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Welcome back to 2008, everyone! Knee-Deep in KDiZD is here, appearing courtesy of The History Channel. That’s right, it’s 2007’s Knee-Deep in ZDoom, now upgraded for vanilla Doom2.exe.
If you’re not familiar with the original KDiZD, that’s okay! (After all, it has been… wow, 15 years?) You can think of KDiKDiZD as a Doom E1 remake with larger maps and a combined focus on atmosphere, exploration, and tougher combat. KDiKDiZD is also packed full of weird mapping tricks and some really dumb jokes.
KDiKDiZD has been primarily tested in Eternity Engine, DSDA-Doom, Chocolate Doom, and Doom2 1.9, but it will probably work in any Boom-derived or vanilla-like port of your choice.
Eternity is the preferred non-vanilla port to play this in. If you're using a dev build, there was a savegame dehacked bug introduced on Oct 2, 2021, which was fixed on Sept 3rd, 2022. So if you run into savegame weirdness, try updating.
There are currently some graphical glitches in DSDA-Doom, causing various sprites and textures to display incorrectly.
I'm told that it works in Woof, though I haven't tested it there myself.
It works in GZDoom builds from Nov 18, 2022 or newer, in 256-color software mode only.
It doesn't work with true-color rendering. Effects and lighting will not appear correctly or at all.
Backstory:
Your name is Doom Guy, an actor. You've been cast in a cable TV reenactment of 2007's "Knee-Deep In ZDoom". You were never much of a history buff, but it'll put food on the table and help cover Daisy's vet bills. Maybe it'll even revive your acting career. You adjust the prop helmet to breathe a little easier, try out a few cheesy poses with your character's handgun, and ready yourself for the first day of filming.
Nine KDiZD maps reinterpreted and enhanced with streamlined layout progression, updated visuals, and all-new fight choreography.
Soundtrack replacement featuring new MIDI arrangements of the original Doom tracks.
22 monsters, split between 10 standard types and 12 added ones, featuring a selection of KDiZD monsters and several new to KDiKDiZD.
Heavily modified palette with 38 added fullbright colors and some other tricks up its sleeve.
Countless new textures and flats.
Camera textures to show distant events as they occur.
Sliding doors, see-through glass floors, warping liquids, advanced lighting effects, forcefields, scripted events, and slopes.
Compatible with Eternity Engine, DSDA-Doom (mostly), GZDoom, Chocolate Doom, and DOOM2.EXE.
Not compatible with true-color rendering.
Credits:
Spoiler:
KDiKDiZD mappers: Esselfortium, Nuxius, Tun, Tango, Butts, and Brinks
Original KDiZD mappers: Tormentor, Vader, Risen, Nmn, NiGHTMARE, Ellmo, Graf Zahl, BioHazard, and Kirby
Original Knee-Deep in the Dead mappers: John Romero, Sandy Petersen, and Tom Hall
Playtesting leads: dew, rd, GarrettChan
Soundtrack: Jimmy and Esselfortium
Original KDiZD art: Vader, Nmn, NiGHTMARE, Tormentor667, and Scuba
Additional art: Esselfortium, Cage, Eriance, Xaser, Espi, Nmn, Vader, Fletcher, Mark Quinn, Anthony Cole, Tormentor667, ayoung93, elend, and Scuba
New sounds: BouncyTEM and Esselfortium
Story: Esselfortium, dew, and Jimmy
Tool development and technical support: RestlessRodent, fraggle, Altazimuth, Mikolah, Linguica, Nine Inch Heels, Zokum, Andrewj
Additional playtesting and feedback: sink, Marcaek, Nine Inch Heels, CSG, Xaser, Kassman, deathz0r, Vader, Tarnsman, and Antares031
A full detailed credits list is available in kdikdizd.txt.
Known Bugs:
Spoiler:
Due to voodoo doll shenanigans, you may sometimes become a "zombie" instead of dying.
It is sometimes possible to "bump" a keycard without actually picking it up.
Saving your game in vanilla is not supported, due to the savegame buffer limit. If you're using Chocolate Doom, you can disable the savegame size limit in Chocolate-Setup, or if you're using real vanilla, you can optionally use Doom32 or Doom2+ to extend that limit if you want to save.
Camtextures may sometimes display time in a slightly accelerated form from what you are used to. These are premonitions and should be treated as such. Remain mindful of these possible futures.
In DSDA-Doom and PrBoom-Plus, you may run into some oddities. The automap background color appears as an eyesearing bright blue instead of the expected black. (You can override this in the settings page if you want.) Also, sprites for players, Nightmare Demons, and Hell Knights will appear with glitched colors.
In outdated GZDoom builds, all white pixels will erroneously appear to glow in the dark. Updating to a newer build should fix this.
Q&A:
Spoiler:
Is this really KDiZD for vanilla?
More or less, yeah! A lot of creative license has been taken, both to make the maps work within vanilla limits and just because I wanted to. It would be kind of pointless to literally just make the same thing again. KDiKDiZD plays a lot differently than KDiZD, but if you know those maps you should be able to easily recognize these alternate versions of them.
