betabox

X6 is not genuinely hard (save for the Extreme difficulty it has, but everybody talks about the game in general). The difficulty is only artificial and the game as a whole is tedious, both of which lead to it becoming boring and repetitive to play through. None of it's helped by the fact that it's full of ideas and concepts that may have been good as that: on paper. But they fell flat in execution. I'd say X5 has more genuine difficulty than it though, and at that, I have a harder time getting through several parts of it than X6.

Most of the time when E3 builds reach the public online, they're a case of that build being repurposed for other trade shows or conventions. So, several copies had been made and distributed, and one or more eventually reached public hands. That's usually how HP and its community members get E3 prototypes out; at least a few layers removed.

I wouldn't doubt or question if it's possible, that user is not likely to be making it up. Lots of things like this slip by without most people noticing. I mean, they said someone originally explained how to get the difficulty in PSX Doom. That bit seems to have never left the discord channel it was discussed in, for example.

The sailor jupiter guy is that dark686revived. I remember more that they had this very deranged perception of relationships and how they were going to win over their crush by doing things like hiring an escort.

Surprised he complained about Doom II having too many enemies and ambushes when that accurately describes the D64 Lost Levels. They're straight up trap and ambush central.

I'm curious what would be an appropriate estimate for all WADs (and PK3s and other formats, I guess) ever put up online. Obviously impossible to make even a decently accurate estimate, as it would need to account for anything ever released across forums, personal sites and so on. Also including the fact a significant amount have been lost to dead links and sites, etc. I wonder if the number in that regard would approach 100 000.

The pre-smartphone days of mobile games was a hell of a time. FWIW, platforms like J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile, RIM (Blackberry), etc had LOTS of official games, as both conversions/ports and original titles. They came from all the big companies too, like Capcom and Konami, and were releases across North America, Europe, Japan. The latter got tons of exclusives that pretty much nobody knows about. It's pretty disappointing how undocumented this aspect of gaming is, and that it's just impossible to do nowadays as those games are permanently lost over time. But you can consider all of these games to be obscure, since they hardly got any publicity and next to nobody ever talked about them. Good luck finding any decent, reliable information on even 10% of all such games ever released back in the day (again, only counting official releases).

Start by getting through the regular campaigns, as in finishing them. Extreme ROTT is better approached when you actually have a feel for what the core game mechanics are like. Another major concept about the expansion is that it plays heavily on the idea of letting your eyes deceive you. It presents you with seemingly mean or unfair scenarios that maximize the struggle, while stashing away utter challenge breakers nearby that just amount to the same level of secret hunting that any other campaign entails. Not to say that Extreme ROTT is really great or greatly designed. IMO, it isn't, at least not to the level as Hunt Begins and especially Hunt Continues. But its difficulty is mostly misjudged and highly exaggerated. Other than a small number of levels that can be counted with one hand (out of its 40+), the rest is very doable. Even Hunt Continues has its own little touch of EROTT to a couple levels and you know what, unlike EROTT, there are no secrets or tricks to cut you much slack in those. Again, if you can get through the main campaigns, you can handle it. Just don't approach it like those others, for the most part, where you're just gunning down enemies while looking for keys, switches, etc in a really mazy construct with a lower degree of caution. The level progression is very much unlike that; sometimes the switch or key is nearby or otherwise in plain sight of where you need to get to next. Instead, just take a moment to look at the challenge presented, and figure out how to get through it with what's provided to you in the map (items, weapons, etc.). Here's a casual playthrough of Extreme ROTT on Crezzy Man difficulty (highest), and with only saving at the start of each stage. Not at all saying to play it like that, but it just shows how feasible it actually is. You'll have a much easier time on the lower difficulties and saving more often. If you're stuck at any part, you can see how to get through using it (levels are timestamped in the description). This was played in Ludicrous Edition, where a lot of things for it were fixed and otherwise changed. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmeqZiAFQzihkvM5RgMCPB5KJb3MvPG75

Weird I'm only seeing the Quickbooks threads. Like over 30 of them by now. But some of you are seeing the Coinbase, American Airlines, Binance (sic).

What's the account verification like on this forum nowadays? I'm curious how they get approved, since several clearly got through, which resulted in this.

