What exactly is a "Total Conversion"

[Breadbunbun]

As of recent months I've been pondering this question quite a lot, especially when it comes to doom, because the definition seems so so very fuzzy and debated amongst the community. Perhaps not as much as the definition of partial conversion, but the definition is still thrown around in a lot of different way, and seems to have almost changed in definition over the years.

 

Some total conversions seem simply to be graphics, levels and music with no gameplay changes and are considered total conversions. and some total conversions are supposedly entirely within a DeHackEd file (you know the one, or maybe you don't)

 

And I wanted to get everyone else's consensus on what they personally believe to be the minimum bar for something to be a total conversion, must it change gameplay? or can it just be graphics levels and music? Must it change graphics and levels, or can it be a total conversion with only gameplay changes? I am quite curious. I personally have not a fully formed opinion on this, so that is partially why I make this post.

[Gez]

To me a total conversion is basically a whole different game, but it's not standalone. That's the point, a conversion converts the game into another game. A partial conversion is still recognizable as the base game, a total conversion no longer so.

 

We can sort of make a spectrum:

basic mod - mod with custom assets - partial conversion - total conversion - standalone game

[Breadbunbun]

10 minutes ago, Gez said:

To me a total conversion is basically a whole different game, but it's not standalone. That's the point, a conversion converts the game into another game. A partial conversion is still recognizable as the base game, a total conversion no longer so.

 

We can sort of make a spectrum:

basic mod - mod with custom assets - partial conversion - total conversion - standalone game

I agree with a lot of what you say here however I think your definition of total conversion is a little overboard, and firmly discredits some well known and well accepted total conversions from the past such as the Aliens TC, STRAIN, or Osiris, where the core game is very visible underneath. So while I'm not against this definition, as it does definitely include a number of total conversions such as HacX, REKKR, and Ashes 2063 to name a few, in my personal opinion it is a little overboard and narrow. Not to say its a bad definition, its plenty good, and definitely matched the meaning of the phrase, but I personally believe its a little overboard.

[Gez]

It's funny because if you asked me to give an example of a partial conversion, I'd have immediately answered "STRAIN". It's intended as a sequel to Doom II, and is about people getting the bright idea of bio-engineering new demons to use as a weapon, with predictable results. So there's nothing about it that says "it's not at all Doom anymore". The text file calls it a total conversion, but it's really not.

 

Aliens TC is also technically a partial conversion; that said back when it was made, Doom modding was a wild and untamed frontier, tools were rudimentary, and people didn't get to have the thorough understanding of the engine that we have now over two decades after its source was released. I'll grandfather Aliens TC as a total conversion due to that.

 

Osiris I've never actually played, so I'll withhold judgment.

[kwc]

IMO OSIRIS is a fantastic wad, it's one of my favorites, but it's not a TC.
There are a great number of new textures, sprite changes, a new weapon and some dehacking, but the core gameplay is still very very Doom. 
New weapon granted, the changes it makes are primarily cosmetic to fit the Egypt theme.

 

I find it difficult to zero in on a single aspect or "spirit" as to what a Total Conversion of Doom is, because as soon as we establish some kind of designation we can forever debate on where the semantic line is drawn. The most 'elegant' way that I would describe a Total Conversion is as a mod that fundamentally alters the way in which the base game and the player communicate, "gameplay", and of course one can argue that a mere vanilla map is capable of achieving this.

 

I also think wholly changing the games assets (textures, sprites, etc) is a very fundamental step toward something being read as a TC, as well. I'd argue that even if the underlying mechanics were left untouched but all cosmetic assets were replaced to resemble an entirely new theme, that this hypothetical project would count as a TC. Audio/visual elements can have about as strong of an impact on how players may perceive a game's mechanics as the underlying systems at play (attack frames, weapon sounds, etc).

 

I think, though, that this is where the authors of OSIRIS came to identify their project as a TC, much like how Gez is willing to grandfather Aliens TC due to the context of the time, OSIRIS falls under very similar territory. It was quite an undertaking for the time, and with orders-of-magnitude less points of reference as we have now, it probably felt like a new game during the age of the "Doom Clone".

