The /newstuff Chronicles #89

[Liam]

Five new wads, twenty new maps, and seven more days of Doom until the next /newstuff. This week you'll frag your friends in a tech-base arena, try to escape from the claustrophobic hallways of a marble temple, stare in disgust at messy texturing gunk, and take a visit to whatever planet that shub-niggurath thing comes from. Also someone please mail me and tell me just why ZDoomGL takes screenshots in .raw format.



The Real Crusher by Black Void - - The fun this week starts with 'The Real Crusher', a Doom 2 Map06 replacment with a good fifteen-twenty minutes of the same old 'hide, shoot, clear the room, move on' action. The stone and blood and marble suggests that the map takes place either in a cave or in Hell, I'm not exactly sure but either way it's pretty ugly. Ammo and health are balanced reasonably well but that doesn't make up for the consistently dull gameplay. Safe to pass up.

xfire4 by Lee Szymanski - - One 'Fen Boi' brings us this in-your-face Doom 2 DM map (Map02), fitting for serious one-on-one games or 3-4 player FFA. Xfire4 sports a typical, circular arena-type design, although the doom2.exe 'instant lift' in the inner circle adds a little spice to the DM action. I disagree with the usage of the soulsphere, especially when it's so easy to grab, but I didn't find it to seriously harm the map's balance. Er, yeah, probably a nice alternative to Dwango 5 too *cough*. Worth a look.

Crackers 'n Tea by Epyo - - As much as I want to sum up this entire wad with 'ugh', I think that'd reflect poorly on myself as a reviewer. Crackers 'n Tea is a six map wad replacing Doom 2 Map01 through Map06, each map with it's own little storyline (paragraph walkthrough of the map in the txt file). Each map is also made up of a variety of different themes (including 'palace of disgusting mancubus textures that suggest Epyo has his gamma off kilter', 'some whirlpool palace or something' and 'big wood temple with furniture on the ceiling'), and has a thumping soundtrack containing midi covers of ridiculously popular rock bands like Tool. Short maps, bad architecture (with the possible exception of Map05), terrible texturing, back to the drawing board. Oh and you'll need Zdoom for this one, but only because of a particle fountain or two and a single ledge that's too high to reach without jumping.

The Temple by Sébastien "Darkstalker" Roy - - A very simple vanilla-compatible Doom2 map taking place in a green marble... uh, temple (which has a nice, pretty view from the outside), The Temple is a worthy play if you're disgusted by the next wad reviewed for whatever reason. The map is fairly straightforward gameplaywise; shoot your way through some hallways, flip all the right switches, get all the keys and make it out alive. The major downsides to the map is the disappointingly simple architecture past the first outdoor area and the minimal usage of lighting, both of which did loads to take away from what could've otherwise been a very atmospheric map. Check Temple out if sourceports aren't your thing.

Project Slipgate by Bryant and Kevin Robinson - - Hey, remember Dark 7 and the Dark 7 mission pack? From the exact same mapper(s) that brought you those delightful wads comes Project Slipgate, a tasty 11 new ZDoom maps (Map01-Map05, Map12-Map16, Map18) that are very true to... uh, Quake. As a matter of fact, almost all the sounds, textures and graphics come from Quake, and the authors recommend playing this wad in ZDoomGL with the ZDGL MD2 pack to give your weapons and enemies that low-quality poorly-animated zing that the Quake models had. Hey! Don't be too afraid. Just cause it looks like Quake doesn't mean it's lost all elements of that classic Doom gameplay you all know and love... it just eh, added a few new elements in. In any event, I would hope nobody would pass this up because you need a jump key, these maps are balanced, fast paced, challenging, and save a few gross texture misalignments, some of them look damn good. Worth looking into, requires ZDoom.

[999cop]

The link of the image of "The Real Crusher" is broken here.

[Naked Snake]

Whoa, Project Slipgate kicks some ass.

