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

«‹›71 »

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

Zero Star posted:

Was the whole WAD full of Quake maps? Because the first map of Enjay ZDoom 2001 is a remake of the Slipgate Complex. The rest of this wad's levels aren't Quake though.

Ungh, how disappointing. But you're right, this is what I was thinking of, thanks for this.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2011 01:41

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 15, 2024 12:04

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

The Kins posted:

Merry Christmas, thread! I have two bits of nice news for you.

First, I've released a stupid new GZDoom mod! It's called Reelism and it's basically you versus a pissed off RNG. People seem to like it so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpSJ-sYtZ4c
Download!.

Agreeing that this mod is quite addictive and fun. Some observations:

1. The Wolf3D pistol is pretty much useless, especially when compared to the starting handgun. So all it really accomplishes is giving a nod to old-school shooters (and cluttering up the inventory.)

2. The flamethrower isn't really fun to use, and I don't quite know why. It looks good, but the projectiles move a lot slower than the player, making it an awkward weapon that I mostly avoid using.

3. In the last ~2 hours of playing, I've had a lot of situations where I had no ammo and was unable to keep enough in stock through weapon pickups, alone. The fist is not really a great fallback weapon.

The game really shines when you're running around, blasting poo poo with the DB Shotgun or that ROTT Pipe-bomb-style launcher and strafing enemy fire like you're playing a Bullet Hell game. I think it would really kick some rear end if you got your hands on some Duke3D / Blood weapons. This game's clearly all about random mass mayhem, but it's currently lacking in the hardware department. If you're planning to continue working and expanding on it, I think Reelism's found a permanent place on my computer.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2011 02:15

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

The Kins posted:

While all the cool kids are posting updates, Reelism v1.1 is ready to roll! Here be the fixes...

The changes you have made to the flamethrower are sublime and I definitely find myself using it a lot more now. While I'm thinking about it, I've got some free time and was wondering if you'd be interested in me putting together a map and tossing it your way.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2011 20:36

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

So, something called "Epsilon" was recently released for Quake. It's a premade combination of textures and mesh mods, built on the darkplaces engine, that is essentially idiot-proof. It also comes with the Quake demo, so you can check it out even if you somehow don't already own Quake (currently $2.49 on Steam) but would like to play pretty Quake.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2011 00:39

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

My mind is still blown by how grossly inefficient Polymer is, even on Nvidia rigs. I've committed to the HRP V4.x packs and Polymost, which run exponentially smoother.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2011 03:20

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

Vertigus posted:

What are these from? Tell me now.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2011 05:43

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

JerryLee posted:

I'm pretty sure the first one is from Demon Eclipse and the second is from... well, if I had to take a guess I'd say Ultimate Torment and Torture, but I'm nowhere near as confident of that.

Thanks.

Is it just me, or are the Community Chest Megawads garbage? I played through maybe the first 6 or 7 levels of Chest 1 before I junked it; all of the maps stuck me as amateurish, with bad flow and aesthetics. The thing was, you could tell these weren't the first maps the authors had ever made, but they were still ugly as sin and completely unimaginative, with this distinctly unfinished feel.

On the other hand, I tried Chest 2 out and was pleasantly surprised with the first couple of maps. Then everything went out the window and these sprawling, tedious maps started taking their place. No real art direction or focus, just imbalanced messes that give me the impression they were put together as quickly as possible.

I know somebody said Chest 3 gets better after the first map, but it's seriously a terrible start. How did these megawads become so popular?

# ¿ Dec 31, 2011 09:44

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

That Ignorant Sap posted:

It gets better with each revision. Berserk kill a Pain Elemental without it blowing up in your face? Yes, please. Point blank super shotgun blast extra strong? drat straight.
Loving the ability to chainsaw Mancubus and Revenant weapons off their corpses to use. Needs more of that. Saw off a Hell Baron's arm to swing as a bat for a half-dozen hits, sending troops flying. Take an Arachnotrons plasma cannon (though now it's essentially the same as your own. Maybe it a bit weaker and slower to fire, but it's cells charge themselves over time..Take an Archvile's horns and blast poo poo at the cost of your armor, or resurrect enemies at the cost of life.

