Early FPS Megathread: the kids need to learn about TekWar sooner or later

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Early FPS Megathread: the kids need to learn about TekWar sooner or later

«‹›3135 »

laserghost: Feb 12, 2014; ^{trust me, I'm a cat.}

Cream-of-Plenty posted:

I think Necrodome is the high water mark of classic FPS game design.

This (and Strife ) is the last game I ever need in my collection of early 3D shooters. Raven made some really interesting games in late 1990s: MageSlayer, Take No Prisoners and Necrodome. It's like after Hexen 2 they decided to blow steam off on some smaller, fun, arcadey projects before going back head-on with Heretic 2.

# ? Sep 7, 2014 22:16

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# ? May 14, 2024 22:37

Cream-of-Plenty: Apr 21, 2010; "The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."

SPACE HOMOS posted:

I have a copy of Necrodome in a box in my garage.

Where do you live?

# ? Sep 7, 2014 22:17

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

Lork posted:

Thomas Edison is a hack!

He certainly was!

# ? Sep 7, 2014 22:24

Lork: Oct 15, 2007; Sticks to clorf

I would've said Nikola Tesla (which apparently is also apocrypha?), but, you know, no need to complicate the joke.

Lork fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Sep 7, 2014

# ? Sep 7, 2014 22:25

SolidSnakesBandana: Jul 1, 2007; Infinite ammo

Bloodmobile posted:

Half-Life and Counterstrike killed the early FPS. CoD and Halo buried them.

This makes me nerd angry.

# ? Sep 8, 2014 03:20

Yodzilla: Apr 29, 2005; Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch

chocolateTHUNDER posted:

I understand why PC gamers don't like matchmaking (I don't care for it on PC either) but it really is the best loving thing ever on console.

Except when it doesn't work because reasons. I still prefer browsers on a console ala Killzone 2. That game was great because it had both.

# ? Sep 8, 2014 03:23

Catalyst-proof: May 11, 2011; better waste some time with you

I've been getting some crashes in GZDoom on OS X with the following command line:

code:

~/Games/Doom/launchers/GZDoom.app/Contents/MacOS/GZDoom \
-iwad \
~/Games/Doom/iwads/doom2.wad \
-file \
~/Games/Doom/custom/total_conversions/doomrl_arsenal/DoomRL\ Arsenal\ Beta\ 7.93.wad \
~/Games/Doom/custom/total_conversions/doomrl_arsenal/DoomRL\ HUD.wad \
~/Games/Doom/custom/total_conversions/DoomRL\ Monsters\ Beta\ 4.6.wad \
~/Games/Doom/custom/total_conversions/DoomRPG/DoomRPG \
~/Games/Doom/custom/total_conversions/DoomRPG/DoomRPG-Brightmaps \
~/Games/Doom/custom/total_conversions/DoomRPG/DoomRPG-RLArsenal \
~/Games/Doom/custom/total_conversions/DoomRPG/DoomRPG-RLMonsters

I built GZDoom from commit c33b33 of the osx branch. Does this look off to anyone?

# ? Sep 8, 2014 20:07

Linguica: Jul 13, 2000; You're already dead

I'm finally playing BTSX1, and one minor thing I noticed that really screams polish is that they took the time to hide all unnecessary lines on the automap, so it looks much cleaner and easier to understand.

# ? Sep 8, 2014 20:47

Dominic White: Nov 1, 2005

Because I was bored for an hour, I put together a little all-in-one starter pack for those who want modern Windows Doom without the hassle.

(That's how it should look right off the bat, no tweaking needed)

Contains:
The very latest GZDoom SVN build
A340 Soundfont for better MIDI (Already set up)
Pre-configured for Widescreen, Mouselook, WSAD
QLZ Launcher (Very handy once you have a few mods)
Lovely Doom.pk3 - a compilation of 100% aesthetic mods that don't mess with the pixel-art aesthetic. Includes a nice HUD replacement.

All you need to do is throw your Doom/Doom2.wad file in there and run the launcher. The Lovely Doom PK3 is mostly Smooth Doom, but with a few extra bits and gubbins to fill in the blanks.

