Mulderland's Enhancement Pack for DOOM 3 (2004)

Installator included. Must have improvements and fixes pack. Best way to play DOOM 3 over all releases.
AND why you must play Doom (2004), NOT a Doom 3: BFG Edition.

ℹ Introduction

DOOM 3: BFG Edition is a remaster version of DOOM 3 (2004) and it's considered inferior by old school fans to latter due atmosphere. And I agree with them but they both have pros and cons.

DOOM 3 (2004)

Pros:

• Atmosphere & Visuals. Basically better and darker lightning. Locations are dark everywhere.
  
• More hardcore resource management cause it has less items (ammo, medkits etc.)
  
• Hand flashlight that you must take if you want to illuminate your surrounding and shove your gun that makes you more vulnerable.
  
• Better weapon hud FOV (Basically you can see more of your current gun and it doesn't feel like it's in front of your face)
  
• Guns do emit dynamic light when you fire them around walls and surfaces from muzzle flashes.
  
• Same with cutscene's field of view, it is increased comparable to BFG edition. And they are skippable.
  
• You can zoom in and zoom out while aiming your weapons.

Cons:

• Low quality texture even at max settings
  
• Lack of ''Lost mission'' DLC that was released with DOOM 3: BFG Edition.
  
• Lacks selection of modern resolution in settings.
  
• UI/HUD is stretched. Same with PDA interface and main menu and health/armor counter etc. They were made for 4:3. And all prompts are lower quality.

DOOM 3: BFG Edition

Pros:

• Brand new DLC made exclusively for it called ''Lost mission'' that wasn't released for DOOM 3 (2004)
  
• Higher quality textures
  
• Was released on XBOX 360 (But we can exclude that for being useless for pc users)
  
• Same with added two original games to main menu that you can play without owning them separetely (DOOM 1&2)
  
• All UI/HUD is made both for 4:3 and 16:9 (PDA, main menu, health/armor counter etc.)

Cons:

• Lightning became brighter that decreases whole horror atmosphere. Lots of dark areas became a like a Christmas tree. Flashlight will be used more rarely.
  
• Impossible to skip cutscenes ( Seems like nothing until you die before them couple of times or if you completed game and don't want to watch them) And they have lower field of view.
  
• Shoulder flashlight that basically makes game easier. Main idea of original game was that you must to grab hand flashlight to see something. Especially at darker DOOM 3 (2004)
  
• Doom 3: BFG Edition significantly increases item availability compared to the original, featuring more ammo pickups, more armor, and more health packs, making it faster-paced and easier.
  
• Guns DO NOT emit dynamic light when you fire them around walls and surfaces from muzzle flashes, like in DOOM 3 (2004)
  
• Missing some interesting moments and encounters from DOOM 3 (2004) due to bugs or missed during development. (Like missing Cacademons fight in Caverns and
  breaking stair's in Hydrocon Level)
  
• You can't zoom in and zoom out while aiming your weapons.

So what if we move pros from DOOM 3: BFG Edition to DOOM 3 (2004) (because they are easily recreated in OG game then vice versa), latter will be a superior way to experience DOOM 3 for old and new players. Yes, that's why this guide was created.



Video comparison of DOOM 3 (2004) and DOOM 3: BFG Edition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiufUB-JAb4&t=819s

From me - pictures from two same levels of Enpro (comparison)

DOOM 3 (2004) and DOOM 3: BFG EDITION. No words required, you will understand.


Guess where is DOOM 3 (2004) and BFG Edition XD

ℹ Mulderland's Enchancement Pack

It includes:

1. Source Port dhewm3 v1.5.5 RC2:

dhewm3 is a source port of the original DOOM 3 (2004).Compared to the original version of Doom3, dhewm3 has many bugfixes, supports EAX-like sound effects on all operating systems and hardware (via OpenAL Softs EFX support), has much better support for widescreen resolutions and has 64bit support.





2. dhewm3 Wide Patch (HUD).

All interface is adapted to 16:9 and increased in quality.

