Have tried "Rise of the Triad", looks great

Maybe to much words.

I can say, that I am a loyal Doomer (and some of you will know me as nasty Macintosh-praiser), but this game has the potential to keep me away from Dooming for - a few days.


I did downloaded the shareware-version, which contains 9 special-levels not included in the retail-version and installed it on my Mac. It runs -very- smooth under my PC-emulation "Virtual PC", which come with PC-Dos 7.0, much faster than many other Dos-game, included Doom, so I guess its engine is not only a polished rip-off from the Doom-engine.

Then I looked out on ebay and got a new shrinkwrapped CD-box for tiny $7.00 plus $10.00 for shipping to Germany. If you do not own a credit card - most ebayers accept the payment as cash, which is fairly secure on low valued sendings. This game of course was banned in my country.

Funny to see, that the RSAC Advisory index on the box shows the maximum possible of "4", Doom reaches only a "3" (what not automatically makes the game to be better).

It came out in 1995. The game was available both on Floppys and as CD, which also was called "Super Triad". The CDs contains not only what is on the floppys but also 10 more network-levels, a level randomizer, a texture set from the game in 64x64 and 128x128 to include in other games (maybe Doom), a collection of WAV-files (sound is very good in this game) and some pictures from the team (some very strange pictures of Tom Hall, which was one of the founders of id-software, the pictures are much wilder than the ones included in the "Book of Id" from the ID Anthology). These are very nice goodies. Also included are the shareware-versions of "Rise of the Triad" (which means additional 9 levels), Duke Nukem, Duke Nukem 2 (no - not the Duke3D-game from 3D-Realms) and some other.

It has something from a role-playing-game, you can slip into 5 several characters with different abilities. The game claims to have invented the "RemoteRidicule" which allows to talk with friends or foes over microphone whilst playing, but I know that this feature was included in "Marathon" first, which came out for the Mac in 1994 (I started playing shooters with Marathon on my Macs).

The features of the game are really great and (I must confess) there are more than in vanilla Doom/Doom2 (not in order):


- breakable glass

- bullet-piercing on walls, like in Doom-Legacy or (excuse me) DukeNukem 3D and ShadowWarrior

- animated objects in map-mode

- good looking, animated menus

- your enemy jumping down at you, if you hit them with the Bazooka, their bodys bursts in the sky, their flesh "rains" down.

- nice looking weapon sprites (a two-handed pistol and many different rocket-type weapons)

- very nice explosions, flamethrower-traps

- lots of blood and gore, you can see flying eyeballs and bloody skulls/body-parts and shoot on people who have already surrendered and now crying for mercy - what a fun. Beautifully splatter-scenes.

- moveable objects that are made for killing you (rotating cylinders with lots of blades moving around in some rooms and also firewalls.

- there are gliding platforms you have ride to reach places which are important for fulfilling game objects.

- toxic gas and gas-masks that reduce your world-view, giving you a true mask-feeling, including breath-sounds.

- fog-effects

- jump-pads (you can jump high in the air and shoot down to your foes)

- Looking up/down - sometimes automatically. Whenever you are gliding or standing on a platform or a higher place, you will look down automatically when an enemy appears under you so you can shoot him, this works even whilst flying.

-and there is "Shrooms", which is a powerdown that, when you pick it up, will makes you feel like having taken drugs, very phsychodelic with unusual views and sounds.


Go get the shareware from:

ftp://ftp.3dgamers.com/pub/3daction/00archives/risetriad/releases/1rott13.zip

size: 3.5 MB zipped, 9 very cool levels.

Why this is not available or linked on Doomworld? It has to do with Doom since it is from Tom Hall and shares parts of the engine with Doom.

some good sites about that game:

http://www.apogee1.com/rott/ (Apogee´s page)

http://www.gibbed.com/gznews/rott.html (Ground Zero)

Do not get me wrong: I would never, never stray away from Doom, but this is well worth some hours of play.

