Winter's Fury - 10th Anniversary Update

[Pieruskwurje]

 

Original Thread

Winter's Fury is 10 years old today!

Spoiler

One afternoon, I was catching up with my brother. He had recently been recommended a video on Youtube about 10 Doom Wads to play, and much to his amusement he found Winter's Fury on that list. "Pieruskwurje," he said. "This video recommended your mod!" I was a little surprised as I knew it had been a year or two since I released it, but happy nonetheless.

 

I took a look at some of the comments, finding that one in particular had singled out Winter's Fury, claiming that it was 'an old one, but a good one'. Confusion struck me. This fool clearly had his math wrong, or at least his sense of time warped by his incorrigible youth. Surely, as it had only been a small time since I released Winter's Fury a year or two ago, back on December 6th... 2012??? 10 years???

 

I was immediately distraught. Could I have really let 10 years fall away with nothing to show for it?! "No, I don't want that," I thought. And so here I am today, taking deep breaths while trying to forget the fact that this mod is now in the double digits by releasing this anniversary update. I am also going all in and promising another upcoming installment in the series to be finally released in the coming months. I hope you enjoy.

 

 

Winter's Fury is a GZDoom mod for Doom 2 with 12 playable maps, a new set of weapons, and a cinematic story line. 

 

You follow the story of TAO soldier Sergeant Elliott Morse, assigned to clean-up duty by the UAC at Baphomet's crypt. Traversing the frozen technological wasteland outside Mount Baphomet, Elliott discovers things better left to the unknown.

 

Screenshots:

 

Spoiler

 

Some 'Before/After' shots:

Spoiler

 

 This new update includes:

• Several remastered set pieces that still capture the original design (MAP01, MAP02, MAP04B, MAP05A, MAP05B, MAP07B).
• Several places where the original design sucked, so I remade it entirely (MAP07B).
• Minor changes and improvements to all maps.
• UI overhaul including the cinematics, HUD, menus, and credits.
• New dialogue system that allows much more expression (pauses, speed changes, italics, shaky).
• Updated character dialogue that keeps the original major plotline but adds much more to look forward to.
• Use of 3D models to improve performance in previously laggy maps.
• Dedicated options for controlling background transparency on text and other SFX.
• Backend changes to completely convert the maps from ZDoom/Hexen to UDMF format.
• Bugs spawned from older GZDoom hacks reworked.

 

Download here.

Please note:

• It is recommended that you play using the latest official release of GZDoom (tested on 4.11.0).
• The mod has been designed with use of Light Shadowmaps and Bloom Effect being turned on, but they are not mandatory.
• Winter's Fury is not designed to be played with any other addons.
• This mod is in the same universe as Insanity Edged. I think that playing Winter's Fury first is better, but there's no reason why you couldn't play Insanity Edged first either.

 

Despite the mod being 10 years old, I am always looking for feedback. I encourage you to report any bugs or to let me know if you think something could be done better. Considering I'm releasing an update 10 years after it's original release, I'm not particularly afraid to release one after 11. There's still more that even I would want to change in certain levels to bring them to a higher quality, but that can wait until I finish work on actual new mods. Above all, I hope you enjoy it.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Pieruskwurje

[esselfortium]

This looks great, congrats on the release!

[Breezeep]

The "after" shots look leagues better than the earlier stuff! Very tasteful trimming and architecture on display. Grats on getting this out!

[Shulbocka]

Oh hell yeah! This is still one of my favorite all time WADs to this day and for more then good reason. Whoever made that Youtube video knew what they were talking about. I was not expecting this at all, ever, but am totally excited to play through it. Congrats on the release and thank you very much for making it.

[Somniac]

Wow, this is a blast from the past. I loved the original Winter's Fury and played it a ton back then. I'm keen to check this new one out. 

 

I feel old now! I'm still 21, I'm still 21, I'm still 21....man 2012, feels like a lifetime ago, doesn't it?

[Jimmy]

The Return of the King!

[StoopidBoiEthan]

Holy shit, I think this was the first major doom wad I ever played, can't believe that it not only has this major update, but now a sequel in the works. God damn.

[Rex705]

Sweet I never fully played the original but what I did play always had it ranked as one of the top quality maps. Can't wait to try this one out.

[NightFright]

About time this one got dusted off. And not too early, either - fitting to the season!

[Gregor]

I never played this one before, but always had it on my list of "classic WADs you need to play before you die." So this anniversary seems like the perfect time (and season) to finally give it a go. Let's do it!

[Red Recluse]

Eviternity winter all maps covered in mist.Better sound monsters and frozen design.

