miniwadm - a 300K IWAD

[brightentayle]

 

GET IT HERE  (or get it from attachments over here in case website dum)

 

miniwadm is lightweight game data replacement for DOOM, DOOM II and its' numerous expansions. It only has one placeholder map, making you try to load custom mapsets on top.

Being a heavily edited version of Fraggle's miniwad, this project's goal was to make the original more legible, while keeping it ridiculously tiny (with ~300K as target). The former was downsized even further to make space for new graphics and sounds, with many things recycled and replaced with each other.

 

FEATURE LIST:

Spoiler

• 228K to play DOOM I, 303K to play its' sequel
• Compatible with a billion mods
• Brand new DOOM_M (not)
• Monsters with their own silhouettes
• Slightly different weapon graphics
• Item pickup sprites a-la Quake Live
• Weapon and demon magic effects
• Coloured torches for TNT MAP30 puzzles
• Darkened flats, to contrast the walls
• Properly colour-matched patches
• Exactly eighteen <1K sounds, w/ PC speaker versions of those
• Yes, it's still two 228K and 303K IWADs with all of the above

 

 

KNOWN ISSUES (can't fix, won't fix):

Spoiler

• Demo playback in Chocolate Doom (and supposedly vanilla) can cause the palette to go bonkers and render a lot of warm colours as whites. Haven't noticed this happen during gameplay. Might have to do something with the uneven patch size textures in Doom and (moreso) TNT use.
• Torches are recoloured through DEHACKED, so while they're gonna look proper in Chocolate Doom, they won't in vanilla. Unless you patch the DOOM executable (universal miniwadm.deh is included separately).
• Related, if certain mods replace the torch graphics and have green on them, they may look a bit weird.
• There's shootable E.T.s. Self-explanatory, and not an issue IMO.

 

Now, I wanted to make one good release of this, in (vain) hopes multiplayer servers will use this in place of Freedoom: Phase II - something that's twice as big as DOOM II and takes a while to download with Doom Explorer, especially with its' Internet Archive download speeds (so an hour of 200 megs' worth of one Zandronum mod). And so that both miniwadms could pass the IWAD CRC check with flying colours.

 

Realistically, neither of those will happen, but who knows for sure, right?

Edited June 6, 2023 by brightentayle

[BeachThunder]

I appreciate this conceptually, but I think that a lot of things could be communicated more clearly. Weapons are completely unintuitive, especially the fists, which should probably at least have some kind of hand shape. Also, should probably be more clear which direction an enemy is facing - maybe glowing eyes on the front-side?

[brightentayle]

8 hours ago, BeachThunder said:

I appreciate this conceptually, but I think that a lot of things could be communicated more clearly. Weapons are completely unintuitive, especially the fists, which should probably at least have some kind of hand shape. Also, should probably be more clear which direction an enemy is facing - maybe glowing eyes on the front-side?

...then let me introduce you to the original, see how intuitive that one is.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIYI9LMqrRM

 

The graphical choices in miniwadm are intentional because of 1) how wadptr compresses graphics and 2) everything from the video above. Again, this is supposed to be a balancing act between playability and size to provide you with a bare minimum to play Doom with, not a dedicated Atari 2600-themed mod.

 

Hell, if you run the original miniwad and are able to consistently punch people, you're a psychic.

 

Also, pro tip: keep the status bar up. Look at the ammo count. Maybe use the number row to switch between weapons if you're that confused.

Edited June 7, 2023 by brightentayle

[brightentayle]

Doublepost, if I didn't sell you on it yet.

[fabian]

On 6/7/2023 at 10:59 AM, brightentayle said:

...then let me introduce you to the original, see how intuitive that one is.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIYI9LMqrRM

 

Could you post the same with your miniwadm instead of miniwad?

[MrFlibble]

I just tried this with MBF 2.04, and I get various errors with miniwad1.wad (miniwad2.wad seems to work fine).

 

This is when I tried to load The Ultimate Needs More Detail megawad:

And this is when I tried REKKR (specifically, the PWAD version fixed for MBF):

[brightentayle]

On 11/23/2023 at 1:50 PM, MrFlibble said:

-snip-

Duly noted, I somehow didn't realise I didn't fully remove DLEVSIGN from the WAD.

 

Dunno why MIDVINE1 and 2 aren't showing up properly, though.

Edited November 30, 2023 by brightentayle

[brightentayle]

@MrFlibble Tried your recomp of MBF, aimed specifically at REKKR - and yeah, the thing's very fussy about how big the textures files are specifically for W106_1 (MIDVINE1) and W107_1 (MIDVINE2), for some reason. Any other transparent textures don't seem to cause errors, again, for some reason.

 

With 256x128 textures on both, though, REKKR does run normally.

[MrFlibble]

Alright, I sort of fixed miniwad1.wad, although its size increased slightly: miniwad1_fixed.zip

 

I gave Needs More Detail a little spin with it too in MBF, it's actually quite playable and has a certain aesthetic. Maybe give the weapons more of a conic shape to produce an illusion of perspective though?

 

Also I just had a thought that the graphics from Shaw's Nightmare could work pretty well in this, with some tweaking. The WAD would be bigger though, but perhaps still small enough (?).

[liPillON]

Hi, I recently swapped fraggle's original miniwad with yours and noticed that the STFBx lumps' size is 35x33 pixels

They should be 35x31 as in the IWADs

 

Some ports ignore this, others raise a warning.. Other might crash? I don't know, I haven't tested all of them of course

 

[brightentayle]

On 2/28/2024 at 3:59 PM, liPillON said:

Hi, I recently swapped fraggle's original miniwad with yours and noticed that the STFBx lumps' size is 35x33 pixels

They should be 35x31 as in the IWADs

  

Some ports ignore this, others raise a warning.. Other might crash? I don't know, I haven't tested all of them of course

Aite, noted. Will probably fix it... this weekend, maybe?

 

I need to do more tests, honestly.