And finally, I want the Spider Mastermind's chaingun to fire against a room of troops and imps.

I've said it before, but being able to ram your hands into an Arachnotron's brain and use him as an overcharged plasma turret would be awesome.

EDIT:

Also, I didn't realize that because Brutal Doom makes changes to the "Nazi" enemy (by giving them MP40s), the changes overwrite those made by megawads. Getting to the alien ship in EPIC and finding out it's occupied by none other than Nazis is pretty hilarious.

Cream-of-Plenty fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jan 4, 2012

# ¿ Jan 4, 2012 01:22

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

In my experience, most Brutal Doom + WADs are usually pretty fun on HMP or UV. The problem is that it feels like every map maker eventually puts you in a situation that is more or less impossible with the changes Brutal Doom makes. For Scythe, it's Anger (Map 23). For EPIC 2, it's Orion's Belt (Map 14) when it decides to lock you in a small arena with four cyberdemons and an arch-vile. Even if you do somehow survive the irregular 24-missile volleys (you won't), it rewards you with 20 homing-missile-machinegunning Revenants. Community Chest 2's Elixir (Map 5) can be an exercise in frustration, since it has hundreds of zombies. Regardless of how clever you are in disposing of the 40 and 50 man waves, their improved hitscan weapons will wither away more of your health than the map provides.

I really don't like save scumming--usually I try to power through a whole map without reloading--and I really don't like using cheat codes to get through impossible situations. But I have yet to find a 32-level WAD that doesn't have at least one scenario where you're pretty much hosed.

That being said, what I played of both "The Ultimate Torment and Torture" and "ZPack" was thoroughly difficult, but manageable. They might be worth looking into if you haven't already. Also, I've gone through about half of "Threshold of Pain" on UV and while I'm consistently hurting, I haven't quit in frustration (yet.)

# ¿ Jan 5, 2012 00:53

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

ChickenHeart posted:

I just managed to polish-off Scythe 2 with Brutal Doom on Ultraviolent, myself. Holy poo poo did those last few maps become horrible death-traps. I managed to clear all of them without cheats, but everything after the Gardens had more than a few instances where I had to exploit my ability to jump and duck to survive those gangs of Revenants. God help you if you started Forgotten City with less than 200 health and armor.

So that's Scythe, NeoDoom, NewDoom, Hell Revealed, and Reloaded under my belt; I might give Threshold a try. _{(gently caress Revenants)}

Shortly after I posted that, I finally got through Epic's four Cyberdemons. It took another 8 or 9 tries, but somehow I did it. I think it mostly has to do with the BFG's random damage finally smiling on me and enabling me to kill two of them...so, random luck, but it's finally done.

You're right, though. It's extremely important to end levels as healthy as you can, because you never know what's going to be jumping on you the minute the next level loads.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2012 06:57

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

Kazvall posted:

Throw out all your favorite skulltag compatible wads so I can rejoice! Big props for including the download links! (I just had to reformat my HD and I lost EVERYTHING)

The Ultimate Torment and Torture
ZPack
Speed of Doom

# ¿ Jan 6, 2012 20:22

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

bleedbackwards posted:

I'm playing Ultimate Torment and Torture with Brutal Doom and this message appeared on my screen when I started the second area, making it basically impossible to play the game. I suspected UTNT might not play nice with Brutal Doom when it didn't ask me to pick a class at the beginning of the game but is there a way to get rid of this message? I don't even know what the hell it's referring to.

Something's not right here. I'm using Brutal Doom v0.14 with UTNT and the latest version of Skulltag and I'm getting the class selection menu. I just loaded it up and selected the second episode and didn't have any issues with prompts. This makes me think it's not necessarily a conflict between UTNT and Brutal Doom but something else.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2012 05:16

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

bleedbackwards posted:

Well I was using GZDoom so I tried it with Skulltag but the message is still there, and I still don't get to pick a class. I'm using Brutal Doom 0.14 and Skulltag 98d.

Very strange. I wonder what we're doing differently. I'm just drag / dropping both Brutal Doom and UTNT over my skulltag.exe as I do with everything.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2012 06:11

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

The Kins posted:

Also, UTNT changes a lot under the hood as well so I wouldn't be shocked if Brutal Doom had some horrible conflict with it.

