LEGACY OF RUST - overall thoughts?

[Gez]

50 minutes ago, Lizardcommando said:

Then again, I am also using a slightly older version of GZDoom so that might have something to do with it.

You lose on the splash damage. On the plus side, that means you can use it point blank.

 

But even without the splash damage, it's still just as much DPS as the plasma rifle.

 

You also lose on some custom sounds, like the whole scar gate opening sequence.

Just now, neubejiita said:

No info on any new linetypes yet?

I don't believe any have been used in Legorust.

[Lizardcommando]

I think there's still splash damage with the flamethrower and that flaming Hell Knight's fireballs, it's just that the splash damage radius is super tiny as far as I could tell. I noticed that the obituary said I had killed myself when I blasted the flamethrower in an imp's face when I was right next to it.

[Gez]

42 minutes ago, Lizardcommando said:

I think there's still splash damage with the flamethrower and that flaming Hell Knight's fireballs, it's just that the splash damage radius is super tiny as far as I could tell. I noticed that the obituary said I had killed myself when I blasted the flamethrower in an imp's face when I was right next to it.

Yes, the bug is that the radius parameter was interpreted as a fixed point value and not as an integer. The burn radius is 64, so as fixed point that was 64/65536, or 0.0009765625 map units. Super tiny indeed.

 

Again, if you get the August 26 build or any later from here, both of the MBF21 bugs constated in Legorust have been fixed now.

[Master O]

I got a question for loading Legacy of Rust in GZdoom.  So if I wanted to create a shortcut, would the command be:

 

gzdoom.exe -iwad doom2.wad -file id1.wad id1-weap.wad

 

or is the id1-weap.wad file unnecessary?

[gaspe]

I played the 2 episodes and I have very mixed feelings about the whole wad. I think this wad has an identity crisis that it doesn't know exactly what it wants to be. At first I thought it was the inconsistency of the visual themes that was jarring (E1M3 and E2M6 don't help because they totally feel out of place) but there are many other wads I really like that aren't so consistent on that. Here there are maps that are very vanilla and while other maps feature more heavily the custom stuff so LoR sits in a weird spot of trying to be classic with just some cheap nods to the iwads and the new content that feels more like a tech demo of some ideas stitched together. I think that making a vanilla episode and then making the other episode as a partial/total conversion with more thought put into how use the custom monsters would have worked better. The gameplay overall felt very bloated, on top of the vanilla monsters there are also the new ones used and more often than not they just add more meat in the encouters and nothing else. At times it felt quite similar to play a zdoom wad where the modders just put into their maps random monsters taken from realm667.
The new enemies are bad per se, the vassago is the most used and it's also the only that added something really different. The banshee is just bad and it doesn't have its niche in the gameplay, its explosion is very weak look at the suicide bomber of Valiant how this kind of enemy is done right, I guess that's why it was used so rarely. Contrarily to many others I really liked the incinerator, it isn't somethiing to use at point blank like the plasmagun but the flames can easily put the monsters in pain state.
Now for the maps E1M1 and E1M2 are very nice. Especially M2 with the dam even if the combat in the starting area was rather annoying with multiple revs and pinkies while you only have the sg. E1M3 is just terrible, the new theme looks nice at first but the whole level is an endless parade of variations of the same room done with the same 4-5 textures. The gameplay is such a boring slog and like others have suggested you could add more rockets (and fuel if you carry the incinerator from the secret level) so you can speed up the combat instead of having at best the SSG to clear more than 400 enemies. E1M4 was my favourite of the first episode, the gameplay was on point and without much flaws and I really liked the Doom 2 aesthetics powered up with some custom textures. I liked E1M5 overall but near the end it started to drag on for too long. E1M6 focuses on using only the new monsters and sort of forces you to use the incinerator but so it lacks the variety of Doom 2 combat. But the real problem of this level it's the layout that simply isn't suited for having good fights.
E2M1 is like a puzzle that was fun to unravel, it could just be a bit more forgiving with the resources it gives you. E2M2 is another map that goes on forever, it's not bad but it could be trimmed down a bit. E2M4 was (again) my favourite of this episode. Sexy Doom 2 browns all over but it's done very well and I like it. E2M6 is the sister of E1M3, another map with its own custom textures used only here. Personally I'm not a fan of this kind of monotextured levels. Then let's spam the curve tool to cover the layout that it's just a linear corridor to follow. The gameplay at least flow fast and isn't unpleasant like E1M3, there are plenty of fuel around so you can quickly burn every horde that comes. Low point is that in the marble area there's a pack of avs in a place whre you don't have cover and unless you are prepared in advance to shoot them you are dead. I wonder if you actually tested this.
E2M7 has a cool castle scenery and the maze with the vassagos was the best part. The rest of the level was made with the calamity blade in mind that it's really fun to use for the first 2 minutes then it gets repetitive. It's a weapon that it's very limited with its usage and the encounters you can design for it so you can only have mobs in a flat area. Another thing I liked of this level was the storytelling done with arming the missiles and the escape from the portal you came in E1M1, wrapping up the story.

