The Gamer's Quarter

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

Strikes me as a bit Into The Shadows. Well,, minus the first-person bit and ignoring that it was in development after Quake.
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[Harveyjames]

Wow, I would have liked to have seen how that turned out. They could barely get it together to make Quake the way it was. There's no animation on the gun models! Imagine how clunky and rubbish-looking an Id software fighting game would have looked in 1996.

Actually, there's a Mortal Kombat game which has an adventure mode just like that, where you roam the land doing Zelda-y things and when you meet an opponent you fight them in a round of Mortal Kombat. Needless to say it is fucking terrible.

[Cycle]

I remember taking a screenshot of GOTCHA! with the demon and spider facing each other looking like it's on a 2D plane, and adding some life bars, and then posting it on the internet saying it's a leaked screen from a fighter id were working on.

I didn't convince many people.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

That was you that did that?
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[Cycle]

wait what i didnt realise it got circulated

seriously?
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[Harveyjames]

That's so cute.

[Cycle]

Romero usually makes for a pretty interesting interview.

Also Harvey, I also saw the Miyamoto influence in Episode 1 and asked Romero about it once, I lost the response though. I mean, he said Miyamoto is a big influence on him, and he named the main character in Daikatana after him.

I'm sure it was meant to be a compliment at the time.

I should dig up another interview where he talks about wanting to make a game about CHOICES. Such as whether or not to cross a bridge.

Seriously, that is the example he uses.

One of his less stellar game ideas, there.
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[Cycle]

Romero please get back to being a lead designer and not anything else plz.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[Cycle]

HAVE AT YOU , MASTERMIND!!

KUNG FU KICK!! YAAA!!

Also that is awesome, I thought it just died in the forum I posted it in (but it was a pretty big forum at the time). Unless someone else did a similar thing!
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[Cycle]

Hey Rero, do you that issue of Hyper (has MK3 on the cover I think) that had all those fake MK shots? Like a PYTHONALITY where a giant foot crushed the other player?

I totally wanted that in MK 3.

Also how are you doing with those Zone episodes.
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[Harveyjames]

I had the Sim City 2000 Urban Renewal kit which allowed you to edit Sim City's graphics and a Doom WAD ripper, and made DOOM CITY where all the houses were item pickups and the tall buildings were various sizes of monster. It took me a lot of Saturdays.

[Cycle]

COOL. I also had the renewal kit. I didn't know you could do that kind of stuff! I just used it to cheat.

Oh wait, I remember trying to edit some of the sprites into cooler stuff! Can't remember what, though.

I remember editing the first level of DooM 2 a heap, such as putting a mastermind in the back garden area, and placing hanging keens all over the damn place.

Ah, those were the days.

Back before I thought about BALANCE and WELL-CRAFTED SETPIECES

I was just like FUCK YEAH, BFG ON THE FIRST LEVEL AND THREE CYBERDEMONS THIS SHIT IS GONNA BE TIGHT

ALSO, HANGING KEENS ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE!!! ROCK ON

AND BARRELS.

LOTS OF BARRELS.
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[Harveyjames]

I got absolutely nowhere trying to edit levels. It was too hard...

Hey Valve and Turtle Rock Studio's 'Left 4 Dead' looks cool. It's a multiplayer FPS in which you co-operate to make your way through a city full of Zombies. Also CHOICES.

[Cycle]

Well I never really made levels (I think I made a box once and just used it to stick lots of stuff in), I mainly worked with premade ones for HILARIOUS RESULTS.

Left 4 Dead sounds interesting!
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[Cycle]

So has anyone seen the OUCH face while playing doom?


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[Harveyjames]

If I have I don't remember it... how do you get that?

I remember my dad hacked apart the Doom wad file in a hex editor (I think) and was really pleased with himself because he managed to find the word 'fuck'.

[Cycle]

oh harveyjames dad, when will you learn!

[Slonie]

[Cycle]

I played all the marathon betas (they came with the Marathon Trilogy Boxset). I'm glad they changed it from that first version they had!



GRENDEL LIVES

This was the first beta, basically it was Pathways into Darkness in space. People expressed this and the beta was met with a cold reception at trade shows, so they ditched it and started work on a new engine...

Nevermind, can't find pics of the other betas.