Edited May 23, 2022 by kwc

[Bridgeburner56]

I've always understood it as thus:

A total conversion replaces all of the original game's assets, but still needs the original game to run. Whether or not the gameplay is similar or wildly different to the original game doesn't factor into it. The term references the assets.

[MFG38]

I pretty much second @Bridgeburner56's notion.

[Gez]

11 minutes ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

Whether or not the gameplay is similar or wildly different to the original game doesn't factor into it.

Note that I didn't say anything about gameplay, merely about game. There's a distinction here. Because you can actually change the gameplay without changing the game. Just look at the dozens of gameplay mods that exist for Doom. (As well as for other games. I won't even try to count all the Skyrim mods that purport to give it the gameplay of Dark Souls.)

 

Besides Doom's gameplay, even without gameplay mods, is extremely malleable. Depending on level design, what tools (weapons, health, armor, etc.) are provided to the player and what the opposition is, Doom can be a survival horror game, a tactical shooting game, a puzzle-solving exploration game, an arcade game, or a power-fantasy massacre game.

[Shepardus]

I'd consider it a total conversion if I can launch it with Freedoom instead of Doom without noticing the difference.

[Bauul]

1 hour ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

I've always understood it as thus:

A total conversion replaces all of the original game's assets, but still needs the original game to run. Whether or not the gameplay is similar or wildly different to the original game doesn't factor into it. The term references the assets.

 

Yep, this is my understanding of it too. It's entirely about the assets: if it no longer uses any stock Doom assets then it counts as a Total Conversion.

 

2 hours ago, Gez said:

We can sort of make a spectrum:

basic mod - mod with custom assets - partial conversion - total conversion - standalone game

 

I agree with this, presuming "mod" is being used to capture any kind of custom content, including mappacks. Because generally a mod in the Doom lexicon is a project that focuses on gameplay changes rather than asset changes, so that wouldn't ever be a conversion because it lacks new assets.

 

The one thing I'd add though is that the line between "mod with custom assets" and "partial conversion" is kind of fuzzy. I wonder at what point a mod becomes a conversion? Perhaps when the presentation is notably no longer meant to be Doom? 

 

I've seen Elementalism described as a partial conversion, but I just see it as a mappack with custom assets. It's interesting hearing it described differently.

[Gez]

11 minutes ago, Bauul said:

I agree with this, presuming "mod" is being used to capture any kind of custom content, including mappacks. Because generally a mod in the Doom lexicon is a project that focuses on gameplay changes rather than asset changes, so that wouldn't ever be a conversion because it lacks new assets. 

I always found that distinction kinda strange. To me, anything that mods the game is a mod. And yes, that includes modded maps.

 

12 minutes ago, Bauul said:

The one thing I'd add though is that the line between "mod with custom assets" and "partial conversion" is kind of fuzzy. I wonder at what point a mod becomes a conversion? Perhaps when the presentation is notably no longer meant to be Doom?  

Like, take any of the classic map packs -- Memento Mori, Alien Vendetta, and so on -- they have custom textures and music. And yes, there's no clear boundary, just like you can't look at the color spectrum and say "this right there is when it stops being blue and starts being green!"

[ReaperAA]

2 hours ago, Breadbunbun said:

I agree with a lot of what you say here however I think your definition of total conversion is a little overboard, and firmly discredits some well known and well accepted total conversions from the past such as the Aliens TC, STRAIN, or Osiris, where the core game is very visible underneath. So while I'm not against this definition, as it does definitely include a number of total conversions such as HacX, REKKR, and Ashes 2063 to name a few, in my personal opinion it is a little overboard and narrow. Not to say its a bad definition, its plenty good, and definitely matched the meaning of the phrase, but I personally believe its a little overboard.

 

STRAIN and Osiris are definitely not TC, especially not as per today's definitions of Doom TCs. At best, I would call them partial conversions and even that is a stretch, since some modern wads (most notably Valiant and Heartland) have comparable amount of aesthetics and gameplay changes, yet I have rarely ever seen anyone refer to them as partial conversions.

 

Aliens TC is also not really a complete total conversion either, at least not in the sense that REKKR (which is no doubt a TC) is.