[Gez]

1 hour ago, Master O said:

or is the id1-weap.wad file unnecessary?

It is unnecessary and might even bungle things up since it's a dehacked patch that applies parts of the changes that are already done by the dehacked patch in id1.wad.

[Master O]

4 minutes ago, Gez said:

It is unnecessary and might even bungle things up since it's a dehacked patch that applies parts of the changes that are already done by the dehacked patch in id1.wad.

 

I had a feeling that was the case.  Just wanted to confirm.

[Jimmy²]

 

[scalliano]

This was basically my experience.

2 hours ago, Master O said:

I got a question for loading Legacy of Rust in GZdoom.  So if I wanted to create a shortcut, would the command be:

 

gzdoom.exe -iwad doom2.wad -file id1.wad id1-weap.wad

 

or is the id1-weap.wad file unnecessary?

id1-weap.wad is not required. Just be aware that with GZDoom you lose the PSX fire sky in the levels that have it.

[Agent Strange]

50 minutes ago, Jimmy² said:

...

 

Another banger from Civvie

[Master O]

31 minutes ago, scalliano said:

This was basically my experience.

id1-weap.wad is not required. Just be aware that with GZDoom you lose the PSX fire sky in the levels that have it.

 

Oh, I'm surprised GZdoom hasn't fixed that issue with the fire sky yet.  That sounds like something they should be able to fix fairly easily.

[Gothic]

1 hour ago, Jimmy² said:

-video-

I wonder if Civvie disliked the new music, most of the footage uses stock Doom1/2 songs.

[Antroid]

49 minutes ago, Gothic said:

I wonder if Civvie disliked the new music, most of the footage uses stock Doom1/2 songs.

 

Maybe he was unsure about the possibilty of being copyright struck, even just automatically? Seems like just a safer thing to do than see if these tracks are volatile that way. Keep in mind that I have no idea how youtube's copyright stuff on music works.

[Lizardcommando]

I just finished through Episode 2. I liked it slightly more than Episode 1. I didn't like E2M1 but I thought E2M2, E2M3 and E2M4 were alright. E2M5 was mostly fine from what I could remember. I really liked E2M6 and E2M7 and I wish we had more of those kinds of tech bases in Episode 1. Aside from the inescapable toxic pits and the legions of Vasaggas and the bald Cyberdemons that swarm you in those last two levels, those were my favorite levels. The music was really good for the most part and E2M6 is my favorite song.

 

I did not really like the bald cyberdemon. Kind of a boring guy. Is it basically just a cyberdemon with less health?

 

I got to play around with that new fire BFG a bit more. Ok, it's kinda cool. I like that it can slice through enemies like a hot knife through butter. I like the charging mechanic although I wish you could just hold down the charging button infinitely instead of it releasing its energy at the full charge. It makes me wonder if porting my ZBuster from my Omega Zero mod could be easily done now with that new weapon. Just out of curiousity, does this weapon not have vertical aiming?

