My Critcisms of Freedoom

As enthusiastic as I am about the Freedoom project, being a GNU/Linux user and supporting Free Software, I feel there are a lot of problems with it from both a gameplay and design standpoint. Firstly, from my own experience, the game just doesn't feel as fun or as satisfying to play as regular Doom. Despite sharing all of the underlying code and behavior, the weapons and sound design just don't feel as impactful or visceral as Doom. I feel this the most with the game's shotgun. Doom's shotgun is iconic, we all know this. ID's sound design and animation really made that shotgun what it is, and despite firing it thousands of times it never gets old. You feel powerful when using it, yet it feels smooth and quiet. It almost has a relaxing sound to it, which is strange but that's the best I can describe it.

Freedoom's shotgun on the other hand, and indeed it's entire weapon roster, just doesn't have that same appeal. The shotgun looks and sounds weak by comparison, and blasting away enemies just isn't as fun as it should be. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what I feel the problem is, but I would say it's a combination of both the animation and the sound design not really conveying the same sense of satisfaction as Doom. It sounds more like a toy than a shotgun. The enemies also leave a lot to be desired, I feel. They seem to lack the same visual clarity and appealing design of Doom's roster. A lot of the enemy sprites seem rather blurry and undefined, and coupled with the slightly less polished animations, makes them less enjoyable to blast away. A lot of the design decisions feel random and incoherent, one enemy appears to be a cybernetic soldier, while another appears more like a deformed squid, and another is a large pink worm. Doom's roster on the other hand felt a lot more consistent. The soldiers were zombies, and the demons felt like they meshed together more than a lot of the enemies in Freedoom and they embodiment their respective archetypes better. I feel the Imp replacements in particular are subpar, and I would rather they be redesigned into more of a "Creature from the Black Lagoon" type of monster. Better fitting the silhouette of Doom's imps, while being it's own thing. I also feel the chaingunners can be made into a similar creature as well, thereby cementing a connection of some kind. And the pink worms should be something akin to Pink Hulks, as if it were an experiment gone wrong.

The level design has also been touched upon many times, and I too feel it's inconsistent, even moreso than the likes of Doom II. Some levels are just downright unfair, and throw dozens of enemies at you with no regard for pacing. I would love to see other wad creators try their hand at improving them.

Overall, this is a fine effort, but there is a lot of room for improvement and I hope that one day Freedoom can be the ideal replacement for the non-free Doom. 

Welp, the whole project is a mess from the beginning. Most of the asset are from edits or works from various autors along the time, so there's not a clear direction of anything...

In fact, is impressive that we have 2 functional iwads at this point tbh.

3 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

Welp, the whole project is a mess from the beginning. Most of the asset are from edits or works from various autors along the time, so there's not a clear direction of anything...

In fact, is impressive that we have 2 functional iwads at this point tbh.

There needed to be a cohesive direction for the project, as I agree, you can tell there are a lot of conflicting ideas here. A project like Freedoom can very well surpass the original Doom one day, as the lack of a restrictive license on the assets makes it very enticing in the long term. But Free assets mean little if they aren't appealing to begin with.

Since you mentioned the shotgun, I'll leave here my opinion that the shotgun sound from older versions (before 0.12) sounded better. Not quite as good as the original Doom shotgun sound, but still punchier and more polished than the current version.

3 hours ago, tomas7777 said:

Since you mentioned the shotgun, I'll leave here my opinion that the shotgun sound from older versions (before 0.12) sounded better. Not quite as good as the original Doom shotgun sound, but still punchier and more polished than the current version.

I didn't know that!. I tried the earlier versions and although it sounds different, I still put both on the same level. Decent, but not good.

I don't mind most of the graphics; my big wish would be to have the weapon hands and status bar face fixed up, though. The hands look like they alternate between ROTT/no glove style and Doomguy's gloves. The face might have been better as a helmet mimicking that of the player sprite instead of what is supposed to be an homage to one of the DOOM movies.

20 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

The philosophy as I understand it was to get an IWAD working first, with placeholders abound, because then at least it would be usable. This isn't just a standard mod where you get to decide when to stop working. It is replacing every single asset in the original game, which is a MASSIVE undertaking, especially for volunteers. People who come out to "review" Freedoom seem to forget that often, even though Free is in the name.

 

Just downloading Free Software and saying "I like" (or "I don't like") is not really supporting. If you want to support by being a critic, your own review method could be a lot better. All you said was "the sprites aren't as good" etc. How about some examples? Side-by-side comparisons of the graphics? Maybe a diagram that shows which sprites are "meshed together" and which ones don't fit in? An organized list of the maps that shows which ones are too hard for their slot or otherwise don't fit?

