The /newstuff Chronicles #182

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Ty decided to run off on holiday in the middle of the week, so there's only 2 wads to play with. 13 maps though, but only one of them is single player. So it shouldn't take too long to get through this week's lot:

• Doom/alt markmenu "skin"/shell for the Photo.bat program by Mark Bowman
  15kb - n/a - n/a
  Some sort of frontend plug-in.
  
  
• Mandatory Suicide by Derek Braun (Dittohead/aliceschain)
  49kb - doom2.exe - SP - (img)
  A back-to-basics map that was made in only a few hours. But unlike many of it's kind, it's not styled at random. The brick theme does persist throughout, and works nicely with it's map 16 slot. Detail is quite basic, as you'd expect for a map built in a few hours, although some effort is made with the lighting in one area. Gameplay is actually quite good, with a tight ammo balance early on and a tight health balance will have you exercising caution throughout. Not too bad.
  
  
• The Zodiac Deathmatch by Milian Moritz
  562kb - ZDoom - DM - (img) (img) (img) (img)
  A 12-map deathmatch wad, one for each sign of the zodiac. Each map is themed appropriately, including the element that each sign belongs to. Some maps use Boom features like deep water (complete with colormaps), fog (likewise) and translucent lines. There are also textures for each sign, together with some new sprites. The maps themselves are tiny and have not much detail (and it gets off to the worst possible start for me...a crap Aries map), although some maps (particularly the stronger-themed ones) have more detail, and the scenery things, Boom effects (esp. map 10, cool effect there) and different skys (all of which are quite good) rescue them a bit. Weapons vary throughout, but usually with little ammo around to support them, so you might end up changing a lot and/or running out. There's also a small amount of health/armour available, too. Expect the death count to be high, as there's a few suicide spots as well as the map sizes and weapons/items setup. Overall, a neat idea that should provide some novelty deathmatch moments, but sadly isn't taken full advantage of with the quality of the maps. Finally the things only appear in multiplayer, and all but two maps have no player 1 start (which messes it all up if you're sightseeing). So, unless you're a DM'er and/or ZDaemon regular, don't bother (unless you want to fix the bugs and then make some sort of SP challenge out of it).
  
  

[Cyb]

I cheated and I'm proud.

plus there are no wads so nobody cares!

[Grazza]

I care!

BTW, some of the links are broken (those to the idgames database have 00000's that need filling in, and the image for the markmenu thingy).

[Epyo]

Screenshots don't work.

Third post wow my best ever.

[Sporku]

Um.. Wow. This is the smallest /newstuff I have ever seen.

EDIT: and none of the image links work, so heh!

[Tormentor667]

Nothing works for me here :(

[Grazza]

useful link

To see the images, make the file-names upper case.

[sargebaldy]

best /newstuff evar.. wait, no.

pictures be here: http://www.doomworld.com/images/newstuff/182/

[Dron]

Agh! Why did you even POST a /newstuff this week?! 1 Frontend and 2 wads. Heh

[Dittohead]

Links seem very broken.

But hey, atleast my map got the picture ;)

[MasterOFDeath]

great. Just great. I had 2 maps and a wad a friend made that I will never see or have reveiwed until next week. I cant wait to see next weeks newstuff, it will be huge.

[DooMBoy]

This week's /newstuff is smaller than the attention span of an 8 year old with ADD who's been drinking too much Kool Aid and sucking down waaaaaay too many pixie sticks

[june gloom]

DooMBoy said:

This week's /newstuff is smaller than the attention span of an 8 year old with ADD who's been drinking too much Kool Aid and sucking down waaaaaay too many pixie sticks

i'm sorry, what? you lost my interest, what were you saying? *goes back to watching TV*

[Dittohead]

Grazza, if you play the map: Is the diffulty to your liking? In my last map you said it was too easy ;)

[SyntherAugustus]

Well I didn't expect t/nc this week, but heh.

You = teh super late. :)

[Grazza]

Dittohead said:

Grazza, if you play the map: Is the diffulty to your liking? In my last map you said it was too easy ;)

I hadn't played it, but since you asked, I gave it a go.

It's certainly not easy, but it's not hard if you don't rush. Much of the difficulty stems from a lack of health though; the player is rarely in great danger at any one moment, but must handle most of the battles in a way that costs very little health at all (otherwise, you just run out of health after a while). This reduces the styles of play that can be adopted and overall makes the map less fun.

As far as I can tell (i.e. unless I'm missing something), you are sealed off from the early parts of the map when you leave them. It would be nice to be able to return to them, to provide more options if you want to get 100% kills.

To make the map more fun while keeping it difficult, I'd suggest being more generous with health, but booby-trapping more of the power-ups and weapons - this should keep things balanced. The berserk, RL, the keys, etc., weren't booby-trapped at all. For instance, when picking up the berserk, the demons could start teleporting in behind and around the player; as it was, that scene was kind of tedious. I thought the archie in the maze was a nice idea; it wasn't clear when playing what triggered it, but its noises gave you enough of a clue to get the plasma gun ready. The maze itself maybe wasn't such a good idea, but at least it wasn't too big. As for the final area, you just have to hope you don't eat a rocket as you enter.

