Doom II XBLA Now Released!

Ragnor said:

Level 1 The Earth Base
Level 2 The Pain Labs
Level 3 Canyon Of The Dead
Level 4 Hell Mountain
Level 5 Vivisection
Level 6 Inferno Of Blood
Level 7 Baron's Banquet
Level 8 Tomb Of Malevolence
Level 9 March Of Thee Demons

Is it just me, or do these sound like the names given by the wad name generator?

Damn I want this pretty bad. Is there no release date for the rest of the world yet?

MajorRawne said:

EDIT 2: Is anyone remotely worried that the new official mapper will suck compared to Doom Community champions, and that the new maps will be 1994 standard in order to fit in with the original Hell On Earth maps?

Personally, as long as the action is fast and the gameplay is awesome, I'll be happy. The architecture looks great from the screenshots I've seen though.

EDIT:
I'm more worried that the level designers make a crappy modern level set that has no character or gameplay.

Ragnor said:

Level 9 March Of Thee Demons

Typo? Isn't it "March of The Demons" rather? "Thee" wouldn't make much sense.

Mr. T said:

boohoo waaa waaaaaa... I bet if someone offered you the chance to be paid for making Doom maps, you would jump at it.

Of course I would. I love doom mapping. Getting income from it would be a perfect job for me. But I can't expect doomers to respect me for it.

MajorRawne said:

EDIT 2: Is anyone remotely worried that the new official mapper will suck compared to Doom Community champions, and that the new maps will be 1994 standard in order to fit in with the original Hell On Earth maps?

It's that weird "official" thing isn't it. Because these levels are "official" and released as part of a product package they will carry far more weight and be played more than other levels which may, or may not, be of a better standard but simply aren't "official".

I guess that will always be the case. It's psychological, the adherence to authority.

Keeping in mind that some of the ex-Rogue guys work at Nerve now, they at least have some prior experience making DOOM maps. So I doubt they'll be terrible. I wouldn't expect anything mind blowing at the same time; I doubt they'll top UAC Ultra for example.

Dragonsbrethren said:

Is it just me, or do these sound like the names given by the wad name generator?

Well, I couldn't come up with anything beter myself...

Blzut3 said:

They might not be in a hurry to release Doom on PSN since you can already play Doom, Doom 2, Final Doom, Master levels, and Hexen on the Playstation 3 (I suppose that argument doesn't really hold up since they have released Xbox versions of Doom before). Though it would be nice to see that extra episode on another platform other than the 360.

PS3? Hnh... I was hoping it would come out for PSP :P

40oz said:

Of course I would. I love doom mapping. Getting income from it would be a perfect job for me. But I can't expect doomers to respect me for it.

It depends on who you are. If it's CJwright, then... no, I'd still dislike him. But if, say, Erik started being paid for that, more power to him! I would appreciate if he still released free stuff that's still good quality, but I wouldn't mind at all if someone else paid him to do something he's good at.

Abyssalstudios1 said:

I wouldn't mind at all if someone else paid him to do something he's good at.

I agree with this bit... it feels more like selling out to me if someone goes and works for Activision and makes dumbed down games rather than making awesome DooM maps!

If you have a hobby, and you can make money off of it, then good for you. Why should you work with EA who's staff consists of depressed vampire programmers when you can sit at home, drinking coffee while making a fun map!

Cutman said:

Damn I want this pretty bad. Is there no release date for the rest of the world yet?

This wednesday.

Gez said:

Typo? Isn't it "March of The Demons" rather? "Thee" wouldn't make much sense.

Lets just hope it isnt a typo of "March of Three Demons" ;]

Are there any level design credits for the new maps in the credits menu screen?

Remember that asking for, offering or linking to warez is against forum rules.

Doom 2 has indeed been officially confirmed for this Wednesday (Thursday for me, since all release dates are obviously based on american times)

I wonder what my overall leaderboard rank will be this time. I placed in the top 200 worldwide in Ultimate Doom :D

I'm a shameless PS3 elitist, but this is super awesome.

So, someone who has acquired this legally, what are the new levels like?

