Triumph Of The Will

Surprisingly, apart from a graphical patch (which isn't really that effective), I've never really played a game that used a majority of MAC sprites. Triumph Of The Will, is apparently the third in a series of "Mac-enstein" mods. This part of the series was made by the team of Andy Nonymous and ponz, and was released at the end of August.

Enough formal introductions! The first thing that was apparent upon beginning (apart from OMG THEY USED MAC SPRITES! WHO'D OF THOUGHT), was that the game utilized High Resolution sprites, giving off a more polished look. 10 more seconds into the game:

I'm sorry, but no matter how often I see out-of-place wall tiles, it just never ceases to irritate me. While it is of course up to the author, I would of much rather seen the whole room wooden, or maybe edited sprites so those images are on the stone; so at least its consistent. Despite that I found the maziness (a new word!) of it intriguing. Looping pushwalls seem a bit unnecessary but I'm not sure of what Andy and ponz were aiming for.
Anyway, continuing on, the enemies are plentiful, and there's alot of ammo. However, there is no alert as to the fact you're taking damage. Your character is completely oblivious to the bullets entering your body; it seems someone *glares* removed the red flash you see when you get damaged. This forced me to try to keep an eye on my statusbar, which is hard when I'm trying to concentrate on the gunfight I am in the middle of.
Also, this is probably a bug present in the Wolfenstein Engine ITSELF, but I found on multiple occasions the doors literally disappeared when I ventured to open it at the same time as an enemy.
Unfortunately I'm making this brief as I have work tomorrow, I'm sorry to anyone who wanted to see a full blown review with tonnes of screenshots and fireworks and references to google, but yeah, more next time I promise.

In closing, I would like to mention that due to the design of level 1, and my own moronic-ness (I believe I just coined ANOTHER new word, GO ME), it took me close to 15 minutes to find the key needed to progress through to the next level.

DooM: Death Doesn't Wait (Full)

The full version was released within the last 24 hours, and I THANK GOD there was a ReadMe file. It cleared up the purpose of the game for me; a remake of the original Doom levels. Playing the first level now I'm able to go OH! Mainly because it has changed ALOT. The basics of the level are the same but the enemy placements match the original Doom more.  However moving on from that, lets go through what I mentioned when I played the demo:

• B.J References. Looks like our friend Franz actually went and eliminated references to B.J:
  
  Good job to hi-WHOOPS missed a spot
  
  But we can blame that on the fact that no real menu editing went on; the original Signon screen, Wolfenstein music, and overall menu, remain. Only things like the episode menu and the "title" of each section have changed.
• The little ammo bug has been fixed and I can't pick up ammo when I have 99, but each clip gives me TWELVE shots. As such reaching 99 ammo takes almost no time at all.
• Second grade effects; ALL UNCHANGED. Running across killer slime has never been easier, since it DOESNT HURT YOU :D
• Still minor code changes. No attempt was actually made to fix up scenarios like the one pointed out in the last entry:
   
  Also I noticed if I stood at the angle needed for those "wall" sprites (STRAIGH 90 DEGREES LOL) to look even slightly decent, it becomes apparent that he forgot to implement a certain fix making the effect look wrong no matter what angle my character stood at. SHOCKING.

I checked the readme to see who was responsible for the shocking coding:

++++++Credits++++++

Thanks to Id Software for DooM.

Thanks to:
Lollo93
Mr.Glue
as beta-testers.

Me for source code editing.

HAHA! It was ME! Me was responsible! We must eliminate me from the Wolfing Comm-wait...NO! Not me, Me. Since I wasn't sure who this illusive Me was, since he is not an active member of DHW. If anyone has any details about Me, please contact me, so we can use the information sent to me to talk to Me and attempt to resolve the lack of coding done by Me in Death Doesn't Wait.

Door images were changed without thought and now they open the wrong way; meaning the door handle is on the right and the door opens as if it were on the left. Crazy.
A couple of things before I finish (this is brief and unfulfilling I know, but its 15 minutes from midnight so slack shall be cut) Franz made the effort to swap the OVERSIZED chaingun back to slot 4 and the single-barreled shotgun (which happens to shoot two shots in a row) to slot 3.
Oversized they are, with the weapons WAY too big to be held by the hero...To match it the enemies are too small for some reason, with the imp being a tiny thing half the size it should be.

To exit, I ask if anyone finds this "Google" item mentioned in the Readme please take a screenshot, I'd be interested to see it. Rumor has it the item looks like:

Any information on the whereabouts is welcomed.

OH GOD CORNY JOKES?

Wolfenstein Reloaded

The people at id first planned to create Wolf 3D as a more complex game. They were considering more tactical features like dragging dead bodies, stripping and changing uniforms, silent attacks, etc.. I guess the creators at id really liked the original Wolfenstein 2D games and wanted their 3D versions to have the same intellectual appeal as their predecessors. They say that although the above feature codes were completed, they nevertheless dropped it because they drastically slowed down the gameplay and made the controls too sophisticated for a mouse or joystick.

That interesting tidbit is found here. It creates a picture of a more sophisticated game, with more strategy than run and shoot. However as also pointed out, these and more features (other sources mention things like planting mines) were dropped because they made the game too complicated.

I always wondered if someone would get around to basically REMAKING the game, with pretty much the same storyline and all that, but with all the features that hit the cutting room floor, and then some.

While it has been released for over a year, I had never really gotten around to playing Codetech and Megabyte's mod Wolfenstein Reloaded. I had followed production since it was announced on the DHW Forums, but after release it was like "I'll download it later".