 

Even better, you could support by contributing assets yourself. After all, that is the only way Free Software can exist.

This is the sort of comment I truly dislike. I do not need to show you a 10 page document detailing all the little differences there are and why I personally don't like them, this isn't a term paper or an essay. And you can dislike something without being involved yourself. It's like a chef in the restaurant rebuking your criticism of his food by saying "Oh yeah?, why don't you come in the kitchen and make it yourself then?". That isn't a valid argument.

As it is a community project, I reserve the right to criticise the decisions being made and offer my own input. Which I did in the initial post. Maybe in the future the new crop of Doom modders will take it upon themselves to contribute assets, and I hope they do. There's a lot of great custom content being made, but they're being made for non-Free Doom, which is unfortunate.

He didn't say your criticism is invalid, it's just that Freedoom has never been lacking in criticism but has almost always lacked coordination and people to actually do anything about it.

Umm, please forgive me for being blunt, but I think that the comparison to the original Doom approach is entirely wrong. I mean, the whole project does lend itself to this because of its nature and history, but really, it'll be better for all to just not walk in that direction.

When saying that "feature X is not as cool as in Doom", it comes across as implying that you'd wish Freed∞m to be more like Doom than it already is. Whereas the ultimate goal of the project, from the beginning, was to create a stand-alone game that plays and feels similar to Doom but isn't Doom.

You're saying that monster design in less consistent than that in Doom, which I think is actually arguable, but you know there's a reason for that due to the nature of the entire project, and besides, there's been a lot of conscious effort on the part of the contributors to make more consistent designs that fit both a certain theme (eldritch aliens) and a recognizable art style. It is not a deficiency that this art style is different from what id Software used, and if you take the comparison route, you could just look at the contemporary "Doom clones" from the 90s and see that the art in Freed∞m is actually pretty good, especially for a completely free project, compared to many of those commercial games.

I will agree on the map design though, but I need to point out that many maps have received quite beneficial improvements lately.

10 hours ago, Captain Muskrat said:

Maybe in the future the new crop of Doom modders will take it upon themselves to contribute assets, and I hope they do.

Is it me, or are you sort of implying that the current contributors aren't good enough?

I've been following Freed∞m's development for about a decade already, and there has been a truly astounding leap in art quality ever since @raymoohawk joined the team and others like @HorrorMovieRei followed. It is probably not entirely fair to all these talented artists, who came up with original monster designs and turned them into complete sprite sheets with animations, to suggest that it is desirable for their work to be surpassed by some presumably more talented future artists. You have to at least acknowledge existing contributions for what they are and their place in the project's history.

But of course, you're welcome to produce examples of what you feel is better custom art and/or better character design. It is also not true that custom content is only made for commercial Doom and based on id Software's art (which I believe is what you implied). For example, here's a set of enemy sprites for a Doom engine game released under the CC0 license.

17 hours ago, Captain Muskrat said:

I do not need to show you a 10 page document detailing all the little differences there are and why I personally don't like them

What I said was, if you want to support by being a critic, consider these suggestions. If you just want to shout at the clouds, sure, you are allowed to do that. Similarly, I am allowed to tell you that I think you're just shouting at the clouds instead of providing meaningful feedback. It would be different if this were a status update, but you created a dedicated thread for this which indicates that you're ready to put some amount of effort into your post, and to invite discussion from others. I can see your account is new so just keep that in mind going forward, when you make a thread expect more thoughtful responses than just "yeah haha +1 lol"

17 hours ago, Captain Muskrat said:

There's a lot of great custom content being made, but they're being made for non-Free Doom, which is unfortunate.

There would be a copyright problem if IWAD-based assets were added to Freedoom. We're only allowed to distribute modified IWAD assets because they aren't usable without the original IWAD data as well... in other words, you still have to own the original game to play the mod.

This is another reason why Freedoom is such a time consuming project: For standard modding, we can save ourselves a lot of time by modifying existing assets (mostly sprites). But to create a Freedoom sprite, you're pretty much starting from scratch.

My impression of Freedoom is that it lacks a clear artistic vision. The available assets - levels, textures and sprites - are inconsistent in style and it really feels like it's randomly slapped together.

How come that this project has been going on for 20 years or more and still doesn't feel polished? Meanwhile over that same time period we have seen countless megawads that managed to do better and got a release that actually worked, often even with very extensive sprite and texture work.

Yes, the goal is different here, but all the problems clearly hint at the project lacking guidance by its leaders. Just waiting for others to deliver is never going to work, but that's the impression I got.