[kristus]

WHOA Project Slipgate has been released for over 6 months already.

[Rich]

I played real crusher and didn't find the play boring. Actually, it's a decent challenge in some parts.

Tried the temple and liked it but can't seem to find enough ammo. Has anyone found enough ammo? Perhaps I missed a hidden box?


Rich

[Black Void]

Well thanks Rich, always good to know that some one enjoyed a first attempt at a wad. Afterall- you can't be too critical towards my first map...

[Rich]

Thought I'd pass along some information and , perhaps, help someone.

I've tried unsuccessfully to post since they got this new software at doomworld. I even sent Ling three emails asking for help but all I got was one reply saying I should be able to post. That's kind of like telling the mechanic your car is broken and he says, 'your right it is'.

Anyway, the problem is Netscape. I'm all set up and everything but I just can't post and the message doesn't point to Netscape. It just says I can't post. I just now tried Internet Explorer and it worked fine. You can see my post. Hope this helps!

Rich

[Rich]

Black Void said:

Well thanks Rich, always good to know that some one enjoyed a first attempt at a wad. Afterall- you can't be too critical towards my first map...

Your welcome! I recorded this and thought it was as good as many of the wads out here.

Support the Doomers of today as they are the future of tommorow.

Rich

[Virgil]

Rich: Netscape has problems with doomworld. I tried using it too but it won't work. Just use IE.

[esayeek]

Rich said:

Thought I'd pass along some information and , perhaps, help someone.

I've tried unsuccessfully to post since they got this new software at doomworld. I even sent Ling three emails asking for help but all I got was one reply saying I should be able to post. That's kind of like telling the mechanic your car is broken and he says, 'your right it is'.

Anyway, the problem is Netscape. I'm all set up and everything but I just can't post and the message doesn't point to Netscape. It just says I can't post. I just now tried Internet Explorer and it worked fine. You can see my post. Hope this helps!

Rich

vb and all of doomworld contain some "eh" code; and IE seems to be pretty good at ignoring or working around mistakes in webpage code in general. so, it would probably be better to try IE, or maybe opera or something.

[Shaviro]

bigbadgangsta said:

Whoa, Project Slipgate kicks some ass.

WHOA, you're right.

heh. Quake looks better in zdoom than in...ermm...quake.

[Rich]

Virgil said:

Rich: Netscape has problems with doomworld. I tried using it too but it won't work. Just use IE.

Virgil!

Ah, you too! That's why I thought it would be good to let others know. Thanks for adding your support.:)

Rich

[SyntherAugustus]

The Real Crusher was a level based on map06 of all places. The whole idea was not even near it. However, the nonsense title doesnt flaw out the level. I had fun with the level. Good challenges.

The Temple was a nice fun level without any source ports (although i did play it with eternity and icd deh 2). It was one of those better levels i found on 3darchives.

Crackers 'n Tea was a sort of bad levels. Crappy architecture all over the place. Looks like either a "shit on purpose" wad or a bad first attempt. Safe to pass.

XFire4 is the deathmatch wad of the week. It was fun with the cajun bot but it's a good wad.

I wasnt able to play slipgate due to my 66mhz!

[Liam]

RailGunner said:

XFire4 is the deathmatch wad of the week. It was fun with the cajun bot but it's a good wad.

O_o

Not like it had any competition or anything...

[Vile]

I really enjoyed playing through slipgate, even though I think the highly brownish texture scheme from quake was captured just a little too well. ;) The final level also brought back memories of quake's e1m7 (House of Chthon), and although it was a bit too easy with the BFG and full cells, it was introduced quite nicely. Adding the radio sounds from Q2 was a nice touch as well.

I also played through crackers.wad, but I don't have much to say about that..

[Volte]

Crackers and Tea: interesting.... not bad, as I had a bit of
fun playing it, but it was wierd, let me tell you. The only bit I had
even the slightest of problems on was the one with the Spider. Spider
+ big open space means that you have nowhere to hide. Same with the
two Viles on the last level; nowhere to hide (also I finished them off
without too much trouble...)