Are you actually allowed to do that?
KDiZD’s text file says that it allows modification and reuse, so yep! I’ve also spoken with some of the KDiZD’s creators while in the process of developing this.
Wasn’t this project dead?
Yes! After several years of work, I shelved it around 2011 because it had become an unmaintainable nightmare, and because BTSX development was really taking off around that time. I picked it back up in 2020, overhauled a lot of things, and did most of the remaining work myself because I am apparently some sort of Extreme Doom Masochist.
Why?!
I don’t know!
No, seriously, what the fuck?
I really don’t know what to tell you. This project is what happens when I repeatedly ignore the voice of reason that tells me something would be too annoying to attempt.
What about BTSX E3?
Next year.
Downloab: KDiKDiZD.zip
(load the A and B wads together)
I don't know what kind of hacks or tricks that were used to get all the features of this mapset working both in Vanilla Doom and a handful of source ports, but this does look like a technical achievement, and impressive.
Congrats on getting this released, at long last! Even after many other impressive technical demos, this remains the definitive project aiming to explore what's possible under vanilla conditions!
Build 4 is out, and with it, KDiKDiZD now (mostly) supports GZDoom. Thank you to Mikolah and Kinsie for the assistance getting all the odds and ends behaving more-or-less properly!
There is one notable caveat, which is that GZDoom screws up the palette in a noticeable way, turning all white pixels glow-in-the-dark.
I believe the issue is that GZDoom "steals" what it thinks is a duplicate palette color to use internally as a transparency color, but it doesn't check to see if the COLORMAP is the same between the two colors it's comparing, so all normal white pixels get erroneously turned into KDiKDiZD's glow-in-the-dark white.
is it normal for the message to appear in the build 4 when trying to play it on GZDoom or is there someway to fix it to remove said message at the start of the 1st level?
MrRumbleRoses wrote: ↑Thu Nov 17, 2022 12:49 am
is it normal for the message to appear in the build 4 when trying to play it on GZDoom or is there someway to fix it to remove said message at the start of the 1st level?
Use software rendering. GZDoom’s hardware renderer doesn’t support the way I’ve done lighting, so most of the light sources will be dimmed in hardware, and the glass/reflective translucency effects will also disappear.
Just played it with Crispy Doom, not sure if that was a good idea but so far it played nicely.
Pros: The combat felt awesome. The way advanced visual effects like slopes and texture lighting were done also good. Reference sector effects like deep water, fake bridges, 2D illusion of arched passes and slopes, fake visual floor/ceiling portals are cool. The texturing and lighting effects are nice. Fake "reflections" on the metal floor were also quite a revelation to me, well they didn't look exactly like reflections but the overall effect was contributing to the impression that the floor were polished or wet and it's entirely vanilla.
Cons: I disliked the overall complexity and detail oversaturation. I couldn't finish a single map. Honestly, I'm that person to find original doom maps good enough, all of them. Every time you enter next level it's unique and this is what this mapset lacks, all of the levels feel and play in the same oversatured maze manner, also styled the same. The music was rearranged from rock/metal/ambient to sound like something emotionless from sega.
Every new level begins with the same backstage that makes it feels so routine literally killing all the magic of the doomguy traveling into places other than the reality.
Neutrals: Double-barreled shotgun was quite a good addition to the 1st episode but seemed looking worse than the one presented in Doom 2. The original shareware Doom lacked plasmagun and bfg9000 for the sake of it being trimmed down version of the full game, the cacodemon and baron of hell demons are present, which could seem like some kind of inconsistency.
Rachael wrote: ↑Sat Nov 12, 2022 10:54 am
I am surprised this isn't getting much attention.
I don't know what kind of hacks or tricks that were used to get all the features of this mapset working both in Vanilla Doom and a handful of source ports, but this does look like a technical achievement, and impressive.
It does on DW, which makes sense since this was made-for-vanilla. The GZDoom compatibility is a incredibly achievement in itself considering what is pulling off.
Camera textures (Basically animated displays), midtextures to achieve reflections, 3D floors, mikoportals, vanilla scripting... Knee Deep in KDIZD abuses software rendering hard. Imagine it is 1994 again yet this gets released.
This would definitely be incredible in the DOS era. It probably also wouldn't run on Doom-spec hardware (486). I'd imagine a Pentium would do a lot better rendering all these visual effects in 320x200.
To give a decent baseline about its performance: I've been running this on my Pentium II 233 MHz, through Windows 98 with a build of Eternity Engine from around 2005. It achieves full frame rate at 320x200, and only begins to drop frames if I bump it up to 640x400. I imagine that, sans the extra overhead of running under Windows and/or SDL and/or whatever else extra Eternity would add to the equation, a Pentium could probably ace this thing pretty easily, and a decently-specced 486 (like a DX2/66) might also be pretty playable on vanilla under pure DOS.
