MrFlibble

I was wondering, does anyone have fond memories of playing Warcraft II back in the day, or does anyone still play? It was one of my favourite games in the mid-90s, although I never played competitively (no Internet back then), but it blew my mind by being awesome in almost every way imaginable. Great visuals like my favourite animated series! You have complete control over what and where to build, where to send your forces and so on! Compelling storyline with different missions! Cute critters! etc., etc. I made a few scenarios in the editor, admittedly very amateurish (I was 11 at the time), but still very cool. It was only when StarCraft came out it pushed Warcraft II aside by superseding it in all quarters, with more compelling story and interesting characters, more sides to play, a hugely advanced map/campaign editor and so on. However, I still love the somewhat more simple and straightforward approach in Warcraft II. While the game has greatly influenced the RTS genre, and there have been numerous attempts to copy the formula, I feel that almost none have quite captured the feel of the game. There's an indie game called Wyrmsun that does a spot-on impression of the visual style, while mixing fantasy with bits of Age of Empires-esque pseudohistory. However, this project has seen sporadic development over the past few years, with some issues not being ironed out, while the more recent versions have taken design choices that I feel are rather questionable, like trying to limit base-building by introducing "building sites" for certain building types that are randomly placed on the map, instead of allowing players to construct buildings wherever they like. It would be nice to see a true spiritual successor to Warcraft II (not in the least because Warcraft III took too much of a departure from the previous game in terms of both visuals and mechanics), but so far nothing seems to quite fulfil this task.

Back in 2019 I embarked on a quest to plumb the depths of the Wayback Machine, looking for Warcraft 1 (Orcs & Humans) custom maps. After a lot of digging and missing/broken page snapshots, I was finally able to find a good chunk of that thanks to a couple of intact archived fan sites/pages. However, as a by-product I also found several dozens of Warcraft II fansites with maps, and downloaded some 50 megabytes worth of those. I've attached a txt file with the Wayback Machine links here. Out of these findings, my personal favourite is a page of maps by someone calling themselves Picasso, with a lovely map called Head On: BTW, did you know that Blizzard added the map editor to WC2 after seeing all the custom missions created for the first game with the unofficial editor? They even included a save game converter (WC1 custom scenarios were in the form of savegames) with the Mac release of the game, so that Mac users could play custom scenarios created for the PC. True, but there's still some charm to it. Speaking of bad pathfinding though, rather recently I bought the full version of Tzar from GOG. I had played the demo for a little while and liked how it combined ideas from Warcraft II and Age of Empires, and the nice visuals, so I thought I'd give it a try. No sooner than I got to the second campaign mission I learned how awful (if not to say atrocious) the pathfinding was. Worse, much worse than in Warcraft II or StarCraft or whatever, especially when it comes to unit groups. I lost the second mission because of that -- all my forces got hopelessly lost on their way to the final battle (you were supposed to "ambush" an enemy patrol or something) and picked off one by one by the enemy. I later read at GOG's forums that people recommend to play on easy mode to spare the nerves because of the pathfinding troubles. In fact, I did exactly that and played a little bit, but the game turned out to be less enjoyable than I expected.

Actually I also thought that the short lamp was by him, but these contributions were made at the time when I did not actively follow the project, so I might be wrong. It gets complicated sometimes because files were not always submitted to the repo by the same person who made them. So I've actually no idea if GrammatonLegio is the author, or if this is not @Wereknight's alias over at GitHub, at that. I missed this one earlier today, here's @Blastfrog's version of the old barrel's explosion, made in vanilla style: https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/205/commits/70f4d5257db1f69b1b8cf269d8116601964ecb55 I believe it never made it into any milestone release. Also it looks like there were several revisions of @Blastfrog's digitized weapons, I wonder if you'd want to commit them separately to the attic (considering those are WIP versions of the same sprites)?

