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

«‹›3144 »

Plan Z: May 6, 2012

Was always meh on fully body because it usually makes the first-person weapons look weird and tiny and sit on the hands strangely. Not always, but most of the time.

Plan Z fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Jan 6, 2019

# ? Jan 6, 2019 19:36

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 28, 2024 18:23

treat: Jul 24, 2008; by the sex ghost

Cat Mattress posted:

Did it use the same animations for both?

Yes. Same model, same animations. There was an option to toggle the player model on/off when in first-person, because peoples own legs were the last thing they wanted to be staring at when they spent most of their time high up in the air looking downward at the ants they're raining hot plasma on.

e; When the L4D demo came out, I lived in a house with 4 other dudes. While trying to sell them on the game, I looked down, pointed at my monitor and yelled "YOU CAN SEE YOUR LEGS!" Then everybody preordered the game. It was a special thing, speed running through levels and seeing that left leg eagerly extend outward to meet the next ledge while running and jumping between platforms. I think the player model and full-body view models were separate entities in L4D, though.

treat fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Jan 6, 2019

# ? Jan 6, 2019 19:46

Al Cu Ad Solte: Nov 30, 2005; Searching for
a righteous cause

Plan Z posted:

Was always meh on fully body because it usually makes the first-person weapons look weird and tiny and sit on the hands strangely. Not always, but most of the time.

Same. I'm thinking of the difference between Wolf The New Order and The New Colossus. TNO used dedicated first person models, and BJ's body and legs would appear in special circumstances like sliding or climbing a ladder. TNC had full body awareness and the weapon animations felt weird and detached, and it was honestly completely loving impossible to tell what he would do during the melee kill animations. You'd just see some vague violence occur and Nazis would be dead. I mean dead Nazis are better than alive Nazis so I'm not complaining exactly I just wish they didn't go with full body awareness because I like to tell wtf is going on.

Also I have been immune to motion sickness until TNC's jerky horrible camera attached to BJ's neck.

# ? Jan 6, 2019 20:58

Johnny Joestar: Oct 21, 2010; Don't shoot him?

...
...

when they added the vr headset mode for tf2 i set it so i could toggle that on the fly depending on who i was because it gave a cool sense of weight to the movement even though i don't have a vr thing. hopping around as scout and seeing the scattergun pop into my vision briefly due to it was neat as gently caress.

# ? Jan 6, 2019 21:55

chaosapiant: Oct 10, 2012; White Line Fever

Johnny Joestar posted:

when they added the vr headset mode for tf2 i set it so i could toggle that on the fly depending on who i was because it gave a cool sense of weight to the movement even though i don't have a vr thing. hopping around as scout and seeing the scattergun pop into my vision briefly due to it was neat as gently caress.

Whoa what? TF2 supports Oculus/Vive? I�ve never played that game, but VR support might make me look into it!

# ? Jan 6, 2019 22:50

Barudak: May 7, 2007

kirbysuperstar posted:

gently caress yes. I need to fix my Xbox controller, I think.

Its back compatible on the Bone and if you have a BoneX its in 4k. The game is extremely of the half-life school of game design with way way more padding and less design skill, frequently does poo poo thats unfair because you lack the controls to do what they want you to do, and on top of that is just in general hard as steel.

I made it sound like dogshit but everyone should play it, its really unique and did inventive stuff with the player character and UI that wouldnt be done again for years.

# ? Jan 6, 2019 22:56

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Rupert Buttermilk posted:

Yeah, aside from this not being correct, as far as my somewhat clear memory of Halo 1 is concerned, this also makes no sense.

As nonsensical as it sounds, it is correct. You can not see your legs in first person in Halo 1 (though I believe it was added into the updated graphics mode in Anniversary), but you can still shoot yourself in them by bouncing needler shots off the floor into your invisible feet.

# ? Jan 6, 2019 23:55

haveblue: Aug 15, 2005; Toilet Rascal

Visible body was added in Halo 2.

Destiny 1 had a fun bug where you could damage yourself by shooting your own leg only if it was submerged in a pool of water.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 00:00

Johnny Joestar: Oct 21, 2010; Don't shoot him?

...
...

chaosapiant posted:

Whoa what? TF2 supports Oculus/Vive? I�ve never played that game, but VR support might make me look into it!

yeah i don't remember the details, it was mainly a weird tech thing they set up mainly because they could, i guess

# ? Jan 7, 2019 00:09

kirbysuperstar: Nov 11, 2012; Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.

Barudak posted:

Its back compatible on the Bone and if you have a BoneX its in 4k. The game is extremely of the half-life school of game design with way way more padding and less design skill, frequently does poo poo thats unfair because you lack the controls to do what they want you to do, and on top of that is just in general hard as steel.

