DESCRIPTION:
Reds Over World is a very intriguing mod. It's very ambitious, with a lot of fascinating qualities to it. Throughout my journeys, I can see heart put into a lot of its construction, and while there are some holes on the road, most of it has been a somewhat interesting journey. However, I can't deny that there are some design decisions that permeate throughout the entire mod that I find myself disagreeing immensely with. Multiple times, actually.
I thought about making a complaint regarding these concerns, but figured after reading the main thread for a bit that it's very likely that my design philosophies would probably clash with how the mod is intended to be designed. Rather than whine into the aether and maybe only get a quarter of my concerns addressed, I figured I'd try cobbling up something myself to help my own run. It has helped, so I figured why not release it for interested parties. It might help them as well. If nothing else, it'd be a reason to replay the mod again with a different perspective.
Also, for a little extra, wirejammers if you wanna play ROWAn with regular Doom 2 maps. You can't play using vanilla ROW actors with these, but hey, it's something to extend the playtime.
There's a fair bit that this addon goes through, it sure is a list:
Spoiler:
- The first thing I did was to completely overhaul the weapons. The way they worked in vanilla was to put it mildly, unpleasant. They reload by clearing inventory items, meaning that it's possible to reload your weapon with invisible rounds that you don't have. Their dodgy offsets when reloading make it difficult to ascertain whether they're ready or not when you see the sprites raise. The cutoffs that occasionally happen in the sprites distract and annoy me. The barely hearable foley also doesn't help in determining your reload speed.
- The second thing I did was take out the A_FadeOut from the playerpawn that causes the renderer to crash when the player dies (presumably 'cause the engine needs the player to figure out how to cull things and whatnot). Bizarre decision in the first place, considering the only way the player can see such an effect is if they deliberately die in front of a mirror.
- Magazine counter implemented in the HUD. The lack of one is rather displeasurable, primarily 'cause you'll have to constantly guess in the heat of combat just how much ammo you have in a single mag. It'd be one thing if you're atleast allowed to change weapons when you're suddenly struck with an empty magazine, but no, you're forced to reload right in front of the enemy. Frequent deaths from cheap ambushes that permeate throughout the entire mod gets just a pinch more irksome when that happens. You can't even guess based on the ammo count like in DN3D, 'cause it checks your invisible shots counter instead of your ammo for reloading. There's the argument that it's realistic, but even that's wrong. IRL soldiers CAN check, or at the very least guess how much rounds are in the mag by judging the weight. Especially if they're familiar with the weapons they wield. Either that, or by witness holes/see-through material in the magazines. A mag counter can be easily explained as an abstraction of the player character doing a mag check routine, represented by the player looking to the side.
- One of my pet peeves about this mod is the fact that 5 out of the 6 automatics share ammunition in vanilla (which then share ammo with the pistol as well). They also perform too similarly to each other, there's no thought to what weapons you should be using in the heat of combat. None of them (aside from maybe 2) share ammunition IRL, nor their performance in the field, which is strange considering the pursuit for realism that's been constantly cited as to why certain things are done the way they are. It felt like selective realism, the common excuse used for implementing mechanics that hinder the player, without considering the times when realism provides venues that benefit the player. "Doors being the same color for realism" when IRL I could just blow open said door instead of having to explore an entire map for the key, y'know? It is a tool like any other in the game design box, a tool to create interesting gameplay. Also, if you're going to argue for realistic firearms nomenclature, the least you could do is not call magazines "clips".
- The sharing of ammunition caused a bit of a conundrum when I attempted to mend the problem. With how now most of the "clip"-based weapons split into their own separate ammunition pools, it's very possible that if I were to randomize the ammo drops, it could cause a balance rift that left players with ammo for a weapon they don't have. I decided to try following this mod's footsteps, though instead of sharing ammo pools, it simply shared the pickups. Clips have been replaced with little bullet piles that have 1, 2, or maybe 6 of various ammunition types. Same thing for clippackets and clipboxes, now being ammo packs/boxes with various assorted ammunition in them. This does help to balance some of the weapons I'll describe later here in this list.
- With ammo distribution comes the conundrum of ammo limits. Researched how much mags the soldiery would be carrying in the era, so I went with that. 7 mags total for each ammotype if you found the backpack, 3-4 if you didn't.