A good while ago I committed a few assets retired from the then-current IWADs to the attic. I also attempted to collect unused submissions posted here in the forums: Sometime later, a similar effort was proposed by @Blastfrog: There are also assets that have been contributed to the project, but never made it into a milestone release because they got replaced by something else in the meantime. These assets may only be tracked down and recovered by either browsing the history of the respective files in the GitHub repo, or by finding them among closed/rejected pull requests, such as these: https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/195/commits/e85c215b2834a3171ef4ee0c17948d26f925adf0 https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/192/commits/2f8177f3cbc446270a5f9cd8e4c7ec8dbf76276a https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/192/commits/0c1022f8d1e43808f39d1e893f17ee1668d2531e https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/193/commits/5e917c9c43196923dbc3628c1eee8b83e2b771e7 https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/192/commits/5d785a9016744f5aa966698f8d3c53cb0b6a5ea5 https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/191/commits/802463fef423d5c0d4a0f57edc42e039488fb285 https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/230/commits/6bb1ffd0d7dc725b7215d93455b69d6e0ab1bd6a https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/223/commits/6824b6f1b88e7c9a0f7a0e4771d087ff2fda1403 https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/223/commits/a8607a653b26c06cd47203c65d1ac6118a8c14a0 https://imgur.com/dFCGz04 https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/228/commits/9413a3f0079f54ebe86f295ee71ddc63e4235530 https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/228/commits/03c1986246cfe33852900ace57720cf6142a27f2 https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/228/commits/2fa963c97e49985ca9ed49bf4090a70940ff3516 https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/commit/f8cd97072ea30aa1e03b71768d9004184a6e9ce2 Truecolor sources of @Talon1024's Final Doom texture replacements: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=31139&p=989287#p989287 https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=31139&p=993589#p993589 https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=31139&p=993589#p985597 https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=31139&p=982583#p982583 I also don't think the attic has @Jewellds' techlamps: https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/144 Or the techlamp by @GrammatonLegio: https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/216 Here's a lever-action shotgun by @CaptainW, never used in any IWAD (AFAIK): @Blastfrog made a WAD with this, available from this post.

Somehow this reminded me of Bavaria, I wonder where this was actually taken.

@Jimmy², thank you very much!

I have just discovered the doom text generator, and through it, a font called Gargoyle Wing, available here, with a small version present. I think it looks quite fitting for the project, in part because it appears somewhat similar to the old font. @Catoptromancy, @GeorgePieVG, @Craneo, @AntonR, what do you think? Should we try asking @Jimmy² if it could be licensed for the project?

Dearest @Eevee, thank you very much for this incredibly useful tool! Please accept my utmost gratitude! I look forward to saving a few hours of work with this one.

It's a fork with added Sigil support. For the clean maintenance release of MBF 2.04, go here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=40857 I've never had Windows 7 so I don't know if it still can run DOS applications natively. XP certainly does. @vanilla_d00m, if you want to check out BOOM 2.02, DOSBox or 86box + DOS/FreeDOS is the way to go on newer systems. I'd still recommend MBF 2.04 though, it has all that BOOM has, plus more freatures and bugfixes.

There's already a new Banshee sprite set: https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/1426/commits/539a53ec14239121d3597a7cc1cb95085cb6bba2

I'm very noobish when it comes to coding, but since the Quake engine is open-source, how difficult would it be to actually code the branching dialogue system that you envision into it? I suppose that the dialogue screens should not be very different from how the in-game menu works, i. e. there are selectable strings that the player navigates about, leading to more screens with text when selected. Since you have already developed a prototype in the Quake engine, perhaps this approach would turn out less resource-demanding than migration to a completely different engine altogether? I don't know if the dialogue system in The AMC Squad is purely based on CON scripting or partially hard-coded (IIRC, the game uses a modified version of EDuke32). But maybe it could be worth taking a look at the implementation there to see if it could be replicated in a Quake source port.

I resumed my search of Heretic PWADs the other day and found this topic: I've tried the following vanilla/limit-removing compatible ones with Heretic128 and the latest Blasphemer IWAD in DOSBox: Unbeliever, Heretrix and HUMP Mini. I've not progressed far in any of the episodes, but they all seem to work fine with Heretic128 and appear quite friendly to new players, i. e. no huge crowds of monsters at the start and so on. Notably, HUMP Mini is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which says: Actually, that sounds very similar to the BSD-3-Clause license. Also of note is the title screen art for Unbeliever: I think it would be pretty nice to have something of this kind as the title or intermission pic.

Isn't DISDAIN built on GZDoom? I had the impression that it fully supports 3D models. As for The AMC Squad, EDuke32 definitely does support models, although I have no idea how compatible they are with the Quake format (possibly not at all). There's an optional Duke Nukem 3D High Resolution Pack that replaces monsters and sprite items with 3D models, among other things.

Thanks, gotta look into it, then.

Thanks! I have sorta checked out the SLADE script a while ago, but haven't experimented with that yet. I was kinda hoping someone has done this already :)

A quick Google search yielded this topic by @DrPyspy that includes downloads of Doom 64-style Revenant and Arch-Vile: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=68009 Haven't tried them but they look fine I guess.

Is there a way to auto-convert vanilla Doom maps to the more limited console texture set?

Nothing like what you describe, but quite often in the "drifting" in-between state, I seem to have rather complex thoughts that slowly morph into dreamlike images (possibly illustrating what I am "thinking" about), but then I drift back to the surface and awake, and then I am completely unable to remember what these thoughts or images were about. Whenever I try, I can't get anything better than "someone was doing something". More annoyingly, sometimes in this state I seem to come up with a really funny thought (or image?) and I give a chuckle, which, again, sends me awake, but I am completely unable to remember what the joke or the humorous thing was. I don't have solid evidence, but I have a feeling that these episodes of half-dreaming last for not more than several seconds. This is in contrast with "regular" dreaming (both non-lucid and lucid) where I have rather clear thoughts that I can remember when awake, and which are sometimes correct (no misremembered information from real life) and even interesting on their own. On another note, sometimes I have dreams where I'm sort of watching a film or a TV series but at the same time taking part in it as a character. It makes perfect sense within the dream, but not when you think about it.

