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It's not an "early" FPS game, but certainly retro so maybe the discussion fits here... I got the Wrack ( http://www.wrackgame.com/ ) preorder for $5 during their QuakeCon sale. It includes access to the current build -- which is only 4 levels, so I can't really recommend paying just for that (especially at the current price of $10), but it was fun enough and had a good feel to it. It has some of the good qualities of Doom while being different enough to not completely invite comparisons that it would lose out on.  I should probably be posting feedback somewhere on their site rather than here, but... eh. The main thing I enjoy about it is having a fast player that can go through many enemies fairly quickly with responsive weapons. (I.e. the lessons from http://vectorpoem.com/news/?p=74 ) The bits of mild platforming, I can take them or leave them, no big deal. Primarily it's stll just some fun shootin' stuff. I think they have an aesthetic that can really work for them while not requiring stupid amounts of effort in content-creation, but they do need to do something to help the enemies pop out a bit more from the environment. Aside from that, the only fundamental flaw that nagged at me was the lack of a map. I know that with real 3D levels this is harder, but hopefully they take a whack at it. Filling out a map is one of the simple pleasures of a retro shooter, and it also makes secret-hunting more fun and helps to paper over some of the sins of having a limited palette of colors/materials/patterns/architecture for your levels. Any of you folks tried this out? It's got potential, and even the incomplete build plays like a solid "vertical slice". I do wonder how they're going to get a whole game out the door, and if they're relying on preorder sales to fund development. (If there's a better thread for this feel free to send me there.) JLaw fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Aug 9, 2012 |
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Aug 9, 2012 05:55
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Johnny Law posted:Aside from that, the only fundamental flaw that nagged at me was the lack of a map. I know that with real 3D levels this is harder, but hopefully they take a whack at it. Filling out a map is one of the simple pleasures of a retro shooter, and it also makes secret-hunting more fun and helps to paper over some of the sins of having a limited palette of colors/materials/patterns/architecture for your levels. This just made me remember the item in Doom that fills in the automap. I used to avoid the hell out of that thing because it meant I'd be way more likely to get lost, instead of knowing which parts of the map I hadn't explored.
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Aug 9, 2012 05:57
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You lucky people with Boxer also get MT-32 support (although there is a custom DOSbox build that allows it too)
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Aug 9, 2012 06:01
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Vertigus posted:This just made me remember the item in Doom that fills in the automap. I used to avoid the hell out of that thing because it meant I'd be way more likely to get lost, instead of knowing which parts of the map I hadn't explored. What? It fills the unseen lines in gray, so you can make the difference easily between what you've already explored and what you haven't seen yet.
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Aug 9, 2012 09:59
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Man I don't think I ever used the map in old games unless I was completely lost. Usually samey architecture and only having a half-dozen textures was the cause of that.
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Aug 9, 2012 14:20
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So after some conversation on IRC got me jonesing for more Descent, I went and set it up and downloaded a bunch of mission packs for it and now I'm doing a writeup. Descent Created by Parallax (now Volition, and better known for Red Faction and Saints Row than for Descent), Descent was the first six-degrees-of-freedom FPS. Not only could you fly freely in any direction; you could spin around any axis without limits. Descent freed players from gravity and the limits of "up" and "down" in a way no shooter before - and few since - could. Singleplayer and co-op sent you into a series of airless mines where you would be pitted against hordes of killer robots as you attempted to rescue trapped miners, trigger the self-destruct, and escape; multiplayer ranged from no-holds-barred zero-gravity deathmatch to more complex modes like capture the flag. Once you've finished the base games, there are a lot of good fan-made addons for it, ranging from individual deathmatch levels to complete singleplayer campaigns with custom weapons, enemies, and storylines. And, of course, you can always grab a modern source port and go looking for people to play co-op with - or just spend your time hugging people with plasma missiles in deathmatch. Where to get it: GOG.com has Descent 1+2 and Descent 3 for sale, for $6 each. How to play it: There are two main source ports, DXX-Rebirth and D2X-XL. Both support D1 and D2. Rebirth focuses on polish, simplicity, and backwards compatibility; XL has many more features, but tends to be more complicated to set up as a result. Addons: The Descent Mission Database is a large database of levels and mission packs for Descent 1, 2, and 3, although navigating it can be a bit annoying. This pack is a convenient package of levels (mostly from DMDB) for D1, including the official "Levels of the World" and "Definitive Collection" levels. This one is an equivalent for Descent 2, and includes the official "Vertigo" and "Maximum" levels. E: jesus christ I had forgotten how terrible the enemy design is in Descent 2. Stick to Descent 1 for singleplayer, kids. ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Aug 9, 2012 |
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Aug 9, 2012 18:59
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closeted republican posted:Have you tried WinROTTGL? It's been a while since I've actually used a ROTT source port, but I think it's a direct continuation of the original WinROTT, not just a branch that adds OpenGL. PUKED posted:Yeah, ROTTGL works great, and it has proper mouselook and everything. I tried this, but it crashes every time I run it. The crash always happens when the startup window says "Entering BuildTables," any idea what that's about?