As for DooM:

[Slonie]

I knew you'd come through. As for the cold reception at trade shows, I can now admit to being a part of that. My 13-year-old self came up to them at Macworld and said something like "this is supposed to be as good as Doom?". In retrospect, I was totally a dick!

At the next Macworld I was able to totally get schooled in LAN play on Mars Needs Women, so I guess, mission accomplished. The later beta looks somewhat close to the final game so it's not quite as much of a shock.

The Doom screenshots are exactly what I was looking for. In fact, I think somebody linked to a design document for doom a while back that went over what the early version of that game was supposed to be like. It must have been linked from here or IC or SB, or else I found it on some Doom fansite.


Now, if only I had a copy of Super Marathon...
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-Slonie

[Cycle]

I couldn't go to MacWorld expos because I lived in Australia

Super Marathon is just Marathon 1 & 2 ported to the Pippin. I saw a copy once on ebay, but it went over $200 and I decided I didn't need it to complete my collection since I have both games anyway! I have my two Marathon Trilogy boxsets (one sealed).

Also, there were three (publicaly released) Marathon betas, not two!

The design document (written by Tom Hall) is called the DOOM BIBLE. It can be found in PDF form pretty easily. Doomworld probably has it (it has basically everything else DooM related) It's very interesting. DooM was going to be Daikatana!

All the DooM betas are widely available, too. Some are more interesting than others.

How are those Bungie videos coming along, by the way.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[Lestrade]

[Cycle]

Yeah, there were actually quite a few NON-BROWN textures in Quake. Wish they used some of them more, I loved the blue one. It's amazing how well the game turned out considering everything...

Damnit, now I gotta go play it again, too.

Thanks, JERKS.

Rero why aren't you talking more about doom, isn't it YOUR GAME like marathon is MY GAME?

Before we get off DooM and (back) on Quake, what are peoples thoughts on each doom episode? I love the miyamoto design of the first episode (it feels like Zelda sometimes) and the large maps with epic battles and even exploration in episode 3 are awesome, but episode 2 was a bit bland... I think because it was mostly Tom Halls stuff, before the nature of the game changed radically.

Also... DOUBLE KILL (forgot about the cyderdemon):



From Hyper, June 1995.
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[Harveyjames]

When you say Miyamoto design, do you mean the 'if you see it you can get to it' approach that Eric-Jon was talking about?

I always thought Episode 1 was the best episode. I do like 2, though. I haven't played 3 but it's mostly based around subverting your expectations of the first two episodes, right? Like, collapsing bridges, doors that close forever, etc. I

Episode 4 as far as I can tell is retarded. The fact that the level names read like the tracklisting of a Cradle of Filth album doesn't help.

[Cycle]

Oh sorry, I thought you were the one who said that earlier... the IF YOU CAN SEE IT approach is one of the things that made me ask him about it, yes. I should really dig up that interview I did with him, but I have no idea which issue it's in.

Actually, all the levels in episode 4 are named after passages in the King James version of the bible!

I don't think Episode 3 was really there to subvert your expectations, Episode 4 did that more, and DooM ][ even more so. Maybe I'll talk about it more tomorrow, I'm busy right now and also about to go to bed.

playing quake itt
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[Harveyjames]

I thought there was something Nintendo-y about the way Quake rewards players who have an intimate knowledge of where all the items are and how best to use them. But I haven't properly played Doom recently.

Apparently the characters in Doom were based on 3D models made by the guy who did the special effects for the Robocop movies. Has anyone ever seen photographs of these models?

[Shapermc]

Yeah, I'm probably at about the same point in the game as you. I'm trying to just go through each level w/o saving, but most of the time I end up getting to one point and saving at about the 2/3 mark. Anyway, yeah, Door to Chthon was the first level to really make me feel like it was brilliantly laid out from start to finish.

[Slonie]

Cycle, I was able to get the archive of movies, but QuickTime in OS X complains that it is not a valid movie file either. I'll try and get it open on a machine that can run classic to see what happens there. The odd thing is that it's not complaining about the codec not being found, but instead just saying "The file is not a movie file." Doh.
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-Slonie

[kirkjerk]

late to the party a bit in this thread.

[Harveyjames]

So E2M3, 'The Crypt of Decay', is kind of a bitch to play. I've come within a whisker of the end a few times, but there are a few Romero cheap tricks which are really fucking with me- specifically, the 'corridor 'o' nail shooters' (which I seem to lose about half my health on each time through) right before the last battle.