- Naturally, new sprites and sounds for everything. It took me a while to figure out the hand sheet I should be using, considering ROW just used a greyscaled Doomguy hand here and there. It actually reused the one over and over and over again throughout multiple weapons, no matter the actual size of the weapon. Very awkward to look at. Either way, researching the uniforms of Soviet, US, and GIGN during the 80s/90s didn't really fruit something that I could use as a neat universal setup. Decided to just go for what the manual says regarding all 3 character's black ops history. Black gloves and black sleeves. Works enough for me. It would be better if I could have separate uniforms for the different characters, but that would require a lot more sprites and checks in the code than I'm willing to do for the addon. Pardons for being lazy in this regard.
- A good chunk of the sprites here are modelshots from Goldsource mods (or just straight up Half-Life and its expansions), providing a moderate consistency throughout the whole thing.
- Weapon slots have been redistributed, primarily to ease familiarity for folks used to vanilla Doom, but also so a single slot doesn't get occupied by 4 weapons.
- Magazine drops as an aesthetic choice is removed. It was distractingly annoying to see an empty magazine drop with the pistol/Uzi even if you just shot one round, that's not how magazines work. At the same time, the right way to do a magazine drop is to have two states for every weapon, checking if the player actually empties the magazine and worth throwing out instead of retaining, and I'm not in the mood to do that. Hideous Destructor this unfortunately is not.
- To go back to my previous stated point, weapons all need to be manually reloaded now. This finally allows the player to swap to a different weapon if they run dry of what they're currently using. No, I can't be bothered to add an auto-reload CVAR. Atleast not for now. Maybe later, if the stars align.
- The knife was not a good backup weapon in vanilla. It hits for 5 damage per strike, weaker than one shot from the pistol. You can also attack with the pistol significantly faster than the knife. I disagreed with this design primarily because enemies in ROW can be individually very dangerous, and there are moments in ROW where you do run out of ammunition, so making your last resort weapon awful does nothing but frustrates players. Nothing exemplifies my frustration more than the very first map, where a soldier has his back turned from the player. Players using the knife'll quickly be disappointed with how it performs, sometimes not even killing the soldier in one strike. Took a page from Hideous Destructor and made it more useful generally. Couldn't copy its homework well enough, but I'd say it's decently close in practice. It's been changed to provide 20 damage spread over 4 frames. A jab with a knife is likely to hurt a pinch more than a smaller 9mm round, no? Switching to the knife even outside of emergencies is now a valid strategy, provided you could get close to the enemy without being riddled with bullets.
- The pistol was fine, for the most part. I don't like the cutoff at the bottom of the sprite when reloading, but it was for the most part inoffensive. It is however part of a bigger problem that the mod has in terms of character representation. You play as 3 different characters in this mod, but while your enemies and handlers are altered, neither the presentation nor the weapons you wield reflect the kind of character you should be playing. If I were to show you a random screenshot using the default pistol without any enemies, you wouldn't know if I was playing as the Soviet, the US, or NATO. The manual straight up tells you that the pistol is meant to be a generic looking pistol, representing both the Colt .45 and the Tokarev, some weird handwavy schtick. In order to provide individuality, the pistol is now split into 3 unique pistols that are given to the characters at the start of their respective maps.
- Adding to this, the HUDs have been separated into 3 different main color themes depending on what campaign you're playing in. Red for Soviets, blue for the US, and white for NATO. FID was kind enough to then revamp the graphics for me. Quite a glow up from the original HUD.
- I find myself conflicted whether to maintain the tracers shot from firearms or to remove them completely. See, ROW's gunplay tries to kinda ape the shooting that Wildweasel's Nazis have (or to put it more bluntly as an inspiration, Blade of Agony), but it appears to fail to comprehend that Blade of Agony's gunplay relies entirely on the fact that the tracers ARE the projectiles shot. ROW's gunplay in comparison uses hitscans with tracers tagging on its back (meaning you can do things like shoot through props while enemies cannot). Adding to that, the tracers don't go where the bullets go, meaning that the player is fooled about just how accurate or inaccurate a weapon truly is. Maddening fact when I figured it out the first time. Decided to keep the tracers, but have them emitted by the A_FireBullets so they'll properly reflect the accuracy levels. Nah, I didn't change where the bullets spawn. They still do shoot somewhere below the crosshairs. Muscle memory gave me stockholm syndrome. Sorry.
- Right, the pistols. The Tokarev TT-33 is a decent pistol overall. It's the only pistol with autofire, meaning you don't have to tap the fire button everytime you shoot with it. It is also the only pistol variant that you find in maps. Think of it as the vanilla counterpart.
