Back to the Arcade

Well, those were independent, although it's true that Tom Mustaine, who was one of the developers involved in them, is working with id. I doubt it will be one of those because it would require some copyright clearing for id to use them.

I played some of the extra episode at Quakecon on Saturday. All I can say is that I personally liked the way the maps looked and flowed (way better then most of Sandy Peterson's stuff IMO). I also did not seem to recognize the levels from any previous mapset, so they could be new.

lupinx-Kassman said:

I played some of the extra episode at Quakecon on Saturday. All I can say is that I personally liked the way the maps looked and flowed (way better then most of Sandy Peterson's stuff IMO). I also did not seem to recognize the levels from any previous mapset, so they could be new.

Awesome! That's good to hear that they're at least decent; I look forward to seeing what they came up with. :)

Something about the idea of new, official Doom 2 maps has me excited. There are plenty of great community maps, but seeing id take interest in Doom again is awesome. :D

Well, technically these new maps weren't made by id. They were made by Nerve Software.

True, bit it's equivalent to Final Doom.

Many of the staff at Nerve Software used to work at Rogue, so it's possible that at least some of the levels will be made by people who developed Strife.

Anyway, I'll be interested to see if they include any new resources (textures, music) as well as the new levels.

NiGHTMARE said:

Many of the staff at Nerve Software used to work at Rogue, so it's possible that at least some of the levels will be made by people who developed Strife.

Whoa. Now I am excited about it!

Super Jamie said:

Whoa. Now I am excited about it!

You just want a Blackbird cameo appearance you dirty boy.

NiGHTMARE said:

Many of the staff at Nerve Software used to work at Rogue, so it's possible that at least some of the levels will be made by people who developed Strife.

Anyway, I'll be interested to see if they include any new resources (textures, music) as well as the new levels.

As far as I saw there were no new textures, and the music (while picked specifically for each level) seemed to be tracks that were already in the game. One curious thing I did notice however is that the medpacks seemed to have the UAC insignia on them instead of the usual plus symbol.

Also, while the maps had new titles when bringing up the automap screen, they did not have new intermission graphic titles (map 2 was called underhalls in the intermission, while it was 'the pain labs' in the automap.)

lupinx-Kassman said:

One curious thing I did notice however is that the medpacks seemed to have the UAC insignia on them instead of the usual plus symbol.

That doesn't suprise me

hardcore_gamer said:

I live in Iceland.

Really? Nice! I plan to move there within five or ten years.

As for the 'new episode'... I'm not familiar with Nerve. But if they really want quality stuff in there, they should go check out some of the more higher rated wads to come out. But, being the cynic that I am, this is doubtful.

GreyGhost said:
That doesn't suprise me

The Red Cross didn't really care much if it was used in things like games. After all, in games like DOOM it makes sense because it's a valid symbol for military medics. What happened is that Johnson & Johnson, who separately acquired a trademark over the red cross to use in their products, got pissed that the Red Cross was licensing the symbol to some entities, and started legal action against the Red Cross. As a result, they had an undisclosed settlement which allowed the Red Cross to continue its licensing of the symbol as it wished. I believe I read that in 2006 the Red Cross made a public statement telling game developers in particular to avoid using the symbol. It's clear from the public actions the Red Cross has taken that the arrangement was that the Red Cross would make open statements against the use of the symbol in commercial products, to please J&J and further the company's commercial concerns.

lupinx-Kassman said:

I played some of the extra episode at Quakecon on Saturday. All I can say is that I personally liked the way the maps looked and flowed (way better then most of Sandy Peterson's stuff IMO). I also did not seem to recognize the levels from any previous mapset, so they could be new.

Could you be more specific in the way they were? Techbases? Outdoors? Urban? Hell? What texture themes? Were the maps short or long? Okay for Deathmatches? Lots of monsters? Difficult? Easy? How many maps did you play (or get to see being played?)

40oz said:

Could you be more specific in the way they were? Techbases? Outdoors? Urban? Hell? What texture themes? Were the maps short or long? Okay for Deathmatches? Lots of monsters? Difficult? Easy? How many maps did you play (or get to see being played?)

I played a map and a half. The first two maps were tech bases, using mostly brownish textures like BROWN1 and STARTAN2 etc. The first map was somewhat short while the next was a bit longer (I died a couple of times and left before completing it.) As for the difficulty, lets just say it isn't Plutonia, but it is harder then doom 2 (more like it's later maps). I can't say whether it would be good for dm or not, as I do not know how it would change according.

What was the detailing like?

Was it the usual IWAD fare of bare vanilla-style rooms with questionable texture alignment, or more precise design with decent detailing like an early good megawad, or was it amazingly limit-pushing like Suspended in Dusk?

