What are you playing now?

Just now, seed said:

 

Never had much luck with either palette tbh (Jovian or PalPlus). Both made the red letters in the hud look almost purple. For me, the closest thing that emulates how Doom looked like back in the day on a CRT is with darker gamma corrections (like in Doom Retro or ZDoom's gamma set to 0.90), which is why I requested this feature for Crispy at some point, and with brightmaps.

Yeah I noticed, just glad it gives the right mood for my PSX nostalgia kick. Hopefully one day we find a good solution on most sourceports. I didn't realize I missed the CRT look until I attempted this.

1 minute ago, Kira said:

Yeah I noticed, just glad it gives the right mood for my PSX nostalgia kick. Hopefully one day we find a good solution on most sourceports. I didn't realize I missed the CRT look until I attempted this.

Me neither, although I'm fine with how it looks on basic monitors, including my own. For me, it's only more apparent when it comes to switches in dark rooms at a distance, I still have imagines in my mind with red lights looking pretty strong since CRTs also enhanced the contrast in those areas.

I think (not sure) expensive monitors do bring it closer to its original look, but yeah, expensive ones. Doubt we'll ever get a solution in source ports.

I prefer 0.75, 0.80 or 0.85 myself. Depends on how dark the scene is or the palette being used.

Wow this thread has never been so active before :D

Recently finnished Kama Sutra. One freaking good sexy oldie plenty of fun, engaging, memorable maps, for better or worse, because Gusta's gameplay was generally exciting and sadistic, specially the first steps into several of his maps, while Method seemed to be more experimental and grindy, with the ubiquitous instapop cyberdemon(s) and large groups of ineffective monsters (not that Gusta's maps didn't suffer from them). Block lines everywhere, half of the times to sacrifice gameplay for realism. Speaking about this, was Kama Sutra ever crowned as the "Queen of DoomCutery"? Because that's how I'm going to remember this mapset. Overall, I still prefer Plutonia 2 quality and savagery, but I see why KS earned its place in many people's heart (aww <3), and it has a ton of replay value. Like I said, it's so memorable. Whoever is curious and wants to try this, be aware that some maps won't work as intended in, say ZDoom, vanilla-isms are required to execute certain tricks (turn infinite tall actors on for map 16, mmkay?). 

Next on the list are Abyssal Speedmapping Session 2 by various authors, and Tyrant by Albatross, couple short wads to use GLBoom+, since KS took me eight days.  

I Finished ICARUS: Alien Vanguard and now I'm gonna play Icar2015 by Eternal.

Then I'm planning to play "No End in Sight". Have been waiting to play this one for so long.

21 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

I prefer 0.75, 0.80 or 0.85 myself. Depends on how dark the scene is or the palette being used.

Seems 0.75 is actually the lowest value ZDoom (2.8.1 at least) allows, which honestly really brings that retro feeling back.

Also,

23 hours ago, Kira said:

Yeah I noticed, just glad it gives the right mood for my PSX nostalgia kick. Hopefully one day we find a good solution on most sourceports. I didn't realize I missed the CRT look until I attempted this.

It appears different source ports have various responses to PalPlus. In PrBoom+ I got these purple-ish red numbers in the status bar, but it seems to work correctly in ZDoom 2.8.1, I can actually make the game look like in the screenshots now.

As for accuracy... the Possessed definitely look closer to how they looked like back in the day based on the various images I still have in my head, other things... I don't know. Really not remembering the Imps looking like this for one.

E: Also, what is the gamma/brightness value used in the images on PalPlus' page? Can't seem to be able to figure it out.

3 hours ago, seed said:

Seems 0.75 is actually the lowest value ZDoom (2.8.1 at least) allows, which honestly really brings that retro feeling back.

It actually goes even lower than that via the console in all G/ZDoom versions, try gamma 0.50 and you're dangerously close to Doom 3 territory. Gamma 0.25 might actually represent Doom 64 on a TV with default in-game brightness.

some DMP 2013 maps on zdaemon sessions, replaying Roger Ritenour Phobos (WAY better than Earth, so far - i'm on MAP02 start) and playing some random wads from the archive (a 1994 map called 11nibig.wad and started a doom episode called #1kill)

Finnished Abyssal Speedmapping Session 2 and Tyrant yesterday, couple fun sets to spend a few hours or minutes depending on your speed.

