the first person shooter game thread (eew fps)

[BIL]

Anyway, I just went through Ep1 of Wolf 3D (including the Secret map) and beat it. So now, what should I do?

A) Move on to Episode 2?
B) Beat Ep1 on a higher difficulty?
C) Try to speedrun Ep1 and beat the Par times on each map?

(a 100% run doesn't seem that interesting to me)

It's been so long since I played on anything but Death Incarnate, I can't recall if it's a significant step up from the lower three settings.

I find the original three episodes a bit underwhelming these days, and The Nocturnal Missions only sporadically better. I'd go straight to Spear of Destiny on Death Incarnate. It's better designed around the engine's one enduring strength, fast and lethal short-ranged shooting. See this post a page back for elaboration.

Something I'd forgotten about since posting on the Wolf3D TC is a mechanical inaccuracy that I think is for the best. Doors can no longer be shot through by the player or enemies from the instant their opening animation begins - fire only passes through the gap, DOOM-style. So enemies can't instant-kill you while obscured, and you have to actually see what you're killing. There are parts of The Nocturnal Missions and SOD that are quasi-memorisers on Death Incarnate with vanilla Wolf3D, which play much more smoothly in the TC.

[Edmond Dantes]

Awww, is Vanilla Wolf3D too tough?

Just kidding! Just kidding!

Personally I'm waiting for my paycheck to come in so I can buy a copy of Spear online. I have a CD edition of wolf, which was SUPPOSED to include Spear... but didn't. Oh well, Spear itself is available on CD-ROM anyway.

But Wolf3D is really a game that succeeds in putting the player on edge. I find myself quickly turning around any time I hear a door open or close, wondering "Oh god, what was that? Did I forget to kill a Nazi?" Dude to how just one or two close-range shots can end you. Which makes rooms with more than three guys kinda intimidating. You just don't get that in a game anymore.

A friend of mine is letting me borrow Return to Castle Wolfenstein BTW. Ever played that?

[BIL]

That nervous tension is exactly why I favour SOD over the much slower-paced original, these days. Mazes often don't include doors, so the first inkling that you've missed a Nazi may be his bullet blasting 80% of the back of your head off. You'll learn to clear corners very quickly. In particular, the zombie mazes later in the game are pure adrenaline. DOOM's reliably grunting, gurgling enemies seem like a ridiculous luxury after surviving a blind corner labyrinth infested with erratically moving and dead-silent killing machines.

The vanilla Wolf3D door flaw doesn't bother me in difficulty terms - it's easy enough to just hit "open," then scoot away and camp out while enemies emerge for a blasting. It's just a blatant shortcoming of the engine that enforces some very lame tactics. Much more satisfying to gamble on hitting enemies through the gap while they attempt to do the same to you, and know that if you get one-shotted in a doorway it's because you were too slow on the draw, not too slow at scurrying around the corner.

[Ed Oscuro]

Blood 2: Nightmares. Down in the Bayou, with the mountains and castles...

Another really weird game, but at least it felt like it had a plan behind it this time. About as nice a sendoff as Blood 2 could get, really, and it tried to make some use of stuff made for Blood 2 but not shipped with the original release. Installing this is as easy as pulling the three directories out again, doing a copy (I went through most of the files manually to make sure I wasn't overwriting any of the patch files, but I might have; I'm not terribly worried though) and then editing the batch file (since I copied the directory in case of mistakes).

Contract JACK is also better than this.

[lilmanjs]

Sounds like some people in this thread need to get themselves some SDL mods of wolf3d. Some amazing things are being/have been done with the wolf3d engine and sometimes I forget when playing that this was ever the basic engine that wolf3d was.

[Edmond Dantes]

Oh, once I've played the original Wolf3D to death I'll be sure to look at mods.

Speaking of Wolfenstein, I installed and played a little of Return to Castle Wolfenstein earlier... seems okay so far, but feels more like a Medal of Honor game despite having secret areas and paranormal elements.

I wish there was a PC port of the first two Medal of Honor games, altho they play fine on the PS1's controller.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Enemy Territory hogged spotlight, but the original RTCW multiplayer was pretty popular for a while, if memory serves.

Further into Republic Commando, I think its least satisfying feature is the simplistic enemy A.I. The game's designed around it so I can't rightfully complain, but released four years after Halo: Combat Evolved, it leaves something of a void in that respect.
The game - on the most superficial level - seems like Project Snowblind with better textures and physics. Gameplay's different enough, but there are similar moments of glitz galore. More difficult by default... provided you don't quicksave-quickload through (I don't - checkpointing is very sufficient).