- The Colt .45 is a notch stronger than the TT33, though only running with 7 rounds rather than 8. It also lacks its autofire capabilities, you'll have to tap the fire button to let out lead with it.
- The .44 Scoped is based off of the GIGN backstory that Alceste has. It's no Manurhin with a bipod on, but y'know, it helps when you don't have the SVD but need some minor zoom for your accurate bang.
- The Pancor Jackhammer has been completely tossed out the window in favor of a different shotgun of the era. The SPAS-15. I don't think I've seen it represented in Doom mods a lot, so this might as well be my answer to that. It's a shotgun that is both pump action but also gas-actuated, meaning that I could introduce an altfire to make the gunplay more interesting. The semi auto fire is moderately fast, but somewhat inaccurate, while the pump action altfire is slightly more accurate, but takes slower to get to the next shell. It could mean life and death if you're faced against a supersoldier at close quarters. Do you sacrifice accuracy for speed or speed for accuracy?
- The Coachgun on the other hand is made exceedingly more accurate. I try to have both positives and negatives in my weapons to make players swap decisively in the middle of combat, and for the Coachgun, it's a sacrifice of speed and reloading for maximum accuracy and side-by-side fire. The ability to fire one shot instead of both of them is also introduced, for the resource conserving players (me included).
- The Micro Uzi (which amusingly wasn't even a Micro Uzi in the original mod), has now been turned into just a regular factory Uzi with a stock. It's the most accurate out of the 3 SMGs. 32 rounds, moderate damage, using the same rounds as the MP5SD2. The rate of fire is the slowest, but it's still a force to be reckoned with, giving the player an edge in higher range engagements. Certainly a lot more useful when you start with one in Surrey.
- The MP5SD2 is made to be somewhat inaccurate compared to the Uzi. It's a room-to-room clearing weapon first, and while it pales in comparison to the Bizon, it makes up for it by having a suppressor. I don't know if it works, considering more than half of ROW's enemies seem to be set in +AMBUSH anyways, but hey, it's atleast a counterpart to the Uzi that you might want to swap to once the fighting gets closer.
- The Bizon came 3 years early, but in a time of laser cannons and nuclear projectile firing rifles, some anachronisms can be forgiven. It replaces the Skorpion entirely, meant as the perfect room clearer out of the 3 SMGs, with 64 rounds to boot in its name. Its flaws? It's using a unique ammo type compared to the other 2, 9x18mm Makarov, and those don't come as easily as 9x19mm Parabellum that have their own separate boxes (reused from the unique Uzi ammo in the original). Adding to that, it's also the most inaccurate out of the 3. You will suffer if you try using the Bizon for medium to long range engagements.
- The Milkor MGL is a strange creature in the original. I can't tell if it has unlimited ammo because it's intended or if someone forgot to put 1 in the useammo flags. There's extra ammo for it, so I suspect not. It's been changed to require reloading, but enhanced to compensate for the extra fiddlyness. The grenades explode instantly rather than bounce around, and adding to that, they now have shrapnel. Compared to the original, you do not want to use this for close quarters room clearing. You might not even want to use this out in the open. You'll want to use this behind some solid cover where the shrapnel won't hit as badly. However, if the MGL is now useless for room-to-room clearing, what kind of grenades are the player supposed to bounce off of walls? Very simple.
- Implemented 3 brand new handheld grenades that rarely drop from enemies (well, specifically from the weapons that enemies rarely drops, so I won't have to actually make up new enemies, but shh). The RGD-5s, the M67s, and the Gasbang nades. The RGD-5 chucks for much further, but doesn't have as good of a shrapnel spread. Decent offensive grenade.
- The M67 in comparison has bigger shrapnel, and WILL hurt if you're caught. Think of it as a defensive grenade that would be better suited for throwing behind cover.
- The Gasbangs were intended to be just regular ol' flashbangs, but I found out that I actually kinda suck at making flashbangs. Either that, or ROW enemies are just too good at getting over their flinch states. They're deadly gas grenades now that'll cover a small space with constant damaging particles that'll stop any advances dead on their tracks. Useful for the occasional monster closets that just spam entire droves of enemies at you. That said, I had them drop on the new G3s, so it might be hard to come across one when you rarely fight people wielding P90s.
