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Master O

Catacombs 3D

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Are there any fans of that game here?  Also, was Catacombs 3D ever open sourced, like Wolf3d and the Doom family?

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I love the Catacomb 3D trilogy, Catacomb the Abyss is my favorite of the 3.

 

Answering your question about the source code, yes it was released.

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33 minutes ago, Solmyr said:

I love the Catacomb 3D trilogy, Catacomb the Abyss is my favorite of the 3.

 

Answering your question about the source code, yes it was released.

 

I wonder if anyone's made any source ports for it.  My guess is no.  

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29 minutes ago, Master O said:

 

I wonder if anyone's made any source ports for it.  My guess is no.  

Your guess is right, in fact very few people downloaded the source code, almost nobody cares about the Catacomb 3D games :(

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That's interesting but unfortunately forgotten series. I hope someone make a proper sourceport because I prefer to use WASD for moving.

Edited by riderr3

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I played that game a ton on my dad's old 386 and I loved it even though for the longest time I couldn't get past the graveyard area which was like the beginning of the game.  I guess I just didn't care because I thought it was so cool destroying walls.  After I learned how to use the spread shot thing, I managed to get all through the game.  God bless DOS Box so we can play all these gems from the early 90s on modern PCs.

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11 hours ago, Master O said:

 

I wonder if anyone's made any source ports for it.  My guess is no.  

Wrong, there's Reflection Keen (yes, it's a port of Keen Dreams but also supports the Catacomb series). I'm not sure if you can remap keys to WASD though.

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14 hours ago, Solmyr said:

Your guess is right, in fact very few people downloaded the source code, almost nobody cares about the Catacomb 3D games :(

 

Had no idea. Thanks for the update. 

 

Also Mr. Flibble, are you still cross? :]

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Has anyone involved with ECWolf said anything about the possibility of Catacomb support? From my admittedly uninformed point of view, it seems like it wouldn't be as ambitious an undertaking as some of the other games it plans to support.

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Well, the official site says:

The 3D games using earlier versions of the engine Hovertank and the Catacombs games may get supported. However, the focus is to do the games directly based of Wolfenstein 3D first.

This is not very encouraging, but NY00123's work with Reflection Keen should be more than enough, it's pretty much a dedicated source port with high-res support, correct aspect ratio, optional bilinear filtering and some other features. NY00123 is very careful about restoring the code and behaviour of the games, in the vein of Chocolate Doom.

 

2 hours ago, Master O said:

Also Mr. Flibble, are you still cross? :]

^_^

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Catacomb Abyss was one of the first FPS games I ever played.  I still play through the series now and again, it's arguably "bad", certainly poorly balanced towards being too easy even on higher difficulty, but still somehow compelling, to me.  I've even considered doing a mod/levelpack for it (and maybe I still will) but last I looked into it the tools available for making one weren't fully satisfactory (levels were doable, but custom graphics/messages less so) plus the limitations on level design are pretty steep (the engine allows, IIRC, a maximum of 100 actors per level, and that includes bullets and stuff that get generated during play, so if you fill up a map close to/at the limit, the player's ability to shoot things ends up impaired or, on a maxed out map, removed completely.  There's a reason they kept the levels small even though the engine could accept larger level layout dimensions than the standard one they used.)

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2 hours ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Catacomb Abyss was one of the first FPS games I ever played.  I still play through the series now and again, it's arguably "bad", certainly poorly balanced towards being too easy even on higher difficulty, but still somehow compelling, to me.  I've even considered doing a mod/levelpack for it (and maybe I still will) but last I looked into it the tools available for making one weren't fully satisfactory (levels were doable, but custom graphics/messages less so) plus the limitations on level design are pretty steep (the engine allows, IIRC, a maximum of 100 actors per level, and that includes bullets and stuff that get generated during play, so if you fill up a map close to/at the limit, the player's ability to shoot things ends up impaired or, on a maxed out map, removed completely.  There's a reason they kept the levels small even though the engine could accept larger level layout dimensions than the standard one they used.)

 

Since all the Catacomb games are open source, it's not like the engine could not be upgraded, right?

 

We've all clearly seen how far Doom was expanded and continues to expand after being open sourced.  (Granted, Doom is much more popular, but still...)

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I played one of the games a lot when I was a kid.

 

I discovered a cheat where you can freeze time, move around, and throw suspended fireballs. I would set up massive amounts of fireballs directed at the enemies, step back, resume the game and watch them get obliterated.

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4 hours ago, Master O said:

Since all the Catacomb games are open source, it's not like the engine could not be upgraded, right?

