[Suggestions needed] Lee Jackson/Bobby Prince tracks for Doom I/II mapsets

Okay, so after using the Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of the Triad tracks to create alternative soundtracks for Doom I and Doom II, I have decided to expand the scope of this little project. Now, I want to gather as many MIDIs of Lee Jackson and Robert Prince that I can find to create a dedicated soundtrack for a megawad that currently only uses the vanilla Doom II soundtrack. 

 

I have already started working on an unofficial soundtrack for Doom II: Reloaded.

 

So far, here are all the soundtracks I have gathered:

 

Bobby Prince

Xenophage: Alien Bloodsports

Abuse

Demonstar

Duke Nukem 3D

Rise of the Triad

 

Lee Jackson

Rise of the Triad

Duke Nukem 3D

The six tracks made for Ultimate MIDI Pack, TNT MIDI Pack and Eternal MIDI Pack, respectively

 

Here is the vanilla Doom II tracklist for reference: 

 

Title (D_DM2TTL) 

Intermission (D_DM2INT) 

Text screen (D_READ_M)

 

MAP01 (D_RUNNIN)

MAP02 (D_STALKS)

MAP03 (D_COUNTD)

MAP04 (D_BETWEE)

MAP05 (D_DOOM)

MAP06 (D_THE_DA)

MAP07 (D_SHAWN)

MAP08 (D_DDTBLU) 

MAP09 (D_IN_CIT)

MAP10 (D_DEAD)

MAP11 (D_STLKS2)

MAP12 (D_THEDA2)

MAP13 (D_DOOM2)

MAP14 (D_DDTBL2)

MAP15 (D_RUNNI2)

MAP16 (D_DEAD2)

MAP17 (D_STLKS3)

MAP18 (D_ROMERO)

MAP19 (D_SHAWN2)

MAP20 (D_MESSAG)

MAP21 (D_COUNT2)

MAP22 (D_DDTBL3)

MAP23 (D_AMPIE)

MAP24 (D_THEDA3)

MAP25 (D_ADRIAN)

MAP26 (D_MESSG2)

MAP27 D_ROMER2)

MAP28 (D_TENSE)

MAP29 (D_SHAWN3)

MAP30 (D_OPENIN)

MAP31 and Cast sequence (D_EVIL)

MAP 32 (D_ULTIMA)

 

Feel free to offer suggestions!

Edited November 23, 2021 by Rudolph

Taking the Death Toll - E3M7: Gate to Limbo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z3hy3Er_UQ

Kicking Ass and Taking Names - E1M2: Nuclear Plant - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbedWF1rvnE
Spook - E2M2: Containment Area - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFDM0uIiRJE

 

Yes. I am biased for Bobby Prince.

Edited November 12, 2021 by user76828904
Forgot to add something.

Good ideas! Also, DN3D seems to have more than enough tracks for all the Ultimate Doom levels.

Hurrah for uneventful night shifts.

 

E1M1: Hangar - Stalker - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4mRg0J5NIc

E1M2: Nuclear Plant - Lemon Chill - https://youtu.be/0IULiX5OmQE

E1M3: Toxin Refinery - Water World - https://youtu.be/1EVhdhxuGFc

E1M9: Military Base - Stalag 3-D - https://youtu.be/F_3pX9KWovk

E1M4: Command Control - Pissed! - https://youtu.be/zc4bbcltlJs

E1M5: Phobos Lab - Sneaky Snake - https://youtu.be/4ITPQNcp1nA

E1M6: Central Processing - The City Streets - https://youtu.be/2OrP5tPIKcs

E1M7: Computer Station - Space Storm - https://youtu.be/yZXoVrJoddg

E1M8: Phobos Anomaly - Invader - https://youtu.be/0fvTDAbTNqk

 

