Something I don't get about Kex Deathmatch

[SyntaxError999]

So when creating a deathmatch lobby, not all the maps are available

in some of the "games". Most notably Doom 2 only has three levels.

 

I've looked at the maps in the IWads and they all have Deathmatch start

points. Why did Nightdive hardcode the game to skip levels?

[Hekksy]

I imagine because most of the doom 2 maps actually suck for deathmatch compared to the maps they included on purpose.

[Revenant100]

It unfortunately appears to be a continuing trend in these re-releases to deliberately withhold existing playable content that's already present within the files, perfectly game-ready as-is, and previously usable for the past decades. Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition has an identical issue where the game is packed with all 80+ of the original multiplayer (and also functional in singleplayer) maps, but this re-release only allows access to to 8 (yes, eight) of them. No explanation was given there either, and no acknowledgement of the missing content was ever made except for the promise they (and the missing game modes) would be added back that was never fulfilled, so the outlook for Doom+Doom 2 is seemingly equally as dire.

Edited November 12 by Revenant100

[SyntaxError999]

On 11/10/2024 at 2:35 PM, Hekksy said:

I imagine because most of the doom 2 maps actually suck for deathmatch compared to the maps they included on purpose.

 

I dunno... I had a lot of fun on a 2 player DM on Map 3

[SyntaxError999]

On 11/11/2024 at 4:25 PM, Revenant100 said:

It unfortunately appears to be a continuing trend in these re-releases to deliberately withhold existing playable content that's already present within the files, perfectly game-ready as-is, and previously usable for the past decades. Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition has an identical issue where the game is packed with all 80+ of the original multiplayer (and also functional in singleplayer) maps, but this re-release only allows access to to 8 (yes, eight) of them. No explanation was given there either, and no acknowledgement of the missing content was ever made except for the promise they (and the missing game modes) would be added back that was never fulfilled, so the outlook for Doom+Doom 2 is seemingly equally as dire.

 

Picking the "Greatest hits" to curate a prepackaged, marketed experience basically. To be fair, most of the maps don't make for the best Deathmatch experience... but let the player decide. 

 

[Terraformer9x]

It is a really weird decision and unfortunately I don't think the maps will ever be made accessible without the use of mods.

 

Tbh a lot of the decisions made with the KEX Doom port and KEX ports in general come off as "we know what's best for the community".

[Quasar]

Reminder I was not on the team and not part of the decisions but there is an inherent tension between provision of matchmaking-based multiplayer and providing a plethora of options. If every player wants to play a different map then no one can find a match and I'm certain this was a factor in the decision. Another is that QA cannot test MP on every single map. ROTT was brought up earlier and I happen to know that was a major factor there as the number of breakages in single-player maps that had to be fixed repeatedly was off the charts. There's no way "80+ levels" could have been tested on time and every single one that didn't work perfectly would have been a separate complaint or even potential cert failure on the consoles.

 

9 hours ago, Terraformer9x said:

Tbh a lot of the decisions made with the KEX Doom port and KEX ports in general come off as "we know what's best for the community".

So was local splitscreen only in the previous port "better for the community?" Or maybe the no multiplayer at all of BFG Edition and several SKUs of the preceding Doom Classic? In the end what's "best for the community" is to keep using Odamex and Zandronum. What's best for the broad consumer base is something else entirely.

[THEBaratusII]

On 11/11/2024 at 6:25 PM, Revenant100 said:

It unfortunately appears to be a continuing trend in these re-releases to deliberately withhold existing playable content that's already present within the files, perfectly game-ready as-is, and previously usable for the past decades. Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition has an identical issue where the game is packed with all 80+ of the original multiplayer (and also functional in singleplayer) maps, but this re-release only allows access to to 8 (yes, eight) of them. No explanation was given there either, and no acknowledgement of the missing content was ever made except for the promise they (and the missing game modes) would be added back that was never fulfilled, so the outlook for Doom+Doom 2 is seemingly equally as dire.

 

That is my problem with a good chunk of remasters (especially coming from Nightdive Studios) nowadays.

 

Not only they decided to forget/cut certain content and features all in the name of 'quality control', they try to tell people that promises/patches are coming *along with more content* but it's been a year already and all we have is this rather lackluster 1.1 update. However I do understand that Nightdive aren't entirely at fault because publishers and deadlines can be very stupid at times.