[TJG1289]

Man, this one brings back memories. The story in this WAD was so interesting to me, that when I finished it and went to bed, I thought about it so much, I did not sleep. At all. It was weird. I guess it just hit me in a way I never expected a story in a Doom mod to hit, and the ending left me with a lot of questions. Plus, it's gorgeous and fun to boot! I'm sure this new anniversary edition is a great way to experience it again (or for the first time).

[Rex705]

I love the HUD I just wish it was split and on the sides of the screen instead of the middle where the guns are.

[Caleb13]

Hot cold damn, this mod has better story and visuals than many commercial games I've played!

 

Anyway, I'm just popping in to report two bugs, both berserk-related. Firstly, if it expires while you're firing/reloading SSG, the firing/reloading sequence will glitch. I think it affects other weapons too, but I can't easily replicate it. Secondly, if you maximize your screen size, GZdoom displays white medkit icon and current health next to it. Normally, the icon turns black when you pick up a berserk (and stays black for the rest of the map), but not in this mod.

 

Also, every autosave message starts with "Captured yesterday". Is that intentional? I used latest GZdoom 4.10.0.

Edited December 7, 2022 by Caleb13

[kevansevans]

One of my favorites, glad to see it get the update treatment.

[Pieruskwurje]

Thank you very much everyone who has commented; I'm very happy that you've taken the time to share your thoughts and I'd love to hear other old stories about Winter's Fury if you've got em'.

 

 

 

22 hours ago, esselfortium said:

This looks great, congrats on the release!

Thank you. I'm going to take this opportunity to say that I am still very appreciative of the small bits of feedback you gave when Winter's Fury was in very early development; attempting to break up the monotonous snow really helped bring some of the outdoor environments to life.

 

20 hours ago, Shulbocka said:

Oh hell yeah! This is still one of my favorite all time WADs to this day and for more then good reason. Whoever made that Youtube video knew what they were talking about. I was not expecting this at all, ever, but am totally excited to play through it. Congrats on the release and thank you very much for making it.

It makes me very happy to know that people still consider this one of their favourites, despite the age it's gotten to. I truly hope you enjoy the update!

 

13 hours ago, Somniac said:

Wow, this is a blast from the past. I loved the original Winter's Fury and played it a ton back then. I'm keen to check this new one out. 

 

I feel old now! I'm still 21, I'm still 21, I'm still 21....man 2012, feels like a lifetime ago, doesn't it?

It was so long ago it feels like a different life entirely. I was still in school back then! Either way, I hope you enjoy it!

 

9 hours ago, Jimmy said:

The Return of the King!

My friend, you bow to no one.

I've been changing the subtitle of MAP08 every time I updated this mod over the last 10 years thanks to your original comment; I am sure that this will be the last time.

 

5 hours ago, Gregor said:

I never played this one before, but always had it on my list of "classic WADs you need to play before you die." So this anniversary seems like the perfect time (and season) to finally give it a go. Let's do it!

It's not old enough to be a classic WAD, right? Right???

I really hope you have a good time playing!

 

3 hours ago, TJG1289 said:

Man, this one brings back memories. The story in this WAD was so interesting to me, that when I finished it and went to bed, I thought about it so much, I did not sleep. At all. It was weird. I guess it just hit me in a way I never expected a story in a Doom mod to hit, and the ending left me with a lot of questions. Plus, it's gorgeous and fun to boot! I'm sure this new anniversary edition is a great way to experience it again (or for the first time).

That's fantastic to hear. Having a full-fledged cinematic story driven WAD was not common back in the day, where most of it was contained to the now charming mid 2000s ZDoom mods which always had difficulty with presenting it in a clean way. I fell into the same trap with early versions of the mod too, where it sometimes baffles me that people actually really liked the original 2012 version.

 

I am ashamed to admit that I had to really tone down the intended dialogue in some of the earlier versions to the point that some elements to the story may have got lost in translation. Being constrained to centred text in one font where you couldn't even tell what was a capital letter or not forced me to try to make the dialogue lines clear and snappy, not wanting to have a giant paragraph of text appear all at once. Fortunately, the new dialogue system really helps alleviate that.

 

Spoiler

A good example would be with the conversation between Darkness and Baphomet, where the old versions really made it feel like Darkness was begging for Baphomet's help before suddenly saying "nah lmao I had a backup plan all along", which felt really weird to me. The new dialogue system combined with a rewrite really helped make it feel more like this was a chance opportunity that he took, and after realising it wouldn't work he would have to try to readjust his trajectory to make everything work again.

 

 

2 hours ago, Rex705 said:

I love the HUD I just wish it was split and on the sides of the screen instead of the middle where the guns are.

