ZDoom

You've fought long and hard to get here, and you'll have to fight even harder to survive. The Blood Wave Device glows violently, power leaking out of it in the form of brilliant white-red light.

The bodies of hundreds of demons lie in various states of dismemberment, both by your hand and theirs. Their blood is already boiling away, vaporized by the hellish energy of the BWD, only to be converted into fresh lead for the rest of your arsenal.

What a mess.

BloodWave takes the tradeoff-centric resource and cooldown management of Doom Eternal, simplifies it a bit, and drags it back to '96, replacing weapons and monsters to create a brain-melting balance between power fantasy and brutally-fast defeat. You'll have to pay attention to how you slaughter the demons if you want to survive.

The key lies in the way monsters drop items in BloodWave. (Almost) Every enemy you face will drop a few armor shards after getting "staggered" by a certain amount of damage, and will drop health bonuses after getting killed...unless you use certain weapons. For instance, the Bolter Pistol will cause enemies to drop ammo instead of health. Play it smart, and you can turn a roomful of baddies into an armory--or heal to full instead. The choice is yours.

Spoiler: The Weapons

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• 0. The Blood Wave Device: Replacing the Chainsaw, this malicious piece of technomancy is triggered with your Use Item key. It fires a shockwave that does vicious damage in a wide radius. The damage doesn't fall off with distance from the explosion like traditional rockets, so you can wipe out a pretty large group of weaker enemies with it. Enemies killed with the BWD are Disintegrated, dropping ammo instead of health on death.
• 1. The Bolter Pistol: Replacing the Pistol, this device uses the same twisted energy that powers the BWD. While it lacks in power, it grows stronger against wounded foes; enemies take up to twice as much damage from the Bolter Pistol based on their missing health, maxing out when the enemy has lost 80% of their HP. Further, enemies tagged with the Bolter Pistol are Disintegrated for 2 seconds--if they die while this effect is applied, they turn into ammo.
• 2A. The Coil Carbine: Dropped by zombiemen (or spawned in place of the Coil Repeater if there's no zombies to be had), the Carbine is a solid death-dealer. With a faster rate of fire than the Bolter Pistol and damage equivalent to the Bolter Pistol's maximum, it's a solid choice for small crowds, and it has respectable accuracy too. Consumes 2 Coils per shot.
• 2B. The Nail Shotty: Dropped by shotgunners (and spawning on Shotgun spawns, assuming you haven't already got one), the Nail Shotty fires a spread of 3 big chunky iron nails. It's a handy alternative to the Carbine for sustained damage, thanks to its reliable rate of fire. While you do pump it when you stop firing, it's just for the cool factor, and you can swap or keep firing to interrupt the pump. Consumes 1 Nail Bundle per shot.
• 3. The Thermite Grinder: Replacing the SSG (and spawning on Shotgun spawns, once you have a Nail Shotty), the Thermite Grinder opens up a new option for murder. Stagger an enemy with it, and instead of armor, they'll drop Thermite Mini-Bombs, which you can shoot to send flying off into the distance. Depending on your target, and your timing, the mini-bombs can do more damage than the initial thermite blast--which is saying something, considering how nasty the triple-shot spread of burning metal is. Grinds up 3 Nails per shot.
• 4A. The Coil Repeater: Replacing the Chaingun, this beast fires specially-charged Coil projectiles which pierce enemies. The rate of fire starts just a bit slower than the Bolter Pistol, but ramps up over time--at the cost of lost accuracy. That said, even at mid-range, the Coil Repeater can absolutely shred enemies, especially larger ones, and it does crowds well too! Consumes 2 Coils per shot until it finishes spinning up, and 1 Coil per shot at max speed.
• 4B. The Photon Accelerator Cannon: Replacing the Plasmagun, this badass piece of light-infused tech chews up brilliant gemstones and spits out coalesced brightness. It's powerful enough to give even ghosts a run for their money. And the spread tightens as you focus the beams, making it an excellent long-range option for sustained damage against larger targets. Consumes 1 Light Gem per shot, but it adds up fast...
• 5A. The Macross Cannon: Replacing the Rocket Launcher, this thing works like a cross between the classic "drunken" rockets and the laser-guided launcher from Half-Life 1, with a touch of Beggar's Bazooka for good measure. Hold down the trigger to launch mini-missiles, which will hover at your command. Release the trigger, and the missiles will all fly off in the direction you're facing--spreading out slightly as they fly. Use them up-close, and they can overpower many medium-size targets. Use them further away, and they're great for peppering a group of small baddies. Consumes mini-missiles.
• 5B. The Undertaker: Replacing the BFG, this thing is nice and simple: Shoot monsters until they die. Collect ammo from the corpse. Some claim that the BWD is a failed attempt to recreate the Undertaker's power. Consumes 4 Light Gems per shot. Enemies slaughtered with the Undertaker are Disintegrated, dropping ammo instead of health.