1 hour ago, Professor Hastig said:

My impression of Freedoom is that it lacks a clear artistic vision. The available assets - levels, textures and sprites - are inconsistent in style and it really feels like it's randomly slapped together.

I won't talk about the levels as I do feel they have this sort of mishmash feel to them, but when you talk to sprites and textures, you need to keep in mind these following two factors:

a. for a long time, one of the explicitly stated goals was to maintain "PWAD compatibility", as during the time when physical copies of Doom games were becoming rare and digital distribution had not yet reached its current scope, Freed∞m was seen as one of the few options to play PWADs and mods. For this purpose, the textures and most sprites for props were inevitably designed in such a way that they would maintain a degree of visual and stylistic similarity to their id Software counterparts.

b. enemy sprite work has gone through several stages, simply because making a sprite sheet is a big task and many different contributors were involved. As I mentioned above, the arrival of @raymoohawk marked the start of a new era when monster designs gradually became more and more consistent, however some are still based on very old designs that have been improved upon. The overall quality of sprites has increased drastically over the years, anyhow.

I honestly do not find this problematic at all, considering that neither Doom nor many of its contemporaries could actually boast a completely uniform art style (games like ZPC being more of an exception I guess). Actually, I believe that in the case of Doom and Quake, there was more of trying out different ideas and seeing what sticks, rather than having a "clear artistic vision" from start to finish. Perhaps it helped that id Software had only a handful of artists on board who could refine the arrays of differently created sprites (hand drawings, tracings and digitized photos of sculpted characters) into what looks like a more or less uniform art style.

19 hours ago, magicsofa said:

We're only allowed to distribute modified IWAD assets because they aren't usable without the original IWAD data as well... in other words, you still have to own the original game to play the mod.

I think this is not entirely the right/sole reason... What about mods that include assets from several different games? For example, do I need to own not only Doom II but also Powerslave and HeXen to "legally" play Epic 2?

I'd rather say that mods are allowed to include modified assets derived from proprietary games is a kind of "fair use" exception, because these do not constitute the full game. (Then again, earlier versions of WGRealms 2/Demon Throne included complete sprite sheets of certain Doom/Heretic/HeXen monsters, and The AMC TC did that too in the past, and these are both completely stand-alone games).

In the case of Freed∞m, using anything derived from proprietary art assets would be incompatible with the project's license, which is the primary reason why this is not done.

19 hours ago, MrFlibble said:

I won't talk about the levels as I do feel they have this sort of mishmash feel to them, but when you talk to sprites and textures, you need to keep in mind these following two factors:

 

a. for a long time, one of the explicitly stated goals was to maintain "PWAD compatibility", as during the time when physical copies of Doom games were becoming rare and digital distribution had not yet reached its current scope, Freed∞m was seen as one of the few options to play PWADs and mods. For this purpose, the textures and most sprites for props were inevitably designed in such a way that they would maintain a degree of visual and stylistic similarity to their id Software counterparts.

  

b. enemy sprite work has gone through several stages, simply because making a sprite sheet is a big task and many different contributors were involved. As I mentioned above, the arrival of @raymoohawk marked the start of a new era when monster designs gradually became more and more consistent, however some are still based on very old designs that have been improved upon. The overall quality of sprites has increased drastically over the years, anyhow.

 

Of course I am aware of these issues, but the point still stands. I checked out several older versions, and yet, the content is so extremely inconsistent that it has been standing out like a sore thumb.

Of course that's what you get if you gotta just take what you can get, but a good project lead could have steered things into a more productive direction.

20 minutes ago, Professor Hastig said:

 

Of course I am aware of these issues, but the point still stands. I checked out several older versions, and yet, the content is so extremely inconsistent that it has been standing out like a sore thumb.

Freedoom is a niche hobbyist project so for alot of the assets, project accepts what it can get. Worst inconsistency has been with random mix of older, less polished assets and newer, prettier assets but that is generally unavoidable until everything can be replaced with something newer and better. And the project seems to have been making alot of progress recently.

20 minutes ago, Professor Hastig said:

Of course that's what you get if you gotta just take what you can get, but a good project lead could have steered things into a more productive direction.

 

What is the project lead supposed to do with so limited selection of people that are willing to make stuff for Freedoom? What do you mean by "more productive direction"?

2 hours ago, Professor Hastig said:

but a good project lead could have steered things into a more productive direction

As I mentioned above, I've been following the development since about 2012 if not earlier. There have been attempts to bring the project into a more unified development process. At some point, there was a guy who came up with a pretty consistent vision of the setting, plot and character designs, and contributed stuff -- some of it is still in the game. Unfortunately, sometime later that guy did a Bad Thing(tm) and was banished from this realm, never to return.