E2M1: Deimos Anomaly - Preparation D - https://youtu.be/ZeSIrY4LQTQ

E2M2: Containment Area - The Call of Death - https://youtu.be/tgP_QoUGLyk

E2M3: Refinery - Taking Names - https://youtu.be/oTprwuN8c_8

E2M4: Deimos Lab - Robocreeping - https://youtu.be/aLGEyO7bSvg

E2M5: Command Center - Future Military Conquests - https://youtu.be/J_MQYPkofO8

E2M9: Fortress of Mystery - Warehaus - https://youtu.be/0n-chrCzb6w

E2M6: Halls of the Damned - In Tents - https://youtu.be/kXi8tCQHpiA

E2M7: Spawning Vats - Aliens, Say Your Prayers! - https://youtu.be/OQvhc0fVkOI

E2M8: Tower of Babel - Ah Geez! - https://youtu.be/5Ng3Q7Hl-14

 

E3M1: Hell Keep - Pissed Office Box - https://youtu.be/GbO7MBvFH5c

E3M2: Slough of Despair - Going After the Fat Commander - https://youtu.be/22CLGdnYgMk

E3M3: Pandemonium - Bullet Dam - https://youtu.be/ImWeUwWD2fE

E3M4: House of Pain - Taking the Death Toll - https://youtu.be/dHWq5_b3uIE

E3M5: Unholy Cathedral - Spook - https://youtu.be/g-TYywWp81A

E3M6: Mt. Erebus - Plasma - https://youtu.be/AcoQpTm8QIs

E3M9: Warrens - Restricted Area - https://youtu.be/pCADhwvZFVo

E3M7: Limbo - Alfred H. (My Family's Plot) - https://youtu.be/d77SdTz1TxY

E3M8: Dis - Urban Jungle - https://youtu.be/babYTsY-U20

 

E4M1: Hell Beneath - In Hiding - https://youtu.be/6or486_S7_o

E4M2: Perfect Hatred - Lord of LA - https://youtu.be/xWfXHZd9pVM

E4M9: Fear - Whomp - https://youtu.be/7Sd5FG78Ey8

E4M3: Sever the Wicked - Calypso Facto - https://youtu.be/KZDyGyEy2E8

E4M4: Unruly Evil - Layers of Dust - https://youtu.be/dE50wSmTwO8

E4M5: They Will Repent - Baked Goods - https://youtu.be/GIOHHrInNu4

E4M6: Against Thee Wickedly - Gloomy - https://youtu.be/oDQRAfWezRE

E4M7: And Hell Followed - Gotham - https://youtu.be/h-ojy83WgaI

E4M8: Unto the Cruel - Departure - https://youtu.be/BO0ZW15qYtQ

Edited November 13, 2021 by PsychEyeball

@PsychEyeball Holy crap! You are on a fire. Thank you so much.

 

As a token of appreciation, I feel compelled to share the wad with your suggested tracklist for your and everyone else's enjoyment.

 

That said, I noticed you picked "Bullet Dam", which is unfortunately not available as a MIDI. As such, I have taken the liberty to pick "233.778 Celsius" instead. It was either that, "Subway", "Floghorn" or "Missing Impossible!".

 

EDIT: Re-uploaded it with "Missing Impossible!" as a replacement for D_BUNNY, because why not?

DukeMUS.7z

Edited November 13, 2021 by Rudolph

@Rudolph That's right. Duke Nukem soundtrack has enough good music to bring it to Ultimate Doom.

 

@PsychEyeball Nice tracklist. Did you say an uneventful night shift? No zombie did run amok in your watch?

 

@user76828904 By the way, sorry if I did not use your suggestions for the WAD file I uploaded: I wanted to stay true to PsychEyeball's exhaustive tracklist. If you have more suggestions, go ahead! It is always fun to experiment. Plus I might try to do a Doom II replacement soundtrack too while I am at it.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Rudolph

@Rudolph PsychEyeball's playlist is complete. ;)

Edited November 13, 2021 by user76828904
typo

Thank you both for taking part in this little project of mine!

13 hours ago, Rudolph said:

@PsychEyeball Holy crap! You are on a fire. Thank you so much.