That's the thing, though: I've played through a lot of UTNT with several versions of Brutal Doom and haven't had any problems. I've always considered the combination a beautiful pairing (granted, the new creatures can't be headshotted, etc.)

# ¿ Jan 7, 2012 07:13

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

TOOT BOOT posted:

I miss the days of shareware. Tons of great games being released, and none of this lovely 1-level demo stuff. Doom gave you a full third of the game to play without paying a dime. After playing those 9 levels it never occurred to me to just say 'Welp I'll just replay this over and over' instead of buying the whole game or whatever modern publishers are worried about.

I remember downloading the Quake demo off of the AOL Games page. It was 70 or 80 MB--which was colossal for a dial-up connection--and took all night. There weren't even any preview screenshots of the games or anything. At most, there was a basic synopsis, so you were basically taking a shot in the dark that your 6-8 hours of downloading would yield something worth playing.

Ah, the glorious dial-up crawling Web 1.0 demo downloading days. :allears:

# ¿ Jan 8, 2012 08:31

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

TOOT BOOT posted:

That reminds me...funny story. Quake 1 required a Pentium and I only had a 486SX/33.

So when the demo came out, I downloaded a program that emulated a math co-processor.

The good thing is that it made the game work. The bad part is that it ran at about one frame per MINUTE.

I think it that Christmas that I got a boxed copy of Quake and a Rendition Verite card so I guess it all worked out in the end.

That reminds me of the time I got Half Life and had to upgrade from 16 MB of RAM to 48 by buying a blazing fast 32 MB RAM stick. Or the time I got a 16 MB Voodoo 3 GPU so I could play Turok 2.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2012 10:16

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

The_Franz posted:

The Quake shareware is only 8.8MB. Even the full game is only 50-something megs.

The first game that I recall requiring a "huge" download was Sin. There was a day one 30+ meg patch which was unheard of at the time. I think that you could actually call them and ask for it to be mailed on a CD.

Huh, weird, I must have remembered it incorrectly then. Still, at 8.8 MB, it took like 90 minutes to download...which, for my young self, might have felt like 8 hours. There WAS a demo on AOL that I remember taking all night to download. And then, later, the Unreal Tournament '99 mods that were each 4-6 hours. Basically, dial-up was a terrible, terrible thing.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2012 04:04

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

Fergus Mac Roich posted:

I'm a young'n but even I remember pulling an all nighter to keep aol from disonnecting me while i downloaded urban terror.

Or Tactical Ops.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2012 06:55

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

Reive posted:

Does Brutal Doom usually give little errors?
I notice when loading it into skulltag that there's a bunch of little 'unknown's here and there, also the brutal title screen is missing, and when the second title comes up it says 0.12 instead of 0.14.

That's definitely not normal--especially the part about saying 0.12 instead of 0.14. The little errors can happen, depending on what WAD or PK3 you're forcing Brutal Doom to play with, but generally isn't a game killer.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2012 01:53

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

Changelog for Brutal Doom v0.15c:

Cyberdemon and Mastermind takes more damage from direct impact of rocket attacks (A cyberdemon can die with aprox. 15 rockets)

Increased BFG ball damage factor from 220 to 300. (can kill Cyberdemons with 3 shoots if you hit the big ball plus most hitscans that comes from it)

So basically, the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind are generally more susceptible to weapons and don't require the same level of head-shotting that they required in previous versions. I haven't gone toe-to-toe with either in v0.15, but I figured it's worth the head's up.

bleedbackwards posted:

I'm not sure you can even kill the Spider Mastermind at all if you're shooting the legs. I've pumped probably 30 rockets into its body and it was still standing. Then I decided to reload and try shooting the brain with the minigun instead and it went down after maybe five seconds of sustained fire.

Weapons on the Spider Mastermind's legs do 5% damage, so basically nothing.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2012 06:01

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

JerryLee posted:

Here's an update of sorts that I found linked on Doomworld. There are also some character models floating around now, I guess.

