Do you think Freedoom might be too hard for some?

[blue95]

This is not an attack to the Freedoom project. I've been playing Freedoom 0.6.3 for the past few weeks on and off and I really like it. I even tried playing without cheat codes. Ok, I used the level skip code on Map 13, but I know it's still in progress and not complete.

I played Doom tonight, and I noticed on the easiest difficulty, it's pretty easy. While Freedoom, on the easiest setting gets hard. For example, near the end of Map 04, you get a ton of those worm-monsters (forgive me I don't know what they're called in Freedoom) attacking.

Thinking about it, it might be hard for beginners who just discovered Freedoom and play on the easiest setting. Does it seem to be too hard on easier modes?

Just a reminder, I'm not attacking the project. Whoever is working on the game itself, keep up the great work.

[hawkwind]

No. Well, maybe yes for 5 year olds ...

[Gez]

It's certainly harder than Doom or Doom 2. But harder than TFC in Ultimate Doom or Plutonia Experiment?

[blue95]

Gez said:

It's certainly harder than Doom or Doom 2. But harder than TFC in Ultimate Doom or Plutonia Experiment?

I only had Doom in mind when I was thinking about difficulty, and I have no problems playing this game. I'll admit, some moments were very fun and action packed. :D

I'm just wondering if being too hard on an easier setting might turn away players who just got into Doom or FPSes in general and stumbled across the project.

[Catoptromancy]

Skill tags still need alot of work. A map being too hard in lower skills could be a bug.

[blue95]

Catoptromancy said:

Skill tags still need alot of work. A map being too hard in lower skills could be a bug.

I didn't think that qualified as a bug. I thought a bug would have been a problem such as crashing, or walking in a lava pit without losing health. Things like that come to my mind when I think of bugs.

If skill tags need a lot of work, then I'll leave it alone and wait for game updates.

[Catoptromancy]

Not exactly a bug, but just gameplay tweaking. Its not that it needs alot of work, its just time consuming and not every map is finished.

[blue95]

Catoptromancy said:

Not exactly a bug, but just gameplay tweaking. Its not that it needs alot of work, its just time consuming and not every map is finished.

I understand, don't worry about it. I just thought it might be good to discuss difficulty. I do look forward to any future versions since Freedoom is still being worked on.

[wesleyjohnson]

I have been playing Doom since 94, off and on, so I do not consider myself a newbie, but neither do I go so far as to have my every twitch response tuned to the game, like so many kids do (like my nephews).

For me, without cheating, at medium difficulty, I can get upto level 10, and no more. So yes, I consider some of the levels of FreeDoom to be overly unfriendly in difficulty. I do not bother trying anymore, I just cheat.

1. doors that can be passed only by players with fast mouse-based running
2. hidden areas that are hidden so well that you need a cheat sheet to know of them
3. levels where there is just enough ammo to kill the monsters if you have a near perfect one shot, one kill, accuracy.

Most of this is caused by designing for one, instead of designing for all player levels. It really looks like many of the levels are copied from pre-existing PWAD sources, so as to fill out levels that have not been addressed yet. Such PWAD levels frequently gave no consideration to player levels.

Most could be fixed by some tweaking of player level resources, and some problem areas need more than that. I do not get very promising replies when I bring it up, but there may be some fixes ongoing. Some changes have been reported, but I do not know yet what they are as they have not made it to a release.


See my "Fast doors" thread.

I do not believe in "learn by dying", and consider any level that requires that to be grossly flawed.

In the end it depends upon what the FreeDoom level designers want to do. If the most consideration is going to be for the advanced players, like so many PWAD were, then other players might as well practice their cheat codes instead of their skills.

[chungy]

MAP10 is a particularly problematic map, it has been worked on quite a bit since the last release to alleviate many problems with it... I don't blame you for resorting to cheating to get past it.

