Arno

Thank you! I suspect you tagged @intacowetrust by accident, since he's the author of PsyDoom. The instructions as shared by @Master O is indeed a good place to start. If you're on Windows and you have the bundle from GOG installed, then the source port should be able to auto-detect the game files.

I always had an interest in doing a source port of my own. However, I figured that creating a Doom source port would prove to be too time-consuming for me. That's why I secretly started developing a source port for The Catacomb Abyss in late 2015. There is of course already the excellent Reflection Keen source port, which supports all Catacomb 3D games. But rather then aiming for a Chocolate-style experience, I decided to go for a source port that offers improved visuals, based on OpenGL. So CatacombGL it is. Updated 2022-12-30: version 0.5.4 is released. Download CatacombGL 0.5.4 Beta (GitHub) Main features: * Runs native on Windows 7/8/10/11 and Linux. * Hardware accelerated 3D rendering via OpenGL, supporting widescreen resolutions, a customizable field of view and an uncapped frame rate. * Player, projectile and monster movement with floating point precision. * Configurable mouse and keyboard controls. * Supports all four Catacomb 3D games as included in the Catacombs Pack from GOG.com. * Supports The Catacomb Abyss version 1.13 (shareware). Current limitations as of version 0.5.4: * No support for game controllers. * No backwards compatibility with saved games from the original DOS game. How to install: CatacombGL does not run standalone, but requires the original game data (levels, pictures, sounds, etc) to be present on the system. The Catacomb Abyss game data can be obtained legitimately and free-of-charge by downloading the 1.13 shareware version. Various websites offer the shareware version for download, see for example https://archive.org/details/TheCatacombAbyss. Alternatively, the game data can also be obtained by buying the Catacombs Pack from gog.com, see https://www.gog.com/game/catacombs_pack. The differences between the shareware and commercial versions are purely cosmetic. The Catacombs Pack is required in order to run Catacomb 3D (The Descent), The Catacomb Armageddon or The Catacomb Apocalypse. The CatacombGL.exe (Windows) or CatacombGL.a (Linux) can be run from any location. When started, a selection screen with an overview of all the supported games is shown. In case the Catacombs Pack was installed via the GOG installer, the game data will be auto-detected. Otherwise, it is possible to manually browse to the folder which contains either the Catacombs Pack or the shareware version. If anyone experiences any issues or if there are suggestions for improvement, please let me know!

I definitly have the same experience. What I find relaxing about mapping is that it's relatively easy to fit a mapping session into the daily routine. It doesn't matter whether I have 20 minutes or 120 minutes available, there's always an opportunity to extend a work-in-progress map with an extra room or some Doomcute.

My apogolies, but unfortunately I'm stepping out of the project. I thought I could make maps for two community projects, but I overestimated the amount of time I could spent on mapping. After some consideration, I decided to focus my efforts on at least finishing the Embryo map. Sorry! Still looking forward to check out the release of Hell on World Tour.

I created a blockout of the whole map and I'm currently adding detail section by section. I was aiming to get the map ready for testing by end of October. So a public release on Valentine's day is fine for me.

There are quite a number of science fiction stories which feature a reset of the calender to Year Zero after an apocalyptic event. Like for example in the movie "2012". So it wouldn't surprise me if this unanounced game is/was meant as a continuation of the story after the events in Doom Eternal.

It looks like both CyClones and Necrodome were released on GOG on June 28, 2023.

I have a question about coop play: should each map contain coop starts? I think it can be fun to have this supported, but I can also imagine It's going to be hard to make coop work in a playable area of 96 x 96.

I would like to take MAP04.

I remember PlanetQuake as a pretty active community hub around the year 2000 for everything related to Quake, Quake II and Quake III Arena. It had daily news updates, plenty of hosted sites and a forum. But unfortunately, unlike Doomworld, PlanetQuake was company property, so they pulled the plug once interest in Quake faded.

This is pretty awesome, as more people will benefit from the good work you've put in TFE. Plus, you'll have your name in the credits of a commercial release. Congratulations!

General Zod (Michael Shannon) in Man of Steel. He's convinced he's the hero of the story, burdened with the heavy responsibility to save his species. By any and all means necessary. Edit: now that I think about it, the type of villain that keeps on loudly proclaiming that they're really the good guy, thus committing atrocities in the name of "good", is my favorite kind of villain. Superboy Prime from Infinite Crisis and M. Bison from the Streetfighter movie come to mind.

