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Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

Curratum

Guest
Bonus item - if you're actually interested in Heretic, here's the best Heretic maps that are out there:

HoF2VpN.png
 

Sceptic

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
10,871
Divinity: Original Sin
That was an interesting take. I've never played PS Doom but the sprites, art style and colored lighting and general lack of darkness always turned me off when I watched videos.
Edit: Posting before your first coffee for the day is bad. I meant Doom 64, not PS Doom...
PSDoom uses the same sprites and art style, so if it's the new graphics that annoyed you about Doom64 you might still enjoy it. D64 did inherit the lighting system from PS, though it also added to it, so depending on how much that's a problem it might be a dealbreaker. I'd suggest just downloading one of the PSDoom WADs and trying it out. I used the GEC Master Edition for ZDoom but there are others around. There's even Kaiser's old condoom.wad that straight up converts the levels without any of the rendering tricks, but that one's not as interesting, as regular Doom music and lighting makes the PS levels look as bare as they really are.

Bonus item - if you're actually interested in Heretic, here's the best Heretic maps that are out there:
I was actually wondering if you had any Heretic suggestions, perfect timing!
 

agris

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,764
Curratum its not easy, and m’lady may not have any tasty fingers to give you for it, but if you want your posts to be useful to others years from now you could transcribe those file names into a bulleted list.
 

Curratum

Guest
Curratum its not easy, and m’lady may not have any tasty fingers to give you for it, but if you want your posts to be useful to others years from now you could transcribe those file names into a bulleted list.

Isn't imgur good for, well, a good few years? I might do a text dump if I manage to remember the DOS commands for dumping dirs to text files!
 

agris

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,764
Curratum its not easy, and m’lady may not have any tasty fingers to give you for it, but if you want your posts to be useful to others years from now you could transcribe those file names into a bulleted list.

Isn't imgur good for, well, a good few years? I might do a text dump if I manage to remember the DOS commands for dumping dirs to text files!
Within cmd it’s something like “dir > file.txt” perhaps double >
 

Sceptic

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
10,871
Divinity: Original Sin
Some comments about GZDoom, since it was mentioned earlier.

There are many things I don't like about GZDoom, but it supports pretty much every single IWAD, has full Boom features, Mapinfo, Decorate, and seems to have reasonable compatibility with Doom Legacy and Eternity and can play WADs made for those. There's something to be said for the convenience of having a one-stop port for all my Doom-ing. So I've been trying to mould it into looking and playing as close to ideal as possible, and I'm almost there.

The problem is the Hardware renderer is goddamn ugly. It took me forever to find how to get rid of the postprocessing filter that gets applied not just sprites/textures, but even to the texts and menus (turns out the option isn't under Hardware Renderer or Postprocessing, but under Textures, even though it's not texture-specific). Graf keeps trying to find ways to fix sprites clipping (first there was a Smart mode, now there's Smarter), but it's still not quite there. No problem I thought, I can just turn to software mode for that authentic look. I even tried truecolour software, and that looks reasonably good, it gives a much more natural smoothing. The only problem with Software is that you can no longer use Sector Light Mode, and without it the lighting in some WADs (especially older ones made for Doom Legacy) is completely screwed up to the point of unplayability.

I'd really like to have the option to turn on the Sector Light Modes in Software. Is that even possible? I tried going through the Wiki but I think it hasn't been update in a while, it references things under certain submenus, when they are now somewhere else.
 

Sceptic

Arcane
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Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
10,871
Divinity: Original Sin
I just finished playing through Playstation Final Doom using the GEC Master Edition that I'd also used to play through Playstation Doom. Took 6h45 on Ultraviolence, 100% everything but had to look up some of the more obtuse secrets (including the bugged out ones).

Comparing both Playstation ports to each other, and each one to its source material, I think PS Final Doom is not as good. Part of this may be that the source material itself isn't as compelling, but I also don't think the conversions took as much advantage of the PS engine to compensate for the weaknesses. The lighting isn't as creative or as elaborate, enemy placement tends towards fewer enemies to probably keep sprite count manageable. This is especially tedious in the Plutonia levels, which were guilty of overusing chaingunners and revenants in the first place, and here some of the other enemies get replaced with one or the other, and in huge packs on large open maps this is just tedious. "Final Doom" is also a bit of a misnomer; of the 30 levels, almost half of them (13) are Master Levels, 11 from Evilution, and only 6 from Plutonia. As someone who doesn't like the latter I can't say I mind though. The game really has the feel of a slam dunk, and I think misses some of the extra care put into PS Doom.

The Master Levels perhaps suffer the most in the conversion. The original compilation was interesting for showcasing very diverse styles from different authors, and I think the centerpieces were always Anderson (Inferno) and Kvernmo (Cabal). Kvernmo's are all gone, probably because they're too large and complex and gimmicky. Anderson's are severely butchered; not so much in geometry, but his design always had a strong aesthetic and at the time unsurpassed usage of textures and colours. I expected the coloured sectors of the PS engine to perfectly play this up, but the lighting is kinda bland and watering down his texturing makes the levels much more forgettable. Klie's and Mustaine's are similar to the originals, I happen to like both and enjoyed them. Willits was always the worst and that's still the case.

