Doom II XBLA Now Released!

[myk]

It's quite probably based on the Doom95 sources.

[Devalaous]

Wonder where I heard the Boom thing. Oh well, I barely understand the source port side of Doom outside of which plays what how :D

Regardless, the random pitch is horrible. Helium Hell Knight Death!

[SteelPH]

Ragnor said:

Wonder where I heard the Boom thing. Oh well, I barely understand the source port side of Doom outside of which plays what how :D

Regardless, the random pitch is horrible. Helium Hell Knight Death!

Yea. While I'm havin' a lot fun with this, the random pitching is really distracting.

[Gez]

40oz said:

Some other things I should point out, there are like... no backpacks. I only found one in MAP08 and did not find more in any other maps. There appeared to be a fair amount of every other powerup though. Berserks, Computer Area Maps, Partial Invisibilities, no Light Amplification Visors though, but I can live with that. I would have encouraged the use of impassible lines around hallways because I often found myself bumping into wall details while trying to avoid monsters. Also the last map was very easy. The main boss monster was apparently the Spider Mastermind, but there are also some archviles and a bunch of hell barons and revenants to accompany it. I managed to get the hell barons and Spider Masterminds to fight ACCIDENTALLY which cause the spidey to die without me even opening fire on it, which was kinda lame. I had a ton of ammo leftover too.

From what I've heard, the last map is MAP08 and has a cyberdemon as its boss. MAP09 is the secret map, accessed from a secret exit in MAP04.

[cybdmn]

Gez said:

From what I've heard, the last map is MAP08 and has a cyberdemon as its boss. MAP09 is the secret map, accessed from a secret exit in MAP04.

Heh. This happens, if you do not play it on the 360.


I have opened the game, and had a look over it. The main wad is not the normal doom2.wad, as it was the case in Doom for XBL. It seems to be the doom2.wad created for the XBox port in XBox Doom 3.

The new episode wad is located in a subfolder called "mission1". Maybe there will be more?

[Quasar]

cybdmn said:

Heh. This happens, if you do not play it on the 360.


I have opened the game, and had a look over it. The main wad is not the normal doom2.wad, as it was the case in Doom for XBL. It seems to be the doom2.wad created for the XBox port in XBox Doom 3.

The new episode wad is located in a subfolder called "mission1". Maybe there will be more?

Does this mean that the old (crappy) MAP33: Betray is still accessible from the modified MAP02? I know it's already verified as being in there, but nobody's said whether or not you can still get to it.

I was hoping some youtube videos of this would go up, but so far nothing :P

[Dragonsbrethren]

Yeah, I'd really like to see the new maps in action (by someone who doesn't walk through at a snail's pace, like that official video that got pulled) since I don't think I'll ever get to play this.

[scalliano]

I've played the first 4 maps of the new episode, and there is a very strong Ultimate Doom feel throughout. Just one thing bothers me, what's the deal with the super shotgun? I died trying to switch back to the regular shotty to take out a Lost Soul at close range and proceeded to blow myself up with a rocket. That's gonna take a while to get used to...

[cybdmn]

Quasar said:

Does this mean that the old (crappy) MAP33: Betray is still accessible from the modified MAP02? I know it's already verified as being in there, but nobody's said whether or not you can still get to it.

The map is in the wad, but not accessible from MAP02. The trigger in MAP02 is still there, but nothing happens, if you try to switch it. Must be deactivated in the binary.

scalliano said:

Just one thing bothers me, what's the deal with the super shotgun? I died trying to switch back to the regular shotty to take out a Lost Soul at close range and proceeded to blow myself up with a rocket. That's gonna take a while to get used to...

The mapping of the weapons have changes on the directional pad since Doom.

[hardcore_gamer]

40oz said:

Those screenshots look pretty sexy. It's relieving to know that these maps are being made by a team of game developers and not some random nobody that popped up in the doom community. I anxiously await PC rips.

I have already played through 5 levels of the new episode and while they are by no means bad (they are fairly decent) they aren't drastically better then the maps the Doomworld user community has made over the years. In fact I would even argue that allot of the maps made by the Doom community are in fact much better.

But then again the new episode has over 9 levels and I am only on level 5.

[Randy87]

I hooked up my 360 drive and extracted the arcade version as well but I don't have any kind of mission folder. There is an xex xbox executable, some pngs for acheivement icons and jpg arcade menu graphics, an xml for arcade info, another container for avatar award models, and last but not least, a "doom2.disk" that presumably contains the wad data. I opened it up in hex and found an IWAD and PWAD entry later in the file, but I have no idea what I'm doing in there.

[cybdmn]

Well, after some cleanings from an moderator, i would suggest stop discussing this. Just believe me, the new wad is in an subfolder as said before.

[Gez]

Randy87 said:

I opened it up in hex and found an IWAD and PWAD entry later in the file

Well then isn't it kinda obvious?

[Randy87]

I don't intend to release the wad or anything! and no Gez, not for me. How many bytes should i grab after the header? Is there some way to find the end of the file?

edit: or did you mean when I said "presumably contains wad data"?