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Aug 10, 2012 00:42
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And here's a QuakeCon 2012 panel on Id modding! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpfumM8P0NE Those Involved: Jonathan Wright (Zeus and Cujo bots for Quake, currently at Id) JP LeBreton (Remade his Bioshock map "Arcadia" in Doom 2, currently at Double Fine) Brendan Chung (Barista series for Doom 2 and 3, Pathways Redux for Doom 3, currently Blendo Games) If you haven't got the time to watch for an hour, Atomic Magazine wrote a summary.
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Aug 10, 2012 07:10
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Meanwhile somewhere in a back room id Tech 5 is crying in the corner while John Carmack kicks it in the stomach.
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Aug 10, 2012 14:57
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The Serious Sam Facebook group just linked to this short video of a conversion for Doom: Serious Sam: The Retro Encounter. Looks fun.
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Aug 10, 2012 16:07
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Rather Dashing posted:The Serious Sam Facebook group just linked to this short video of a conversion for Doom: Serious Sam: The Retro Encounter. Looks fun. Looks amazing. When's it coming out?
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Aug 10, 2012 16:16
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Tezzeract posted:Looks amazing. When's it coming out? It's very rare that modders give any release date beyond "when it's done" in my experience, but if you want to follow its progress, the development thread is there.
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Aug 10, 2012 20:46
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RyokoTK posted:Doom 64, as well as the PSX version of Doom, used this awesomely creepy ambient music. It really gave the games a totally different feel from original Doom. Defiantly. Give this track a listen to when it's dark outside sometime.
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Aug 10, 2012 22:28
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Vakal posted:Defiantly. Give this track a listen to when it's dark outside sometime. Doom PSX also introduced a kick-rear end title theme, something the original games lacked. It was later arranged and given creepy ambiance for use in the Doom 64 introduction cinematic and another arrangement used for the ending theme. The latter version isn't that great and is pretty much a low-quality version of the PSX original. If there's one single "Best Thing" to come from PSX and N64 Doom, it's this.  PSX original theme Doom 64 title theme Doom 64 ending theme I was a little disappointed when I found out it wasn't used for Doom 3's theme, but what we got was still pretty good. EDIT: Jesus Christ that track Vakal linked 
Mak0rz fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Aug 11, 2012 |
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Aug 10, 2012 23:43
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Mak0rz posted:EDIT: Jesus Christ that track Vakal linked I really think that Doom 64 managed to blend horror and pure action far more successfully than they did with Doom 3. It had an absolutely oppressive atmosphere.
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Aug 11, 2012 01:35
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Most effective use of pitch-shifted crying babies since Max Payne. Also really cool looking colored lighting.     aedit: suffers from the a lack of ememy variety similar to what plagued the original Doom though. Oh look it's another room full of Hell Knights and Barons   dude awesome 
see you tomorrow fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Aug 11, 2012 |
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Aug 11, 2012 04:04
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Oh weird so that really is its own unique game. And based on those screenshots it looks more like Quake than Doom. Is there an ideal way to play that on a current PC? I know people sometimes release graphics packs and things like that for old games or does emulation do a good job? e: and speaking of soundtracks, anyone who played Blood without the CD in the drive was really missing out. the midi fallback soundtrack did that game no favors Yodzilla fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Aug 11, 2012 |
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Aug 11, 2012 13:21
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Yodzilla posted:Oh weird so that really is its own unique game. And based on those screenshots it looks more like Quake than Doom. Is there an ideal way to play that on a current PC? I know people sometimes release graphics packs and things like that for old games or does emulation do a good job? Absolution, as mentioned a fair bit earlier, is a close-approximation Doom 2 total conversion. That's been the standard for some time now. All you need is doom2.wad. Doom 64 EX is a more accurate port, but requires the actual ROM files of Doom 64 from the N64. As far as I can remember (it's been a while), Absolution is pretty drat close to the original, and in any case it's drat fun. eta: tooooooo bad posted:suffers from the a lack of ememy variety similar to what plagued the original Doom though. Oh look it's another room full of Hell Knights and Barons Which is weird, since the game had just about all of the Doom 2 monsters except Arch-Viles and Masterminds, I think, but this is still somewhat true. The level design in general is not quite as exciting as Doom 2, but the atmosphere alone is worth the play. edit2: It looks like Quake, but it plays like Doom. Specifically, it played like PSXDoom -- it uses a modified version of that. Absolution I think contains a modified old version of Skulltag, so it plays like any modern Doom port now. RyokoTK fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Aug 11, 2012 |
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Aug 11, 2012 13:40
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RyokoTK posted:Absolution I think contains a modified old version of Skulltag, so it plays like any modern Doom port now. Doomsday; not Skulltag. If it had been based on Skulltag, it would be playable with GZDoom by now.
