Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl Reloaded

[Scuba Steve]

 

It’s time for action! The original first-person beat-em-up is back and punching above its weight. Urban Brawl has been remastered for 2021; the same great mod you remember now features a host of quality-of-life updates, bug-fixes and graphical enhancements. Urban Brawl: Reloaded is available now, but first, what’s new in this rerelease?

 

Features

• Time to up the ante – Urban Brawl now features a robust set of fighting mechanics which were not possible with ZDoom in 2008. Unleash a devastating new uppercut on your enemies, slam the ground to give yourself some breathing room, or grab your foes and toss them into one another.
• It ain’t easy being GZ – Urban Brawl has been completely overhauled to take advantage of modern hardware acceleration. Originally released for ZDoom, Urban Brawl: Reloaded runs properly in Vulkan and OpenGL—no more software hacks!
• Don’t have time to play with myself – Fire up GZDoom or Zandronum and play competitively or cooperatively. Urban Brawl is multiplayer compatible. While GZDoom is the preferred port, Zandronum is available for those looking for an online experience with client-server capabilities. Join three other friends and punch, kick, and bash your way through the Urban Brawl co-op campaign or merceless bludgeon them in deathmatch in one of these Zandronum servers...
  • [TSPG] Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl co-op Hard
  • [TSPG] Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl Survival Normal
  • [TSPG] Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl Deathmatch
• Back on track – Brawl-out to new music by the original composer, Ralphis.
• So two thousand and late – In addition to new mechanics, you’ll also enjoy ultra-widescreen compatible cutscenes, visually retouched maps, and a brand new boss encounter replacing the often maligned topical humor from the mid 2000s!
• An inside snow-job – Dead of Winter has also been updated to work properly and is now included with the base game.

 

Download

Urban Brawl: Reloaded is a stand-alone iwad for GZDoom. Unpack the zip file into your GZDoom directory and simply select ‘Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl’ from the launcher menu.

• Download from the idgames archive
• Download Urban Brawl: Reloaded

 

But that's not all!

The original commercial bonus material has also been repaired and is available as well. While not a part of the main game, this material can be loaded separately by dragging the file onto the GZDoom exe and running ‘Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl.’

• Download from the idgames archive
• Download Bonus Content

 

Credits

• Sluggard: Programming & support for the 1.2 release. Wrote the new weapon, enemy, and combat code. Cleaned up countless errors in the wad from the conversion to GZDoom and added multiplayer support.
• Isle: Original programming support - Responsible for the 1.0 and 1.1 releases
• Cyb: Early programming and decorate support
• Manc: Voice acting and web hosting
• Ralphis: Original music for 1.0 release + additional rerelease tracks
• Darknation: Writing

 

Screenshots

Spoiler

 

Edited December 30, 2023 by Scuba Steve

[Scuba Steve]

FYI: If you've played AD2 in the past, you will probably have to delete any AD2 references in your ini or install it to its own directory.

[esselfortium]

Nice, congrats on the release!

[Tarnsman]

Good stuff Maynard.

[Altazimuth]

Congrats on getting this out! Any plans for another physical release?

[Manc]

ACTION!

[Sharessa]

Heck yeah, new update to the best WAD series.

[Hawk of The Crystals]

Now this is a throwback.

[Philnemba]

Its time for some more...ACTION!! 😎🤜💥🙃

[Mr. Freeze]

47 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

a brand new boss encounter replacing the often maligned topical humor from the mid 2000s!

 

🤔🤔🤔

[snapshot]

He's huge, goliath to my david, 30 stones easy. He's huge, but that means he has huge guts, rip and tear...

 

this game is such dumb fun lol

Edited August 10, 2021 by sluggard

[Noiser]

Now that's what I call a nostalgia trip!

[Doom_Dude]

Coolness. Good to see Action Doom get a facelift. :D

[Murdoch]

Neat, definitely adding this to the download queue.

[Gez]

2 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

But that's not all!

The original commercial bonus material has also been repaired and is available as well. While not a part of the main game, this material can be loaded separately by dragging the file onto the GZDoom exe and running ‘Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl.’

Why not merge it into the main wad as a bonus episode, like Dead of Winter?