Later evidently meant 13 months, as I only just downloaded the game last week. Playing it, I was blown away by some of the "original" features. It was apparent that this was a remake of the original Wolfenstein storyline, but almost everything else had changed. You start in a jail cell where a guard walks in to check on you. Killing him, you attempt to escape your nazi-captors clutches.

While it starts similarly, there are many substantial differences. For example, in Wolf3d you start off with just the basic guards stopping you, and the game gets more difficult as time goes on, with new enemies as you get deeper. In Reloaded, you are thrown straight into the action, with many types of enemy within the first 2 minutes. The maps occasionally seem reminiscent of the original (mainly in E1L1 with the jails), but they are really engaging and interesting.

Even though you could easily go in guns blazing, the game is obviously made with strategy and stealth tactics in mind. Ammo is surprisingly scarce in that I found myself more often than not running out of SMG ammo and having to rely solely on the rifle for awhile. One of the great things about the game is Codetech added the ability to pick up the dead bodies of your victims and dump them elsewhere, to prevent patrolling guards from being alerted by your presence. This is a great feature and I am personally surprised it took until this mod for it to be implemented; it adds a great element to gameplay.

Weapons were really well thought out too. While the pistol and SMG seem normal as compared to other mods, the rifle and chaingun have been given disadvantages to combat their power, such as taking awhile to load between shots. I would talk more but there are no doubt others who haven't played yet who don't want it ruined for them.

I'm yet to complete the game, but I can see myself sticking with it. I haven't enjoyed playing a mod this much since Orb.

 

As an added note:

We think we should tell that we will expand our "Reloaded" theme with two more titles. We decided to remake Spear of Destiny and it's first mission pack Return to Danger. Key maps have allready been designed in our minds and you will definately see some interesting new features.
So as of now, we reserve titles Spear of Destiny Reloaded and Return to Danger Reloaded...

That is some good news from April 2007 from Codetech, which leaves me waiting expectantly. If WR was good, surely SODR will be just as excellent.

As yet another added note while I'm here, another quote from yesterday by Codetech:

But it has not been all quiet after WR, there's something that not many know about but it should become public next weekend. Spare your questions though, my lips are sealed.

No clues on what this secret is, but I can't wait to find out.

 

NB: No screenshots this time, I'm trying to work out why they wouldn't work.

Evil Dead Trailer

A trailer I found on Youtube for a Wolfenstein mod based on the "Evil Dead" movies. Its pretty well animated for something done in MS Paint. The author of the video and game is Mäx (maker of Sensenmann and the newly released Northern Darkness). Being a lover of horror movies, I'm excited to see what comes of it. According to comments posted to the video, Mäx believes it'll be ready and released next year.

Youtube It Up!

Just a good video to watch of the first level of Blake Stone. Whoever is playing, played well. Well, until he died anyway.

DooM: Death Doesn't Wait (Demo)

I downloaded this and it's been sitting on my desktop for a few days, so I finally decided to give it a whirl.

The first thing I noticed was that while the statusbar character had been changed to that of the DOOM counterpart, it seems that Z. Franz forgot to remove/replace other B.J Blazkowicz references:

Shave and a haircut (and a dye) two bits. ANYWAY actual gameplay. Once again I found ammo placement to be WAY too generous, not that it did anything since ammo gets collected regardless of whether I hold max ammo or not. There were lots of enemies which sometimes made things a bit frantic and I almost died more than once which was actually pretty cool, having to be more careful and such. I was disappointed that the author hasn't tried to make it look closer to doom, opting for second grade effects:

I gather that's an attempt at sludgy water. not only does it look clumsy, but unlike what former-doom players expect, the "sludge" sprites do no damage.

In one or two of the large areas you find that there are so many objects in view that some of them disappear.

Playing the game, it's obvious that there are only minor code changes implemented so far, however with some of the scenes that have been attempted, it seems that Franz might want to do some more if he wants them to look good:

The above screenshot is a perfect example of this point; if this is to look decent, Death Doesn't Wait needs to have directional sprites installed, or the scene needs to be thought out differently.

I'd almost accuse Franz of rushing this mod, but once again, being a demo, I'm hoping this is an EXTREMELY early version. In these days of easily implemented visual and gameplay related enhancements, one would think that modders would take advantage of all these discoveries.

Fingers crossed that Franz does. For now, I'm going to go shoot some midget-imps with my strangely double firing single barreled shotgun which sounds alot like the chaingun from the original Wolfenstein.

Super Shooter Demo

I decided to give this demo by 'Dzialo' a go. Unfortunately it takes a bit to impress me, and on the whole Super Shooter didn't really take my fancy.

While I mostly enjoyed the level layouts, ammo and health placement seemed a little over the top, which would be to cater the over the top ammunition and health limited of 999 and 300 respectively. I gathered that these unusual limits were to cater for the large clusters of enemies that filled sections of the levels. However I found that such ammo levels were unnecessary; Dzialo's enemies had little health and took only a few shots each to kill. Even the bosses (which I assume were mini bosses) were fairly easy to kill.
I found the classic disappearing door-sides problem came up a few times, and some of what I assume to be the jail cells had inconsistent back walls (grey stone everywhere but the backwalls of a fair few cells were a neat blue bricked panel) which wrecked the atmosphere of the areas.

I found it unusual that of all things, BJ would end up fighting himself countless times, and with a lack of readme, ReadThis!, or manual, there is no explanation offered apart from all the polish, which I am unable to read and as such have no idea what it is all about.
Personally I found the recycled graphics seeming lack of plot and randomless unfulfilling, but I guess that's what you would expect with such a short game. I can only hope that if and when the full game is released such things are improved.

Hi me!


Hi me...again. You seem to have gained a little weight.