Dynamite Duchess

[Impie]

 

GET IT HERE

 

Been working on this for a year and figured I may as well post it everywhere. It's a standalone, so just run it in Gzdoom and you're good to go.

 

Somewhere in Napoleonic Sweden, explosives heiress Dinah Wyck awakens in a strange garden, with an equally strange robot maid insisting that she is sick and must go back to bed.

 

Dinah has no memory of how she came to enter Castle Quarantine, nor why its bizarre inhabitants are so hostile toward her. And somewhere in the distance she hears the voice of her father calling to her.

 

Armed only with a cricket bat and a handful of cherry bombs, Dinah sets out on a quest to rescue her father and find a way out of Castle Quarantine...

 

 

GAME INFO:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 5 by Impie

[Biodegradable]

Congratulations on releasing this pretty detailed and elaborate TC, Impie! It looks really nice.

[Impie]

6 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

Congratulations on releasing this pretty detailed and elaborate TC, Impie! It looks really nice.

thanks man. if y'all will excuse me, i'm gonna go sleep for a week...

 

this was originally a YA novel I never published, with a story that needed a lot of work. This version is definitely better, and it's much more suited to something interactive like a video game.

 

I'm hoping somewhere down the line I can use this prototype to produce a fuller and more immersive original game.

[Rince-wind]

Is there a way to disable dynamic music, because having the track changed every five seconds because you spotted an enemy gets really grating

[Impie]

not at the moment, no. sorry. i could probably add a custom option to the config menu at some point.

[Rince-wind]

50 minutes ago, Impie said:

i could probably add a custom option to the config menu at some point.

 

I'd really appreciate that, thanks

[Impie]

27 minutes ago, Rince-wind said:

 

I'd really appreciate that, thanks

Actually another idea occurred to me I could keep in mind: the dyna-music is on a timer, so instead of starting the timer at max each time its triggered (200 tics, ticking down to 0), i could make it additive (ex: +75 tics per activation) so it doesnt happen unless youre attacked multiple times or by multiple enemies.

 

I'll make a couple notes and experiment.

[Cacodemon345]

Mediafire is blocked by my ISP. Please upload elsewhere.

[Impie]

12 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Mediafire is blocked by my ISP. Please upload elsewhere.

Added a mirror download on Mega to the download page.

[Scuba Steve]

When people download the latest Doom TC masterpiece—which just happens to be simply adorable—they often think to themselves, "You know what this TC was missing? Needlessly shoehorned political opinions."

[Major Arlene]

Also, calling this "Castle Quarantine" and setting it in Sweden, when Sweden never even locked down at all, makes this make loads of no sense. Come on.

 

5 hours ago, Impie said:

this was originally a YA novel I never published, with a story that needed a lot of work.

 

Please never write for young adults.

[dew]

Spoiler

"Dinah, dear, I MUST protect you from the pandemic that only kills old people and athsma patients. Let me keep you safe by confining you to an artificial dimension that could cause brain damage!"

 

"How long must I stay here, Mother?"

"Only for a week or two, until the pandemic has settled down."

"A week or two....A week or two....A week or two..."

 

"That's right, you can't protect me. The world is mean, and scary, and bad things happen! But it takes people like Daddy and me to remind everyone that there are -good- parts worth protecting. The fireworks show could remind people of a time when we didn't live in fear! It could inspire them to fight and take our country back from tyrants like the governor!"

Not a yuge fan of rising bigly against the hoax lockdown for Martyred Daddy D.

[RDETalus]

30 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

When people download the latest Doom TC masterpiece—which just happens to be simply adorable—they often think to themselves, "You know what this TC was missing? Needlessly shoehorned political opinions."

To be honest I had zero interest in this TC until I read this, now I'm playing it. It's got something for everyone

[Scuba Steve]

Cool.

[magicsofa]

Looks cool but ye goons are confusing me. Does the product contain shoehorned political opinions or not. Should be a clear line right...

[bigsmoke1919]

really good doom wad i'd say 
cool visuals, fun gameplay and very good level design 
i had some issues with the menu tho 


yeah i really dont know whats causing this but still a very good wad 

(oh and adding a hexen loading screen to your wad makes it even better imo)

[rzh]

Man, Hexen 3 took a really strange turn

[Scuba Steve]

53 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

Does the product contain shoehorned political opinions or not. Should be a clear line right...