 

Overall, Legacy of Rust is a mostly fine addition to the official add-ons released for Doom + Doom 2. Most of the new enemies are alright although I'd definitely make a couple of changes here and there with them. The new weapons are pretty cool. I love the new textures and the repurposed old alpha textures. The music is mostly great. LoR E1 gets a 7/10 and LoR E2 gets a 8/10. This is how I'd rank LoR with all the other classic Doom releases:

 

1. Doom 2

2. Ultimate Doom

3. No Rest For the Living

4. Legacy of Rust

5. Plutonia Project

6. Evilution

7. Sigil

8. Master Levels.

[Gez]

10 minutes ago, Lizardcommando said:

Just out of curiousity, does this weapon not have vertical aiming?

It doesn't; the explanation given being that if it did, autoaim would make the heatwave collide with the floor or the ceiling pretty quickly and it'd be less effective overall. A problem a floorhugger would have avoided, I think; but perhaps that Heretic mechanic is absent from MBF21.

[Canjul]

3 hours ago, scalliano said:

This was basically my experience.

id1-weap.wad is not required. Just be aware that with GZDoom you lose the PSX fire sky in the levels that have it.

And the intermission screens. Though I'm hopeful that GZD will come to support both in time! I know for a fact I've seen PSX style skies in older GZDoom WADs.

[xttl]

I also wanted to apologize if my previous post came off a bit harsh or dickish. Not that a tot of people here (even the devs) probably really care about a relative nobody's opinion about some maps.

 

To say something positive: I enjoyed playing almost all of the maps on sequential UV (1 save / map at the beginning) using kbd+mouse controls except for E1M6 and parts of E2M6 and E2M7 as previously stated. Not too easy but not too frustrating either, not even E2M1.

E1M3 felt like it really went on for way too long (not difficult, just too long) and became boring slog to grind through until the final fight. I remember E2M2 also feeling a bit boring to play at times, maybe E2M5 as well.

 

All the MIDIs except for E1M3's were pretty nice to listen to, though some (not all) really didn't feel like they belong in a violent, bloody, serious-ish (albeit cartoony by today's standards in video game graphics) shooter game about a demonic invasion.

 

I may be willing to take my words back about the AV+Rev crap without any cover (at least without anything more than other monsters) in the yellow key teleport "trap" (quotes because it was completely obvious even seeing it for the 1st time ever) in E2M6 but I'd have to go take another look at the situation...

 

I feel that any situation in a map which absolutely must be known of in advance to be able to survive it is BS design. (I never play slaughtermaps either which some people seem to actually like grinding over and over either). Any situation which can realistically only be survived with good RNG dice rolls is also BS design in my opinion.

 

I'm actually not sure if that situation is either of those though because, like I said, I'm not the best player ever, and I was always more into deathmatch anyway, but was this wad supposed be beatable without savescumming on UV only by the bestest players? NR4TL definitely isn't bad at all, maybe even a bit too easy and boring at times, if that gives some idea of my skill level in single player mode. Sigil 2 felt challenging but mostly enjoyable. I think I could do most of Plutonia nowadays without too much trouble if playing it without pistol only restarts with 1 save / level but I've not tried it in a while. (last time I tried doing it without any saves or even map restarts at all it ended in the map9 exit room, lol, I think that spot is bullshit too though knowing about it doesn't make it any easier and good rng doesn't really help either... when and if I try it again l'll just practice skipping the trigger line which raises the mancubi and revenants on those corner platfoms)

 

I might also have to go and re-evaluate the Tyrants at the very end of E2M7 (I watched somebody else playing through it without cheats and it didn't seem THAT bad...), but I will stand by my words that the AV surprise at the end of E2M7 before the final Tyrants definitely is bullshit.

 

Also, for what that is worth, KexDoom ia certainly the best official port of Doom so far, though I personally hate that capping framerate to 35 is only available via console commands (I suppose setting up a 35Hz video mode would work as well but that comes with its own issues) and is buggy. I'd say uncapped framerate in this port feels better (less laggy) than in any other port I've tried, but I still don't want to use it because it just feels wrong after a few decades of watching the game running at 35fps.

