Incline Dusk, by New Blood Interactive: a frenetic FPS inspired by olDoom and Quake (2017)

[ferratilis]

When this game came out, I was hype about the "boomer shooter" rennaisance. But having played some of them in the last few years, as well as a few Realms Deep demos, I just want it to stop. There's nothing of note there, they can't even replicate what made classic shooters good: gunplay, balance, and level design. Games like Dusk and Amid Evil are decent, but just decent. Ion Fury has some of that Build engine goodness, but again there's absolutely nothing memorable about it, so you could just play Duke/Blood/Shadow Warrior instead. Project Warlock is kind of decent, but I found the visual design too jarring, like it's trying too hard to be retro and modern at the same time. HROT is unique, I guess, but also becomes bland after some point. Also, they turned brown to 11, even Quake 0.1 wasn't that brown probably. Prodeus went the Brutal Doom route, which immediately invalidates it as a classic shooter for me. Is there anything else even worth trying? I want to like these games, but when playing them, I just think I'd rather find some Doom wads or Quake maps to try out.

Ashes 2063

I played that already, it is indeed better than all the games mentioned. It puts them to shame, actually.

 

[Ivan]

I'm due for another playthrough

 

[ferratilis]

 

[Baron Dupek]

It's out and... it's compatible with Half-Life and Quake?
wat

 

[HeatEXTEND]

the Brutal Doom route, which immediately invalidates it as a classic shooter for me.

Spotted the homo.

 

[ferratilis]

the Brutal Doom route, which immediately invalidates it as a classic shooter for me.

Spotted the homo.

Spotted the ADHD zoomer.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

the Brutal Doom route, which immediately invalidates it as a classic shooter for me.

Spotted the homo.

Spotted the ADHD zoomer.

Gotta keep the mind in shape ya know.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

the Brutal Doom route, which immediately invalidates it as a classic shooter for me.

Spotted the homo.

Spotted the ADHD zoomer.

And come to think of it, Doom is fast as fuck, what are you on about anyway? I'll assume you are what the kids call a "hater". Brutal Doom is fantastic and anyone speaking ill of it in any manner whatsoever should be beheaded or at least have their drives ripped from their systems

 

[ferratilis]

And come to think of it, Doom is fast as fuck, what are you on about anyway? I'll assume you are what the kids call a "hater". Brutal Doom is fantastic and anyone speaking ill of it in any manner whatsoever should be beheaded or at least have their drives ripped from their systems

Why are you butthurt? If you enjoy Brutal Doom, play it. I don't like how over the top it is and I think it ruins the delicate balance of the original, which is almost perfect imo. Brutal Doom is fun for about an hour or so, but I'd never commit to a full playthrough with it. That's the long and short of it.

 

[Lemming42]

The big advantage of Brutal Doom is that it'll kick your ass on higher difficulties, while UV on vanilla Doom is still pretty easy.

It's a shame the mod adds so much dumb shit because I'd love a mod that just rebalances Doom's difficulty to be more like Brutal Doom and maybe keeps some of the punchier weapon sounds and animations (if this exists, someone please tell me). I was hoping Project Brutality would be that but they went even more batshit with stupid gimmicks.

Brutal Wolfenstein 3D was the same way, the gunplay was perfect and the new enemy types were very cool but there's so much inane edgy shit and bloatedness added that it just gets tedious as fuck.

 

[Morenatsu.]

SMOD >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> brutal whatever

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Why are you butthurt?

Because I can't stand people going "meh" over top grade produce. It's infuriating and sad at the same time ya know.

It's a shame the mod adds so much dumb shit because I'd love a mod that just rebalances Doom's difficulty to be more like Brutal Doom and maybe keeps some of the punchier weapon sounds and animations (if this exists, someone please tell me). I was hoping Project Brutality would be that but they went even more batshit with stupid gimmicks.

It is heavily configurable...

 

[Lemming42]

It is heavily configurable...

From memory, the things that pissed me off were:
- the gore (which is obviously half the focus of the mod). Partly because I think it just comes across as over-the-top, but partly because it changes gameplay in a way I don't hugely like, with the monsters playing pain animations and surviving after getting limbs blown off and such
- the amount of blood effects, which again look stupid and splatter all over the screen
- the existence of grenades. I know I could just not use them, but come on, who thought CoD-style quick-button grenades would be a good fit for Doom
- a couple of weapons felt a bit too changed from the original, namely the chaingun which is just too effective in BD, which changes it from a staple weapon into a thing you bring out when you can't be arsed dealing with a room and want to just mow them all into paste in the space of about five seconds

If it's possible to configure it to basically look and play like original Doom with better-feeling (and slightly rebalanced) weapons then I'll give it another shot.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Yeah that's all configurable through the in-game options. I agree the player power is turned up to 11 but just regard UV as normal and NM as hard and it's all good. If that's not enough there's always plutonia hehe. I'm a fanboy for sure but the guns just feel so fucking great from the pistol all the way up, imo only E.Y.E. comes close but that doesn't have the targets to really make it shine (love the damage models in BD).

