Cavernous

The Chaos Crew sent in a big long thing which they wanted me to post here on DW... never being one to diss a hosted site here you go, but I've tamed it down a little since I didn't feel like devoting an entire page of text to one update.

The Chaos Crew is entering fully into the post-production phase of our"Caverns of Darkness" episode. It's been a long development period,and we are all looking forward to releasing the game.

Through the years, we have playedendless fragfests which bear witness to the Satanic power of theenemies we face in-game. When I was conceiving the plot, I thought,"Well, the game makes it obvious that there's a devil. And if there is adevil, then there must be a God, too." And to reinforce this, we haveadded the element of 'holy places' in which hell spawn cannot enter.In a few levels, ruins of churches can be seen, and they'll offersanctuary from the vile fiends you'll deal with. And for those who lookto the Symbol of Grace, Salvation can be found. All it takes is faith, andyou had best have some, for in the depths of the Caverns of Darkness,before the Gate to Hell itself, you will face the legion of the Evil One'swrath.

I have a request. There is a bit of audio editing which we need done. Ineed someone in the Doom community with access to Cool Edit Pro. If you have the software, or knowsomeone who does, please contact me at jaxndoom@aol.com. You mayend up with your name in the CoD credits...

Whee... BTW, the Chaos Crew's Chris Lutz is one hell of an author, as you'll find out when we release the 10 Sectors WAD :)

God? eww! cant i play as an imp?
anyway, im sure cod will rock, i played the demo and it was quite good, so...

Am I the only one who think that the last paragraph sounds like a request for warez?

No, I think he means he wants to send the sounds to somebody who is willing to edit them and send them back.

Am I the only one who think that the last paragraph sounds like a request for warez?

Not even close. I don't think anyone's dumb enough to ask for warez on a major gaming site.

I became a counselor so I could tell rape victims they deserve it.

Please tell me this is just a really, really, excruciatingly bad joke.

It's the name of a song. The band got lots of songs of the like. Lüt already explained it once that I've seen.

[quote]It's the name of a song. The band got lots of songs of the like. Lüt already explained it once that I've seen.[quote]
Ah. Thanks for pointing that out. Somehow, it's still very scary.

Whoa -- free advertising of my skills on the Doomworld main page. I feel honored.

Anyway, yes, COD is almost done -- I have exactly 10 more sectors to create and place and then the levels will be completley built. There are some minor errors to correct (I spent the weekend going over every level with a unbelievably fine-toothed comb), but that shouldn't take me more than a few days.

Prepare to descend, folks -- it's gonna happen mighty soon.

After Caverns of Darkness is completed, The Chaos Crew is going to be restructuring itself. Some of our curent members will remain on board for what is coming, but a few will be leaving us by their own choice.

What is coming? I'll tell you.

Some time ago, you'll remember the post I made here regarding the Community for Cooperative Game Development. I am about to launch fully into making this community a reality. The Chaos Crew will be the flagship team for the CCGD, and as such, we'll be going professional. With the Doom, Heretic and Hexen source code under GPL, we now have the means to produce something really top-notch. Already, mods like ZDoom and EDGE are introducing features that touch on what the newer game engines have.

Incidentally, the main reason why I want to use the Doom engine varriant for a professional project is its overall speed. Zones load in the blink of an eye, you can crowd a zone with monsters and take only a minor hit to framerate, and that's on even lower-end pentium machines. Imagine the room for improvement we have when designing for mid-range to high-end systems.

In Unreal, my Pentium III 450 bogs down from time to time, and there are polygon count considerations as well. DOOM, on the other hand, SCREAMS on my system, even with tons of monsters. I need an engine that is FAST even on older systems, and to my mind, that's DOOM.

Now, keep in mind that the game I have in mind will not be part of the Doom saga at all. It will not use any of Id or Raven's resources.

I will be needing a coder who is intimately familiar with both ZDoom and EDGE, and can merge them into a fully-functional Win9x application for innitial development considerations. Must have a previously released DOOM engine mod. If you are interested, please contact me at jaxndoom@aol.com.


And just to clear up things, My search for someone with access to Cool Edit Pro has absolutely nothing to do with warez. I need someone with that software to do some audio work for Caverns of Darkness as support for The Chaos Crew. Contact me if you're interested. Instructions will follow.

In Christ,
G. B. Jackson
Director, The Chaos Crew
http://www.doomworld.com/chaoscrew
"We give Order a purpose..."