Lovely Doom All-In-One (Just Add Doom2.WAD)
Lovely Doom PK3

Bonus: BTSX-Style HUD for Smooth Doom/Vanilla

Dominic White fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Sep 16, 2014

# ? Sep 8, 2014 23:27

Gashroom: Jul 13, 2005

Dominic White posted:

Because I was bored for an hour, I put together a little all-in-one starter pack for those who want modern Windows Doom without the hassle.

Lovely Doom (Mega.co.nz Download)

Nice, thanks!

# ? Sep 9, 2014 00:10

Kuromyneko: Aug 21, 2014; Kuro neko

Quake was pretty much the first FPS I really got into glad this thread is around to remember it

. Modern fps game don't seem to have the newness that Quake had when it was released imo.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 00:23

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

Elliotw2 posted:

The main issue most people had with Halo 1 is that the map designs were super large and maze like for a console FPS. I still think it's a pretty good game though, and I like most of the Bungie made games.

Did we play the same Halo? The maps were large, yeah, but mazelike? With few exceptions, the outdoor areas were open arenas with a scattering of cover and the indoor areas were extremely linear -- and suffered badly from relentless copy-pasting of the same rooms over and over and over again with minor variation in cover and item placement.

At the micro scale, the fights in Halo are great. The Pillar of Autumn in particular was a blast, especially on Legendary where it gives the enemies (and thus you) plasma grenades. Those narrow halls were wonderful for flinging a grenade down them and then listening to a twenty-grenade chorus that hurled Covenant bodies past you like some kind of gruesome potato gun. And the AI was and is excellent. But at the macro scale the game was incredibly monotonous and repetitive. Especially since the "the second half of the game is the first half, but in reverse" idea kind of depends on the levels all being fun to play through a second time, which, for the most part, they really weren't.

I had a lot of fun with Halo, but basically all of that fun came from co-op play of The Pillar of Autumn, The Silent Cartographer, and The Maw.

SolidSnakesBandana posted:

This makes me nerd angry.

I don't think Bloodmobile is wrong, though. Half-Life was the genesis of the modern corridor shooter.

Pre-Half-Life, most FPS level design was nonlinear and explorable. And most FPS storytelling was the same way, either presented entirely outside levels (Dark Forces) or in a way that meant it didn't matter what order you explored it in (System Shock). Or was simply absent.

Then Half-Life comes out with its clean, linear level design and its shiny in-engine cutscenes. No more audio logs or intermission text; now you can have things happen to the player, in real time. The dark side of this was that any sense of exploration was almost entirely absent; the game was a linear sequence of challenges to overcome and scripted_sequences to watch.

And Half-Life was wildly, shockingly successful. So everyone copied it. And most did not copy it well.

Granted, not all of the blame rests with Half-Life. Lots of "modern FPS" misfeatures -- the two-weapon limit, slow movement, boring enemies, boring weapons, checkpoints, and lovely unskippable non-interactive cutscenes -- postdate it. But HL1 was the beginning of the end for the high-speed exploration-based FPS that I love so much.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 00:42

Minarchist: Mar 5, 2009; by WE B Bourgeois

Dominic White posted:

All you need to do is throw your Doom/Doom2.wad file in there and run the launcher. The Lovely Doom PK3 is mostly Smooth Doom, but with a few extra bits and gubbins to fill in the blanks.

Here's the PK3 file by itself if anyone wants it.

Malwarebytes ate my launcher.exe, saying it was a trojan...? :ohdear:

# ? Sep 9, 2014 00:50

Malek: Jun 22, 2003; Shut up Girl!
And as always: Kill Hitler.

Minarchist posted:

Malwarebytes ate my launcher.exe, saying it was a trojan...?

Just add it as an exclusion. Mine did the same thing saying it was a Trojan Downloader.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 00:52

chocolateTHUNDER: Jul 19, 2008; GIVE ME ALL YOUR FREE AGENTS

ALL OF THEM

So I recently installed duke nukem 3D and beat all four of the built in episodes. I'm still in the mood for more duke - so what are some of the best third party duke episodes? And where can I download them?

# ? Sep 9, 2014 01:20

Dominic White: Nov 1, 2005

Minarchist posted:

Malwarebytes ate my launcher.exe, saying it was a trojan...?

That's weird. It's literally downloaded fresh from the QLZ site and dropped into the directory. Windows Defender doesn't think it's evil, at least.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 03:08

Insert name here: Nov 10, 2009; Oh.
Oh Dear.