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-leaked-images-are-indeed-from-doom-4-new-hard-evidence-about-the-games-identity/

Looking at the character models seems to reinforce the idea that the vibe will be survivalist instead of military (even a recently-wiped-out-except-for-you military). I'm really not sure how I feel about that in the wake of FO3 and Borderlands and Rage and uuuuuughhhh. Maybe these are all just NPCs. Maybe I shouldn't speculate in a near-vacuum.

One thing I did think was amusing was the amount of shotgun shells on the outside of one of those models. I guess we know how Doomguy will be carrying around his ammo now.

I dig the "F" "U" on the shoulders of the dude who has made armor out of shotgun shells.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2012 06:03

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

RyokoTK posted:

I was doing just fine through most of Scythe 1 until the last chapter. The third or fourth level in chapter three has two Cyberdemons in a really tiny space, and they do so much goddamned damage now it's ridiculous. I had to give it up there.

EPIC 2 has a map where you end up in an arena with four Cyberdemons, an Arch-Vile, and four small pillars. Then, when you kill all of them, a wall drops with 20-26 Revenants, all machine-gunning heat-seeking missiles at your rear end simultaneously.

I beat it, legit, on UV and Brutal Doom v0.15 beta. Only took me like 15 or 16 tries. :smugdog:

# ¿ Mar 29, 2012 20:07

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

I've played around with Brutal Doom v0.16 and some observations so far: The new death animations are pretty amazing--like somebody else mentioned, you can totally go all "Robocop" shotgun-death on the zombies now. And it feels good. There are a bunch of new sounds, like possessed chatter for the former humans, but they've done something strange with the Imps. Can't quite put my finger on it, but their heads feel fatter, and they have more of an alien-demeanor to them. It probably doesn't help that the new sounds for them are some mish-mash of the Xenomorphs from "Aliens" (pretty sure, at least.)

Also, there's an iron-sight feature for the pump action, but I'm on the fence about it. The shotgun just doesn't feel like a weapon that needs ADS features. On the other hand, the grenade launcher has been cleaned up a bit (new sounds and particle effects) and doesn't feel as OP as it used to. You'll still hurt yourself if you use it in close quarters, but it doesn't feel as "cheaty" as it might have before. Also, the Railgun's been buffed, and makes a mess of lesser enemies. Not sure if it's been set up as a drop, however.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2012 22:55

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

Galaga Galaxian posted:

Wait, a new Brutal Doom version is out?

Wait, new sounds for the imps?

It's the first test version for 0.16, so I imagine the feedback will involve people complaining about the new imp sounds...I hope. They're not terrible, but they're way too close to Xenomorph sound clips.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2012 23:00

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

Lork posted:

I don't really like the direction Brutal Doom has been taking lately. It seems like they're running out of things to do that can be considered straight upgrades and are starting to make changes just for the sake of making changes. Like the new shotgun sprite that looks way too similar to the assault rifle; does that really need to be there? The new imp sounds (which are from Doom 3 by the way) I can take or leave, but the possessed zombie chatter is really obnoxious and doesn't belong in Doom at all. This is all stuff that is very much up to personal taste, which would be fine if it was in smaller mods that people could download if they wanted them, but I don't think it belongs in what I and probably many other people consider to be the "flagship" Doom mod.

I've been following its development in the ZDoom Projects forum (which is ironic considering all of the test releases are intended for Skulltag and the Skulltag thread for Brutal Doom is slow as poo poo.) Judging from the amount of negative feedback some of the changes are receiving, I have a pretty good feeling that they're going to redact a lot of the new audio changes.

I don't mind the shotgun changes, but I've complained about the assault rifle aesthetics in the past. It's blurry and the black furniture washes out a lot of the detail, resulting in a nondescript black triangle at the bottom of your screen. I think it's especially ugly when compared to the other weapons. I'd prefer something like this or this, at least for the sake of contrast. If I knew how to do the replacements, myself, I'd be all over it.

I'd agree with you, though: It definitely feels like Brutal Doom is beginning to roam into "feature-creep" territory. I'd rather see the author move on to making the mod compatible with a lot of the Realm667 bestiary than changing the "gently caress Yourself" taunt or the Plasma Rifle sprite for the umpteenth time.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2012 04:19

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

Guillermus posted:

Also about how Brutal Doom is changing, i consider (execpt the mentioned voice), everything going better with each version. The chaingun being one the one that improved vastly in 0.15 with its secondary fire allowing to move.