[Graf Zahl]

Partial conversion is indeed a tricky thing. I'd say it depends a lot on the presentation. Strain is still clearly Doom - it reuses a lot of original assets, both textures and sprites, so even for partial conversion it is borderline. IMO some good examples for partial conversions are Enjay's Marine Assault and Operation Overlord maps. They clearly reuse a lot of Doom assets, but complement them with new additions, a new story and a mode of gameplay that is quite unique and different from what one would expect from a Doom map.

[Doomkid]

Back in the 90s, a lot of wads were called "Total Conversions" in their TXT files and stuff, but by modern standards (last 15 years or so), they'd be called "Partial Conversions".

 

Nowadays, only the most exhaustive TCs from the old era would still be called Total Conversions - think Batman Doom. That's still undoubtedly a TC even to this day.

 

Aliens TC, STRAIN, All Hell Is Breaking Loose, OSIRIS, even Star Wars Doom 1/2 - All of those classic WADs are absolutely Partial Conversions as we think of them now, but were all marketed as TCs back in their day. After all, just changing that much stuff was such a huge undertaking with the limited tools and software of the time - that's why they were called TCs.

 

With all that stuff said, using modern standards...

 

Total Conversions:

REKKR, Batman Doom, HACX, Ashes 2063, Aliens: Eradication TC (2020), Action Doom 2, Mega Man 8-bit deathmatch - all distinctly "not using much/any Doom stuff".

 

Partial Conversions:

Aliens TC (1994), STRAIN, All Hell Is Breaking Loose, OSIRIS, Star Wars Doom 1/2 (90s), A Fistful of Doom, Rowdy Rudy / Ray Mohawk, a lot of the DBPs, The Golden Souls series (but it's as close as possible to being a TC.. but those Doom monsters don't lie!)

 

..And for fun, mods:

Brutal Doom, Simpsons Doom, Project Brutality, DBZ Doom, Final Doomer, Smooth Doom, Guncaster - All the stuff that doesn't come with maps!

 

 

This is all just colloquial, and for the sake of convenience/grouping WADs accurately and easily (ironic considering no one agrees 100% on where the boundaries are, lol - but still!)

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

To me it's very simple. Partial conversion replaces plenty of the base game graphics, sounds, etc, and total conversion replaces all of them. 

 

That would retroactively disqualify a whole lot of older wads claiming to be total conversions. That's where I draw the line in the sand. Like MtPain says, disagreeing is part of the fun. 

[Pistoolkip]

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Back in the 90s, a lot of wads were called "Total Conversions" in their TXT files and stuff, but by modern standards (last 15 years or so), they'd be called "Partial Conversions".

 

Nowadays, only the most exhaustive TCs from the old era would still be called Total Conversions - think Batman Doom. That's still undoubtedly a TC even to this day.

 

Aliens TC, STRAIN, All Hell Is Breaking Loose, OSIRIS, even Star Wars Doom 1/2 - All of those classic WADs are absolutely Partial Conversions as we think of them now, but were all marketed as TCs back in their day. After all, just changing that much stuff was such a huge undertaking with the limited tools and software of the time - that's why they were called TCs.

 

With all that stuff said, using modern standards...

 

Total Conversions:

REKKR, Batman Doom, HACX, Ashes 2063, Aliens: Eradication TC (2020), Action Doom 2, Mega Man 8-bit deathmatch - all distinctly "not using much/any Doom stuff".

 

Partial Conversions:

Aliens TC (1994), STRAIN, All Hell Is Breaking Loose, OSIRIS, Star Wars Doom 1/2 (90s), A Fistful of Doom, Rowdy Rudy / Ray Mohawk, a lot of the DBPs, The Golden Souls series (but it's as close as possible to being a TC.. but those Doom monsters don't lie!)

 

..And for fun, mods:

Brutal Doom, Simpsons Doom, Project Brutality, DBZ Doom, Final Doomer, Smooth Doom, Guncaster - All the stuff that doesn't come with maps!

 

 

This is all just colloquial, and for the sake of convenience/grouping WADs accurately and easily (ironic considering no one agrees 100% on where the boundaries are, lol - but still!)

 

Excellent answer.

 

Just one follow-up: where would you rate Chex Quest?

