Eviternity has overall a good performance… Except two parts, I think the first one is where you got stuck, a big circle area in a winter map right?, and the second is a castle map which I think it’s map 15, 16 or 17.
It’s a pity modern engines like GZDoom have still this limitation, I remember I started lowering diverse graphical options (AA, texture res., lightning, etc) and it barely made a dent, the framerate stays low when looking at specific directions.
The person in the video is using mouse look. But they don’t have up/down look on. The original DOS Doom has that kind of mouselook as well.
Personally I use full mouse look with no autoaim. Sometimes 1% autoaim.
The problem is the BSP map format and the sector/portal algorithm you need to traverse it. The original Half life engine had similar problems and would slow to a crawl on large ‘open’ maps. I’m also surprised gzdoom hasnt worked around the problem somehow, but maybe it needs to closely adhere to the original to be able to play maps properly???
I had the same explanation in another forum, it’s related to the BSP format itself. It seems it’s too at the core of how the renderer works to be fixed. They also can’t put a visibility distance slider for the same reason.
Download the new version of Sunder and skip to map 15, you will want to laugh (and cry).
Yeah obviously that’s what I meant when I said mouselook. Didn’t even occur to me, heh.
I didn’t know you could fine tune autoaim though.
I found a way to finish up the remaining Sunder levels I left, with this mod, an AI Director.
I’m in no way good enough to play it vanilla, without a mod like Guncaster, that’s for sure. I could have used something like the Ultimate Custom Doom, that allows to say, receive only 50% damage from enemies or do 30% more damage, but as I said before, the real issue is that I was tired of the extreme slaughter maps style. I came to appreciate the style (the crowd control, the lane clearing, the target prioritization, etc) over time but not enough to play more than 3-4 levels in a row, and not with levels with more than 4000 enemies.
I found that AI director mod that replaces the monsters at start by their own, you can set how many there are at the start, and how many appear on new spawning waves and what rate the spawning waves occur (IF there is new waves). So with that a level with 5500 enemies (I tested it with level 15) can be reduced to 1400 monsters + a pair of new enemies every minute, or maybe only 400 monsters + faster or bigger waves. It even can preserve the boss monsters, and optionally also alter the item roster. And it isn’t totally random, if a level had mostly imps, it will keep the same style.
In any case, this and Sunlust will have to wait, right now my priority is continue with Adventures of Square.
I’ve never really understood slaughter maps. I remember thinking Scythe was a brilliant was until I got to it’s last few levels. Thankfully I was playing it coop, which meant I could die and respawn and then die again seconds later. I have no idea how those maps are even possible single player.
You reminded me of a coop slaughter map that I used to play all the time back on ZDaemon, but couldn’t remember the name of. I went to look it up and found the map (coopbuild) and also found out that it was never finished - the mapper was killed in a car crash back in 2006.
It was a pretty solid map from what I remember - some actual required coop and a bunch of modified monsters that made them put up a fight with a full server of marines running around.
Relevant ?
I finished up for now my Doom session, during the last two months I played more than 100 maps (damn long megawads!) for a total of 90 hours. I wanted to write some words about the game’s design, which I guess at this point it should be a tired topic, but I always like to discuss what I play.
I find interesting how despite being so famous and how there are so many games that in theory try to recreate the classic FPS experience of the 90s, in reality very few games are anything close to it. I find puzzling when less shooter-savvy players point out to Serious Sam, Painkiller, Hard Reset or whatever as 'FPS ‘like the old times’, as they differ in fairly important aspects. I would say the key aspects of Doom design are:
-Enemies are somewhat slow. There is this misconception that Doom was a fast, brutal, adrenaline-fueled game and enemies were therefore fast too. People really have bad memory, you were fast, but not the monsters. In reality, all of them walk (or as much jog around) or float slowly, really. The single exception is the Lost Soul flight charge.
-Enemy projectiles aren’t that fast. With the exception of Cyberdemon & Manubus which are a bit faster, individual projectiles are fairly easy to dodge. It’s easy to avoid 4 or 5 imps firing at you fireballs at medium range, for example.
-You are fast. I think this is subtly different from the first point (even if speeds are only relative). Why? Because I feel the player’s speed is empowering, it gives him choice of where to engage enemies, and when to disengage. Ultimately it makes him responsible of what happens, so when you are killed it feels like totally your fault. And if he is low on health or he is searching for a key, his speed allows him to only waste a few seconds backtracking even in big levels.