BTW, the area with the blue armour and plasma gun can be handled very safely using the "door trick" - the player stands behind the door, rapidly opening and closing it. The result is he takes very little damage while the monsters kill each other. In general, infighting can be provoked rather readily in many parts of this map, leaving the player with plenty of ammo.

I think UD's summary of "Not too bad." sums it up pretty well. I don't regret playing it. :)

I notice that you again claimed it needed "ZDoom, ZdoomGL, Doomsday", when in fact it doesn't.

[Cyb]

newstuff crisis averted! all links and screenshots work now! nothing to see here!

[Dittohead]

Grazza said:

The maze itself maybe wasn't such a good idea, but at least it wasn't too big.

Everybody tells me the maze was tedious and hard. But that was the point, I think. And then when you breathe that sigh of relief after exiting, you are confronted by a mass of demons. Heh.

But thanks for the pointers, I'll definetly keep them in mind.

[iori]

fp.
Props to all logged in Trolls.
:D

[marky]

Hi,
may I say, that I'm the author of the Zodiac maps?
Well... I'm working on the SP versions of the maps. And these maps will be more detailed and more interesting to look around. Stay tuned...
With the DM maps I wanted to set up some new scenery and make a wide variety of DM situations, small and fast or big maps, tricky and easy, with traps and straight fights...
It's interesting that the players who entered so far, always loved some maps and hated some others. But the maps they love or hate are never the same. Everyone had his own favourite. (There are even maps that I myself don't like...)
As for the details... I started to put more detail in some maps, but then I always found that the details made the maps harder to play. As if the details irritate you and distract you from the fighting. I found, that the best DM maps are the simplest (as map 07 of dwango 5). So in the end, I took the details out of the maps, and they were better to play.
What is your opinion about this? High detail in DM maps? I'm not sure...

marky/Milian

[DooMBoy]

I don't really see the point of making a DM map über-detailed, since you're going to be fighting another person or persons as the case might be, and you wouldn't really have much time to stop and stare at all the pretty details.
I can understand a little detail here and there, but too much is indeed a bad thing (GothicDm cough cough).

[LogicDeLuxe]

Dron said:

Agh! Why did you even POST a /newstuff this week?! 1 Frontend and 2 wads. Heh

Why shouldn't he? It sure is better than nothing, and since newstuff is reviewed in a weekly base, so be it.

[cyber-menace]

AgentSpork said:

Um.. Wow. This is the smallest /newstuff I have ever seen.

Not for me. I uploaded a map one week way back when, when DeathZ0r was still reviewing. I had the only map submitted. Now THAT is a small /newstuff.

[june gloom]

DooMBoy said:

I can understand a little detail here and there, but too much is indeed a bad thing (GothicDm cough cough).

which gothdm though? goth99 was way over-detailed, but goth2 was perfect.

[DooMBoy]

Gothic99, definitely. Let's throw in 1 2,000 or more sectors worth of pointless, CPU-hogging detail and throw the actual deathmatch out the window.

[LogicDeLuxe]

DooMBoy said:

Gothic99, definitely. Let's throw in 1 2,000 or more sectors worth of pointless, CPU-hogging detail and throw the actual deathmatch out the window.

And that's why the original 3 episodes which were constucted with the old pre-1.666 visplane limit in mind are still the best DM maps. Hook up some old 80486 machines you have laying around catching dust and the party can begin. ;)

[Ty Halderman]

Anyway, I'm back and have cleared the incoming pile. Some were rejected for a variety of reasons but most cleared the bar and should be available shortly. Note to uploaders: putting a bunch of vulgarity in the text file doesn't make you look as mature as you apparently think it does :)

Since there was a delay, I re-dated all the files to the time I logged on, so that none of the files will drop out of newstuff for 10 days (it goes by file timestamp, not when I actually move them).

I had no clue where to put Heresy but put it in Combos. Looks like fun to check out if you have both Heretic and DOOM2. However, follow their advice and install into a clean directory, because at the end the batch file nukes the directories it creates, which you might already have elsewhere and prefer to keep (like sprites/, sounds/, etc.). Deltree can be dangerous.

[june gloom]

DooMBoy said:

Gothic99, definitely. Let's throw in 1 2,000 or more sectors worth of pointless, CPU-hogging detail and throw the actual deathmatch out the window.

goth99's detail is great... for singleplayer.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Dron said:

Agh! Why did you even POST a /newstuff this week?! 1 Frontend and 2 wads. Heh

BlackFish said:

Well I didn't expect t/nc this week, but heh.

You = teh super late. :)

There was a small debate about whether to put newstuff up this week or leave it till next week, but it wasn't resolved (at least not in the forum) so I uploaded the reviews anyway just in case they did decide to post it this week. (so it was uploaded on time, but posted late)

BTW the smallest newstuff ever had a single ZDoom map with French scripting in it. (one of Andrew B's newstuffs IIRC)

marky: good to hear that, as they are interesting maps and should be good for single player (if the zodiac idea is expanded in the form of more detail and if the gameplay is good).

[marky]

I'll do my very best :-)