Back to Saturn X graphic/audio enhancements

[m8f]

Back to Saturn X episodes 1 and 2 are already among the best-looking wads.
Awesome textures, great music, and maps with elaborate layouts and intricate detailing leave very little space for enhancement. Almost everything is as good as it can be.
But because of project's vanilla nature, some things still can be modernized with help of ZDoom features.
At the other hand, big visual enhancement [G]ZDoom mods like Beautiful Doom or Smooth Doom are not fully compatible with BTSX because of palette and special textures.

So, here I share a list of mods that:

1. are fully compatible with BTSX or made specifically for it;
2. do not change BTSX own style;
3. do not change vanilla gameplay (at least no more than [G]ZDoom itself changes it)
4. add something to visual and audio appearance of BTSX.

Mods that are modified for BTSX or made specifically for it:

• Smooth BTSX fluids. This mod makes water, nukage, slime, etc. animations smoother. Tested with E1 and E2. Contains no new textures, runs only with BTSX. Original smooth fluids topic here.
• Blood Fixer: original by Nevander, the only modification by me is light blue Cacodemon blood. Original topic.
  
  
• Intermission screen for Episode 1. Contains no new textures, runs only with BTSX E1.
• Intermission screen for Episode 2. Contains no new textures, runs only with BTSX E2.
• Automap arrows: x-rocket or simple triangle. They help navigation in complex maps.
• Animated skies for E2. Makes stars glitter.
• Custom obituaries and pickup strings (Hell Baron and Knight are renamed to Demon Baron and Knight, because there is no 'hell' in BTSX).
• BTSX Style Fullscreen HUD (original by blackfish and ptoing, modified by me). I added some features as: berserk and armor type indication, right bulb now shows armor, selected weapon is highlighted and weapons without ammo are marked red.
• Fullscreen Statusbar Mod by NightFright.
• PerK's Smoother Weapon Animations Enhanced (BTSX Edition). Original by NightFright. My changes are: Plasma Rifle shoots light blue, pistol is left-handed, fixed weird weapon colors by converting sprites to PNG, Plasma Rifle has fire damage type.
• Droplets: Simulated Blood: BTSX Edition. The only important modification is that blood dilution effect in liquids now works with BTSX liquids. Compatible with: droplets_spattered.pk3, Smooth BTSX fluids, Blood Fixer. Original by Josh771, can be downloaded here.
• Advanced Mirrored Monsters for BTSX (also contains blood color fixes). Original by Coldiron. Changes are: Cacodemon blood, fire deaths, proper raising from mirrored death, proper raising from gibbed death, Cyberdemon has no mirrored death, Archvile's initial attack type set to Fire.
• Immerse by Josh771 with essential patch.
• Reikall's Voxels mod and BTSX-flavoured addon for it by reikall. Original topic
• Doom 2 Minor Sprite Fixing Project - v1.9 - Back to Saturn X (both Ep1 and Ep2) compatibility patch. E1 incorporates these fixes already, but not the latest version. Original topic.

Other relevant mods:

• Remastered BTSX soundtracks: Episode One and Two by Velvetic. Episode One is outdated (map31 was moved to map32 and new map31 was added, so you may want to rename D_EVIL to D_ULTIMA in pk3). One can argue that these soundtracks are not an enhancement, because they are quite different in style. Original topic.
• Final Doomer has a weapon set made specifically for BTSX, but it changes the gameplay quite a bit.

Also it would be nice to have:

• Different item pickup sounds like in Beautiful Doom.
• Different switch sounds like in njsplash.wad.
• Liquid splash sounds and animations like in njsplash.wad. I can provide a list of liquid flats.
• Titlemaps.

[reikall]

http://www.moddb.com/mods/back-to-satur ... n-x-add-on

I liked the palette.

[reikall]

The set of voxels I made for this last night has been deleted from ModDB with no explanation, so nevermind I guess.

[m8f]

I liked the palette.

Awesome!
I added Reikall's Voxels and BTSX-flavoured addon for it to recommended list.

The set of voxels I made for this last night has been deleted from ModDB with no explanation, so nevermind I guess.

I uploaded it to mediafire while there is no other link to download.

[reikall]

Hi there,

It was deleted by Back to Saturn X admin, esselfortium, not us. You would have to contact him.

Kind Regards,
The Mod DB Team.

Take down my add-on, please.

Edit: nevermind.

[m8f]

Take down my add-on, please.

I contacted esselfortium:

...I'd like to keep that page limited to the official downloads only — I don't have any problem with the mod existing, I just don't think the ModDB page is the place for it.

Should I still take the add-on down? It is beautiful and deserves to be seen.

[m8f]

Added animated skies (glittering stars) for Episode 2.

I'm not content with final result, but even a little motion adds life to otherwise static picture.

[Talon1024]

There's also remastered versions of the BTSX soundtracks by Velvetic.

The BTSX E1 remastered soundtrack isn't up to date with the newest release of BTSX E1, however.

[m8f]

Thanks for the mention! Added to the list.

[m8f]

Update: added new obituaries.
May contain grammar mistakes (I'll be glad to hear about them to fix them).

[m8f]

Update:

• Converted custom obituaries and pickup strings (and more) to DeHackEd format. Now it is compatible with blood fixer.
• Added BTSX Style Fullscreen HUD for vanilla weapons with additional features (see entry in OP).

[SiFi270]

Something seems to have gone wrong with the yellow keycard in that HUD.

[m8f]

I found the difference between keycards, and this should be fixed by now. I updated the file, the link is the same.
It is very strange that I see yellow keycard correct with fix and without. Is it OK now?

[SiFi270]

Now it looks like this, which is also an issue I've been having with blackfish and ptoing's version.

[m8f]

May I ask you to try second time? http://www.mediafire.com/file/jvj4d857a ... anilla.pk3
It now uses the same image as the yellow skull, as for this HUD they look the same.