-Enemies are numerous. As everyone knows, the 2.5D game with 2d enemies allowed for big enemy counts even 25 years ago. Technology has improved since the start of 3d engines but it seems most games still don’t try to reach the same amounts. Now, I don’t really need a FPS where you fight 120 enemies at the same time, I don’t really refer here to the huge numbers that some modern wads can have, I would be happy with shooters where there are more than 6 enemies in one combat ‘scene’. But just try to remember how many FPS in the last 15 years had average fights with more than 6 enemies, it’s pretty damn low.
-Most enemies are ranged. There are 17 enemies in Doom 2 and almost all of them are ranged. Only the pinkies are melee, and the spectres that are just a reskinned pinkie. Lost Souls are the other melee enemy but in a way they can be considered a ranged enemy who is the projectile itself. And really, it’s pretty telling how the pinkies are a somewhat slow melee enemy who can’t can’t even move & attack at the same time. They aren’t supposed to be a big problem by themselves, and that’s a good decision, walking backwards and firing is boring.
So, -wait a moment-. If the enemies are slow, their projectiles aren’t that hard to avoid, and you are very fast, where is the difficulty of the game? I think that’s the key. Individually the enemies are weak, but the combinations of several factors like
-bigger enemy quantities
-enemies in different directions and/or at different heights
-different types of enemies whose projectile speed is different, that makes avoiding them more tricky
-of course hitscan enemies, Revenants, Archviles, etc
-level design that favor enemies, as it may allow for ambushes, dark rooms, narrow areas that impide movement, etc
are what suddenly makes the game more challenging, and more interesting. And they are additive, as you add them up, the game designer can present more and more dangerous situations. And obviously not having health regeneration means every little error and hit counts.
Just look at the pinkies, they are pretty easy to deal at first, but that doesn’t mean they can be ignored. They are a danger when they are in big crowds, or when appearing on your back without noticing, or they serve as meat shields to other monsters, or they make you waste time in one flank while another flank is pouring enemies. They are maybe the poster child of this style of enemy design I’m talking about, as I said before they are the only melee enemy in the game and not very fast, dealing with them is straightforward, so level designers have to use them creatively to really tap their potential. Even enemies like Archviles are easy to deal, individually and with freedom to use a bit of cover. But in the real game, an Archivile with a bit of backup can be a pain in the ass. This philosophy, where most enemies are easy as you can overpower and outrun them, but in combinations of different enemies and in conjunction with good level design are a totally different experience, it’s perhaps the defining feature of Doom.
I think this produces a ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ design, and the way it marries inextricably enemy and combat design with level design is also Doom as hell.
Some other factors that help Doom in being Doom:
-Pain chance. A small but surprisingly important feature, without it or any equivalent system you have a much more plain, less engaging combat. It’s surprising how many “nu-old shooters” didn’t take care of it.
-Enemy infightning. Nuff’said.
-Hitscan enemies. They exist, yes, but they did the most sensible thing possible and they gave them slow reaction times and few hp. A few of them here and there, both alone or in conjunction with projectile based enemies really spice up the gameplay.
Speaking of HP, don’t forget a lot of enemies have very little, meaning some hordes act like the popcorn in shoot ‘em ups. The weapons have a definite power curve too, so you struggle to kill a Hell Knight with a shotgun and then mow down groups of them with a rocket launcher. Two different experiences with the same enemy.
Some Doom-posting.
Sunder
I commented about me playing this WAD time ago. I finished the first 14 maps, which is the ‘classic’ Sunder, before the author is adding more in 2019, with my own custom hackish solution.
I have to say, even if the gameplay is divisive (super tough slaughter maps), it’s worth experiencing just for the visuals, so I recommend it to at least “play” it with the -nomonsters parameter. It’s like visiting a virtual art exposition. Spectacular architecture and atmosphere. There are so many times that terms borrowed from Lovecraft like ‘cyclopean’ are used and feel gratuitous, but not this time. The structures and spaces created here are really cyclopean and finally feel alienating in ways that few times I’ve seen in my life. It is combined with a brutalist fever dream, with imposing structures like giant needles of steel and rust that extend to the red horizon. It also shows how ‘non-euclidian’ is overrated, ‘too-euclidian’ can be a thing too, the overuse of hard edges and straight lines in detailing everything makes for a subtly unsettling look.