 

(and yes, I know the laggy feel when using even the of worst uncapped fps implementations is just an illusion, they generally won't lag any more than 35fps would though they feel like it because the screen update rate is much faster than the rate at which inputs are sampled and handled, also I've not tried uncapped GZDoom in ages or DSDA at all so maybe they've also good nowadays)

Edited August 31 by xttl

[DBH]

4 hours ago, xttl said:

I also wanted to apologize if my previous post came off a bit harsh or dickish. Not that a tot of people here (even the devs) probably really care about a relative nobody's opinion about some maps.

 

To say something positive: I enjoyed playing almost all of the maps on sequential UV (1 save / map at the beginning) using kbd+mouse controls except for E1M6 and parts of E2M6 and E2M7 as previously stated. Not too easy but not too frustrating either, not even E2M1.

E1M3 felt like it really went on for way too long (not difficult, just too long) and became boring slog to grind through until the final fight. I remember E2M2 also feeling a bit boring to play at times, maybe E2M5 as well.

 

All the MIDIs except for E1M3's were pretty nice to listen to, though some (not all) really didn't feel like they belong in a violent, bloody, serious-ish (albeit cartoony by today's standards in video game graphics) shooter game about a demonic invasion.

 

I may be willing to take my words back about the AV+Rev crap without any cover (at least without anything more than other monsters) in the yellow key teleport "trap" (quotes because it was completely obvious even seeing it for the 1st time ever) in E2M6 but I'd have to go take another look at the situation...

 

I feel that any situation in a map which absolutely must be known of in advance to be able to survive it is BS design. (I never play slaughtermaps either which some people seem to actually like grinding over and over either). Any situation which can realistically only be survived with good RNG dice rolls is also BS design in my opinion.

 

I'm actually not sure if that situation is either of those though because, like I said, I'm not the best player ever, and I was always more into deathmatch anyway, but was this wad supposed be beatable without savescumming on UV only by the bestest players? NR4TL definitely isn't bad at all, maybe even a bit too easy and boring at times, if that gives some idea of my skill level in single player mode. Sigil 2 felt challenging but mostly enjoyable. I think I could do most of Plutonia nowadays without too much trouble if playing it without pistol only restarts with 1 save / level but I've not tried it in a while. (last time I tried doing it without any saves or even map restarts at all it ended in the map9 exit room, lol, I think that spot is bullshit too though knowing about it doesn't make it any easier and good rng doesn't really help either... when and if I try it again l'll just practice skipping the trigger line which raises the mancubi and revenants on those corner platfoms)

 

I might also have to go and re-evaluate the Tyrants at the very end of E2M7 (I watched somebody else playing through it without cheats and it didn't seem THAT bad...), but I will stand by my words that the AV surprise at the end of E2M7 before the final Tyrants definitely is bullshit.

 

Also, for what that is worth, KexDoom ia certainly the best official port of Doom so far, though I personally hate that capping framerate to 35 is only available via console commands (I suppose setting up a 35Hz video mode would work as well but that comes with its own issues) and is buggy. I'd say uncapped framerate in this port feels better (less laggy) than in any other port I've tried, but I still don't want to use it because it just feels wrong after a few decades of watching the game running at 35fps.

 

(and yes, I know the laggy feel when using even the of worst uncapped fps implementations is just an illusion, they generally won't lag any more than 35fps would though they feel like it because the screen update rate is much faster than the rate at which inputs are sampled and handled, also I've not tried uncapped GZDoom in ages or DSDA at all so maybe they've also good nowadays)

35 fps 🤢. 

 

Having played the hell out of the unity port and all the addons bar a few at 60fps. 

 

Playing at 120fps on the kex port on my ps5 is something I could now never imagine not having. 

 

I went back to the unity port at 60fps and wow what a difference. I could not imagine playing doom at 35fps without feeling ill 😂

[msx2plus]

On 8/22/2024 at 8:18 PM, Redneckerz said:

I have no idea how you managed to optimize your post so poorly.

why are you so needlessly smarmy here? somebody is having performance issues w/ software that shouldn't have it and are frustrated.

 

there are absolutely issues of some kind. regardless of display mode and setting, i get regular hitches, lag spikes, and decreases to 30fps for several seconds at a time while doing *nothing* on my fx-8350 w/ 16gb of ddr3 ram and 2060 gpu. it is the first kex release to have issues on my machine and it quickly pushed me away from playing in the port, sadly.

