Ion Fury, a new Build Engine game out now.

[dsm]

Finally caved in and bought it. Like it a lot so far, may even end up loving it.

 

I like the level design, the clever secrets, the references and I always was a sucker for a good HUD face. Weapons are relatable, while still being gloriously over-designed and I generally like the cartoonish, but detailed art style.

Gunplay is enjoyable, even though I agree that the "Loverboy" revolver sounds a bit on the soft side, but so far, the gameplay doesn't really make me feel like I'm a competent combatant, since I get hit in nearly every encounter with hitscanners. It's fun though, which is the most important part.

 

Music is pretty awesome and quite memorable.

 

I admit that I also found myself a little annoyed at the platforming, when hunting for secrets; you fall off, or miss, ledges far too easily and since you take fall damage in this game, it can result in some save scumming abuse, which I don't find all that fantastic. But hey, it's the Build Engine; it can't really be helped (except make fewer platforming puzzles for secrets, but then many of the secrets wouldn't be as memorable so...).

 

The pickups look nice, but are very small and easy to miss; at first, I found myself wasting big medkits (picking them up when I was only 5 health points short) because I couldn't tell it was a big medkit.

 

I would agree that the enemy lineup is a little meh, except that these are your basic cannon fodder enemies only introduced in the first two levels of the game. I was actually surprised to learn that they're more distinct from one another than I was led to believe from watching gameplay footage. Each soldier-type has distinct sounds and rather distinct attacks, so they're easy to tell apart.

[wheresthebeef]

20 hours ago, bonnie said:

 I also hope for easily accessible custom maps and multiplayer.

 

Same guys made Duke3D Megaton Edition on Steam which had/has Steam Workshop so it was super easy to play custom stuff. Not sure how they will handle non-Steam versions but I've no doubt these guys will make it super accessible; they are, afterall, huge Duke3D modders.

I haven't heard or read anything about multiplayer; I don't think there will be any, at least not at launch.

[VGA]

There will probably be no multiplayer, because they would have to fix eduke32's multiplayer first.

[Woolie Wool]

I had to break out my 4:3 NEC MultiSync S-IPS monitor for this since the way the game draws in software resolution means everything is stretched to your native resolution regardless of aspect ratio. With that done I was able to play it in glorious 640x480! I think there should at least be the option of using the resolution as an actual video mode in software, and a legacy build for those of us with real CRTs (though carrying a 21" Trinitron from the room where my retro PC lives over here would be a hell of an ordeal to play one game!).

 

 

Played this way, it really does look and feel like a DOS game, albeit one that would probably need a high-end P3 to run even with optimization by an ASM wizard. Ammo is really scarce in the beginning, especially since the pickups can be hard to see and easily missed by a new player, but gets more comfortable later on. I agree with everyone who was unimpressed by the enemy variety; the not-quite-hitscans are virtually impossible to dodge (except, ironically, the boss's; more on him later), there isn't a clear tell when they're about to fire or time to get out of the way, and the damage is low enough that enemy encounters often feel like a "health tax" for lack of map foreknowledge.

 

The boss was intimidating to look at but not actually all that difficult if you keep your cool and don't fall off the edge of the arena, as there is so much space available you can dodge most of his fire by keeping your distance and circle-strafing him, retreating to cover only when he closes in so you can run away beyond his effective range. Only when he gets close to you is he an immediate threat. I did, however, really like the way his missiles would not be fired at you directly but at whatever cover you were hiding behind at the moment, blowing it to pieces and denying you the use of that area as a safe zone. Ah well, better for an early game boss to be easier than he looks than massively frustrating like the asshole Destructinator from Adventures of Square.

[CARRiON]

I put my new Ryzen CPU in and now this game runs silky smooth. Pretty funny.

[Jon]

@Woolie Wool do you mean to say the assets are designed for 4:3? Or is just the software renderer hasn't been considered properly yet and wrongly stretches things in 16:9?

[Woolie Wool]

The software renderer appears to use a fullscreen borderless window and stretches things to 16:9 on a 16:9 monitor rather than using a video mode and displaying 4:3 properly.

[Touchdown]

I think, based on the preview, this is a pretty competent Build engine game. Certainly feels more oldschool than Alien World Order episode the Duke3D re-release. I really like the environments and level design in general. Weapons are all pretty cool with Bowling Bombs being just as awesome as I expected them to be after Bombshell (which I still haven't finished). The only thing I kind of don't like so far is the lack of enemy diversity - hopefully there'll be cooler enemies in the full game. But it's pretty good overally. Here's hoping that Amid Evil lives up to this and Dusk (Early Access release on Monday, mark your calendars).