ToxicFrog posted:

I had a lot of fun with Halo, but basically all of that fun came from co-op play of The Pillar of Autumn, The Silent Cartographer, and The Maw.

I'm still angry that Halo 1 PC didn't have coop. :mad:

# ? Sep 9, 2014 03:12

Ramba Ral: Feb 18, 2009; "The basis of the Juche Idea is that man is the master of all things and the decisive factor in everything."
- Kim Il-Sung

chocolateTHUNDER posted:

So I recently installed duke nukem 3D and beat all four of the built in episodes. I'm still in the mood for more duke - so what are some of the best third party duke episodes? And where can I download them?

The best one for me was the Starship Troopers total conversion but be warned it is really 90s in some parts but gets better.. Still a great mod and levels though.

I also reinstalled Blood and man the flare gun against cultists is so satisfying hearing them scream.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 03:36

Karasu Tengu: Feb 16, 2011; Humble Tengu Newspaper Reporter

Insert name here posted:

I'm still angry that Halo 1 PC didn't have coop.

Neither of the Halo pc ports had coop, poo poo sucked. Maybe they'll fix it if the HD collection really does get a pc port.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 03:42

SolidSnakesBandana: Jul 1, 2007; Infinite ammo

ToxicFrog posted:

I don't think Bloodmobile is wrong, though. Half-Life was the genesis of the modern corridor shooter.

Pre-Half-Life, most FPS level design was nonlinear and explorable. And most FPS storytelling was the same way, either presented entirely outside levels (Dark Forces) or in a way that meant it didn't matter what order you explored it in (System Shock). Or was simply absent.

Then Half-Life comes out with its clean, linear level design and its shiny in-engine cutscenes. No more audio logs or intermission text; now you can have things happen to the player, in real time. The dark side of this was that any sense of exploration was almost entirely absent; the game was a linear sequence of challenges to overcome and scripted_sequences to watch.

And Half-Life was wildly, shockingly successful. So everyone copied it. And most did not copy it well.

Granted, not all of the blame rests with Half-Life. Lots of "modern FPS" misfeatures -- the two-weapon limit, slow movement, boring enemies, boring weapons, checkpoints, and lovely unskippable non-interactive cutscenes -- postdate it. But HL1 was the beginning of the end for the high-speed exploration-based FPS that I love so much.

I'd say that this presents a better argument that Half-Life was the last good old-school FPS. The reason people copied it so hard is because it was just leaps and bounds above the quality of all the competition. People couldn't get away with making just another Doom clone, Half-Life simply raised the bar too high.

To this day I can't figure out why Call of Duty got so popular though. I mean, I enjoyed Call of Duty 4 just like everyone else, but it wasn't that good.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 03:49

Bleusilences: Jun 23, 2004; Be careful for what you wish for.

It was there at the right time. Back then, if you remember, it was WW2 mania. It was really what the series needed and the multiplayer, with perk and kill streak, was out of this world.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 03:57

chocolateTHUNDER: Jul 19, 2008; GIVE ME ALL YOUR FREE AGENTS

ALL OF THEM

SolidSnakesBandana posted:

To this day I can't figure out why Call of Duty got so popular though. I mean, I enjoyed Call of Duty 4 just like everyone else, but it wasn't that good.

There was absolutely nothing like COD4 Multiplayer on consoles when it arrived. You had Halo for the slow and floaty space alien stuff, Gears of War for the slow and grounded ROUGH N TUFF stuff, and Rainbow Six (it was still a thing back then) for a slower paced military shooter. Notice anything missing?

COD4 came in and blew the tits off everyone with it's fast-paced twitchy gameplay (for consoles), ease of playing with groups and friends (matchmaking was blisteringly fast, even faster than Halo 3's at the time!) and the class system was rather fresh in 2007. It was really just the ultimate package at the time.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 03:57

laserghost: Feb 12, 2014; ^{trust me, I'm a cat.}

chocolateTHUNDER posted:

So I recently installed duke nukem 3D and beat all four of the built in episodes. I'm still in the mood for more duke - so what are some of the best third party duke episodes? And where can I download them?

