Brutal Doom

Brutal Doom (also stylized as Brütal Doom) is a gore-themed mod for Zandronum and GZDoom, created by Marcos Abenante (Sergeant Mark IV). As of December 31, 2015, the newest version is 0.20b. Inspired by the infamous Doom comic, the mod features many new graphical effects, such as new death animations, fake flares and 3D blood effects for OpenGL, and also changes the gameplay by revamping the weapons and monster AI. Brutal Doom has been in active development since 2010.

Brutal Doom is compatible with Doom, Ultimate Doom, Doom II, and Final Doom. It can also be combined with its official, optional starter pack, a set of new levels for Doom II specifically designed to work with the modification. If you have downloaded such installation of Brutal Doom, but wish to play original levels, rename hellonearthstarterpack.wad and copy original doom2.wad to the folder.

Features

 * Most weapons now use a reload mechanism.


 * All enemies have remastered sprites and animations.


 * Many enemies have new attacks, such as the imp's pouncing attack.


 * Headshots can be executed on many enemies, except the cyberdemon, spider mastermind, cacodemon, demon, lost soul, and pain elemental.


 * There are more complex gibs and extensive decal bloodstains.


 * Players can perform fatalities on enemies.


 * Enemies also have fatality animations if they kill the player (or sometimes, other lesser enemies) with a melee attack.


 * There are dynamic fluids that flow and splash.


 * All weapons have remastered sprites and animations. For example, the shotgun's wooden furniture has been replaced by black synthetic.


 * All weapons have been re-balanced. For example, the rocket launcher deals much more impact damage but has a lower rate of fire and a smaller blast radius.


 * Certain enemies, such as the baron of Hell, Hell knight, arachnotron and cyberdemon, have been made larger.


 * Some enemies can be taunted with laughter. They can also be offended by raising a middle finger and shouting, which alerts non-deaf monsters like a weapon would. This causes the cyberdemon in particular to react violently, whereafter it will attack more aggressively.


 * The blur artifact has been replaced with NPC marine allies. These marines start the level tied up, and can be freed with a melee attack or simply via the use key. The latest update reinstated the blur artifact, but they are randomly dropped by spectres instead.

Weapons
Many weapons have been replaced or upgraded and have secondary fire modes that adds various combat functions:


 * Fists - Players can now deliver punches with both fists independently. Pressing the primary fire button will result in the player giving a quick punch with the right arm. Pressing the secondary fire button will result in a powerful right punch, which involuntarily moves the player a little forward. When the player does a left punch then a right punch consecutively, the next left punch will have immense power. There is also a random chance of doing an uppercut when doing regular punches. When the Demon Rune/Berserk pack is picked up, hitting the reload button will show the player cracking their knuckles, and a text message will appear. This changes the mode of the fists effects on enemies. "Smash Mode" delivers immense damage to the opponent, usually gibbing them. "Rip And Tear" makes the player perform fatalities on the enemy, from a third person view. This mode gives a small amount of health with each fatality.


 * Pistol - An assault rifle replaces the pistol, which, unlike the pistol, remains useful even late in the game, with increased accuracy and damage. It has a magazine capacity of 31 rounds. Using the secondary attack causes the player to look down the sights, making the rifle useful for sniping targets at a considerable distance with very high accuracy. Picking up another assault rifle enables them to be dual wielded, with high rate of fire but with poor accuracy. It also disables the player from using grenades.


 * Shotgun - The shotgun does more damage than its original counterpart, but compensates for this by only holding eight shells at a time, and utilizes a one-at-a-time reloading system. The secondary attack causes the player to look down the sights, granting a limited sniping ability.


 * Super shotgun - Deals more damage than before and reloads quicker, though firing will cause a noticeable amount of recoil. Using the secondary attack will shoot just one barrel, which can be useful for taking down multiple targets.


 * Chaingun - Replaced with a minigun. It fires faster than the chaingun and is more accurate; however, there is a small delay before firing, caused by the spin-up time on the barrels. The secondary attack spins the barrels before attacking. This of course removes the delay before firing, and significantly increases the firing rate, at the cost of greatly reduced accuracy and very heavy recoil, making it very easy to shoot off-target.


 * Rocket launcher - Has a "revolver style" firing chassis, forcing the player to reload after six shots. The pause between shots is greater, though the damage from the rockets has been increased.


 * Plasma gun - More powerful, has a brief pause before firing and fires slightly more slowly due to needing to reload fuel cells every 50 shots. Plasma balls have a small splash radius, making firing at point-blank range ill-advised. Secondary attack fires a charged shot, releasing multiple plasma balls as a sort of "plasma shotgun" function. It takes longer to fire a charged shot than to fire as normal. Similar to the assault rifle, the plasma rifle can be dual-wielded at the expense of accuracy.


 * BFG9000 - Has a somewhat long charge pause before firing, though the attack is more focused and powerful as a result. Also has a significant amount of recoil.


 * Mancubus flame cannon - Primary fire acts as a flamethrower, while secondary fire fires a shot that ignites enemies upon impact. Can be obtained either by using the chainsaw's alternate fire on a mancubus corpse, or by killing a mancubus with an explosion.


 * Revenant missile launcher - Unlike missiles launched by the revenant, these do not follow a certain target. Obtained via the same methods as the mancubus flame cannon, but when used on revenants instead.


