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Jimmy

[V1.3] The Adventures of Square: Episode 1 - Cornered by Circles

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The brilliant Doctor Octagon has been kidnapped! Square must find him, and rescue him from the clutches of the Circle of Evil, a mysterious cult hellbent on the domination of Shape Land. He will square off against terrible monsters and impossible traps in order to prove that he's no square when it comes to justice. Guide him to the center of the Circle's domain, unravel their malicious plot, and win the day fair and square.

The Adventures of Square™ is a wacky and wonderful total conversion for the DOOM engine by Bigbrik Games: a new company of level designers, programers, musicians and procrastinators whose impetuous charge is to make things blow up in fun and interesting ways! Lead by James Paddock from 2011, the project began as an ambitious, one-man attempt to bring to life a hidden world of paint, puns and shapism, but soon grew to become the flagship title of a small and dedicated team, including community veterans Xaser, Alfonzo, MTrop, Pavera and Tarnsman. While the first episode is a complete and paid-for experience, it's only a small taster of the crazy delights we have in store for later – so stay tuned!

Square makes extensive use of ZDoom's advanced features in the UDMF format, with a unified approach to its level design, art direction and gameplay. Players can expect to find all the best elements of DOOM's fast and frenetic pace unencumbered by a sharp focus on fun, shapely layouts and free-flowing combat, and with a variety of new and familiar mechanics that build upon this brand of play. The game is made with speedrunning and multiplayer in mind, and features exclusive deathmatch (Square-Off!) maps in which to blast your buddies. It's the whole shebang, I tell ya!

The Squareware™ features the first episode of the game, Cornered By Circles: Radial Dawn, including:
  • 9 fully playable levels, fresh out of Shape Land.
  • 16 tracks from The Adventures of Square OST, courtesy of the musical minds of Jimmy, Xaser, Alfonzo and jmickle.
  • All-new textures and artwork.
  • All-new sounds and voice acting.
  • 4 exclusive deathmatch maps.
  • Arcade style Time Attack! Mode for single-player support in deathmatch levels.
  • Support for Xbox controllers.
  • Partial support for Mac users.
  • Really, really awful puns. I mean Jesus.
Download:
Visit the website for downloads and screenshots!

(Note: Google Chrome may block the download. Bigbrik promises that our games are not computer-obliterating malware. Just use another browser. :P)

Be There And Be Square!

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A note for anyone using Chrome: You may have to temporarily turn off the malware and phishing protection to download this. Chrome blocks it for some reason... o.O

Yay for release! The gang has really put a lot of work into this, and we're all very proud of it. Excited to finally see it come to some completion!

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I remember talking to Pavera about this some time ago, and keeping true to my word, I'll give this a shot later.
It's all shaping up well.

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Yay!

Edit: Going to find some time to play this before I'm stuck working overnights this week, but after I get some time off I'll definitely post some feedback.

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Here are some slime trails on the first map: (playing in square.exe)




Anyway, we all know that this is an instant Cacoward, absolutely - if not this year's, then sometime when it's fully finished.

Also, for me, this is like Wrack done far better. :D Seriously, all techbase parts in this wad totally remind of Wrack. Start of MAP02, for example.

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This is great, downloading instantly. Did you change something on the first three levels or just added the rest of the episode?

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I'm up to map 4 right now. The game so far is a great and flawless fun. I don't have anything else to say than: Awesome job, Jimmy and company!

Is there any credits file, or another way how I can find out particular map / sound authors; or do you just "officially" claim that everything is a collective work? :)

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scifista42 said:

Is there any credits file, or another way how I can find out particular map / sound authors; or do you just "officially" claim that everything is a collective work? :)


We don't have a fully enumerated credit list, per se, but we've each touched everything to the point of it being mostly a collective work.

Was there anything you specifically wanted to know?

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The original authors for those maps are MTrop (E1A1), Tarnsman (E1A3), and myself (E1A4).

Of course, all of them have been worked on by other members of the team, and everything has generally been edited in a collaborative effort.

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Hey folks! A big thanks to the rest of the team for pulling some serious weight to get this out the door. Matt, Jimmy and Xaser really dominated the resource scene and made a tough and arduous task look relatively simple! Mad skills.

A side note: I was the last one to edit a few of the earlier maps with what I now think is an out of date zdbsp - a bit of a blue on my part. If you see some slime trail action, that's my potato of a node builder screwing things up: it'll be fixed promptly.

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Niiice! Congrats on the release Jimbo & Co.! From the shots, it looks like this has progressed very nicely since I played the last version. Hopefully I'll get some free time in the near future to play through this.

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!!! IMPORTANT UPDATE !!!

Download the latest version from http://adventuresofsquare.com

Watch that page for all changes.

Beta 2 fixes map bugs caused by an out-of-date version of ZDBSP.

Original Post will be updated in a bit.

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A couple of bugs, both on the same map.

I kept on getting stuck and bumping into the air.

This one is two bugs in one.

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Great, I'll download it right away! I'm glad I got a better net connection so I'll be able to easily download it now.

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Admittedly, the difficulty curve of Square is a little more unforgiving when compared to Doom and its settings. Skill 4 is really meant to be played after you really understand the mechanics of the enemies and how and when to use each weapon. Skill 3 is already pretty darn difficult, and is meant to be a proven challenge to even fairly skilled Doomers. There's really no shame in starting this game on Skill 2 to orient yourself with the mechanics, since it'll still provide a fair enough challenge on the later levels without feeling like too much of a cake walk.

It's probably just from playing this game so dang much over the last year, but after a while I got so used to the way all the enemies and weapons behave that I could pretty much bounce through new levels as the team put them together. It's an intense rhythm for sure, but it's really damn fun once you orient yourself into it. :)

With that said, this is a beta! Please keep the feedback coming!

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I really think you guys way overdid it on the difficulty, and the extreme speed of the projectiles means a lot of cheap shots and fuck-you situations that you can only avoid through trial and error. I went into an analysis in the ZDoom thread but the whole way you set up the difficulties seems off to me, especially for a TC that runs standalone and could have broad appeal outside of the Doom community if not for the fact that you need considerable Doom experience just to survive even on easy. I mean, on the one hand it gives you this tutorial that teaches you the basics of movement and seems geared towards informing people who have never played a Doom engine game, and towards the end of the game tosses you into situations that kick around people who've been playing Doom engine games for years.


I'd really suggest having non-Doomers playtest the game on easy and medium, especially since MAPINFO lets you add additional skill levels, change the behavior of enemies on different skill levels, and provide a more gradual selection of difficulties between "piss easy" and "Square Revealed". Playing Doom II The Way Id Did on skill 4 back to back with Square on skill 3, D2TWID not only feels more forgiving, but if you get a trap sprung on you, you can often figure out what to do fast enough to get through it relatively unscathed without reloading. Not so in Square.

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scifista42 said:

Anyway, we all know that this is an instant Cacoward, absolutely - if not this year's, then sometime when it's fully finished.


Well I must say it looks very original and pretty sexy however I would be disappointed if this gets a cacoward since it really has absolutely nothing to do with Doom except using the engine.

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