 

As a token of appreciation, I feel compelled to share the wad with your suggested tracklist for your and everyone else's enjoyment.

 

That said, I noticed you picked "Bullet Dam", which is unfortunately not available as a MIDI. As such, I have taken the liberty to pick "233.778 Celsius" instead. It was either that, "Subway", "Floghorn" or "Missing Impossible!".

 

EDIT: Re-uploaded it with "Missing Impossible!" as a replacement for D_BUNNY, because why not?

DukeMUS.7z

Funny you mentionned that because 233.778 Celsius was my first pick for this level initially, then Bullet Dam was playing in the background and thought it would be a better fit. But yeah, unfortunately Episode 5's music is not available in standard MIDI format.

 

12 hours ago, user76828904 said:

@PsychEyeball Nice tracklist. Did you say an uneventful night shift? No zombie did run amok in your watch?

 

Maybe I am a zombie and no one saw fit to tell me yet!

PsychEyeball's arrangement is pretty legit, but I had so much fun with this thought exercise that I hope it's ok to post my own arrangement too. I'm not nearly as familiar with Duke3D's expansion as I am with the base game, so I'll be ignoring it to focus on what I think is an elegant goal: of transposing the core 3 episodes of one game over the core 3 episodes of the other.

 

E1M1: FUTURMIL.MID
- Not as joyous & upbeat as "At Doom's Gate", but I think it could be used to lean in to the "you are a space marine" premise. This pick and the next one blatantly steal from Lunar Apocalypse's pacing.

E1M2: STORM.MID
- The original soundtrack turned more atmospheric after the high-energy intro, and I think that should be duplicated. Plus, the song is built around the rhythmic beeping of what sounds like a warning klaxon which fits the fate of these techbases: there's been a containment breach and all hell has broken loose.

E1M3: 233C.MID

- The conspicuous background siren worked for the urban environments of Duke3D, and I'm using it here to connect with the previous song's "red alert" aesthetic. There's no ambient sound effects in vanilla Doom, but I think this song, like the previous one, seems like it contains diagetic sound from the base's alarm.

E1M4: NAMES.MID

- A peppier song for a well-lit level - it also has enough variation in it to cover the extended running time of this map, which is the first time that you're left to your own devices to explore a big space and forge your own path across its nonlinear layout.

E1M5: GUTWRNCH.MID

- The first legitimately scary level. (Mean, too.) The song sticks with the Military vibe established earlier.

E1M6: STREETS.MID

- This song sounds very techbasey. And it lasts long enough to support the extended runtime this map requires - it is the first full 3-key journey, after all.

E1M7: XPLASMA.MID

- This is the marathon level of the set, the one that incorporates backtracking through the labyrinth while listening for the sounds of newly-added monsters somewhere ahead. Seems an appropriate place to put this song since it's so good at sustaining a low-key tension.

E1M8: STALKER.MID

- CPD Map28 taught me that Stalker was designed to have a tracker point it to somewhere post-intro in order to loop cleanly - when you use the midi outside of that context, it crashes to silence & restarts, which is unfortunate. It's still got a sublime buildup, though, and will serve well on a short boss level.

E1M9: INHIDING.MID

- Honestly, the secret levels were the last things I considered, and they had to make do with whatever leftover scraps they could get. Of the three secret levels, this is the most ordinary one (containing none of the "WTF" qualities that define the other two), and so it gets the most upbeat leftover song.

 

E2M1: ALIENZ.MID

- Episode intros deserve short, punchy, exciting songs, and this midi is one of the ones most able to get the player pumped to dive in and conquer.

E2M2: SNAKE1.MID

- The spookiest epic in this new soundtrack replaces the spookiest epic in the old soundtrack. This level has a great combination of short-term scares and long-term resource-management, and deserves the most charismatically foreboding song for its journey.

E2M3: GOTHAM.MID

- This map is shorter and more high-energy compared to the surrounding levels, and requires a midi which can support its moments of action while accommodating the anxieties of blind ooze-runs and pushing through the dark, strobe-lit final stretch.

