Display Opponent Health

About: This mod will output a player’s health whenever you look at them. The color of the health value will also be changed based on the amount of health remaining. This includes a good deal of customization options through the KEYCONF, CVARINFO, and MENUDEF features. (This works in co-op as well but that doesn’t seem as useful or interesting to me and it wasn’t my motivation for making this. It actually works on anything that has a TID, but this script only sets up TIDs for players.)

Protip: Type “doh_help” in the console to see a list of custom console variables to affect the output, or just go to the new “Display Opponent Health Options” submenu.

Compatibility: Primarily Zandronum, should work in GZDoom as well, although I haven’t tested.













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Seven years of rambling

For the past seven years, I’ve been on a Doom hiatus due to not having a machine capable of playing any advanced Doom source ports, primarily Zandronum. I was at least able to occasionally play Doom on my PSP, or with the crappy PS3 port. But the much bigger problem was that I haven’t had a machine capable of running XWE, SLumpEd/SLADE, ACC, or Doom Builder. Making mods has been my favorite thing about Doom for so long and those other limited methods of play did little to scratch that itch.

My old laptop has technically been available, but it’s incredible slow and nearly unusable without some work I’ve been unwilling to put in. Already long overdue, I finally ended up getting a Chromebook about three years ago, which I ended up loving. The only problem, is of course it can’t run Zandronum, much less any editing software. But I’d heard that you could dual boot Linux alongside Chrome OS, which was great news, because although I’m not super familiar with Linux, I’d be able to get around enough to at least play Doom properly for the first time in years. Unfortunately, it turns out not every Chromebook is capable of running every Linux application, and I never got it working. So I kept my Linux installation for a while, but never ended up using it.

I figured I’d have to wait until I was ready to buy another computer, because my Chromebook was getting me along fine in almost every other way, and I began embracing console gaming and collecting instead in the meantime. And that was it for a while, until, about a week ago, when my brother texted me telling me that apparently Zandronum is available on Android now?? (Alongside five other Doom ports.) And has been for two years! (If I could turn back time…)

This is mindblowing news to me, although I still didn’t have any intention of playing a first person shooter on my phone. However! Chromebooks can run Android applications!!!! …But how good would it run? Is it a recent version? Would I be able to use the laptop keyboard and a USB mouse? Would it even work on my laptop or would I run into the same problem I did with my Linux installation? I decided I’d take the plunge and spend $2.49 USD to find out the answers to all these questions and more. And holy shit, it actually worked, it was the Doom I remembered!

I spent a while just going through the menus, setting up all of my old bindings and aliases and settings until it looked just right. But I ran into a problem. Using the software renderer (not a popular choice, but my preferred renderer) consistently caused this incredibly bizzare HUD text glitch I’ve never seen before, and can’t find anyone else who is experiencing the same thing.

All text HUD elements are invisible, but they individually show up for one frame sometimes when the value changes, and they all show up consistently when the game is paused, or for the full duration that I point my crosshair at another player in multiplayer. Even weirder, this doesn’t affect the percent symbols, which remain normal throughout, and this behavior only affects the default Doom statusbar, not the fullscreen variant. Still, this is a big setback and makes the game essentially unplayable with the default HUD.

Okay so since this problem is exclusive to the software renderer, I’ll use the OpenGL renderer, a minor inconvenience. Except hey, wait, I got a new complaint! When using OpenGL, it’s not possible to change the screen resolution for some reason, but at least it’s fullscreen and it looks okay enough. …But the console text is so small it’s almost 100% unreadable. Which doesn’t necessarily affect gameplay depending on who you are, however I am me, so it does. Okay so we’ll use text scaling? Nope! It seems console text is the only text that won’t get scaled. The size of console text is based off of your resolution! Which I can’t lower in OpenGL but I can lower in the software renderer.

Either I won’t be able to see my HUD or I won’t be able to read the console.

I’d made a custom HUD about nine years ago, so I decided to see what would happen if I ran that in software, and it actually worked fine! But sometimes I want to use the default statusbar too so it’s still a frustrating workaround. I spent a while just playing nostalgic mods anyway, and revisited lots of my own projects, which reminded me how much I’d really missed making these projects.

Then I realized, technically I could still make mods as long as I had a text editor and the ability to zip files. I couldn’t open or produce wad files, and I definitely couldn’t make levels, and worst of all I couldn’t compile ACS, but I could at least mess around with DECORATE and a few others, including SBARINFO. Since I knew my old HUD only had two lumps, and both were text, I tried opening it as a text file, and I was lucky enough to be able to extract my original code even! I started experimenting and I was able to recreate the original statusbar, and for some reason when I tested it out it also solved the flickering problem, which honestly gives me even more questions, but I’m not complaining. I made a few other small files just to mess around, do some stretches to refamiliarize myself, but mostly I played Jumpmaze.