Really, the minigun has finally found a useful alternate fire. Having to remain motionless in the older alternate mode was very un-Doom-like, and made it difficult to use even at the best of times. The new mode is great: A ridiculous RPM that will empty your ammo supply in surprisingly little time and somewhat increased recoil. You can't help but realize that you're wasting significantly more ammo on every target, but it feels so good.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2012 19:37

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

RE: Goon WAD

This subject came up in this previous thread around Christmas of 2010. A few of us collaborated on some maps in the hopes that the Goon WAD would pull through, even though--being a Goon project--the odds were stacked against it. Nothing ever came of it, but I saved the couple of maps that were finished and had been posted in the thread.

If you guys are serious about resuscitating the project, I can re-host the 3 or 4 maps that were made in a couple of days. I'd love to see 8 or 9 authors slap together a crazy MegaWAD.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2012 05:09

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

Hadlock posted:

Are we making single/coop or multiplayer maps? Is there a popular/novel tileset we could use?

Honestly, I feel like we should shoot for singleplayer maps without an overall novelty. I want to say making it singleplayer would give it the widest user-base (a lot of people don't play Co-Op or Multiplayer), and the lack of a required novelty will prevent it from growing tiresome for the player. Also, it would allow more people to contribute to the WAD without being scared off from something like, "Make an Egyptian-themed Map."

That being said, individual maps should have a pretty free range of what kind of map they want to make. For example, one of the maps I made was relatively novel (a hectic "back and forth" style map called "Suicides"). I'd actually really want to see a big mish-mash of levels in a single WAD, encouraging you to use different playstyles.

Professional WADs with coherent level-design like Scythe-X are fine and dandy, but man, they get boring after a while. Let's celebrate 20+ years of first person shooters by embracing the hair-brained art design of mid 90's FPS's!

# ¿ Apr 14, 2012 18:42

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

As I said, here are the THREE maps that were posted for the previous GOON WAD.

Suicides and Abattoir Blues by me, and Fear of the Dark by somebody else...I didn't make a note on the author, but I bet he still pops in on this thread.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2012 02:59

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

Stuntman posted:

Are those high-res textures part of 016, or are they their own separate thing?

I'm almost positive the level textures are separate from Brutal Doom. Obviously the new weapon and enemy sprites are part of the mod, though.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2012 07:22

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

SolidSnakesBandana posted:

That sounds fun as hell. Big money! Big Prizes! I love it! I'd buy that for a dollar.

Sort of reminds me of the Kins' Reelism.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2012 02:28

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

jimmy boag posted:

Am I just blind or is there no way to download that without signing up for an account?

Nope, I can't download it, either. Sanzuo, do you think you could re-host that somewhere else, like mediafire?

# ¿ Apr 20, 2012 18:25

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

Sanzuo posted:

Ugh, sorry I'm new at this.

http://www.mediafire.com/?89j2z0uzvuld01l

I'm not sure if it was deliberate, but my experience went like this: Pushed a button that opened the first door. Immediately made a left and pushed the button that opens the door at the top of stairs. I then pushed a button on that same wall, which opened the door right next to it. At the end of this room, I pushed a button that opened a door across the hall from the room I was currently in. This room had an HK in it, and when I killed it, I pushed the button in its room and the map ended.

I thought it was just a short map, but when I reloaded it, I flew through some walls and realized there was a lot more to the map. Did you intend for the player to go through the map so quickly, possibly missing a lot of extra stuff? Or is it a mistake that I only had to press four switches to end the level?

# ¿ Apr 20, 2012 19:16

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

Also, I believe I did my last two maps in "Boom" Format. If people make maps in "UDMF" format, will we be able to put them together in a WAD?

Sanzuo posted:

Pretty much. However nearly half the map is unlocked via secrets. When I designed the map I had a story in my head, and I kind of designed the map like an introduction to a much bigger campaign. So it was supposed to be a quick jaunt kind of like Entryway. I'm just not sure how to make it more challenging aside from adding more badguys.