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

When this game came out, I was hype about the "boomer shooter" rennaisance. But having played some of them in the last few years, as well as a few Realms Deep demos, I just want it to stop. There's nothing of note there, they can't even replicate what made classic shooters good: gunplay, balance, and level design. Games like Dusk and Amid Evil are decent, but just decent. Ion Fury has some of that Build engine goodness, but again there's absolutely nothing memorable about it, so you could just play Duke/Blood/Shadow Warrior instead. Project Warlock is kind of decent, but I found the visual design too jarring, like it's trying too hard to be retro and modern at the same time. HROT is unique, I guess, but also becomes bland after some point. Also, they turned brown to 11, even Quake 0.1 wasn't that brown probably. Prodeus went the Brutal Doom route, which immediately invalidates it as a classic shooter for me. Is there anything else even worth trying? I want to like these games, but when playing them, I just think I'd rather find some Doom wads or Quake maps to try out.

I played the HROT demo (or pirated it, I don't remember) and it was just a quake reskin. Every enemy I ran into was taken from Quake.

Boomer shooters have one serious problem and it's not going to be solved any time soon. Modding doesn't exist any more. Many of the boomer shooters I pick up are either Doom eternal wannabes (fuck dodging, learn to position yourself bitch) or they're just like early modders work where they haven't released enough maps to cut their teeth. HROT is a great example of this, where the game feels like a quake 1 mod where the map designer doesn't know how to balance encounters or communicate where to go to the player. That's something that takes an active community of modders and players giving feedback to learn over at least a few months of trial by fire. Steam made the boomer shooter barrier to entry so damn low that all of these should-be-free-mods are being charged for. I can see the exact same design flaws I used to give feedback on to modders but now it's £20 a pop and they're not going to be improved.

Call me a fool but I'm looking forward to when boomer shooter fad dies and we move onto Halo clones instead. There's not many FPS designed around a sandbox and multiple ways to approach the situation. The modern open world game kind of does it but not really. So when the fad stops being PS1 graphics but I added 3 pixel filters over it and moves onto ps3/360 era parodies we have potential to see new-Halos making the most of modern tech to make some ludicious sandboxes. It's also much easier to design open combat arenas and throw in different play things than it is to design well thought out single player levels based on corridors and exploration. It's harder to fuck up Halo with meme versions of it's self than Doom or Quake.

 

[karoliner]

New Blood boss wanted Dusk to be as moddable as Doom and Skyrim: 'If there's not anime big tiddy waifus in Dusk by the time we're done with the SDK, then we haven't done it right'​

News
By Ted Litchfield
published about 22 hours ago
"Dusk Very HD"

(Image credit: New Blood, user MidStedt on Steam)

Before Dusk HD ballooned into a full overhaul of the game's graphics, it was meant to be a companion piece to an oft-requested feature for the beloved 2018 boomer shooter: a full software development kit (SDK) for modders to run wild with, alongside Steam Workshop support for those mods.

"You see what people do with Skyrim," New Blood boss Dave Oshry said in a recent interview. "If there's not anime big tiddy waifus in Dusk by the time we're done with the SDK, then we haven't done it right.

"We're not going to make those official, contrary to popular belief. 'Dusk Very HD.'"

The studio head was (maybe?) kidding when he invoked those most colorful cultural exports of NexusMods, but it came from a very real place of wanting Dusk to have that potential as a modding destination: "People can do whatever they want to Dusk. Dusk HD might have gotten carried away and become this crazy project, but at the end of the day, it's supposed to be a showcase for what you can do with a five-year-old game and the added modules."

To that end, maybe the coolest thing about the SDK is its ability to load map files from a bevy of classic FPS engines.

"Early on, we made the decision that the game would load .bsp files, which are the same levels Quake, Half-Life, and the Source engine used," said New Blood programmer Ben "Zombie" Moir.

"It's kind of insane, because for a lot of different games, you can just copy the maps in and Dusk will load them. It just works."

It wasn't an easy process⁠—when asked what it took to implement such broad compatibility, Moir merely quipped, "What went into it? Years of my life."

Moir seems grateful for the challenge, though, noting that he's now a much more experienced programmer than at the project's start. He also notes that the continuity with FPS history could really set Dusk modding apart: "It means that when people make custom levels, there's all these different tools, and there's all this documentation and videos and references out there that they can use, and this big community of decades of people making maps for other games that they can pull resources from."

New Blood already showcased a Half-Life map conversion for Dusk all the way back at the SDK's alpha release in 2020, but I'm really eager to see where people go with Source stuff in particular⁠—a lot of my adolescence was on that engine, and I want Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines map conversions for Dusk yesterday.

 

[Valestein]

Based.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

To that end, maybe the coolest thing about the SDK is its ability to load map files from a bevy of classic FPS engines.

Holl'up

 

[Caim]

HDusk when?