Realizing my assumption that Zandronum would never be available on Android was wrong, and had been for two years, I thought maybe I should do some research and just verify that, OF COURSE none of those editing tools are available on through Chrome OS. And that ended up being mostly true… except for one ZDoom forum post from over two years ago with no replies, where someone posted an ACS compiler for Android. Just the APK hosted on their Dropbox, not the Play Store. What are the chances the link is even still up though?? AMAZINGly, that worked too. However, in order to install APKs not from the Play Store on Chrome OS, you have to be in developer mode, which, depending on who you are (I am still me) you might not have developer mode enabled. And annoyingly, when you enable developer mode, your hard drive is wiped. So I backed up a few things, turned on developer mode, and was able to install the APK, and it actually worked!!!! Although when it doesn’t compile, it won’t produce an error log, which makes debugging even a small scale project incredibly tedious.

Still, even using this jank setup, I’m able to work on Doom projects again and that’s pretty incredible. So I think I’m gonna be back for a while.

This might seem like a long post, but if you divide one thousand one hundred ninety-six (the number of words in this post) by eighty-four (the number of months it’s been since my last new project) you get approximately fourteen, which is a pretty reasonable average.

Spud HUD Version 2

(Original version)

About: A simplified non-obstructive HUD that contains only the bare essentials. This version removes the old fullscreen variant and instead the normal HUD now replaces Doom’s fullscreen HUD, leaving the default Doom statusbar intact.

Protip: Autload it. Always.

Compatibility: Pretty much any modern source port. And again, Doom or Doom II.

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Circles

Actually getting back into the groove of things here. A small project, but here it is nonetheless.

About: A single deathmatch map with a gimmicky design, inspired by Dr. Seuss. There is significant use of sector movement which cannot accurately be expressed in the screenshot, so keep that in mind.

Protip: Turn sv_infiniteammo on.

Compatibility: Doom II, Zandronum. (skulltag_data.pk3 required again for use of Minigun, Grenade Launcher, and Railgun.)

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Barrel of Fun

The end/start of another hiatus. Here’s another project, see you in a few months.

About: A new game mode, Barrel of Fun is a single player and co-op defense game. Monsters randomly spawn from all corners of the map and make their way to the center, where they target the single explosive barrel. If the monsters destroy the barrel, you lose. It is similar to invasion but doesn’t have different waves or any ending, and running away from the monsters is no longer a viable strategy.

Protip: Always keep your eye on the barrel, or a zombieman might slip through the cracks while you take on a revenant.

Compatibility: Doom II, Zandronum. (skulltag_data.pk3 required for use of Minigun, Grenade Launcher, and Railgun.)

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Prop Hunt

About: Another new game mode, Prop Hunt, finally in Doom! If you’re unfamiliar with Prop Hunt, it’s a game mode with two teams, the hiders (props) and the seekers. The hiders are all different decorative objects that were already in Doom, while the seekers are marines with shotguns. The prop players run around and try to blend in. The seekers must differentiate against the prop players, and the real props. The seekers win by killing all the prop players, and the props win by surviving until the time runs out. Runs under Team Last Man Standing game mode.

Protip: When hosting this mod, please enable chasecam.

Compatibility: Doom I or II, Zandronum.

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King of the Kill

Finally, the official inaugural Zandronum mod from Doom.co! Hope everyone enjoys it.

About: A new game mode where you win by being the first player to get a set number of kills in a row while being the “leader”. You become the leader by either achieving the first kill when there is no leader, or by killing the leader directly. The leader will receive full health, armor, and ammo for every frag he gets, and will also go slightly faster and jump slightly higher every time he frags someone. Played through deathmatch.

Protip: Don’t forget to set the pointlimit cvar to an actual value other than zero!

Compatibility: Doom I or II, Zandronum.

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Bot Creator

In the interest of digging up old relics of time, I present you my Skulltag Bot Creator program. Written in AutoHotkey a few months back, but never released because I was waiting for a more appropriate time. Since Skulltag is dead now, I guess it’s a Zandronum Bot Creator.

It should be pretty self-explanatory, except that you must keep a copy of 7z.exe in the same directory that you launch botcreator.exe from, or else it won’t work since it wouldn’t be able to create the PK3. (The required file is included in the botcreator download link anyway.)

Also, hooray for the first post in the Applications category! I’ve never really released an actual program before, so I often take for granted the fact that only I know exactly how everything works, and how to maneuver around certain bugs and things, but this program is simple enough that there shouldn’t be any bugs.

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(View Source Code)

Nyan Cat

Here’s a little project I was working on over a year ago. I almost completely forgot about it. (Sorry the fad is out of date now.) After fixing a few things and wrapping it up, here it is. Keep in mind that this was made before Zandronum existed, so I still don’t have any official projects designed for it.

About: A sidescrolling-ish Nyan Cat game where you eat cake and burgers, while dodging poop in space. Have fun.

Protip: Don’t forget to set up your controls.

Compatibility: Doom II with Skulltag(/Zandronum?). Oh, and you need to use the Software renderer. OpenGL makes it look like crap.

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Portal Gun

Oh so Zandronum 1.0 was released like a week ago or something, I’ll work on moving over to that soon. (This was only tested with Skulltag, not that it should make a difference.)

About: A portal gun for Doom. Works in multiplayer.

Protip: Don’t forget to set up your controls.

Compatibility: Doom I or II, Skulltag(/Zandronum). It also seems to work in ZDoom.

Download!