Duke Hard was recently released: http://www.moddb.com/mods/duke-hard
Roch map series, those are huge and very detailed: http://dukerepository.com/maps/Roch
Then there's Platoon from TeamTNT: http://www.moddb.com/mods/platoon-tc
Ageo of Evil is a decent two-episode leveset from goon superstar, Yahtzee: http://www.moddb.com/mods/age-of-evil/downloads/age-of-evil-e1-2
Mystique: Ages in Time is a pretty hard fantasy levelset: http://dukertcm.com/knowledge-base/reviews-mod-duke3d/mystique-ages-in-time.html
WGRealms2 is a stand-alone mashup megamod, hard as hell but some levels are impressive: http://www.moddb.com/games/wgrealms-2
Same goes for Duke Nukem Forever 2013: http://www.moddb.com/mods/duke-nukem-forever

Overall, there's not that much good episodes for Duke, most of them tend to be made during late 90's and kind of suck, with poor geometry and gimmicks. But there's a whole ton of excellent single maps, which push forward what could be done with Build3D.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 10:09

Babylon Astronaut: Apr 19, 2012

This episode is pretty interesting. It only takes 20 minutes or so.
http://forums.duke4.net/topic/4468-the-wall/

# ? Sep 9, 2014 10:39

Laputanmachine: Oct 31, 2010; by Smythe

chocolateTHUNDER posted:

So I recently installed duke nukem 3D and beat all four of the built in episodes. I'm still in the mood for more duke - so what are some of the best third party duke episodes? And where can I download them?

If you didn't know, Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition is on Steam and it has all the episodes, including Duke it Out in D.C.(has some good levels, and some absolutely massive labyrinth clusterfucks like The Smithsonian), Nuclear Winter (not very good) and Life's a Beach (definitely the best of the bunch). I'm mentioning this because it also has working online multiplayer with a somewhat active community. At least last spring I got some fun deathmatches going on in the evenings.

Speaking of deathmatch, the weapons really make the experience unique. It can be a very fast paced shooter until some prick finds tripmines and the game transforms into puzzle platformer if the map is cramped at all. Then there's the jetpack, the shrink ray, freeze ray and all the other toys.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 14:25

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

http://www.develop-online.net/interview/john-romero-reloaded-reinventing-the-shooter/0197277

John Romero wants to make minecraft his bitch?

Dominic White posted:

I was talking with an ex-Bungie guy a while back, and the vibe I got the maps were largely the way they were because the game was designed kinda like an RTS. There are combined arms enemy squads with their own group and individual AIs, strongpoints, areas of cover (both for you and enemies) and caches of resources that you're meant to travel between.

Most of the bigger open-field battles in the game can be replayed a dozen times over and you'll get a completely different result every try due to that. To this day, the Elites are still smarter than 90% of modern FPS enemies.

Thing is Halo WAS designed as an RTS. It was even displayed as an RTS for the Mac at macworld, and got some hype. Then it turned into a third person shooter over time, that was then built on an RTS backbone. The two weapon limit came from the 3rd person view; they'd have you carry one gun in your hands and one on your back, and that was it; and you could swap those two and see both your weapons at all times; no fake hammerspace needed.

Then they finally decided FPS games were more popular and it fit better as an FPS, but the game definitely has all kinds of leftovers from its long-term development. It took years and years to make and went through so much iteration; but that's how the best games get made. Same deal with Half-Life, the really stellar games tend to come from a whole lot of redesign and not being afraid to toss out bad ideas, although that costs serious money.

Halo's enemy AI is really stellar and its sad that almost no games have tried to do the same level of strategic gameplay. Even Halo 4 hosed it up.

Also I love me some silent cartographer :3:

Its so great how you start off in the beaches, and then pour inside a facility, then come out and back on the island. You end up walking all through the whole island by multiple routes, and its just the perfect self-contained level.

I have to also give a shout out for truth and reconciliation though. Starting the level in the dark on a canyon ridge, sniping elites using your night vision, and then capturing a landing pad so you can launch into an elite cruiser. Then you battle your way through the cruiser, capture Keys, and then blow that popsicle stand. The covenant ship level design did start to get repetitive, but they did a good job of having it feel really different than the human architecture you'd seen thus far, or the forerunner architecture.

On the other hand Halo gave us The Library, one of the worst levels ever made, and each Halo game seemed to have to have a similarly terrible, terrible level. For Halo 2 had Sacred Icon and Halo 3 had Cortana, which committed several gaming sins in a row.