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Aug 11, 2012 14:05
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Yodzilla posted:e: and speaking of soundtracks, anyone who played Blood without the CD in the drive was really missing out. the midi fallback soundtrack did that game no favors I actual preferred the midi versions of some of the songs. The carnival level music in particular.
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Aug 11, 2012 14:09
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RyokoTK posted:Doom 64 EX is a more accurate port, but requires the actual ROM files of Doom 64 from the N64. Honestly, it's worth the effort to dig up the ROM. And by 'Effort' I mean 'Five seconds in Google'. It's a really common and easily found one. The level design isn't as purely fun or fast as either of the original Doom games, but it's a lot more unwelcoming. Even in the first level, there's some nasty traps and a constant feeling that even in the brightest techbase areas, you're somewhere where you're not supposed to be. There's a lot more creativity in general in the environments.
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Aug 11, 2012 14:33
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RyokoTK posted:
The only problem with Absolution is that the Doom 2 physics don't exactly match up with the Doom 64 physics which were used when the maps were designed. Where you notice this most is in areas where you have to "jump" between platforms. With Doom 64 EX it is easy, but in Absolution it can be frustratingly hard.
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Aug 11, 2012 14:41
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Vakal posted:The only problem with Absolution is that the Doom 2 physics don't exactly match up with the Doom 64 physics which were used when the maps were designed. I've been playing Doom with jump enabled for years now, since I'm a scrubby cheater, so I guess I never noticed that. 
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Aug 11, 2012 14:58
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In case anyone has trouble getting Doom 64 EX to recognize their ROM image like I did, you need to find a tool to convert it to the long-obsolete z64 format.
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Aug 11, 2012 18:13
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I played through the first couple levels of Doom64EX, and drat is it a creepy game. Totally different atmosphere from Doom and Doom II. The "music" is not far off from the drone/doom I like to listen to while I'm playing Doom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVIKbSe3ICQ
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Aug 11, 2012 18:36
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closeted republican posted:nQuake is dominated by Europeans (mostly Scandinavian and Eastern Europe), so you'll get lovely ping if you're not in Europe or near it. Use clients like ProQuake if you want to play with America-based players.
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Aug 11, 2012 20:25
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Huh, whaddya know. I was saying how Doom 64 felt more like a Doom sequel than Doom 3, and then I go and check the (admittedly super-limited) story on the game: It is, actually. It's set after Doom 2.
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Aug 11, 2012 20:54
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That Super Duper Quake mod feels like it was made back in the 90s. Among the enemies that spawn are Tickle Me Elmo and Homer Simpson. Also pressing E activates a "supercheat" that gives you 999 health and super jump, but there are scourge enemies with stupidly powerful nailguns or something that will immediately kill you. Yet somehow it's fun because the weapons are crazy, like the "World Ender" gun and the freeze guns. That and collecting armor powerups gets you a robot buddy, although the turret weapons tend to target it.
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Aug 11, 2012 23:32
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RyokoTK posted:I've been playing Doom with jump enabled for years now, since I'm a scrubby cheater, so I guess I never noticed that. This isn't a particularly good idea in Doom 64 as jumping around could screw up the various triggers in the stages that are required to open up passages or change floor heights. You could literally make a level unbeatable in Doom 64 by jumping abuse. The readme warns you about that. As for Absolution vs 64EX: It's no contest. The latter is the better port. Absolution runs on a super old version of the Doomsday Engine (then known as "jDoom"). It can only be installed in the default directory, is not an accurate port, the controls and graphics are clunky, it's unstable, and has added a variety of changes including new secret levels and annoying enemies. Normally I'd be on board for that, but the new secret levels house the Artefacts and the puzzles required to get them are really obtuse. Just play Doom 64 EX. It's hands-down the superior version and is actually in active development. It was made by one of the original Absolution developers who were frustrated with its flaws. Speaking of Doom 64 EX, does anyone seem to have any problems with collision detection in the current version? I notice a lot of monsters often get stuck on geometry/each other. Sometimes I charge at a demon or spectre with a chainsaw to hack at it and discover that I get stuck inside of it as well. Dominic White posted:Huh, whaddya know. I was saying how Doom 64 felt more like a Doom sequel than Doom 3, and then I go and check the (admittedly super-limited) story on the game: It is, actually. It's set after Doom 2. Doom 64 is the real Doom 3 
Mak0rz fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Aug 12, 2012 |
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Aug 12, 2012 04:51
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Mak0rz posted:Doom 64 EX talk I tried running it, but I couldn't get wadgen to work. It just sits there without doing anything. Suggestions? E: Tried again, now it's saying my wad is corrupt. It just didn't feel like reporting that last time I guess. Nevermind Segmentation Fault fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Aug 12, 2012 |
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Aug 12, 2012 05:08
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How does Doom64 EX work? I get the WadGen thing, and it then outputs an IWAD and a soundfont, but do you drop it into a source port of your choice then?
