HERCULINE'S DOOM UPGRADE: Final Release

"Final release? Yeah, we've heard that one before..."


No... really. This is it. Just to prove it, I've uploaded it to the DoomWorld id Games Archives where it should appear in the next batch of "latest files" and become a permanent part of Doom history. Until then, it can be downloaded through the following links, which also will be a permanent part of the blog's sidebar:

HERCULINE'S DOOM UPGRADE

WITHOUT MUSIC: 15 MB

WITH MUSIC: 106 MB

I've decided to release two separate versions because everyone's tastes in game music varies and also because some people might simply want the smaller file. Only the version without the music has been uploaded to the Archives; this should circumvent any copyright concerns regarding the Aubrey Hodges PSX music, plus I had a difficult enough time getting the smaller of the two files to go through the FTP anyway.

If you've downloaded a previous version of the mod, you'll want to delete that and get one of the final versions. Several new weapons and monsters have been added and several bugs regarding sprites with similar or even identical names have been fixed. I never figured out how to get the Armor Shards to be of benefit above 200% or how to prevent the Soulsphere from being picked up when it's not needed, but everything else seems to be working perfectly so I'm calling it a done deal.

Also, if you have a previous version your old game saves will most likely not work with the new final versions. Sorry about that, but there's really no way to get around it.

It should also be noted that the mod will not work with any previously saved "vanilla" games. My mod replaces ALL the default weapons except for the fists and the pistol, so if you load a previously saved game your weapons won't be in your inventory!

MOD DESCRIPTION

Herculine's Doom Upgrade is a mod for GZDoom that uses custom spawners to randomize monsters and items. Many new ones are added and have been carefully selected and placed to present new and unexpected challenges while attempting to maintain a semblance of the original difficulty intended by any given map's author as well as to maintain the original atmosphere of the games. New weapons have also been added in an attempt to maintain these balances but also have been chosen to fit the original atmosphere.

Here are a few of the new things you can expect to see:

These aren't just recolored versions of the original monsters. I've carefully chosen the new creatures on the basis that they not only fit the original atmosphere of the game, but also that they possess some new attacks and unique behaviors that add fresh and unexpected challenges to the game. It should also be noted that I've done my best to preserve our ability to use the tried-and-true trick of getting those big bad-ass monsters to kill each other for us. Each class of monsters has been assigned a species type that should* keep them from attacking other monsters of the same species and yet still allow infighting to occur between monsters from different classes. *(I say should because this is supposed to work in theory, but I have observed an instance or two where the monsters just didn't seem to care.)

As a result of randomizing monster and item spawns, difficulty can potentially be erratic. Overall difficulty is usually slightly higher. If you're having too tough a time of it, you can try restarting the level to get a different set of random spawns. However, I've modified a few things in an attempt to prevent the average map from becoming impossible when using my mod. As mentioned in the previous post, one of these modifications was an increase to DoomGuy's ammo carrying capacity. I've also added some new and interesting power-ups (like the ability to freeze time for a few seconds) that should help even the odds even if you're not a Doom veteran, but like everything else I've chosen for this mod I've done so with the intention of making our Doom experience more enjoyable rather than ridiculously unbalanced.

The new weapons also have all been chosen with balance in mind. Some weapons, like the Necrovision MG40 (an uber-chaingun) might at first seem like they give you an unfair advantage (it fires so rapidly you could cut grass with it and it similarly cuts down some of the toughest of the new demons) but once you note how rapidly they consume ammo or, in the case of some of the energy weapons, that they can have a backlash that makes them almost suicidal to use, you'll tend to save these big guns for only the more desperate emergencies. Some of these weapons also have the potential to be rare since they are only dropped by randomly-spawning enemies.

This mod likely will not work with any mod that replaces the existing monsters, weapons or items. This mod will work with any Doom IWAD and should work with most custom megaWADs and levels, but may not work with heavily scripted ones.

SPECIAL THANKS

The various contributors to Realm667's Beastiary, Armory, Item Store and Prop Stop. This mod is in no way an attempt to take credit for anyone else's excellent work. A full list of credits can be found in texts both included separately with this WAD and also integrated into the WAD itself.

Snarboo for his randomizer which inspired me and taught me how to do this.

Graf Zahl and the DRD Team for GZDoom.

Aubrey Hodges for the best Doom music ever. Elbryan42 and Doom Depot for the music WAD.

Everyone who follows the blog here and has supported this project. THANK YOU!

UPDATE: 05-21-2011

After proudly posting that this would be the final ever release of the mod, I've played through the entirety of Doom II on Ultra-Violence with it and did not notice any issues... except for two little things:

I never saw any stimpacks or the green armor vest. Not once. I was always getting the new medipack and the ArmorSphere instead.

Being a sort-of hard-core Doomer who generally makes things more difficult on myself rather than easier, these issues nagged at me and as I was playing I was continually trying to adjust the spawn rates of these items, but with no apparent effect. This puzzled me because I had gone so far as to make it so that the items should only have had a 1-in-10 chance of spawning something different.

Finally I realized that the problem was in that I had given the stimpack a chance of spawning a medikit and that the medikit spawns were then automatically producing the new medipacks. Even so, according to the math there still should have been some spawns of the lesser items rather than nothing but the more powerful items. Apparently the spawn spawning a spawn confuses the game engine somehow, and no level of tweaking the spawn ratios will fix it.

The only solution I could come up with was to totally eliminate any randomness for the stimpacks and green armor. However, I'm not going to upload a new version of the mod containing these changes because it's not likely that most people are going to complain about too much health lying around, and also because a new version would invalidate the saved games using previous versions since two spawners have been totally eliminated from the list.

If anyone who has been using the mod truly wants the new version in which these changes have been made, contact me and I'll be glad to send you a copy. Besides, who knows? Maybe I'll find some other new things to add to the game and at some point release a newer version anyway...