Features

• A complete re-balancing of Doom's gameplay for a different experience while keeping the old mainstays of demons and zombies.
• Increased deadliness for all weapons and monsters for more intense fights.
• Improved monster attacks that take advantage of each monster's tactical and aesthetic niche.
• Detailed weapon behaviour including visible recoil and muzzle climb.
• A real-time scoring system for co-op play that rewards survival first and killing second.
• Minimal interference with the original Doom visual style.

Hideous Destructor still holds a place in my heart, even though I suck at it. It's right around that level of unfairness known as "Nintendo Hard", which is hard enough to make you throw down your controller (or keyboard in this case i guess) in disgust, but not hard enough that you won't try it again. I wish it was compatible with Skulltag, though, because I'm sure it'd be a blast in Survival. Except nobody would ever host it in Survival BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL PUSSIES. --Ethril

So what does it actually do?

• First, it gives the player better weapons: along with the pistol, you get grenades, medikits, and at least one of eight possible primary weapons of your choice. Then it reduces the spread of every weapon, most notably the shotguns, to make it much easier to kill at longer ranges. The weapons themselves do more damage, too.
• In return, though, it makes the Doomguy move more like a real human being. Compared with the monsters he is now only above average in speed, and will have some difficulty firing while running. Getting hit is going to be a lot worse, especially since everyone else's firepower is increased to kill as efficiently as you!
• On the bright side, your logistical problems are greatly ameliorated. You naturally regain health over time (the rationale being that you're taking stress and fatigue as well as actual wounds), and zombies of all kinds drop much more ammo - in addition to the fact that you're already using less than before.
• What you pick up and when you pick it up are also much more under your control. Medical pickups and light amp goggles can be picked up and kept for later on in the level. There's also an option to have you manually pick up things like armour, ammo, and weapons, giving you even more control over your resources.
• These changes all lead to your in-game risks being front-loaded: your timing, positioning, and ability to anticipate attacks in any single fight are much more important than your strategic timing of when to use which pickup. One mistake can kill you immediately, instead of just hurting your chances two or three firefights later. This kind of play can be a bit more stressful than the way Doom normally plays, but it makes each kill that much more rewarding.

Or you can just watch a few videos to see what it does.

• Main download: The mod itself.
• Skull Destructor: Skulltag version.
• Stand-alone monsters: Some of the replacement monsters as standalone files for use alone or with other mods. Only the demon uses any new graphics, and none use any new sounds.

Update Log

19 September 2011:

• Skulltag edition now available! Check the downloads!

  Please be warned that I had uploaded several updates postdated to this date. If you're reading this on the 19th, the one linked is in fact the correct update.

• Changed the SSG sound a bit.

11 September 2011:

• Bugfix: BFG got into an endless loop if you tried to reload while it was full.
• hd.wad is now hd.pk3.

25 January 2011:

• Bugfix: I think I've solved the "turrettes spawn even when you very specifically say no monsters" bug. Side effect: there are no longer any cell pickups that spawn when nomonsters is on. Considering that the vast majority of the time that flag is on people are playing deathmatch, and in light of the changes I made to the plasma rifle, we're probably better off this way.
• Bugfix: Spiderdemon wouldn't play death sound if "gibbed" (despite there being no gib state).
• Overhauled the plasma rifle behaviour. The projectiles go much faster and hit harder, and the gun reloads much faster.
• Tweaked the baron and caco to be a bit tougher and less subject to chaingun cheese.
• Tweaked the player's rockets to shoot faster and hit harder. Grenades unaffected.
• The rocket launcher and shotgun now fully load whenever you hit the reload key.

16 January 2011:

• Should've done this a long time ago... I'll just quote from the manual:

  You can use HD's lives system by setting the fraglimit. If you set this to 100 or lower in a deathmatch game, the fraglimit works as it normally does. However, if you set it to over 100 in a deathmatch game, you will get a lives counter on your HUD, with an initial value equal to your fraglimit less 100. If you (or your team) runs out of lives, you will not be able to do anything the next time you respawn. When only one person (or one team) remains active, the game ends without needing to hit the (absurdly high) fraglimit.

  If you set a fraglimit in a co-op game, the fraglimit will appear as your lives counter, and if you (the players) run out of lives you will not be able to act the next time you respawn. If you set the fraglimit over 100 in a co-op game, the lives counter is your fraglmit less 100 and the game ends the moment you run out of lives.

  Only the host needs to set the fraglimit. You must allow exits for the level end to work.

20 December 2010:

• Tweaked the launched and the thrown grenades. The former now makes a scorch on explosive impact, and the latter should be a bit less unpredictable while rolling.

26 September 2010:

• I've added a new starting loadout, the "Assassin", which starts out with maxed grenades and meds as well as berserk packs, with the pistol and melee as your starting weapons.
• Removed the chainsaw from the "Contractor" loadout and gave it to the Assassin instead.

08 July 2010:

• A bit of a major gameplay change with this update. In previous versions even very slight movements would seriously throw off your aim. Now you can move at least a few feet before your aim is thrown off, making it much easier to get a few good shots off without exposing yourself while lining up your shot. So far it's given the shotguns a huge advantage over what they used to be like - hopefully they won't quite eclipse the rifle while gaining considerably more close-range functionality. Let me know what you guys think.
• Bugfix: The new shotgun reload animation was offset too high, showing the empty space beneath the sprite.
• Bugfix: You could sprint yourself to death. Now you no longer hurt yourself by overexertion and just stop sprinting instead.
• Bugfix: The BFG would disappear if you pressed altfire.
• The rifle's overheat gas does more damage.

13 June 2010:

• Bugfix: The turrette would insist on spawning despite the sv_nomonster cvar.
• Updated the caco's secondary attack to cause a minor quake.
• Updated most guns to use A_ZoomFactor instead of physically pushing the player back which was silly and sometimes caused side effects.
• Continuing tweaking with the cyberdemon, giving it even more of an attack delay. The vanilla takes about 30-35 rockets to kill and is immune to explosions; HD's takes about 30-40 but those rockets must hit from long range, while it can be taken out with a single BFG shot at medium range. Not sure how to reconcile this with a lot of maps that try to set up a "rocket duel" between the cybie and the player.
• Along those lines, you may notice that direct rocket hits have a slightly harder punch.
• Tweaked the shotgun's reload animation and firing rate.

09 June 2010:

• Bugfix: Finally got rid of that old error message from having to specify no projectile for the bleedout hack.
• Updated the cyberdemon. Previously it was deliberately impossible to beat the cyber without a few fellow players to distract it (and a couple respawns so they can keep distracting it). Now you just need a decent response strategy and either a big gun or a lot of patience.

11 May 2010:

• New sounds for the bullet weapons.

15 March 2010:

• Bugfix: If you died and the killing blow got rid of the last of your armour, from respawn to the next time you get hit you would still be counted as wearing armour at value 0 for other purposes.
• New cheat: type hd_doomguy in the console to reduce your inventory to just a pistol with 50 rounds. (If you have less than that, you get bumped up to 50.) This works whether cheats are allowed or not.
• All playerclasses now start out with their weapons fully loaded.

06 March 2010:

• Bugfix: You could hold on to the fire button while using the chaingun and start moving to avoid movement-related shooting penalties. This was because the code only checked for movement when the movement animation was playing.
• Bugfix: You weren't respawning with a full chaingun mag after losing in co-op.
• Sacrificed the moving weapon bob for a subtle way to tell if you can shoot without penalty. If the weapon looks a bit lower than it should, that means your aim will be off.
• Changed the chaingun behaviour. It used to be that you had to raise the chaingun, then press altfire to turn it on to make it shoot fast - if you shoot without turning it on, you hand crank the cyclical barrels and shoot about the same speed as the (ew) vanilla chaingun. Now you just shoot fast, and turning the weapon on and off is much less of a hassle.
• Changed the super shotgun behaviour. Now, if you hold the attack key you will automatically fire your second shot, but there will be a longer delay to keep you from shooting by mistake. However, if you let go and press attack a second time, you can get your second shot almost instantly.
• Sped up the rocket launcher reloading a bit.
• Added an explanation of the armour prompt to the manual.

24 February 2010:

• It occurs to me that there's no simple way to set hd_lives to a negative number in the command line. I've changed it so that in addition to a negative number, you can also enter a number over 100 which will be parsed as 100 + the lives you actually want in the new co-op mode.

  Example (new mode, 5 lives): c:\doom\zdoom -file wads\hd.zip -warp 10 -skill 3 -host 4 +set hd_lives 105

  Example (old mode, 5 lives): c:\doom\zdoom -file wads\hd.zip -warp 10 -skill 3 -host 4 +set hd_lives 5

23 February 2010:

• Bugfix: You could mantle while dead.
• Bugfix: You could jump while out.
• Bugfix: hd_autoreloadoff didn't. Does anyone ever - has anyone ever used this thing???
• New co-op mode! Set hd_lives to a negative number and you instantly lose on running out of lives, instead of having to wait for everyone to be wiped out. The number will be automatically parsed as positive should you subsequently start a deathmatch game.
• Changed all instances of momx, etc. to velx, etc.

22 February 2010:

• Bugfix: "Out of lives" message was overwriting "Wiped out" message.
• Bugfix: Deaths were not being properly attributed in the custom scoring system.
• Bugfix: Wrong player's pronoun given in the victory announcements.
• Bugfix: Monsters killed by friendly marines didn't increase your score. Downside of new implementation: You get points for killing friendly monsters of any type not marked friendly by default, and no points for killing unfriendly monsters of any type that are.
• Added some randomized bylines to the victory announcements.
• Cleaned up the marine spawning code. Unfortunately I can't change the skin tones on the zombies without them looking like they're wearing blackface, so making them all grey and grimy and dead-looking is the best I can do.

31 August 2009:

• Bugfix: Rockets exploding in the ceiling would get stuck in a loop.
• Added the +FORCEXYBILLBOARD flag to a few actors, most notably the explosions and other radially symmetrical effects.
• Reduced the dud explosion rate.
• Changed the BFG ball behaviour so the two parts of the ball act more like a single unit.
• Miscellaneous tweaks to the archvile, including making it solid.

29 August 2009:

• Bugfix: One line of playerpawn code that messed up the animation. I had no idea why it was there.
• Compatfix: Got rid of the white team so that it should conceivably work with Skulltag.
• Duds now may potentially explode.

24 August 2009:

• Bugfix: Killing non-threatening barrels still added to your score.
• Bugfix: Hell Knight corpse still shootable.
• Bugfix: You may have noticed that it has been very easy to kill yourself by bouncing a launched grenade off an enemy that just got too close when it hit. There's no reason for this behaviour except that I'd never gotten around to fixing it until now. :) While you're no longer able to do that "bounce off a wall and shoot around the corner" trick (if you don't know what this is, take a careful look at the shotgun guy tower in Map12), at least now a tiny error in distance judgment won't wipe out your fireteam.
• Modified the chaingun guy's behaviour a bit to make him more aggressive.
• Rockets now start off much faster, though at closer ranges the grenade is still preferable.

20 August 2009:

• Bugfix: You actually mantled higher with a heavier weapon. Teaches me to only test extreme cases. (Unless one were pole-vaulting with the weapon... nah.)
• Changed the movement slightly. Now you can no longer straferun and you move a bit slower backwards. Also you need a tiny running start before you can jump forwards.
• Changed the armour system. Now if you tap the use key while moving into it, you get a comparison message. Hold the use key for a moment while moving into it, and you will pick up the armour.
• You can now mantle while crouched or pushing the forward button.
• Added the +NOTELEFRAG flag to a wiped-out player. Note that this change requires ZDoom SVN 1754+.

18 August 2009:

• Bugfix: Hand grenades were immune to infinite ammo cheat.
• Bugfix: Hand grenades cooked off on altfire even without dropping the spoon.
• Pistol ammo now always visible on the status bar.

17 August 2009:

• Now you start with (inter alia) a pistol! With enough ammo to last you for the rest of your life!!!
• Much betterly improved documentation wrt the skill levels.
• You can no longer hit barrels and summoned squad marines with the use-button kick (although the fist altfire works fine).
• Bugfix: Soul and mega spheres would not follow lifts.

06 August 2009:

• Bugfix: Turns out a good number of zombies were still shootable when dead.
• Added Xim's chaingun guy sprite edits and cleaned up the animations accordingly.

04 August 2009:

• Bugfix: A player frozen at spawn on wipeout could still kick. (Now if anyone knows how I can prevent them from "using" anything at all, I'm all ears.)

03 August 2009:

• Bugfix: Nazis still shootable when dead.
• Various tweaks and bugfixes throughout the year. I don't even know what, frankly.

(Old updates from 2007-8 available here.)