- The RPG-7, now without that irritating cutoff from the original, also requires the player to manually reload the weapon. It's significantly slower to fire another missile compared to vanilla. To compensate, the damage is slightly increased, making it an excellent anti-armor weapon. Bosses may die faster from it, but it's fair since their rockets can usually obliterate you in one hit as well. It's just more fair and balanced, now. However, because it is now relegated as an anti-armor weapon, firing HEAT rockets, the radius is reduced. Positives and negatives, remember? As a little bonus, I gave it a mini scope. Not the most helpful, but hey, atleast it's actually using a somewhat historically accurate PGO-7 sight reticle.
- The M16 Carbine was likely intended to be an M4 Carbine. I won't state the obvious about the pursuit of realism without proper research. Either way, to make it more unique compared to the other assault rifles, I changed it to an M16A2. Burst fire only, to be specific. 5.56mm. It's great for medium range engagements due to its accuracy, but starts to suffer when you get closer up because of the slower rate of fire.
- The AK-47 (as its internally called, even if the manual wants to say that it's an AK-74) performs very similarly to the M16 Carbine. I already explained what the M16A2 does, so I imagine you could probably guess what the AK-74'll both excel and suck at. Uses 5.45mm.
- The P90 was an SMG pretending to be an assault rifle in vanilla. Decided to put a proper assault rifle in its place. Well, I say assault rifle, though it's more of a battle rifle. The G3A3 compared to the M16A2 and the AK74 is the most accurate in the assault rifle slot. It also sports the highest damaging bullet of the 3. Indispensable if you got the room to dodge and need consistent accurate fire down range that the SVD is too slow to provide. The caveats? 20 rounds per mag. It's also even slower than the two. Probably suicide if you try using it close range, especially against some of the better armored enemies.
- The SVD hasn't been changed too much from the original. Y'know, aside from the messed up scope. The reticle isn't accurate to what the Soviets used, a PSO-1, and the "extra zoom" system in place also made it so that it's unwieldy to use unless you barely tap the altfire button. That has been removed in favor of a single zoom that goes real far away. To compensate, the reticle's a high contrast one, so you'll be able to see where its aiming even in the shade. The blips are kinda surprisingly useful, considering ROW's bullet spawning shenanigans. Realism being beneficial to the player instead of just being a hindrance, y'know.
- The Desolator Cannon is toted as being "the BFG of the mod". Saying that it's a lame BFG is putting it mildly. Enemies in ROW move rapidly all the time, while the Dessy here could barely catch up with its single slow firing projectile. Sure, it +RIPPERs through enemies, but what good is that when they're 2 kilometers away from the projectile still firing away at the player? Anyways, now that the sprites are replaced and it has a proper reloading system, enhanced its capabilities by having it shoot 2 more projectiles, going left and right. It's a bit more tolerable to use now for those crowded corridors. Also called it the Desolator Rifle, because the moniker Cannon felt more fitting for the other weapon with the changes I've done.
- Can someone actually hit anything with the Laser Rifle in vanilla? I feel like I would've taken atleast half a mag's worth of lead to the face before I could kill anyone with the thing. Made it significantly more accurate with a higher damage to boot. You're probably wondering what's in store for the Laser Cannon's negative. It fires slightly slower, but more than that, there's an overheating system now. Hold down the button for too long, and it'll sharply stop and cough for a while before you can use it again. Still powerful, but y'know, not too much.
- The mounted DShK. First time I came across it in E2M2, it was a VERY BORING sequence where you just hold down the fire button for the entire duration of the attack. The only other time it was interesting to use was in E6M2, and that was because you're actually surrounded! It is now a mounted PKM, with 50 rounds per belt. Yes, you have to reload it, now. Sometimes, the enemy might get too close when you're out of ammo, that's when you hit altfire and gun them down with your regular guns before getting back to the PKM and reloading it. It made the sequence a little bit more dynamic, and that's good enough for me. To mini brag a bit, the gun also has ammo belt tracking. The sprites visibly run dry as you hit 5 rounds and lower. Felt good about implementing that. You don't see that a lot in Doom mods using visible belted machineguns.
- The fun doesn't just stop at the weapons. You may note that the portable medkits heal you for 20HP per use, now. There's a good reason for that. See, most times the mod'll remember to provide the player with some health after the end of missions, but sometimes it'll just forgot, like in E4M3. Y'know what happens when you start with 40HP, no armor, and the first enemies you face are hidden behind foliage? Irritation. Used both UNCLEARABLE and INTERHUBAMOUNT. You can now carry all of the portable medkits you were keeping from the previous maps, along with bypassing any scripts that clear your inventory for whatever reason. You can only carry 4 portameds rather than 5 to compensate, but I added in an extra 5 points of health so you can heal up to a total of 80HP. Enough that a "practically dying" player from the previous map can restore themselves to decent condition in the next. There's also sounds when you use the medkits.