It was just an asset swap with new graphics, sounds, music and maps, but no real changes to the gameplay. Yet it was released as a stand-alone game

[Gez]

24 minutes ago, Pistoolkip said:

Just one follow-up: where would you rate Chex Quest?

Where would you rate Freedoom?

 

It's basically the same thing. Though Chex Quest did remove hitscan attacks and shortened episodes to just five maps.

 

IMO, Chex Quest feels like a TC. It's not just a technical question "assets replaced: yes/no"; there's the entire mood and tone of the game that's been changed too. When you play Chex Quest, it's mechanically like Doom, but it doesn't feel like playing Doom.

 

Freedoom, on the other hand... by definition everything is new, but it still feels like Doom.

[Doomkid]

Chex Quest, FreeDoom (and even stuff like Adventures of Sqaure) feel like what I would call "standalone TCs". To me the Doomy feeling still oozes through, though there's not a single Doom asset to be found - other than that engine everything is running on under the hood!

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Chex Quest, FreeDoom (and even stuff like Adventures of Sqaure) feel like what I would call "standalone TCs". To me the Doomy feeling still oozes through, though there's not a single Doom asset to be found - other than that engine everything is running on under the hood!

This idea of "standalone TC" rubs me the wrong way, especially with FreeDoom. People made the whole thing from scratch to be independent and free. The only thing that's shared among them is the engine, because that's free already. Feels kinda like saying that PUBG and Hearthstone are a standalone TCs because they both run in Unity.

[Doomkid]

Well, I think the difference there is that the mechanics of FreeDoom are literally the exact same as those of real Doom. Not one single line of code has been meaningfully altered between the two. Although I have no idea about those games, unless they are the exact same under the hood sans graphics and level designs, I'm gonna say I don't think that's an apt comparison. (unless all of the enemies, items and actual "sector functions" in those games are 100% identical in functionality, then I'll eat my words!)
 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

Well, I think the difference there is that the mechanics of FreeDoom are literally the exact same as those of real Doom. Not one single line of code has been meaningfully altered between the two. Although I have no idea about those games, unless they are the exact same under the hood sans graphics and level designs, I'm gonna say I don't think that's an apt comparison. (unless all of the enemies, items and actual "sector functions" in those games are 100% identical in functionality, then I'll eat my words!)
 

Those games I mentioned was a major leap in moon logic. They have nothing in common, except for the engine. 

So where would you say a mod ends and independent game begins? For me, that's probably an iwad. I wouldn't call Batman Doom its own game because it's still a pwad. Things that released as iwads, like Chex Quest and Freedoom are independent games, as far as I'm concerned, not total conversions. 

[Doomy__Doom]

1 hour ago, HrnekBezucha said:

So where would you say a mod ends and independent game begins? For me, that's probably an iwad. I wouldn't call Batman Doom its own game because it's still a pwad. Things that released as iwads, like Chex Quest and Freedoom are independent games, as far as I'm concerned, not total conversions.

Problem with this logic is, Freedoom1|2.wad have sprites, sounds, textures, maps, but do not contain such gameplay data as "how fast does an imp fireball travel". That's part of the executable, hardcoded in the engine, which is why vanilla dehacked patching creates a new .exe. If I make a patch that makes zombies move twice as fast, they will do so both with Doom and Freedom, the "game rules" are external to the iwad.

 

Freedoom implements legally free resources which happen to be compatible with the rules, and the reason why it's an iwad and not a pwad is pretty much "by convention" - because the whole point is to have a functional game without owning a copy of doom. In fact, you can manually turn it into a pwad:

And load it: <your favourite port>.exe -iwad DOOM2.WAD -file freedoom2.wad

It will even work on vanilla exe (without -iwad ofc).

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

I guess I'm going to reopen with a bump because a similar question is bothering me, but since I'm probably gonna ramble, my main thrust is:

Is the moniker of "partial conversion" (and to a lesser degree, "total conversion") still truly relevant/useful in this day and age, or are these outmoded terms that we use out of tradition when there are better ways we could categorize them?