There was footage of the first two levels briefly available some time ago, and the architecture was looking quite good. Also featured a lot of interconnectivity and height changes, with windows between room and corridors overlooking areas, etc. Strategic placement of barrels. So it seems quite good actually.

Quasar said:

Keeping in mind that some of the ex-Rogue guys work at Nerve now, they at least have some prior experience making DOOM maps. So I doubt they'll be terrible. I wouldn't expect anything mind blowing at the same time; I doubt they'll top UAC Ultra for example.

I had entirely forgotten about that. Strife ftw.

Its now out for real and I'm playing the hell out of it. Already got 4 achievements, heh.

You know a game is new when your the 4th best at Entryway :p

I don't consider the Xbox 360 inferior in any way. All the games released for it work without having to spend £300 (nearly $600) on a new graphics card, or having installation issues, or being incompatible with the operating system.

And you don't need to spend half an hour installing games to the 360 unlike the PS3, then another 20 minutes updating it, before you can even start playing. Honestly, it is quicker to load Bubble Bobble on the Commodore 64, which was incidentally more addictive than many of today's games. Yes the PS3 does have a selection of good games (not least of which is GT5 - oh wait, it's never gonna be released at this rate and it's already been superseded by Forza 3 and a dozen other similar games) and graphically it is very impressive, but my best mate owns one, and there is nothing about the PS3 that would tempt me away from the XBox. I don't need a highly overpriced Blu-Ray player with games support.

I don't consider ZDoom inferior either. As a new mapper, I really find ZDoom easier to map for, and hanging decorations far above the player's head don't mysteriously halt the player's movement unlike Boom.

But these are personal preferences and slightly off topic.

As for losing respect releasing new level sets, why would people fail to respect the official team who created the architecturally "simple" but incredibly fiendish map sets, just because they provided more of them? It seems that some of today's maps have to spam the player with Revenants and Chaingunners in order to provide a challenge. Even though the original maps are easy by today's standards, the genius behind them still draws us in.

I'm only aware of few games that actually require a high-end graphic card to run at all, and most of the time these games don't sell well (see Shattered Horizons) ; it's only "necessary" if you consider it "necessary" to run on maxed graphics.

So here's the puzzling part : you, or at least the theorical "you" I'm supposing you might be by your post, complain about having to spend $600 on a graphic card for PC games because you want the absolute highest quality, *and then* you proceed to pick a game system with lower resolutions, lower graphic quality and games capped at 30 FPS.

... I just don't get it.

All of this is of course meaningless as we're on Doomworld in a topic about Doom 2, and the classic game and maps could probably run at 30 FPS or whatever the vanilla limit is on one of these $10 netbooks they sell in Africa.

Up to The Pit right now. Ive already lost all my number 1 ranks in the levels as the better players follow my lead and one-up my scores. Still, it made me proud to see that "1" on levels 4 upwards.

I was raging for a while, because the super shotgun WASNT placed between the shotgun and chaingun, instead its sitting between the fist and chainsaw (wtf?). Then I realised theyve mapped the up button on the D-pad to a "shotgun toggle" which exclusively selects the shotguns (ie the main gun). The music is definitly messed up, at least, compared to the PC GZDooming I'm so familiar with. SSG sounds terrible to me.

The "You Have Huge Guts" is sadly just for KILLING with a fist, not for fighting one and winning with only the fists. This makes it trivial, as you just need to save on Tricks and Traps and reload till the cyberdemon wins then punch him to death with the invuln.

EDIT: The D-pad setup is ingenious. Up toggles shotguns, left toggles plasma/BFG, right for Pistol/chaingun, down for rockets, fist and chainsaw. Would have preferred Rocket/BFG and Chaingun/Plasmagun myself, but it works.

MajorRawne said:

As a new mapper, I really find ZDoom easier to map for, and hanging decorations far above the player's head don't mysteriously halt the player's movement unlike Boom.

If that happens and it wasn't the author's intention for some reason, then it is a mapping error. You can choose hanging decorations that block the player (which you should use if they are very low-hanging) or ones that don't (which are the ones to use if they are a long way above the player). You can't blame the engine for a mapper's errors and/or failure to test properly. (Note that if you use the wrong type of hanging decoration, the map will also fail to behave as intended for players who use Zdoom with "actors infinitely tall turned" on, so it makes sense to get this right regardless.)