Dominic White posted:

Does Halo count as an early FPS? I mean, released back in 2001 is pretty retro these days.

Why mention it? Well, currently trucking along and due for release this Christmas is the SPV3 project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TQSGzR95xU

In short, a complete remake/reimagining of the original Halo (complete with extended/redesigned missions), running on the Halo: Custom Edition engine and brought as close up to spec as Halo 3/Reach as they can on the old tech. First six missions due Christmas, the other 9 over the course of 2015.

I'm really quite excited for it, based on that trailer.

To this day, I still think the original Halo is hugely underrated. The AI in particular, combined with some random elements made the levels hugely replayable.

Man you got me all excited for this fan project and then I open up the trailer and... it looks like rear end. Seriously that doesn't look much different from Halo CE on the PC already.

Meanwhile have you played Halo: Anniversary? Its pretty much the best port possible, the team was really faithful to the original (To the point where it actually runs the original's game engine in parallel with Reach's to calculate all the game logic) and it also looks pretty dang good. Way better than this noise.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Sep 9, 2014

# ? Sep 9, 2014 16:29

Jblade: Sep 5, 2006

chocolateTHUNDER posted:

So I recently installed duke nukem 3D and beat all four of the built in episodes. I'm still in the mood for more duke - so what are some of the best third party duke episodes? And where can I download them?

Alongside all of the stuff laserghost recommended, there's also the AMC TC which I made (and EP2 should hopefully be out at the end of the year) DukeHard is also good if you just want more duke gameplay (I made the executive Bath house level)

# ? Sep 9, 2014 16:43

haveblue: Aug 15, 2005; Can't post for 2 hours!; Toilet Rascal

Zaphod42 posted:

Thing is Halo WAS designed as an RTS. It was even displayed as an RTS for the Mac at macworld, and got some hype. Then it turned into a third person shooter over time, that was then built on an RTS backbone. The two weapon limit came from the 3rd person view; they'd have you carry one gun in your hands and one on your back, and that was it; and you could swap those two and see both your weapons at all times; no fake hammerspace needed.

The melee button reportedly happened in the same sort of organic way. The AI would break down when the player got too close to the enemies, so to make players avoid that situation they gave the enemy a punch move that would take off a good chunk of health. Then someone realized it would only be fair to also let the player do that in return, bound to its own button for quick access. A bit of tweaking later, and you've got a new fundamental pillar of gameplay and a combat flow different from every other FPS at the time.

quote:

Meanwhile have you played Halo: Anniversary? Its pretty much the best port possible, the team was really faithful to the original (To the point where it actually runs the original's game engine in parallel with Reach's to calculate all the game logic) and it also looks pretty dang good. Way better than this noise.

They just use the Reach engine for the graphics, the old engine is completely authoritative as far as gameplay goes. There's even a button you can press that crossfades into the old graphics live while in the middle of a level. The only differences are a few carveouts they've made here and there for the new terminals, and the game is even smart enough to push you out of the alcove if you switch graphics to a mode in which the alcove doesn't exist.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 16:47

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Its pretty interesting to see how much Halo changed over its development, and how much those things were important to it being such a huge success. Then the sequels were all crapped out pretty much as fast as Bungie could hand them over because MS needed its cash cow to keep pushing its consoles. I was really, really hoping that Destiny would be like the real proper Halo 2 that we've needed for years; something where Bungie could plug away forever redesigning until they came up with something really fresh. Halo 1 introduced the elites, the hunters, the grunts, the jackals, the flood, the sentinels, all the vehicles and guns, and more. Then Halo 2 through Halo 4 added... Brutes. And Drones. The two worst enemies in the series. And Energy Swords. (okay swords were cool) Halo 2-4 really needed some new aliens on the level of the Elites, but they didn't. And if anything they screwed up by making the Elites playable/allies in 2 and 3, when they were the best enemy, replacing them with the lovely Brutes. Luckily Bungie was smart enough to bring back Elites as enemies in Reach, and drat Reach is pretty good.