Ass02 was definitely better than the first one, really dig the sky and E4 aesthetics/theme in general, outside of a few oddities in gameplay. One important thing, in map05 by Alfonzo there's a blue-coded door that cannot be used in PRBoom+, so in order to fix that you'll need to go to Options > General > "Compatibility with common mapping errors", and change "Linedefs w/o tags apply locally" to YES.

Tyrant was super short and relatively simple, mostly orthogonal design and open areas, where danger comes mainly from hitscan. The latter maps became more aggressive in terms of setups. Nice and recommendable.   

Currently not struggling with Struggle by Antares. Got to map 04, really enjoying it so far. Things that I've been noticing: now that revenants shoot rockets in a straight line, it feels weird not to dodge in like U shape or whatever, and also these rockets can clip through walls (!) since they travel very fast. The drill is great, but in contrast to the chainsaw, when you are drilling a monster you cannot retreat and "unglue" its hitbox, like you can with chainsaw. This change may be incidental though. 

Currently playing Eternal Doom, about a third through I believe. I'm taking my time with it, as I... I'm definitely not in love with it. Enjoy some maps and concepts, but it can be such a damn chore to play if you don't know where to go. I've spelt 20+ minutes running around trying to find out where to go next numerous times. It always ends up with me having to look up the map on YouTube to find out that I managed to miss a small button texture placed "randomly" on a wall. Also really tired of sniper chaingunners where you have to be on a really precise spot to see and be able to shoot.

4 hours ago, Malefication said:

Currently playing Eternal Doom, about a third through I believe.

What a coincidence!!! I'm about to play Eternal Doom too!

Don't know how many times I played it before.

Maps 20-Silures & 30-Excalibur are the ones you'll definitely get lost (at least playing from the 1st time). I used to open the wad file on Doom Builder to see where to go next, but now it's all in my head, think I'll not need help this time.

Halfway through Doom 404 right now.

Gotta say, out of all the minimalistic WADs I've played, this has to be the best. It stays very creative with gameplay and monster encounters even with its limitations. I especially liked its take on Dead Simple.

And the soundtrack kicks ass too.

After finishing BTSX Episode 2 I moved to Moonblood (yeah, doing it in reverse again, first Exomoon and now what came before it).

I must say I enjoyed Episode 2 more than the original, which was already great but had 2 major problems:

1) Lack of variety in themes and styles. Everyone just copied each other the majority of time and there was barely anything to create contrast despite contributions from multiple authors. As strange as it might sound, it was too consistent, which reminds me of the maps from AA who were not designed by skillsaw. No one really brought their own ideas to the table or did something to stand out from the crowd. True, deviating from the established formula can often lead to undesired or outright terrible results, but sticking too close to it can have its fair share of problems.

2) Lack of challenge. Sure, it had it's tougher parts here and there and it was certainly fun, but that's all, even though challenging does not automatically mean good. My favorite maps are definitely going to be the medieval ones, those were amazing despite the techbase maps getting an upgrade too.

Glad there were no graphical issues of any kind this time around, which may, or may not have been port dependant. I played the original through GlBoom+ 2.5.1.5 and it had some nasty HOMs in places, but I played E2 in Eternity and it was flawless. Let's see if E3 delivers, I'm looking forward to it.

As for Moonblood, so far so good, but I really should have played it before Exomoon I guess. The nonlinearity and gameplay is there, but so far there's nothing aesthetically impressive, if not actually... looking dated somehow? I shall see how it changes later on.

2 hours ago, seed said:

I played the original through GlBoom+ 2.5.1.5 and it had some nasty HOMs in places

IIRC, you can see HOMs in OpenGL (e.g. at the glowing toxic pits in the cave section from map 12), so that could be the reason if you played in that mode. If not then that's weird, I don't recall any, and I use Crispy Doom. 

6 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

IIRC, you can see HOMs in OpenGL (e.g. at the glowing toxic pits in the cave section from map 12), so that could be the reason if you played in that mode. If not then that's weird, I don't recall any, and I use Crispy Doom. 

Yeah, under bridges in some cave areas, that's where I saw some HOMs in OpenGL.

10 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

I don't recall any, and I use Crispy Doom. 

Crispy doesn't render HOM, only black areas (or flashing red if you type TNTHOM).

5 hours ago, seed said:

Yeah, under bridges in some cave areas, that's where I saw some HOMs in OpenGL.

