A classic Doom mod has received and update since its original release in 2009, with Bethesda swooping in to help promote the FPS game’s total conversion project that now has more levels, a revamped arsenal of weapons, and a new enemy, as it’s now an official add-on for the Bethesda published ports of Doom and Doom 2.
These additions have come to Doom mod Harmony, which now sports 13 levels instead of 11, a slew of new content like music and enemies, and it can all be accessed from the in-game add-ons menu for Doom and Doom 2.
As far as Doom mods go, this official re-release with extra content is clearly one of the more notable ones. So much so that Bethesda appears to have helped put together a new interview with Harmony’s creator and developer Thomas Van Der Velden.
Velden explains how Doom mod Harmony felt like “a world of its own,” which meant he slowly started to replace almost everything about the original Doom with his own content.
“Harmony draws inspiration from post-apocalyptic sci-fi cult movies like the Omega man and Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” says Velden. “Like many shooter games, it focuses on a setting/atmosphere and the story is secondary. For the game mechanics, it draws inspiration from 3D shooters from the ‘90s, like DOOM (1993) and Duke Nukem 3D.”
Harmony’s development as a Doom mod didn’t all come from sitting behind a computer though, as Velden did something similar to the first game when designing his sprites: he made real world versions out of clay models and photographed them.
“Back then I didn’t have any money but I had a lot of free time and creativity. First, I made clay models, which I then painted. They have an iron wire skeleton and the joints are exposed so they can be posed in different positions. With a (borrowed) digital camera, I took pictures to edit on my computer.”
Velden adds that the Doom mod wouldn’t have been possible without the shooter’s original developers id Software, who helped make the official release of the add-on project possible inside of Doom and Doom 2.
“In 2022, I made two new levels (12 & 13),” Velden continues. “I used some resources from earlier projects and made everything fit with the style and story. Harmony is now a 13-map adventure full of action and exploration. With the new maps, it reaches an epic grand finale.”
You can read the full interview here as well.
If you’ve got a hankering for more Doom-related content, don’t worry. Recently a game developer managed to get Doom running in Microsoft Notepad, and you can actually (mostly) tell what’s going on. Trivium’s Matt Heafy has also talked about how doing a Doom soundtrack is a “lifelong dream,” if you want to imagine what that would sound like.
