I promise this isn’t turning into a DOOM only website, and especially not one that is only dedicated to Blight. But with the first game wrapped up, and the tongue-in-cheek humor with the mention of two other Blight games, I felt somewhat motivated to carry through with those ideas.

Blight: Affliction is the second game in what would eventually be known as a trilogy. I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, but that is my long (very long) term goal. It will be the Blight trilogy that all takes place between DOOM and DOOM II. The second of the three (as well as the third) will take place within DOOM II. No more limitations on the monsters or weapons. Players will get to fight the Archvile, and kill things with the Super Shotgun.

Progress has already begun on Blight: Affliction, and will feature the first half of DOOM II Megawad. So you will have MAP01 through MAP016. While the second half, MAP17 through MAP32, will be the last of the trilogy. The name is mentioned in Blight but will not be mentioned here just yet. This will feature some unreleased maps that I had worked on since my 20+ years of DOOM design. Old maps will be updated, New maps will be added. I will try to not use custom textures unless I need to illustrate an idea. And, this will once again take place directly after Blight.

I will only work on this sparingly as I have other projects as you can see that do need worked on, and Blight doesn’t make us money. Thoughts about that have stirred in my head, but it would be a fully realized drop with goodies. But again, I don’t have a name behind my mapping, and Blight wasn’t supposed to be a Magnum Opus. I did jump head first into the mod developing scene and release that as my first mod.

Blight: Affliction will try to address many of the issues that was brought up during the development of Blight, such as difficulty, bugs, and lack of weaponry. And with the KEX port released, I will have to make sure I develop for that as well. My ports I’m shooting for is GZDOOM, DSDA, Woof, and KEX. I’ll see as I move further along if I need to test in other ports. But those are the ones I’m looking at. 

John Romero once stated in his streams, after a suggestion by a viewer, that they were known as “SIGILians”. Well I hereby declare Blight fans to be “BLIGHTarians”. Anyway, a short update to the progress of Crusader Games. Aside from personal, health, and work related issues, we are still a company designed to create some awesome content for a variety of genres. Happy DOOMing. 

With the release of DOOM + DOOM II, Doom is now available to a wider audience with the release on consoles. One of the benefits of this version is the ability to release mods to that audience to allow users with PlayStation or Xbox, or even Switch to play the mods on these gaming consoles. I’ve had a few individuals suggest some quality of life improvements for Blight. And with this version of the game being released, I wanted to make sure I could get Blight out on this list as well.

I’ve made many Quality of Life improvements over the last version. First QoL improvement is to get the word out or fix related postings to say “While inspired by SI6IL and SI6IL 2, Blight is not meant to be as hard” That was one of the biggest amount of comments I had received and mentioned in previous topics. Balancing the difficulty for the majority of the Doom community is like me trying to shoot a penny. I’m just not going to be able to with my experience. It’s either too easy, too hard, or too cheap. So it is a mild experience that gets hard in the end, but isn’t nearly as hard as many of the mods that show up in Bethesda release.

I have brought back the Baron of Hell on every level. John Romero had placed a Cyberdemon on every level in UV mode for Si6il II, but I’m not that bad, I chose to go with the simple Baron of Hell. I like them. They provide a bit sponginess while putting in some high damage enemy fire. I did modify some enemy placements, though not many. And while the following was present in version 1.2, I don’t think it got much attention. I have enemies that are randomly placed through out the map. So one play through may have an enemy show up behind a specific door, but the next time, they appear at the top of a platform. It adds a little bit of randomness to specific monster types giving even me an element of surprise.

Since the release of this remaster is using a new engine, I had to add the appropriate files to my map. So I fixed it to be KEX compatible, I’ve added some bonus things like altered HELP and ENDOOM screens. I’ve created widescreen support, and for the ports that do use intermission maps, there is now an intermission map based on a rural mountain side in the eastern mountain ranges based loosely around an image of my work. There is a M_DOOM logo in there as well, and I made some alterations to the music in a couple levels. I’m using two new tracks for E7M5 and E7M9 due the nature of E7M5, I felt it was more appropriate to change that. 

Outside of some small bug adjustments and line definition changes, a lot of the improvements were to get it updated to the KEX engine so my console friends can download the mod. Look for the mod to be released in the next day or two. Planned releases will be Crusader Games, idgames Archive, Bethesda mod browser, and links can be found also on the Doomworld posting.

Blight has been out since May 31st 2024, and while that’s not been hardly any time I was able to see a stream of someone playing an early version of it; several revisions back to be exact. I understand why people may not want to watch their own movies they act in, or see comments on a YouTube page, but I think that is where I ended up finding myself. I was hoping to have much more feedback on BLIGHT since its release, but the streamer has been the only commentary that I’ve had outside of testers.

I specifically asked for play testing, but what I got was a whole colorful commentary on some things that needed addressed. Mix that in with an echo chamber of viewers, it was hard to weed through the actual constructive criticism and the profanity-laced anger from the difficulty of some of the maps. I did respond to the streamer and thanked them for the comments they made once they reached the end of their attempt. There was some good suggestions mixed in, it just took a bit of time to hear it. I had to watch the entire stream, and unfortunately, that wasn’t the best experience to sit through; funny comments mixed in with sharp insults.