That's because GL renderers try to render what's beneath the bridge, but there's nothing actually there, so it shows up as a HOM. Software renderers make the flats bleed over it and so don't have this issue.

If BTSX E2 has bridges like this, and I expect it does, then the reason you didnt see any while using Eternity is because Eternity doesn't support GL rendering.

Playing Scythe 2 right now (currently almost completed map 25)

Annnnnd I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I generally like the level layout more than that of original Scythe, but on the other hand I have 2 major issues with it:

1) Evil Marine. These guys can come into play when I least expect them. They are just annoying. Thankfully BFG can put these guys to rest quickly.

2) My main problem. First 22 levels were fine. But map 23 onwards is a different story. Its just Pure slaughter, slaughter and slaughter, which is not my style.

7 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

2) My main problem. First 22 levels were fine. But map 23 onwards is a different story. Its just Pure slaughter, slaughter and slaughter, which is not my style.

The original also had plenty of slaughter-esque stuff in his final episode though, Scythe 2 just ramps up he difficulty in their case. Mostly.

I actually like the evil marines, they're pretty fun to fight against once you figure them out :D.

35 minutes ago, seed said:

The original also had plenty of slaughter-esque stuff.

Only 2 levels in original Scythe are what I would consider slaughter-ish (the one with 666 monsters and the last map). The rest of the maps are quite hard but not are no way what I would call slaughter. And still they were much more forgiving than the map-23 onward maps in Scythe 2.

Infact map 23 of Scythe 2 felt like a big spike to me where the previous maps on UV felt easier than map 23 on HMP.

35 minutes ago, seed said:

I actually like the evil marines, they're pretty fun to fight against once you figure them out :D.

They are too fast for my taste. If one has the map knowledge and knows where they are, then they are not so hard to deal with. But when they catch u off-guard, they can easily dish some serious damage before the player can react.

2 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

They are too fast for my taste. If one has the map knowledge and knows where they are, then they are not so hard to deal with. But when they catch u off-guard, they can easily dish some serious damage before the player can react.

Oh yeah, I can definitely agree here. I found them annoying at first too, but after dying a few times in the process and observing their behavior, they had actually become quite a fun enemy to fight.

2 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

Only 2 levels in original Scythe are what I would consider slaughter-ish (the one with 666 monsters and the last map). The rest of the maps are quite hard but not are no way what I would call slaughter. And still they were much more forgiving than the map-23 onward maps in Scythe 2.

 

Infact map 23 of Scythe 2 felt like a big spike to me where the previous maps on UV felt easier than map 23 on HMP.

That's not how I define slaughter however, if we're talking about difficulty. Believe it or not, you can totally have easier or very forgiving yet still very fun and engaging slaughter maps. True, Scythe has fewer slaughter maps but unless memory fails me, there aren't only 2 maps.

Scythe 2 does get much more difficult than the original did after MAP20, Erik himself warned the players about this in the readme, recommending HMP or lower even if one was capable of handling the original on UV. Its final episode is much less forgiving.

Just now, seed said:

That's not how I define slaughter

Yes different players have different definition of the term slaughter. Some people refer to it as a certain level of difficulty. Others refer to this term as style/type of maps that throw hordes upon hordes of monsters and player has to make really good use of rockets and BFG. My definition is closer to the latter.

5 minutes ago, seed said:

True, Scythe has fewer slaughter maps but unless memory fails me, there aren't only 2 maps.

The other maps in Scythe (even though they are hard) don't really throw u in a "fight 100 revenants" type situation. At best, they can be called mini-slaughter or something.

17 minutes ago, seed said:

Erik himself warned the players about this in the readme, recommending HMP or lower even if one was capable of handling the original on UV.

Well so far I am doing ok on HMP but I did got quite scared by the sudden spike in map 23. Before map 23, I was playing on UV and doing fine. Hopefully there won't be another spike like this. And yes I can handle the original Scythe on UV (minus that staferunning map).