[Black Void]

RailGunner said:

The Real Crusher was a level based on map06 of all places. The whole idea was not even near it. However, the nonsense title doesnt flaw out the level. I had fun with the level. Good challenges.

Hey now... it uh... er... crushed you with darkness... (sad, sad, sad... I know... I just liked the music on level 6...)

[fen boi]

If enough people moan about it i'll change the soulsphere and re-submit xfire4. Not a great deal of interest was shown in the forums so I just had to trust my judgement.

[SyntherAugustus]

i thought xfire4 was good

[Volte]

Here is my crappy run-through of Crackers and Tea. I have too must free
time. :p

Once agian, I came very close to dying when fighting the Spider, but
meh, the rest was easy.



Requires ZDoom. That's what the demo is recorded in.

[Opulent]

First off, Netscape4.x will not display the DW pages correctly (and often will crash from the Java scripts), but it does allow me to post.
IE 5.0 and above should be fine... but I still recommend Mozilla.

xfire4 is a great dm map... hope to find time for Slipgate....

Next week: new Inferno and Höglund maps! whoo hooo....

[The Ultimate DooMer]

I'm gonna stick up for Crackers and Tea a little bit, cos it wasn't that bad. It had a sort of non-serious, playful feel to it and one or two interesting challenges. On the spider bit, you simply move as far away as possible from it and use your plasma gun. The archviles, well, with 100% health and 114% armour, you can take 2 hits without dying so make your rockets count. I also liked the sludge pipe bit as well. (I wonder where he got the idea from...)

Project Slipgate is cool, just like Dark 7 but Quake-like instead of Unreal-like. Still has too much ammo though, but it's still great so far. (i'm at the end of the cathedral bit)

Temple 2 was quick and nice, Crusher was nothing like the original at all and Rhea3 isn't even finished.

[Rich]

Regarding Temple.wad:

As I said earlier, I like this map. However, because of the low amount of ammo I just can't see it being completed in UV unless a lot of it is done tyson style. Did I miss a berserk pack or chainsaw?



Thanks,

Rich

[Darkstalker]

Regarding the low ammo, I had a bit more than enought to finish my map, use the pistol for zombies and a few imps and you should be fine.
/me writes "More ammo in maps" in reminder.txt :)

Aboout detail: I did the first half of the map spontanuously at 1am and the rest of the map the same way but the next day, so inspirations was running short.

Well, for a map that took 2 days to improvise I thought it was good enough to release it since I didn't touch any editing utilities for so many months :P

[Rich]

[QUOTE]Darkstalker said:
[B]Regarding the low ammo, I had a bit more than enought to finish my map, use the pistol for zombies and a few imps and you should be fine.


Thank you! I'll try that.

[Epyo]

Ultimate DooMer said:

On the spider bit, you simply move as far away as possible from it and use your plasma gun.

I dont remember putting a plasma gun in.....

[Volte]

I had to hide in the cave and finish it off with my SSG. Nearly killed
myself with the RL.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Actually, I think it was rockets that I used. Still, it works the same anyway.

[Opulent]

Volteface, your demo desyncs on Map05. :(
were you using a zdoom1.23 beta?
those look like easy/fun maps to play.

[Rich]

Opulent said:

Volteface, your demo desyncs on Map05. :(
were you using a zdoom1.23 beta?
those look like easy/fun maps to play.

Hey Opulent!

Your right about zdoom 1.23.:)

I reported that bug to Randy but I'm not sure if he issued an update.
It records okay but, as you know, plays everything back in skill 1 or 2 and desyncs.

An easy way for folks to check their version is to record 30 seconds of doom2 map1 at skill 4 and then play it back. You may see a lot of soldiers (zombies) have disappeared.

Rich