Stronghold: On the Edge of Chaos released

After what has no doubt been a very long development period, Stronghold: On the Edge of Chaos, Tormentor667's latest project, has been released to the public. This massive project takes the Invasion game mode from Skulltag, and turns it into something much more challenging by introducing strongholds, which the player must defend from the oncoming swarms of demons. It is personally recommended by the testing team that, if you are not an experienced player, playing on an easier difficulty level might be ideal for you. The first full release candidate of the project can be downloaded here. All feedback received will go towards making release candidate 2 (and its eventual /idgames release) completely perfect. Note: Due to an issue with the source port, Skulltag users will have to download this very small patch in order to properly display the new status bar: here.

Just as a little note - I uploaded the wrong version which had a little bug in the INTERMAP. Atm, I am just reuploading the whole files to both mirrors which should be done in about 20 minutes. Sorry for the trouble.

Tormentor667 said:

Sorry for convience.

No problem. :P

Anyway, the headline is grossly misleading. Stronghold isn't really released, it's "just" a release candidate.

Gratz on the release! I'm looking forward to playing it.

Whops, what did I write?!

Back online!

I'm using GZDoom and have that broken status bar, too.

Very nice. Page long review post coming as soon as I've given it a good go. Here's to hoping for an interesting release candidate.

Very cool, I've been looking forward to this :D. Although I can't play it until I get my new computer put together :(.

Oops, nvm

I thought I'd just post some initial thoughts to get the conversation moving so to speak. My major impression of Stronghold is that it takes mediocrity to new heights and plumbs the depths of being completely average. I see a lot of attempts at trying to stand out and failing, like the university student version of a michael bay film intro that serves as the title movie; it tries to be cool and epic and just ends up being hilarious in the cheesiness. Nothing about Stronghold is particularly bad, except for the intermap, but I'm not going to discuss that in this post. In fact, most everything in Stronghold is a great idea that suffers from poor execution, and in fact more than anything else that seems to be the theme of Stronghold. More on all that later, I should go back to playing.

Okay, so I run the file, and first thing I notice on STR01 is that either Skulltag is messing with me or this sky is very poorly designed. Also, sorry but I couldn't really get the thing to run all of that well once I tried to go inside the building, so I can't say much more. Wish I could actually give it a go... ATI problem, I think.

Snakes said:

Okay, so I run the file, and first thing I notice on STR01 is that either Skulltag is messing with me or this sky is very poorly designed. Also, sorry but I couldn't really get the thing to run all of that well once I tried to go inside the building, so I can't say much more. Wish I could actually give it a go... ATI problem, I think.

Looks like you're running in software mode. The maps use OpenGL skyboxes, among other GL-specific features that will either appear incorrectly or not at all in software.

Got it, thanks a bunch. Heh, now I feel kinda silly.

I've been playing it for a bit and I must say I'm having fun. It's hard as hell, and I definitely went with a lower difficulty setting (I'm using Single Player mode). I have to always be ready, alert, and hyped up, not to mention I have to move fast to get power ups, ammo, health, and weapons in between waves. "Stonghold" is insane!! But it's really helping me to improve my "meh" Doom skills...that, and I'm enjoying a good ass-whoopin' here and there.

But it is a lot of fun, albiet quite challenging and chaotic at times with the waves of ambushes. I like the graphics--a nice variety of locales to fight in: some stunningly beautiful, some nightmarish and dark, some otherworldly and strange. The lighting effects are great, as there's a huge variety there, too.

I like the new music: fast passed, dramatic, intense action stuff. The game play is different, heavily involved, and always getting more and more complicated. I guess it's a bit repetative in way because all of the levels are invasion fights, but because of their escalating difficulty and the many different environments to fight in, it still manages to stay pretty fresh and entertaining.

So far, I like it :). To the "Stronghold" team members: good work!

Honestly, I found a lot of the levels to be dull and somewhat boring. The main problem this wad suffers in terms of gameplay is just how poorly designed a lot of the maps are. A lot of the maps only have one or two paths the enemies can take, which usually results in simply camping at one spot during the battle. The worst had to be Twilight. The base you need to defend only has one entry point and although the enemies spawn all around the base, the only ones you need to worry about at all are the ones that spawn in front due to the fact that the ones from the rear tend to just get stuck on the side of the building.

Orbit is another map that proved to be somewhat dull. The enemies only spawn at one point and to get to your base they have to cross a highly exposed bridge. I was able to defend the bridge with nothing but some land mines, a marine, and a turret. I was able to just sit back and relax while the enemies marched straight to their death. The only time I even needed to do anything was during the final wave due to the fact that the pyro barons. What should have been an epic battle was quickly ruined by the devastator I was given which allowed me to kill them with one shot. Pretty anti climatic.

