MrFlibble

On 2/6/2021 at 1:43 AM, Redneckerz said:

If you like modern multiplayer, than UT2004 with its vehicle support.

If you like classic multiplayer, than UT99 withs many modes.

Problem is, I'm a complete noob in this as I mentioned earlier. These days I have to make a choice what I want to invest my time into, and honestly I feel like I'd rather pick a FOSS arena shooter for casual play (playing Nexuiz against bots made a good impression on me); at least I won't have that uncomfortable feeling of having bought something and not using it. But I would certainly like to know and understand what exactly I'd be missing when not playing UT games -- if it is possible to explain in a few short words that is.

For now, after having played the demos of UT99, UT2003 and UT2004, save for the vehicle stuff that I personally have not developed much of interest/liking, and marginally prettier graphics in the case of 2004, I do not really feel/understand the difference between any of the UT titles and Nexuiz. I know there are all these factors like movement speeds or weapon balance that differentiate the games of these kind between one another; or the level layouts. But at least theoretically, there is a certain common element in all arena shooters against which the differences are evident and can then become the basis of payer preferences.

I do feel the difference between UT and Q3A though because I never had trouble playing the UT demos (on normal difficulty), but could not survive more than a handful of seconds in the very first Q3A demo level on normal difficulty. I did not give it a lot of tries but I think the difference is there (maybe UT just labels the easy level Normal for new users to feel more comfortable, like StarCraft II does; don't know). From what I understand, OpenArena is as close to Q3A as possible gameplay-wise, which I guess is one of the reasons I've not tried OpenArena yet.

I'm not really sure what hi-end and low-end graphics means these days, but I notice that games with more "realistic" looking true 3D graphics (that take advantage of powerful video cards) that are on offer fail to interest me because they all seem to look the same. I mean, there are differences in the art style (and in what exactly is being depicted), but there's so much colour and lighting and other visual stuff it becomes hard to pinpoint what makes this or that game unique.

On the other hand, some of the modern indie-leaning games go for a simplified or even oversimplified style that seems incredibly bland. Just compare Braveland and Heroes of Might and Magic II. I would not say Braveland is the worst example here, but the cartoonish style feels pretty generic, while the sprites in HoMMII are true pieces of art.

Yet there are some very good modern games that are neither photorealistic nor exaggeratedly pixellated nor cartoonish, like Blasphemous.

3 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Both for different reasons.

I've been asking the same question as the OP and would love to know more!

I have very limited experience with arena shooters generally. I enjoyed playing through the UT99 demo several times a good while ago, and equally enjoyed the demo maps from UT2003 and UT2004. But it's pretty hard for me to tell which is better (if at all), or if I could get a comparable experience from one of several FOSS arena shooter projects (I don't play online so it's against bots only).

24 minutes ago, Gez said:

Nearly a hundred texture packs, over 300 weapons and powerups so as to fight the 300 monsters, 42 fonts, 178 prop packs, 34 SFX, and a dozen sound effects. "Not much of a selection for stuff tbh"

 

How many would be "much of a selection"? Three thousand monsters? Three millions? Three billions? Or wouldn't that be enough still?

I gather that the author wants Egyptian themed monsters, specifically, and the collection mentioned does not have a lot of such material?

I just found the ESRGAN fork by Joe Ballentine which can also auto-process alpha channel in images. Here's an attempt on Strife characters using the 2x_FakeFaith-Lite_105000_G.pth model (scaled up 2x witth nearest neighbour):

I guess you won't get a lot more obscure than this:

https://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/dead-of-night/

Or maybe these too (all for DOS but run well in DOSBox):

Here's a cool thing:

Production of Cambridge Assyriology, it's a screen adaptation of a popular Babylonian tale, spoken in reconstructed Babylonian ("reconstructed" refers to the pronunciation that is; the text itself upon which the script is based is rather well preserved).

On 12/26/2020 at 1:25 PM, sergeirocks100 said:

For a project of mine, i drew a set of status bar faces:

 

Argonian Doom?

Thanks for all the effort put into compiling this list! This deserves being bookmarked.

Personally, I could not help but notice that the enemy sprites in 2.5D id Software engine games -- Wolf3D, Blake Stone, Doom, Heretic, Hexen and Strife -- do have something in common between them (e.g. if you look at how human/humanoid enemies are drawn) which cannot be explained by the small resolution and limited palette alone. I'm not sure if there was any cross-pollination between the artists working on all these projects. I think it's a good thing, actually, because it creates a sense of continuity and coherence among the games that you're playing.