Have you tried the minimised HUD or the alternate HUD? I know it's not exactly the same, but it at least gets the info to the sides of the screen (not to mention the alt HUD is fully customisable in GZDoom options, so you can at least match the colour scheme if you wanted).

 

2 hours ago, Caleb13 said:

Hot cold damn, this mod has better story and visuals than many commercial games I've played!

 

Anyway, I'm just popping in to report two bugs, both berserk-related. Firstly, if it expires while you're firing/reloading SSG, the firing/reloading sequence will glitch. I think it affects other weapons too, but I can't easily replicate it. Secondly, if you maximize your screen size, GZdoom displays white medkit icon and current health next to it. Normally, the icon turns black when you pick up a berserk (and stays black for the rest of the map), but not in this mod.

 

Also, every autosave message starts with "Captured yesterday". Is that intentional? I used latest GZdoom 4.10.0.

Thank you for the feedback!

• I had noticed the berserk bug where you can get an extra free shot after it expires, but decided to leave it in as was fun to use it to min-max damage output, even if it does look really dumb. I might take a look into it regardless, thanks!
• I'll take a look at the medikit/berserk appearance one; might have accidentally messed with the status bar too much when making the new full HUD.
• The change to the Autosave message is intentional. You'll find that many of the system messages have been changed (cheats, option changes), and have the same colour text as another character in the mod.

Also, I can't believe GZDoom got updated again before I released this! I have no idea if everything still works on 4.10.0, but I'd assume so.

 

Edited December 7, 2022 by Pieruskwurje

[esselfortium]

7 minutes ago, Pieruskwurje said:

Thank you. I'm going to take this opportunity to say that I am still very appreciative of the small bits of feedback you gave when Winter's Fury was in very early development; attempting to break up the monotonous snow really helped bring some of the outdoor environments to life.

Oh wow, that's a blast from the past. I'm usually a bit embarrassed by my old posts and feel like I was kind of tactless in them, and that one is no exception. I'm glad that it was helpful despite that.

 

I really need to get around to playing this soon, it looks fantastic.

[Not Jabba]

48 minutes ago, Pieruskwurje said:

• I'll take a look at the medikit/berserk appearance one; might have accidentally messed with the status bar too much when making the new full HUD.

I think I know how to fix this one. Create a text file in your pk3 called ALTHUDCF. In that text file, all you need to include is the following:

 

Berserk SPRITENAME

But instead of SPRITENAME, put whatever is the name of the Berserk pickup sprite.

Edited December 8, 2022 by Not Jabba

[Devalaous]

Every time ive tried to play this, my computer has never been strong enough. Now after more upgrades, we have another GZDoom version and another Winter's Fury. Will the curse still be present..

 

Aside from that, the bits ive managed to play over the years have always wowed me like no other mod has, and passing this mod around to a few people that DID have beefy PCs, got a whole lot of them back into Doom for a time. Lets see if I can do it again :D

[Kyka]

Ten years old? wtf? I played it soon after release, and yeah it was amazing. Really unique and wonderful fun.

[Insaneprophet]

This looks truely awesome. Its been one of the things near the top of my playlist ever since i got doom running on a computer again. With this anniversary update (and those screen shots!) it leap frogged anything else i was thinking about and became a must play now. Sadly my computer wont run it or the newest gzdoom... I had thought i should be able to play the original but i cant find it anywhere as all the original links ive found lead me right back to the update. Well this still looks awesome and im sure with a little detective work i can find the original somewhere as im unlikely to upgrade my PC anyrime soon and looking at those screens and reading about this. I dont want to wait for this wad. Thanks for creating it!

[Pieruskwurje]

25 minutes ago, Insaneprophet said:

Sadly my computer wont run it or the newest gzdoom... I had thought i should be able to play the original but i cant find it anywhere as all the original links ive found lead me right back to the update. Well this still looks awesome and im sure with a little detective work i can find the original somewhere as im unlikely to upgrade my PC anyrime soon and looking at those screens and reading about this. I dont want to wait for this wad. Thanks for creating it!

 

Man, that really sucks. I don't know what limitations on hardware the newer versions of GZDoom have imposed, but there's a good chance that if you can't meet those minimum requirements, you won't be able to run Winter's Fury at a stable framerate at all. In fact, the older versions of the mod would be even worse off, as they didn't take advantage of new features to fake map geometry.

 

If you're still confident you want to try it, I can provide a link to the next most recent version (2016.5).