[xttl]

7 hours ago, DBH said:

I could not imagine playing doom at 35fps without feeling ill 😂

 

You can keep using uncapped framerate, but I can't play it at more than 35fps without feeling ill. That's simply the maximum framerate the game runs at and always was, everything above it has to be "faked" one way or the other unless you rewrite significant portions of the whole game engine.

 

I don't know if there's some kind of technical reason for KexDoom to not have a 35fps cap option (except secret console commands which don't fully work), maybe, but assuming multiplayer stays active for a while longer I sure hope one will be added in a update shortly.

 

For single player I see no need to use it any longer since I already played all the new id1.wad maps.

[Redneckerz]

8 hours ago, msx2plus said:

why are you so needlessly smarmy here? somebody is having performance issues w/ software that shouldn't have it and are frustrated.

 

there are absolutely issues of some kind. regardless of display mode and setting, i get regular hitches, lag spikes, and decreases to 30fps for several seconds at a time while doing *nothing* on my fx-8350 w/ 16gb of ddr3 ram and 2060 gpu. it is the first kex release to have issues on my machine and it quickly pushed me away from playing in the port, sadly.

Because the user says nothing about it but comes in with ''I have no thoughts about it'', only to proceed it doesn't run well and that this is difficult to comprehend because Doom is just ''a bunch of crunchy pngs''. This doesn't read like a serious critique, it reads like someone who is trolling if that is what you geniunely believe.

 

Its interesting that you single my post out when others criticize it aswell.

 

Sucks that it runs bad on your rig aswell, because it definitely runs fine on a low end ring with a GPU several magnitudes slower than yours. I am playing in the DX11 renderer, i have to assume you tried the various ones out before you decided to decline on the new release.

[xttl]

For what it's worth, I'm running KexDoom on a 6-7 year old "business oriented" laptop with a crappy Intel GPU  through a compatibility layer (wine/proton) and it runs well enough, except if resolution scale is at 4x or max (at 1920x1080) and I have too much other crap (modern browsers and modern websites suck...) running in the background.

 

correction: Steam was selecting the Nvidia MX150 (this is a dual-GPU laptop) for me despite not explicitly starting Steam or the game with prime-run. Still not that powerful though, it's about equivalent to a GT1030 or even weaker AFAIK.

 

KexDoom does not even really use the GPU for rendering the game view, it's using GooberMan's multicore software renderer from RnRDoom, so GPU performance shouldn't matter a whole lot AFAIK.

 

The CPU on this laptop is a relatively weak mobile ultra low voltage part (i7-8650U) and also from the era before Ryzen when Intel was not improving their CPUs much, so it's not that much faster than a FX-8350 despite being a few years more recent.

Edited September 1 by xttl : added the actual CPU model

[msx2plus]

it's definitely hard to say what the issue is, but that helped me explore some theories - it doesn't seem to be RnR-related, as i was able to play some heavy limit-removing stuff on it at native rendering (2560x1440 on my end) without an issue with very low frame times per core (usually <1ms - love this diagnostic graph btw, awesome). it also lacked the mouse input weirdness  of the kex version (which persists even with vsync disabled both in the game and force-disabled via the nivida control panel stuff). i can only be led to believe that it's an issue of some kind with the wrapper, which makes it doubly frustrating knowing just how well this can run while using next to none of my system resources. could it be something to do with RnR's parallelization and kex's not synchronizing? the fact that the framerate dips at fairly consistent intervals even when nothing is happening ingame seems to point to... something? like? that? i'm 0% versed in multithreading though, so take with a grain of salt.

[Gez]

The alignment of the blue parts in the new techbase blue door texture is slightly off compared to the alignment of the red and yellow parts in the other door textures. You can see on this rave door (spoilered for seizure avoidance) that it jumps from blue to red, and from yellow to blue, but not from red to yellow.