I love this idea! From what I understand, the freeware version of REKKR is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, meaning that you should be fine even if you create an entire new stand-alone game (Final Doom style, I guess), provided that you properly credit @Revae for the assets and never sell your work commercially.

That is what I assumed, as well. This is probably the right approach if the project is intended to comprise entirely of original submissions.

I was looking for other open game projects that have art assets licensed under BSD-3-Clause, and came across a discussion at Open Game Art where a user mentioned that GPL and BSD-3-Clause are compatible licenses -- whereas from the previous discussions here I'd assumed that they are not. I followed the link to GNU.org to make sure this information is correct, and indeed it is (emphasis added): Just to be sure, I checked the GNU.org definition of GPL-compatible license, in case it means something else than what I was thinking: I suppose this also means that art assets released under GPL can be combined in one project with art assets released under BSD-3-Clause. Which brings me to the point: This is also reiterated in the Contribution Guidelines section on the GitHub page. But why, exactly, is GPL not allowed if the licenses are compatible?

The most noticeable difference is that the levels in the DOS version are, like, totally different from anything in the console releases. Not in the sense in which, say, Duke Nuken 64 levels are different from PC Duke Nukem 3D levels, or the PlayStation Doom levels are different from the PC version levels -- no, the console levels have nothing in common with PC Powerslave levels at all, and are built on different technology (IIRC, the engine is called SlaveDriver). It's a true 3D engine and the levels are fundamentally different from the PC version, which uses the Build engine -- Lobotomy devs weren't even informed by 3D Realms that the engine supported sloped surfaces, -- so the comparison with Doom PC vs. Doom 64 would not be reflecting the full extent of how different the console releases of Powerslave are. I've never played the console versions but I believe they also have non-linear progression, i. e. you can enter one map, get an item and go back to a previously visited level and use that item there, for example, to access previously unreachable areas. The PC version has linear progression. The game is still cool and is one of the better "Doom clones" of the era. I also believe that the PC version levels are generally more detailed and look like "places" (especially open areas), while the console version levels look more like very intricate mazes. Again, different tech produces different results. But that might just be me getting wrong impressions from watching videos of Saturn and PlayStation gameplay though.

The body seems to be made by mirroring the Skeletal Warrior from Daggerfall:

Here's something I wanted to ask for a long while (and I hope that WAD discussion is more appropriate than Doom General discussion for this): while there have been created many professional-quality custom sprite sheets for new monsters/characters over the past decades, it seems that the story goes back to the 90s, even though back then it was less widespread. I'm generally talking about completely custom sprites created from scratch (drawn, pre-rendered, digitized, whatever), not frankensprites or edits of sprites from other games. I guess that the monster replacements from Hell 2 Pay (1996) definitely count among the earliest such creations, although their quality and design aren't that great. But they are legit pre-rendered sprites and they work sorta well in that WAD. I also vaguely remember a PWAD that replaced all Doom 1 characters with pre-rendered sprites, including toy dinosaurs (?) for the zombies and a yogi on a flying carpet for the caco. I don't think it included any custom textures or levels, and also do not remember the year of its release, but I'm pretty sure it was sometime in the mid-90s. The Army of Darkness TC (1996) includes three custom monster sprite sheets: Skeleton, Skeleton Captain and Evil Ash, the former two having ended up in Freed∞m's attic (and the regular Skeleton was at a time edited into the Arch-Vile placeholder). There is, of course, HacX (1997), but it's a commercial release, and the quality of the sprites is, of course, above average. Same goes for Chex Quest (1996). Bugs Doom (1996) from the creator of X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse replaces some of the low-tier monster with characters from the Bugs Bunny cartoons. I know there are other TCs and partial conversions (Batman Doom, Simpsons Doom, Aliens TC, Ghostbusters TC), but not a lot beyond that.

Well, there are studies that point to different video game genre preferences in males and females: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8141853/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273345813_Examining_the_Role_of_Gender_in_Video_Game_Usage_Preference_and_Behavior#:~:text=The disparity between genders was,%2C educational%2C and simulation genres ( https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/55870539.pdf I am not qualified to judge how accurate the procedures employed in these studies and their results are. Of course, nothing of this suggests that there may be no female Doom players (for example), or that the share of female Doom (of FPS in general) players is disproportionately small. Moreover, the third paper appears to suggest that if you're into a specific genre or game, differences between males and females are mostly negligible. But on the whole, differences apparently do exist and the ratio is likely indeed not 50/50 like @Doom reboot World said.