Mordeth

From DoomWiki.org

Mordeth is a Doom II partial conversion by Gaston Lahaut (Mordeth). Its first episode "The City of Babel" containing six levels and some custom enemies was released on February 22, 1997. Additional episodes are still under active development and the finished project will use the Eternity Engine.

Mordeth was listed on Doomworld's Top 10 Infamous WADs due to its remaining episodes taking a very long time to materialize along with a significant project personnel turnover rate. As a high profile incomplete project with the longest wait in the Doom community, the Cacowards' Mordeth Award was named after it.

Installation[edit]

The available demo was packaged with New WAD Tool. The custom flat and sprite replacements are contained in the file MORGRAP0.WAD. Contrarily to DeuSF, NWT does not use namespace markers to group sprites and flats together; and indeed replacement flats are sprinkled over the sprites which constitute the bulk of MORGRAP0. As a result, it is not enough to simply load MORDETH.WAD and MORGRAP0 in most modern source ports.

In Chocolate Doom, the command line parameter -aa can be used to load MORGRAP0.WAD in a way that emulates how NWT works. The full command line to load Mordeth is: 

chocolate-doom -aa MORGRAP0.WAD -file MORDETH.WAD -deh MORDETH.DEH

For other ports, the easy solution is to obtain the DeuSF version of Mordeth (mfb97dsf.zip - available at Doomworld, see link below). The alternative is to look through the graphics resource file to cut and paste the lumps as appropriate in the correct namespaces. The flats are GATE4, GRNLITE1, MFLR8_1, BLOOD1, BLOOD2, BLOOD3, CEIL3_1, GATE2, GATE3, and GATE1, in that order (but with many sprites interspersed). Once they are removed, all remaining lumps are sprites.

Custom monsters[edit]

Fire wyvern
This small flying enemy is a green recolor of Heretic's gargoyle and functions similarly, firing a continuous stream of fireballs. This monster has relatively low health at 125 hit points but can be hard to hit due to its small size. It replaces the mancubus.
Gargoyle
These monsters act as statues but will come to life when fired upon. They are brown recolors of the fire wyvern and have the same attacks, though they possess slightly more health (175 hp). There are also gargoyle statues that do not come to life but are destructible and have the same amount of hit points.
Ghoulspawn
This monster is a variant of the pain elemental but instead of lost souls, it fires green wraiths at the player that explode on contact. This monster has 400 hit points and replaces the revenant.
Swamp dragon
These tall green monsters borrow their appearance from the chaos serpent from the Heretic series and fire a volley of mancubus fireballs at the player that burst into flames upon contact. These monsters have 3000 hit points and replace the cyberdemon.
Chaingunner
Identical in appearance and attack to the heavy weapon dude (which also appears in this mapset) except for the fact that it drops a clip instead of a chaingun and shares its amount of hit points with the Wolfenstein SS which it replaces.

Unused monsters[edit]

Additionally, Mordeth features several custom monsters defined in its DeHackEd patch that do not appear in the mapset. Presumably, these monsters were meant to appear in subsequent episodes.

Teklord
This monster has 150 hit points and fires a BFG shot at the player. It replaces the Hell knight.
Unnamed monster #1
This monster was not named in the DeHackEd patch. It features the same alert sounds as the teklord and fires cyberdemon rockets. It replaces the pillar with skulls and has 150 hit points.
Unnamed monster #2
The second unnamed unused monster. This monster charges at the player and explodes on contact. It has 150 hit points and takes its alert sound from the daleks from Doctor Who.
Mechanotron destroyer
This monster has 1500 hit points and alternates between firing a cyberdemon rockets and a continuous hitscan attack. It shares its alert sound with the unnamed monster #2. It replaces the spiderdemon.

Content[edit]

Mordeth MAP06

Built-in demos[edit]

This WAD features three built-in demos. All require Doom II v1.9 to view them. The demo levels are:

Demo Level Skill Tics Length
DEMO1 MAP05: Babel's Inner Quarter 4 12066 5:44.74
DEMO2 MAP03: The House of Shadows 4 12406 5:54.46
DEMO3 MAP06: The Draconic Guardians 4 9567 4:33.34

Speedrunning[edit]

Current records[edit]

The DSDA episode records for Mordeth are:

Run Time Player Date File Notes
UV speed run 13:57 vdgg 2019-07-17 mdall-1357.zip

The data was last verified in its entirety on July 28, 2022.

External links[edit]

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