[Catoptromancy]

Map10 was fixed today. Are you playing the lastest daily build? The very latest. Map10 a week ago really was impossible, it is fixed now. The fast lift has also been fixed, it will be in the daily builds in less than 24 hours.

Please post bug reports on specific maps and specific areas of maps. If you feel something is too hard, you can submit something easier or make suggestions.

[wesleyjohnson]

Sorry, my reply was to the original poster.

"are you playing the latest build" sounds like it was addressed to me.
In reply: I am not following the daily builds for several reasons.
My internet access is 56K modem. Also, I have spent too much time on this and need to work on things that could earn some income. When the changes get to the next release I will visit the library and download it (library has high bandwidth). GIT postings could give more detail as to what was fixed.

[Catoptromancy]

You can follow along with development here. It takes 24 hours or less for a commit to be on the daily builds. Just download after a major fix, like map10 or new map15.

This is a lsit of everything fixed and dates they were fixed. When reporting bugs it is highly advised to use a daily build, since problems may already be fixed.
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/freedoom.git/log/

[chungy]

It still will take him half an hour to download each new IWAD, that's not a really ideal.

My suggestion, if it's not too much to ask, you can instead find some location with a fast internet connection, and clone the Git repository there (with "git clone git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/freedoom.git", it would take over 2 hours on dialup...), put it on a flash drive or whatever, take it home, and periodically (maybe once a week, or day, or whatever) do a "git pull"; even on dialup, the updates should not take too long to download. You'll need DeuTex 4.4.902 (available here), imagemagick, make, and python installed to compile the IWAD, after all that just a simple "make" should build the IWADs into the wads/ directory, no need to wait for daily builds.

[wesleyjohnson]

"git clone git" ??
Is that actually a command that is going to work on a Library computer?
They don't let you run any programs that are not part of the preloaded OS.

Where do you get "git" from in the first place ??

[chungy]

Heh, well you probably won't be able to run it on a restrictive library computer, but I figured you might have a friend, relative, workplace, or something else with a broadband connection... (the initial download is almost 40MB, if you just spend a couple hours some day on your dialup connection, that would be the biggest hump; then each week or however often you want, "git pull" to get newer revisions, which are going to be fairly small since it only gets stuff you don't already have)

You can get git at http://git-scm.com/download (it's also part of many Linux distributions, check your repos in apt/yum/whatever). If this is too complicated for you (no offense intended, but it's really not for everybody), you could forget it and simply download the newest IWAD(s) from http://free.doomers.org/ at your library.

[wesleyjohnson]

Real problem is that git would download it to the wrong machine. My Linux machines are off the internet, and I borrow time on someone else's Win98 machine for this communication. I can only use it for so long before I hear about it.

Secondly, what OS is needed to run all those programs needed to build the latest wad ?? Linux, Win98, Win2000, latest Windos offering ??

[chungy]

The process is really built with Linux in mind, although it's been shown to work under Cygwin and the *BSDs (with some hacking) before...

If you keep a USB drive with the repo on it, you can take it home to compile/patch/whatever, take it back to an Internet-connected machine to update, etc; but from the sounds of it, it's probably just additional complexity when all you really would want is to download the latest daily build from the above link.

[Catoptromancy]

Remember you dont need daily build everyday. Just once in awhile.
If you found a bug or think something is wrong, check the git log and see if it has been fixed.

Also on same link as daily build are just maps/sounds/graphics wad.
http://free.doomers.org/

This is direct link to just the maps, it is under half the size of the full iwad. Load it as a normal pwad. On 56k would only take a about 6 or 7 minutes.
http://free.doomers.org/freedoom_levels.wad.zip

[NoWits]

When I first played, I died on the second level. Poor me :(

[Jon]

In the sourceforge SVN I had a branch where I'd reworked the build process to not use symlinks. As I recall, this was one of the major stumbling blocks for building freedoom on windows without using cygwin. I suspect the branch is now gone but it wasn't actually that hard.