Actually, very few people played Catacomb 3D at the time of its release in 1991. It was published via a bi-monthly disk magazine with only about 30000 subscribers. After they had developed Catacomb 3D, both the id Software crew as well as their publisher Apogee gained an interest in creating more 3D games. So much that they decided to drop a third Keen trilogy and they choose to work on Wolfenstein 3D instead. So Catacomb 3D is mostly known for historical reasons. Its sequel, Catacomb Abyss, attracted some audience in 1992 because it could be freely distributed as shareware.

I'm honestly surprised, in a good way, by the amount of support so far for a Catacomb 3D remaster. I don't think it will ever happen, but there are two features that I would love to see in such a remaster. First, a very user friendly level editor with Steam workshop support that allows you to mix and match enemies and textures from Catacomb 3D / Abyss / Armageddon / Apocalypse. Second, a brand new episode with a lot of beautiful art made by someone with a passion for EGA, and including some levels made by guest authors Tom Hall, John Romero, Jim Row and Mike Maynard. The last two worked on Catacomb Abyss, but are also known for creating the Blake Stone games.

I've also finished the book now. What stood out for me the most is Romero's sheer enthusiasm at those moments where Carmack's technology and his design idea's came to life on the monitor for the first time. I think any programmer and/or game developer can relate to that. There are obviously also some darker sections in the book, but the main storyline is about just doing the things you love to get the most out of life. That's why I found it quite enjoyable to read.

@WhiteMagicRaven Interesting! Apparently that is a different attempt to reverse engineer and port ShadowCaster to a modern OS. Based on Java. That looks pretty nice with already quite a bit of functional gameplay.

True, so far very few mods were made for those games. At least Hovertank 3D has Demon Hunter, Robot Redemption and Doom World Wars. There's even less for the Catacomb 3D games. To the best of my knowledge, the Peter Dreimour mods are the only Catacomb 3D mods in existence. If there is anything else out there, I would love to know.

I received a copy of the book yesterday. There are lots of interesting details about Romero's youth in the book that weren't covered in Masters of Doom. So far I like the pacing and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book.

Yes, that can also be a way to identify the correct portal. However, the scroll hints at the fact that the correct portal is not accompanied with treasure chests.

In C++11 the keyword nullptr is introduced, which is also recognised as "a pointer that points to nothing", but with the advantage that it cannot be accidently used as the number 0.

Thanks for giving CatacombGL a spin! I agree with @Jello, this is a fair review. There were talented game developers involved with Catacomb 3D, but they had to develop the game within two or three months, while also working on the second Keen trilogy. Consequently, there's little variation in textures, environments and enemy designs. Adrian Carmack did a good job on the sprites for the red demons, though. The internal team at Softdisk that created the Catacomb Adventure trilogy spent a full year on it. Which resulted in way better textures and a lot more variation in enemy designs. The additional development time also allowed them to push the limits of the engine, with animated walls, flooded hallways and invisible walls. What really makes the Catacomb Adventure trilogy shine in my opinion, is the way the levels logically connect to eachother. The layout of each level provides a nice continuation of the story, from cemetery, to garden, to the outside of the mausoleum, to the main floor of the mausoleum, to the crypts beneath, etc. By the way, in the penultimate level of Catacomb 3D, trial and error is not needed to find the right portals. The 6th scroll offers the following hint: "Beware the false gates. The true way has no valuable friends". On the topic of Catacomb versus Wolfenstein 3D, I recently came across an article of the former British gaming magazine PCZone from May 1993, which came to the following conclusion:

That's a nice little programming exercise. It looks like when words are seperated by two or more spaces, it will count as extra words. That might not be the intended behavior. Hence, I would add state = false; after final = final + 1;. I would personally also try to use more descriptive names for the variables. The variable final represents numberOfWordsFound. The variable state represents something like previousCharacterIsPartOfWord. But I have to admit that finding the right name for a variable can be hard.

I was curious what would happen if Helion is started on a machine with a too low OpenGL version. I tried it on my old 2nd generation Intel laptop (Intel B960) from 2011 with OpenGL 3.1.0. It actually gives a pretty good error message: Fatal error occurred OpenTK.Windowing.GraphicsLibraryFramework.GLFWException: WGL: OpenGL profile requested but WGL_ARB_create_context_profile is unavailable

In ancient times I've made RTCW maps based on real locations in the Netherlands. I would love to revisit that theme. I'm also curious what others come up with in this project. Count me in!

Congratulations on the new release! It's nice to see that probably the most well known source port for Wolfenstein 3D is receiving proper maintenance and some interesting new features.