[WIP] Blackout: Hardcore Tactical Mod for Zandronum/UZDoom

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pkmx
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[WIP] Blackout: Hardcore Tactical Mod for Zandronum/UZDoom

Post by pkmx »

BLACKOUT is an unforgiving, hardcore, tactical gameplay conversion mod for UZDoom and Zandronum.

Status: Alpha Release
https://allfearthesentinel.com/zandronu ... 0828.1.pk3

Supported Engines: Zandronum >= 3.2 (tested on 3.2.1), UZDoom >= 5.0 with OpenGL renderer
Note: You need the latest UZDoom 5.0 release candidate to load blackout, as the latest stable 4.14.x release will not work.
Download the latest UZDoom 5.0.0 RC3: https://github.com/UZDoom/UZDoom/releas ... 5.0.0-rc.3

Recommended Mods Recommended Settings
  • movebob: As players move slower in Blackout, the default movebob setting is too high and looks unnatural. Recommended to set movebob to 0.02 or 0.03.
  • sv_forcegldefaults: Set to true to make levels darker.
  • gl_enhanced_nightvision: Set to true to enable night vision effect.
  • compat_clientssendfullbuttoninfo: This must be set to true when hosting on Zandronum, otherwise clients will not be able to sprint.
Overview
  • Unforgiving Combat: Players are fragile human beings and dies to a few gunshot wounds.
  • Forced CQB: Players are expected to hide behind covers and execute proper breaching techniques to maximize chance of survival.
  • Engine Compatibility: Designed for multiplayer cooperative/survival games on Zandronum (DECORATE/ACS), with compatibility with UZDoom.
  • Map Compatibility: Compatible with most community megawads, best with city/techbase maps.
  • Gritty Realism: Gun shots are extremely loud and uncomfortable. Players lose control and orientation when near death. Items are pickups that require time to apply.
The Player
  • Slowed Movement: Players move at normal walking speed, and are further slowed down by heavy weapon, aiming or other conditions. Players can sprint to temporarily escape traps or run across obstacles/gaps.
  • Stamina System: Sprinting and firing weapons consume stamina, which regenerates naturally.
  • Pain/Stress System: Getting hit increases pain and stress, causing heavy breathing, camera shake and loss of peripheral vision.
  • Energy Nanosuit: Players start with an energy nanosuit equipped, which can store argent energy from map pickups or monster drops. The nanosuit grants several gameplay features below.
  • Adrenaline System: Receiving high damage or being at low health increases the chance to trigger an adrenaline surge, granting temporary speed boost and damage resistance to escape danger.
  • Last Stand: Fight for a chance to revive from a downed state, but only if you don't get gibbed in the first place.
Offenses
  • Real Weapons: Iconic weapons from COD:MW2 (RGA2): Beretta M9, SPAS-12, MP5K, M4A1, FAMAS, MG4, SCAR-H, M82, AT4, and more.
  • Real Ammo: Ammo are based on real life caliber (9x19mm, .45 ACP, 5.56 NATO, 7.62 NATO) with damage modeled after them.
  • Weapon Handling: Weapons have a lot of recoil. Using ADS/scopes improve accuracy over hipfiring, while running, being injured or being in pain greatly increases the spread.
  • Reloading: Weapons require reloading and require extra bolting action if dry reloading (empty magazine).
  • Weapon Slots: Players can only carry up to 4 weapons: 1x pistol holster, 1x chest sling slot, 2x back slots. Some weapons can optionally be carried in multiple slots.
  • Weapon Weight: Firing weapons consume stamina. Lugging around heavy weapons makes players move slower and regenerate stamina slower, while lightweight weapons boost player speed.
  • Thrown Weapons: Frag grenades deals heavy damage to enemy groups. Throw smoke grenades to confuse enemies and reduce their accuracy.
Defenses
  • Energy Shield: The energy nanosuit fields an energy shield that can absorb 100% damage, and can be recharged with energy from the nanosuit itself.
  • Fragile Health: The human body is very fragile on the battlefield. Protect your core health at cost using the energy shield as buffer.
  • Scarce Healing: Healing items are very rare. Do not expect to heal from near death to 100% healthy on the field.
  • Environment Protection: The energy nanosuit by default absorbs 90% of environmental slime/lava damage. Players without the nanosuit needs to wear a CBRN suit that may be damaged.
  • Combat Armor: For classes without the energy shield, combat armor that functions like regular Doom armor can be worn. Those aren't incompatible with the energy shield provided by the energy nanosuit.
Monsters
  • Familiar but different: Monsters retain their Doom archetypes, but are slightly tweaked to fit tactical gameplay.