E2M4: GLOOMY.MID

- There's lots of exploration through quiet hallways, combined with left-turns into the uncanny as you find yourself in magical areas that have come to life to try & crush you.

E2M5: ROBOCREP.MID

- The first map in the episode that's 100% haunted. Finding the exit is always possible, but it never feels like you're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel until the moment you finally stumble upon it.

E2M6: WATRWLD1.MID

- This song's an epic that deserves to be paired with a long journey full of anxiety. It manages to complement both major moods of this map, which are 1: You have to go deeper, and 2: This level is absolutely trying to kill you.

E2M7: PIZZED.MID

- The last techbase-sounding song leads us to the episode's conclusion.

E2M8: URBAN.MID

- An epic showdown, which doesn't get grating if the battle takes a while or if a restart's needed.

E2M9: DETHTOLL.MID

- Again, it's just leftovers. At the very least, "another Bobby Prince ostinato" works here since the songs immediately before & after it don't lean as hard on that device and it avoids redundancy.

 

E3M1: INVADER.MID

- You're in the thick of it from the very first moments. No peace, no respite can be found here.

E3M2: LORDOFLA.MID

- This maze is disorienting and hostile. The song mirrors how the player starts on the back foot and can't seem to catch a break.

E3M3: SUBWAY.MID

- This song is based on a minimalist beat that has the percussion shift around underneath it. It matches this wide-open Tom Hall level by running long enough to support all the extended exploration until the one path to the key is uncovered, and also by deliberately underplaying things so that the player can boggle at the dimensional mishmash and wonder "what is even going ON here?"

E3M4: STALAG.MID

- Lee Jackson created a bunch of dark ambient music based on dissonant drones, and I like the idea of them taking control of the episode to emphasize how *wrong* the Episode 3-style garishness is.

E3M5: INTENTS.MID

- This level is symmetrical and cryptic, confounding and capricious. And this dissonant piece seems to me to be the most cursed & haunted of the bunch.

E3M6: SPOOK.MID

- This level is brightly-lit and wide-open. The lava and the monster hordes are dangerous, but it seems a good time to regress back to the comfy Bobby Prince riffs, if only for a short time just for pacing purposes.

E3M7: ALFREDH.MID

- You are lost in limbo, and there is no hope. Will you ever find your way out?

E3M8: AHJEEZ.MID

- Short, fast, & loud, just like the level.

E3M9: WHOMP.MID

- This track is an understudy out of Lee Jackson's ambient experiments, and therefore gets used for the leftover Secret Map slot.

 

...Since Thy Flesh Consumed didn't add any new art or songs and just endeavored to reuse the existing assets, I'm gonna do the same and bring my favorite songs back for one last ultraviolent hurrah.

 

E4M1: XPLASMA.MID

- This matches the bleak, forlorn mood that Sign Of Evil evoked in the original release. Quiet, but allowing for the incoming brutality to take center stage and dash all your hopes.

E4M2: NAMES.MID

- This song is perhaps unusually cheerful for such a hellish level, but I like how it complements the gameplay: things start off stressful from the very first moments, and that pressure will not ever relent until the exit switch is hit.

E4M3: 233C.MID

- This midi has to serve two purposes: to complement the hot start with danger everywhere, but also to be sustainable enough to play until the key & door situation is entirely solved.

E4M4: INVADER.MID

- A breather level. The first consistently low-key moments since this episode's journey began.

E4M5: ALIENZ.MID

- By now, a Continuous player is sure to have stabilized, and this song matches the resource situation where you can feel confident in tackling everything before you as long as you don't get sloppy.

E4M6: SNAKE1.MID

- From the canyons outside the castle to the inner workings of its mechanisms, this is one big endurance match that aims to wear you down by sheer attrition.

E4M7: GOTHAM.MID

- This map is more of an exploration-focused mood piece.

