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Katamori

Æons of Death discussion thread

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In my Youtube channel I'm uploading gameplays in Æons of Death, with music. Because my video views are little and I work hours for a video, I should be happy, if you spend a bit time to watch my gameplay videos.

Here's the playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ttony33?feature=mhum#g/c/5BF2108B328695F6

EDIT: in description of the V5 premier video you can find 2 download links for V5.

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I had a quick look at one of the videos but it didn't look like my cup of tea. An almost migraine-inducing overload of random new content.

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purist said:

I had a quick look at one of the videos but it didn't look like my cup of tea. An almost migraine-inducing overload of random new content.


Yes, I know, but in my opinion it gives a lot of new adventures! AEoD is one of the best WADs ever!

And imagine that random insanity madness in Hell Revealed 2... I beat HR2 with AEons of Death from MAP01 for MAP21 on UV difficulty! I think, it's incredibly exciting and also, increase my adrenaline level

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It's just a random pile of shit composed of randomly ripped resources. There's nothing special about it at all. It's been done thousands of times in wads like 100gunsx, alandoguns, etc.

It's also incredibly boring since half the guns are almost exactly the same.

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The one thing that makes AEoD stand out among all the randomizers of the type is its sheer size. There are so many lumps that the ZDoom devs had to tweak the lump hashing code, because it ran into the 65 535-lumps limit. It was the first, and I think to date the only, mod to require removing that limit. (Now, ZDoom can manage up to 4 294 967 295 lumps. Let's hope AEoD v6 doesn't require a 64-bit build.)


I'll admit that other than this technical trivia, AEoD is something I find utterly boring. It lacks cohesion; it's just randomness both in its behavior and in its looks. But if people have fun with it, more power to them I guess.

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I had a look at the "Valley Of The Queen" video, and I found it quite nice... Maps like that go very well with AEoD.

About how AEoD (and anything like that) is considered here, I guess you're outta luck. The average DOOMWorld player is way too conservative to appreciate something that deviates so heavily from the standard DOOM canon. :-)

As for me, I think that with their last iteration, the AEoD guys have done a great job in characterizing the weapons (the slot limit system is a great plus, too). The special effects in particular are top notch - IMHO they make the game look much more modern than it actually is...

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rsl said:

I guess you're outta luck. The average DOOMWorld player is way too conservative to appreciate something that deviates so heavily from the standard DOOM canon. :-)


There's a difference between conservatism and having taste

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rsl said:

About how AEoD (and anything like that) is considered here, I guess you're outta luck. The average DOOMWorld player is way too conservative to appreciate something that deviates so heavily from the standard DOOM canon. :-)


I love it when people post shit like this. People don't like it! That must mean they hate everything that's different from the original doom! It doesn't matter what flaws are pointed out, they'll still pull this good ole' excuse out their ass.

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There is certainly a conservative trend here at Doomworld (there wouldn't be threads about elitism and purism otherwise); but in this case it's not the only explanation.

Code-wise, AEoD is very well done. They did a fine job balancing all that stuff and providing a wide variety of behaviors. It's cool.

But the clashing art styles and thematic inconsistency is a big turn-off, even if you're not a conservative purist.

If you enjoy it despite that, well, that's cool, have fun; but don't expect everyone to comment about your vids because relatively few people here will have any interest in watching them. I know I don't.

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Gez said:

If you enjoy it despite that, well, that's cool, have fun; but don't expect everyone to comment about your vids because relatively few people here will have any interest in watching them. I know I don't.


I think, people can watch my videos, although they don't like AEoD... because

a) a video is quite different, than you must play with the mod :)
b) it should be interest, if you just watch

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Well, my intent was only to warn Katamori (who is more new than me at the forums) about the fact that modifications like AEoD are generally not exactly "praised" within communities like this. And therefore, a thread like his would have worked much better at, say, ZDOOM's forums. No intent to start any "religion war", either - by the way, I personally like both worlds, now and then.

Craigs said:

I love it when people post shit like this. People don't like it! That must mean they hate everything that's different from the original doom! It doesn't matter what flaws are pointed out, they'll still pull this good ole' excuse out their ass.


Only - no matter the experience - I always end up being surprised by the fact that, in response to what was a politely-expressed statement - as I intended it, at least - one does not exactly get always the same treatment in response. But whatever... Considered they'll outnumber us in abundance ever, we must always expect our "thug around the corner"... ;-)

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rsl said:

The average DOOMWorld player is way too conservative to appreciate something that deviates so heavily from the standard DOOM canon. :-)


Are you insinuating that if AoD had been a seperate standalone game which was just a garbage chute of new stuff with no consistency or character or anything else that seperates it from being a total mess it would have been much more widely accepted?

