Grazza

You have the same gamma-change options as in the original game (F11). Otherwise, you can of course change your monitor's brightness, contrast, etc. :) Oh, and feel very free to attach any demos you record here, even unsuccessful ones, if you'd like other people to test that they play back or if you would like comments on them. One of the reasons for this forum to exist is to encourage people to have a go at recording demos, after all. Sweet Prince: thanks for the tip; I'll try that on the rare occasions when I use the software-rendering exe.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/gkburgess/648159-elec_lg-resized200.jpg

I think a major part of good level design is forcing the player to use a diversity of weapons, and not just by rationing the ammo. There are plenty of possible situations where over-reliance on the SSG (with its slow reload and poor accuracy for long-range shots) would get you killed in a great hurry. BTW, with fast monsters or on NM, the range of such situations is considerably widened. Fredrik: heh, maybe, but I'd still rather rely on it in that situation (one-on-one with no cover) than the plasma gun, where you can be pretty certain you'll get fried at least once.

That reminds me of MDK. My recollection is a bit fuzzy, but I think the health potions tried to run away from you in that.

Well of course. Society is constantly decaying, just like standards in education are always declining, etc. ;)

Since Nanami's demo site appears to have vanished, I have uploaded the seven Demo Recording Recommendations that I wrote for it to my own webpage. I've removed the images to save space, but all the substance is there. I'm also attaching DooMer 4ever's UV speedrun on Mines of Titan, which I found very impressive (and his textfile should be helpful for anyone wishing to push the time down further). AFAIK, this demo isn't currently available for download anywhere else. Recorded with Legacy; you can get the wad here or here. mines330.zip

Note that the title of this thread relates to the name of the articles I wrote (see the first post in this thread), rather than it being an invitation to make suggestions for future demos. We should probably have a thread devoted to that though...

Quite a few examples spring to mind. There's Doom Doom Quicker (see E3M8), and there's one quite early on in one of my own (edit1: it's the second mastermind I'm referring to, not the first - though on watching it again, I see that it might have been hit by a trace or two from earlier shots, so maybe it's not such a clear-cut example). Generally, you can be pretty much certain that they'll go down after two shots from close up, but occasionally you'll be lucky and it will only take one. By that point though, you'll most likely have fired the second shot anyway. Cybers sometimes only take two BFG shots, BTW. Regarding archies, a well-aimed SSG blast from close up will more often than not stop his attack. Maybe 75-85% of the time? edit2: The changes in Zdoom 2.0.52 that Cyb described here will probably have some impact on these questions.

I don't understand the question. There are (to say the least) plenty of times where I do lose time in that demo, but jamming myself in the red key doorway was, I thought, a pretty good idea, as it enabled me to rocket one baron without taking damage or losing much time. If you mean the big arena with all the pillars, I couldn't leave until all the monsters were dead (this was a Max run). I played motion2 (mostly out of morbid curiosity), but don't feel inclined to record anything on it.

This might help: http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/CoefficientofRestitution.html. I assume you're not talking about collisions in terms of quantum mechanics. ;)

Graf-Zahl: Note my exact wording: There's a world of difference between this and a deliberate partial/demo release.

