Thirith on 27/7/2020 at 10:07
Jason, did you use the DXX mod to play Descent?
I wonder how the game plays in coop... I think I played coop once or twice way back, but my only memory is of destroying the reactor and losing my coop buddy on the way to the exit. By accident. Obviously.
Sulphur on 27/7/2020 at 10:08
Wait, you could co-op Descent? I only remember sticking missiles up a friend's tailpipe over and over again (and in the game).
Anarchic Fox on 27/7/2020 at 12:24
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Even I've never finished Descent 1, so massive kudos for doing that. It's a bitch of a time managing those hitscan enemies.
Yeah, that's what always keeps me from coming back. Doom, and nothing else (not even Quake) did hitscan monsters properly: as glass cannons or basic fodder. (Barring the Mastermind, but that was a boss fight, so I'll let it slide.) Deus Ex gets an honorable mention, because its hitscan enemies... weren't. They just had very fast projectiles.
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
I replayed Quake...
Quote Posted by icemann
And that makes me want to go and play Quake now. Dammit.
Yeah, it's damn good. Many reasons have already been mentioned; here's another. Having a shiny new 3D engine, Quake put scads of effort into levels that emphasized verticality, creating memorable and fun levels. This verticality was lost in gaming's death march into realism. For a time all we got was the verticality of the Uncharted games, where vertical movement became a slow, linear quasi-puzzle.
Sadly, Quake is also one of the games I can't revisit, owing to remembering it too well. Doom is my go-to for nostalgic shooters, because of its vibrant modding community: I'm still only a fifth of the way through the Cacowards. Quake's modding community was, and is, far less impressive.
It's strange how some good games (Doom, Thief, Half-Life) form lasting modding communities, while other good ones (Quake, Descent, the Epic Games shooters) fizzle. You can't say it's due to ease of modding alone, since (particularly early on) Thief modding was a singularly perverse experience.
Briareos H on 27/7/2020 at 12:59
Paper Mario: The Origami King.
A very nice adventure which looks and sounds great, with endearing characters and funny writing (the usual Paper Mario fare), tarnished by a lack of risk-taking in structure and narration as well as a generally unpleasant combat system, which only becomes fun and tactical during boss fights.
It doesn't help that the first contact is strongly customary (is that the right word?) and mechanistic. You get your castle and princess to rescue, your new Nintendo princess, your new baddie, your new gameplay gimmick and your whole story subdivided in acts with a literal red tape to follow. If the game wasn't otherwise charming (and so expensive) I may not have went past the first chapter. Which would have been a shame, given that chapters 3 and 4 are true highlights, not only for this game but for the whole Paper Mario series IMO.
Worth it if you like Paper Mario and don't expect a real RPG (no xp, items and exploration are minimal, no real party system), but "objectively" so-so.
On PC, I'm enjoying Carrion a fair bit. I've only started but I love the immediacy of it. I wonder if the level design and upgrades will manage to keep my interest high.
Regarding the comparison of indie games numbers, the analysis is quite interesting. I discovered Carrion through Twitter word-of-mouth and was immediately attracted to the technical aspects of the game. The way the creature moves in a refined Gish-like fashion, the way the tendrils worm themselves across the geometry were a big factor in my interest. Same reason I was attracted to Noita, which I think has been doing fairly well, same reason I predict a massive success for (
https://twitter.com/tuxedolabs/status/1178998032022560768) Teardown.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
So, if I were a marketing person (i.e., cynical AND soulless), I'd probably say if you want to make an indie game that does well, it needs to be more interactive, spill claret
and also repackage old ideas in a new format.
I'm not sure repackaging old ideas is a mandatory step, for me the new format is mainly what matters. If you show something that is technically or mechanistically fresh and offers unusual degrees of interactivity, you're definitely going to pique my interest. But I can't say for the general audience.
Regarding the other two games, Necrobarista has a style that is an instant turn-off and Röki looks nice but my current status with Scandinavian folklore in video gaming is: DONE. I will probably play that one in a year or two.
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
Quake's modding community was, and is, far less impressive.
It's strange how some good games (Doom, Thief, Half-Life) form lasting modding communities, while other good ones (Quake, Descent, the Epic Games shooters) fizzle.
We're getting SM jam plus 2-10 individual maps each month and then another jam on top of it almost every other month. Things like AD and Copper and constantly being updated with new content and maps, the Discord is alive and the community is fantastic. So i'm not sure what to say except "strongly disagree".
Anarchic Fox on 27/7/2020 at 13:27
Quote Posted by Briareos H
Paper Mario: The Origami King.
Does it compare well with Thousand Year Door? Hell, does it compare at all? I'm itching for a new, well-designed low-numbers RPG, but the sticker/paint nonsense of the last few entries were a big drawback.
Quote:
The way the creature moves in a refined Gish-like fashion...
Sold. I loved the idea of Gish, the execution not so much. Incidentally, there's a whole unexplored realm of platformers based on peculiar movement... think Bionic Commando or Within a Deep Forest. I wouldn't have anticipated it, but "mobile sticky ball" is a fun way to platform.
