
What is Codename: DEMOLITIONIST?
Back in my old days of UT modding, there was this mod series called SWWM (which stands for Some Weird Weapons Mod). It featured all sorts of wacky weapons, and all was fun... until one day I grew tired of modding that game and working with its janky engine. Now, what does that have to do with this? Well, I'm basically returning to those roots, kind of, and this mod is here as a spiritual successor to that series.
This mod's arsenal is a "best of" of many of my older weapons from the SWWM series, along with other minor mods I made (or didn't make at all), revised and remastered, with all-new visuals and extra features that I couldn't make back then. It also features... a cute main character!
Spoiler: robutt
The titular Demolitionist is a combat robot manufactured by Akari Labs, a robotics company from Kasukabe, Japan. It was designed to defend humanity from potential threats, which of course includes the currently invading demonic force on Earth. You play as the first unit, lovingly nicknamed "Demo-chan" by Akari Labs co-founder Saya Miyamoto, freshly deployed on the US to fight the demons that "those stinky idiots from the UAC" brought with them. There is much to say about this whole setting, but I don't want to rant about lore here, this ain't the right place.
Anyway, before we continue, there's some important things that must be mentioned:
DISCLAIMERS
This mod features loud sounds and flashing lights, which may be harmful to certain people. There are options to dampen some of these effects, but it may still be unsafe nonetheless. Furthermore, the UI design and color schemes of the mod may be problematic to people with color blindness. Certain elements such as healthbars and various numbers could potentially become hard to see under some conditions. GZDoom has sliders for controlling not just brightness, contrast and gamma, but also color saturation, which may be of some help.
The characters and stories featured in this mod are part of my own personal lore. Any similarities to real world individuals or events are entirely coincidental or, in some cases, loosely referential.
The mod’s overarching story and themes often tackle topics of world politics, economy, human rights and others. No work of fiction is free of politics, especially those that reflect the author’s own beliefs. If you feel discomfort from political views opposite to your own, this may not be for you (especially if you’re right-leaning/conservative).
The mod is rated 16+, due to frequent use of foul language and off-handed mentions of sex in the story. While not directly featuring any explicit content (please be wary of the official "side materials" posted on my social media), you must be warned: The mod IS horny (and so am I, as its author).
Now... let's talk about all the stuff in the mod.
The HUD
Spoiler: show me the stuff
Hopefully not very intrusive, and giving all the information you could need. What you're carryin', what you're wearin', how close you and your enemies are to dyin', how much damage you dealin'... all that stuff. As you can see at the bottom, the Demolitionist kinda likes to talk a bit, but don't worry, if you don't like that, you can toggle the voice acting in the options menu. Speaking of options, a lot of stuff in there is configurable, so be sure to check it out, oh and don't forget too to bind important things, as there are some very much needed actions in this mod, such as quick melee attacks, tertiary/quaternary fires, a dedicated dash button... and the Demolitionist Menu:
Spoiler: let's take a looksie
One of the most interesting parts of this mod. You can access this menu whenever, and check on various things, such as the current mission (which changes depending on the IWAD you're playing), various player stats (e.g.: travel distances, damage dealt, highest score, etc.), your current inventory (from which you can directly use/drop items you have, including ammo and weapons), your carried keys, a store to buy stuff with your score points... and most importantly, THE LIBRARY: A compendium of DEEP LORE for everything you find, and much much more, including information about various characters and organizations, locations, etc. There is A LOT you can read in here, to immerse yourself into the madness that is me attempting to connect Doom lore with my own. If you don't know how to move around in this menu, you can always press F1 for a nice help screen showing the controls.
Anyway, enough talking about this stuff, let's get to the goodies.
The Weapons
In order to do the demon slayin', you've got a whole lot of fun guns at your disposition. Most weapons have at least two fire modes, some others may have more. All weapons also have a melee attack, so you can punch or bash enemies that get too close. I won't be going much into the nitty-gritty details of each one, you can just check the library in the menu when you pick one up if you want more info.