 

I bought this game at launch, hoping that it would be the definitive way to play ROTT multiplayer since the original DOS netcode has aged like milk and even was in the process of prepping up a community mapset for multiplayer thanks to Steam Workshop support, but little did I know they didn't implement Steam Workshop support for multiplayer. Despite my optimism (by continuing on with my collaborative mapset and formation of a Discord community named ROTT Central) of hoping this would be addressed, it seems like they are biting more than they can chew with even more remasters.

 

It even reminds me about the time when I bought Blood: Fresh Supply on launch, hoping the same damn thing but it took some time to realize that the remaster was half-assed and it never received patches thanks to Atari at the time, though the situation with Fresh Supply is a bit more different than ROTT:LE. Luckily while Blood can still be enjoyed more accurately with the likes of NBlood and NotBlood, what about ROTT? All we have are not so fleshed out source ports that get touched and then left out for years. The only source port that was the most complete in my opinion was WinROTTGL but that was held together with duct tape and glue. While multiplayer worked it was really held back with the netcode being wrapped around using an ancient API known as DirectPlay.

 

Anyway, I had given up on my collaborative project and my last ditch effort is to promote the damn thing when the time/motivation is right. Worst case scenario I might end up just canning the mapset entirely. I understand that Rise of the Triad is not a popular game (even in multiplayer) and is an acquired taste but despite that, I am starting to believe that Nightdive is just bad at preserving a game's multiplayer experience, the only games they somewhat got right was the id Software titles ofc.

 

In conclusion, While I liked KEX Doom's multiplayer, I just don't see myself being optimistic about the idea of having mod support for multiplayer any time soon. Nightdive is just going to pump out even more remasters with possibly little to no support after launch. For ROTT, There is this source port being worked on which might be the only hope for a proper ROTT multiplayer experience. https://github.com/erysdren/NetROTT

 

But who knows a 1.2 patch may be likely, but I'll believe it when I see it. Anyway rant over.

Edited Monday at 09:22 PM by THEBaratusII

[Quasar]

It's becoming increasingly impossible to engage on this forum regarding anything Nightdive related, and I am disappointed to see these trends continue. Yes, features get cut in the name of "quality control." It's called the reality of commercial game design. Time and resources are limited and we don't have the liberty of doing what we do as a charity or a hobby. Even under those conditions we try exceedingly hard to put in absolutely everything and when it does not happen we ourselves are disappointed. Multiplayer workshop support is supposed to be in ROTT EX - check the executable and you will find strings to do with it. The fact is, despite a dozen people working overtime it didn't get finished into a state that worked. Console builds had to go into cert on schedule and promotional agreements were already in place relying on the release date - it was not getting delayed to make it possible just to add MP workshop, no matter how much we wished.

 

Dave Oshry isn't part of Nightdive and AFAIK he wasn't supposed to mention another patch at the time that he did. It is a shame that any false hopes were created but that's outside of us devs' control. Try to remember that you're not talking to (or right past) the people who call the shots.

 

Meanwhile our games continue to get good reviews from both users and critics so these problems are apparently quite small in the relative scheme of things. Drumming them up as some kind of indictment of a slide in general quality is outside of any realistic sense of their scale. If it's multiplayer where we sometimes come up a bit short then I can tell you why: multiplayer is the hardest part of the development cycle. It has the most and most stringently enforced requirements on all the three console platforms. It has the most complexity in code terms. It requires the most refactoring to these ancient game engines that were all built for lockstep play over an IPX LAN or a serial cable. And some games, like ROTT especially, actively fight back during the process. They have frightfully stale and fragile designs which break down constantly under modification. It's lucky we're even able to include MP components at all in a lot of cases.

[THEBaratusII]

Which is pretty much why I stated "because publishers and deadlines can be very stupid at times."

 

Also now it makes sense regarding the Dave Oshry comment.

 

I'm not no programmer/gamedev (I only know DECORATE for ZDoom and that's about it), but I could imagine developing these remasters must be hard. If anything my rant was mostly due to frustrations regarding my upcoming COMM-BAT mapset. I just couldn't find a better way to playtest my work more conveniently to ensure a quality addon, which is why I became so unmotivated working on it for a while.

 

Also based on my experiences tinkering with ROTT's IPX driver just to dupe the gametics (with side effects like slowed down mouse sensitivity at random times) and the amount of playtest work I did for Classic Gaming Arena, I could also imagine the difficulty of getting proper network code and it amazes me that games like Descent and Blood (especially when played via DOSBox) still aged like wine to this day. (based on my experience) while certain games like Eradicator, KKnD, Powerslave, Radix, WarCraft, etc, etc end up having varying performance when playing on the internet.

 

I apologize if I came off as harsh.