Doom II: Compendium

After a long wait and an exorbitant amount of work I am pleased to finally be able to release my latest project: Compendium. Having worked on this for a few years now, I feel confident in releasing v1.0. Compendium is as the name implies a compilation-style project, containing a hand picked collection of some of the best doom maps/wads released from 1994 to roughly 2004-2005, representing the classic era of Doom modding. All the mappacks represented have been remastered (in the sense that outdated DeHackED code has been converted to DECORATE/ACS) and bugfixed (generally speaking I've removed all bugs I've found which can allow a player to become stuck in a level, including a ton of fixes that should ensure much better multiplayer compatibility), but they are otherwise untouched, as it is not my intention to mess with the authors' original vision. This means that there are no new rooms, no different thing placements and nothing of the sort to be found in this. Each of the wads included in this is accessible from a (currently functional but unfinished) central hub map. After you complete one of the mappacks, you are sent back to the hub map, which means you can keep your arsenal when going to the next one (or simply start a new game to be taken back to the same hub map with a clear arsenal). There are right now 54 wads represented, for a total of over one thousand levels. I've tried to ensure that this project is fully compatible with gameplay mods, and hopefully that is indeed the case: this includes the wads that previously broke horribly due to dehacked patches. Please note however that as of the current release there are no new weapons included. Some of the wads included in this are well known vanilla megawads from the time, such as Memento Mori, Obituary and STRAIN. Others are wads that take advantage of ZDoom features, such as Daedalus and Project Slipgate. Others yet take Doom gameplay to creative new heights, like Cyberdreams or All Hell is Breaking Loose. Some are celebrated classics, others are undiscovered gems. Some, like Eternal Doom, have absolutely massive maps which will take a long time to navigate, others, like Scythe, focus on quick and intense gun and run action. I've tried to go for as much variety as I could in terms of the styles of gameplay and level design offered here, so I am sure that you are bound to find at least one mappack you'd really like in this. Some might wonder what the point of such a project is. One could, after all, simply download the relevant wads off the idgames database as needed. And indeed, my aim here is not that of replacing the original files, which should be preserved and rejoiced in exactly the way they used to be. As far as I'm aware there have not been similar projects to this released yet, although other communities such as the Duke Nukem 3D one have made something comparable. That being said, the advantages of having a project like this are numerous. For one thing all the 54 wads included here are completely cross-compatible which means you don't have to load each of them separately. This is particularly advantageous for those who wish to play using RPG-style mods with a very large arsenal and experience systems, etc (DoomRL comes to mind for example). It is also extremely useful for multiplayer hosting on Zandronum, as instead of hosting 54 servers you would need to host only one. Now not only that but as I mentioned, the code conversion and bugfixing makes these the most up to date and polished repackagings that these wads have seen yet. Some of these were still stuck in old DOS installers and such, personally I think it's about time someone made a modern repackaging to be enjoyed by all GZDoom users without hassle. Last but not least, I have spent a very long time digging the idgames archives (among other sites) to find interesting old wads that have slipped past the spotlights, so this project beyond being one of bugfixing and ease of use, is also (at least as far as I'm concerned) one of documentation. This is a love letter to that period of Doom modding which in my opinion holds some of the best maps ever made for the game, from which I think mappers even today could have a lot to learn.