I'm not talking about Capstone stuff

But actually Corridor 7 at least also has kinda-sorta similar style but more cartoonish.

Thanks!

Just tried this out, everything works excellent (I had to mess around with settings to get to the 1024x768 4:3 mode). However I found that I'm unable to bind certain keys. I wanted to change fly down to Ctrl but the menu just acts as if no key is pressed at all. Same with the Shift key (haven't tried Alt). All other keys seem to work normally.

Okaay.

So I was unable to properly run Priority: Survive (a freeware but closed-source StarCraftish RTS using the Allegro library) on Windows 8.1, but it also did have problems under Linux with Wine.

I also failed to run the demo versions of both Cossacks and Cossacks II under Win8.1. I tried DxWnd but it did not help.

The demo of Original War has noticeable framerate issues, but apparently they fixed that for the full version by adding the optional OpenGL renderer.

It's easily remapped to PrtSc via the keymapper. Even better yet, you could just record a video of your playthrough in DOSBox in a lossless format and then pick any frames that you find most appropriate for screenshots. VirtualDub is good for that.

Quiver is kinda-sorta similar to Doom. It's worth checking out, if only as a curiosity.

22 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Madspace has non-euclidean geometry which makes for some interesting design. It is on GOG.

I know both MadSpace and Z.A.R. are available from Steam but seemingly not GOG?

Regarding the non-Euclidean thing, from what I remember/understood it's actually like portals in other 2.5D games, and is being used more extensively. MadSpace is a fun game, you can grab a DOS demo here.

Black gloves eh? Nice.

To clarify though, is this for your fork/alternate weapons mod, or are you planning to commit those to the main branch as replacements?

Love it how you nailed the pixel art style, I think it kinds of rhymes with raymoohawk's sprites, e.g. the zombies.

Thanks for sharing this!

A while ago I used to dig into IndieDB and itch.io and posted stuff that seemed interesting (to my tastes at least) here. However it has become really tedious to wade through all the entries (I was specifically looking for freely downloadable content), especially at IndieDB.

From what I gather IndieDB is basically a springboard for Steam Greenlight nominees. It seems to have rather declined in popularity because what is posted there are either updates of some long-running projects or just press kits. Some years ago you could find more playable prototypes or even free games than now.

itch.io on the other hand is a kind of self-publishing platform and is a mixed bag of everything. Some titles that I find look interesting but I do not really like this "Name your own price" for downloads that is used very often (sometimes even for demos). I know it might be an easy way to support the developer but it also looks as if the system was trying to shame you into paying.

There's also GameJolt.

The new wand looks awesome!

On 11/21/2020 at 2:00 AM, sergeirocks100 said:

I figured maybe you would get ambushed by revenants or mancubi, but i really don't know.

Maybe playing some maps by other authors will give you inspiration? Making a map layout that is detached from the intended gameplay makes little sense.

On 11/17/2020 at 6:38 AM, sergeirocks100 said:

i've been working on improving that, here's a preview:

Some of your previous screenshots showed more interesting and detailed areas, yet here's another boxy room covered with a single texture. I understand this is WIP, but even then perhaps it would be better to show off something that is more developed?

I guess you'd appreciate some constructive criticism to help you improve the design, but it's pretty hard to tell what this area is about. It's a good idea to tie the level layout with how gameplay is going to unfold, and so far this appears to be a room with a narrow path near one of the walls. What exactly do you plan for the player there?

Hah, and I thought that this was a sophisticated Dopefish reference.

21 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

and DoomNew by Marakate, the latter is a 100% clone which also uses the DMX library (And therefore cannot be used) and has DeHacked support

I was just able to run the PWAD version 1.16 with DoomNew and the Freed∞m IWAD, not sure if it loaded the DEH file properly though. It still gave the messages about those patches but was apparently not bothered much by it.

Doom-Vanille crashed back to DOS, likely because it did not load the DEH file.

Russian Doom hangs on the skill selection screen. Music continues to play.

A while ago it was discovered that neither the stand-alone IWAD nor the PWAD version of REKKR (v1.16) do not work with MBF with Freed∞m IWAD.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2140114

@Revae promised to fix that at some point but I'm not sure if this is already done seeing as how there are other priorities to the project.