I've pretty much mastered it, though. As seems to be customary, there's a nice little quad damage just tucked away in a corner right before you get to the two shamblers at the end, so it shouldn't be too hard to beat once I get round to playing it again. I found the Well of Wishes, too, but still can't seem to get into the portal to the secret level.

While there's nothing particularly clever going on in this level, it's pretty tight and always gives you a few alternative options to get to where you want to go, and seems to be themed around letting you get as many monster-on-monster fights going on as possible, since it's populated pretty densely by Hell Knights and Ogres. It's as ugly as the last Romero level, though. I've noticed his stuff tends to be laid out quite horizontally, too, as opposed to American McGee's map which was full of trapdoors and multiple levels.

My computer keeps resetting itself while I'm playing, which is a worry. It doesn't do that for anything else, like After Effects, so I wonder what's so special about EZQuake.

[Cycle]

[Harveyjames]

It didn't seem anywhere near as cheap as it does in Romero's levels, though. Romero's levels make Doom 3 look unpredictable.

[Cycle]

I'm playing through his levels now, I haven't really found anything cheap. It's been pretty breezy so far, actually. I'm up to... uhhh the level after wizards manse.

I'm dissapointed that the first episode is the only one with a cool secret levels.

the other levels aren't really anything special and it's like why are they secret!

i like cool secret levels.
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[Slonie]

[Cycle]

Yeah I deathmatched in the difficulty/level select area too. I loved how you selected it all in-game!

It's also awesome how it changes once you get all the runes.

I played the game on a very weak system, so also had scanlines and everything. Still played the snot out of it, still loved it.
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[Shapermc]

[Lestrade]

[Shapermc]

Lestrade, I'm totally fucking with you here. About three years prior to Columbine I made an RPG on the TI-86 and it was Zombie Teacher Killer. All the weapons were guns/knives. The location was School. The bosses were Teachers and the random enemies were Zombie Janitorial Staff. I used my school as a location because I was familiar with it, I used the teachers because it was easier than making up new names. I mean, I realized that this could be a problem so I solved it by adding the word Zombie to a lot of things. It was widely distributed at the school and one of my teachers even played it and enjoyed it! I was patient and somewhat creative, but the effort to make a new enviroment and name a bunch of things was more effort than I could muster at the time. I mean, that stuff was so familiar to me then.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Lestrade]

That's a great story. I like the subversion to avoid being suspected as a psychopath. Do you have screenshots of this?

I just realized: I made an entire, accurate map of the first house I lived in as a Doom WAD, years ago. Does that count as art?

[Shapermc]

[Pink Teddy Bear]

I remember modeling my house as a level in Duke Nukem 3D. That game had a pretty neat level editor.

[Cycle]

[Harveyjames]

Guys, I made a massive design document for a Doom Level based on my school, too! The first level would recreate my walk to school, and all the people I would walk past were going to be there in exactly the places I normally saw them as I walked there, so Dean and Mark Blake were going to be by the bus stop.

The rocket launcher became a baseball bat gun, and the shotgun was a pellet gun. The troops and sargeants just became generic schookids of various ages, which would be scattered liberally through the levels, which were all the same map but with different item and monster placements to represent different periods of the school day. Doors would lock and unlock, too, so you'd only be able to get into the janitor's closet during third period, which of course had a super baseball bat gun in it.
Higher-tier enemies became specific hard kids from my school, like Leroy Spence and Luke Holburn. So yeah, basic revenge fantasy stuff.

[Cycle]

I was too ambitious... I wanted to create WADs that mapped my entire city, and you could go into stors and by guns and you had to clear buildings of zombies for money to buy more weapons and ammo and yeah.

Instead I managed to make a box full of hanging keens!
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

The greatest ever WAD that I made ever I dubbed "Son of Nuts". It regularly crashed the game but what else would you expect of a level inspired by nuts.wad.
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[Cycle]

you will have to explain what nuts.wad was all about!
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

10,000 enemies!

EDIT: That's just the first room. The second one is entirely Arch Viles, Masterminds and Cyberdemons.
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[Cycle]

OH SNAP.

it was possible to finish the first level?!
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