Chip

Thank you! I've been continuing to lurk since I stopped posting regularly. Figured I didn't need to be the spammy middle schooler I'd been lol Yeah, I didn't mention this in my OP but the DOOM monsters are certainly beefier. Haven't given a DOOM monster only play-through a go, yet. I've since completed the "Shareware episode" of QDOOM and I feel like I can now give a more polished review of the mod. I played on Normal difficulty with both Quake and DOOM monsters, btw. Rating: 3.5/5 Many of my complaints stay the same. It would be nice to lower some enemies health to create a more well-paced game, rather than cause arena fights to feel like chores for the player. Some issues I ended up enjoying. Something about the transparent objects, such as enemies or barrels added this cool, sort of holographic feeling to the techbase environment. Also the completely invisible spectre demons added a much needed suspense to the level I found them in. The final boss fight feels very half-assed. After forcing the player against hordes of bullet spongy hitscanners in previous levels and little variety to the monster types (although similar to the actual Shareware DOOM), Drugod has the player face against only a few fiend's and pinky demons. Then, as the big boss fight, Drugod uses a regular Baron of Hell and a Death Knight. This whole set leads up to a very boring final fight. The Baron of Hell seems to almost have the same health as just a pair of Pinky's in this mod, and the Death Knight is easily defeated in the widely open space. I feel like this episode could've ended on a more interesting bang! Instead, it feels like the quick learning curve in previous levels can easily be forgotten in this level. In the end, I'm hopeful for the future of this mod. Drugod easily could've melded the Quake and DOOM imagery together to create something closer to his original proposal. I can imagine future levels will be more original and mix together the Quake and Doom worlds. As for this current mod, it feels a tiny bit unpolished and lacking a bit of creativity. I do hope when this mod is in its final stages it does get some recognition for accomplishing what it sets out to do, but for right now my rating feels fair.

In line with their celebration of 30 years of Doom, the ID team has released several new mods to their properties in relation to Doom. They most notably added Sigil 2 to Unity DOOM 1 and 2. However, as noted in the clip attached to Bethesda's latest X post, another mod being added to Bethesda properties came in the form of the new Quake port. Usually, I wouldn't care to acknowledge any addition to this port, however my eye was caught by the name "QDOOM" The clip showed a recreation of DOOM's shareware episode, remade entirely in the Quake 1 engine. It looked intriguing. There was a mix of classic DOOM monsters and Quake Monsters, as well as Quake weaponry. I decided to read the Slayer's Club article on the release of this Mod, which I was fairly certain I'd heard of before. The creator of QDOOM, Drugod, was part of the team that made the Doom and Blood crossover, Bloom. The Slayer's Club article acted as an advertisement for Drugod and the Bloom team's new game, Voidwalker, which is set to be released in the near future, made on the familiar Quake engine. I looked into the name, QDOOM, and a mod from the early 2000s for the DOOM source port EDGE shared the same name. It played in an almost mirrored fashion to the modern officially released QDOOM, in that it implemented Quake features into the DOOM game. This Total Conversion was created by Marc Pullen. Diving deeper into the interview, it seemed that Drugod claimed complete responsibility for the mod. However, when searching up this project, several articles from May 2023 claimed both Drugod and Wrath: Aeon of Ruin developer, Nahuel, were working on this project. Drugod thanked Nahuel late in the interview, but does not credit the developer for putting work into the project. These articles from May also seem to suggest that this Mod was going to be a much deeper amalgamation than just a remake of DOOM episode 1 on the Quake engine with a couple of added quirks. Drugod wanted to remake parts of Quake and DOOM 2, as well, and even intended on mixing the two starting maps from each game together. Drugod also claimed in his interview with Bethesda that he originally hoped to combine enemy types from both Quake and DOOM (much akin to Blooms mix of Blood and Doom enemies), but ended up finding it too difficult. Still, Drugod intends to add more to the mod, and on the episode select screen there are places for more future levels. About a year ago, Drugod posted to ArtStation a collection of images likely from Alpha versions of this mod. It speaks more towards the "amalgamation" idea he originally had. This included Quake-type maps and even DOOM 2 enemies, all coming together to create a mod with equal Quake and DOOM aspects to it. One of the original QDOOM designs from Drugod's artstation page After working on the project since last November, taking a couple of breaks to work on other things, Drugod was finally able to officially release QDOOM on the latest Quake port. So how does it play? Short story: It's alright. It is a very faithful remake of the first episode of DOOM, and uses interesting ways to make the two engines work. I enjoyed the use of shooting to open up secrets, and the automatic opening of regular doors. I haven't gotten around to beating it yet, since it's considerably harder than KDitD Drugod implements this cool feature that allows you to choose to play with just Quake enemies, ported DOOM enemies, or a mix of both. I chose both and the mix is pretty even. There are a few blaring issues, however. In the Quake Remastered thread, user Cantleylads points out some strange bugs, including the strange gibbing of the zombie characters, which can be gibbed by almost any gun other than the super shotgun. There is also the issue that a lot of imported textures and enemies are almost transparent and some sprites are visible behind others, breaking immersion. The first issue seems easily overlooked, while the other might just be an issue with the engine, though isn't very terrible. Another gripe I have with the mod is the enemy types used. the use of Quake soldiers and Doom Zombiemen is pretty normal, though the mod almost overdoes it in it's use of fiends. many Quake enemies are very bulletspongy, and Drugod carried that over to the Doom enemies, as well. I think the sponginess worked well in Quake, since it wasn't as closed-quarter as DOOM's maps are. the mod then becomes slower than one might remember DOOM episode 1. I still haven't finished the mod but I can't imagine my feelings for it will change too much. Conclusion Is it worth playing Yeah, I'd give it a shot. A lot of Quake remastered mods are often ignored since interest in Bethesda remasters have sort of died down. This came out for the port but is still an interesting take on Shareware DOOM. Is it the best Quake mod ever? No. Does it make KDitD look like the work of a bunch of 2 year olds? No. It's still fun, nonetheless, and pretty short to blast through I find it strange how Drugod overlooked some easily-spotted glitches, and his enemy placement decisions seem a bit overdone. Additionally, I find it strange that he would use a strange name such as QDOOM for a mod, considering a semi-popular Doom TC from 2001 shared the same uncommon name. Is he trying to cash in on QDOOM's (2001) success? probably not, but it's a strange coincidence that 20 seconds of research could fix. Drugod's other projects seem interesting as well, and he's really sticking to Quake mapping. I haven't played any of his other work, but he seems dedicated to the mapping scene and has a genuine interest in the art form. QDOOM is short, fun, and an interesting take on celebrating 30 years of DOOM. Have fun blasting through hell's army and inter-dimensional beings!