I made it sound like dogshit but everyone should play it, its really unique and did inventive stuff with the player character and UI that wouldnt be done again for years.

Yeah, I'm not likely to buy a Bone anytime soon. Seems like it works fine on the 360 at least, so that's an option too.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 00:13

Barudak: May 7, 2007

Is Cthon from Quake the worst designed boss in an FPS ever? Signs point to yes

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:07

Mordja: Apr 26, 2014; Hell Gem

Al Cu Ad Solte posted:

Also I have been immune to motion sickness until TNC's jerky horrible camera attached to BJ's neck.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I kind of got used to it after a while but it's far from ideal.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:08

Mak0rz: Aug 2, 2008; 😎🐗🚬

Still enjoying Arcane Dimensions but Jesus that swamp level is a bit much.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:10

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Barudak posted:

Is Cthon from Quake the worst designed boss in an FPS ever? Signs point to yes

It's kind of a fun puzzle once you get the rhythm down, but not much of a boss. On low difficulty it's just a big old nothing

Mak0rz posted:

Still enjoying Arcane Dimensions but Jesus that swamp level is a bit much.

Have fun looking for books.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:11

Mak0rz: Aug 2, 2008; 😎🐗🚬

skasion posted:

Have fun looking for books.

I have three left! :argh:

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:13

Mordja: Apr 26, 2014; Hell Gem

It's not really an FPS but this is the closest thread I've got with the Freespace thread having long since died. Crosspost:

Mordja posted:

Do you like anime?

*crickets chirping*

Do you like space sims?

*The crowd goes wild, RAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH*

Well Wings of Dawn came out! What is Wings of Dawn? It's an anime-themed, standalone mod for Freespace 2 and believe it or not, it's far from the only anime-mod for that game. I only ever played the original release of it, like, a decade ago, but it was actually really fun, and a drat impressive use of the engine. Since then, the original author's been remaking the thing with this version including full on visual novel sequences. Ayup.

Anyways, the best way to get it would be through the FS2 launcher/mod manager Knossos and here's a trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy2GfP_sMzM

There's also a NSFW patch courtesy of the author himself, because of course there is but I'm not going to dignify that with a link you sicko

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:18

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

Barudak posted:

Is Cthon from Quake the worst designed boss in an FPS ever? Signs point to yes

At least he's not a wall.

Problems with bosses is that they're the last thing that players will see, and the game ends after that. So basically time spent designing the boss is time that is mostly wasted; it's better to have good regular enemies that players will see all the time and crappy bosses than good bosses and crappy regular enemies.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:20

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

Mordja posted:

It's not really an FPS but this is the closest thread I've got with the Freespace thread having long since died. Crosspost:

When you say anime, do you mean Macross? Because I could use a space sim with hilarious missile fuckery in it.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:26

Flannelette: Jan 17, 2010

Cat Mattress posted:

At least he's not a wall.

Problems with bosses is that they're the last thing that players will see, and the game ends after that. So basically time spent designing the boss is time that is mostly wasted; it's better to have good regular enemies that players will see all the time and crappy bosses than good bosses and crappy regular enemies.

Bosses were probably hard for quake engine/hardware limits given the total lack of any real ones.
I consider the homing missile spiders and blobs from quake crappy enemies that there were too many of.

Mordja posted:

It's not really an FPS but this is the closest thread I've got with the Freespace thread having long since died. Crosspost:

Flannelette fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Jan 7, 2019

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:30

Barudak: May 7, 2007

Cat Mattress posted:

At least he's not a wall.

Problems with bosses is that they're the last thing that players will see, and the game ends after that. So basically time spent designing the boss is time that is mostly wasted; it's better to have good regular enemies that players will see all the time and crappy bosses than good bosses and crappy regular enemies.

I think it depends on how the fight is constructed if a boss is good or bad; the more unique mechanics that dont appear again the worse it usually is. If your game is about shooting things a boss fight where you shoot the thing is 9 times out of 10 better than a bossfight where you use mechanics that didnt come up before or after.

Granted their are tooooons of ways to mess it up like invulnerability phases, precise aiming, or no time to be in the open turning the fight into a cover shooter.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:34

Johnny Joestar: Oct 21, 2010; Don't shoot him?

...
...

chton is better than icon of sin

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:38

haveblue: Aug 15, 2005; Toilet Rascal

Cthon is less a boss than a "holy poo poo a game can do THAT?" moment. Don't forget how shocking it was in 1996.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:41

Al Cu Ad Solte: Nov 30, 2005; Searching for
a righteous cause

Barudak posted:

Its back compatible on the Bone and if you have a BoneX its in 4k. The game is extremely of the half-life school of game design with way way more padding and less design skill, frequently does poo poo thats unfair because you lack the controls to do what they want you to do, and on top of that is just in general hard as steel.

