in the vicinity instead. That way it's possible to complete the medic's and arms trainer's dialogue. That said though, "Macil has authorized the implant for everyone" should probably be changed to "Richter" at that point, since the only humanly way you could get to seeing that piece of dialogue is when Macil's already dead. Unless I'm missing something, in that case it probably shouldn't be too difficult to assign this to Macil's "alive" flag and display the proper name depending on his status.

It's impossible to overrate the gameplay additions that Doom 2 introduced, with the Super Shotgun, Megasphere and so many new monsters. In terms of texture choice and atmosphere though, both were way better in Doom 1. Not only did it have prettier looking textures and levels across the board, the atmosphere was better too. One possible exception might be level 28: The Spirit World, which felt much more disturbing and depressing than any hellish level from 1. Those felt welcoming by comparison, I'd even say. Which is not to say of course they were worse, just felt different, a more "friendly" Hell if you will, which I also appreciate very much. I really enjoy fanmade WADs in the style of Inferno, much more than any Hell on Earth inspired ones, in fact. And yeah, The Citadel was one of the best Doom II moments, precisely because of how Doom 1 it felt. It was clearly a repurposed leftover level and it shows.

As in, takign all the maps from Strife and gluing them together, just to see what we'd end up with. I'd quite like to see something like this.

This is a topic that both concerns classic Doom and the new reboots (not counting doom 3 which I haven't played). Classic Doom was known for its melding of high technology with Hell. Hell itself was stated to have high technology and be capable of producing stuff like Spider Masterminds, Arachnotrons, Mancubi, Revenants all with its own efforts. The classic Inferno episode had a bunch of tech textures here and there, most immediately noticeable in the final map, Dis. What I've noticed and what kinda bothers me is that for a very long time most designers wouldn't capitalize on that and instead opted for keeping hell separate from any sort of technology in their texturing. I guess all of that goodness in the original Doom games was a product of its times - early 90s was the time of ready melding of science fiction and fantasy. It's there where science fantasy had its peak in gaming, with series like Ultima, Wizardy and Might and Magic. But for some reason this hasn't stuck, and these days only science fantasy games that aren't Dragon Ball that you can find anywhere are gonna be tabletop board games. People are just afraid of doing science fantasy anymore, perhaps worried about a potential hit to profits, or consider the mixing of these two supposedly opposide worlds to be "jarring" or whatever. Anyway, this has become even more apparent in Doom 2016 and Eternal. All the monsters with any traces of technology on them have been retconned from being created by Hell without aid to being results of UAC's experiments. It's always the humans that provide the technological enhancements to mancubi, arachnotrons - hell, Revenants are created entirely by the UAC, with the only contribution of Hell being the Argent energy. Why go that route? Why does Hell need to be devoid of high technology to be scary? Is it for suspension of disbelief so that stuff like Nekravol can come across as believable? It really wouldn't take anything away from the image of hell if it had command of high technology. Especially since what we get at the very end is Immora, a city of technology so high that it looks like fricking Urdak. So yeah, feel free to rec me some nice wads that have lots of those cable textures 'n crap mixed with hellish reds and greens, that would be nice.

I know right?

Until relatively recently, I thought Hell Knights and Barons were actually wearing pants. Medieval style, plain sackcloth pants, due to the tan/brown color of it. Turns out it's actually leg fur instead. still looks like pants, I say.

Hey, I've been playing this WAD, since I'm a sucker for WADs stylistically close to the first two games, and more recently I've developed a taste for Doom 1 episode replacements (DTWiD, NEIS, Deathless and more). But when playing 2022: ADO - episode 2 specifically - I've noticed that certain walls don't lower for me and certain switches that are supposed to work multiple times, work only once - leading to frequent soft locks. Is this a known issue in Crispy Doom? Should I be playing in a GZDoom-based port instead? Thanks

Ahh gotcha, thanks. I must have missed that on /idgames, as it's not stated in any easy to read place.