- Added in a weapons bar next to the ammo counter, mainly to inform players of what weapons they have at the start of every map.
- Air counter added. You swim a lot in this mod, and you don't regain lost health if you drown ala' Goldsource.
- Bomb counter added. Yes, I know half of the bomb sections in this mod doesn't actually count it down. It's a key, it should have an indicator that you have one.
- HUD alphas increased for readability.
- Added ammotags to the ammo counter so players'll be able to know what guns are loaded with what ammo.
- Briefing colors changed to help with readability. The dark grey text on dark grey background doesn't exactly look very good. The colors are also changed depending on faction.
- Briefing music changed depending on faction.
- Static textures changed so you can actually see the pictures.
- Changed some voice lines to sound less distractingly stereotypical. I don't mind camp, but have some restraint for goodness sake.
- Changed some more voice lines to not sound like they're trying to pierce your ears.
- Reskinned the backpack to actually look like a backpack instead of an ammobox that players could easily mistake for, well, a regular ol' ammobox.
- Doom64 medkits reskinned to use Soviet medkits.
- Brightmaps added to medkits to help spot them in the dark.
- Brightmaps added to switches to help spot them in the dark.
- Brightmaps added to particularly incensing enemies to help spot them in the dark. Yes, I'm talking about the puppets.
- Brightmaps added to some enemies that don't have BRIGHT set to their missile states.
- Brightmaps added to keys to help spot them in the dark.
- Brightmaps added to breakable switches to help indicate that they're breakable in the first place.
- Reskinned the Jackhammer blueprints to instead be excerpts from a SPAS-15 instruction book.
- Reskinned the RPG-7 warheads. The flat one looked awkward when there's a bunch of them together.
- Reskinned the armors to use Spetsnaz suits and PCVs. What? HL1's set in the 90s, I can fudge it.
- Reskinned the portable medkits to help differentiate them from all the regular medkits.
- Brightmap added to portable medkits to help spot them in the dark.
- That insufferable squeaky door sound is replaced.
- Brightmap added to bomb sprite to help spot them in the dark. Yes, I'm talking about the one in E5M3. That one took me too long to spot, not being helped that it's next to some bushes.
- Air control altered. The platforming is enough for me to do something about it.
- M_DOOM altered so you'll know if the mod's loaded.
- A few known softlocks have been fixed. E1M3, the garage door that can shut you inside the red card area. E3M4, in the room with the document, a switch can only be used once and will softlock the player if they don't enter and exit correctly. E4M3, a crushing ceiling that won't go back up if the player retreats. E5M5, switch leading to the area with the Desolator Rifle, see E3M4. E6M5, the door in the wall that won't open because the sector is raised to the ceiling instead of kept to the floor.
- Armorsave percentage added to HUD, mainly 'cause I feel a need to stress to the player that armor protection levels are important in a mod where more than half of the enemies shoot rapid fire projectiles and the other half just one taps you.
- Altered weapon given in E3M5 to be the SPAS-15 instead of the Uzi. Really, dude? Only being able to equip your weapon right next to two shotgunners? Incomprehensible design.
- MAPINFO altered so E4M3 actually leads to E4M4B first instead of skipping straight to E4M4.
- Weird one side yellow card locked side-by-side door in E5M1 turned back to normal. Dunno what was that about.
- Tesla projectiles made smaller so you won't be blinded with them when hit. Again, primarily circumventing what a fun drain the puppets section was.
- Several of the background music replaced due to personal preference or being annoyed at the sound quality dissonance. 22khz does sound different compared to 44khz. I don't think I've got them all yet, though.
- Lockdefs to have locked door lines in the automap properly colored instead of all of them being red or green for some reason.
Regarding installation, it's not gonna be like patching the original mod, I promise. Just launch z_ROWAn.pk3 after RedsOverWorld.pk3. Haven't tested to see if it'll work with the unpatched version, so keep an eye out for that. Also not sure what'll happen once the 2.0 patch rolls around. I'll adjust if I can.
DOWNLOAD:
DEFCON? I hardly knew 'er!
Wirejammers!
SCREENSHOTS:
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VIDEOS:
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CREDITS:
Due to how large the credits size is, I've placed it all in the README that is inside the archive.
I'm certain I got most of them, though there are probably some stuff I could miss. Feel free to remind me of those ones.