Recently finnished Struggle, good stuff. Beautiful blue scheme if a bit too strong to my eyes, nice flow, good arena-styled combat in general. Honestly, I was initially skeptical about the new behavior of most enemies, if the changes will feel too finicky, specially the new ultra fast projectile. These new dudes weren't that bad: ophidians are the easiest to fight, I wish Heretic ones were this powerful; afriests usually took a long time to kill since they spam projectiles and fly in random patterns, but they were cool and creepy; chaingun elites though, ambushes in cramped spaces particularly, they always obliterated me in one second no matter what I did, since those blue bolts cannot be dodged at close range unless you were already strafing fast enough, and when they came from every angle, instant death, I'm not sure if they're the kind of enemy to spam randomly and expect a player to push through their low pain chance in order to win. Turrets enforce you to stay moving, which imo they were used perfectly fine. Leviathans are funny jackasses. And the final boss, wow, I never seen anything like that. Props for the idea, I had to check a video to see the right strat, took me a bunch of tries but claimed victory at the end, yay!

About the stock enemies, let's just say that after I finnished the wad and replayed something else, I realized how much I missed normal revenants (no, I'm not sick). If you're so used to control homing missiles, then that won't help here. And they're not less dangerous, if anything keeping distance is required. I was disappointed that even when approached to drill one, it could still retaliate, cacodemons too (one bit me twice!), so the drill machine wasn't as satisfying to use against them as I expected. The other changes sort of blended well enough, more or less. I'm not sure why the hitscan from the spiderdemon can barely hit you at close range, if it's supposed to keep the original attack behavior, apart from projectiles. The new weapons were the shit, all of them, specially the grenade launcher, so satisfying to aim at monsters from afar and actually hit them. Struggle delivers a lot from one man, and that gets my respects. Everyone should give it a try, at least, gets highly demanding later though.

So next is going to be Newgothic Movement 1 by ArmouredBlood. I heard good things about it, like it's better than the sequel. Dunno, let's see if that's true, I'm in a better position nowadays. A weird thing, for some reason the midi in map 11 is broken in every soundfont except SDL, which also causes severe slowdowns in GLB+. Heh... 

1 hour ago, galileo31dos01 said:

So next is going to be Newgothic Movement 1 by ArmouredBlood. I heard good things about it, like it's better than the sequel. Dunno, let's see if that's true, I'm in a better position nowadays. A weird thing, for some reason the midi in map 11 is broken in every soundfont except SDL, which also causes severe slowdowns in GLB+. Heh... 

Definitely not better than the sequel overall IMO.

NGMVMT 2 is much more consistent and has no random levels (really, that Cyberdemon fest level lol), but it's also far, far, FAR less forgiving in places. MAP02 can go fuck itself. Good luck here fella, you're gonna need it :D.

1 hour ago, galileo31dos01 said:

A weird thing, for some reason the midi in map 11 is broken in every soundfont except SDL, which also causes severe slowdowns in GLB+. Heh... 

It's 49 minutes long and nearly 900kb :P

On 3/1/2019 at 12:39 AM, Walter confetti said:

playing some random wads from the archive (a 1994 map called 11nibig.wad and started a doom episode called #1kill)

Thanks to you I have something more to play :) #1kill seems good enough. I tried typing 11nibig everywhere and found nothing.

On 3/11/2019 at 11:16 PM, Kepehn said:

 

Thanks to you I have something more to play :) #1kill seems good enough. I tried typing 11nibig everywhere and found nothing.

You're welcome, also i wrote the name of the file i played wrong, is this: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/0-9/11nideck

Also playing WADPAK2, reached E3M1. More downs than ups in this compilation more than it's predecessor, but there's few pretty good maps here, especially E1M4 (777.wad), E2M8 (petkillr.wad) and E2M9 (wedge.wad) is pretty cool...

41 minutes ago, Walter confetti said:

Also playing WADPAK2, reached E3M1. More downs than ups in this compilation more than it's predecessor, but there's few pretty good maps here, especially E1M4 (777.wad), E2M8 (petkillr.wad) and E2M9 (wedge.wad) is pretty cool...

Funny you mentioned it. I had downloaded a few wads recently (to play later) and WADPAK2 was in it! Think I'll try the predecessor first. Thanks for the highlighted Maps, I'll keep an eye out for those!

Wishper of Satan with Brutal Doom.

I've been sampling some of the work of 'Myscha The Sled Dog', aka T. Elliot Cannon. His Odyssey map set was as good as anything I've seen from the 1990s, very challenging and enjoyable, difficult to fault. Also played the single map wads Pazuzu and Diabolos (the latter seems to share some elements of the former, and to be a much changed and improved version of it). The section after the blue door in Diabolos presents the player with a pretty testing experience. All highly recommended.