Spoiler: oh yeah, show me the goods
The Items
What else to have too than some handy little items to pick up and use. Important note: Most of the stuff here can be held in your inventory as "spares", including health and armor, and also powerups don't activate automatically, except healing ones when you take damage.
Spoiler: alright, let's see 'em
Requirements / Compatibility
GZDoom 4.8pre-371-gf1d017d0f or later is required. You can find Windows devbuilds here. For Linux, it's easier to build from source, (or install the gzdoom-git AUR package if you're on Arch).
This mod uses 3D models and shaders, so hardware rendering is essential. It WILL NOT WORK in software. In addition, shaders DO NOT WORK in the GLES backend, so use OpenGL or Vulkan (the latter is recommended for best performance). If you experience stuttering when models first load, please enable the "Precache GL Textures" option and restart the game.
Hardware requirements? Well, it's recommended to have a fairly fast CPU (core count is irrelevant), ideally over 3GHz. In terms of graphics, I develop and test everything for a GTX 1060, so there's that. This mod makes heavy use of various visual features, and it's fairly heavy on moving parts as well. Scalability is a problem too, you WILL definitely need something powerful to run this with high-end maps.
The mod is compatible with Doom, Heretic and Hexen (as a matter of fact, the overarching story advances in relation to the IWAD played, as a trilogy of sorts). There is also additional special compatibility for No Rest for the Living, Eviternity and Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. TNT and Plutonia will not have any special plot changes, as the Demolitionist's involvement in these campaigns would be non-canon. Support for Sunder and Ultimate Doom 2 (as an alternative to vanilla Doom 2) has been planned once they are finished.
Other mods that have been tested to complement nicely are LegenDoom Lite, Corruption Cards, and various monster packs including Colourful Hell, DoomRL Monsters and Rampancy among others. There are many mapsets that suit this nicely, usually those of the slaughtery kind, or those that feature large open spaces.
Where do I get this?
You can head over to the GitHub page for the code and clone it from there, or... you can get any of the pre-packaged builds linked below ("latest" is always up-to-date with current git master, while "development" contains stuff that is heavily WIP, and isn't recommended unless you want to follow that sort of thing closely).
NOTE: Please PLEASE make sure the mod is up to date before reporting bugs. I am tired of getting reports for things that have already been fixed.
Extras
Glowing tag recolors (texture edit, because this can't be made scriptable yet):
Blue (very blue)
Cyan (very sky)
Dragonfly (very fitting for Eviternity)
Gold (more like brass, but whatever)
Green (the default)
Magenta (opposite of green)
Orange (kinda Hellblazer-ish)
Peach (Kirin's favorite flavor)
Pink (like the Candygun)
Purple (personal favorite #2)
Red (not pure RGB red, but still good)
Violet (personal favorite #1)
White (handy as a template)
Yellow (ohhhh, banana)
Updates and Whatnot
There is much planned for this mod looking forward. I want to basically make of it my "big thing" that I'll spend most of my efforts in. Sure, there may be other projects, including some potential "side mods" featuring other characters, but THIS will be the big one.

Now that all the hassles of cleanups and improvements from the 1.2 are out of the way, the road is open to additional weapons. There's so much more of this world's varied weaponry that I want to feature here, and I'm certain there is a very glaring lack of dakka around, so expect some mighty bullet hoses to fall onto Demo-chan's hands in the future. Additional weapons will share slots with existing ones, requiring you to swap what already is there, dramatically changing the dynamics of your loadout. And what else would there be after that? Well, I do have some crazy ideas that could work, maybe. Some finishing touches to crown the "final stage" of the mod's development. Stuff that's hard to do, so I'm of course leaving it for last.
Now, if you want to stay in touch about the mod's development (e.g.: if you'd like to give more direct feedback and whatnot) you can go visit this wonderful discord server, where many other cool mods by some of my friends have their own channels too.
As usual, if you like my work and want to help me keep doing what I do, please consider supporting me on Patreon.
