Enjay

Yup, AndrewB's comments are pretty close to how I feel about these WADs. My favourites are Station Alpha Omega. I really like the slimy girder supported area. The whole thing sounds and looks pretty atmospheric too. Ahead by quite a bit IMO is vrack 'though. The thing is fairly large, but logical. I spent very little time wandering around aimlessly trying to work out what needed to be done next and the action flowed well in a good looking level with nice special effects. Coincidence they are both space stations? I dunno, I just like them. Give us a clue - where is the Hissy Easter egg? I have played Vrack through twice now and not spotted/realised it was there.

<<what's the difference between you and these other cats>> We know it sounds stupid and are having fun taking the piss out of each other amongst friends. You've never done that? The other guys just sound stupid and don't know it. Hey, that's their choice. Perfect example "thrown at ya sperm covered faces" if someone said that, and meant it, in my local pub they would be laughed out of the building, no matter how tough they thought they were. A bunch of guys messing around saying that would trade insults and get back to their drinks. No harm done. In fact thanks - next weekend there will be an asshole in a Scottish pub quoting you - me. His mates will be laughing with him, not at him and that is the difference. BTW, I thought "cats" went out with the 60s. Keith Richard from the Rolling Stones is the only person in the world who still calls people cats, and he's stoned most of the time - at least he looks it. You hip-hop guys who pinch 60's words "which i doubt u know the meaning of" really piss me off. My dad grew up in the 50's and 60's and he is the only person I actually know who should use such words, anyone else is just trying to sound like they know what flared trousers are and want to impress people by making them think they have a flower in their gun. Half you will probably start sayin "groovy" too. :-P I'll be glad when this nonsense falls off the bottom of the doomworld page.

On a personal note Gemini, your comments as to why I said what I did are just about as far of the mark as they could be:- <<you only try to act tough>> I gave that up years ago. I am a 36 years old, well qualified and established in a profession that allows me to serve people in a way that I see fit. I have absolutely no need to give anyone the impression I'm tough. I'm not. I'm me. I'm happy. <<you only try to come up with something with a point when you really can't argue>> My point was made using sarcasm, by extending your objection to Doomers using Hip-hop words to its ultimate ridiculous conclusion - that you can only use words from your own musical preference peer group. Sorry if you missed the point. <<will probably start sayin "sick" too>> Yeah, I said that quite a lot this week. Both my son and daughter had sickness and diarrhoea for 2 days. That might be sarcasm again. :-) <<u don't really use in real-life>> Correction, I do use hip hop words all the time in my everyday speech to my friends. Guess what, I also use other cultural references in my everyday speech too. This doesn’t mean I think I’m Homer Simpson, Mr Hanky, In Star Wars or whatever. I think it might be something to do with having wide horizons and not feeling the need to wear a badge of any one kind, hip-hop or otherwise. My music tastes specifically are very diverse and I am prepared to give anything a listen, and accept that what I like may influence me and I let it do so. I will quite happily try and break my neck in the mosh pit, but wont leave the floor if acts as diverse as Pharoahe Monch or Fatboy Slim come on (and that combination is possible in the club I usually go to, but I may draw the line at N’Sync). Incidentally, when my friends and I are using hip-hop words it is usually in a very ironic way, and we usually piss ourselves laughing at how ridiculous the words sound when we say them. The fact is we live in the North East of Scotland. No one here puts a cap in anyone’s ass, has their program fucked up, has a ho (although a whore is possible), drinks a 40 or lives anywhere near the hood. This is not done to disrespect anyone (used the full word so as not to offend you). It is just done for fun. What Hip-hop artists speak about is totally irrelevant to my life, but it doesn’t stop me liking the music or enjoying the lyrical content. If anything, when we are using such words we are probably closer to the sentiments you expressed, because we are basically taking the piss out of people in our part of the world who use them and mean them, despite them being totally out of context. People like that may well be trying to give the impressions you suggest but thankfully, here, they just end up looking like arses, and everyone else knows it. <<bet you reffered to him only so i could "see" that you're really down with hiphop, bitch>> No, that particular quote is one of my favourites because it is Ice-MF-T at his silliest sounding (at least here). No one here says that and means it, and even if they did, no one would ever say it with that kind of intonation. If I say that, in that way to one of my friends, we are taking the piss out of each other in the most royal of manners. <<Down with hip-hop>>, hmm, I would say Ice-T was stretching the definition of hip-hop , especially nowadays, but I will bow to your superior judgement, or were you just pointing out how wrong I was? <<so i could "see">> No, I am quite glad that I have no real need to prove anything to you or anyone else, despite typing this incoherent babble as an answer to you. And I think that is pretty close to where I came in. Werd to your mutha

Thank God, or whoever you prayed to. Ebola - Thanx for making this words thing seem as trivial as it truly is.