Lt. Typhoon mod
I’ve playing a bit with the weapon/gameplay mod, after seeing in ICARUSLIV3S channel. It isn’t as good as Final Doomer or High Noon Drifter in polish, but it’s decent. The most salient point is the number of weapons included, I’m counting 18, almost of all them with alternate fire. Balance wise, it isn’t as OP as Guncaster, but still more OP as the default arsenal.
Vanilla Doom Plus - Monster randomizer
I like the whole idea of randomizers, and playing with new enemies with new effects or abilities, so I’m always looking for new developments in that area. This one is interesting because it can specify the individual ratio of replacement into each monster category, and it seems compatible even with wads that use their own partial enemy replacements.
It’s here where I resume my attempts of, for once, being able to play all the annual cacowards wads of the past year.
UAC Invasion: The Supply Depot
Supply Depot is a single level WAD on a well realized supply depot / techbase, with lots of cool vehicles modeled in voxels and good detailing in general. I say ‘single level’ but it’s pretty big, I needed almost 2.5 hours to finish it. Despite that, I have to say it’s well paced, it used mostly weak enemies that are easy to kill which contribute to the quick pace, and it has a mostly straightforward progress without strange puzzles or feeling of being lost, which isn’t a small achievement given the scope. It also combines well close quarter battle with a few open arenas and bigger ‘set pieces’, producing a balanced experience.
In definitive, it isn’t what I would call ‘fantastic’, but it’s a very solid and well executed wad in ways that aren’t obvious.
Dimensions of the Boomed
What would happen if you put Quake 1 into Doom. You obtain this.
DotB is a 7-level episode for Zdoom that lifts Quake 1 ep1 art style without any shame. And it’s a good pick, given how great is Quake 1 style, episode 1 in special. It’s incredible how nigh-indistinguishable it can look in comparison with the real Q1, even some of the Q1 monsters appear and the sprites are fantastic.
But beyond the gimmick, Is it good? Yes, thanks god, it’s an WAD episode with very solid level design. The levels are usually homages at first to Q1 Ep1 levels but once you start exploring you will see they are bigger, more complex and with more enemies, like a remixed edition. The atmospheric music btw, is very good, perfect for the game.
Map 04 is the only one problematic, with a distinctive non-linear approach: you have to find and activate 8 different switches, each on in a different area, to get the gold key. However it’s easy to miss the switch and the game will let you progress from the current area to another one without getting to hit the switch. So I got six switches and I didn’t know where were the 2 I had missed, after exploring a bit I got one more, but I wasn’t able to find the 8th one and had to use noclip to bypass the golden door.
TODO:
Dark Universe Part 1
Preacher
Maskim Xul
Struggle: Antaresian Legacy (ugh this is a megawad)
I need you to remind me of all this when the Cacowards come out. Or was asunder a prior year?
Sunder is not included in my list because of Cacowards, it’s an ‘extra’ I guess.
Continuing with WADs…
Preacher
Preacher is a fairly unique project, and you can notice since the moment you start it, and this sounds as menu music.
In fact, this WAD episode has a interesting musical theme going on, where music from a folk/gothic/doom rock band were taken (with permission) and then levels where designed later to made them fit the theme, about sin, a psychotic priest, and perdition.
And in fact the atmosphere is the strong point here, with gothic strongholds, stone and pale green architecture everywhere, desolated outposts, bleached wood, and all wrapped in a moody, depressed, phantasmagorical ambiance with a dark Christianity flair. It’s all incredibly cohesive, getting a striking result with art assets that looked at them individually are so low resolution.
It’s a 9-level episode, but they are thankfully average in length so it doesn’t overstay its welcome (except the last one, but that’s forgivable), and the difficulty is also not specially high, except again in the last level where things get epic.
Gameplay wise, it has a gimmick of always starting with a teleporter which will put you in semi random places in the map, usually in the middle of everything, so the action can get pretty chaotic and hectic.
Oh, speaking of gimmicks… there is a good Blood-related gimmick. I will leave it at that.
