Rise Of The Wool Ball :3 (v1.2 now GZDoom compatible)

[MSPaintR0cks]

 

Hey there :D It`s been a while... no, not that song by Staind
Shortly after I released my previous Zdoom mod Shadow Of The Wool Ball, I immediately started making plans for it`s sequel and set myself a deadline of one year.
Since then, I went all OCD and made sure to make a tiny bit of progress almost every day (my social activities did suffer a little, I am not gonna lie^^").
And some day last week... BAM! I was finally finished with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time has passed since the events of the first game. Peace has returned to Scott and Rebecca`s home planet.
Just as spring has started to bloom there, both of them awake from their hibernation slumber and start doing what they do after every winter - running happily to the nearby woods, enjoying the beautiful nature and joining some sick moshpits at their favorite metal festival after that.
But this time, their routine gets interrupted by Scott... who mysteriously disappears on their way to the woods.
Rebecca immediately starts looking for him, and not much later she comes across the reasons of his disappearance... and some familiar faces too.
But those kind of faces she never hoped to see again. Furry, green eyed faces with stubby noses. With mouths emitting a stench of canned tuna. Eew.
Their stench is not the worst thing about them, though. It`s much more their deeply sinister intentions, which are far worse than last time...

 

 

 

• 3 all new episodes with 6 levels... in REALLY REAL 3D this time!!!
• all kinds of cool new stuff!!!
• 320x200 cartoon graphics that will make your Pentium 1 melt!!!
• 265 colors!!!
• awkward english by a non-native speaker, though not as bad this time!!!
• a new soundtrack using the latest MIDI synthesizer, in the vein of Bobby Prince and games like Earthworm Jim and Jazz Jackrabbit!!! ...at least I tried so
• horrible puns, they never get old!!!

 

 

 

 

v1.3 (GZDoom compatible)

v1.2 (GZDoom compatible)

v1.1 (Standalone build with intended Software Mode)

 

 

 

As I said at the start of the post, this is the direct sequel to Shadow Of The Wool Ball. This time, I was going more for a Rise Of The Triad-y style, which I am a big fan of. However in the end, the gameplay kinda startet to turn into its own kind of beast. I tried to expand on everything that you guys and gals liked about the first game (thanks so much for all those comments by the way, I never felt so motivated to work on something :D), while removing things I found annoying in Rise Of The Triad.
Also, I tried to stay as closely to the original engine limitations of ROTT as possible... which means staying all blocky with 90° walls, only having one general floor/ceiling height etc. I pretty much want the player to feel as if they just discovered an obscure 90s game, with every aspect (graphics, sounds, level design) of it being shaped by the limitations of its time and pop culture.

 

McWaxMax for coming up with a few awesome design and gameplay ideas (won`t spoiler here), for doing voice acting, always being there with an inspiration for creative new stuff, writing an awesome midi for one of the levels and all around being the coolest buddy ever :D
Almonds for being super motivating and an awesome person to talk with during development... and for drawing me three beautiful looking decorative sprites :D
SanyaWaffles for helping me out with countless scripting issues. This game would have taken 10 years longer without your help :D
Captain J for drawing these awesome explosions for SOTWB and ROTWB... I love those :D

Edited August 6, 2021 by MSPaintR0cks

[Salt-Man Z]

Holy crap yes. 

[Nine Inch Heels]

I have to admit, this mod does look like something I'd want to try. If you managed to come up with fluent gameplay while also delivering a very interesting art-style, this would be something I'd enjoy lots. Unfortunately, the next month is going to be rather busy for me, so I can't playtest this extensively. But this is something I am looking forward to for sure.

[A2Rob]

Looking very forward to this project.

[Big Ol Billy]

Omg SOTW wrung more fun out of Wolf3D restrictions than I ever thought was possible. The art style and tone were a huge inspiration to me, too. Very excited for this! Taking RoTT as a starting point for the sequel is a masterstroke.

[Mondobizarrro]

i hope it wins a cacoward

 

[Jayextee]

Shadow of the Wool Ball was fucking awesome, so this.... you've made my day here. <3

[Untamed64]

On 31/05/2017 at 0:46 AM, MSPaintR0cks said:

I tried to expand on everything that you guys and gals liked about the first game (thanks so much for all those comments by the way, I never felt so motivated to work on something :D), while removing things I found annoying in Rise Of The Triad.

What could you possibly find annoying in RoTT?

[bonnie]

when is it gonna be doooooooooooooooooooooone

 

i'm about to frickin cry i can't wait for this masterpiece any longer ;~;

[Havoc Crow]

Oh wow, fantastic.

I enjoyed SotW and loved how it managed to breathe life into the Wolf3D formula (I never really could get into any other wolf3d-style games, but SotW was awesome.) Can't wait to see what you're gonna do with this one. Are there going to be floating platforms like in RotT?

[kaleb.]

hell yeah cant wait for this

[Lollie]

I'm so glad I saw this thread. I wasn't aware of the original until tonight, and had a lot of fun playing it through - Real cute and charming, and the third act pulled some great tricks (I loved its secret level the most). Very excited to see how you play with Rise of the Triad's formula.