Edited August 10, 2021 by Gez

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

That's great. Hope we can also see a remaster of AD1.

[Scuba Steve]

37 minutes ago, Gez said:

Why not merge it into the main wad as a bonus episode, like Dead of Winter?

The bonus material was a little more bawdy and non-sequitor than I wanted people to experience in the base game, but I wanted it available to people who actively sought to engage that material.

[Gothic]

Glad you decided to remaster this. And I agree that hopefully you'll give Action Doom 1 some love as well.

So far I've found 2 oddities, not sure if calling them bugs:

 

-If you have tutorials turned off, it won't play the cut scene where you take the gun from your cabinet.

-Glass shards have a really loud bouncing sound, like they break more bottles every time they bounce.

[Scuba Steve]

The gun is intentional. Let's you begin the game quicker. Later, it also eliminates your "freebie" in the minefield forest. Glass? Yeah, it's probably a byproduct of new sounds being louder... every time they bounce, just like bodies, they make a sound... it just happens to be noisy. GZDoom will probably break this mod again in 6 months, so maybe I'll use a different sound for bouncing glass shards in the next bugfix.

[OniriA]

Got fond memories of this mod (especially the music) .

 

It was also released as a commercial product, with exclusive content in the paid version. Is this material now available for free aswell? 

 

Scuba, I'm also really curious about the replaced boss / content.  I remember there being a.. 

 

Spoiler

Certain level in the game where you had to track down a rapist / sodomizer in his creepy farmhouse. I can remember this farmhouse was also really buggy, pitch black, and almost impossible to navigate. I hope all this is fixed now but I'm taking a wild guess about this boss being the one that's replaced? 

 

I also only got the bad ending so far and in there you see the final boss (some fat corporate guy) having groomed your young daughter.  And while you're at home, drunk and depressed, it shows you a screen where he has sex with her at night.. 

Edited August 11, 2021 by OniriA

[Scuba Steve]

Spoiler

He didn't groom your daughter, the narration tells you he IS her father because he had an affair with your wife. If you take too long to rescue her (beat up in the alley and spending weeks recovering), she becomes attached to him and shoots you, the shitty dad... who never gets to a chance to redeem himself.

 

Nope, the farmhouse is exactly the same save for improved ceiling and floor portals thanks to the hardware renderer... and I believe the basement has some impassible lines and is slightly brighter so you're not getting stuck on geometry. Only the end of MAP01 was changed... the original bosses were awful placeholder sprites that were drawn at the beginning of the project... the club boss is entirely new and fits the other sprites... and includes a much better song.

 

Yes, the bonus content is also available again... you can find it in the first post.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Scuba Steve

[Doomkid]

Glad to see this classic get a touch-up for new versions of GZDoom, and the new features sound great. I'm honestly just happy to see Action Doom again after a long time, the art style has always been so appealing

[OniriA]

@Scuba Steve

Ah, that clears up a bunch since that whole sequence gave me a weird aftertaste for many years, so thanks for clearing that up. 

 

I looked up the sprites of the farmhouse boss again out of curiosity and I can't help but notice that he looks somewhat similar to Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker (serial killer / rapist from the 80's). 

Was its design inspired by him in any way? 

Just curious.

 

I also found sprites of yourself, but I can't remember you appearing ingame anywhere. 

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by OniriA

[Scuba Steve]

He's largely based on the Final Fight boss, Hugo.

[Dreemurr Deceevurr]

Awesome!!!

[Kizoky]

In GZDoom I can see ACS script errors spamming the console
I used it as an IWAD, not sure if I did something wrong, apart from this, I noticed the "Piano guy" at the bar is missing

[Scuba Steve]

Apparently the error only appears when you have the build set to a specific developer mode... or you're running one of the recent dev builds. I never saw it because we were using the last stable release, 4.6.1

[pagb]

Doesn't seem to work for me. Latest 4.7.0 returns the same error.

 

[Scuba Steve]

Clear your ini settings of anything related to AD2.

[pagb]

24 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

Clear your ini settings of anything related to AD2.

Searched for that "actionsub" cvar on the ini and removed it, now I'm golden. Thanks!