Oh, okay, gotcha. That's sort of the feeling I got, but I figured I'd ask.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2012 19:40

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

Sanzuo posted:

http://www.mediafire.com/?bxx3i7u34jb3yxj <--- A new and improved version of my first map. Please play it and tell me what you think! It is short.

Now I just need to figure out how to rename it and change the music and stuff.

Edit: Sorry, quick patch.

In my opinion, a lot better. I think you added the right amount of personality and texture to the map. Maybe scale back on the number of flickering lights you use, but it wouldn't kill me if you kept it the way it is. I also like the use of enemies spawning in, especially because you don't go overboard with them. I think it would fit well in a goon wad now.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2012 02:48

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

John Carstairs posted:

I actually made this one at work at some point last year, but the textures were all messed up because I had to use the Freedoom wad. I took this opportunity to finally fix that: http://www.mediafire.com/?k4t582e272pcoog

Cool, I'll check this out and get back to you.

In the meantime, I cleaned up my two maps, "Suicides" and "Abattoir Blues". With Abattoir Blues, I upped the difficulty and added a teleport so you don't have to backtrack so much, making the whole map flow a lot better. If anybody wants to give them a shot and let me know what you think, I'd much appreciate it.

As far as the GOONWAD is concerned, who is seriously pursuing making a map? So far I have:

Me (Cream-of-Plenty)
Sanzuo
SPACE HOMOS
Jimmy Boag
Chinese Tony Danza
John Carstairs

MAYBES:
Savage Messiah
an_Mutt
Reive

H20Melon, is this "Fear Of the Dark" map I'm hosting yours? I cannot figure out who made it, but I'm throwing it into the GOONWAD, too.

Cream-of-Plenty fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Apr 22, 2012

# ¿ Apr 22, 2012 07:20

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

Sanzuo posted:

This is where I admit that I'm bad at doom because I think Abattoir Blues is TOO HARD.

This is coming from someone who's never beaten DOOM 2 though. I have a hard time dealing with huge rooms full of monsters and Archviles. Levels like icon of sin make me run into a corner and cry.

Visually I think Abattoir Blues is too dark in parts, which is unfortunate because some of the architecture looks good... I think. I'll get back to you if I actually beat it.

Suicides was kind of fun. It reminded me of doing pacers in gym class. Except towards the end I was completely out of ammo and there were still the mancubuses and the baron of hell to deal with so I just rushed to the exit.

Yeah, everybody that has played "Suicides" so far has told me that the key to victory is to run, which is what I had intended. Rather than the Mancubui and Arch Viles being enemies to fight, they were additional obstacles, not unlike the crushing ceilings or acid pits. If you're nimble, you can beat the level without expending too much ammo, which is something that seemed to fit with the gym-class suicides exercise.

I might go back and crank up the lighting in Abattoir, since you're probably right in that it's too dark.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2012 08:59

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

an_mutt posted:

I'll get around to play-testing the maps that have been posted itt tonight maybe; I remember playing the original versions of Abattoir Blues and Suicides last week so I'll say a little thing on each:

Suicides - Don't like this map; I prefer playing to 100% secrets and kills, and having no ammo to take care of the remaining enemies is lame. Maybe have an ammo cache at the exit as a secret for us completionists?

Thanks for the observations!

I've come to the conclusion that Suicides isn't the sort of map you would use to open up a WAD, and that the player is inevitably going to have more ammo than the map suggests. I've actually played it on UV with Brutal Doom v16, and clearing the place out with a minigun is still challenging fun. Easier, but not ridiculously so: The long distant Mancubi barrages, acid pits, crushing ceilings, and Baron of Hell are still dangerous. For that reason, I'm considering sneaking a "weapon closet" secret into the map that would--surprise, surprise--require you to be nimble and quick to get to it. It's just that I'm really opposed to putting in a secret that would trivialize the map if it's easy to get to.

quote:

Abattoir Blues - I really like this map, although the chaingunners in the gigantic open area picking me off from far away felt cheap. The ending felt really sudden. I feel like it could be expanded another few rooms!

I'm glad you like this map. It's easy to see that people who like one of my two submitted maps, don't like the other. I'd agree, though: The ending does feel abrupt, but I'm not sure how to end it. I'll brainstorm something.