I'm assuming the Vanilla engine limits still apply, though perhaps they have been raised to take advantage of the 360s obvious hardware advantage over a DX2/66 :)

The detailing was surprisingly good. There was no questionable texture alignment that I saw (although it is hard to remember every detail), and I would say that they were visually more appealing then pretty much any level out of doom2. However, it wasn't the kind of detailing that pushed the engine's limits.

A new "official" doom2 episode!

WOW!

Is there any possibility we can donwload it from some where?

Lorenzo said:

A new "official" doom2 episode!

WOW!

Is there any possibility we can donwload it from some where?

Well, one can always hope that someone somehow hacks it to port it over to the PC. But that is not likely, since you would have to get the data straight from the Xbox 360 hard drive and then somehow convert the levels from the Xbox live arcade version of the game.

The ironic thing is....i actually own both a Xbox 360 and have a gold membership for it, but still can't download the game (or ANY Id game for sale on the arcade for that matter) because of Iceland's (where i live) shitty Xbox live support.

hardcore_gamer said:

Well, one can always hope that someone somehow hacks it to port it over to the PC. But that is not likely, since you would have to get the data straight from the Xbox 360 hard drive and then somehow convert the levels from the Xbox live arcade version of the game.

Or someone could just manually build the maps. Can't be more than 9-10 maps right?

I kind of doubt that the actual map format is any different than it is in the PC versions of the game, so if the data could be extracted somehow, the maps could be separated out of it.

esselfortium said:

I kind of doubt that the actual map format is any different than it is in the PC versions of the game, so if the data could be extracted somehow, the maps could be separated out of it.

Really?

And yet PSX Doom as well allot of the console ports can't be extracted without a shitload of effort.

At best someone will re-create the maps for the PC. I don't think we will see the actual maps ported.

hardcore_gamer said:

And yet PSX Doom as well allot of the console ports can't be extracted without a shitload of effort.

The two situations are not equivalent. All of those old Doom console ports had to be modified, compressed and encoded in obscure ways so that they could work within the limitations and computational quirks of those old machines. Consoles in the current console generation are much more capable and standardized. An XBox is basically your Windows machine in a different box. So, really, the easiest way to port Doom to it would be to just leave it the way it is.

Creaphis said:

The two situations are not equivalent. All of those old Doom console ports had to be modified, compressed and encoded in obscure ways so that they could work within the limitations and computational quirks of those old machines. Consoles in the current console generation are much more capable and standardized. An XBox is basically your Windows machine in a different box. So, really, the easiest way to port Doom to it would be to just leave it the way it is.

Agreed. There would be nothing to gain from tearing the game apart and rebuilding all sorts of things.

I would imagine they didn't bother, considering Doom 1 on XBLA still plays the original demos in sync.

hardcore_gamer said:

And yet PSX Doom as well allot of the console ports can't be extracted without a shitload of effort.

In addition to what Creaphis said, the map format had also been changed to accommodate new features like the colored lighting effects from PSX Doom and Doom 64.

Gez said:

In addition to what Creaphis said, the map format had also been changed to accommodate new features like the colored lighting effects from PSX Doom and Doom 64.

Well ok, but there is still the fact that the game is located on the Xbox 360 hard drive. How exactly are people expecting modders/hackers to copy the new levels from the hard drive and then get them to work on the PC?

hardcore_gamer said:

How exactly are people expecting modders/hackers to copy the new levels from the hard drive and then get them to work on the PC?

With a screwdriver

hardcore_gamer said:

Well ok, but there is still the fact that the game is located on the Xbox 360 hard drive. How exactly are people expecting modders/hackers to copy the new levels from the hard drive and then get them to work on the PC?

The Xbox and the Xbox 360 hard drives use a file system known as "FatX".

Just take the hard drive out of the 360's protective case, hook the damn thing up with an adapter or whatever, fire up xplorer360, and boom, your in.

Here is some more in depth information: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=492418

Assuming the data for XBLA Doom 2 isn't encrypted or something, I really doubt there will be much hassle.

Mike.Reiner said:

The Xbox and the Xbox 360 hard drives use a file system known as "FatX".

Just take the hard drive out of the 360's protective case, hook the damn thing up with an adapter or whatever, fire up xplorer360, and boom, your in.

Here is some more in depth information: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=492418

Assuming the data for XBLA Doom 2 isn't encrypted or something, I really doubt there will be much hassle.

Well that's comforting to know :)

Kaiser appears to have a reputation for hacking Doom ports, perhaps he will hack this as well, with any luck.

I had no idea Nerve had members of Rogue in it.

In that case, I'm not too worried about getting an episode of Sewers and Betray stuff :p

As for Doom II itself, ive fortunately been stopped from replaying it on GZDoom, as I'll now save it for this version