Really loving the new Add-on release! Thank you to Sponge and the team at Id for continuing to work on the Unity Port. In my own headcanon, I've accepted that REKKR and Harmony are now in a shared universe (Revae and TVDV collab when!?!). I can't edit the Doomwiki, due to my only skills consisting of eating and resting. Maybe somebody who's better at Wiki editing could do this. I think all the custom enemies and weapons from the official add-ons should have their own Wiki pages. It makes the WADs these custom items came from feel more official, in my opinion. The custom weapons/enemies from HacX have their own individual pages, and the weapons/enemies from Chex Quest have pages dedicated to both their weapons and enemies. If I'm asking too much, maybe just changing some of the descriptions of weapons/enemies would help. I wasn't sure which weapons were which on the Harmony page. Love to see the activity going on in the community!

I do want to mention that this years Cacowards did include many Vanilla-compatible Megawads as both winners and runner ups, including Bourgeois. I know Sponge has been focused on the Quake remaster recently (Which great job with, by the way), though I believe after seeing the many many Vanilla winners this year, there is no need to abandon WAD adding to the Unity Port. I haven't personally looked into many of these WADs, though I'm sure at least 1 should pose no difficulty in being added to Unity. The list includes: Cydonia Doom 2 in Spain Only URE2020 Arrival Down the Drain (Which I'm pretty sure is not licenced, though I honestly didn't look into it all that much) Deadly Standards 3 1000 lines community project 3 Auger;Zenith The Long Trek Back Home Uprising Zone 400 Tetraptykon Ray Mohawk 2 and of course, Bourgeois Megawad That's a lot of content! I hope one of these gets added! Great stuff coming out that's vanilla compatible, and hopefully after seeing how many winners had vanilla WADs this year, it will inspire others to try at it and end up winning Cacowards of their own. That's all I wanted to ramble about.

do you think you really need 2 years to do this? I don't imagine it taking longer than a year.

Sorry for Double posting, just a reminder that the Book has been updated to its final version! Thank you to Revenant100 for your work, and everybody else for reading this! You're the best!

@Revenant100 thank you SO SO MUCH! In a bit I will edit the OP with version 1.2 of the graphic Novel with the updated graphics. I will also change the introduction of the comic to something different, since it currently credits u/fuckinwaluigi, but it seems this guy found it. Thank you so much!

I get the copyright law, so if ID or Beth had an issue with it, I will take it down. I don't imagine them getting that mad at me for using the comic since it was just something they seemed to just throw together as a treat for iPhone users. If they don't ask me to pull it down, I'll continue to leave it up.