[Edmond Dantes]

Well I won a copy of One Unit: Whole Blood (Basically Blood's version of the Duke 3D Kill-a-Ton Collection) on eBay thanks to a mislisted auction, so I'm quite enjoying blowing zombies to pieces.

One difference between the demo (or shareware, whatever term you prefer) version and the full game is that the demo doesn't have innocent civilians running around. I'm kinda glad to have them since the bad guys often waste a lot of time chasing them and not me.

So last night I finished the first episode of Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. Found one of the secret levels, but... how the hell do I unlock Floor 10?

Also tried to speedrun Wolf3D Episode 1 on Death Incarnate, one-life, and... fucked up royally on e1m5 (I assumed I could hold out until the one elevator that has a secret 1-up just before, and... I was wrong).

EDIT: Well... crap. There *was* a copy of the Spear of Destiny Super CD Pack by FormGen floating on Amazon for $10 (plus a little more for S&H) but someone grabbed it, and now the lowest price I can find is $30.

But on the flipside, I noticed a Goodwill seller on Amazon has the id Anthology for $40, so I'm thinking of grabbing that, if nothing else for the sheer fact that it has Spear and also all the Commander Keen games (and I love Commander Keen. Who DOESN'T love Commander Keen?)

[Obiwanshinobi]

I need help in "A Bridge Too Far" Republic Commando mission (PC version, medium difficulty). The one where you're up against a turrent (droids seem to spawn right behind it) and two heavy battle droid dispensers. Long story short, the turret's field of fire is ruthless and I can't detonate bombs when I control it.
At least one of my dudes gets killed no matter what in a place when reviving him without getting killed is out of question. I could elaborate, but you really need to play for yourselves to see how demented it is. What I found on GameFAQs isn't helping. Of gameplay videos on YouTube, this one doesn't look "assisted" to me, but I'm not sure what the player does to stops droids from taking over the turret. I don't have grenades working against droids either.
Anyone here finished the game at least on normal?

P.S. Worked it out. Secured position (F3) nearly behind the first sniping post. Once the first wave of droids got dispatched, I sent a comando for the grenade post at Wookie's corpse, only to cancel order when the gate opened. Having thrashed the second wave, it was safe to assign grenadier and sniper to further posts, where they took care of the turret's crew. Then it was the right time to man the turret so I could plant explosives on droid dispensers.
It was a bit fancier to be fair (I picked up some grenades on the bridge and used them), but F3 was the glory button. First time I had to use this command, but it's good to know not all of the game plays by itself.

Really, don't quicksave-quickload. Republic Commando doesn't need it.

[Wyrmnus]

Wish there was another game that could give an experience similar to FEAR 1.

[BIL]

God damn, BDOOMv19 Black Metal TNT Evilution has ruined my Monday. Shoulda been to bed hours ago! That's gonna hoit! Favourite tweaks of the moment are the monsters' new damage states and vastly improved hitzoning. Cruelty boner setups are far more consistent and enjoyable to trigger by blowing off a limb or delivering the coup de grace slightly off-center, and some monsters like the zombie bros and Revenants now demand considered aiming. The formers' attacks won't be reliably stopped by body shots any more, making headshots vastly more urgent, and the latter are downright lethal if carelessly sawn in half with the minigun - got an OG DOOM jump scare for the first time in memory when I returned to a comfy monster corpse carpet only to get a screaming skeleton's rocket to the balls.

RE TNT, "Wormhole" is the most profound case of DOOM II syndrome I've ever seen. It's a neat techbase/hellcastle map, and horrid mirror dimensions are always good for a laugh especially when it's not clear which side is meant to be the clean one. But man does it tug on geek pride when the exit switch pops up 15% of the way through, especially with this savage mod+difficulty.

"Don't leave, burn sum ammo checkin out muh cool mappin ;] ;] ;]"
"WHATS IN IT FOR ME PRICK"
"Principle ;3 ;3 ;3"
"FUCK"

This is why The Shores Of Hell remains my favourite OG DOOM level set overall. Threads and paths spiralling all over the map with nowhere that's pointless to be. II and Final turn me into DOOMjanitor. And I like it. ;w;

Sounds like some people in this thread need to get themselves some SDL mods of wolf3d. Some amazing things are being/have been done with the wolf3d engine and sometimes I forget when playing that this was ever the basic engine that wolf3d was.