[Jon]

I bought this from 3Drealms direct rather than steam, but it only offers a windows download, not Linux. I've contacted their support to see if it's possible to get a Linux build. If not I'm going to ask for a refund but I don't fancy my chances.

[VGA]

10 minutes ago, Jon said:

I bought this from 3Drealms direct rather than steam, but it only offers a windows download, not Linux. I've contacted their support to see if it's possible to get a Linux build. If not I'm going to ask for a refund but I don't fancy my chances.

They say on their website

"ION MAIDEN will release for Windows PC, Mac, and Linux in Q3 2018.
If you order now (Early Access), you'll be granted immediate access to an exclusive multi-hour preview campaign! (PC, Linux)."

 

https://3drealms.com/catalog/ion-maiden_56/

 

So tell them that you want a Linux build. Anyway why the heck would anyone not buy it on Steam so he has it on the Steam account forever? 3D Realms is shady

[Jon]

9 minutes ago, VGA said:

They say on their website

"ION MAIDEN will release for Windows PC, Mac, and Linux in Q3 2018.
If you order now (Early Access), you'll be granted immediate access to an exclusive multi-hour preview campaign! (PC, Linux)."

 

https://3drealms.com/catalog/ion-maiden_56/

 

So tell them that you want a Linux build.

 

Thanks, that's good news. Hopefully my ticket will be answered.

 

9 minutes ago, VGA said:

Anyway why the heck would anyone not buy it on Steam so he has it on the Steam account forever? 3D Realms is shady

 

Easier for me; I don't have to set up steam on any future Linux device to play the game. I don't currently have it installed for that matter. Also no DRM

[bloodshot]

On 3/1/2018 at 10:43 PM, KVELLER said:

 

It really puzzled me when I installed Diablo for the first time. How much is it? 5 MB?

 

 

Diablo 1 is 500 megs, but it runs off the CD.

 

If you install the HD mod source port thingy you have to grab the files from the CD and it's much bigger

[VGA]

57 minutes ago, Jon said:

 

Thanks, that's good news. Hopefully my ticket will be answered.

 

 

Easier for me; I don't have to set up steam on any future Linux device to play the game. I don't currently have it installed for that matter. Also no DRM

And in the future, where will you download Ion Maiden from? 15 years from now? (If you don't install Steam)

[Gez]

Are they planning on getting on GOG? I'd rather get it there than on Steam.

[VGA]

https://www.gog.com/game/ion_maiden

[scwiba]

I've been messing around with it a bit. Only played the first level and a half (they're longer than I expected), but I'm enjoying it a lot so far. Maybe more than Duke3D, but then again I never was a huge Duke3D fan. Will probably play the rest of the demo over the weekend.

 

Here's a couple idiots (one of which is me) playing the first 40 minutes blind: 

 

 

[cybdmn]

8 hours ago, Jon said:

I bought this from 3Drealms direct rather than steam, but it only offers a windows download, not Linux. I've contacted their support to see if it's possible to get a Linux build. If not I'm going to ask for a refund but I don't fancy my chances.

 

 

You know that the Linux version is inside the installer? You can extract IonMaiden_Preview-1.0.exe with 7zip for example, and get that:

 

https://imgur.com/s2JfTlL

[Jon]

5 hours ago, cybdmn said:

 

 

You know that the Linux version is inside the installer? You can extract IonMaiden_Preview-1.0.exe with 7zip for example, and get that:

 

https://imgur.com/s2JfTlL

 

I didn't know that, thanks!

 

13 hours ago, VGA said:

And in the future, where will you download Ion Maiden from? 15 years from now? (If you don't install Steam)

 

From my NAS, or whatever replaces it.

[cybdmn]

13 hours ago, VGA said:

And in the future, where will you download Ion Maiden from? 15 years from now? (If you don't install Steam)

 

And what if there is no Steam in 15 from now? Where will you download all your games?

 

God, how can anybody play Doom today, when he just ordered it back in 93 from id directly?

[Jon]

I can sympathise with folks who like the convenience of outsourcing storage to Steam, or GOG, or Humble, etc. - not everyone can or wants to have a proper storage solution in their house (or pay for enough storage on another cloud storage solution). But in my case yeah, I'm a packrat and I've got the setup for it, so that's the most convenient. It will live in /archive/Games next door to /archive/Games/Doom where my mid-90s IWADs live.