 

Spoiler

 

[eltiolavara9]

played it like yesterday or so on easy (though i did check other difficulties), i was having a good ass time until a cyberdemon showed up (worst enemy in doom like actually) and then i couldnt play the second chapter because no matter what i changed my settings to it was lagging super hard and running like shit, i'm not sure why because every port runs silky smooth and my pc can run doom 2016 (for the five minutes i played it before i got bored)

new enemies are cool, new weapons are very cool, holy shit does this wad pull no punches at all from what ive seen of the final map.

it feels like a modern wad and not a classic doom episode, so it has all the good stuff of modern wads like extremely fancy detailing and the bad like the entire wad being unplayable in harder difficulties unless you go into a cave and train your doom skills for 30 years or savescum constantly, find every secret and hold onto every single resource you get for dear life, neither of which are fun. (to me at least)

also i like that the alpha stuff is used

tl;dr great but too sadistic for me also the port lags a lot

Edited September 2 by eltiolavara9

[Eurisko]

Finally finished it over the weekend. 
 

Thoroughly enjoyed it and I hope we get more in the not too distant future. Beautifully crafted. 
Though, ‘The Spiral City’ can fall off a cliff, it nearly broke me.   
 

[HQDefault]

I've been playing through it on Ultra Violence and I've been mostly enjoying it. A lot of the maps are right on the razor's edge of difficulty that I still enjoy.

 

I have not been able to finish Soul Silo, though. I didn't go to the secret level and therefore didn't have the calamity blade, and when walking into that Arch-Vile room, I didn't have a backpack or any spare rockets. And with those three elements combined, that effectively made the Arch-Vile room impossible at my skill level. I can only kill a maximum of two with the flamethrower before the invulnerability runs out, and there's still another six to go with barely any cover. And it's really hard to motivate myself to finish the rest of the expansion knowing that even if I do get past that room... from there on out it's basically slaughter map territory. And while it's not impossible for me to like slaughter maps, it's still pretty rare.

[TheRealLotica]

I finished the expansion probably less than week after the update was released, so it's been awhile, but overall, it was a mixed bag for me.

 

On the one hand, the levels look gorgeous, utilizing a mixture of old and new graphics to have its own look. The music helps compliment the presentation. I also liked the "new" weapons, even though it took me a little bit to realize that I always didn't have to charge the Calamity Blade all the way to get through some of the later areas.

 

On the other hand, and I'm pretty sure this has been talked about to death, but the difficulty. You can tell that several people worked on the level design because the difficulty is all over the place. The Coiled City, while it looks awesome, is such a chore to play through. Not TNT Evilution-tedious, but it just wasn't fun after awhile. Mind you, I was playing on Ultra Violence, so I expected it to be a challenge, but holy shit. Even Plutonia wasn't that tedious in most cases (At least its levels were shorter). Don't get my started on the last level. That section with all the Archviles almost ruined the whole experience for me.

 

Overall, I think it's a fine episode. I don't think it's as great as the original games, or even No Rest for the Living for that matter, but for a complete expansion, it's definitely refreshing coming from the older content.

[TheRealLotica]

1 minute ago, HQDefault said:

I've been playing through it on Ultra Violence and I've been mostly enjoying it. A lot of the maps are right on the razor's edge of difficulty that I still enjoy.

 

I have not been able to finish Soul Silo, though. I didn't go to the secret level and therefore didn't have the calamity blade, and when walking into that Arch-Vile room, I didn't have a backpack or any spare rockets. And with those three elements combined, that effectively made the Arch-Vile room impossible at my skill level. I can only kill a maximum of two with the flamethrower before the invulnerability runs out, and there's still another six to go with barely any cover. And it's really hard to motivate myself to finish the rest of the expansion knowing that even if I do get past that room... from there on out it's basically slaughter map territory. And while it's not impossible for me to like slaughter maps, it's still pretty rare.

 

Surprisingly, that room on Soul Silo wasn't that difficult for me. I got clever and utilized the Archvile's attack to hop over the wall and I was able to take care of it without an issue. It does require some luck though, so that's not me bragging. :)

[dodgydave]

Is the download on the Epic games store region locked? My regular internet connection and my VPN say its region locked on the Epic games store.