ROTT's multiplayer is really quite good. However, the engine is a modified Wolfenstein engine and it gets quite monotonous. Notice the floor and ceiling heights are the same through out the whole level. It does have some nice points but I could never play through the whole game. I even did some levels for ROTT that me and my buddy placed DM on; that was pretty fun. One thing I did like was those jump pads. I wish someone would add those to Doom.

What??? You mean you just discovered ROTT? :)

That game rocks! Actually, it's more of a polished and updated Wolfenstein engine imo. But still, it's great fun, especially in deathmatch.

Wildman said:

ROTT's multiplayer is really quite good. However, the engine is a modified Wolfenstein engine and it gets quite monotonous. Notice the floor and ceiling heights are the same through out the whole level. It does have some nice points but I could never play through the whole game. I even did some levels for ROTT that me and my buddy placed DM on; that was pretty fun. One thing I did like was those jump pads. I wish someone would add those to Doom.

Damn :) You must have replied when I was still typing mine up.

Stphrz said:

What??? You mean you just discovered ROTT? :)

That game rocks! Actually, it's more of a polished and updated Wolfenstein engine imo. But still, it's great fun, especially in deathmatch.

I have heard of it before, but the game is very hard to get in Germany and is sold very expensive (if auctions are not canceled before by ebay-germany because it is banned). Did not know that the engine is from Wolfenstein. Interesting!

Wildman said:

ROTT's multiplayer is really quite good. However, the engine is a modified Wolfenstein engine and it gets quite monotonous. Notice the floor and ceiling heights are the same through out the whole level. It does have some nice points but I could never play through the whole game. I even did some levels for ROTT that me and my buddy placed DM on; that was pretty fun. One thing I did like was those jump pads. I wish someone would add those to Doom.

Yeah, the jump-pads are really nice. I have not noticed the equal floor- and ceiling heights, only that there was something different like in Doom, maybe that was because was totally in the game :-).

I was enlightened to ROTT shortly after telling people on IRC I had fallen in love with DOOM (for the second tiem)

'tis neato =)

Peter Heinemann said:

I have heard of it before, but the game is very hard to get in Germany and is sold very expensive (if auctions are not canceled before by ebay-germany because it is banned). Did not know that the engine is from Wolfenstein. Interesting!

Yes, it's hard to get it Germany.
I got it from a friend in Bulgaria some years ago. I also liked it very much.

Wildman said:

ROTT's multiplayer is really quite good. However, the engine is a modified Wolfenstein engine and it gets quite monotonous. Notice the floor and ceiling heights are the same through out the whole level. It does have some nice points but I could never play through the whole game. I even did some levels for ROTT that me and my buddy placed DM on; that was pretty fun. One thing I did like was those jump pads. I wish someone would add those to Doom.

That is true, the levels are boring, but I love all the special effects and weapons and everything else about the game besides the levels. It's a very close second to Doom as far as old-school shooters go.

Wildman said:

ROTT's multiplayer is really quite good. However, the engine is a modified Wolfenstein engine and it gets quite monotonous. Notice the floor and ceiling heights are the same through out the whole level. It does have some nice points but I could never play through the whole game. I even did some levels for ROTT that me and my buddy placed DM on; that was pretty fun. One thing I did like was those jump pads. I wish someone would add those to Doom.

Skull Tag has jump pads. And spring pads.

I must admit, I played multiplayer ROTT even before Doom, and it was great fun. I don't think the engine is technically as advanced as doom (square walls, only 1 floor/ceiling height) but god, I remember running around those levels fragging my friend over the modem with some drunk missles..

And hey, it's by Tom Hall, it HAS to be good, right?.. .. right?

Well... apogee thought that this game would smoke doom but it didn't because of one little factoid - square walls. This sent doomers running to the hills and back to thier vector-based doom map editing.

Another thing that sux is that thy haven't released the damn source yet! so it is hard for ppl to make editors/source ports (gee... like doom did?).