What I might end up doing is removing the chaingunners, adding another Revenant on each pillar (there is already one on doombuilder's "hard" difficulty) and upping the rockets you get in the Baron / HK "star chamber" right before that room. That way, if you're thorough, you'll have enough rockets to pop out, fire some off, and retreat before their rockets get to you--but you'll still be up poo poo's creek if you blindly run out into the open.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2012 20:11

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

H2Omelon posted:

Nope. I can't for the life of me remember the name of who made it though. They also made a second map called Blood of the Earth which I still have on my harddrive.

Personally I wouldn't add his map to the wad unless he agrees to it being included.

Good. I'll keep threatening to put it into the GOONWAD and see if he comes out of hiding. :colbert:

Rather Dashing posted:

Edit: Seeing as it's the preferred flavour at the moment, should we be balancing this for Brutal Doom?

There are probably going to be people who tell you not to, but I feel like I'd be a fool to not balance my maps with at least a little Brutal Doom in mind. After all, that's the #1 complaint nowadays for MegaWADS, i.e.: "It's ridiculously hard with Brutal Doom; the monster closets are pretty much instakills."

The main drawback with balancing your map solely around Brutal Doom is that the mod is ever-changing. You might assume you can put hitscan enemies somewhere because the BD rifle has a zoom feature, but if Sarge removes it in a later version, suddenly the enemies are tedious. Or if he decides to nerf the Imps so they no longer pounce on you, certain traps may become underwhelming. Even worse, if he changes the player's movement speeds in liquids, it could (and does) break parts of maps that are time-sensitive.

Since each map can be so different, it's tough to recommend what you should do. I would suggest that, at the very least, you make efforts to distinguish between different difficulty levels on your map. That way you can give the player a little wiggle-room if the way they're playing Doom makes your map too easy / hard.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2012 20:24

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 15, 2024 12:04

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

CoarsestGrate posted:

Went through Abattoir Blues just now, and found two things wrong with it (running GZDoom w/ Brutal Doom).

1. Shortly after the first door, once you go down the steps, there's a missing wall texture where the river of blood goes into the wall:

2. The teleport after you get the red key only works once. Afterwards you just fall into the hole.

Other than that, it was a jolly good romp. My personal opinion though is that it is still pretty easy on UV.

Thanks, I fixed the teleport chamber so it's repeatable. That was a mistake, making it a W1 instead of a WR. As far as the missing texture is concerned, I opened it up in Doombuilder and couldn't find anything--every line has a texture in that hallway. However, there was a vertex that could have been causing problems, so I got rid of it. Hopefully it's been fixed.

an_mutt posted:

The only thing I can think of is putting it right at the exit; a timed door may also work, but if you put it in a place that can easily be overlooked then the player is basically being screwed over. The timed door would help in making the pace of the map feel more urgent, though!

Anyway, I played through the new Abattoir Blues and it still looks great, in terms of aesthetics. I was literally firing off my last shell on the last enemy (that wasn't a Lost Soul) though this time around, and I had 11% health (though that may just be my bad playing!), so maybe you could introduce a little more of both? I understand if you're aiming at that level of difficulty but I scraped 100% kills by the skin of my teeth.

The secret was good advice, really. I put a time-sensitive closet with a Plasma Rifle and 3x Cells by the series of switches, so you can't get it right away, but you can snag it before you have to deal with the Mancubi, Pain Elemental, Arch Viles, or Baron. The hardest part was getting the "fast" door to close at juuuuust the right time. On the other hand, I added a little bit more health and swapped out some hitscan enemies with Imps, so that there's a larger emphasis on dodging projectiles, rather than being helplessly whittled down by fodder enemies.

I'm torn on upping the difficulty on Abattoir Blues simply because I'm getting a lot of feedback saying it's just about right, already. CoarsestGrate, you might just have to play worse. :3:

~~Obviously you guys don't need to keep downloading these updated versions, but I've taken some of the comments and re-worked both maps. Suicides and Abattoir Blues.~~ Temporarily taken down to address some final issues.

Cream-of-Plenty fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Apr 23, 2012

# ¿ Apr 22, 2012 22:20

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

«‹›71 »