  • Attack Patterns: Monsters attacks deal more damage, but generally have longer charging times to warn the player. Some monsters have rapid attacks but are inaccurate or low damage.
  • Improved AI: Monsters will try to blind/suppress fire against player and try to keep distance. Monsters can have different behaviors when facing multiple players.
  • Armored Monsters: Some monsters have armors that make weak rounds like 9x19mm ineffective.
  • Headshot: Deal up to 3x damage and conserve ammo to reward good aiming.
  • Pain/Staggering: Monsters have higher pain chance to encourage suppressive fire to interrupt attack sequence. Monsters can also enter staggered state when low on health.
  • Scavenging: Players can destroy/scavenge monster corpses for more loot drops and to prevent resurrection from arch-viles. Use the combat knife for more chance of loot.
Alert System
  • Realistic Alert System: Monsters alerts and attacks are based on distances to actual visual sighting and auditory noise made by players, as well as other factors like missed shots, explosions, or by other monsters.
  • Player Detection: Players have an alert radius that is based on light level, player movement and crouching state.
  • Cloaking Device: The cloaking device (blursphere replacement) turns the player nearly invisible. However, it drains nanosuit energy and may be destroyed when taking damage. Firing weapons or taking damage also temporarily disrupts the cloaking mechanism, making the player visible to monsters.
  • Stealth Gameplay: Players can utilize the cloaking device or careful noise control and bypass open areas, avoid waking up monsters, setting up traps or moving to engage from favorable terrain.
  • Returning: Monsters can forget the target to revert to idle/wandering state if the target stays out of sight for too long. Players can utilize this mechanism to escape and reset combat.
Randomization/
  • Wandering State: Non-ambushing monsters by default wander around the map, randomizing their location to make each encounter different.
  • Staggered Spawn: An optional mode where monsters spawn in staggered waves even in standard levels, making each playthrough truly unique.
  • Constant Ambush: As monsters continue to spawn in previously cleared rooms, players must be prepared to engage monsters from different locations or angles compared to a normal playthough.
Weapons
  • Combat Knife (Slot 1): Your basic melee weapon. Consume stamina to attack and can take down enemies silently. Use it to scavenge corpses without destroying the loot.
  • Tactical Junk (Slot 1): Throw a piece of rock/junk from the ground. This can be used to trigger lifts and traps, or to distract a single enemy.
  • Beretta M9 (Slot 2, Holster/Chest): The standard issue pistol that fires 9×19mm ammunition.
  • H&K USP .45 (Slot 2, Holster/Chest): The H&K USP chambered in .45 ACP, which features higher damage and very low noise in stealth mode (subsonic ammo), with smaller magazine and slightly rarer ammo drops.
  • Franchi SPAS-12 (Slot 3, Back): A pump-action shotgun that shoots 12 gauge buckshot. You can interrupt the reload anytime by pressing fire.
  • Stevens Model 311 (Slot 3, Chest/Back): A sawed-off double-barrel shotgun that can shoot two 12GA buckshots at once (or fire only one barrel with altfire), with large spread and high alpha damage just like the SSG.
  • H&K MP5K (Slot 4, Chest/Back): The iconic SMG that shoots 9×19mm and is relatively silent when suppressed.
  • KRISS Vector (Slot 4, Chest/Back): The vector is chambered in 9×19mm and features rapid fire and reduced recoil, which is the best for spraying.
  • M4A1 (Slot 5, Back): The standard issue assault rifle that fires 5.56×45mm NATO in full auto. This is used as the baseline of all weapons.
  • FAMAS/M203 (Slot 5/7, Back): Fire in 3-round bursts with reduced magazine size (25 rounds). The main feature is the under-barrel M203 that shoots 40×46mm grenade, which can be instantly switched with the zoom button, or as a separate weapon in slot 7. Weapon handling is generally worse than M4A1 due to bullpup design and heavier weight with the attached M203.
  • AKM (Slot 5, Back): A secret weapon that can only be obtained from insurgent drops. It fires 7.62x39mm with high recoil. Use it until it is dry and then dump it for another weapon!
  • FN SCAR-H (Slot 5, Back): The battle rifle chambered in 7.62x51mm NATO that can fire in full auto (with very high recoil) to eliminate any medium tier monsters in close range.
  • M14 EBR (Slot 6, Back): This is a DMR that fires 7.62 NATO with slower firing rate but has a built-in scope to engage enemies from medium-long range.
  • H&K MG4 (Slot 6, Back): A 100-round LMG firing 5.56 NATO for suppression fire, slows down player movement and takes a long time to reload.
