Tag: WAD

  • RTC-3057 for Doom: Doom with a tinge of survival horror.

    RTC-3057 for Doom: Doom with a tinge of survival horror.

    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.

    The following was released to Patreon subscribers a few days earlier. If you wanna see this stuff early, please consider subscribing to my Patreon. Every dollar helps.

    Wow, so blue…

    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.

    Things may look slightly different, but it’s still Doom: the goal is still killing demons.
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  • A little thing about Legacy of Rust, the new Doom level set.

    A little thing about Legacy of Rust, the new Doom level set.

    They really didn’t need to do this.

    In 2019, Doom got a remastered port handled by Nerve Software, and while it wasn’t perfect, it was serviceable enough. It got a few updates that fixed a few of the major problems – including requiring Bethesda.net to login – but it was fine. A perfectly playable version of the 1993 classic.

    DOOM + DOOM II is a bit of an unwieldy title, tbh

    Five years later, at Quakecon 2024, they remastered Doom again. This time handled by Nightdive Studios, the wizards who remastered a whole bunch of games, from Turok to Quake II. This time they added support for Boom, a Doom source port framework that added a whole bunch of new features and expanding older ones. But they weren’t done with that. Of which has become tradition with all id Software remasters by Nightdive at this point, they added a new episode called Legacy of Rust.

    Mild spoilers for Legacy of Rust within.

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  • Doom modding in the ’90s: My recent fascination.

    Doom modding in the ’90s: My recent fascination.

    One day, I was checking out some YouTube videos, until I had stumbled upon this one by Pordontae:

    YouTube player

    I was gonna write something about that Doom level set featured in the video, but I realized there wasn’t anything particularly unique about it. Some of the levels feel bland and featureless, often with no sense of balance. E2M9 has a fight between one spider mastermind and three cyberdemons, for crying out loud! But it did give me an idea. that’s not the main reason why I liked this level set. It was the random sounds that the creator replaced.

    Playing this level made me realize how amazing the Doom mod scene was during the mid-to-late ’90s. END1.WAD is the epitome of a 1994 level, according to the Doom Wiki. During the heyday of Doom modding, everybody was making their own levels to play around in Doom, in varying levels of quality. Some have held up and get universal praise from Doom veterans. Others are forgotten, an experiment often made by a teenager who didn’t pursue game development further.

    Modifying an existing game wasn’t a new concept, but Doom was one of the few to openly embrace it in its early days. This lead to many creative levels, some made by people who’d later become famous in their own right.

    Though this wasn’t always the case. Since the tools were fairly new, most people were making fairly dreadful levels, usually plagiarizing parts of the original Doom levels, or in some cases created tutorial levels. Such as FEAR21.WAD, which looks so obtusely designed that it’s like if Salvador Dali made Doom levels. Here’s a UV-Max (All kills, all secrets) run from Doom speedrunner ryback:

    YouTube player

     

    This above is an example of what most people had to offer. For 1994 standards, it was great to have another level to play, but it’s very tough to play today unless you’re like me and have a liking for crap, for sure.

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