Quote:
We're getting SM jam plus 2-10 individual maps each month and then another jam on top of it almost every other month. Things like AD and Copper and constantly being updated with new content and maps, the Discord is alive and the community is fantastic. So i'm not sure what to say except "strongly disagree".
Would you provide links? Searching wasn't helpful.
When I was deepest into Doom, I relied on its Cacowards. While making my way through them, I also played each year's ten highest-rated Quake mods. (I don't remember which ratings site, nor did I find anything like the Cacowards.) The Quake ones were less fun, and far less polished/creative/ambitious, than the Doom ones. However, I only made it through the first half-decade or so of Quake modding, so maybe there was a big jump in quality in the last decade and a half.
Anyway, it won't be the first time an initial impression turned out to be false. It might just be that comparing
anything to Doom's modding community is unfair. Doom modding is nuts.
Briareos H on 27/7/2020 at 14:38
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
Does it compare well with Thousand Year Door? Hell, does it compare at all?
Origami King is pretty much in the same vein as Color Splash, they are their own thing and almost don't stand in the "light RPG" genre that Mario RPG and Paper Mario more-or-less created. Times are a-changin' for sure.
I still liked it as an adventure/experience, but I don't think it's fair to compare it to TTYD. Unlike the former, Origami King doesn't feel like a game that knows what kind of gameplay it wants to offer to the player.
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
Sold. I loved the idea of Gish, the execution not so much.
"Gish-like" may give you a wrong idea since there are no strong puzzle elements (as far as I've seen) and you are much more mobile than the ball of tar in Gish. I just love deforming bodies that slip around satisfyingly.
You can try the demo on Steam, it represents the final product very well.
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
Would you provide links? Searching wasn't helpful.
A good place to start is (
https://www.quaddicted.com/) Quaddicted which has everything you need to start playing custom maps. It's not always up-to-date with the latest releases, which you will find publicised on (
http://www.celephais.net/board/) Func_Msgboard. You can start with the Coppertone Summer Jam and the latest release of Arcane Dimensions if you've never played it. Excellent stuff, you'll find plenty of great map authors so it's hard to single any -- but at least, sock/SimonOC is a consitently great mapper, and you may also want to check out maps created by our resident skacky, all are good. The Rubicon Rumble Pack is another large mission pack I enjoyed a lot in the recent years.
The "monthly SM jam" I mentioned is the speedmapping jam, not everything in there is fun of course but you'll find plenty of good releases. Latest one was SM209 in May so I have to eat my words about it being monthly, but activity has been slower during the summer and we still had some great maps.
A huge difference with the Doom modding scene is that there are very few TCs that stray too far from the classic Quake themes and feel. There are are several major texture/object packs that are not part of the original, but they never feel like a different game and most people release their maps to be either vanilla or close-to-vanilla (AD and Copper) with a custom texture set. It's a bit like the Thief modding scene. You can find the mapping (
https://discordapp.com/invite/f5Y99aM) Discord here if you want to check out what people are currently working on. If you are looking for fresh stuff, the (
https://i.imgur.com/KQYXpD1.png) upcoming jam might be of interest to you. Also perhaps some day I'll get my head out of my arse and release something.
WingedKagouti on 27/7/2020 at 14:38
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
When I was deepest into Doom, I relied on its Cacowards. While making my way through them, I also played each year's ten highest-rated Quake mods. (I don't remember which ratings site, nor did I find anything like the Cacowards.) The Quake ones were less fun, and far less polished/creative/ambitious, than the Doom ones. However, I only made it through the first half-decade or so of Quake modding, so maybe there was a big jump in quality in the last decade and a half.
Anyway, it won't be the first time an initial impression turned out to be false. It might just be that comparing
anything to Doom's modding community is unfair. Doom modding is nuts.
Making maps for Doom is a lot easier than for Quake, and the map tools available for Q2/HL/Unreal are more userfriendly than the ones that were made for Quake (a lot of them were fanmade). Thus a lot of the people making maps for Quake migrated to the newer and easier to use engines and tools, which meant abandoning making maps for Quake.
That said, there was an official Quake episode (Dimension of the Past) released on the 20th birthday of the game and it's worth playing if you want more Quake.
Anarchic Fox on 27/7/2020 at 15:21
I happily yield the point. The next time I'm in the mood for classic shooters I'll give the Quake scene a deeper look. Thanks, Briareos and Kagouti. :angel:
Quaddicted was the site I used for rankings. I guess I just didn't persist far enough to see the really good stuff start to appear. Is there any Cacowards equivalent?
Jason Moyer on 27/7/2020 at 18:20
Quote Posted by Thirith
Jason, did you use the DXX mod to play
Descent?
Yeah, DXX-Rebirth.
henke on 27/7/2020 at 18:47
I'll hold off on playing Descent until DoTheGeek finishes his ART9000-infused remake. That's the way Descent is MEANT to be played! :cool: