Project Warlock

So in case you’re wondering what this is, it’s very much what you’d get if you somehow fused Doom and Heretic in terms of gameplay, and if you tried to remake Quake’s art style in BUTCHER (which was essentially a 2D sendup of Doom as well). 

I figured to see about giving this little gem some extra love, as it seems to be under the radar right now. 

Beaides, there’s really something about it that draws so much appeal to me. 

ETA is supposedly Spring 2018. 

While it visually looks awesome, the flat levels instantly turned me off.

Reminds me a bit of the old Catacomb 3D games, which is cool.  What's it run on?

PC on steam only for now, but other versions are being discussed :)

Unfortunately there's no music on the alpha, but I may come up with a 12-track sampler of 30 second snippets, it's just that the library is over 60 tracks and I need permission to do so :)

Those enemies remind me of Catacombs Abyss. I look forward to trying this out.

4 hours ago, wheresthebeef said:

While it visually looks awesome, the flat levels instantly turned me off.

It's mainly a Wolfenstein clone, but there are lifts in places like ROTT. It's still fun though I promise.

This looks like something I would enjoy!

6 hours ago, wheresthebeef said:

While it visually looks awesome, the flat levels instantly turned me off.

Looks like a Raycaster engine game with a lot of frills to make it better than the awful standard. With that said, I'm stoked.

I'm intrigued!

I'm not a fan of Wolf3D-type games, but I guess I shouldn't judge before trying it for myself.

I'll keep an eye on it.

On 1/7/2018 at 11:54 AM, Man of Doom said:

if you tried to remake Quake’s art style in BUTCHER (which was essentially a 2D sendup of Doom as well). 

Why on earth would anyone bother to do this except as a joke?  Quake's art style is legendarily infamous and quite literally its worst and least interesting quality, and this game can't even get that right with the 8 bit palette.  Quake has atmosphere and ambiance in spades however...but that certainly doesn't translate well without good audio production and map design and I ain't seeing that here.

On ‎12‎-‎1‎-‎2018 at 4:01 AM, Quast said:

this game can't even get that right with the 8 bit palette.

According to their Facebook page, the art of the game is stored in a 4 bit palette (yes, 16 colors), which is then rendered on screen into 32 bit colors with the visual effects of the Unity 3D engine. I think it's an interesting design choice and I'm looking forward to seeing more of this game.

Reminds me of 8-bit.

On 1/11/2018 at 10:01 PM, Quast said:

Why on earth would anyone bother to do this except as a joke?  Quake's art style is legendarily infamous and quite literally its worst and least interesting quality, and this game can't even get that right with the 8 bit palette.  Quake has atmosphere and ambiance in spades however...but that certainly doesn't translate well without good audio production and map design and I ain't seeing that here.

What a childish, spoiled-rotten-brat type response, in a community I am otherwise quite proud of.

The lighting effect are excellent - I'd say you've pushed your engine way beyond the ordinary, and created something amazingly dynamic. I imagine this game has a very lean memory footprint, as a pleasant side effect of the color scheme.

I must say that I long to see more vertical component - that's my Doom spoiledness :) While watching the video, I just wanted to see some stairs, and a wide' multi-level view. I can't quite release that desire.

However, there's so much action going on that I think I could get used to it. Any chance of a non-Steam release for those of us who can't Steam?

Looks promising. I guess this is what QUAKE would've looked like if it was finished in the Catacomb 3D era.

I actually kinda like the way the alpha footage looks aesthetically, but omg the level/encounter design seems to have no depth and the monsters look excruciatingly non-threatening. As an example, where is the monster to break up the circle strafing of that large crowd towards the end of the video? Height variation too and all that, but... Idk; this looks so amusingly close to something like somebody stole TwinBeast's aesthetic (which I like) and levels/enemies/weapons from "Rescure of Earth."

Still, being in the alpha stages, maybe better levels will come with time and the enemies will be fleshed out more on the gameplay side of things.

So it’s been somewhat confirmed that the levels won’t be completely flat. 

I see one ledge in that pic with more flat, player-level ground persisting behind it, that doesn't somewhat confirm anything lol.

I played the old alpha version of this game back when it was still called "cataclysm 3d" Not bad for a game in unity. I cant wait to try out the final product.

This week a new promotional video was released of Project Warlock. In the video the lead developer gives a short recap on the history of the game and then shows some of the features. He's quite young, but apparently inspired by his dad to work on a game with a '90's theme. Nice! 

Now, you're talking! Wow, this looks fun! I'm seeing some height changes too...not a lot in that demo, but, yeah. And, I'm a sucker for medieval settings, as well. Interesting looking environments with plenty of color variation, lots of neat-looking monsters, lots of weapons. I'm interested! Looking better and better.

The music was fun to make, and so was presenting this video at PAX East ;) I give it two months and you can all give it a shot!

My profile's about me has a pic of the booth. I'm on the left

this game looks awesome, id like to see more games like this on console

@Arno and @Lokust Sun:

Can't wait! Is there any way I can contribute? It would be especially cool to get my hands on some alpha stuff, source, and/or early-release/beta builds!! (I know I'm asking a lot).

FYI: I am predicting that there will be a big interest in making Doom total conversions of Project Warlock :) And, honestly, the gameplay so much resembles Doom TCs that I would be surprised if such a project was extremely difficult. It looks a whole lot like a Doom game (meant in the best possible way).

Are there rotated monster frames, or do the monster sprites always face the player? (One of Doom's strong points is that the monsters all have such rotated states, which allows realistic monster infighting, and great visuals in multiplayer coop when watching another player battle a monster).

For that matter, will there be net play, like Deathmatch and Coop?

Will the data files, such as art, music, sound, maps, and object stats be user editable? Will editor tools be released? (Not that I want to hack up your game, or anything - I'm just excited about it, and deeply interested in it)!

It looks a little more like ROTT than Wolf 3D.

7 hours ago, kb1 said:

@Arno and @Lokust Sun:

Can't wait! Is there any way I can contribute?

Just to be clear: I'm not part of the dev team. Just like you, I'm very interested in this game and I'm following the progress the team makes. Good questions, though.

17 hours ago, Arno said:

Just to be clear: I'm not part of the dev team. Just like you, I'm very interested in this game and I'm following the progress the team makes. Good questions, though.

Oops. Selective reading, I guess :) Thanks for posting about it - that sold me!

@kb1

Answers to Questions: We are a team of 5 and we're almost done, so unfortunately there's no way to contribute as all ends are covered. Thanks though! PAX East had a beta, but I'm not sure if there will be a demo before release date. They don't seem to be talking about one even when I suggested one. No rotated monster frames unfortunately, just Wolfenstein technology, BUT way f-ing better plus there are like 50 enemies all looking great! no net play though we did want to, time won't allow that sort of development over the top of things. I strongly wish things were editable and did recommend the level editor, but unfortunately it's the same deal with time as netplay. Maybe DLC?

6 days on gog. Official release date 10.18.18 !!!!!

No monster rotations?

Seems like it's another retro-nostalgic simplistic shooter. What I mean is, it's way more shallow than Doom, a game from 1993. Way more shallow. I don't know if I stressed this enough: EXTREMELY shallow gameplay compared to Doom because of the simple Wolf3D/ROTT architecture and static enemies.

I base my opinion on the video above. An example is the way he fights the monsters with melee, just standing there and spamming attacks. Even this is impossible in Doom, you have to bait the Demons into attacking and backing off them.