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Xenaero

The /newstuff Chronicles #237

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Two hours before midnight, Sunday the 12th of June 2005 draws near at the time of this writing. (Yes I know i'm a lazy retard, so stop whining about it.) After I weeded through the 10000000000 1994/5 wads uploaded this week, I came out with 5 wads. Slow week.

  • Hell's Bells - Mr "Stick needles" Slug and Dynamicd "in my eyes"
    ZDoom - Solo Play - 7,421 KB - (img) (img)
    First megawad of the week. Just look at the screenshots. This thing looks like it came out of SLIGE. Seriously. There's not one thing of detail in sight. You can pick up one of the easy-to-get keys in the very simplistic, texture-confused, 5 minute to complete each levels and get confronted with hordes of monsters that burst out of 3-5 trap doors in the next room. This is the perfect wad if you wanted to just be a zombie and play it without thinking.

  • Hi-Tech Hell 2 - Alien Tech - Simo "DD_133's computer go boom" Malinen
    Legacy - Solo Play - 3,093 - (img)
    A legacy 7 map mapset. Oh dear. Well, considering that Legacy locks up my computer, you be the judge of this and get back with me. In the meantime, I managed to grab a titlepic screenshot for you all to enjoy.

  • Scythe 2, v1.01 - Erik "Jesus" Alm
    Boom Compatible - Solo Play - 7,913 KB - (img) (img) (img)
    The much anticipated/wanted megawad is finally here, and it's no surprise out of the 5 wads this week, this one takes the cake. I mean, wow, everything is near perfect if not perfect. I dont think this needs describing. Despite the few screenshots, this one surpasses anything i've played this year, easily. If you don't get this now, i'll e-strangle you.

  • Tides of Sin - Dr. Sam "Haha you cant exit this level" Kendrick Ellis III, M.D.
    Limit Removing - Solo Play - 46 KB - (img)
    An E1M8 replacement, with a plasma gun. Ok so dont expect this to run with shareware Doom (ed. WTF? You can't play PWADS with shareware), at least not easily. Another thing is, after you kill the flood of barons and such (which I couldnt survive due to massive lack of ammo) you get a red key, how you go about using that took me 10 minutes of time looking around the level, until I hopelessly gave up and rocket jumped into the 'demon crate' which was the exit. If there's a red color coded switch somewhere in the level that lowers the exit, i'm going to get new eyeballs.

  • Zaero: Episode 1 - Steven "Copyright Infringer" Searle
    doom2.exe - Solo Play - 15,295 KB - (img)
    Biggest wad of the week, and it only had 3 levels. Man, with that filesize you probably would expect more than that right? Well you do get more. There's a whole slew of Quake-styled textures and levels, it's just crawling with demons instead of -insert weird Quake monster name Strogg whatever here-. Ammo and health are in a bit too much of a supply, but all is well, give it a spin, and jam to the metal music which bloated this file to massive proportions!

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Thanks for getting it in on time. :D

I took the MP3s out of Zaero and it shrunk down to 6 MB. Figures. Still worth playing IMO.

Well I just went through the effort of downloading and screwing with Legacy's config program just to try Hi-Tech Hell 2. Legacy thanked me by hard-locking my computer up and causing my speakers to let out horrible buzzing noises, half-way through the opening cutscene. Piece of shit .. :/

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I haven't been able to play Doom recently because I lost my wireless mouse, and my laptop doesn't support anything but USB mouses.

Dammit.

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Meh, scythe 2 is good. Thats about it. No other megawads/levels, no weapon mods, no rescorces, ect...

A week thats dull. Yey.

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Ah fuck i knew i turned mine in too late.

You didn't get to review rf_lost :(

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Scythe 2 delivers the quality that was to be expected.

My favorite is Zaero though (I just like the theme) but was it really necessary to bloat the file with 5 music tracks from Quake 2? If the author had even bothered to comvert them to mono would have shrunk the file by several MBs.

And now to the most frustrating entry of the week: Hi-Tech Hell.

