Welp, hey there, ladies, gentlemen and variants thereof. I'm Xterra, and it's my pleasure to bring y'all my mod, QuakeStyle ZX. This blogpost will serve as the infodump as to what's coming in the near future for ZX, now hosted here on ModDB in addition to its ancestral home at Zorasoft, where its fellow Zorasoft mods QuakeStyle, QuakeStyle Unbound, Doomzone, ZAGE and Ratchet and Clank: Hot and Bothered are also hosted. (Zorasoft.net)
Now, first question you might be asking-- "Where the hell is the mod?"
It ain't live yet. Not here, at least. v7.2 is still live at the link above, if you're antsy in the pantsy and want a taste of ZX before the current version, v7.3, drops. I've got some last tweaks to get done and some A/V work to shore up before it's ready to go. 7.3 will go live on Zorasoft before it goes live here, possibly.
"Version 7.3?! Shouldn't you start at version 1?"
I did...back in 2012. You see, ZX is a very old mod indeed, having been in on-and-off development since I was in highschool. (I'm now a college graduate.) Its prior versions have all been hosted at Zorasoft (and its predecessor, Zoraspace) for all these years, and boy howdy has it been a rollercoaster. The mod basically evolved as my coding, design and A/V expertise grew; believe me when I say the mod has only gotten better with age.
"Well, I got that much. What's the mod about?"
Glad you "asked"! As stated in the blurb, the jist of ZX is that it's something of a mashup of elements of most every Doom, Wolfenstein and Quake game into a gameplay enhancement-and-randomization mod that will never play the same twice. It has an arsenal of sixty-five unique weapons that, should you play a long-enough mapset, you stand a very real chance of getting all of.
Along with those weapons are a buttload of nasty enemies-- at least three types of enemy can spawn in place of any given stock Doom monster; some similar, others very different.
Aiding you along the way are powerups galore; from quality-of-life stuff like light-amp goggles and biospheres that nullify damaging floors to the legendary Quad Damage, complete with the sound, blue screen tint and...oh yeah, the requisite carnage.
"What comes with the mod?"
Well, the package includes:
-the mod itself (of course)
-three addons ("Bolognese Gore", "Classy Bastards", "Weapon Wheel")
-the folder containing all the documentation (which you REALLY should read before you play-- it's worth it)
-Patches for D64D2 and Thunder Peak mapsets
"OK, addons...what're those for?"
The "Classy Bastards" package adds the option to pick a starting loadout from a very, very long list. These loadouts are *very* unbalanced for deathmatch play, so don't use it there. The "Weapon Wheel" package is a custom version of GleassPty's weapon wheel mod; it adds weapon and item-selection wheels to the game, a la Ratchet and Clank or Doom 2016 (or, honestly, most any current FPS worth its salt). Note that you might need to set up the Weapon Wheel to your preferences. Lastly, the "Bolognese Gore" addon is a version of SgtMarkIV's (yes, the dude who makes Brutal Doom) "Bolognese" gore mod tailor-customized to work with ZX, to make everything a bit more...splatty and chunky.
"Will it work with Brutal Doom?"
Not a chance in Hell. It won't work with pretty much any other gameplay mod for that matter, even Colo(u)rful Hell. ZX is very self-contained, and it doesn't play well with other gameplay tweaks. This is common to all of the Zorasoft mods. Any requests for Brutal Doom compatibility will either be ignored or playfully ridiculed. I mean, for God's sake, you've already got the Bolognese gore mod, ya damn '90s-kid edgelord gorehounds... :-P
"I've heard of QuakeStyle Unbound-- is this an offshoot of that?"
Quite the opposite! Unbound (and, in turn, Hot and Bothered) was built off of ZX as its core. The mods have long since significantly diverged.
So...with that infodump outta the way, expect the first ModDB drop of ZX 7.3 soon!
-Xterra
