Squenched Avacausage - a Doom II mapset

It's 5 A.M., cloudy and threatening to rain as you drive down the desert highway, your ancient, beloved truck's engine furious about how long it's been driven. You aren't looking forward to going back to work after a time away from the big city, but this might just give you an excuse to put it off.

And then with a final wail and muffled thud, it gives up, and streaks of flame flash through the gaps in the hood. You didn't know it was even possible for an engine to fail like that. Extended vacation it is, then. You debate how long of a walk it might be to find the nearest payphone so you don't get fired, as your truck slowly rolls to a stop.

... In front of a large structure. Hm. Maybe they have a phone?

You climb out of the truck, but pause. There's a tingle in the air, and you feel like you're being watched. If the corps taught you anything, it was to never, ever, ignore that feeling...

At the edge of perception, you swear you hear a distant, howling scream. You can smell cooked meat and ozone. Something's not right.

You turn back and take your sidearm and a few magazines out of the glovebox. Just in case.

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Hi!

Squenched Avacausage is a quest through the strange and unsettling worldof SquenchCon International Food-Similar Products Ltd. and its many (evil) subsidiaries.

Its levels involve a variety of combat situations, often in close quarters, with extensive use of Boom features, odd architecture, and setpieces (some may say "gimmicks") in the name of trying to create something different, funny, weird, light-heartedly dark(?), and other descriptors. You will be taken to such exciting locales as an evil office building, a train, too many factories, the bottom of the ocean, Heck itself, and even a landfill...

I would describe the UV difficulty as ranging from "moderate" to "evil". I kind of built it at just a little bit above my own skill ceiling, such as it is. This version now has difficulty scaling, finally! So I hope that helps more people enjoy it.

Work has been going on-and-off since the end of 2021, with the first WIP release posted not long after on Dec 1, and continuing in various stages ever since. After the "proper" Bite 1 release in 2024, I have tried to make each update more of a polished expansion/continuation.

Levels have been organized into loose chapters of 3 maps each, separated in turn by an intermission with non-combat gameplay, with MAP01 falling outside that pattern as a larger-scale opener. This current release thus covers chapters 1 to 4, along with MAP01 and secret levels MAP31+32.

For asset and soundtrack credits and other details, please refer to the readme file.

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Notes on engine compatibility:

For best results this wad requires a port that supports UMAPINFO, as well as widescreen graphics for the menu, intermission, etc. Most of my testing was done using DSDA-Doom as a baseline.

I strongly encourage you to set your preferred source port to its equivalent of "complevel 9", "boom", or similar compatibility options for the closest experience to the intended one. Jumping/crouching WILL break everything, so please don't! I mean, I can't stop you, but you have been warned!!!

Extra features on some ports may cause issues, like projectile-blocking scenery, vertical aiming, etc, but I have tried to be mindful of this where possible. As of this writing, there are a number of issues with running this in the official Doom + Doom II port due to subtle engine differences, so proceed with caution there as well - it is likely not finishable.

Multiplayer of any kind is out of the question, there are too many sequences to break. Again, I can't stop you but, again, you have been warned. again.

Dehacked patches are in use, partly for cosmetic purposes, but also for key gameplay tweaks that you will discover through the course of playing. As a result, gameplay mods are very likely to interfere so... well you get it by now.

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P.S. - if you enjoy my particular mishmash of nonsense, you can get me my very own avacausage on ko-fi to help support this and other completely unrelated nonsense:

https://ko-fi.com/novaplusplus