There were some things which I must say are superior to doom (pleez don't flame me).

*The godmode/hand of god is very cool and is quite comparable in power to the bfg9000, but much neater.
*The Firebomb was really cool.
*Bullet weaps had infinite capacity.
*The final boss (in coporeal form) was very impressive, he would shoot back a magical equivalent of what you shoot at him.
Guided missile makes a little ball that follows you, flamewall spurrs an etherral ground spray, etc. Although the way to beat him is not attack him (huh? is that fuzzy logic or what?).I only wish I could make some guy like this in Edge.

I still have the whole package (box, manual, everything) from the day I bought it when it came out. I even have the little known addon pack, Extreme ROTT.

I loved the one level where you activate some grinders in a room with a whole bunch of bad guys, and then watch through the windows as they get chewed up!

I'm something of a first-person game collector, but only the good ones. I have the original floppy AND cd versions of System Shock.

Anybody remember a game by SST called "Cyborg" or something like that? I think it was made by Ravensoft. Mostly robotic enemies, but you could control aiming with the mouse.

I think you mean CyClones, which Raven made between Shadow Caster and Heretic.

sirgalahadwizar said:

Another thing that sux is that thy haven't released the damn source yet! so it is hard for ppl to make editors/source ports (gee... like doom did?).

Actually they have released the source (or information about) for all the data files (ie sounds, images maps and so fourth), the main wad actually uses the same format as the doom wads...

what really keeps me away from playing rott so much is the lack of real mouse aim (have to use pgup/down) and the ability to disable auto aim.

some day i'll probably make a tc containing all that neat things from rott
:o)

PainoMan said:

I still have the whole package (box, manual, everything) from the day I bought it when it came out. I even have the little known addon pack, Extreme ROTT.

I loved the one level where you activate some grinders in a room with a whole bunch of bad guys, and then watch through the windows as they get chewed up!

I'm something of a first-person game collector, but only the good ones. I have the original floppy AND cd versions of System Shock.

Anybody remember a game by SST called "Cyborg" or something like that? I think it was made by Ravensoft. Mostly robotic enemies, but you could control aiming with the mouse.

I got a few of those old ones too - Curse of the Catacombs, Terror of the Catacombs, Lethal Tender <-- which was rather realistic for it's time. I remember it had an actual body damage feature, where you might get shot in the leg and then you couldn't walk straight. There was one I missed out on that was really weird, it has something like living toasters and guys made out of spare kitchen equipment but it had a serious theme. I think the word Doctor was in the title.

sirgalahadwizar said:

Well... apogee thought that this game would smoke doom but it didn't because of one little factoid - square walls. This sent doomers running to the hills and back to thier vector-based doom map editing.

Another thing that sux is that thy haven't released the damn source yet! so it is hard for ppl to make editors/source ports (gee... like doom did?).

There were some things which I must say are superior to doom (pleez don't flame me).

*The godmode/hand of god is very cool and is quite comparable in power to the bfg9000, but much neater.
*The Firebomb was really cool.
*Bullet weaps had infinite capacity.
*The final boss (in coporeal form) was very impressive, he would shoot back a magical equivalent of what you shoot at him.
Guided missile makes a little ball that follows you, flamewall spurrs an etherral ground spray, etc. Although the way to beat him is not attack him (huh? is that fuzzy logic or what?).I only wish I could make some guy like this in Edge.

Thanks! I was driving myself crazy trying to think of that name! I have the damn thing packed away and I was just about to go ripping through my storage to get it!

NiGHTMARE said:

I think you mean CyClones, which Raven made between Shadow Caster and Heretic.

Yeah, Cyclones Ive got that - its total SHIT ill send ya th cd for $5

Stphrz said:

Damn :) You must have replied when I was still typing mine up.

I loved that game. Sure, square walls. But other than that, it was WAY ahead of its time, it features stuff thats games are just NOW starting to feature. While everything thats in doom, was done with build-engine games :D Man, if the makers of Rott made a new rott it would kick serious ass I would love to play rott multiplay sometime is there a way to through IP?

bitstate said:

Actually they have released the source (or information about) for all the data files (ie sounds, images maps and so fourth), the main wad actually uses the same format as the doom wads...

what really keeps me away from playing rott so much is the lack of real mouse aim (have to use pgup/down) and the ability to disable auto aim.

some day i'll probably make a tc containing all that neat things from rott
:o)

So, where is this goodness you talk of?

I wanna rummage through it and make mods for doom (using rott sprites and sounds as a base).

I also wanna rumage though the code and find all the health/damage/misc numbers so that I can both hack the game and make accurate doom mods.

Ancient Warrior said:

I loved that game. Sure, square walls. But other than that, it was WAY ahead of its time, it features stuff thats games are just NOW starting to feature. While everything thats in doom, was done with build-engine games :D Man, if the makers of Rott made a new rott it would kick serious ass I would love to play rott multiplay sometime is there a way to through IP?

Hey man!
Just because I said some bad stuff about it that doesn't mean I didn't like it or think it was better than doom - they both have their own genre-subgroup.

ROTT is good because of all the neat stuff in it like the powerups (and downs!) and weapons + the neat multiplayer concepts.

DOOM is good because not all of the enemies are human - which gives it a sense of intrigue, fighting human targets can get boring after a while. The weapons are of a differerent flavor too - how I have longed to blow a lightning guard across the room with a SSG, and how I have longed to use ROTT's godmode powerup in doom.

-And yes ROTT was ahead of it's time in some areas, but not all. Remember... Quake did come out later that year (lightyear advances in level structure).

I will only say this: ROTT is the only game that I like better than Doom. And a hellava lot better too.

Also, try this:
type "\ecc" in the game to make it possible to enter cheats.
then, type "\ekg". It makes the flying gibs in Legacy, Duke3d, or even Quake look like Telletubbies (no offence, guys at Legacy). After all, I've never seen one with flying eyes, heads, and hands flipping you off.

And ever try RottEd the level editor? Damn easy! And fast.

Plus, I think ROTT is the only game to date that I can think of with weapons such as the FlameWall and Firebomb built in. And not to mention the Hand of God!

Oh, and also, the shareware levels are in the regestered version, but you start them like add-on levels. All I need now is Extream Rott...

Check out: www.classicgaming.com/rott

sirgalahadwizar said:

So, where is this goodness you talk of?I wanna rummage through it and make mods for doom (using rott sprites and sounds as a base).I also wanna rumage though the code and find all the health/d

The txt file i have found somewhere is actually officially released by someone involved in the making of rott, it doesn't have info on the main exe so health and such is not editable however its very detailed about the formats of the images and the format of the darkwar.wad (i think its name is that), the sounds are normal .voc files (as in i think dn3d), think tarin said that the image files can be read by an old doomutil called dmgraph or something :O)

Well, now that I've read that ROTT can be edited somewhat by DmGraph (which is also the editor I use for Kill), now I can start my next TC: RottDoom! After all, ROD is just a small TC, and Kill is going smoother than I expected. And I am serious about the RottDoom.
Now, should I keep Rott2 (for ROTT itself), or should I go with RottDoom and make that the sequal to Rott...hmm....

Well, you will definitely HAVE to use EDGE to do a ROTT TC. I hope you can recreate those awesome gib deaths with DDF. Good luck on it.

I just found out how to make the "Dark Staff" actually work, got the idea from "immoral conduct" edge PC.

I'll just make the projectile "noclip", and each frame will have explosion damage in it (so it will hurt guys, can't use standard attack damage becuz it's "noclip").

Must put a fuse on it so it won't lock the game up or something (fuse=5 oughta work)

Maybe don't ahve to use "noclip", maybe use "inert" or something else not as strong, this would enable me to make it explode on walls. What do you think?