Maskim Xul
Another wad, this one a bit shorter than the previous one, where the highlight is the atmosphere. Imagine being in a Lovecraftian setting and being sucked into a strange realm, an in-between world. A seemingly endless Library, that works with rules not known by man, and of a indefinite extension, just brown bookshelves everywhere, in halls and in nooks an crannies, sometimes not bounded by small details like gravity. That’s what it feels like. Being lost, hopeless, in an unknown place. Part of it is the haunting music, and moments without action just exploring, and the meager ammo count also helps the feeling.
Speaking of exploration, in this wad the challenge isn’t only killing enemies. The place is confusing to navigate and there are hidden switches to find, 6 keys to collect, and even a proper environmental puzzle. On the other hand that also can be the drawback of this wad, because it can be a bit to hard to explore, with strange moving parts and little indication of where to go. But hey at least it feels as part of the experience, for what’s worth it.
It also features its own custom weapons (some very original, btw) and its enemies, some taken from Hexen, others their own custom Doom versions.
After the Library you have the second level which is a more library+dungeon+‘fleshy inferno’ type of thing, and it’s here around the halfway point where I abandoned it because damn, it got MEAN. Explosive booby traps triggered by proximity spawning around. Enemies that melt you spawning behind secret doors opening when you pass by; groups of instahit, -faster and more damaging than chaingunner- enemies, duo archviles in places without barely cover. Mostly it’s doable… by quickloading once you suffer the trap, but at that point I lost interest, it was an exercise in abusing the f9 key.
Remind me which engine you are using again?
GZDoom.
It’s kind of the standard, now. PrBoom+ for people who wants something a bit closer to the original and vanilla, more performing but less moddable.
My final (for now) Doom WAD post.
Dark Universe - Ep1
I didn’t care a lot about this 5-level WAD. The gimmick is the setting itself, you are in a spaceship assaulted by aliens, it features a pseudo realistic (for Doom engine terms) ship design and at start you can see friendly marines roaming around, and in general it tries to be ‘cinematic’, with steam leaks as you pass around, a window glass breaking and a imp falling down, a broken hull area where you can be sucked out to space and die, a part where an alien ship breaks in and the aliens start pouring in. You also turn on/off forcefields or use wrecked pathways to access different areas. The level design is usually non linear. It reminds me a bit of Build engine games, or maybe a proto Half Life, being half old school fps, half more modern design.
The amount of action is low (around 100 enemies per level?), there is also an exploration side. For that, a good amount of ammo and health is hidden behind colored doors (in addition of normal secrets), and you have to use the color keys not to reach the exit but to get the loot and be able to survive. But they are never hard to get and even the secrets themselves are fairly easy (and I never got all the secret in Doom maps!).
Beyond that small gimmick, my opinion is that the combat encounters and gameplay are very standard and not worth commenting, and the level design can be a pain in the ass with last two levels, convoluted, non linear and with little sign posting of area differentiation. The cinematic side is… cute, I guess, but obviously it doesn’t hold up a candle to all the the commercial games that also are in that territory.
Struggle: Antaresian Legacy
I wasn’t going to play this. In the screenshots I had seen it looked kind of ugly, with a techbase style that seemed slapdash, the new weapons looked decidedly lo-fi, and I didn’t personally like the chiptune music that you start with. But I decided to give it a chance, and it was a good choice. While I didn’t like the look, it has tight, fast, explosive gameplay. The small tweaks done to enemies and weapons, the level design and enemy encounter are designed to always flow from one fight to another, never stopping. Later, it features complex open courtyards and finally it tries a few levels of slaughter map. Even more impressive is that all styles are well designed, with fun puzzley combat moments to more adrenaline fueled scenes.
The ingame plot is about some kind of alien invasion I guess? Lol The thing is, you eventually start seeing their influence, fighting their (new) troops of blue snakemen and finally assault their world. So in the last third of the episode they use a more barroque style of architecture with pleasing symmetries, good detail, and in general better visual polish, all using a cool looking color scheme. In fact, even the music improves.
Well, the last level is pure bullet hell bullshit which i totally skipped, but the rest was worth playing.
What else to comment… oh yeah, the difficulty. A bit too high for me, once reached level 11. Not by a big amount, mind you. I think the real issue here is the uneven difficulty, I think I found moments in level 14-17 that were harder than level 25-26.