 

The protagonist doesn't talk about COVID, but when you play this project, remember you're in a "Castle Quarantine" where "mommy and daddy" keep you safe from the "tyrannical governor" who wants to kill you. It's all pretty ham-fisted and I spent my time rolling my eyes instead of using them to admire the gorgeous artwork.

And before any crybitches whine about "Why r u being political" remember, this project was explicitly designed with a political subtext; the author wanted to express his opinions about lockdowns and quarantines by choosing to insert them into his project, so here we are, talking about politics instead of Dynamite Duchess. That's on Impie, not me.

[Tarnsman]

Looks interesting and has an enemy that's apparently a dog made out of pudding (does weakness to breakfast mean that you eat them or that you throw eggs at them?) which is enough for me to check it out.

[Scuba Steve]

The standalone works fine, but the pk3 version has real issues. It doesn't work properly with Doom 2 or Hexen, even when running as an iwad. Also, artwork for 'Pause' is missing.

[KubaloBlackMT]

Played it for a short bit and found it pretty cool. I can tell it feels different because I died a bunch of times like a newbie (mostly to the Centaurion). Maybe I just wasn't using the inventory items as much, or I'm not being careful enough when fighting enemies. But yeah pretty good.

 

EDIT: Definitely the inventory items!

[Cacodemon345]

The standalone version needs to be mirrored into Mega too.

[rzh]

2 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

The standalone works fine, but the pk3 version has real issues. It doesn't work properly with Doom 2 or Hexen, even when running as an iwad. Also, artwork for 'Pause' is missing.

I'm running it on LZDoom (either the latest or one of the latest stable versions, I can't be bothered to check), if I dragged and dropped it over the .exe it had issues (like ammo only counting as ammo sometimes), if I boot up the .exe by itself and select the pk3 as an IWAD from the launcher it works fine. Also it autosaved when I first ran it (with issues) and when I tried to load that save the game gave me an error and refused to load, but starting a new game worked just fine.

 

Overall, a great TC so far, I really like it. Regarding the subtext of some dialogue lines, I don't really care because it doesn't happen too often (and you can skip most "cutscenes"). I'm only saying this so that people that might want to try it but feel put off by the author's opinions won't get the wrong idea and miss out on this, because as I said it's actually a pretty good mod.

[holaareola]

5 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

 

The protagonist doesn't talk about COVID, but when you play this project, remember you're in a "Castle Quarantine" where "mommy and daddy" keep you safe from the "tyrannical governor" who wants to kill you. It's all pretty ham-fisted and I spent my time rolling my eyes instead of using them to admire the gorgeous artwork.

And before any crybitches whine about "Why r u being political" remember, this project was explicitly designed with a political subtext; the author wanted to express his opinions about lockdowns and quarantines by choosing to insert them into his project, so here we are, talking about politics instead of Dynamite Duchess. That's on Impie, not me.

Yeah it's called Castle Quarantine and confinement is a theme (dad's in prison, you're in the castle)... but quarantine's referenced in loads of things these days. The other stuff feels like typical tropes for this kind of setting. Are you bringing in history with the poster? Didn't see anything in the actual content worth getting exercised about.

 

 

Anyway, I had a go and loved the art style and general tone. Attacking enemies with 'breakfast', great (in principle, I never got hold of more than the cricket bat). Love the monster designs and the solid *thwuck* of said bat's alt fire. Have you done all of this yourself?!

 

Unfortunately I ended up in the hedge labyrinth almost immediately. I don't know if players ever really like mazes. At least the theme works here and we've got an automap, but it's front loading your game with weak content IMO. Anyway, it was fun and the difficulty was bang on UV, if you don't pay attention you are dead, it was right in the sweet spot for me. But then I got to the Rose Mother and had a truly horrible boss fight which, after posting her my few explosives, mostly involved circle-strafing round the stairs slipping one whack in between each projectile spurts for so long I got bored, stuck god mode on and just stood there hitting it until it was over.

