Cold as Hell

Cold as Hell is a total conversion for ZDoom set in a fictional military research facility in Greenland in the 1950's. The project was created by Jon "JonnyFive" Washburn, and was originally released in November of 2004. The conversion makes numerous changes to Doom's core gameplay, including the introduction of a reloading weapons system, mission objectives, a open-ended hub structure for levels, and the inclusion of snow effects.

Development
Development of Cold as Hell began in earnest in early 2004 and continued through the year. The conversion was developed using ZDoom 2.0.63a as a basis, and made extensive use of the source port's advanced features to create the various gameplay enhancements and special effects for the conversion. The map was planned out as a large hub that began with a single level detached from the main hub and quickly opened up into a much larger complex. For the most part, the player is free to travel throughout the research complex in which the conversion is set.

The gameplay of the conversion mixes the classic Doom style of gameplay with elements of both survival horror games and military shooters.

Reception
Generally, Cold as Hell was well received by the Doom community. It maintains a 4/5 rating on Doomworld's idgames index, and has received largely positive comments on its plot, setting and gameplay. Common player complaints include excessive difficulty (especially at the highest difficulty settings) and the overly harsh impact of the bleeding system and reduced health on the player.

Most of the major complaints relate, however, to issues of the conversion's performance and various game-breaking bugs.

Performance Issues and Bugs
Cold as Hell, on release, had a number of issues with its performance that would render it nearly unplayable on older computers. Primarily due to the snow effects and possibly to the large size of the levels in the hub, the game would begin to lag heavily on many computers. Snow effects could be switched off, although this toggle was broken in the initial release of the game. Two patches were released to combat the problem of lag, although they were only partially successful in improving performance.

On versions of ZDoom other than 2.0.63a (which the conversion was developed on), a number of crippling bugs rendered the game largely unplayable. Most importantly, the weapon reloading code was largely broken, preventing players from using their weapons at all after trying to reload them once. Additionally, players reported other problems that would prevent the player from advancing in the game. These problems, combined with existing performance issues, rendered the conversion largely unplayable to many in the potential audience.

These problems were compounded by the abrupt disappearance of the author from the online Doom community. After releasing Cold as Hell and providing basic support through two patches, Jon "JonnyFive" Washburn ceased to try to support the conversion and made no further attempts to fix the remaining issues. A few users, including Christoph "Graf Zahl" Oelckers, tried to modify the conversion to render it playable under newer versions of ZDoom, but due to the failure of the original author to include ACS source, they were unable to completely replicate the original behavior of the conversion and fix the various issues it had.

Cold as Hell: Special Edition
In August of 2008, Jon "JonnyFive" Washburn posted a new thread on the forums at ZDoom.org1 indicating that he had located the original project files and intended to go back and revise the conversion to work properly on newer versions of ZDoom. The original goal of simply fixing the problems with the original quickly grew into a full re-release of the conversion including various enhancements designed for GZDoom's OpenGL mode.

As of October, 2008, the author has yet to set a firm release date. However, significant progress has made on the revision, and the author has stated that he is committed to providing an updated version that will run under the latest version of ZDoom in addition to the GZDoom-enhanced update.