GET UP AND KILL!

On November 8, 2018, it was not my birthday in Sweden, where Vargskelethor (A.K.A. Joel from Vinesauce) uploaded the VOD featuring the Doom WAD I submitted for his contest. It was my birthday during that time here in The States. Time is fun.

I told everyone when he finally played it I would upload it for everyone to enjoy, and here it is, and then some.

Get Up And Kill! (Colloquially known around by me and my friends as “Guac” like Guacamole but pronounced by Joel as “GWEK” so I guess it’s “GWEK” now) is a single Doom level for GZDoom made with the intention of feeling like a semi-retro mod that could’ve been made with PrBoom+ and some DeHackEd patches.

Features

• Neon color Industrial-Punk aesthetic (Described by Joel as “Birthday Shake”)
• Over-the-top enemy placement and humor
• 5 original 3D weapons and tons of replacement color-coded pickups to match (that look bad because I was strapped for time)
• Grading system that goes from A, the lowest grade, to XXX EX GRAND MASTER, the highest.
• New Zombiemen sounds from Ghost Squad (Wii)
• Quadruple bass pedal drums that I liked but everyone seems to make fun of
• Semi-Nonlinear level design
• Transparent Swimmable 3D Floors
• Dynamically lighted explosions
• Easy difficulty for accessibility
• Cooperative player starts
• A finishing gauntlet featuring two cyberdemons and a boss battle with a double-health Spider Mastermind and his Arachnotron cohorts. Especially difficult if you’re going for 100% kills!

Known Bugs

• If the Status Bar’s scaling options (Options > HUD Options > Scaling Options) aren’t set to 1 or using the defaults like this then your HUD will be ridiculously huge. This bug was introduced in the very version of GZDoom that Joel ended up using for the contest. Thanks, Graf.
• Autosaves only trigger once, so it’s possible to use up an autosave and then not go through the portion it was intended for.
• The invulnerability sphere was supposed to have been edited to have a golden colormap (seen here after applying a quick patch) but instead I appear to have uploaded and backed up the wrong wad so it’s the default inverse colormap which looks like hell on the neon-soaked textures.
• I forgot to render the Handcannons with a right hand holding them so only the left hand is visible.
• The title “Get Up And Kill” is incorrectly attributed to Bruno Mattei’s Hell of the Living Dead, a film about rats that transmit an infectious zombie virus. The line actually comes from Bruno Mattei’s Rats, a film about rats that transmit an infectious zombie virus.
• Sometimes the EFX explosions will damage you. I don’t know why.
• You can continue to control your character after winning. Using the console command Spynext will change the camera back to your player so you can see yourself. This does not change your ending stats.
• The sound effect that plays when you get a secret is actually unecessarily long because I forgot to trim it, so after getting a secret you’ll still hear some really quiet crowd cheering noises and instrumental breaks.
• Due to miscalculation on monsters in the level, you can only achieve a XXX rating for Demons Trashed by waiting for Pain Elementals to spawn over 30 Lost Souls or by killing any respawned demons on Nightmare!. (The level has 217 monsters on normal, and there are three Pain Elementals which will generate at least an additional 9 monsters. XXX grade requires you to kill 257 monsters.)

Onto the actual release, I actually have three versions of Get Up And Kill to give you today. Championship Edition, Director’s Cut, and Original Mix.

Championship Edition

CE is the warts-and-all WAD that was submitted directly to Joel’s contest. It features everything you see in the WAD as it showed up on the above-linked VOD and everything Joel missed as well. Untouched and preserved for archival and interest.

Director’s Cut

Obviously, I can’t say I made a patch and then not release it, right? DX is GUAK with a few post-release quirks mitigated and fixed, though still a little rough around the edges. Differences between CE and DX:

• The bugs listed above that are in italics are fixed.
• References to the “Chat” and other things specific to Vargskelethor’s Twitch stream have been removed.
• Leftover debug code has been cleaned up and removed.
• Deathmatch spawns and weapons have been added to the map, as per Joel’s suggestion.
• Scripts have been tweaked to run automatically when a Deathmatch game is detected.
• Leftover DECORATE actors and their corresponding sprites that were not used in the final product have been removed.
• The unused Titlemap has been removed.
• The requirements for achieving a XXX grade for Demons Trashed has been reduced to accommodate how many demons are actually in the level. (This is one of the italicized bugs but I wanted to elaborate.)
• Grades for time have been sparsed out somewhat. While you are still required to achieve a time under 2 minutes for a XXX rating, most play sessions are usually 6 and a half minutes or higher: Far exceeding the lowest grade requirement (400 seconds or 6.6 minutes for an S).

Obviously these fixes actually make GUAK-DX smaller in filesize than GUAK. I highly recommend it.

Original Mix

The final version of GUAK is a very special one. During the video, Joel mentioned that he’d love to play through the entirety of Doom 2 with the weapons. Well, now you can. The WAD was designed from the start to easily mesh with other Doom wads because I’m insane, and Original Mix allows you to mix GUAK weapons with almost any level you desire. Some discrepancies between GUAK (DX), GUAK OM, and Doom 2:

• In GUAK, Zombiemen and Shotguys dropped Jury Rifles (the Pistol replacement.) Since this was done by replacing the actors entirely, in GUAK OM they simply drop boxes of scrap (Clip replacements) and Scrapshoots (Shotgun replacements)
• In a desperate attempt at balance, Scrapshoots and Handcannons will spawn differently from normal Shotguns and Chainguns. You’ll get used to it.
• Boxes of Pistol ammo will instead spawn 2 charges of scrap and 2 charges of rounds.
• Scrap charges give you 20 ammo instead of 10.
• Since there is no Fusion Coolant equivalent for the Big Cell Packs, Big Cell Packs now just spawn a bunch of Fusion Coolant.
• There is no BFG replacement. The BFG spawns as is and still uses its own ammo that does not spawn anymore, so you only get charges for your BFG by collecting other BFGs. Use it wisely.
• The Scrapshoot now uses more ammo.
• The Sonic Emitter will give you 5 charges on pickup instead of just 2.
• The Fusion Rifle will give you 50 charges on pickup.
• Guns now leave decals on walls.
• The default status bar is used.
• There is no Titlemap or M_DOOM replacement. Sorry.

GUAK OM should work with most level packs, and anything that doesn’t rely on changing the guns at all. If you find any bugs while playing it, please let me know! I’d love to make this playable in all kinds of level packs if possible.

In closing uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh, I think it’s funny that Joel referenced Meteor, one of my favorite DOS freeware games, when he first saw this wad. That’s really hilarious.

That’s it! That’s all! Please enjoy this thing I spent a lot of time on and tell all your friends.