[Pencil of Doom]

I enjoyed Shadow of the Wool Ball a lot and i look foward to playing this.

[Maisth]

The cartoonish graphics really make up for this wad!

[MSPaintR0cks]

Aw man, I hope I can fulfill these expectations ^^"

 

I am pretty certain that I will release version 1.1 of the game tomorrow.
My testers did a great job at finding all kinds of little quirks and bugs (a few of them are not fully finished with it, but they are still doing an awesome job at finding stuff), and I feel a little more comfortable with releasing it.

 

On 7.6.2017 at 2:08 AM, Untamed64 said:

What could you possibly find annoying in RoTT?

Monks. In tight corridors. With floor traps everywhere.

Also... maps like Rocky Plataeu. :x

Aside from that, Rott is one of my favorite FPS games. :3

 

 

[Maître Jambon]

I'm abord the hype train :)

[MSPaintR0cks]

Sooo... just released v1.1. :D

Smaller changes may still come in later versions.

You won`t believe how nervous I am about this release... I hope I can do these expectations justice.^^"

Well, at least I hope I can sweeten your weekend a little with this.

 

Click here! v1.1

The game runs with a standalone executable this time, for... well, technical reasons. Just launch the ROTWB.exe and you should be fine.

 

Alsooo, on a side note...

If you enjoyed my work so far and want to help a wannabe game developer (me) survive while he is working on his next projects, feel free to donate a tinyyyy amount to my PayPal. Oh that would so make my day. ^^"

 

Edited June 9, 2017 by MSPaintR0cks

[Salt-Man Z]

Well, I know what I'm doing tomorrow...

[Big Ol Billy]

Believe the hype folks!

[Master O]

GZdoom just added support for this as an IWAD:

 

https://github.com/coelckers/gzdoom/commit/e0ece283aa9cb22e75c50adedaebb3bc4e147ff7

 

Quote

Added support for Rise Of The Wool Ball as IWAD

 

It should be in Gzdoom 3.2.0 whenever that is released.

[Da Werecat]

This is nice. I was waiting for this after I played the first one.

 

Spoiler

 

Something with the cloud tiling. Also, is that a UFO in the sky?

 

The apostrophe seems to be missing from the story texts? I've seen some examples of "its" (where it's inappropriate) and "thats".

 

I once ran out of bullets when firing the chaingun, and it switched to the berserk sneaker, even though I had shells. Something with the weapons order?

 

[CaptainManiac]

Hey,this has great concept even though the graphics are old school.

[Salt-Man Z]

Played the first episode this morning. Love it! The intro itself was worth the price of admission.

[scifista42]

Brilliant game. The predecessor's style that I already really liked, combined with a highly refreshing "engine upgrade" as well as plenty of various new ideas and stuff, left me maximally impressed. If I didn't play Shadow of Wool Ball first, I'd probably be inclined to gripe about arbitrary limitations again, but let's leave that aside. Just like Rise of the Triad, this does feel imaginative + well-executed a lot despite apparent limits, and that's great even if one doesn't look at this game as a nostalgic emulation of ROTT.

 

Also lmao at the word

Spoiler

hedgelord

:)

[Revenant100]

I noticed a slight oversight in the key settings: the F1 help menu says +Use is bound to E, but by default the E key is not bound to anything in the provided ini file.

[Da Werecat]

While we're at it, there are also only 4 weapon slots in the menu. And the mouse settings still contain mouselook, even though it doesn't work, dunno if this can be fixed.

 

One more oddity: when I exited E2M1 the hero stayed in the dark corridor, running around.

 

[Negostrike]

What a great intro cutscene! I also like the punk-ish protagonist.

[Da Werecat]

Finished it. I thought it was great. Very easy on medium (I should've chosen hard after my experience with the first game) and ammunition is everywhere, but charming and very polished otherwise. Secret levels are once again creative and worth searching for.

 

Will there be another sequel?

 

Spoiler

Spikes are missing in the corner.

 

I just realized that I should've also made a shot of the automap. Well, it's a place with wall shrooms - not a lot of those in the game.

 

Lava and fast water are giving the "spiked" message - hardly important, but still. On the pirate level - I think the water is rising too high, though it's not very noticeable since it's untextured from the sides. Not sure if intentional.

 

Several trees and other obstacles are much shorter than they look - easy to notice when jumping around on shrooms.

 

These crushers have a very limited damage area. I think it's pretty much only the perimeter?

 

Maybe the final arena should be taller? The boss gets cut off when you jump. Not sure how it's gonna look in GZDoom with its sprite handling either (didn't test, probably should've).

 

The third secret level is weird. It's the only level that I was unable to max - because there's an inaccessible test room of sorts with a bunch of enemies you can't kill.

[Havoc Crow]

One annoying thing is that the game doesn't autosave at the start of every level... so if you forget to save, you may find yourself set way back by dying.

[Maître Jambon]

 

 

We can get stuck if we jump here.