400th subject! RAPE HISSY!

foreshadowing of the 10 sector contest winner?

...is the band name. They have hundreds of songs like that. I alternate between song titles every once in a while as my info line until I can think of something good/appropriate.

Can hardly wait to play COD, even if the rest of the maps are only half as good as the demo I'm sure they'll kick plenty of butt.

CCGD sound very interesting too, I'll be anxious to see the outcome of it.

...I would doubt it. Ling did seem pretty impressed with my level (actually quote: "HOLY SHIT!") but given some of the competition as displayed in the screenshots, I don't think I can take home the gold. I assume that it must be pretty tough for the judges to come to similar conclusions, actually; I would guess that the probability of even 2 of the judges coming to the same conclusion for the #1 level is low. I imagine that the winning level might be the top pick of one judge and appear in the top 3 or 10 of the rest.

Still, I if DO win, you heard it here first...

Actually, so far, 2 of the judges have picked the same WAD for their number one pick... I'm not telling what it is though :)

Heh. I'm sure you won. In fact, I'll bet you a Voodoo5 you won. How about it :)

Can hardly wait to play COD, even if the rest of the maps are only half as good as the demo I'm sure they'll kick plenty of butt.

While I am a Chaos Crew member, I am a completely honest man. And before God, I swear to you that first level (the one in the demo) doesn't come even remotely close to the later levels in terms of design quality. Money back guaranteed :-)

I actually was somewhat embarrassed about releasing the first level as a demo; it was perhaps okay (I knew it wasn't my best work -- it was my first effort with the new BOOM effects), but is hardly indicative of some of the later levels. And I am not just talking about me -- though the quality of my levels definitely improve, you should see Nokturnus's and Emil's levels. Two words: KICK ASS.

By the way, the levels are now complete -- I uploaded them to Joel for inclusion in the final .WAD...

Wow, if that all holds true, you may get my first 10-overall review :)

What I liked about the first map; I can see where you might have wanted to improve some of the stuff, but I liked the variety of places it seemed to cover. Usually you get something like that split into 2 or 3 levels. It had a good atmosphere to it.

I'm going to be seeing them, and about 130 other bands in a week or so at metalfest here in southern cali.. That should be .. Interesting.. Just thought I'd point that out, heh. Maybe they'll play "Religious Vomit" or something.

Nice! I missed them here a few weeks ago ;( No money.

I remember hearing about Seth throwing his mic stand into the crowd and hitting some dumb girl on the head after one show and she tried to sue him, and he didn't show up to court so she dropped the charges. He got quoted in some magazine "She was stupid".

Just thought that was interesting. Sometimes I have a hard time deciding whether Seth or Cliff Yablonski is cooler.

Does COD still use this modified Boom engine?

Tarin - Yes, Caverns of Darkness uses (a now heavily) modified MBF engine, to which we have added some cool new triggers, sector types, things, etc. There isn't anything terrifically amazing in there -- the true DOOM purists prefer faking room-over-room stuff -- but we have done some cool things (like, don't fall from too high a place...)

Does it have high screen resolution support?

Yes, the COD engine runs in both 320x200 and 640x400 - it's an MBF port.

I really hope you're at least trying or making it possible to have it ported to other OS'es such as Linux/BSD, you already have the source, ZDoom is already ported, what's to stop you? It'd be so sad and .. typical, if there was yet another DOOM version for Windows only.

MBF, and hence the COD engine, are DOS, not Windows. So nyaah =p

MBF, and hence the COD engine, are DOS, not Windows. So nyaah =p

True. I have no idea where he got the ZDoom/Windows thing from. I started the CoD engine in (I think - 'twas a loooong time ago) Boom, but switched it to MBF when it was finally released. It's never had anything to do with ZDoom.

I really hope you're at least trying or making it possible to have it ported to other OS'es such as Linux/BSD, you already have the source, ZDoom is already ported, what's to stop you? It'd be so sad and .. typical, if there was yet another DOOM version for Windows only.

As I said above - the COD engine has always been a DOS baby. How you got the idea it was a Windows one I know not. As for porting it to other OS's (Windows included, for that matter), there are three problems:

1. I don't think the demand is there to justify porting it (with the exception of Windows)

2. I don't have the necessary compilers.

3. I don't have copies of BSD, Linux or any of that, and have no intention of getting them.

The code will be released with the project, and everyone will be free to do whatever they please with it.