Yeah when I first heard of Halo Anniversary and that 343i was doing it, I figured it'd be poo poo. But boy was I surprised. Making the two engines work in parallel couldn't have been easy, but it really, really works. You can play Halo the way it felt on the old Xbox, but with modern graphics so you can live up to your rose-tinted nostalgia instead of the lovely flat shaded textures that we really had back then. I love Halo: Anniversary.

There's a few things that are a tiny bit off because you're using two different engines. Some of the level geometry is slightly different in the higher detail reach engine versions and yet the game still uses the collision data of the old maps; so sometimes you can't walk where it looks like you should be able to, or there's an invisible incline where there shouldn't be. Its very, very minor stuff though. And again, the game lets you switch engines at the push of a button, which is bonkers. There's a noticable delay because the Reach engine fills the memory of the 360 and it has to dump it to have room to load the old textures, but it happens pretty quick. I only wish they'd pause the game during the switch; sometimes if you hit the button on accident during a firefight you can take a couple shots while its switching.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 18:03

RichterIX: Apr 11, 2003; Sorrowful be the heart

I have never played any Halo game so I'd like to try the first one. I don't have a 360 or an Xbone so is my best best Halo PC with CMT SPV3 or some other mod? How do I even get Halo PC now short of lucking out at Half-Price Books or someplace similar?

# ? Sep 9, 2014 22:24

Dominic White: Nov 1, 2005

Zaphod42 posted:

Man you got me all excited for this fan project and then I open up the trailer and... it looks like rear end. Seriously that doesn't look much different from Halo CE on the PC already.

That trailer isn't the greatest. Compare some raw gameplay, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFJTgLH8fgs
Vs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGRDUKbh5Us
(Ignore the silly easter egg stuff)

They couldn't do much with the map geometry, but just about everything else has been overhauled. The final version is supposed to have all the features up to Halo: Reach, including Armor abilities, mission-start loadouts, vehicle hijacking, EMP'ing machines with charged plasma shots and so on. Apparently they've done a lot to Truth and Reconciliation since that early beta release, too.

Anniversary Edition is literally the exact same game with more detail rendered.

Dominic White fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Sep 9, 2014

# ? Sep 9, 2014 22:54

Mc Do Well: Aug 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

Yeah Anniversary campaign is the original engine and the back button just swaps out textures/models. In fact I think it started off as a fan project for PC before 343 hired a bunch of modders. The Reach engine is just for multiplayer, which was just a map pack and a playlist with some special settings to make movement and weapons more like the original.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 23:07

Lork: Oct 15, 2007; Sticks to clorf

RichterIX posted:

I have never played any Halo game so I'd like to try the first one. I don't have a 360 or an Xbone so is my best best Halo PC with CMT SPV3 or some other mod? How do I even get Halo PC now short of lucking out at Half-Price Books or someplace similar?

It looks like it's still relatively easy to find on Amazon. The PC port is worse than the original in a few ways, most notably the lack of coop and drastically reduced animation quality, but it should do in a pinch. I wouldn't bother with any mods at first because there's nothing really deficient about the original game that mods can fix and they only ever seem to hurt the established balance.

It's worth noting for anyone who intends to play Halo for the first time that you should probably skip the normal difficulty and go straight to heroic. The difficulty settings make a huge difference, and heroic is the one intended for people who have played a shooter before. The normal difficulty is intended for a more casual audience, and is so easy that it strips the game of pretty much everything that makes it interesting or unique.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 23:08

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Dominic White posted:

That trailer isn't the greatest. Compare some raw gameplay, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFJTgLH8fgs
Vs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGRDUKbh5Us
(Ignore the silly easter egg stuff)

They couldn't do much with the map geometry, but just about everything else has been overhauled. The final version is supposed to have all the features up to Halo: Reach, including Armor abilities, mission-start loadouts, vehicle hijacking, EMP'ing machines with charged plasma shots and so on. Apparently they've done a lot to Truth and Reconciliation since that early beta release, too.

Anniversary Edition is literally the exact same game with more detail rendered.

Well the other marines do look way better, and a few other things.