 

I think it's useful to have the distinctions for "gameplay mod" (new behavior, same old levels) and "level set/episode/megawad" (same old behavior, new levels), and to have something to indicate that a mod combines both.  Before reading through some of the other replies to this thread I would have said that a "total conversion" would change both levels and behavior, but now I'm not so sure; a few posts before have pointed out that PC/TC doesn't actually need to imply changes to the behavior, just changes to the "theme" of the game and they have a point.

 

And the word "theme" brings me to how the idgames maintainers of old had their whole other way of categorizing stuff with "levels" and "combos" and "themes", where "combos" is sort of the catchall "no levels, but a mixture of other changes" and "themes" sometimes but not always corresponds to "PC/TC" and in general just implies a, well, theme outside the norm of Doom stuff.  Some of their categorizations will eternally annoy me, though (sorry Team TNT, you are not a "theme").  I think you could easily talk about a mod being a "Batman theme" or "Aliens theme" and the general populace would understand roughly what that means, but "combo mod" would probably draw some confusion from anyone who's not familiar with idgames-specific hierarchy.  And maybe some of those who are.

 

It all gets messier when you (like I do) want to have some sort of roughly consistent way to categorize mods across multiple different games.  Other terms I see floating around in videogame land (tangent ahead):

Spoiler

 

"Mutator" - Seems to come from the Unreal scene but I've seen it applied in Doom to mean a mod that changes behavior only with no supporting graphics/sounds.  There are a bunch of old DeHackEd patches around that such a definition could, retroactively, apply to.  I generally tend to regard these as also falling in the category of a "gameplay mod" (just without graphics or sounds).

"Mission Pack" / "Expansion Pack" - I usually associate this one with an official, or at least commercial product (ex. Zaero or Juggernaut for Quake 2).  I have sometimes seen fan mods call themselves one of these, though (ex. "Mission Pack by Rino" for Hexen 2).  Can have changes to weapons/enemies/etc. (Quake and Quake 2 mission packs) or just be more levels (Deathkings of the Dark Citadel).

"Board" - Presumably a holdover from tabletop games; pretty much synonymous with level/map.  Ken Silverman seems to have been fond of this one and there are other random uses of it scattered around, but it tends to be rare.  Unless there's a compelling reason I'd lean towards calling these levels or maps instead.

"Scenario" - Mostly associated with strategy games.  Tends to be roughly comparable to "level" / "map" but depending on the game may have a likelihood of new graphics/sounds/behavior too.

"Campaign" - Mostly associated with strategy or D&D-adjacent games, though people sometimes apply it to other things as well.  Roughly equivalent to "Episode" or "Megawad" in Doom-land terms and may or may not include changed behavior.

"Module" - A holdover from D&D and appears to be almost entirely associated with D&D-adjacent stuff like Unlimited Adventures or Return To Chaos.  Pretty much assured to have maps, often comes with other new stuff too.

"Hack" - Usually synonymous with "mod" of any kind for a game that doesn't officially support modding, or for changing "difficult" parts of a game that does support modding (ex. DeHackEd).  Raises a side question, is there much point to the distinction or is a "hack" really just a "mod" for a game that's difficult to mod?

 

In some cases I tend to just defer to "stick with the expected term for the game in question even if it doesn't mean the same thing across different games".  That seems reasonable enough.

 

Then we've got Wolf3D where standalones are kind of the norm.  Is Spear Resurrection a partial conversion, a fangame, something else?  I distinctly remember some freeware game sites in the early 00's listing it right along every other game rather than as a game mod.

 

RomHacking.net dispenses with the idea of different types of mods being different "things" in favor of a tag-based approach where you can check off any of Graphics, Sound, Levels, Text, Gameplay, Other.  I'm sure there are other archives that take this approach, too.  It doesn't map well to directory-based organization but has its merits.

 

I'm going to throw in one more thought/question about "partial conversion" in particular... was it always, and is it now, largely considered a neutral term or is/was there an implication of halfassery on the part of the modder in comparing it that way to a total conversion?  It would definitely cast a certain light on things that we don't necessarily nowadays consider to qualify as "total conversions" still calling themselves that.

 

Ramble over, tl;dr is "partial conversion" still a useful term or should we generally avoid it in favor of something else and if so what?