I made it sound like dogshit but everyone should play it, its really unique and did inventive stuff with the player character and UI that wouldnt be done again for years.

The entire finale was incredibly satisfying and the bizarro plot twist was the cherry on top. Also the music rips poo poo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZFP-skjRM&t=132s

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:47

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Mordja posted:

It's not really an FPS but this is the closest thread I've got with the Freespace thread having long since died. Crosspost:

how do you have a nsfw patch for a freespace mod. do you romance and gently caress the planes

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:50

Mordja: Apr 26, 2014; Hell Gem

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

When you say anime, do you mean Macross? Because I could use a space sim with hilarious missile fuckery in it.

Oh, Itano would be proud.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:51

Barudak: May 7, 2007

I will drag you all kicking and streaming through Breakdown if I have to, it loving rules.

And seriously, it is absolutely unforgiving hard as balls cruelty on normal and if any human being ever beat it on hard I would assume they were actually a replicant.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 01:51

Lork: Oct 15, 2007; Sticks to clorf

Barudak posted:

Is Cthon from Quake the worst designed boss in an FPS ever? Signs point to yes

I see your Cthon and raise you Omikron's final boss:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DQmVzAxHR4
-Unintuitive first phase gimmick calling back to Half-Life's Nihilanth
-Attacks are virtually impossible to dodge except by luck due to how fast they come at you and their busted hitboxes
-Way too much HP
-Can only be damaged in a single, tiny weak spot on his back
-Speeds up as he takes damage to the point where you barely have any time to get around to his back let alone line up a shot when he's almost dead
-5 second long music loop

My friends and I have been wracking our brains and we can't come up with anything that beats this. Can you?

Lork fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Jan 7, 2019

# ? Jan 7, 2019 02:52

Stabbey_the_Clown: Sep 21, 2002; Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?; Taco Defender

Barudak posted:

Is Cthon from Quake the worst designed boss in an FPS ever? Signs point to yes

In fairness, it was much, much, better than the bosses for Quake episodes 2, 3 and 4.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 03:07

SolidSnakesBandana: Jul 1, 2007; Infinite ammo

chaosapiant posted:

Whoa what? TF2 supports Oculus/Vive? I�ve never played that game, but VR support might make me look into it!

I can't even imagine what it would be like to play TF2 in 2019. Is there a community of people that still play the older updates? Like maybe roughly around the time the Demoman got the sword?

# ? Jan 7, 2019 03:49

Plan Z: May 6, 2012

Barudak posted:

I will drag you all kicking and streaming through Breakdown if I have to, it loving rules.

And seriously, it is absolutely unforgiving hard as balls cruelty on normal and if any human being ever beat it on hard I would assume they were actually a replicant.

I remember not getting far into as a kid and dumping it.

I would legit pay for a version of TF2 that's pre-addon weapons and pre-cosmetics. Just that basic, fun design and look.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 04:24

Jose Mengelez: Sep 11, 2001; by Azathoth

Plan Z posted:

I would legit pay for a version of TF2 that's pre-addon weapons and pre-cosmetics. Just that basic, fun design and look.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/team-fortress-2-vintage

# ? Jan 7, 2019 04:33

treat: Jul 24, 2008; by the sex ghost

Barudak posted:

Is Cthon from Quake the worst designed boss in an FPS ever? Signs point to yes

Coincidentally, I fought Chthon earlier today in a quick session through ep1. He was way more fun than I ever remembered him being, but only because I drive my quakemans like the bus in Speed. When you're rocket jumping and bhopping between the switches as fast as possible (and that arena has some pretty easy fun routes), his projectiles actually start to pose a threat because of how haphazardly he tosses them around. Juking fireballs while bouncing around at 500ups feels like the way it was meant to be played. You get more than enough "shoot that big guy way too many god drat times" sort of boss experience with all the loving shamblers, so I don't really mind the environmental boss gimmicks in Quake.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 05:01

Mak0rz: Aug 2, 2008; 😎🐗🚬

Okay I actually managed to find all eight tomes in the swamp level but I can't find the room with the lectern again. I've been looking for it longer now than I have the last few books.

This is supposed to be a "huge medieval city" according to the readme. Do you know what cities have pal? Signs! So people won't get lost!

This level is a goddamn posterchild for why Quake mappers need to be conscious of the game's lack of automap.

Mak0rz fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jan 7, 2019

# ? Jan 7, 2019 05:52

Diabetes Forecast: Aug 13, 2008; Droopy Only

Mak0rz posted:

Okay I actually managed to find all eight tomes in the swamp level but I can't find the room with the lectern again. I've been looking for it longer now than I have the last few books.

This is supposed to be a "huge medieval city" according to the readme. Do you know what cities have pal? Signs! So people won't get lost!

