Throughout the years you can see a lot of mods that aims to be callbacks of old games. We could spend hours talking about amazing mods in the past that ported (partially or not) games like Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior, Blood or even the likes of Quake through the sheer power of (G)ZDoom. Doomed Redneck is the most recent mod to follow this trend, bringing back the old Redneck Rampage - sometimes referred as an underapreciated Build Engine game from the 90's - into the scene again.

When it comes to mapping, I consider Paul Corfiatis as one of the community's rockstars. He is already around for ages and a guarant for quality projects, no matter if he does them on his own or if he is spearheading larger-scale concepts. His latest one-man-show Doomed Space Wars is currently under construction and takes advantage of textures mostly taken from Dark Forces and therefore giving the mod a very Starwars-ish feeling. The story is quite simple and to the point: A huge Space Station is heading for Earth. You are sent there to wipe it out to prevent the second coming of hellspawn on Earth - sounds familiar, doesn't it? Anyway, a 3rd demo has already been released and is waiting for you.

Back in the days, a WAD set called Eternal Doom existed which had an additional minigame: Cybersweeper, where DoomGuy has to figure out its ways on what squares are deadly and which square were not. A neat idea, and something that is fondly remembered to this day. Newcomer Roebloz brings his take on this underrated classic not only to the PC as a GZDoom (and derivatives) mod, but also as a ROM Hack for the Sega 32x. Welcome to Cacosweeper!

Cacosweeper takes what made Cybersweeper so fun and adds some subtle tweaks to it. In 15 maps, you have to figure out which switches to flick before the exit can be reached. Every now and then, a boss will appear that as to be beat. But beware! If you flick the wrong switch, you will see the error of your ways very, very quickly. Like the original, Cacosweeper transforms the run-and-gun gameplay of Doom to a game of tactics, where puzzle solving is the grunt of the gameplay.

The PC release includes enhanced textures and custom music and a secret level at MAP03. And there are even easter eggs to be found... can you find them? ;)

With Cacosweeper, a little classic from the oldskool Doom days is revived and its just as fun as back then. An absolute must to play.

The PC version is found here as a megawad.

After going on a trip towards the plains of Eternal Evilness and back, fai1025 got tired of huge adventures with a hidden treasure deep into far-far away shores of Hell. The Fai Slayer realised that travelling wide, desolated bits of Hell just to retrieve a random MacGuffin wasn't for them anymore. That's why they decided to gather a team of Science Slayers to exploit a chaotic and demonic radioactive matter known as DOOMium. Their research team has two months, until the 10th of December, to test and find out how DOOMium will benefit the future of mankind and other thriving people that have to deal with demons and alike on a daily basis.

This community project is a collection of 32 short maps using OTEX 1.1 as their only texture set and are interconnected using the exact same teleports for entering and exiting the level. It started on the 16th of October and there's only less than one month left now.

Prior to this community project, fai1025 also did a 20 maps MegaWAD named Unternity in an attempt to move on from Eviternity as a too big maps MegaWAD. Check the links provided for the community project and Unternity MegaWAD if you want to learn more about this DOOM mapper's past projects.

For all of you who have followed and participated in our Doomjá-vu - It's never the same contest: 5 days are left until the deadline and we have a already total of 4 awesome submissions yet. If you are still working on your map, make sure to submit it before the 1st of April or we can't take it into account. If you haven't started yet - time to hurry, chances are good for everyone to win one of the awesome prizes that we have prepared for your contestants. Get it on, and good luck!

Good news to all those control freaks (as I am): hobomaster has finally updated his library frontend DoomLauncher coming with a lot of new and useful improvements to you and going up to version 2.0.0 now. So what can be expected? Next to many bugfixes and improvments, you will find this:

• Ability to drag and drop .zdl files to add to Doom Launcher library
• Update metadata feature. Right click file to get data from id games (title, description, author, etc).
• Added filename to search
• Better error checking with more descriptive messages
• Fixed library sync check that would cause files not to add to the Doom Launcher library
• Added ability to select individual files from the the 'Additional Files' that are added when launching
• Added ability to add demos that were not created by Doom Launcher as well as edit details

So what are you waiting for? Get DoomLauncher from the Realm667 page just here.

Good news to all those control freaks (as I am): hobomaster has finally updated his library frontend DoomLauncher coming with a lot of new and useful improvements to you and going up to version 2.1.0 now - consider this as a small christmas present. So what can be expected?

• Features
  Now keeps track of time played.
  Screenshots can be ordered to set main display image.
  Text file generator that will generate an id games style text file.
  
  
• Bug Fixes
  Fix for save game file checking. Previously overwriting a save game
  not associated with the file would not be detected.
  Fix for seemingly random crash that was casued by an AppendText
  call to the description text box when selected a file.
  Fix for exception that caused by adding additional files.
  Fix for deleting IWADS.

So what are you waiting for? Get DoomLauncher from the Realm667 page just here.

And it goes on, and on, and on! hobomaster22 has just released the latest version of DoomLauncher, the number one doom frontend for organizing and playing all your favorit wads and projects (which are currently 563 pieces in my archive to give you an idea how useful this can be). The author has fixed various issues and added a load of different new features, including

New Features

• Default global settings. Select a default source port, IWAD, and skill to be applied when launching a game for the first time.  (Settings -> Launch Settings)
• Ability to order the files when selecting additional files.
• Pressing enter now defaults to selecting the search button. Check box option next to search box to search while you type.
• Ability to rename a file that is already in the database.
• Typing while in the wad collection area will jump to the appropriate file, similar to when typing in a Windows folder view.
• Added ability to view cumulative statistics. Will add up all statistics for all files in the view. (Settings -> Cumulative Statistics)
• Added option to automatically resolve sync status descrepencies. (Settings -> Sync Status)

Bugfixes

• Fixed bug for statistics in ZDoom based port that would duplicate statistics.
• Fixed bug that created a superficial error based on GameFiles directory settings.
• Cleaner startup. Duplicate change events on startup caused for a slower startup with some random flickering.

Just download the new version from the official project page on the Realm667 and extract the new files into the program's directory by overwriting the old ones and you are ready to go. Have fun!