  • Barrett M82 (Slot 6, Back): The anti-material sniper rifle that fires .50 BMG which instantly evaporates any medium-tier monster from distance. The .50 BMG projectile can rip through several low-tier monsters, with each monster reducing the penetration by health.
  • M79 Thumper (Slot 7, Back): Fire 40x46mm grenades with a ballistic trajectory. The 40x46mm grenade requires about 0.1 seconds to arm, so firing it in close distance won't cause it to explode.
  • AT4 (Slot 7, Back): Fire a single 84mm HEAT projectile that can penetrate heavy armor and basically one-shots everything including cyberdemons in a medium-sized room (up to 2500 damage within 512 map units). Watch out for backblast when firing (don't fire with walls on your back)! The AT4 cannot be reloaded as in real life, and is disposed after firing.
  • Frag Grenade (Slot 8): The good-old fragmentation hand grenade, but with a much larger killing radius than what you expect from other mods.
  • Stun Grenade (Slot 8): Emit a sudden flash and loud sound that blinds and deafens nearby monsters and players on explosion. Getting by stun grenade at close cause severe burning, flash blinding, concussion (after image) and tinnitus.
  • Smoke Grenade (Slot 8): Emit long-lasting smoke that can choke monsters in enclosed spaces, disorient monsters and causing them to lose target, and make g monster attacks inaccurate if player hides behind the smoke.
Utilities
  • FPV Kamikaze Drone: Launch an FPV controlled suicide drone to strike monsters from behind a cover. The player is vulnerable while operating the drone and needs to find a safe place or be protected by teammates. Press the primary fire button to detonate the drone, or press alt fire to discard the drone without exploding it. The drone has a limited operational range and will explode if signal is lost.
  • Sentry Gun: Deploy a sentry gun fitted with an MG4 to shred and distract enemies. The sentry gun has limited ammo capacity and leftover ammo will be dropped if the turret is destroyed.
  • Scanner: Scan and track monsters movement behind walls. This replaces the computer area map pickup.
  • Night Vision Goggles: The infrared powerup is now a toggleable night vision goggles with no time limits, however it may be destroyed during combat.
  • CBRN Suit: Radsuit replacement that is only damaged when walking over damaging floors instead of duration based, but it can also be torn apart by gunfire.
  • Flashlight: The players are equipped with a flashlight that can be toggled on/off. Turn off the flashlight to avoid drawing attention from monsters. It is also automatically turned off when cloaking device is activated.
Class System
  • Military Classes: Start with different loadouts such as: Rifleman (M4A1), CQB (SPAS-12+MP5K), Grenadier (FAMAS+M203), SpecOps (Cloaking Device, MP5K), Automatic Rifleman (MG4) and more. All military classes start with a fully charged energy nanosuit and the night vision goggles.
  • Challenge Classes: The civilian class starts without an energy nanosuit and only a Beretta M9 for true survival horror experience. The security class additionally begins with a combat armor and a USP .45 for better survivability during the early game.
Immersive Gameplay
  • Player Breathing: Breathing causes slight camera sway and has audible sound. Players change their breathing pace depending on stamina pain/stress level.
  • Blood Splatter: Bullets produce blood mist or spray on both entrance and exit wounds. The former works as a hit confirmation, while the latter realistically sprays bloods on back walls.
  • Blood Footprints: Players and monsters can leave bloody footprints if they step on blood pools, allowing others to trace their paths.
  • Blood HUD: Getting hit or hitting enemies at close range can spray blood on the player's view.
  • Near-Death Experience: Players shake uncontrollably when under pain or stress, combined with flashing blood screen, heavy breathing and heartbeats create immersive experience when low on health.
  • Bleeding: Both players and monsters can bleed from open wounds and leave a trail of blood drops. Bleeding can also stack and lead to severe hemorrhage if not treated promptly. Use medical gauze or other health items to stop bleeding.
  • Deafening Combat: Firefight in close quarter are extremely loud and obnoxious just like real life. Standing too close to an explosion can give player temporary tinnitus.
Videos
Spoiler:
Community
Join the discord server: https://discord.com/invite/nFsxzvRcgs
Last edited by pkmx on Fri Aug 28, 2026 2:11 pm, edited 8 times in total.
SaucepanSF
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2021 7:03 pm