I am also unable to run Legacy well but I was at least able to check this out. (If Legacy likes to lock up try to start it with -warp 1) The level design looks interesting and there's a lot of scripting involved (and a lot of on-screen text in bad English! ;) ) I can't comment about gameplay though.

What put me off immediately was the long description of bugs - which can nearly all attributed to Legacy itself. The worst is that you can't save due to some well known engine bug. Sorry, but this WAD goes right onto my 'infamous' list. What's the point of releasing something that only serves to show an engine's weaknesses and shortcomings?

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One correction to the original post:

Zaero requires ZDoom and is NOT Doom2.exe compatible!

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DD: Tides of Sin works fine - once you've killed all the barons the exit opens up (it is E1M8, so this shouldn't come as a surprise). Also, there is plenty of ammo on this map - use the berserk on the demons.

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Graf Zahl said:

The worst is that you can't save due to some well known engine bug. Sorry, but this WAD goes right onto my 'infamous' list.


WTF? The only bug that I know that wouldn't let you save was related to the savegames not supporting the scripts 100% but that's been fixed for ages. (It was existant in 2002 but was squashed pretty fast)

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kristus said:

WTF? The only bug that I know that wouldn't let you save was related to the savegames not supporting the scripts 100% but that's been fixed for ages. (It was existant in 2002 but was squashed pretty fast)



I just quoted the text file. In which version has this been fixed? For me it crashed, too.

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Grazza said:

DD: Tides of Sin works fine - once you've killed all the barons the exit opens up (it is E1M8, so this shouldn't come as a surprise). Also, there is plenty of ammo on this map - use the berserk on the demons.


Well erm, omg. Because I played the level 2 more times and it still didnt lower when I killed all the barons, there must be one or two straglers.

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As for HellsBells, I had to remove it--it had all the original IWAD sprites/textures/etc. in it. I wrote to the author, so once he/she learns how to do a proper PWAD, you'll be able to download a smaller file to play as a mindless zombie.

I didn't realize Zaero had MP3's in it but since people seem to like the wad I think I'll leave it alone with a warning to the author to cut it out in future wads (it's supposedly one of a series of four episodes). My concern with MP3's has always been size over content but I'm old and tired so I don't care today ;)

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Ty Halderman said:

As for HellsBells, I had to remove it--it had all the original IWAD sprites/textures/etc. in it. I wrote to the author, so once he/she learns how to do a proper PWAD, you'll be able to download a smaller file to play as a mindless zombie.



So that explains why this piece of shit was so large... :D

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I've played HTH2 up to map03 so far, and I only hit one bug, when i tred to run it in skill 3. There's a script that tries to target a thing that isn't in the map on that skill level, some more beta testing would have been in order.

It's a really nice set of levels, some very cool effects. Like Strife like doors. Sweet intro sequence, mission objectives and some really nice use of 3d floors. Quite complex levels actually. The overall game reminds me of my own wad Ni'mrod aswell as Aliens TC etc.

There's a few issues with it, but it's rather moot.
Some teleporters look like they are active while they're not, and some look inactive while they're active. Small things like that. Savegames seem to work, I haven't had any problems anyway.

Graf Zahl: Do you use Legacy in OpenGL or Software when you play it? Cause if you use legacy specific maps in Software it's way more instable than if you play in OpenGL. Although Legacy is quite stable in software, if the maps doesn't use any 3d floors. This is of course on my computers. I can't speak for other systems. But I might add that this have been consistent on all systems I tried it on.

Anyway, great wad. I'll keep this one around that for sure.

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DD_133 said:

Another thing is, after you kill the flood of barons and such you get a red key, how you go about using that took me 10 minutes of time looking around the level, until I hopelessly gave up and rocket jumped into the 'demon crate' which was the exit. If there's a red color coded switch somewhere in the level that lowers the exit, i'm going to get new eyeballs.