[Insaneprophet]

So much thanks for offering! Let me fiddle around some more. Im not yet entirely sure, after reading your reply, that i might not just be doing something wrong. I'm fairly computer illeterate and this might be an opertunity to learn something. Im going to try to figure this out some more ... but i may have questions. 😀

Edited December 8, 2022 by Insaneprophet

[TheShep]

banged through it these past couple days. two parts:

 

pt 1: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1674161135

 

pt 2: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1674161712

 

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

The cool thing about WF was that it took advantage of GzDoom all the way while still being a cohesive experience. It never felt like a clusterfuck of assets and source port features. At the time, it was the most cinematic wad I had ever seen, and the one that sold me on GzDoom in general. I see it as a precursor to the commercial GzDoom games being sold today.

[eLeR Creative]

Where is my dub? sulk... ;)

 

Seriously, brilliant mappak, I'd love to play the refreshed version.

[Caleb13]

I wanted to ask, can you obtain backpack and BFG somehow? And do you keep them to the final fight? I never found them in the original WF and couldn't find them in the updated version, either...

[Pieruskwurje]

On 12/8/2022 at 11:41 AM, Not Jabba said:

I think I know how to fix this one. Create a text file in your pk3 called ALTHUDCF. In that text file, all you need to include is the following:

 

Berserk SPRITENAME

But instead of SPRITENAME, put whatever is the name of the Berserk pickup sprite.

Just wanted to let you know that this worked, thanks!

 

On 12/8/2022 at 1:20 PM, Devalaous said:

Every time ive tried to play this, my computer has never been strong enough. Now after more upgrades, we have another GZDoom version and another Winter's Fury. Will the curse still be present..

 

Aside from that, the bits ive managed to play over the years have always wowed me like no other mod has, and passing this mod around to a few people that DID have beefy PCs, got a whole lot of them back into Doom for a time. Lets see if I can do it again

While there has been performance improvements put into the mod, I think GZDoom requirements in general have become more steep as time has gone on. While I'm glad the people you showed it to enjoyed it, I hope you're able to enjoy it yourself one day!

 

19 hours ago, TheShep said:

banged through it these past couple days. two parts:

 

pt 1: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1674161135

 

pt 2: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1674161712

 

Thanks for the comprehensive playthough! I hope you had fun. One big thing that stood out to me in terms of compatibility was that you played without mouselook, which led to a camera issue at the start of MAP07B. I've written up a fix for this one so it shouldn't change your angle if you're playing without mouselook.

 

16 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

The cool thing about WF was that it took advantage of GzDoom all the way while still being a cohesive experience. It never felt like a clusterfuck of assets and source port features. At the time, it was the most cinematic wad I had ever seen, and the one that sold me on GzDoom in general. I see it as a precursor to the commercial GzDoom games being sold today.

That's awesome to hear, considering that keeping it consistent was a big deal in my mind when working on it. It's really easy to scope-creep with the rate that GZDoom keeps adding new stuff these days.

 

8 hours ago, eLeR Creative said:

Where is my dub? sulk...

 

Seriously, brilliant mappak, I'd love to play the refreshed version.

I remember your videos! The dub you put in was kinda awesome, although I definitely would have done the voices of the characters differently. I remember being most surprised that all the extra addons you played with didn't softlock the mod at some point!

 

2 hours ago, Caleb13 said:

I wanted to ask, can you obtain backpack and BFG somehow? And do you keep them to the final fight? I never found them in the original WF and couldn't find them in the updated version, either...

• The backpack is deliberately not used on any difficulty above Frostbite (Hey Not Too Rough). If you do play on the two easier difficulties, there is a backpack spawn at the start of each part (MAP01, MAP04B, MAP07A). This was done in the original versions and is the same in this updated version.
• There's a snippet in the credits that says that the UAC no longer sanctifies the use of category 7 firearms, so of course there's no BFG! Or at least, not in this time, or this place, but maybe somewhere else...

[TheShep]

  20 hours ago, TheShep said:

banged through it these past couple days. two parts:

 

pt 1: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1674161135

 

pt 2: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1674161712

 

Thanks for the comprehensive playthough! I hope you had fun. One big thing that stood out to me in terms of compatibility was that you played without mouselook, which led to a camera issue at the start of MAP07B. I've written up a fix for this one so it shouldn't change your angle if you're playing without mouselook. 

 

------------

 

Tried "quoting" this but it broke after my comment bit...

 

anyway, thanks for seeing that issue. Glad to hear there will be a fix for it.

[Devalaous]

1 hour ago, Pieruskwurje said:

While there has been performance improvements put into the mod, I think GZDoom requirements in general have become more steep as time has gone on. While I'm glad the people you showed it to enjoyed it, I hope you're able to enjoy it yourself one day!

 

Like you said, its somehow been 10 years, and in that time ive managed to get a modernish PC (I9 9900K CPU and Nvidia GTX 1660 Super) that has laughed at all that ive thrown at it, so I should be good this time! I'm going to laugh if I still cant get full speed though xD