But... what the poo poo? They made truth & reconciliation a snow level?? The game already has multiple snow levels! Truth & Reconciliation was great as it was. :argh:

And not just a snow level; but they turned the dark, sneaky stealth sniping level into... something from Diddy Kong Racing. I've never seen so many brightly colored lights on snow before. Ugh. Too much of this feels like change for change's sake and not real improvements.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Sep 9, 2014

# ? Sep 9, 2014 23:24

Lork: Oct 15, 2007; Sticks to clorf

laserghost posted:

Duke Hard was recently released: http://www.moddb.com/mods/duke-hard
Roch map series, those are huge and very detailed: http://dukerepository.com/maps/Roch
Then there's Platoon from TeamTNT: http://www.moddb.com/mods/platoon-tc
Ageo of Evil is a decent two-episode leveset from goon superstar, Yahtzee: http://www.moddb.com/mods/age-of-evil/downloads/age-of-evil-e1-2
Mystique: Ages in Time is a pretty hard fantasy levelset: http://dukertcm.com/knowledge-base/reviews-mod-duke3d/mystique-ages-in-time.html
WGRealms2 is a stand-alone mashup megamod, hard as hell but some levels are impressive: http://www.moddb.com/games/wgrealms-2
Same goes for Duke Nukem Forever 2013: http://www.moddb.com/mods/duke-nukem-forever

Overall, there's not that much good episodes for Duke, most of them tend to be made during late 90's and kind of suck, with poor geometry and gimmicks. But there's a whole ton of excellent single maps, which push forward what could be done with Build3D.

The War of Attrition mod comes with a poo poo ton of user maps that range in quality from pretty good to great. I just wish it worked with Megaton Edition so it could be played in coop.

# ? Sep 9, 2014 23:37

laserghost: Feb 12, 2014; ^{trust me, I'm a cat.}

Yeah, I jumped over a lot of stuff, tried to showcase some more "classic" stuff, without eduke/advanced .con coding mods... but yeah, let's namedrop some more Duke3D releases, they seem to be overshadowed by Doom's community outputs.

Duke Plus also has a bunch of interesting maps full of new gimmicks and features: http://www.moddb.com/mods/duke-plus/downloads/dukeplus-235
Duke Nukem Eternity is am earlier "DNF-like" mod, pretty good but I remember it chugging on my PC: http://www.moddb.com/mods/duke-nukem-eternity
The Gate, can't believe I forgot about it. THE levelset for Duke3D: http://dukertcm.com/knowledge-base/reviews-mod-duke3d/gate.html
Last Reaction & Water Bases, kinda silly name, but in 1999 it was the most important release in Duke community, remember downloading this back in time in e-cafe and burning on CD: http://msdn.duke4.net/revlrwb.php
Borg Nukem, I never really liked it, but it was quite popular at time of release: http://msdn.duke4.net/revborgnukem.php
Duke Nukem 64, mod which makes Atomic Edition look and play like it's counterpart from N64. Actually guys behind this made a lot of reverse-engineering and research, digging up some really obscure stuff from ROM, to make mod more faithful: http://msdn.duke4.net/revduke64.php

And a different kind of maps: A.dream (http://msdn.duke4.net/hotdreamepisode.php), it's actually on Steam Workshop for Megaton version. The gimmick really works at the first time, so I won't spoil anything.

drat, I actually want to replay some of this stuff now.

edit: some bbcode for readability and stuff

laserghost fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Sep 10, 2014

# ? Sep 10, 2014 00:45

Geight: Aug 7, 2010; Oh, All-Knowing One, behold me!

Zaphod42 posted:

http://www.develop-online.net/interview/john-romero-reloaded-reinventing-the-shooter/0197277

John Romero wants to make minecraft his bitch?

I love this interview, if only for how naive Romero still is. I can't wait to see what he churns out, for better or worse.

quote:

Take something like World of Warcraft � what if that was a shooter? You have a giant world full of quests, and tons of people with PvP already in the game. If World of Warcraft was a shooter, that would be brand new � nobody would have seen something that big and that cool.

Sure they haven't, buddy. :allears:

# ? Sep 10, 2014 02:57

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Cream-of-Plenty posted:

I think Necrodome is the high water mark of classic FPS game design.

I played the poo poo out of a similar game, but the vehicles were Tron-style lightcycles only, complete with forcefields and stuff.

I can't remember the name, but I'm pretty sure it ended in -dome, too.

E: It was called Deathdrome (maybe a ripoff of the Necrodome name, both games came out in 1996).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R59SaWjP-G4

KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Sep 10, 2014

# ? Sep 10, 2014 08:12