E4M8: ALFREDH.MID

- It's not the scariest level, but I like the idea of bringing things full-circle so the episode ends like it began: with a purely ambient soundtrack.

E4M9: STREETS.MID

- It's still a very techbase-sounding midi. The level's a major left-turn from the episode's visuals, so going Maximum Techbase seems like the right play here.

 

Well, there's three left, so for posterity's sake:

 

Intermission: GRABBAG.MID

- Obviously.

 

Text Screen: THECALL.MID
- Works well enough I suppose.

 

The End: FATCMDR.MID

- Doesn't fit at all, but it was the only slot left.

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by head_cannon

Sweet! Thank you! Interesting choices. I for one do think that "Going After The Fat Commander" actually fits D_BUNNY well enough.

 

On a side-note: after playing with @PsychEyeball's tracklist, I ended up moving a couple tracks around. I have assigned "Plasma" to E3M5: Unholy Cathedral, as I feel the quieter, solemner tone of the track fits the setting better than E3M6: Mt. Erebus. I have also used "Aliens, Say Your Prayers" for E3M7 and "Alfred H." for the text screens.

 

Anyway, I have taken the liberty to make @head_cannon's proposed tracklist into a WAD as well.

DukeMUS2.7z

Edited November 14, 2021 by Rudolph

@PsychEyeball Now I'm paranoid. How many unknown zombies are in my hood?

 

@head_cannon "A Necromancer! I hoped I'd never have to lay my eyes on one of your kind again."

 

@Rudolph What about a playlist for SIGIL?

 

 

Well, I do not know about SIGIL, as it already has its own unique soundtrack.

 

But hey, if you have suggestions, I am all ears! :D

I love reading threads like this. :)

22 minutes ago, leejacksonaudio said:

I love reading threads like this. :)

I was wondering if you were going to notice it. :P

 

So am I to understand that none of the tracks you composed for the Alien World Order episode are available in MIDI format?

 

@user76828904 Wait a minute, I have just found out that Jimmy made a soundtrack for Duke It Out in DC! :o

 

Maybe we can use that as a replacement soundtrack for SIGIL. Since he composed that one too already, I think it is only fair!

 

 

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by Rudolph

@leejacksonaudio Do you have any suggestions for the tracklist?

@Rudolph That sounds nice. Then the thing is done.

15 hours ago, head_cannon said:

PsychEyeball's arrangement is pretty legit, but I had so much fun with this thought exercise that I hope it's ok to post my own arrangement too. I'm not nearly as familiar with Duke3D's expansion as I am with the base game, so I'll be ignoring it to focus on what I think is an elegant goal: of transposing the core 3 episodes of one game over the core 3 episodes of the other.

 

That was a really good tracklist too. I appreciate as well the more focused goal of your list, plus variety is always nice.

 

31 minutes ago, leejacksonaudio said:

I love reading threads like this. :)

Countdown to when is someone going to do "Assign the ROTT soundtrack to Doom levels"?

Oh, right! The Rise of the Triad soundtrack! I have never actually played that game, so I am not that familiar with it, although I do know some custom mapsets out there do use some of its tracks, notably the first level of Return to Hadron if I am not mistaken.

 

Anyway, here is my tracklist for SIGIL using Jimmy's Duke It Out In DC soundtrack:

 

E5M1: Liberty or Duke

E5M2: Samurai Pizzicato

E5M3: Roads to Nowhere

E5M4: Night Watch

E5M5: Burning Flag

E5M6: Sneak Peek

E5M7: Sluice Gate

E5M8: One Bad Dude

E5M9: A Secret Place

 

I could not find a good use for "Unknown Data". I reckon "The Bar-Strangled Spanner" would be good for a alternative D_INTER replacement and "Wrecked 'Em" for D_VICTOR.

 

Here is the file:

DukeSIGIL.7z

Edited November 15, 2021 by Rudolph

8 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Anyway, I have taken the liberty to make @head_cannon's proposed tracklist into a WAD as well.