 * submachine gun - The Maschinenpistole 40 was used by German paratroopers during, hence it is the weapon dropped by Wolfenstein SS soldiers. It uses the same ammo as the pistol and minigun, and must be reloaded every 33 rounds.


 * machine gun - Also known as Hitler's Buzzsaw, this new weapon alternates with the minigun in weapon slot 4. It likewise has a very high rate of fire, but uses a distinct type of ammo of which 600 shots are included at pick-up.


 * Hand grenades - These are a new weapon that occupies the very last weapon slot and which can be replenished via backpacks and ammo boxes, while single grenades are sometimes dropped by sergeants. They are essentially a throwable rocket launcher blast with a delayed detonation and are quite effective as crowd control weapons.

Monsters

 * Zombieman - Fires its assault rifle in short bursts. Will reload when it finishes the magazine. Has the ability to roll left or right during combat, to avoid the player's bullets and projectiles. Sometimes goes into a "last stand" when mortally wounded, drawing a pistol and firing at the player until finished off.


 * Shotgun guy - Shotgun fires more pellets (8), but each pellet does less damage (3). Has the ability to roll like the zombieman. It will reload its shotgun when its shells are finished. May also go into a "last stand".


 * Heavy weapon dude - Uses the new minigun, and is subject to the strengths and weaknesses of the minigun.


 * Imp - Fireball now travels much faster than before. The imp also comes with a pounce attack, similar to Doom 3's imp.


 * Demon - Largely unchanged. Can survive losing a front limb (the monster goes into a pain state and continues attacking shortly after with increased movement speed).


 * Spectre - When moving or idle, the spectre will remain completely invisible, save for the eyes. It has a translucent appearance while attacking. If it is severely damaged without dying, it may lose invisibility and continue attacking.


 * Cacodemon - Can dodge sideways at high speed to avoid shots. Has a proper melee animation.


 * Lost soul - Drifts around a lot more quickly when not charging. When the Demon Rune/Berserk pack is used, the player can grab lost souls in midair and throw them. This kills the lost soul upon impact with an explosion.


 * Pain elemental - Mostly unchanged. Produces some splash damage upon death.


 * Revenant - Normal and homing rockets differentiated (normal ones are orange, homing ones are red). Crawls around on its upper body and only fires homing rockets if legs are destroyed first. Always "salvo-fires" normal rockets in groups of four. Has a "fatality attack" if it finishes an imp, shotgun guy or zombieman off with a melee attack - it will grab the monster, smash it around a few times and throw the monster's corpse at the player. If this hits the player, it is an instant kill.


 * Mancubus - Fireballs leave damaging flames where they explode. Will get knocked down if hit by certain attacks (such as a full super shotgun blast). It can be angered by using the "offend" feature, which will increase the speed of the fireballs.


 * Baron of Hell - Has a new attack where the baron of Hell uses both its hands to charge up, then fires three balls of plasma at the player. It can also pick up barrels and throw them at the player for serious damage, but the barrel can be blown up while the baron of Hell is preparing to throw it.


 * Hell knight - Mostly unchanged. Similar to the baron of Hell.


 * Arch-vile - Mostly unchanged. Has a higher pain chance and lower attack speed. Its sprite now has horns.


 * Arachnotron - Mostly unchanged. Also uses the new plasma gun.


 * Cyberdemon - Has a new stomp attack, which instantly kills the player and demons. Rockets now have a little spread. Can be angered by using the "offend" feature, which causes the cyberdemon to fire five rockets consecutively instead of the normal three.


 * Spider mastermind - Uses an enhanced version of the minigun firing explosive rounds, which means it has to deal with spin-up time. Players can also walk under the spider mastermind's legs. Notably, this super-minigun is no longer a hitscan attack, but fires (very fast) projectiles. As a result, two spider masterminds can no longer infight with each other, which can make things significantly harder in certain maps (e.g. ) where causing such infighting is expected.


 * Wolfenstein SS - Replaced with a grey uniform version.


 * Icon of Sin - Unchanged in the base modification. The starter pack, however, replaces it with a more complex enemy known as the "Real Icon of Sin."

Compatibility issues with newer GZDoom builds
Running the latest v20b of Brutal Doom with newer versions of GZDoom (2.3.0 and above) will give the following error:

To correct this error, open the mod file (brutalv20b.pk3) in software capable of opening .zip files, and extract the file blood.txt. Find the two instances of (with a lower case letter 'L') and replace them with  (with a number one). Replace the copy of blood.txt in the .pk3 file with the modified one, and the mod should run normally.

Miscellaneous

 * Due to the sounds produced during reloading, this can be a tip-off to the locations and proximity of zombiemen during a level.


 * The plasma gun, chainsaw and BFG9000 use the sound effects of their counterparts from Doom 3.


 * There are unused monsters inside the mod, originally planned to replace the Skulltag monsters:
 * Juggernaut - A mechanical, tank-like mancubus that fires rockets and can kill the player by rolling over them. Can be summoned from the console.
 * Belphegor - A centaur-like baron of Hell. Can be summoned from the console.
 * Dark Imp - A black imp with blue eyes. Unfinished monster.

Awards

 * 2011 Cacowards - Best Gameplay Mod.
 * 2012 Moddb Mod of the Year: MOTY Editors Choice - Creativity Award.
 * 2012 Moddb Mod of the Year: Players Choice - 9th place.
 * 2013 Moddb Mod of the Year: Players Choice - 4th place.