• Main Menu

To:

• UI/HUD

To:

• PDA

To:




3. Textures Pack x4 v1.1.

It's vanilla-friendly textures that consistenly added in the game.
Basically same textures from DOOM 3 (2004) but upscaled to higher quality.

• To:

• To:

• To:

4. Lost Mission DLC.

It's a port of DLC that was added in BFG Edition for DOOM 3 (2004)
1:1 Port.



5. Mulder Config

Config with which you can change some settings.

ℹ Installation

1. Go to Mulderland Website: https://www.mulderland.com/en/games/doom-3



2. Download ''doom-3-enhancement-pack.exe''

3. Launch it from your download location (if you have a problem here, read https://www.mulderland.com/help )

4. You should see this :



5. Click Next, the installer will ask you to locate your "Doom3.exe"



6. Click Next and you can now choose what to install. I personally recommend to install everything.



7. Press Install

8. At the end, the installers will propose to open a README and to run MulderConfig. You probably want, at least, to run MulderConfig - it gives the following options:



You can enable all three (must-have) ''Widescreen patches'' if you are going to start new game on original game or any DLC ( Lost mission and Resurection of Evil)
BUT
If you (for different reasons) started walkthrough of original DOOM 3, Resurection of Evil before installing this pack, and want to continue from old saves , they will have issues with ''Widescreen patches''. Don't enable them

Be sure to click on both buttons :
"Save Config" saves the configuration inside MulderConfig
"Apply" apply your preferences into the game / fixes files.

9. It's done - you can launch and enjoy your game.

ℹ Volumetric Sound ( Open Al HRTF )

dhewm3 has support of emulation EAX-like sound effects that were supported on 2000s Sound Blaster sound cards. Which you probably don't have (And vanilla DOOM 3 (2004) had EAX support on release) And support for it were removed after Windows XP.

Basically it gives us an imitation of volumetric sound effects of EAX (reverb and echo)

You need to press F10 and move to audio options to manage it.

This is my preference but you can test settings by yourself with your headphones
( Yes, it works best with headphones):



That's it. Game becomes more immerse and scary.

ℹ Credits

- dhewm3 by Daniel Gibson and dhewg
- Textures Pack x4 v1.1 by GrowlingGuy41
- dhewm3 Wide Patch (HUD) by Arl90
- Lost Mission DLC port by Arl.
- Enhancement Pack Installer (by mulderland)
- MulderConfig (by mulderland)

Have a good time on Mars.

[ronovsky]

No worries, I got it to work! The solution is to use the dhewm3_notools.exe instead of dhewm3.exe . You then just set Luxtorpeda as your compatibility layer and the game runs and plays beautifully with the widescreen fixes working. Makes for just about the best Doom 3 experience one could hope for on the Deck!

I think you could literally just add a new option for Luxtorpeda to your config and make it replace vanilla Doom3 executable with dhewm3_notools.exe .

[Mulderland]

Sorry, it doesn't work yet on Steam Deck, because dhewm3 (windows) doesn't work on Linux. But there is a linux native version of dhewm3. I'll try to take a look when I have time.

[ronovsky]

Thank you for this. I'm trying to get this running under Proton (Steam Deck), mostly for the widescreen HUD. I'm able to install the pack and enable the Wide Patch in the config executable, but the game won't launch after that. :/

I can run dhewm3 using Luxtorpeda, but I don't know how to enable the Wide Patch after that.

[HerZeLeiD]

In retrospect, DOOM 3 2004's darkness makes no sense. A lot of areas especially environments where people are supposedly working on important stuff have super dark rooms, despite actually having ample light sources in them. BFG's lack of dynamic lighting from muzzle flashes bothers me the most though.

[MullyWhizz]

I see this and go... Welp... Time to replay Doom 3 again. Really excited, I always was offput by the strange gameplay changes most "improvement mods" included. This looks like exactly what I'm looking for.

[Mulderland]

What are you talking about? It's absolutely not comparable. But if you're happy with Absolute HD mod, good for you.

[Drinkey Winkey]

just use absolute hd mod.