With all that said, I have had to take into consideration the dreaded revision phase. I expected to get a little more feedback on map design, combat, and general playability before having to do maintenance on the maps, but after that stream, and what seems like the lack of interest so far (perhaps due to said comments above) I’m having to do some major re-tooling of the maps. The biggest culprit was E7M5. That map was a figurative Hell to go through.

I completed it on Ultra-Violence starting with only a pistol and I don’t consider myself an expert on this by any means. But it was hard and I wanted it that way. I wanted that by design, but the curve was high from E7M4. So I’ve gone back through and removed many of the enemies, or changed them. I’ve added more health and ammo. I’ve kept the munitions the same as I do want players to engage the enemies with more unconventional weaponry. Berserk and Chainsaws are very effective for many monster types and its a shame that they don’t get the love they deserve. That lead to a lot of the ammo starvation when players fell back on using only the Shotgun. 

Despite how I wanted it, I had to take the play-style of the majority of players into account. I’m sorry, you’re not getting a Super Shotgun in this game, and if I made a BLIGHT sequel, its not going to rely much on the SSG like so many like. But I digress. I’ve added some additional game mechanics like randomly spawned monsters, and will incorporate an additional puzzle. In other words, I hope that version 1.1 will be worth the wait that people who were looking forward to BLIGHT will actually enjoy.

I am getting closer to release, but something I thought that would not be as hard as it has been is to find people to play it. The DOOM community is all about multi-person projects, and mega-wads that span 32+ maps in DOOM II. And lest we forget they take years to release. I am just a one-man team making 9 maps for the original game. But even then, its getting people interested to play that’s has become the current challenge. I’m pretty proud of my creations, but I have had others share quite the opposite. So while it was a pipe dream to think I could ever gain the half the notoriety of Romero or any of the Doom Community, I’m still pressing on to a release of BLIGHT.

There is one change though that I will make. Given that I’m finding it difficult to get others to even commit to a day or two of playing, I have decided to no have the box set and only release the mega-wad for free sans box set. Yes, trying to right the coattails of SIGIL and its box set release was probably a bit foolish. And while it sounds interesting to me, to even imagine having it printed up for myself, I have to face the facts that its not that interesting for someone with no name in the mapping community releasing a paid version of a free game.

While I expected it during the month of May, that could slip into the month of June. I have done most of the testing, and the few testers I’ve gotten have given me some good criticism and have found some things I didn’t catch. I’ve gone through several revisions and versions with incremental improvements, but have yet to hear of a person completing the grand opus that I have on E7M8. Only I have seen it through to the end. So if you are a fan of DOOM and want to be a beta tester for BLIGHT, by all means, leave a comment below and I will get back to you. 

Who knows, maybe this will be released in a box set, with some special goodies in the future or maybe not. But I can positively assure the community that a box set will not exist at launch, and plans to release one are currently on hold.

Lastly, I can say that BLIGHT will feature 9 single-player maps across an unofficial Episode 7, tying together SIGIL II and DOOM II: Hell of Earth. It will also have 9 deathmatch maps included. What I’m not including is co-op through the main 9 single-player maps. So those who like to fight along side each other, I’m sorry to say that it will not be possible. I do want to meet deadlines, and if I can’t test something myself, I won’t release it. And I have no possible way to test co-op functionality on maps. Due to that reason, I have decided to cut that portion of BLIGHT.

It’s getting closer to release. I still feel like I have mounds of items on my To-Do list for Blight but for the most part, its almost complete and is on schedule for May release. Wikipedia has DOOM II® listed as it’s release was in May, September, and October. Since I wasn’t in the PC scene during that era, I can’t confirm the exact date so the internet has failed me. I guess John Romero’s release of HELLION will let me know that time. In case it was May, I was shooting for that release date. But now I’m unsure. Either way, May is the month I’m shooting for.

I’ve gotten about half of the deathmatch maps created, and all but the last two maps have been populated with ammo, monsters, and power-ups. I’m working on the administrative building right now, and ran into several bugs, and undesired effects. Some I can’t help, but I did fix the errors. This map didn’t have many monsters or ammo at all, but the outside is so populated with monsters that the sounds of the growls are fitting for the name of that map. I will say I did beat it, but I know which weapons works well with monsters, and when you can control them, aren’t overwhelmed, and have the write weapon (despite no ammo), then you can easily cheese your way through the maps. I’m looking at you Berserk Pack. I love that power-up.

Though my skill in DOOM® is not that high, I do feel like I’m pretty good. So it does feel strange when I have secrets and levels that are hard for me to complete on pistol starts in Ultra-Violence mode. I have managed to complete all my maps with all secrets, but a complete play through, I haven’t done yet. And for this last map I don’t have all the secrets. I did populate it with enough to test, and I’m looking at adding more secrets. Much like Romero, I too have target marks to hit. I need ‘X’ number of secrets, Blood Sacrifices have to be apparent, Bone Idols have to be within the affected areas. And I have to make sure all of them actually work. Several are bugged to where you can’t see them at all. I know where they are, and can still interact with the line definition, but the visual representation of what is happening is definitely missing.

My weeks are tied up extensively with other things that naturally pull me away from development, but time permitted, I will always work on this. The biggest hurdle will be the final boss. But I cleared two maps this weekend, and even though next week is booked for me already, I have a good pace.