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Murdoch

Spear of Destiny for Eternity Progress

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Very close to a first release already. The gameplay balancing is best left to a later version when Eternity offers more control over weapons. Just one real issue remaining, though it is hardly critical so a release could be as soon as some time next week.

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Will there be new maps or just the original maps? And if they are the original maps, will they be enhanced into a richer and more involving game with the new engine?
I ask this because I own SoD and would like to see a revamped version.

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It is an Eternity update of this:

http://www.doomworld.com/wolfendoom/spear_2.html

Laz Rojas created the levels, while I did beta testing and programmed a Boom mod to more closely recreate the original game. That was a long time ago now, and because Boom is not compatible with Windows XP, the mod has essentially been unplayable.

This version for the Eternity port replicates my customised coding using instead the port's natural features, so no custom engine required.

The basic game is essentially the same, but Laz did some nice little enhancements to the levels including shadowing of walls, lifts, and even an outdoor area at one point. The idea was to remain as faithful and accurate to the original game as possible but still give it a little bit of a spit shine.

It would be nice to expand upon it, adding more detail to the levels and things like that. In fact I started a project to do just that years ago but no one was interested in helping. I have neither the skill nor the time to do it on my own.

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Let me know if you need anything. I'm in a minor-features-coding mood right now. I can assume right off the bat that you need a way to make enemies not retaliate when they shoot each other with tracers, right? I'll get to work on that immediately.

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Ah yes that would be good, I did not bring it up as I thought it too dramatic a change. I have the original code Lee wrote to do that if you want it.

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http://www.gginc.org/article52-1.html

Updating on the game balancing. Have now got the machine gun firing with a single bullet/tracer as opposed to the seven pellet/tracer spread it did in the original release because the weapon was based on the shotgun.

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Ugh I just played the real Spear of Destiny... just like I thought, boring. You deffinitely need to spice it up for 2007.

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One problem. In Wolf3D you just sort of point in the general direction of an enemy and fire and it's likely that you'll hit it. Doom is much more exact. Limiting the weapon to one tracer may make it much more difficult to aim. Perhaps a scatter of low-damage tracers would be more accurate in the end?

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Scuba Steve said:

Ugh I just played the real Spear of Destiny... just like I thought, boring. You deffinitely need to spice it up for 2007.


I used to love SOD back in the days, but you're right. By todays standards it's sodding boring. Pun intended.

Quasar: But the aim of people back then were not as refined as they are these days.

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Quasar said:

One problem. In Wolf3D you just sort of point in the general direction of an enemy and fire and it's likely that you'll hit it. Doom is much more exact. Limiting the weapon to one tracer may make it much more difficult to aim. Perhaps a scatter of low-damage tracers would be more accurate in the end?


Nah, I've been testing it pretty thoroughly and it's all good.

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kristus said:

I used to love SOD back in the days, but you're right. By todays standards it's sodding boring. Pun intended.


Well this is really intended more for people who still love the old game, but want to see it looking a bit better (higher res etc) and don't want to shag around with DOSBox et al.

However, if you have any ideas for things that could be done to make it more interesting, then if it's not too much work I can create an alternate EDF file so you can pick and chose which version you want - the "pure" version or the updated one.

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Well, from what I can recall. There's not much variety in the gameplay of SOD. Just hitscan and melee.

Making something in the spirit of SOD would be more preferable to me rather than making it like SOD. But, also I need to point out that I really never enjoyed any of the WolfenDoom TCs. So, I suppose this isn't for me. :/ As I would much rather see something more aching to RTCW rather than Wolfenstein.

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kristus said:

Well, from what I can recall. There's not much variety in the gameplay of SOD. Just hitscan and melee.

Making something in the spirit of SOD would be more preferable to me rather than making it like SOD. But, also I need to point out that I really never enjoyed any of the WolfenDoom TCs. So, I suppose this isn't for me. :/ As I would much rather see something more aching to RTCW rather than Wolfenstein.


I can't think of anything from RTCW that could be translated to Doom easily (at least not without a lot of work). But if you can think of something that can done, let me know. The bosses attack with projectiles but yeah, the regular grunts just shoot you, smack you around or bite you.

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Well, I didn't really mean it like that though.

I just wish to see something a lot more dynamic of a mod than a clean interpetation of Wolfenstein or SOD would allow.

Like intresting levels, monsters and weapons. A WW2 fiction adventure in Doom. And not a recreation of a WW2 fiction from a significantly less able 2.5d engine.