That said, Freed∞m very clearly leans towards the Bazaar model of development, which I believe is not a bad thing at all. Sure, I'm quite biased and I've developed both an acceptance and a nostalgic liking for even the earliest versions with all their imperfections. However, anyone comparing Freed∞m to Doom is probably biased too, and that likely puts expectations a bit higher than where they should be.

Currently, almost all development goes on behind the scenes of sorts, over at Discord, which I do not use. But it seems to me that coordination between the current contributors is much more efficient than in the past, and these people are more committed to bringing everything together into a more polished and consistent whole.

My the only complaint about Freedoom is protagonist's face. He looks like yesterday he had big booze.

1 minute ago, ax34 said:

He looks like yesterday he had big booze

And that's what makes him charming, no?

The thing is that Freedoom is almost antithetical to having a unified vision. The only things that really define it are compatibility with Doom, and being free. If someone were to have a unified vision that's significantly different from what Freedoom already is or what its other contributors want, they may as well be making their own game. I don't really see that as a problem because having a variety of options to fulfill one's vision is a good thing, but it does mean that you don't see as much effort centralized on a single project like you do with some other areas.

I'm currently doing a playthrough of Freedoom Phase 2 and honestly, I do like the changes to the weapons. Its refreshing to have something different, even if its a bit inferiors to OG Doom. The monsters have for the most part awesome designs, (except the Spider Mastermind replacement, ha ha.)

My complain, (big complain TBH) is the unevenness of the maps. I find most of the later maps, starting with Map 15, and Map 32 and on, either don't have quite enough ammo, and/or big weapons to deal with the opposition. Also a HUGE lack of health. Part of what made The Plutonia Experiment fun was offering big weapons like the Plasma gun and rocket launcher, with plenty of rockets. I find that either the Plasma is not included enough and the rocket launcher too late in the level. If you don't believe me try Map22 from a pistol start and you'll see. 

Freed∞m map design is certainly something that can still be improved upon in places.

On 7/19/2023 at 5:59 PM, magicsofa said:

 

What I said was, if you want to support by being a critic, consider these suggestions. If you just want to shout at the clouds, sure, you are allowed to do that. Similarly, I am allowed to tell you that I think you're just shouting at the clouds instead of providing meaningful feedback. It would be different if this were a status update, but you created a dedicated thread for this which indicates that you're ready to put some amount of effort into your post, and to invite discussion from others. I can see your account is new so just keep that in mind going forward, when you make a thread expect more thoughtful responses than just "yeah haha +1 lol"

 

 

There would be a copyright problem if IWAD-based assets were added to Freedoom. We're only allowed to distribute modified IWAD assets because they aren't usable without the original IWAD data as well... in other words, you still have to own the original game to play the mod.

 

This is another reason why Freedoom is such a time consuming project: For standard modding, we can save ourselves a lot of time by modifying existing assets (mostly sprites). But to create a Freedoom sprite, you're pretty much starting from scratch.

You can tell OP really took your advice to heart by not responding to your statement or participating in the thread any further.

Which ironically kinda proves the point. I get the feeling OP is having though, but i also agree that because this project has never not been without any criticism, to add to the pile is just standard fluff. Freedoom needs a coordinator that can work its way up.

On 7/21/2023 at 2:26 PM, ax34 said:

My the only complaint about Freedoom is protagonist's face. He looks like yesterday he had big booze.

why does everyone want to remove one of the most iconic parts of the game? lol

Art is subjective. Statements like "conveying the same sense of satisfaction as Doom" or "lack the same visual clarity and appealing design" need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Neither is Doom (nor the Id from the 90s, in general) the apex of consistency, nor is Freedoom's ensemble something that can't be explained out, the same way Doom mix up of religion folklore, robots, D&D inspired creatures and sci-fi elements is explained with a story that "it's expected to be there, but it's not important”.

You gotta factor-in how Doom has become part of our contemporary folklore. With its theme and many of its sound effects being now something we are so used to that it makes it much harder to judge free of prejudice. If you played Freedoom and were exposed to its themes just as much as you were exposed to Doom-related / inspired lore, then I feel the judgement might have been different.

That said, of course Freedoom has things that could be improved. But a lot of the things that were mentioned here were either fuzzy/unclear or are unjustified/subjective.