Wow, I remember that screen flashing effect. Saw it decades ago when I played the game and thought about it every now and then ever since. GooberMan's post would explain why I never saw it in the game again.

I'm looking for the shovelware discs listed in the thread title. If anyone has them, it would be nice to have them backed up on archive.org or something similar. EDIT: Cobra Powerpack now up on archive EDIT 2: Levelmania now also up on archive Still looking for Games Chameleon

Ridicule these shovelware compilations all you want, but when's the last time your favorite Doom product saved WADs from before even most/all the Doom developers were born?

Yep. Power Duke is by the same company that made Levelmania: Digital Media Hamburg. However, there are a few items in each that are not available in the other (for games other than Doom, like ROTT). Looking through the levelmania disc contents, you'll find a text file referencing Hard ROTT Cafe, another shovelware pack. So yeah, DMH also made that shovelware.

That said, I checked Quake'em and confirmed my suspicion. It's also by Cobra, so it makes sense if a little disappointing that they have the same wads.

That would be a pretty interesting project, identifying what levels the episodes take from. Is there any provenance on the 1 on 1 wad, to maybe see if the same author is involved? Also has me wondering just how original their other so-called "new" episodes are for other games, like Duke!Zone II's exclusives.

Update for anyone who might be interested. Cobra Powerpack (and the separate Cobra Utilities for Doom and Doom II 2-CD set) Levelmania are archived now. Only one remaining is The Games Chameleon.

The GZDoom mod Cold As Hell has a cargo plane you're in at the start. IIRC, there were even 2 designs. It was changed for the big improvement update.

Spicy food does the opposite on digestion for me, practically clearing me out. Seems to vary from person to person, interesting how the effect is the exact opposite between people.

Don't know, but that post above mine kind of seems like spambots have come a really long way :P EDIT: Looks like the post got removed, so it was spam. But it could have very easily passed for legit like 5 years ago, responding to several things in OP. On topic though, yeah I'm really big on spicy food. It's not even whether or not it enhances the flavor, I probably just have gotten a strong affinity for the heat about 11 years ago. If ordering food, I get the spiciest options. Always have a bottle of sriracha stocked, and my current pick-of-the-month (more like last 3 years) is this local brand which sells like 7 or 8 flavors of hot sauce. I try to have 3 of those flavors handy, being the carolina reaper, scorpion and jolokia. Oddly, the scorpion is way hotter than the reaper.

The defunct site addoncollector.spielepedia.de showcased lots of shovelware covers and discs for Doom and several other FPS. You can still view it in the Wayback Machine at archive.org The person who created it did not put any contact or any other information about themselves. Hoping someone here might know if they're on other forums, or other ways to reach them.

The site maintainer did have most of those discs and it *seemed* like there were going to be files available to some capacity (IIRC, one wayback snapshot had a navbar option called archive which wasn't set up since it can't be clicked; that, or it was mentioned somewhere on the site about a WIP archive). Shame that they can't be contacted and the rare ones they have are lost until other copies surface (and I've been keeping an eye out for 2 of them for a quite a while).

I'd be open to a mod like that, but yeah this would be more suited for the duke modding community where they would most likely be able to implement something like that (and it'd likely be in the EDuke32 source port). The continuity issue between levels of the later episodes wouldn't even have to be an issue for the map since it wouldn't strictly need to follow scale or suggest a single means of transport. E4 would be the least coherent with map transitions, though. Can be gimmick-based, like since E5 is around the world, the intermission could be a mock globe or world map with each level location being a highlight on it.

Check out these threads/links: -I'm not sure if @Wadmodder Shalton covered most of the available shovelware collections, but there is a lot here: -Old lists from Greyghost:

I like Maximum Doom, from a shovelware and historical standpoint. In that regard, I like these shovelware compilations for 90s FPS games in general. They may be shit but there's a chance they have WADs from back then that are nowhere to be found online today, again the historical aspect. Complimentary shoutout to @GreyGhost as usual, hope to find out what happened with him. On Maximum Doom, I kind of wonder what the earliest mention is of someone beating all the levels of it. I wanna say Ledmeister did post at some point that he did it. I completed it in 2012, but actually tried to do it before in 2005 before easily giving up on burn out; and Led had already completed it prior to then, even, if it was him.