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Aug 12, 2012 05:12
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catlord posted:How does Doom64 EX work? I get the WadGen thing, and it then outputs an IWAD and a soundfont, but do you drop it into a source port of your choice then?
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Aug 12, 2012 05:14
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catlord posted:How does Doom64 EX work? I get the WadGen thing, and it then outputs an IWAD and a soundfont, but do you drop it into a source port of your choice then? So long as your choice is "Doom 64 EX", then yes. There was some attempt to add support for that IWAD in ZDoom, but it's in a experimental branch in an early pre-alpha status with nobody working on it currently, so it's unplayable.
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Aug 12, 2012 11:53
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What soundtrack should I use for Descent 2? The midi and CD versions are completely different and from what I can gather there's several different CD versions.
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Aug 12, 2012 13:11
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SparkTR posted:What soundtrack should I use for Descent 2? The midi and CD versions are completely different and from what I can gather there's several different CD versions. The MIDI soundtrack was considered low-priority because they were much more excited about the CD soundtrack, and for good reason -- it's one of my favorite game soundtracks ever. The MIDI songs are actually really cool too, but they only bothered making enough of them to cover the 4-level demo. There's a list of the different CD soundtracks here: http://www.descent2.com/goodies/music/d2_tracklist.shtml In summary, there's the original 12-song soundtrack. (13 tracks because track 1 is the data track; and the title/credits music is split into 2 tracks.) Then there are two alternate soundtracks from re-releases and add-on packs. Each of these has a few extended versions and a few new songs. In most cases, the extended versions are exactly that -- the original songs, but just longer. (This even includes Type O Negative's "Haunted" instrumental, whose structure now more closely resembles that of the original song, although it's still not a full 10 minutes!) The exception is the song "Ratzez", where each version has some stuff that isn't in the other version. So if possible, the ideal would be to take the stuff from the 2 alternate CDs and put them all together. I forget how much freedom the source ports give you in that regard. But if you have to choose from just one of the CDs, go with the original for sure. It's great. Sir Lemming fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Aug 12, 2012 |
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Aug 12, 2012 13:53
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Johnny Law posted:It's not an "early" FPS game, but certainly retro so maybe the discussion fits here... I got the Wrack ( http://www.wrackgame.com/ ) preorder for $5 during their QuakeCon sale. It includes access to the current build -- which is only 4 levels, so I can't really recommend paying just for that (especially at the current price of $10), but it was fun enough and had a good feel to it. It has some of the good qualities of Doom while being different enough to not completely invite comparisons that it would lose out on. I preordered at the Quakecon price too. I have the same issue. It feels like it needs a map, but it doesn't have one. I'm much more negative about the platforming though. It's extremely imprecise and they like making you jump onto super skinny ledges(unless I'm missing something). It looks fantastic for the Doom engine though, and what I've played so far is solid enough. Only played level 1 though, so I'll make another trip report when I finish.
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Aug 12, 2012 16:31
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:It looks fantastic for the Doom engine though
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Aug 12, 2012 16:51
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Cat Mattress posted:Even though the main developer's previous work was a Doom source port, Wrack is not based on the Doom engine at all. Oh drat, they really nailed the feel then.
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Aug 12, 2012 16:53
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Sir Lemming posted:So if possible, the ideal would be to take the stuff from the 2 alternate CDs and put them all together. I forget how much freedom the source ports give you in that regard. DXX-Rebirth gives you quite a lot of leeway; you can play from CD, from MIDI, or from OGGs/MP3s on disk, with custom playlists, random play, continuous play, or the original one-track-per-level setup. I'm not sure about D2X-XL, but I'd be surprised if it didn't support the same features. (For those wondering, the GOG version is the Infinite Abyss version with 8 audio tracks; you can easily extract them with something like isobuster and feed them to Rebirth, or just mount DESCENT_II.INST as a .cue using daemontools or something and tell Rebirth to play from CD.) ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Aug 12, 2012 |
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Aug 12, 2012 16:57
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I love Deus Vult 2 but most of the levels absolutely kill my FPS on my Win7 Macbook air. Short of running GZDoom on 4:3 320x200 resolution, what's the most effective way to boost FPS while keeping 16:9 resolution? (I have an external monitor)
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Aug 14, 2012 00:22
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