Well, I've played it twice now, and I'm not sure how you went about it, but I got the red key before the Baron invasion. I picked up the red key, then used it to operate the red-key switch cunningly disguised by having the LITERED texture either side of it ;) That switch opens a room back down the stairs with another switch inside. That switch lowers the wall around the exit demon crate. Entering that switch room means you cross a line which allows the Barons to teleport in. Once they were all dead, the exit lowered just as it should.

So, in order for the Baron invasion to happen, you must have activated the red switch without actually realising that it was the red switch.

I got Hi-tech-hell "working" and I got to wander round the maps. I'll admit, it looks very nice and the gameplay I saw was also good. However, I got a couple of messages something like "mapthing XXX not found". From what I could tell, these may have been teleport destinations or something. Whatever they were, they seemed to be problematic enough to prevent me progressing legally through the maps, so I gave up. :(

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kristus said:

Graf Zahl: BTW, Zaero isn't using Quake2 music.


Sure it is: From the mission packs.

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IMO it'd great if everyone used last week's T/nC format, not just zarkyb. The pros and cons along with the ratings were a nice touch.

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kristus said:

I've played HTH2 up to map03 so far, and I only hit one bug, when i tred to run it in skill 3. There's a script that tries to target a thing that isn't in the map on that skill level, some more beta testing would have been in order.


In the first map there are also a few things flagged incorrectly, e.g. the landing lights on the runway.

It's a really nice set of levels, some very cool effects. Like Strife like doors. Sweet intro sequence, mission objectives and some really nice use of 3d floors. Quite complex levels actually. The overall game reminds me of my own wad Ni'mrod aswell as Aliens TC etc.


That was my impression as well. But my computer doesn't like Legacy much. :(

Graf Zahl: Do you use Legacy in OpenGL or Software when you play it? Cause if you use legacy specific maps in Software it's way more instable than if you play in OpenGL. Although Legacy is quite stable in software, if the maps doesn't use any 3d floors. This is of course on my computers. I can't speak for other systems. But I might add that this have been consistent on all systems I tried it on.


The problems I am having are not while running the map. For example, my computer tends to hang completely if I enter Legacy's menu and make a selection there. No idea why... :(

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DD_133 said:

Well erm, omg. Because I played the level 2 more times and it still didnt lower when I killed all the barons, there must be one or two straglers.

Had you killed the baron near the start - the one that guards the blue key?

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Graf Zahl said:

Sure it is: From the mission packs.


Oh, well.. I stand corrected then. (I always thought that the exp packs had the same music as Q2, but seeing as I never actually played the expansions..)

Graf Zahl said:

In the first map there are also a few things flagged incorrectly, e.g. the landing lights on the runway.

Hm? Yes, you're right. Which makes me wonder why the TXT states that there's difficulty levels included. :/
Also, there's a teleporter start in the void on the first map. Wouldn't surprice me if that's somehting that cause extra problems for some people. (Knowing legacy)

Graf Zahl said:
That was my impression as well. But my computer doesn't like Legacy much. :(
[/B]

Yes I know. :( I find it quite peculiar how Legacy can be so extremely bad on some computers. I played the Alpha version of the new Legacy though, and it's well. Not there yet. ;) But I have my hopes in that this version when it's released will open up to a new public of legacy users. Atleast so that the wads actually made for Legacy (specially my. :p ) will get a fair chance from the general community.

Graf Zahl said:
The problems I am having are not while running the map. For example, my computer tends to hang completely if I enter Legacy's menu and make a selection there. No idea why... :( [/B]

O_o - Well, that was odd.

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Graf Zahl said:

The first map only works on UV.


Aha! That'll be why I had a problem. I used the Legacy Launcher which warped me straight to map01. I assumed it was on UV, I also assumed that it didn't really matter because the text says difficulties are implemented. However, starting a game myself on UV worked. I haven't played through to that point yet, but I'm guessing my problem of a teleport destination apparently missing on map02 will also be rectified.

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Side note: shareware DOOM *can* use PWADs. In fact, if you think back a bit, you'll remember that id Software specifically requested that authors not make WADs that work with the shareware version - typically accomplished by either placing the level in a map that doesn't exist in the shareware version or using a texture that was only available in the registered version.

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