Re: [WIP] Blackout: Hardcore Tactical Mod for Zandronum/UZDoom

Post by SaucepanSF »

Looks really good. Will def try it out when it's available.

Some things that stuck out to me:
- good movement
- enemy alertness
- explosions
- inventory system
pkmx
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2026 4:24 pm
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Location: Taipei, Taiwan
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Re: [WIP] Blackout: Hardcore Tactical Mod for Zandronum/UZDoom

Post by pkmx »

Quick update as I've mostly polyfilled Zandronum's EVENT scripts with ZScript, so all features of this mod should fully work in UZDoom. However, it requires the latest 5.0 version as MTF_MAPTHING is needed to implement Zandronum's GAMEEVENT_SPAWN_LEVELSPAWNED.

Here is a new short video showing the new arch-vile in uzdoom, along with other universal mods (tilt++, crt/vhs effect):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85VQNf2JqLY
[youtube]85VQNf2JqLY[/youtube]
pkmx
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2026 4:24 pm
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Re: [WIP] Blackout: Hardcore Tactical Mod for Zandronum/UZDoom

Post by pkmx »

One more update regarding the new classes (which mostly just have different starting equipments) and a challenge civilian class, where the player has no energy suit and starts only with a pistol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cgTL2NBpaw

This should be close to having a public alpha release now as I clean up the remaining bits!
pkmx
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Re: [WIP] Blackout: Hardcore Tactical Mod for Zandronum/UZDoom

Post by pkmx »

An alpha version is released!

https://allfearthesentinel.com/zandronu ... 260823.pk3

Note: this requires UZDoom 5.0 RC to load. The latest stable 4.14.x will not work.

More gameplay video showing the FAMAS/M203 grenadier class:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZlBCpaBKys
pkmx
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Re: [WIP] Blackout: Hardcore Tactical Mod for Zandronum/UZDoom

Post by pkmx »

Update on 2026/08/24:

https://allfearthesentinel.com/zandronu ... 260824.pk3

- Added a built-in flashlight that can be toggled on/off. Turning on the flashlight increases the detection radius of the player by a lot, making stealth play almost impossible. Activating the cloaking device automatically turns off the flashlight.
- Added built-in blood/gore actors so loading bolognese is no longer needed. This is currently a work-in-progress: The blood system now features directional blood splattering (blood on the wall behind the target, simulating blood spraying from the exit wound), caliber-based blood spawning, and player bleeding on low health.
- Added alternative HUD icons for gearbox (weapon wheel) universal mod compatibility.
- Fixed the issue where players could pick up the combat armor even when armor is full.
- The status bar now correctly shows armor as AR instead of SH (shield) for civilian classes.
pkmx
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Re: [WIP] Blackout: Hardcore Tactical Mod for Zandronum/UZDoom

Post by pkmx »

Update on 2026/08/27: https://allfearthesentinel.com/zandronu ... 0827.1.pk3
  • Added blood splatters on HUD effects when players stand too close to the blood spraying source.
  • Players and monsters can leave blood footprints on the ground if they step over a blood pool.
  • Added a bleeding system for players and monsters which can stack multiple times, leading to severe hemorrhage.
  • Added a medical gauze item that can stop bleeding, but does not heal the player.
  • Both stimpacks and IFAKs now regenerate health over time instead of instantly healing the player. The drop rate of both have been slightly buffed.
  • Added a secret weapon AKM that can only be obtained by killing the new insurgent monster. This functions as a one-time disposable weapon with high damage and high recoil.
  • Added a player tinnitus effect when they stand too close to an explosion (if they don't die from it already).
  • Players no longer spawn blood (+NOBLOOD) if they have the energy shield active.
  • Fixed flashlight lag on Zandronum when playing on high latency servers.
  • Fixed the bug where full ammo clips dropped from monsters do not give the full amount.
  • Added a custom chat sound.
pkmx
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2026 4:24 pm
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Re: [WIP] Blackout: Hardcore Tactical Mod for Zandronum/UZDoom

Post by pkmx »

Update on 2026/08/28:
  • Download: https://allfearthesentinel.com/zandronu ... 0828.1.pk3
  • Added stun grenades that can blind and deafen monsters and players and causes a small localized explosion that can injure players/monsters at point blank range.
  • Monsters that are stuck by stun grenades will groan in pain, unable to attack back or target the players.
  • Players getting hit by stun grenade at close range suffers from flash blindness (white-out effect), heavy concussion (after images) and tinnitus.
  • Some high-tier zombies can now throw stun grenades at players behind cover.
  • All weapons now correctly skip bolting if not dry reloading.
  • Cloaking device now drains more energy when it is disrupted (by firing weapons or getting damaged). The passive energy drain is reduced to compensate.
  • Added a realistic breathing sway effect. The intensity is amplified when aiming down sights/scopes (rigid torso-weapon coupling) or when out of stamina.
  • Combat knife now also sprays blood on hitting a bleed-able actor.
  • Slightly nerfed arch-vile's health points.
  • Slightly lowered the recoil on the AKM, and it now has a slight right-side bias just as in real life.
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