[Gez]

All the WAD format cares about is that its header starts at offset 0. You can just delete everything that's before PWAD and you'll get a working PWAD. If you want to be sure it contains no leftover junk from the encapsulation, you can always just open the resulting file in Slumped, select all lumps, copy them, paste them in a new wad file, and save that one.

[Randy87]

Wow, it opens in XWE. Thanks Gez!

edit: opens in gzdoom

[Randy87]

DosBox Screenshot



GZdoom Screenshot

[hardcore_gamer]

Randy87 said:

DosBox Screenshot


GZdoom Screenshot

Wow.

I was not expecting people to port the maps over to the PC literally the same day as the release of Doom 2 on Xbox live.

But is it actually legal to release them?

Not that I care since I just finished playing them on my Xbox 360 and I found them to be fairly mediocre.

[Gez]

Randy87 said:

DosBox Screenshot

PROTIP: use Ctrl-F5 and it'll create a screenshot in the DOSBox\Capture folder.

hardcore_gamer said:

I was not expecting people to port the maps over to the PC literally the same day as the release of Doom 2 on Xbox live.

I was. In fact, I was expecting it to happen even earlier, given that it had been available in Japan earlier.

hardcore_gamer said:

But is it actually legal to release them?

No. Of course not. Unless you have the copyright, or a license to that copyright allowing you to do so. Neither are the case.

[scalliano]

Got this up and running myself (a surprisingly painless operation as it turns out). As I was rooting around for the health pickup sprites though I noticed the intermission background used by the new ep is actually contained in the IWAD, strange...

And, further to what Gez said, as long as you bought the game, doing this for personal use is fine. Releasing/hosting it would be piracy, hence the deleted posts earlier. We're on shaky ground as it is.

[hardcore_gamer]

scalliano said:

Got this up and running myself (a surprisingly painless operation as it turns out). As I was rooting around for the health pickup sprites though I noticed the intermission background used by the new ep is actually contained in the IWAD, strange...

And, further to what Gez said, as long as you bought the game, doing this for personal use is fine. Releasing/hosting it would be piracy, hence the deleted posts earlier. We're on shaky ground as it is.

Well I can't really see the point in porting over to the PC just for personal use, considering all of the hassle it would make more sense to just play it on the Xbox.

[Randy87]

The only notable changes that I am aware of are the maps, intermission names, medkits, berserk, and interpic (missing any?). If you own a copy of Doom 2 for XBLA and can extract the proper data, here is a simple pwad setup.



edit: forgot the music order is different as well. Maybe a deh patch.

[Quasar]

I am curious though, what happens when you beat MAP08? Is there some kind of new ending? Or just another lame castcall? :P Any other text intermissions? What music actually plays on the maps?

[Randy87]

Just a text intermission then cast call.

[Bloodshedder]

May I remind everyone that linking to or requesting a download for the new episode in XBox Live Arcade Doom 2 is against the rules, and anyone doing so will be losered or banned.

That said, this thread can now continue.

[chungy]

I played this mostly in co-op, found some random bugs (including one that was in the Xbox Doom 3 disc too...), but it's all fairly minor and it was awesome :D

[Devalaous]

Surprised to hear that its the Doom 3 version of Doom 2.

I havent played base Doom 2 in so long that some of the levels are surprising me with monster counts. I wasn't expecting something like 8 mancubi in The Factory all clustered, for example. Still too used to PSX Doom apparantly.

Doom 2's darkness is also annoying me, as I have to switch my TV settings to see anything in some areas. Hurrah for HDTVs making darkness darker than ever.

[Super Flip]

I just tried the demo of this release last night, I am really enjoying the first map of No Rest for the Living.
I will be getting 1600 microsoft points soon, making this my first purchase with those points.

Also, something regarding this port's music.
When I was fooling around with these soundfonts I got, one of which was a Gravis Ultrasound, so I loaded up Map01 and said ultrasound soundfont, then after noticing a strange resemblance, slowed down the music by 4 beats per second, then it hit me:
DooM 2 XBLA's music runs on Gravis Ultrasound.
I even took a comparison from a gameplay vid of Doom 2 xbla, and no difference was found.

I know some people may find this useless, but it was interesting to me.

[Bozzy]

I bought doom 2 on XBLA last night and have been playing it through on UV, the music is slower but the gameplay is EXACTLY the same its a perfect port, for you guys who like a challenge you will love it, having played UV doom 2 on pc multiple times i can safely say it is ALOT harder on 360 but not too hard. alot more monsters and tougher ones. the port is perfect in my eyes, same speed, more difficult.

Well perfect excluding 1 thing. DAMN 4:3 RESOLUTION, my widescreen tv has to suffer with big black spaces to the sides.

p.s. i havent touched the new episode yet as im playing it from beginning to end on UV so i cant comment on it.

my verdict 9/10 for port 100% worth buying. the 1 mark was lost due to 4:3 resolution fail.


EDIT: to Ragnor my HDTV playing it its actually brighter than on my pc and much more visible so looks like your having bad luck with it.

[Reisal]

So how does this commercial multi-level episode stand up in terms of quality and gameplay compared to many of the user created WADs on the Archives?