Sure, but I have no interest in doing that.

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I guess the "limit-removing" feature could at least be requested for Reflection Keen.

 

8 hours ago, GuyMcBrofist said:

I discovered a cheat where you can freeze time, move around, and throw suspended fireballs. I would set up massive amounts of fireballs directed at the enemies, step back, resume the game and watch them get obliterated.

This is actually a pretty unique gameplay feature which is available with the use of the hourglass artifact. I keep suspecting that the Catacombs games in many ways inspired Herectic and the presence of another item in the shape of a hourglass in that game is not a coincidence. The time-freezing option indeed allows to strategically place fireballs so that they instantly destroy enemies when the time flow resumes.

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Years ago I created (with some additional sprites from Doom Jedi), and still have a near complete re-image of Catacomb Abyss, for Doomsday (like my Corridor 7 TC).

 

heretic-ext-003.png

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4 hours ago, MrFlibble said:

I guess the "limit-removing" feature could at least be requested for Reflection Keen.

 

This is actually a pretty unique gameplay feature which is available with the use of the hourglass artifact. I keep suspecting that the Catacombs games in many ways inspired Herectic and the presence of another item in the shape of a hourglass in that game is not a coincidence. The time-freezing option indeed allows to strategically place fireballs so that they instantly destroy enemies when the time flow resumes.

 

Catacombs slaughter maps.  xD

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I enjoyed all of these Catacomb 3D games. They were simple, but the gameplay was fun and the environments (particularly in the later ones) were really cool. They are similar to something like Wolfenstein 3D, but the vibe is completely different. They are worth playing if you're a fan of really early FPS games.

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On 9/9/2018 at 8:29 AM, Vermil said:

Years ago I created (with some additional sprites from Doom Jedi), and still have a near complete re-image of Catacomb Abyss, for Doomsday (like my Corridor 7 TC).

 

heretic-ext-003.png

That looks awesome!!! Do you still have a copy?

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18 hours ago, Spooner5020 said:

That looks awesome!!! Do you still have a copy?

 

Yep, I still have the files and it is pretty much complete except ammo/damage balancing. It has a couple of bugs in modern Dday though, due to changes and temporarily disabled features.

 

I could email/pm it to you if you are interested.

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7 hours ago, Vermil said:

 

Yep, I still have the files and it is pretty much complete except ammo/damage balancing. It has a couple of bugs in modern Dday though, due to changes and temporarily disabled features.

 

I could email/pm it to you if you are interested.

Absolutely. Email is patrickrobinson5020@gmail.com

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I had this on my first computer, a second hand 286. My friends had 486's with Doom or Wolf and I was so jealous but then I found this and suddenly there I was playing a 1st person shooter on that useless old computer haha. Was mucking around with it through dosbox just the other day too. :)

 

I always thought it would be cool to port all the Catacombs stuff into a Doom 2 wad but never got around to trying. Especially as I've not heard of any editors for it that can extract the textures and sprites out? Plus it was daunting enough for me to try and finish Star Trek Doom and Quest for Glory 4 - 3D Hexen so the last thing I needed was a 3rd Doom project hahaha.

Edited by Blake00

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11 hours ago, Blake00 said:

I always thought it would be cool to port all the Catacombs stuff into a Doom 2 wad but never got around to trying.

Coincidentally, inferion_ from the ZDoom forums had the same idea. Just three weeks ago he published a full Catacomb Abyss total conversion for GZDoom.

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inferion_ was kind enough to link me the tool he used to extract all the Catacomb assets! Woot!

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=61795&p=1074092#p1073883

 

On 9/23/2018 at 12:01 AM, MrFlibble said:

Yeah, I also wanted to mention the Catacomb Abyss ZDoom TC :)

 

BTW hi there Blake00!

 

Hi there! I assume this is the same MrFibble from Dune boards and the guru behind the amazing Dune 2 eXtended. Don't tell me you make amazing Doom mods as well haha?

 

While I don't have any Dune mods I do have a few mods of my own here at least lol.

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Just bought the Catacomb Pack around a month ago. Gotta agree that the 3D games haven't aged well.

Also, I think id Software needs to reboot Catacombs as well as Commander Keen. It's sad to see them get abandoned while Wolfenstein, DOOM and QUAKE all still receive some treatment.

 

EDIT: Just found out that they have an official, but small website and there's a Wiki site dedicated to the entire Catacombs series. Oh, and there's yet another Catacombs 3D source port with OpenGL support that currently only supports Catacomb Abyss, and yes, it's currently active.

Edited by taufan99

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