ETTiNGRiNDER

Searching for info/footage on old games once again turns up something interesting. Contrary to "Bishop of Hexen" though I suspect this one's a deliberate nod/tribute.

Linux is the way forward since Windows 10 can fuck off forever as far as I'm concerned. Although I do still use older Windows for stuff.

Keen Dreams. I had forgotten all about the hilarious bug/exploit where if you get killed in such a way that Keen overlaps the edge of the level when falling, it counts as beating the level.

Probably E3M9 - Warrens. The gimmick of it was pretty neat. E1M9 - Military Base would be the other probable contender but it's just a level, not really any gimmick of secret-level-ness about it. Fortress of Mystery is meh, the Doom 2 secret levels are just sucky easter eggs, I barely remember anything about E4M9, and most of what I remember about the Final Doom ones were that TNT had a map that was literally broken and Plutonia had that MAP01 edit crammed up with a ton of monsters.

A few that come to mind which haven't been mentioned. I can't comment too strongly on compatibility, although these are older games so being too demanding is probably less of an issue, although backwards compatibility with your OS might be. Daemon Vector while it has terrible reviews is IMO unjustly maligned to some degree. Also a bit obscure since to the best of my knowledge it was released only in Europe and Asia. It's not in the league of Severance/Heretic 2/Rune, the level designs are a lot more basic, but it's decent taken as a 3D throwback to games like Golden Axe. AFAIK the cinematic cutscenes only play right on Windows XP though, but they're basic enough that you can do without them if you have to. If you can get a decently cheap copy why not. Dark Vengeance is another one I've heard people speak badly of, honestly I've currently only played like 10-15 minutes worth of it and it seemed fine in the beginning at least, but take it with a grain of salt. I'll get deeper into it one of these days. Deathtrap Dungeon is one I've played about halfway and while it's a touch clunky I kind of like it somewhat. I'd rank it as probably the worst of these three though. It's loosely based on the Fighting Fantasy book of the same name. Aside from the somewhat awkward controls some people say it's "too campy" but I found it to be about the sort of "not really serious" that was enjoyable. Creative if nothing else. I've also heard that the PC version is better than the PSX one so you might also take that into account when looking at reviews. If something about it seems particularly appealing to you, go ahead and check it out but I wouldn't give it a general recommendation otherwise. It's nice to see Enclave getting some attention. As I've said before I think it's just about the next best thing you can hope to find to another Heretic/Hexen game. Also, Rune Classic is deeply discounted on GOG right now. Grab a deal while you can.

Eradicator seems a bit unknown/underrated to me. A bit like a mixture of aspects of Hexen and Duke 3D with a few twists of its own. CyClones was kind of interesting too, although it used one of those RoTT/Shadowcaster style engines where there was vertical movement but the levels were still built of blocks. Also seconding Chasm: The Rift, it was pretty cool despite the limitations of the engine and occasional questionable level design choices / Quake-ish annoying puzzle bosses. I knew it had an expansion pack that only got released in Russian to the best of my knowledge, but yeah I didn't know there was a sequel. Also a Russian only release I guess?

I wouldn't blame you too much, PoP had quite a bit better level design as I recall.

I believe there have been two or three that had linear level progression, though the only one I can put a name to off the top of my head was Krull which wasn't very good.

Awesome. Mind if I use that in a WAD?

I live.

Uh, I'm pretty sure having a graphics card as a separate component goes all the way back to CGA? Maybe you're thinking of 3D accelerators.

Level time: 5-10 minutes Though 10-15 might be more like it in some cases. 30 is generally too long. The way I see it, level divisions should be seen as a bit akin to checkpoints. If the level's too long to reasonably beat without saving in the middle, it's too long. If you're not going to use them in a checkpointy way, hubs/continuous world might be better. Level grouping: Episodes Original Doom / Heretic did it right. Doom 2 and megawads thereof get kind of onerous since you can't really complete a discrete unit of the game in one sitting (unless you're a mad speedrunner or something I suppose) and half the time I lose interest by the next day or two. Protagonist: I prefer no protagonist to a lame protagonist Duke Nukem is a good bad example of a character who's obnoxious and detracts from the game, it was novel at the time but he really doesn't hold up. But TBH about the best time I can think of having liked a defined FPS protagonist was Parker from Red Faction and that was mainly because he was generally expressing what I was already thinking as a player (An escort mission? Can't I just shoot this jackass?)

So don't use it.

Just enough story to have an idea of what's supposed to be going on is generally plenty. Original Doom/Doom 2 did it right in this regard.