What's wrong with the pink worm?  I feel that's the most representative and thematically fitting replacement in the roster, it does feel like an eldritch horror creature that fits well as a hell spawn (it's not necessarily too sci-fi) while also fitting pretty well with the color scheme/behavior of the original without being an obvious copy or a reskinned "hulk" that would make it look as an uninspired variant of the original pinky, just with human features. Of course these are all subjective takes too, but so are the ones from OP. The worm is one of the least controversial replacements among those of us who follow Freedoom.

The current imp replacement is a sprite of decent quality and it was never a requirement (or even necessarily desirable) to fit "the silhouette" of the original. Just as long as it doesn't cause misinterpretation/glitches when mapped to the boundaries of the original, it actually would be better for replacements to distance themselves from original Doom (while hopefully not clashing too much with the theme of maps they might be found in).

I've always preferred the "less sci-fi" takes... since I've always been a fan of gothic / demonic themes, but the definition of what constitutes a "demon" is something very malleable, so I've long been advocating to at least not mix up tech/scifi in enemies that had a more organic/eldritch design in the original Doom. Which will allow wads that have a more medieval theme to use the less techy themed creatures to fit in there. So in that sense, I do feel a bit disappointed when I see cybernetics/tech related elements being given to, say, the baron of hell replacement. But other than that, I don't think using visually distinct and strange monsters makes it "inconsistent"... it's not like the original cacodemon or pain elemental from Doom, and their "floating balloon" aesthetic fit really in any traditional definition of what's considered a "demon" anyway, and Doom's archdemon could easily be confused for a skinny alien with its bulbous head and pale naked skin... yet you don't see people complaining about those things.

freedoom is great, it allows you to run mods without requiring you to purchase the original doom. For example, play phase 1 with Doom3d (https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom3d) and suppress your aesthetic taste, you can almost feel like in doom. And to this you can add https://romero.com/sigil.

While FreeDOOM can always become better... its currently in a good place overall... very few sprites are in dire need of replacement and the maps are mostly good... Keep in mind... Doom 2 actually has a ton of bad maps.

There are even a few FreeDOOM sprite sets that are really awesome like the pink worm, the snake thing that replaces the imp and the black creature thing

On 8/25/2023 at 10:16 AM, Amiga Angel said:

While FreeDOOM can always become better... its currently in a good place overall... very few sprites are in dire need of replacement and the maps are mostly good... Keep in mind... Doom 2 actually has a ton of bad maps.

 

There are even a few FreeDOOM sprite sets that are really awesome like the pink worm, the snake thing that replaces the imp and the black creature thing

I'd agree with that.

Is it just me or is FreeDoom harder than Doom? I just started playing Phase 2 which is a hell of a game. I'm enjoying the hell out of it but a couple levels in, I think it's the gamma lab, where you start down an elevator shaft and emerge into a room surrounded by techno spiders, I couldn't get past the blob monsters that come out after the spiders are all dead without god mode. Even before then I kept thinking, these are not just equivocal replacements, these enemies and weapons work differently.

I think it looks great, at first I thought the zombies looked jankey but I think they're supposed to look messed up being zombies and all. 

In any case, is there a process for submitting content for FreeDoom? I might be able to enhance some death sequences. They seem a little abrupt. The thought occurred that some more monsters, Lovecraft type stuff, would be cool but that would seem to require new episodes of maybe a random spawner substitution to fully capitalize on.

On 9/25/2023 at 9:05 PM, Nihlith said:

Even before then I kept thinking, these are not just equivocal replacements, these enemies and weapons work differently.

There are no code or dehacked changes in Freed∞m that would aletr weapon balance or monster behaviour. It's 100% the same as id Software wrote it in v1.9.

The level you're referring to is supposed to be a nod to MAP03, but you fight the monsters is reverse order. It's tough, but apparently doable.

1 hour ago, MrFlibble said:

There are no code or dehacked changes in Freed∞m that would aletr weapon balance or monster behaviour. It's 100% the same as id Software wrote it in v1.9.

 

The level you're referring to is supposed to be a nod to MAP03, but you fight the monsters is reverse order. It's tough, but apparently doable.

 

I was fucking retarded, I was playing with a mod on and didn't think anything of it. I've started over with nothing but the phase 2 Iwad and gzdoom and it's a lot easier and more familiar to muscle memory. I'm still impressed with it though, the basic weapons feel/sound/look better unmodded and the music and level design is very nice.

Second time through Im on map 4. I'll try that strategy when I get there, it was more or less what I was trying to do last time 🙃

On 9/28/2023 at 4:26 PM, Nihlith said:

I'm still impressed with it though, the basic weapons feel/sound/look better unmodded

BTW, are you playing the latest official release, or a nightly build? 'Cause the latter has a lot of graphical and level design updates, including more polished sprites for some weapons.