 

Anyway, once that was done the mansion area looked absolutely great and I LOVE those vitriola enemies. The frantic bowing before an attack is so characterful, and I was enjoying running around the halls until.... I get locked into a room with the Handmother, used all my fireworks and cricket balls up and yup, I suppose I'm faced with another interminable melee slog. At that point I quit.

 

I reckon you've got something here, but man I can't take the boss fights.

[dew]

42 minutes ago, holaareola said:

Yeah it's called Castle Quarantine and confinement is a theme (dad's in prison, you're in the castle)... but quarantine's referenced in loads of things these days. The other stuff feels like typical tropes for this kind of setting. Are you bringing in history with the poster? Didn't see anything in the actual content worth getting exercised about.

You're being wilfully ignorant and it's not a pretty sight. You decided to disregard that I quoted from actual game dialogues. Author is without a doubt commenting on covid lockdows and how cucked the civilization is because we let ourselves get locked in our rooms instead of, you know, fighting for our right to cull the old & weak. The name of the game is some wuhan flu replacement as means for population control by whoever you insert as the "Governor". Gretchen Withmer, perhaps?

 

You're free to ingore the context and enjoy the mod without its politics, but not to chastise people who actually use their fucking brain.

[holaareola]

19 minutes ago, dew said:

You're being wilfully ignorant and it's not a pretty sight. You decided to disregard that I quoted from actual game dialogues. Author is without a doubt commenting on covid lockdows and how cucked the civilization is because we let ourselves get locked in our rooms instead of, you know, fighting for our right to cull the old & weak. The name of the game is some wuhan flu replacement as means for population control by whoever you insert as the "Governor". Gretchen Withmer, perhaps?

 

You're free to ingore the context and enjoy the mod without its politics, but not to chastise people who actually use their fucking brain.

Chastise? I don't think what I wrote was anywhere near that.

 

Wilfully ignorant? 'You decided to disregard', hah, get a load of you! I went back and looked at your post, your dialog is in a spoiler tag I didn't read. I wrote from what I came across in the game. The crazy thing is that we're probably completely in agreement about lockdown policy and the disregard for the elderly in society, but this totally polarised, bad-faith projecting trigger-wire style attitude that is everywhere these days has got you spouting off at me. Dear god. You're probably lovely in real life. //edit: i mean that btw. I think the internet is fucking horrible for this. I so rarely have such bad interactions with people in person.

[Tarnsman]

Played a couple of hours. Really enjoying this. Almost everything is fantastic and I love the general tone of whimsy and interconnectedness of the manor.

 

Only complaint is the story, subject matter completely removed, the story portions kill the flow and suffer from Doom just being a bad medium for it. I like the ghost sprites and the idea of following a story but it might be better as a more minimalist thing that's very abstract and less traditionally told.

[dew]

I apologize, you're merely ignorant. Wilfullness doesn't apply to you, because you were making comments about the mod's context without knowing it. Now if you're going to continue to cry how mean I am to you because you're lagging behind in understanding, we'll have to reevaluate the "bad-faith" part.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

1 hour ago, dew said:

I apologize, you're merely ignorant. Wilfullness doesn't apply to you, because you were making comments about the mod's context without knowing it. Now if you're going to continue to cry how mean I am to you because you're lagging behind in understanding, we'll have to reevaluate the "bad-faith" part.

 

Opinion 1 (to @dew)

@holaareola didn't post anything to deserve this kind of response. I get what you're saying but the stupidity within this mod isn't worth either one of you guys arguing with each other. I also missed your spoiler post at first.

 

Opinion 2 (to @Impie)

This is what happens when you shoehorn hamfisted and shitty political opinions into your project. You said the project was originally a YA novel, but your style of writing and politics seems more appropriate for a lobotomized three year old. Which leads me to...

 

Opinion 3 (also for @Impie)

You totally knew everything was going to go down like this, and this is just an elaborate way to troll people with half a brain who disagree with your (immature, shallow, poorly written, heavy-handed) bullshit political opinions nobody wants to hear about.

Edited June 6 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[Revae]

Is this thread the registration form for the "who can be the biggest asshole" award? Impie didn't do anything to deserve half of this shit, so far as I've seen.