In my observations, the people that actually like it are people who have never released a map set they are actually proud of. It dissapoints me to know that the thing placement that I balanced myself in my maps are able to be completely fucked up by being played with randomizer wads. Wads like HR2 were not made to be compatible with randomizer wads but randomizer wads aim to be compatible with everything else.

I question where your values are at when you're okay with a wad like this completely rewriting the quality of the wads you play with it. If someone prepares you a nicely cooked meal, it would be insulting to add all your salt, extra cheese, hot sauce and whatever to it before you eat it. You can throw around some suggestions on how to make it better but going a quest to make different things out of things that were already good just doesn't seem right.

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40oz said:

Are you insinuating that if AoD had been a seperate standalone game which was just a garbage chute of new stuff with no consistency or character or anything else that seperates it from being a total mess it would have been much more widely accepted?


No. The focus here is on the classic DOOM game and its possible variations. It's no news that many of the people here do like the classic gameplay most, thus favoring a "purist" approach. Nevertheless, others like me sometimes appreciate the amount of surprise that may come from a giant randomizer like AEoD, or more simply, from a weapons modification.

40oz said:

In my observations, the people that actually like it are people who have never released a map set they are actually proud of. It dissapoints me to know that the thing placement that I balanced myself in my maps are able to be completely fucked up by being played with randomizer wads. Wads like HR2 were not made to be compatible with randomizer wads but randomizer wads aim to be compatible with everything else.


I do rather see the two things (liking AEoD or similar WADs, and having released a successful levelset in the past) as totally unrelated. To me, a good weapons modification is one that upsets as much as possible the arsenal - and even some monsters - but by retaining a good relative balance just by relying on the pre-existing thing placement. IMHO you can tell it's really good only if it does not make any standard level too easy or hard, but at the same time forces you to rethink your strategies to progress.

40oz said:

I question where your values are at when you're okay with a wad like this completely rewriting the quality of the wads you play with it. If someone prepares you a nicely cooked meal, it would be insulting to add all your salt, extra cheese, hot sauce and whatever to it before you eat it. You can throw around some suggestions on how to make it better but going a quest to make different things out of things that were already good just doesn't seem right.


I would describe the experience from a different point of view. Every now and then I like to experience a well-known 'quest' (=levelset) with a 'new character that uses a different arsenal' (=weapons modification). Rather than trying to adulterate a well-prepared salad, I see this only as choosing my favourite dressing... :-)

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TheDarkArchon said:

It's the king of the ghastly sewer that is randomiser WADs.


What's the problem with randomizer wads? I don't use AEOD, but I love Scalliano's 667 Shuffle and use it regularly, and also have a fondness for Deathzor's OMGWeapons. The added variety makes the game much more exciting and interesting (at least for me), much in the way that vast item/enemy variety works in a Roguelike. I can see the case against inappropriate and/or ripped resources, but that's not a problem with all randomizers.

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I think everyone should judge for himself if he/she wants to play Doom the purist way or not. Some people even hate it when wads are not compatible with vanilla Doom. I mean where is the point in that? Still there are a lot of people out there who love vanilla Doom so much that they would start a long discussion about it why I'm stupid because I only play GZDoom.

What I mean by that is why judge people if they want to play Doom or some map set not "the original way". Some players like Doom64 addons, some like custom weapons, some like HD sounds and some like fancy texture addons. I don't think it ruins the fun those people will have with some map packs they play. For them it might even enhance the fun, because they have the freedom to play it the way they enjoy it the most. And even if those mapsets were not intended to be played with 5 gazillion weapons - I don't see the harm if anyone wants to try it.

And if you are now hurt in your feelings as a designer when people do that, don't be such a pussy ;)

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I wish random spawners were used in a map set that is designed from the start to have randomized enemies. I have about zero interest in mapless mods. I don't play that much, so when I do, I prefer to play a new map "as-is" rather than a known map with some replacement or randomization thrown in.

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BlueEagle said:

I think everyone should judge for himself if he/she wants to play Doom the purist way or not. Some people even hate it when wads are not compatible with vanilla Doom. I mean where is the point in that? Still there are a lot of people out there who love vanilla Doom so much that they would start a long discussion about it why I'm stupid because I only play GZDoom.