Nice, I thought that was just something a non-native speaker like myself would do. Looks like it's just pure, basic intuition to do so, after all :D

I used to pronounce UAC as "you ack" before I heard the proper way to pronounce it lol

Been replaying KDiZD again for funsies, really liking it too. So I'm really hoping to see this thing eventually see the light of day too >_>

Do you think the two bullet-firing weapons have appropriate levels of power? I've noticed that many praised the rebalance of the pistol in Eviternity, which got me thinking, what would be the best setup for these weapons? The pistol has a rate of fire of 2,5 shots per second, which is pretty poor. But The Chaingun only has 3,5x that, at 8,75 shots per second, which isn't all that impressive either. Not to mess with existing balance, I think it'd be cool to explore some or all of the following options: - Allow pistols to be pickups in maps and droppable by zombiemen - upon first pickup your pistol gets replaced with akimbo pistols for doubled firing rate (5 shots per second). Your single pistol gets permanently replaced like the non-berserk fist does with the chainsaw - Reskin the chaingun to the rifle model and rename it the Assault Rifle, put it on slot 4. Make it a static map pickup - Re-add the chaingun (also in slot 4), but increase its firing rate to 12,5 rounds per second. I know it's silly to discuss weapon balance in a game as old as Doom, but it's just hypothetical. And the one thing I'm wondering about - wouldn't a faster Chaingun encroach too much into Plasma Rifle territory and create functional overlap? The chaingun does feel rather slow for what it's meant to be - which is further exacerbated by the fact that Strife's assault rifle fires even faster than it, actually.

Yeah, either that or just add a slot 2 replacement pickup that works like the Eviternity pistol, or with an intermediate rate of fire between the pistol and the chaingun, and pinpoint accuracy. What really baffles me though, is that they had a much better shooting sound for bullet-based weapons back in the alpha, no idea why they went with the sound they used in the final game for the pistol/chaingun. Restoring the original assets could be a pretty nice way to go about this

Doom 2 did a lot to expand Doom, compared to the first game. A new weapon (an absolutely legendary and revered one), the rather amazing Megasphere, tons of enemies and new textures. The vast majority of megawads made up to this day move within the constraints of the existing monsters, weapons and power-ups, though freedom in exploring other aesthetics and textures is notably much bigger, with innumerable texture packs being both created from scratch, adapting other Doom Engine games' own textures, or remaking them. But we've also had many talented content creators make tons of new monsters, some new weapons and even power-ups (like the Terrorsphere). These extra, custom assets are used in comparatively few megawads. And frankly, it's for good reason - while a lot of the custom monsters look good to great, the vast majority of them are derivative, modified versions of id's own. It's understandable that it takes less effort to modify existing sprites than to create one's own, especially if they're to fit the aesthetic. Even id themselves are guilty of that with the Hell Knight. But yeah - after playing so many megawads with all the same monsters, it would feel really fresh to see some added new stuff making regular appearances. In smart, moderate amounts - like a legit expansion to Doom. Eviternity did pretty well in that regard - while it did borrow from the vast libraries of pre-made monsters, the way the new threats worked was fresh and justified - they behaved distinctly differently from existing monsters and required new tactics to fight, rather than just being the same cannon fodder with another paint job on. Unfortunately even Eviternity had to sacrifice some monsters, like the traditional Baron of Hell for instance, to bring in the new ones. On the other hand, other well-received mods such as KDiZD were guilty of using just too many monster types for it to be justified (three types of dark imps? come on!). It led to visual and conceptual clutter with tons of monsters directly resembling each other in how they work and what they do. So, if you were to compile an "official" add-on to Doom, a pre-selected number of assets that - leaves everything that exists as it is - simply enriches the game even further by adding justified new content that is not clutter - would be used as a basis for tons of megawads going forward what would you include in it? I personally don't have enough knowledge about what is available, but from stuff that I know, here's what I would add, personally: - the KDiZD rifle OR some version of the Unmaker - both would probably have too much overlap, unless the Rifle was a pickup off Zombiemen and provided an option in between the pistol and the chaingun in terms of firing speed, while the Unmaker could just work as in Doom 64 as an extremely efficient rapid fire option. Both weapons would be supported by canonicity - the sprite for the rifle was in Doom's alpha for instance. - It's really hard to talk about textures, simply because of how vast the current library of available custom textures is, but I'd probably throw in some super-essential ones that most people have come to rely on these days (such as Plutonia's obvious blue water waterfall, or the custom-made lava one). I would also merge Doom and Doom II's libraries of textures, so that nothing is left out of Doom 2 - these days disk space is not an issue, obviously. - hate to indulge in what I just knocked (palette swaps), but I'd actually like to have Nightmare Imps in, as a shout-out to Doom 64. The simplest black Imp sprite would do, and they'd launch those blue/red balls and have doubled health and damage output. I also wouldn't mind having some modified Pinky variation in as well - Eviternity's really changed the dynamics of the fights, since you could no longer down a pinky with a single Super Shotgun blast. I'd use one type only, either the green one from Eviternity, or the pink one modified with cybernetic enhancements (I see it as kinda similar to what what id later did with the Cyber Mancubus), with like 20-something or 30 health to keep things on edge. - 2 or 3 more non-derivative monster types, not more. Each with different tactics to deal with. One of these being another boss-type monster in the same ballpark as the Mastermind or the Cyberdemon. 300-500 hp, blast damage resistant, same old. It would be nice if this one could fly, maybe have rapid-fire but dodgeable fire with a high damage output? - One or two more power-up orbs. Maybe one for haste? Though a Quad Damage-like temporary damage boost could probably also alter mechanics in fun ways. So what are your ideas? Has something like this already been attempted?