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Have you seen this yet, Kristus? If we had a Wolfenstein wad with this sort of feel, I believe we'd have something new and exciting.

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Ah yes, that's essentially what I wanted to do with my "Wolfenstein Resurrection" project years ago - bring the WolfenDOOM conversions of the original games under one mod, and use it as a springboard to create something more interesting.

Laz did a lot with the levels in WolfenDOOM - there's differing light levels, shadowing, ambient sounds, a few elevators within floors, even an outdoor section on a later level. I wanted to take that further still, modernising the levels while keeping the same essential layout, among other ideas. But as is so often the case in the Doom community, nobody was willing to help.

Currently my opinion stands thus - make the mod as close to the original game as possible but include extra GFS files that let the player go through the game with either the fireball throwing mutant, the chaingunning officer, or both. Thanks to GFS I can organise things much more cleanly in a sub folder, including the extra EDF files and the extra sprite WAD for the chaingun officer. So all that is added to your main Doom folder is 4 GFS files and a subdirectory.

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Just a quick progress update. I have converted all the possible DeHackEd code to Eternity's EDF system. EDF is like DeHackEd but much more powerful and clearer to understand. Only a few things remain in the DEH file - some weapon tweaks, text string changes and cheat changes.

I've done some more tweaking to the weapons and enemies. All enemies have their original hit points from the "Bring 'Em On" skill (Wolf enemies had their hit points set based on skill) to offset that Doom's damage model is less forgiving than Wolfenstein's. I've adjusted the frame durations to make the weapons as fast they are in the original game. I've bought in the knife, pistol and machine gun graphics from Halten Sie. The machine gun has been altered to have bare hands instead of gloves. I forget the model of the pistol. While not the original game's Luger, it is definitely more period accurate than Doom's Beretta 92 which came out in 1972. And finally, some EDF frame hacking has meant Trans Grosse is now firing his chainguns instead of Baron fireballs.

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JoelMurdoch said:

the fireball throwing mutant, the chaingunning officer

Mutants don't shoot fireballs, they're just made so so the author doesn't have to work too much with DeHackEd. Mutants are supposed to instantly shoot the player with their chest pistols.
Same for the officer, who is just a faster guard. Well, maybe you're planning them to work this way anyway. But originally, SS were meaner than officers. Under WolfenDoom, it's reversed.

But hey, how are autogun enemies gonna work like? Shoot continuously like the Spider, or in bursts of 4 or 5 as in Wolf3d? I'd love to see an Ubermutant shooting with his chaingun instantly (even if they weren't like this in the game).

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Printz - I worked on the original project with Laz, and I spent many many hours playing Wolfenstein back when it was first released. I'm doing side by side comparisons between this and the original game. I know the differences and the similarities much better than you do I'll wager, I don't need a lesson.

Glassy - I will be doing my best to make all the enemies behave as accurately as possible.

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JoelMurdoch said:

I know the differences and the similarities much better than you do I'll wager, I don't need a lesson.

Do you know the exact frame durations and actor speeds, or where to look for them in the source code? :P Nevermind, I shall take a look.

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JoelMurdoch said:

Glassy - I will be doing my best to make all the enemies behave as accurately as possible.

I'm glad knowing it.

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What about the maps, are they going to be 100% accurate, or with some variants.

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Vegeta - The maps are from the original WolfenDOOM release by Laz Rojas, which I worked on with him. The layouts are 100% accurate, but there is some variation including differing light levels, some height variation, ambient sounds and even an outdoor area at one point.

Printz - The frame timing information is pretty much useless as Doom's internal mechanics are quite different to Wolfenstein's, and simply using the same figures is not going to guarantee an identical experience. So I'm using visual approximations instead.

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You're doing a good job so far. One of the problems is that the TC is way too easy. Also, the boss monsters don't drop keys so it's impossible to finish some of the maps.

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xit-vono - actually if you were using the original custom port I created, they did drop keys. Most likely you were not or more specifically, could not. Via EDF, Eternity lets you assign whatever thing you want for another thing to drop when it is killed so the relevant bosses will now all drop gold keys.

And yes, because the machine gun still fired like a shotgun, the weapon was way too powerful. You could slaughter a whole room full of bad guys in no time flat, rendering the chaingun virtually useless. I've modified it completely, making it about the same speed as the original machine gun but decreasing the number of bullet pellets fired down to one. Already in my preliminary playtesting, the game is starting to feel much more like Wolfenstein during combat.

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