I gave this a spin to see how the soundtrack replacement would feel in practice compared to the speculation I had on paper. The main thing I learned is that Robocreeping is unfortunately in the same boat as Stalker: it was designed so that the intro would only play once and be skipped every time the song looped back around, and when you try to use the midi in vanilla Doom the result is an awkward cut to silence each time it restarts. Not a complete deal-breaker, but if I were to do this exercise all over again I'd move it to one of the short-form slots (intro level, boss level, or text screen).

 

You have my thanks for promptly transforming idle speculation into something actually tangible & usable, but I'm afraid I can't stop myself from being pedantic: Episode 4 was left the same as it was in PsychEyeball's arrangement, and E3M8 was left unchanged as well. It's your thread, and you get final cut privileges to make things however you'd like them to be, but I figured I'd speak up in case that was an error or an oversight.

41 minutes ago, head_cannon said:

You have my thanks for promptly transforming idle speculation into something actually tangible & usable, but I'm afraid I can't stop myself from being pedantic: Episode 4 was left the same as it was in PsychEyeball's arrangement, and E3M8 was left unchanged as well. It's your thread, and you get final cut privileges to make things however you'd like them to be, but I figured I'd speak up in case that was an error or an oversight.

Yeah, that is a misunderstanding on my part: I thought your Episode 4 tracklist was just recycling the same tracks as vanilla Doom did, hence why I did not bother making a MAPINFO file. Sorry about that!

 

Here is the complete file:

DukeMUS2.zip

Edited November 15, 2021 by Rudolph

3 hours ago, Rudolph said:

I was wondering if you were going to notice it. :P

 

It was by sheer accident, I swear. I clicked onto the forums and saw it at the very top. If another topic had bumped it from the forum listing, I'd have never seen it.

 

3 hours ago, user76828904 said:

Do you have any suggestions for the tracklist?

 

Oh, no, that's not my call. I leave it to the users to place the music where it fits best.

 

I'm sorry that my EMIDI tricks are wreaking havoc, BTW. You'd have to unroll everything and re-loop the songs to make them work in vanilla Doom without issues, I guess. You might also want to go in and strip out all of the extra tracks that I put in - ones marked with an "FM" or "GUS" or something similar next to a duplicate track name. Those aren't General MIDI tracks. They'll make the song sound strange.

More info on EMIDI, including a link to the official API: http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=EMIDI

If it helps at all, the ZDoom family supports the EMIDI loop events properly (there's more info here), and frankly, since there's been a lot of active feature development in all the important ports lately, it may be a good feature request to toss around. Midi loop points are hella useful, even if they've been a pretty hidden feature in ZDoomville for a while.

@leejacksonaudio Aha, I was just teasing. :P

 

But you have not answered my question: are the Alien World Order tracks available in MIDI format somewhere?

He answered that question in this other thread.

 

38 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

But you have not answered my question: are the Alien World Order tracks available in MIDI format somewhere?

 

I'm sorry - I didn't see that part of your question. Mea culpa. ^_^;; However, @PsychEyeball did give you my answer to that in his link. The MIDI files I do have wouldn't be useable in any manner by anyone other than me. Sorry.

4 minutes ago, leejacksonaudio said:

I'm sorry - I didn't see that part of your question. Mea culpa. ^_^;; However, @PsychEyeball did give you my answer to that in his link. The MIDI files I do have wouldn't be useable in any manner by anyone other than me. Sorry.

Bummer. Oh well. Thanks for the answer anyway!

 

Besides, I am sure there are plenty more Lee Jackson MIDI files out there to experiment with. :)

50 minutes ago, Xaser said:

If it helps at all, the ZDoom family supports the EMIDI loop events properly (there's more info here), and frankly, since there's been a lot of active feature development in all the important ports lately, it may be a good feature request to toss around. Midi loop points are hella useful, even if they've been a pretty hidden feature in ZDoomville for a while.

 

This is interesting to know. I thought EMIDI was an orphaned API for the longest time.