 

(I actually went through a phase of trying to download everything I had in Humble for local storage, but it was a humongous pain in the ass and I realized I would play less than 10% of it anyway so I stopped)

[VGA]

5 hours ago, cybdmn said:

 

And what if there is no Steam in 15 from now? Where will you download all your games?

 

God, how can anybody play Doom today, when he just ordered it back in 93 from id directly?

In 15 years there will absolutely still be Steam around. Jon's disks? Not so much :D

 

Now let's get back on-topic: Will they release a version that has smooth framerate or what? I know it's early access but they are using eduke32 which has so many years of development...

 

Is Ion Maiden using Polymer or Polymost?

[Jon]

25 minutes ago, VGA said:

In 15 years there will absolutely still be Steam around. Jon's disks? Not so much :D

I'm sure Steam will be around in 15 years. I'm also sure my data will have survived, too. It's lasted longer than that already, after all. I'm less confident I'll have *access* to my steam account in 15 years, and that everything I've ever bought will still be available.

[cybdmn]

You have no idea what can happen in 15 years, and you can‘t be sure that Steam still exist, or if at a certain point Windows Games are obsolete and just dissapear from the steam library just like stuff for older consoles like the original XBox.

15 Years ago Nokia was the most successful cellphone producer on earth, just look where they are now. Really, you don‘t know nothing, so just be sure that you can‘t assume that Steam exist in 15 years, at lease in it‘s current form.

 

Discs on the other hand can exist that long. My Doom v1.1 3.5“ floppies are still in an excellent condition. I guess you can calculate how old they are on your own.

 

And for your question regarding the renderer used for Ion Maiden, why you don‘t just look at the eduke32 website?

Polymost is replaced by Polymer since ages.

[seed]

5 minutes ago, Jon said:

and that everything I've ever bought will still be available.

 

Well as it stands right now everything you bought will always be there, maybe no longer available for purchase in some cases but still in the library.

[Jon]

6 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

 

Well as it stands right now everything you bought will always be there, maybe no longer available for purchase in some cases but still in the library.

 

Has nothing ever been pulled from owners? That is very surprising (and quite impressive). I don't doubt that, at some point, that will happen, however.

[seed]

20 minutes ago, Jon said:

Has nothing ever been pulled from owners? That is very surprising (and quite impressive). I don't doubt that, at some point, that will happen, however.

 

As far as I'm aware, no, never heard of anyone literally losing any game they purchased. Whatever you bought will always stay in your library, it just gets removed from the store when it becomes unavailable for whatever reason (licensing issues and so on). For instance, people who got MK Kollection, Alan Wake's American Nightmare and Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition back when they were still available still have the games in library and can re-download them to play any time, they're fully functional.

 

And it makes perfect sense to me to be this way, it'd otherwise be just like someone coming to you to take your physical copies of games away simply because they got pulled at some point.

[CARRiON]

Nah, they have.

 

https://www.geek.com/games/valve-pulls-game-from-steam-library-for-the-first-time-even-if-you-bought-it-1580981/

[<inactive>Player Lin]

1 hour ago, cybdmn said:

Polymost is replaced by Polymer since ages.

 

No, Polymer still has shitload of performance problems(if you ever using recent eduke32 snapshot builds, you'll know, not even a GTX1080/TITAN X can run the renderer with maps have shitload of lights or some heavy shit without single-digit of fps, that renderer just dire need lot of optimizes but lack of proper guys to do that job, as original developer who made the renderer quits many years ago), so IM only have Classic and OpenGL(Polymost), as Polymer has been disabled/removed.

 

And since people already has problems even with Polymost, I don't think the Polymer will ever happens in IM, unless eduke32 dev/VoidPoint guys found a way to optimize it. :(

[Manuel-K]

3 hours ago, Agent6 said:

And it makes perfect sense to me to be this way, it'd otherwise be just like someone coming to you to take your physical copies of games away simply because they got pulled at some point.

Why should DRM make sense? It is only designed to restrict access to stuff you bought.

[seed]

19 minutes ago, Manuel-K said:

Why should DRM make sense? It is only designed to restrict access to stuff you bought.

 

And what has any DRM to do with what I said there? I'm pretty sure my point was very clear.