That definitely sounds nice from a gameplay perspective, will mix things up a bit for sure! I'm personally interested in an expansionary approach, where you don't sacrifice anything, but I'm aware that sort of thing is only available using Decorate, so it'll only work wiht ZDoom-based source ports :(

Well, I'm a complete noob when it comes to doom mapping, much less modding. But I'm still curious what it would entail to make a functional weapon, where are the stats and properties that are to be edited and how to put it all together. The monster and sphere behaviors can fortunately be traced directly from Skulltag, or in the monsters' case, they come with coded behaviors already when you download them from Realm667.

Is adding stuff without the need for replacing anything currently only supported by ZDoom-based source ports, with the use of Decorate? That'd be a bit of a shame, but still better than nothing, I guess. ZDoom makes some alterations that break vanilla compatibility, after all... But since I'd like only expansion without altering anything, that'd pretty much have to be the way to go anyhow. After getting a better idea of additions made over the years, I think I'm getting closer to curating a list of additions that would feel natural and organic for a "Doom III", without being gratuitous/overwehelming. For now, this is what I'd do: Weapons: - Full Auto Gun - using the 0.4 beta machinegun pickup sprite and graphic, this could be the first upgrade to the pistol. Dropped by zombiemen, could work pretty much like the Eviternity pistol (or perhaps with a teensy bit higher RoF). Doom's bullet-based weapons would then finally match Wolf3d's equivalents - Precision Rifle - could work just like KDiZD's rifle, but use the 0.5 graphic instead, which is prettier. Peak sniping weapon for dispatching distant, heavy targets and crowd control alike Spheres: - I think only the Skulltag Doomsphere and Turbosphere are distinct enough in the way they work to warrant inclusion. All the other spheres from Skulltag feel superfluous, as they either improve or provide equivalent functions to those of the OG spheres. These two could really mix up the gameplay meaningfully though. Monsters: Since id themselves proved that they're not averse to recolors whatsoever, I can rest easy including recolored monsters. - the OG dark imp from Skulltag. Black with yellow eyes, twice the HP and a faster projectile. Long overdue, doom 64 and now also eternal already have improved imp recolors - Belphegor - since id themselves recolored the baron once, why not do it again, this time also providing a variation that's a bigger offensive threat? - Blood demon - the version with the metal spikes and legs, a rightful fan fav definitely - Bruiser - these guys would fill in the vacancy at the uppermost tier of monsters really nicely, since there's only the cyberdemon and the spider mastermind there at the moment, and this guy is the only custom monster meant for that tier that doesn't look like a frankenstein - One or maximum two extra classes of zombie, not sure which ones tho. Looking for a good mix of looks which aren't just a recolor and a matching combat role that isn't redundant with the original zombies. Would consider the rapid fire zombie that appeared in KDiZD and the new chaingunner, but both would tempt to add equivalent guns to go with them, and the number of bullet-based weapons is already enough at 3. Could move the drop of the full auto gun from the OG zombieman to the rapidfire zombie though, making it a shade rarer, solving this issue. Plasmagun zombies sound good on paper, but not sure if they've got a good enough looking sprite to use, plus we've got Arachnotrons already. - As for caco recolors, probably not needed. Pain Elementals were already meant to be improved cacos after all, for all intents and purposes. That said, I do second the belief of many posters here that some monster around the threat level of an archvile that can also fly would be a nice inclusion. Would be a bit tough to find one that's not a frankenstein and does fit in aesthetically, but I think it can be done. So yeah, that's all I can think of for now. But I believe this concise list of additions would make for a pretty fun, exciting and complete feeling base for megawads.