I find the prboom.exe to be quite unstable, and always use glboom.exe. It's just the same, but it uses an OpenGL renderer rather than software mode. I highly recommend it if your video card is suitable. The visual appearance is pretty similar to software mode - just cleaner-looking and brighter. You don't get the gl holes or mess that often puts people off other gl ports. I use the Windows volume control to set the music level (you can adjust the midi volume separately). You can even do this without exiting the program - just pause the game (press the Pause key) and go to Windows (Ctrl-Esc works even if you disabled that blasted Windows key). You can then return to glboom, unpause and continue. I'm currently using version 2.2.4, and almost always record with -complevel 1 (Doom2.exe version 1.9 compatibility). That seems very reliable. The only other complevel I have used is 5 (Boom 2.02). [important edit]But I was wrong! In version 2.2.4, the settings changed: for Doom2.exe version 1.9 compatibility, use -complevel 0; and -complevel 5 for Boom compatibilty.[/important edit] The nice thing about recording with doom2.exe compatibility is that pretty much everyone has something they can play it back with, and that you can be fairly sure that it will continue to be supported by any ports that value compatibility with the original game. BTW, Vile has reported a few problems using 2.2.4 on NM. I recorded quite a lot of NM demos in 2.2.3 and never had any playback problems. I'd only ever use zdoom to record if a wad actually required it. Firstly because the exe changes so often (it's a pain to keep dozens of versions and switch between them each time you want to watch a demo), and also since zdoom changes the gameplay quite a lot - I'd rather experience a map the way it was intended and playtested. Eternity works fine for watching demos; I don't know what options there are for recording in Eternity, or if you can only record demos that will play back with Eternity. If you're not an XP user, then you might consider recording with the original game. There are a couple of tricks (novert and joyb_speed 29) that make that much more pleasant than you'd expect. The main trouble I had when switching to prboom/glboom (from Legacy) was the control set-up. Actually my previous set-up had been lousy anyway, but a change was forced upon me because you don't have so much freedom to set up the mouse however you want. I therefore went from using the right-hand mouse button for "use", to having it for "strafe on", and remapped the keyboard accordingly (this is very easy to do within prboom/glboom: options - set up - key bindings).

Note that I artificially boosted the colours in that screenshot - it would have looked very dark otherwise.

Excellent. :) Let's hope Cyb is right, and zdoom stays fairly stable for a while now.

I had no idea someone else had uploaded it anonymously. I would have been far kinder in my review if I had known that it was a work-in-progress that you hadn't intended to be uploaded. Still, the textfile allows distribution - assuming that was your textfile...

Heh, I'm tempted to newproject this. Bad idea. It would desync since the player would start map08 with the wrong stats.

It's kind of awkward for them when New Labour has more or less adopted traditional Conservative policies on some of the main economic issues. The natural thing for the Conservatives to do in that case surely is to try to claim that the policies are being implemented badly or dishonestly, rather than to claim that they are wholly mistaken.

True, but he mentions it was also tested with a wide variety of other ports, and Doom2.exe too. Hyena: I didn't find it a total waste of time, and thought it had some genuine entertainment value (especially if you're in the right mood for it). At any rate, it's at worst not a waste of very much time. :p I really felt horrible having to give some bad reviews, especially where it was clear that a lot of time had gone into a wad. :(( I actually spent a lot of time playing Nightmares of Loki 1999, in the hope of finding at least one or two maps I could recommend. You'll see, if you watch my pacifist demo of E4M7, that I failed in this quest.

OK, done.

Don't forget that while he was elected in 2001 by party members, it was from a choice of just two candidates presented to them by the MPs. It was the MPs who eliminated Portillo (and others). It's not as if IDS lacked support among MPs at that time.

myk: Yes, it plays back OK with Doom95 (the dehacked patch doesn't affect this demo one way or the other), making it possible to hear the dreadful sound replacements. When I watched it though, Doom95 crashed on exiting, and then I needed to reboot to get any applications to play any music. So on balance I'd recommend using doom.exe. :) Rich: My e-mail address appears in the textfile for all my demos. BTW, the dehacked patch is pretty fundamental to this wad (and works fine with Legacy). However, I don't think its absence should make any monsters appear that aren't meant to (in fact, if anything I'd expect the opposite, given that the imps are meant to be able to walk through walls).

The demo/limited versions of perdgate and hell2pay needn't be regarded as warez/abandonwarez, given that they were made freely available. At least I hope they are not, given that I have linked to them in the past. :0

You should play DSV4 map29 (Eviltarium) then. And use that damned switch whether it likes it or not. :p

You're welcome, but please note that using animated graphic smilies in a forum where smilies are deliberately disabled is going to irritate people rather quickly.

Not if the reviews were freely available material that was simply among that collected by WizardWorks and put on their CD - which is most likely the case.