The Evilution levels fare better. The PS effects are used to great effect, especially in Crater and Heck. Wormhole's treatment is simplify fantastic; the level's design and gimmick always invited a spookier and more atmospheric tone than original Doom was designed for, and the conversion fully takes advantage of the lighting, colours, monster sounds and music of the PS version to create a true standout. Of the almost 90 levels, I could appreciate and enjoy the conversions even when I didn't necessarily think it made it a superior level (not always worse though; just not necessarily better), but in the case of Wormhole the conversion is without a doubt an improvement over an already good level and is just perfect.

The Plutonia conversions are ok. As I said I'm not that fond of the original to begin with and these don't really improve them.

It's still Doom, and most of the levels are still converted from levels that are for the most part above average. But my recommendation would be to play PS Doom and skip this one unless you're such a fan of the PC levels that you absolutely must play them in their converted form. Except for PS Wormhole, which really is a must see.
 

Curratum

Guest
A little birdie told me that the new Ashes TC will very likely be coming sometime around mid-year 2021. Get hyped, boys!
 

Curratum

Guest
https://www.moddb.com/mods/wolfendo...ds/blade-of-agony-full-release-v30-standalone

BoA 3.0 is out
  • Beautiful special effects (weather, elements, explosions, etc.)
  • Modern post-processing shaders (motion & effect blur, noise, flares, etc.)
  • Much, much more!
enjoy?

As expected, Episode 3 is miraculously much worse that E1 and E2.

I got sub-20 fps on the first level, saved, quit, selected the "lowest / potato" preset from the launcher, reloaded the save - still sub-20 fps.

This is all going on on a PC that can run Red Dead 2 at an average of 50 fps on High.

I want to say "with all due respect for Tormentor and team", the end product is shit, but I am finding it very hard to respect a team who kept stuffing fx and features that destroy performance in the mod despite dozens and dozens of reports and complaints for the abysmal performance from the community over the years.

The fact that the opening mission of Ep3 is some undercover death camp infiltration bullshit that thinks itself a stealth adventure more than a shooter also shows you how far gone the modders are in thinking they're making "art" and a "new game" instead of delivering solid shooting. I honestly could not make it past the first level, both because it ran at around 15 fps, and because of this design.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,158
he fact that the opening mission of Ep3 is some undercover death camp infiltration bullshit that thinks itself a stealth adventure more than a shooter also shows you how far gone the modders are in thinking they're making "art" and a "new game" instead of delivering solid shooting.
After the shit stealth section of the second episode, they do that... AGAIN?
Damn it modders. Truly, that "saving doom community" wad was right at painting Tormentor and such as lunatics.
 

Denim Destroyer

Learned
Joined
Mar 20, 2021
Messages
425
Location
Moonglow, Britannia
Stealth has always been the worst part in the Wolfenstein games. The forest level in RTCW and the entirety of New Order/Old Blood can attest to that. Anyways I didn't bother to finish episode 1 as the weapons felt incredibly inaccurate, plus I had this weird blur effect around everything that made me nauseous.
 

Curratum

Guest
Stealth has always been the worst part in the Wolfenstein games. The forest level in RTCW and the entirety of New Order/Old Blood can attest to that. Anyways I didn't bother to finish episode 1 as the weapons felt incredibly inaccurate, plus I had this weird blur effect around everything that made me nauseous.

I was still excited about this when Ep1 came back way back in the day, but I got to a level in France where there were massive open spaces and dozens of hitscanners everywhere, the framerate went to absolute shit again, because of the massive open spaces and lines of sight and I stopped.

Haven't really bothered with much of Ep2 or 3. I tried 3 a while back from a beta on github or something and the performance was still as shit as it is today, with the full release. It's not just "bad performance", it's just unplayable.
 

Boleskine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
4,045
WaB did a video on Blade of Agony. I might give this a try. Honestly don't recall knowing about this project until a few days.

 

Curratum

Guest
Poor Mac, conveniently only shows indoor areas and none of the dozens of locations and large chunks of levels where your FPS goes into the 20s.

Not a single word about the performance issues either, which makes the whole video seem like shilling.
 

A horse of course

Guest
Poor Mac, conveniently only shows indoor areas and none of the dozens of locations and large chunks of levels where your FPS goes into the 20s.

Not a single word about the performance issues either, which makes the whole video seem like shilling.

He's a northern bastard, don't trust a word he says
 

Boleskine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
4,045
Poor Mac, conveniently only shows indoor areas and none of the dozens of locations and large chunks of levels where your FPS goes into the 20s.

Not a single word about the performance issues either, which makes the whole video seem like shilling.
At 6:27 he mentions performance issues and frame drops, albeit not to the extent that you wanted. He also mentions animation and AI issues after that.
 

ferratilis

Magister
Joined
Oct 23, 2019
Messages
2,224
Gave Blade of Agony a whirl, it seems fun. But one thing about it really triggers my autism, the sound of footsteps. It sounds like there is someone always walking behind, or beside me, the positioning of the sound feels weird. Is there any setting to disable that, or make it less obvious? I remember having that problem with another GZDoom project, Ashes 2063, but I still don't know if that's a quirk in the engine itself or something is wrong with my audio.
 

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