Ok Gemini how about this for a deal? Every techno shit rockin' fuckin nerd in the world has to stick to plain old fashioned English and avoid any even vaguely Hip-hop sounding words. You obviously feel you should have the monopoly on such words. The Hip-hop set must, in reciprocation, not use any mainstream English words. That is only fair. We could extend this so that skate dicks can only use sidewalk surfing terms, metal freaks can only communicate by thrashing their heads around in a variety of semaphore-like signals and pokemon can only say their own names. Of course, I'm not sure what that would do for human communication, nor where a skating pokemon that likes metal, hip-hop and techno would stand in the scheme of things. Me, I will use the words I want, when I want and because I want to. Anyone who doesn't like it can just refer themselves to the last line of the intro from Ice-T's home invasion album.

Hmm, I guess my memory was wrong about when Strife was first released. Striker - If you are not getting the voices do you have both WADs? Strife should have Strife1.wad and Voices.wad. I have a full version of Strife but I can't play the intro video anymore (such as it is). It is an avi file, but it is a format that windows media player cant play (it plays the first second or two, but I know there is more). The DOS player that used to run it gives a run time error 200 when I try it. Apparently this is common with old turbo pascal progs when played on new fast machines (don't know if the player is one or not). I have a patching program that patches such old progs to work on new machines, but it doesn't work on the avi player. Anyone any ideas?

Glad to hear it is hitting the shelves again because I really hope this may lead to a source port. Strife had a whole load of cool features like interactive NPCs, a branching story with alternative endings, hubs, an inventory, guys who fight on your side, some cool enemies, spiffy animated doors....... I would love to see this updated to use new source port type features. Was it really released so close to Duke? I remembered it being older than that.

I liked the look of the trees / forest effect in KZdoom5 but they became very frustrating IMO at the end because they were unfair. Why unfair? The enemies in the trees were all former humans that have weapons that can fire through the trees as if they are not there. The enemies also "know" where you are because they are computer generated entities and do not have their vision restricted by the trees. The player can also shoot through the trees but cannot see the enemies, who may be firing from anywhere. I know that is part of the intended effect, but I found it frustrating. Suggestions: (take them or leave them) more imps or similar, and less humans, in the trees would be better as the trees would stop the imp fireballs unless the monster had a clear shot; or less trees on easier levels. Despite the above, I loved KZdoom5 (and the entire KZdoom series) and really look forward to KZdoom6.

Well, I downloaded it and played with it a bit so I want....... Actually, just thought I would register my opinion that FBase5 looks really cool and has the intelligent use of ZDOOM features that we have come to expect from Tarin. I agree with Ebola. It reminded me a little of UT and perhaps a little of Half Life too, despite many of the extra textures obviously being "quakey" in origen. Haven't had a chance to DM in it yet, but will soon. :-)

Russell, in your text file with Tunnel Run, you mention your TC "DoomTown3". Is this available, a work in progress or something never to be finished? If Tunnel Run is indicative of DoomTown3's quality, it should be pretty good and I for one would like to see it.

Oops, to be clear. The lindef that should activate the yellow door has a SECTOR tag of 1. The sector that is the door has a tag of 0.

I agree this is a superb level. You just knew the ending was going to be tough when you started opening cupboards full of health and ammo. I like that "I've got a bad feeling about this" kind of approach that so many doom levels have done well. And when I actually went into the final corridor - woa -superb. About the light levels etc. Lets face it, you have to be looking at the level inside an editor rather than playing to really spot this, and the levels plays just fine. it certainly is worth mentioning the 16 point increments in light, however, as I had been editing for a number of years before I found out how the light imcrements work. For my own preference, I like key requiring doors to be visually marked as such. It just helps me navigate, but its a personal preference thing. On key doors, however, I found a minor problem with the level that because no one else has mentioned it may only exist in ZDOOM - the only port I have used to play it. The Yellow key door that gives access to the final corridor from the central tunnel area has a linedef tag of 1 so when you try and open it you hear a door opening sound from the other doors tagged 1 (which you have already been through) but the yellow door doesn't open as its sector has no tag. I think I am right in saying this door type doesn't normally need a tag so perhaps it works in other ports by just ignoring the tag.

Woh, that came as a surprise, I didn't think anyone even really knew about NJDOOM. Actually I don't recomend searching for it too hard, its pretty poor, with many of the levels being "completed" only a few months after doom was released - they are very basic with no texture alignment and full of problems created by the limitations of earlier editors and the bugs in the early version of BSP - and the fact I was crap. NJZDOOM2 is an updated version of many of the levels from NJDOOM, not dramatically reworked, just tidied up a bit. I do better stuff these days, honest. The version of NJZDOOM which may be publically available somewhere is actually not the final version as the final version includes fixes for level 7 and full zdoom versions of the secret wolf levels with sliding rather than rising doors (A la Wolfenstein), but because of this CDROM.COM won't accept it. If you really want some of the old njdoom levels, they were originally uploaded to compuserve years ago and I think had names like dmnige.zip dmnjsoh.zip dmnjkd.zip and doomnj.zip (compuserve renamed them to fit in with their classification system). A shores of hell replacement episode was completed first, then knee deep, and the whole lot was packaged together with the inferno replacement just after doom2 was released (If memory serves). I don't know if they are still on compuserve, but believe me, I don't think it is worth the search.