This level is a goddamn posterchild for why Quake mappers need to be conscious of the game's lack of automap.

If what you're talking about is The Forgotten Sepulcher then honestly good luck. I've only ever managed to find 30/50 of the secrets. And what's worse is there's no actual guides to playing the drat map.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 06:25

Mak0rz: Aug 2, 2008; 😎🐗🚬

Diabetes Forecast posted:

If what you're talking about is The Forgotten Sepulcher then honestly good luck. I've only ever managed to find 30/50 of the secrets. And what's worse is there's no actual guides to playing the drat map.

Nah, it was Foggy Bogbottom. I don't care much for getting 100% secrets. I just wanted that loving rune to unlock the secret map.

Anyway I finally came across the room I was looking for, grabbed the rune, and got my rear end out of there

As for guides, yeah there aren't any. There is a Arcane Dimensions 100% Nightmare series of videos on YouTube that I've referenced before though. Oddly enough I never needed it for this map.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 06:32

Shadow Hog: Feb 23, 2014; Avatar by Jon Davies

Missed some stuff while I was off faffing about at MAGfest, so a few thoughts on subjects from the last three days:

Quake kicks rear end, what was all that Quake nay-saying about. The monsters are beefier than Doom's monsters, but there's also fewer of them so you can focus more on one at a time rather than having to juggle tons at once. It's a very different rhythm from Doom, but it's no less fun IMO. Also love the shotguns; the shotgun is weaker than Doom's shotgun but feels a decent bit stronger than its pistol, and while the SSG isn't a patch on Doom's SSG, I still love the feel of fighting Ogres, Fiends and Death Knights with the thing (4 shots, 6 shots and 5-6-ish shots each). I can't comment on the weapon's inadequacies in Nightmare mode since I tend to play on Normal, though.
Star Trek Voyager: Elite Forces was great, and remains more or less the extent of my interaction with Voyager. Even got the expansion pack for it, although that only adds a fully-explorable Voyager and a few holodeck missions in some black-and-white pulp sci-fi series (that I'm sure the show used in an episode or two, but again, haven't watched the show) as far as single-player content goes. Does add a fair bit to the MP IIRC, though, which was actually where I cut my teeth for multiplayer FPS (against the bots, anyway). I really wanna get Star Trek: Elite Forces 2 sometime, though aside from shifting the team over to the USS Enterprise-E and thus bringing Picard (and Worf, curiously) into the game instead of the Voyager cast, I've heard it's a step down.
I miss Valve single-player games. I fully get that they built up expectations for Half-Life 3 by their doing nothing to the point that they'll never be able to meet them, but man, I can't speak for others, but I don't really care that much about ground-breaking innovation here, I'd just like some sense of closure. At any rate, it feels like my interest in Valve was getting to its peak right around when they decided to focus almost entirely on hardware rather than software, and then Steam started going to poo poo, and then all physical PC game media started requiring Steam making that entire market worthless (why buy a physical disc when I'll be forced to use Steam anyway? Might as well buy it from Steam and cut out the middle man), and blaaaaah my interest in the company has basically become nonexistent. Shame. I'm sure it's possible to rekindle it, but they aren't really making moves toward that end at the moment.

MAGfest was fun btw. They had, as they typically have every year, a room with a ton of old DOS computers loaded with plenty of retro FPSes to kill some time, including 5-6 (one kinda broke, alas) that were set up in a LAN Quake [1] deathmatch session. Came in second the one time I tried; I really do not know DM2 well at all. Even met up with one of my fellow Reelism map creators a couple times over at some game-preservation panels, which were fun to watch.

Also picked up a disc-only copy of Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown (which will come in handy for brief screen-grabbing for an article I'm writing), as well as Doom 2 on the GBA, the latter of which I recall being a bit pricey on the aftermarket. Playing through it on a backlit GBA I recently got, and man it feels weird. I swear Arachnotrons only take two rockets to kill whereas they take three normally; zombie-dropped ammo and weapons give the full amount of ammo to you instead of half; sometimes the armor seems to glitch up and stay at 200 at all times despite me taking so much damage that I'm at "Picked up a Medikit you really need!" levels of hurt; Spectres actually make the stuff behind them brighter rather than darker; the lowest gamma setting still seems a bit washed-out on this screen; and there's some weird miscolorations in the sky and sometimes the textures when a palette effect (like god mode or a radsuit) is being applied. A lotta weird stuff. Still a surprisingly good conversion. Also had the opportunity to grab Duke Nukem Advance, but didn't. Ah well.

# ? Jan 7, 2019 08:27

Convex: Aug 19, 2010

You didn't miss out much with Duke Nukem Advance, I'll say that. It's not a bad effort as GBA FPS games go but I remember feeling very short changed after paying full price back on release then finishing it within 2 hours :mad: