I. Love. Doom mods. Out of all the things I’ve written about over the years, it’s the one thing I consistently come back to writing about. What folks have done to push that 32-year-old game and its engine never ceases to amaze me. This one in particular was one I wanted to write about as early as last year, and I think it’s time.
When id software released the Doom source code around 1997, little did they know what folks were gonna do with that “old” engine. From expanding the vanilla limits like Boom, to the more complex scripting that GZDoom brought years later. While there were still levels being made for Boom and vanilla Doom around the 2000s, source ports like Doomsday and ZDoom pushed the idea of expanding beyond what vanilla Doom could achieve, with a myriad of gameplay and levels projects released around that time. One of these in particular was a ZDoom-focused mod that would change Doom into something more like its contemporaries of that time: System Shock.
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The mod is RTC-3057, a creation ran by “Team Future,” a handful of Doom modders lead by one Jacob “Shaviro” Kruse. Initially, the mod was released as a single-level demo in 2002, and would end up being considered as part of the 10 Best WADs for 2003 to commemorate Doom’s tenth anniversary. (This would be a precursor to the later Cacowards, which started the following year.) The final version consisting of the first hub, codenamed Blue, was released on the /idgames archive that same year.
The RTC-3057 in this case refers to you, a human-cyborg hybrid. Awakening from a bunch of unexplained nightmares, 3057 discovers something has gone incredibly wrong in the spaceship he’s occupying. Armed with the standard pistol and 50 bullets, 3057 must fight their way through all the foes that have invaded the ship.
One thing you’re gonna have to learn quickly that while the bestiary and arsenal are identical to the original Doom, it doesn’t play like vanilla Doom. If 3057 takes too much damage, they’ll start slowing down and seeing a scrambled HUD. There’s interactive screens which are used to show cameras, activate/deactivate locked doors, and other bits of interest. There’s a log system that will give hints and a bunch of lore if you’re curious to read, similar to Doom 3’s PDA system.
Since it’s a mod that relies on a hub system, the levels play a bit more like Hexen, where you’re often going back and forth between areas to unlock a switch/area to make progress. (If me mentioning Hexen gave you PTSD moments of the Seven Portals Switch-Hunt Hell in that game and made you worry, don’t. RTC-3057 is a lot more merciful in that regard.)
3057 moves a bit more slower the average Doomguy. This makes the combat in RTC-3057 feel a bit more tactical compared to the frantic, fast-paced nature of the original game. Some common movement tactics like straferunning and dodging, may still work, but it necessitates having to undo the usual strategies you’d get out of playing vanilla Doom or any PWAD.
While I am not an absolute Doom god, I can at least get myself around most areas on Ultra-Violence if needs be. Playing RTC-3057 on UV is something I would not recommend. Health is kinda scarce and armor even more so. That scrambled HUD thing I mentioned when 3057 is at low health? I saw that constantly.
It can be ruthless, especially in later sections where it’s extremely dark and you can’t see who’s shooting at you. A good chunk of my deaths were lucky potshots from shotgun guys while I was down to 9% health. So I am warning you that if you play RTC-3057, you might wanna pick a lower difficulty on your first playthrough. Yes, I know that Ultra-Violence isn’t The Only Way To Play Doom, but I know there’s folks who will ride or die and play everything on UV. and I’m telling you: Don’t play this on Ultra-Violence the first time through.
Also: Unless you play on recent GZDoom versions or ZDoom 2.0.9 or earlier, you may realize the game is harder, as you do not get the pistol. All later versions of ZDoom as well as some forks like RZDoom will show an error text about a pistol when you first start. This is an unfortunate bug due to a change in the engine code in ZDoom 2.1.0. There are workarounds to make it work on these, but they require basically editing the WAD file. However, when I played the mod on the most recent stable release of GZDoom, 4.14.1, for this article, it seemed to work perfectly fine there with no major issues. I definitely needed that pistol to make it through those early areas!
Shifting from gameplay to the audiovisual side of things: There’s some nice custom spritework., and the whole interactive elements were an interesting novelty for the time. But the one thing that really got me interested was the custom music.
The main soundtrack was done by Julian Hope, a Doom community member who’s done a myriad of projects, including music. Songs like “Guardians” and “Device” really evoke a System Shock 2 sort of vibe, suspenseful and full of tension while fighting for your life. He’s put the score on Soundcloud if you wanna listen, and it’s definitely one of the things that really stuck out to me when I first played it all those years ago. There’s also an expanded soundtrack for the unreleased hubs by Marc “Fanatic” Pullen that was more metal themed than the ambient nature of this mod, but it’s still good.
Speaking of unreleased: While Team Future touted there would be three hubs, the project stopped development once Hub 1: Blue was released in 2004, with Shaviro moving on to something bigger: Doom 3 Phobos, a mod for Doom 3 that’s been long in development: starting in 2004 not long after Doom 3’s release, and took many years to develop, with the first episode being released in 2018, and the third episode releasing just last year. I’ve heard good things about this mod, and I might give that a try sometime if the quality of RTC-3057 is any indication.
RTC-3057 did a few pretty neat things that pushed what that Doom engine could do around the early 2000s. This was around the time when Doom gameplay mods were starting to gain traction, to give old levels get a new twist with gameplay mechanics. This would eventually lead to stuff like Brutal Doom (ugh), something I still hold disdain for. (That 2014 article I wrote about Doom gameplay mods better than Brutal Doom was one of the most contentious blog posts on this site for a while.)
Eventually ZDoom would be used as a base for games like The Adventures of Square: they used ZDoom’s engine as a base, but made their own game around it. Eventually GZDoom became another FPS game engine to make games with, which can feel like Doom without being just a Doom mod. Getting that right balance of making something retro inspired yet still with modern tech sensibilities.
To me, this is why I love Doom and its modding community. With the release of the source code, ports could be made specifically to add/improve existing features, or make new games within the same framework. There’s so many indie games from your run-of-the-mill boomshoots to more thought-provoking games using GZDoom, and that’s great. While RTC-3057 didn’t start it, it definitely was one of those mods that showed to people what people could do with Doom beyond vanilla. And that’s amazing.
If you want to play it for yourself, it’s on the idgames archive. A copy of Doom II is required, available on all modern digital storefronts. The mod only supports versions of ZDoom prior to 2.1.0, or a current version of GZDoom. Will not work at all on other source ports or vanilla DOOM2.EXE.
This suddenly got me on a kick of revisiting a few of these early ZDoom mods: this mod, Knee Deep in ZDoom, Action Doom, Zen Dynamics… Man, the Doom community makes some really cool stuff.
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