What is Chex® Quest 3: Vanilla Edition?
Chex® Quest 3: Vanilla Edition is a backport of the official Chex® Quest 3 over to the vanilla Doom engine. This is not actually a mod of the original Chex® Quest, but rather of Ultimate Doom using a trick involving secret exits to shorten episode lengths and with a special DeHackEd patch applied which is mostly a recreation of Chex® Quest 3's DECORATE stuff. It can also run as an IWAD in some source ports.
Why does this exist?
- It is better for speedrunning, since it is able to run in ports that keep vanilla demos synced, unlike ZDoom-based ports which don't even keep demos synced between different ZDoom versions.
- It is a more complete modding base than Chex® Quest 1 and more universal than the original ZDoom Chex® Quest 3. An alternate base WAD that's Doom 2 based instead is available for PWADs to use as a base.
- If someone's preferred source port is not ZDoom-based, then they can play it in their preferred source port.
- You can play Chex® Quest 3 on a DOS computer (provided it's a 386 or 486). To help with this, there's a package to make it easier to set it up in DOS.
Support in source ports and tools!
While Chex® Quest 3: Vanilla Edition has source port support mostly on its end, some people have taken enough interest in it to add support in their own stuff:
- The Woof! source port has implicit support for it as of 14.5.0, as some bugs and issues which were most noticable with Chex® Quest 3: Vanilla Edition were fixed in that version because of it.
- EDGE-Classic has explicit support for Chex® Quest 3: Vanilla Edition (both the main and modding versions) as of version 1.38. The main dev of Chex® Quest 3: Vanilla Edition also gave some feedback to improve its support.
- The current dev version of the OBSIDIAN random level generator has replaced its support for Chex® Quest 1 with Chex® Quest 3: Vanilla Edition.
Development trivia!
- This was originally envisioned as just a port of the third episode to Chex® Quest '96 in the style of the 1996/1997 versions of Chex® Quests 1 and 2. This old idea may be revisited some time.
- Originally, this was based on Doom II instead of the Ultimate Doom. This was because I overestimated how thorough the first Doom is with preventing Doom 2 stuff from being used. It was later switched when it was discovered that the way most of the Doom 2 stuff is blocked can easily be worked around, and the stuff that was completely blocked wasn't used anyways. It is also more polished under vanilla this way.
- The E4M1 easter egg level was actually created before any of the level conversions from Chex® Quest 3 were started. But originally, it didn't have the spooky theme it does now. During earlier development it served the same purpose of CQ1M0 and CQ1M6 and just showed a message telling you how to get to the next episode. The initial iteration was more Bazoik-themed, and a version closer to the final served as the transition to the "Invasion!" episode. This version would be the one that was kept the longest after the Ultimate Doom switch, where it had a basic message telling you there is no fourth episode in a non-creepy way. Right before release, it was reworked into the final "spooky" version we all know and "love" at the behest of Plerb. A WAD containing these early iterations and two old placeholder levels can be downloaded here: chex3v_dummies.wad