This tends to be a huge problem on the majority of the maps, and the only strategy the player ever really even needs to do with them is spam marines, land mines, and turrets. Hell, half the time it really doesn't even make a difference where you place them so long as they have a clear shot of where the enemies are coming from. I never even had to worry about running out of cash either. Thanks to this strategy as well as the third tier armor, I usually finished the maps with the bonus for taking no damage, meaning I had plenty of cash to spend on more turrets and marines.

Co-op is mandatory for UV!

I thought it was actually rather epic. I've had 2 fights so far, and it's been a total blast.

The levels are atmospheric, the scripting is extensive and really sets the experience apart from any other Doom mod, the music is befitting, the new weapons kick tush, and I've only gotten started!

In retrospect, I think the countdown was most appropriate :)

I'll definitely give this a go with co-op. Maybe even at a LAN!

>>little bug in the INTERMAP
Can i play with this bug? I don't want to download it again...

Btw it's so cool. In coop mode it is probably more epic. I'll have to try later, then i finish this mod in singleplayer.

Craigs said:

The worst had to be Twilight.

Isn't the name a dead giveaway? :P

And I'm sure this is blasphemy/madness/sparta, but I'm not sure if I'll play this except maybe in co-op. I just don't like invasion-style modes.

/me picks jaw up from the floor.

I feel like I'm missing something or this is a huge oversight, so help me out here.

I know this is primarily designed for multiplayer, but I've tried it on single player and now I'm totally stuck. If you run out of lives, you can't re-enter any levels except the training level unless you buy more lives, but if you're also out of cash you can't buy any unless you grind the training mission at 100 gold per time. Of course, after moving through the missions and training level maps a few times to see if I'm really stuck, GZDoom has overwritten all the autosaves so I literally can't load an unscrewed save and will have to either start a new game or grind.

In single player mode at least, why can't you just give the player an extra life so he can continue playing? There's no way I'm starting all over from the beginning. I feel like you've designed it so that I'm supposed to save after every wave and then just reload if I mess up, which feels like I'm cheesing the whole thing, because if I don't I'll eventually be forced to start a new game. That can't be right.

I found a bug.
http://s2.postimage.org/A4H_r.jpg
Also, a first demolisher is so hard to destroy, but next is not so hard.

Melon said:

I feel like you've designed it so that I'm supposed to save after every wave and then just reload if I mess up, which feels like I'm cheesing the whole thing, because if I don't I'll eventually be forced to start a new game. That can't be right.

Ever heard of "Game over?" Being able to run out of lives is just fine, but the game getting stuck at such point rather than terminating is a big design flaw.

Christ, it's like some people are forgetting that you can SAVE YOUR GAME. (Though the lives thing is clearly an issue, and you should definitely be warped back to the hub before the mission you started.)

I'm liking this. It has a professional Strife-era quality to the design and build that makes it stand out immediately. Single-player it's not great fun, but it's not bad either, just a touch slow with all the waves. 10 feels a tad padded-out.

The in-game writing with NPCs seems solid if rather dryly written. I've seen worse, but it's pleasing to see no typical fan-game grammar and typonese. The shop area is great, and the hub system gets a thumbs-up. But it would be nice if there was more changes in the NPC texts to show you're making progress through the missions.

The only real thing that bugs me is, since using Perkristian's sound and weapon sprite mod, going to these new weapon sprites - which are good sprites, but have a very small number of animation frames - is off-putting. They feel very clunky now, and are crying out for extra frames.

Otherwise, between this and Minecraft, I don't think I need to worry about PC gaming any more. Commercial games may mostly suck, but it's relieving to see indie projects like this coming out. Good work Tormentor and the team. :)

OK I think people are misunderstanding me here. The game is sending me back to the hub like it should (more specifically, if I enter a level I get teleported into a "jail" area where all I can do is leave the level). The problem is that there's no way to stop it doing this unless I keep doing the tutorial over and over to earn gold to buy a life. All the while, the hub and tutorial maps are spamming messages saying I'm out of lives but there's no jail on the map.

The only reason why I'm mentioning it here is because it seems like an oversight that the default behaviour for the game leaves me stuck. If it did ZDoom's standard behaviour of relaoding your last save, or Doom's behaviour of starting the level again with all your stuff gone, or even just a standard GAME OVER screen that doesn't let me do anything other than re-open the main menu, then any of them would be fine.

What the hell was the point of adding a SECOND pk3 file to the wad to fix the hud?

Scuba Steve said:

What the hell was the point of adding a SECOND pk3 file to the wad to fix the hud?

Play it in Skulltag and you'll see

Tormentor667 said:

Play it in Skulltag and you'll see

Or ZDoom >= r2542 or GZDoom >= r893. The one in the main pk3 was adjusted to account for a bug in SBarInfo that was never reported.

Play an hour of Stronghold after about 2 hours of the first release on Skulltag yesterday. So far I'm having a lot of fun with it even through I played coop on one map(STR03) so far. Also I like that autoshotgun :)

I really like this, great work guys!