What I mean by that is why judge people if they want to play Doom or some map set not "the original way". Some players like Doom64 addons, some like custom weapons, some like HD sounds and some like fancy texture addons. I don't think it ruins the fun those people will have with some map packs they play. For them it might even enhance the fun, because they have the freedom to play it the way they enjoy it the most. And even if those mapsets were not intended to be played with 5 gazillion weapons - I don't see the harm if anyone wants to try it.

And if you are now hurt in your feelings as a designer when people do that, don't be such a pussy ;)

What does purism have to do with not liking mods that take the intentionally balanced gameplay of a mapset and randomize it into something totally different? Is it still "purism" if the wad you don't want to ruin was made for GZDoom, for that matter?

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@essel: It's more difficult to make a mapless randomizer for ZDoom maps, as ACS functions such as ThingCount scripts are easily broken by these mods. IMO your point stands, though.

@jute: I created Shuffle purely because, while I thought AEoD was a great idea, it's a bit out of control when all you want is a mindless blast-fest for a half an hour. That and the sheer amount of differing styles can be a bit mentally jarring IMO. I just wanted to play a few levels with all of the ace custom Doom-styled content that tends to be neglected by a lot of ZDoom mappers. While any randomizer mod is going to have side-effects when it comes to gameplay, you'll notice that Shuffle still leans heavily towards the stock id content as a means of minimizing the impact. In regards to style consistency, for any non-Doom content to qualify for inclusion in Shuffle, it needs to have previously appeared in a Doom-themed mapset (the UTnT bosses, for example).

@Gez: I think you're on the money here. I look upon randomizers as elaborate forms of "mutators" - a means of switching up the gameplay to whatever you may feel like at that point. They shouldn't be taken seriously as they are not serious mods (I'm saying that, and I made one). What concerns me though, is when players begin loading the likes of AEoD, HoC, 667S and co with absolutely everything fresh out of the zip file. I think I can safely say that's not what any of these mods were meant for. Incidentally, I had actually toyed for a while with the idea of an AEoD-specific mapset, taking in the various themes it uses. But, then again, there's Oblige ...

And, while I've only released one true mapset so far, I'm quite proud of it, regardless of the apparently simple geometry :P

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esselfortium said:

What does purism have to do with not liking mods that take the intentionally balanced gameplay of a mapset and randomize it into something totally different? Is it still "purism" if the wad you don't want to ruin was made for GZDoom, for that matter?


I think "ruin" is far too strong a word. If I've played AV (for instance) several times without modification, why not try it with a randomizer? It doesn't harm anyone else and allows me a new way to enjoy the maps. Obviously I wouldn't recommend using a randomizer on the first play-through of a new map, but even if someone did that it wouldn't affect me, and is certainly no reason to reject randomizers outright.

Personally, one of my favorite things to do is play through Oblige-generated megawads with Scalliano's Shuffle, which is probably as close to Roguelike/Nethack gameplay as Doom will get.

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BlueEagle said:

the purist way


Let me just stop you right there. Hellbent and I have been having back and forth discussions over the last week and doing background research on The Masters of Doom, the Doom Bible, the video "A trip to idsoftware", interviews with John Romero and John Carmack in 1993, and long analysis on all the IWAD maps and alpha level maps in comparison to it's predecessor -- Wolfenstein 3D and to maps released today and we concluded that even some of the best vanilla compatible maps are to an extent "impure" because the way we view the qualities that are important to making good maps are so much different than the way John Romero, Tom Hall, and Sandy Petersen pioneered Doom mapping from the very start. Don't even talk to me like you know what purism is especially when it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand here.

The only thing I'm defending here is the value of the common mapper's effort in making maps when it's completely erased by patching up all the gameplay planning the mapper put into it with stupid random nonsense.

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40oz, I have played several of your maps "vanilla" and then with Scalliano's Shuffle. They were fun both ways. At no point did I feel that I was "erasing your effort". I'm not sure what the problem with this could possibly be.

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That's easy for you to say, you didn't make the map.

There is a valuable and understandable use of creativity, inventiveness, and intelligence used in every single map I've ever played. I can't possibly level with the idea that it is okay to substitute a mapper's artistic approach into mapping with randomization.

However I have no qualms about using a randomizer with Oblige, being as though the gameplay works and is balanced via programming and is inherently random every time it is used, and so if randomization is being replaced with more randomization, nothing is lost.

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Yeah, there has to be a distiction between badly balanced and well balanced randomizers. It's pretty obvious that AEoD is not visually or thematically consistent, but It's debatable whether or not the gameplay is balanced. (I haven't played it enough to know, but it seems like I die way too easily)

Even if the gameplay of a randomizer is moderately unbalanced, the map balance still contributes somewhat to the overall balance, so the work doesn't totally go to waste.

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