I’m done. I played all the Cacowards of 2018! (and some that I think it will appear in 2019) I played fully 4 total conversions, Eviternity, Antaresian Legacy, Golden Souls 2 and Adventures of Square Ep1+2, just with that it was 120 levels to play.
I would say that in this year, the unifying quality I have seen is having an original, unique theme, and in particular executing that theme with a solid atmosphere. The times of making whatever techbase style map or some vague-looking demonic warrens to kill monsters thoughtlessly and call it a day are long gone, most of the wads here have their own developed idea of setting. Although it also could be a bias of the people who select the chosen wads, of course. Let’s see:
Maskim Kul : occult dusty library from beyond
Preacher: religious dark gothic wasteland
Dimensions of the Boomed: Q1-homage eldritch castles and graveyards
Avactor: dark jungles and mesoamerican ziggurats, savage drums in the air
Dark Universe: scifi survival action/horror in a spaceship
Rekkr: primitive mythical Norse age
GS2 and Adventures of Square: they have their own fully realized cartoon world, of course.
Only Struggle - Antaresian Legacy is the exception to the rule feeling a bit less cohesive, although the developments in the last third give it the a core concept of ‘blue alien world’ that could be also considered as unique theme.
Tim Willits will leave id soon.
Only Kevin Cloud (and Donna Jackon!) will remain from the old guard.
I played Pirate Doom in the last two days. It was good!
Actually it starts somewhat weak. Simple levels, not enough detailing, some of the monster ‘skins’ are almost the same, few weapons… I was wondering if the level of mods was just lower six years ago, because I heard lots of good things about it.
But that’s the first three levels. From the fourth onwards, the thing improves with tons of creativity poured into the mod. Sunken ships with ghosts, a hilarious circus with novel trials for the player, swamps, graveyard, a mansion, the lost city in the jungle with new enemies, the voodoo shop full of tricks and fuckery, it’s all good. It isn’t very long which I think it’s also good, it doesn’t overstay its welcome beyond what the concept needs. Another thing that ends up as virtue is the patience in doling out all the enemy types and weapons, making you have something new up to the third-to-last level.
Icarusliv3s plays the 0.9 version of the almost complete Hell-Forged Doom TC mod. This seems to be a continuation/remake of a famous mod that was never finished, Demon Eclipse. If you have played once with the ‘Eriguns’ weapon mod, well, this is the author, and that weapon pack came from his efforts of trying to do this TC.
There is a new Doom WAD compilation of different authors that look nice, The Mapwich, it’s still on RC1.
-I played Alien Vendetta. Or I’m playing Alien Vendetta. I’m up to level 23. It’s… yeah it’s a bit outdated, in comparison with the wads done on the last five years. I’m sure it was great when it was released. It still has some good levels, of course.
-I played Infraworld Hatehammer wad. It’s an incredible open level designed by one of the Eviternity authors that basically it’s 7 small levels crammed into an organic, natural looking hellscape, but it’s brought down by a few issues. What issues? Well, the normal ones for something that tries to be ambitiously open, the player can get stuck easily sometimes. You have to find 6 golden keys, and it was a headache to find the last two, I missed one because I missed a lift-platform (stupid custom texture that looks like a wall decoration!), and the other one I didn’t notice how there was a trick with some teleporters. And I also got stuck a third time as I didn’t notice a custom teleporter (it doesn’t look like a teleporter…) had been activated by triggering something in a different place.
I also tried some gameplay mods.
-Faspons. Not my favorite, but good enough. You move a bit faster, the weapons are good and switch quickly, the enemies are the vanilla ones but with one alternative fire or ability.
-Eriguns I. A solid weapons pack, without any important changes to the arsenal, except for two new big weapons that you can get by kiling a boss .
-MetaDooom. Ehh, despite actually being all features and monsters from all the Doom series, actually it doesn’t feel very cohesive. Some of the weapons don’t feel good, and some of the monsters conversion to 2d sprites look off, or the animations weren’t any good. Didn’t like it.
-LaTailor. This was… sleazy. The gimmick of different suits with different abilities and effects in the weapons seemed interesting on paper, but I’m not sure it really works. You find new suits rarely, you can’t switch one with another and choose depending of the situation, some of the weapons are pretty weird, and the new armor/health system is original but I’m not sure if it’s well balanced for most maps.