Spoiler: The Screenshots In Glorious 320x200 feat. Compendium

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DOWNLOAD ON ITCH.IO

Just gave this a quick run through the first few maps of Doom 2. Only real complaints are that the Plasma Rifle equivalent's (forgot the name, sorry!) firing sound becomes a bit grating on the ears at high speed, and the spinning item pickups (while a very cool effect) can be a bit hard to see in some situations, maybe make them full-bright?

I can safely say this mod is criminally underrated, the weapons are very unique and the mechanics work well once you adjust to them.
(It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the Nail Shotgun's cocking animation is 100% cosmetic.)

Pretty fun, but I do feel like it needs a bit more difficulty. Atleast on vanilla Doom 2 maps it's a little easy. somewhat Harder enemies could go a long way to making this better.

Samarai1000 wrote:Just gave this a quick run through the first few maps of Doom 2. Only real complaints are that the Plasma Rifle equivalent's (forgot the name, sorry!) firing sound becomes a bit grating on the ears at high speed, and the spinning item pickups (while a very cool effect) can be a bit hard to see in some situations, maybe make them full-bright?

I can safely say this mod is criminally underrated, the weapons are very unique and the mechanics work well once you adjust to them.
(It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the Nail Shotgun's cocking animation is 100% cosmetic.)

I get ya on the PACannon. Fun fact: The reason I picked that firing sound was because I saw a video of that pac-man battle royale and heard the sound of someone taking out a huge string of ghosts in one swoop. I should be able to just turn the volume down a smidge and make it way more bearable. Worst case scenario, I go find an alternate firing sound and see about adding a cvar for it.

Fullbright on the items is also a good idea (why didn't I do that in the first place?). Maybe I'll make them flash for extra visual attention.

will183 wrote:Pretty fun, but I do feel like it needs a bit more difficulty. Atleast on vanilla Doom 2 maps it's a little easy. somewhat Harder enemies could go a long way to making this better.

I kinda tuned it for more modern monstercounts, which is a polite way of saying that I practiced using Freedoom (which has slightly higher monster counts) and a couple maps from Compendium (which also have higher-than-vanilla monstercounts). I also built in some spawner logic to catch edge cases where, for instance, a map never actually uses zombiemen. If I feel ambitious, I might come back to this and add something like GMOTA's nightmare monster variants, but that'd be a big undertaking and I've got other stuff dragging me away from mod dev. One thing I *am* gonna need to add: a long-range attack variant for the Imp replacement, because I suspect there are more imp towers in the wild than I encountered in my tests.

Version 1.5 Released!



Grab it over on itch.io!

Changes:

Spoiler:

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• PACannon firing sound reduced in volume, limit changed to 2.
• Items are now fullbright.
• Monsters from other monster mods can now be used with BloodWave! They'll drop 3 health bonuses on death, and stagger once for an armor amount dependent on their radius. These numbers are subject to change, feedback is appreciated!

So, the download link for this mod is currently down. I don't know if anybody noticed, but it is. The short version is, I was hosting the whole thing on itch.io, and, well, the whole thing with the payment processors happened. BloodWave wasn't affected, but...look, itch.io's staff started delisting people's work and seizing their money without saying a word about it, of course I don't trust them anymore. I'll figure out some other hosting solution eventually.

Just throwing a quick reply here, it looks like this' quite the interesting mod. Hopefully you can get another download host soon!

dawnbreez wrote: ↑Fri Aug 01, 2025 9:35 pm So, the download link for this mod is currently down. I don't know if anybody noticed, but it is. The short version is, I was hosting the whole thing on itch.io, and, well, the whole thing with the payment processors happened. BloodWave wasn't affected, but...look, itch.io's staff started delisting people's work and seizing their money without saying a word about it, of course I don't trust them anymore. I'll figure out some other hosting solution eventually.

Is the latest release on GitHub the same one that was on Itch.io? Damn, this whole credit card thing is getting weirder each day. I just revisited this mod recently and was planing to record more stuff with it:

I'm not even sure if I want to ask but what are those pink things in the last screenshot?

roundtree wrote: ↑Tue Aug 26, 2025 10:51 pm I'm not even sure if I want to ask but what are those pink things in the last screenshot?

Freedoom's version of Pinkies.

Okay thank you for clarifying. That does actually look pretty cool blown up like that.