Indeed, the main reason problems like this exist at all is that Zdoom changes the game behaviour with respect to them, and then people make maps that are intended to be vanilla-compatible or Boom-compatible and only test them with Zdoom.

BTW, prboom+ has some settings to help with these "Zdoomisms", in the "compatibility with common mapping errors" options, and the stdout.txt will list all instances of high hanging decorations that block the player, which is intended to help with debugging.

Ragnor said:

The "You Have Huge Guts" is sadly just for KILLING with a fist, not for fighting one and winning with only the fists. This makes it trivial, as you just need to save on Tricks and Traps and reload till the cyberdemon wins then punch him to death with the invuln.

That would be a tough one to make rigorous, as even in some of the toughest "Tyson a Cyberdemon" tasks, such as E2M8, the cyber is liable to take some damage from other monsters. It would be quite a pain to have to be the cyberdemon's bodyguard before setting about him with your fists.

Enjay said:
It's that weird "official" thing isn't it. Because these levels are "official" and released as part of a product package they will carry far more weight and be played more than other levels which may, or may not, be of a better standard but simply aren't "official".

"Official" levels have a greater distribution than custom ones. Levels are like money; they can be appreciated more fully by the community if they have a good circulation.

No Rest for the Living is really good! Maps are very non-linear, the gameplay is pretty good without being too painfully hard. Every map is playable from a pistol start. Ammo is a little generous but it's evenly spaced out. There are TONS of secrets to be found. Some pretty cool switch puzzles too. The detail is surprisingly good being as though it only uses Doom 2 textures. I found a lot of the map designs and other minor details to be really interesting and unique, even though lately I feel as though detail is beginning to all look the same. I'd say the maps resemble visual quality that of Plutonia 2 (if not, even better). The XBLA port must be a limit removing port though because playing in Chocolate Doom did create visplane overflows.

One thing I found pretty interesting is that a majority of the monsters are hidden by secrets. Not so much as simply placing monsters within secret areas as much as it is opening closets in the main areas of the maps for finding them. This was pretty cool for single player. In the first map I got to the exit room only fighting zombies, imps and demons. Upon finding the secrets, many more difficult monsters arrived making the map about thrice as threatening. While I'm usually against having to find secrets in order to get 100% kills, I found this to be really cool. However, I do see a downside in coop, in which one guy will go ahead and find all the weapons and soulspheres, while all the other players are stuck dealing with the revealed monsters.

Some other things I should point out, there are like... no backpacks. I only found one in MAP08 and did not find more in any other maps. There appeared to be a fair amount of every other powerup though. Berserks, Computer Area Maps, Partial Invisibilities, no Light Amplification Visors though, but I can live with that. I would have encouraged the use of impassible lines around hallways because I often found myself bumping into wall details while trying to avoid monsters. Also the last map was very easy. The main boss monster was apparently the Spider Mastermind, but there are also some archviles and a bunch of hell barons and revenants to accompany it. I managed to get the hell barons and Spider Masterminds to fight ACCIDENTALLY which cause the spidey to die without me even opening fire on it, which was kinda lame. I had a ton of ammo leftover too.

Would I play it again? Fuck yeah, I would. Despite its few flaws I still give it 5/5.

Thats good to hear. I kind of want to just play them right now, but I'm determined to play the game in order, after all, NRFTL is the aftermath and thus should be played last.

And iirc, 360 Doom and Doom 2 is a form of Boom, I remember reading about something in the programming to do with random sound pitches or some technoport babble I dont remember :D. Doom 2 definietly has random pitches in the sound.

Ragnor said:

And iirc, 360 Doom and Doom 2 is a form of Boom, ...

Very unlikely. As far as i know, microsoft does not allow open source stuff on the 360.

Nah, it's based on the original source code, not on Boom. Random pitches were part of the original specs. But then the DMX sound library they used broke that effect. Then they released the source code, cleaned out of DMX since they did not have the rights to release that code. And source ports did or did not implement random pitches when they reimplemented sound support.

For the XBLA, they had to rewrite the sound code entirely, so they restored the random pitch. Microsoft would never allow GPL code to touch their console!