BTW - is it possible to make endgame monster showcases including extra monsters? Like say, the nightmare imp coming after the imp, then moving on to pinky etc

Ok, I've done some research into the topic and found out that there was more than one alpha or beta sprite for assault guns, which can probably still be somehow extracted and appropriated. I've noticed that people are mostly fine with the chaingun, but generally despise the pistol. I think adding a generic rifle which would use one of the alpha sprites, have a somewhat higher rate of fire than the pistol and 100% accuracy on sustained fire would alleviate those problems. It could be dropped by zombiemen/preplaced, and I stand by my earlier idea that it could permanently replace the 2 slot, like the chainsaw does to the fist. Of course being able to select the pistol would also be an option worth considering for many reasons, but then the it'd be the pistol that should be the one selected on the 2nd press of the key, so as to have the stronger weapon ready quicker. I agree that modifying the chaingun itself is probably not worth it, especially in a vanilla-emulating mod, for how easy it is to pick it up from heavy weapon dudes.

So it IS possible to make episodic-format wads for Doom 2 as well? Well, stupid question - No Rest for the Living is one such WAD and even if you make separate ones, it's possible to smosh them together so that they're selectable from the in-game menu. I wonder why no one ever went for a 7-episode Doom 2 WAD that covers the entirety of Doomguy's canon adventures. I suppose Doom Tribute is as close to a realization of that idea as it gets - although it did skip Thy Flesh Consumed, had new enemies and was a traditional 30-mission megawad.

Lots of newer WADs have altered palettes for some reason, which does make for aesthetically interesting levels, but also seems to needlessly affect monsters, palette-swapping them without changing their functionalities. Why has this idea gained so much traction recently?

Like I may have mentioned, I'm overall quite familiar with the notion of having multiple palettes. Descent 2 played with that idea quite extensively, having six built-in palettes, each capable of rendering all textures, but each suited better to different texture types. One dude was able to port Descent 1's palette to D2 too a while ago, which was sorely missed because it's got all the purples and renders light grays much more losslessly. Still, it would probably be optimal to have true color and just duplicate the different palette versions of certain textures in the instances where it makes the most difference. Shame such awesome games were created in an era of such frustrating limitations!

Just checked out Breathless and to be honest blue is all it's got going for it. Sure the blues are pretty, but there's not much apart from them. That's why true color would be so much better, shame only the more modern ports support it. I do agree that color banding contributes to the nice retro aesthetic though, and you can't have that with true color. That's not a big sacrifice though, all things considered.

I'd like to play back some of the unused dialogue from Strife, always had fun digging into that game's secrets. What software can I use to get inside the WAD archive and browse its contents?