I do get the appeal of extensive mods, both for playing and technical appreciation. But as with BDOOM, the Wolf3D TC appeals to me as much for what it doesn't change. WASD was all I ever wanted, with non-vaporous doors a nice bonus - otherwise the game was always perfect. Wolf3D's pacing is the oldschool FPS equivalent of Raiden Fighters.

ACHTUNG ACHTUNG ACHTUNG AIEEE AIEEE MEIN LEIBEN SCHUTZSTAFFEL NEIN SO VASSS *morse code* DESTROYED AT A TIME

[Obiwanshinobi]

Any Republic Commando mods I should be aware of? Campaign in co-op would be a godsend. Not that I know of many co-op FPS mods, and the only one I know about is TPP.

[Edmond Dantes]

I do get the appeal of extensive mods, both for playing and technical appreciation. But as with BDOOM, the Wolf3D TC appeals to me as much for what it doesn't change. WASD was all I ever wanted, with non-vaporous doors a nice bonus - otherwise the game was always perfect. Wolf3D's pacing is the oldschool FPS equivalent of Raiden Fighters.

ACHTUNG ACHTUNG ACHTUNG AIEEE AIEEE MEIN LEIBEN SCHUTZSTAFFEL NEIN SO VASSS *morse code* DESTROYED AT A TIME

What is it Mecha-Hitler says when you kill him?

Yeah... this may make me the odd one out, but I prefer not to use source ports if I don't have to. I'm kind of a purist like that. With Doom especially, I feel like the game is perfect the way it is. Most of the features added by mods or source ports wind up feeling like novelties and I normally get bored of them after awhile, but the vanilla game never gets boring.

My favorite source port, of course, is Chocolate Doom.

...

Oh, I just ran across this on the Doom Wiki, and had to share it:

The goal of the expansion is to travel to a pocket dimension of Hell and assassinate a Cyberdemon that has been building an army of demons for his own personal use. No Rest for the Living takes advantage of the expanded capacity of modern systems, with significantly more enemies on-screen at the same time than in the original Doom 2, especially in the later levels.

I haven't played No Rest for the Living (no consoles I own are capable of downloading it) but I'm already calling bullshit on the bolded statement, simply because you can't get more enemies than Doom 2 without each level becoming more packed than a Tokyo subway station.

...

And just recieved notification that a copy of Rise of the Triad (original, not the reboot) that I ordered is in the mail. Now if only I'd get similar confirmation about the id Anthology...

Still wish I coulda gotten the Spear Super CD tho, but I guess I could always find the Mission Disks by other means if I absolutely must have them.

Also, having mixed feelings on Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

[BIL]

What is it Mecha-Hitler says when you kill him?

Mecha destroyed: "Scheiß!" / "Shit!"
Hitler dies: "Eva, auf wiedersehen!" / Eva, goodbye!" (;w;)

disclaimer: much Wolf3D Deutsch is apparently white Engrish. Don't try to impress friends, family or colleagues by quoting it!

With Doom especially, I feel like the game is perfect the way it is. Most of the features added by mods or source ports wind up feeling like novelties and I normally get bored of them after awhile, but the vanilla game never gets boring.

I don't venture much beyond the original games either, but that's what makes BDOOM so good - it mainly just enhances what's already there and already near-perfect. Basically enemies get deadlier and weapons get more destructive - no fluff. Further additions tend to be very well thought-out, like the ability to boot an explosive barrel into an oncoming crowd's midst and blast it in the next instant. It's DOOM².

Especially if you're 1337 like ME, BIG_WILLY_RZR, and disable crouching, jumping and taunts so DOOMguy is foiled by any ledge higher than his chest, as he should be! No disabling Quick Kick though, that thing is fucking great and really spices up close combat. edit: DEJA VU LMAO

I play with taunts, jumping and crouching disabled - it's easy to forget you're playing a mod at all, until you go back to VDOOM and suddenly need to drop the soap for most monsters to have a chance of killing you. Despite all your weapons now firing rock salt.

Fuuuck that was one cool cat I too have been playing BD consistently since then, still total DOOMer crack. All too easy to spend hours tearing through the classic WADs with the speakers shaking the floor. Vanilla game feels so barren now. BD's also a good challenge if you've cleared the hell out of Nightmare in the official WADs. Black Metal is way more involving. No foot racing past enemy hordes and banging the exit switch here, they'll tear your ass apart before you've gone a few yards.

The YT trailers tend to focus on the goofy fatalities, which are pretty much novelty material, but even they have a clear purpose by granting health restores (obviously takes some skill to not lose just as much health as you gain from Berserk kills).

I haven't played No Rest for the Living (no consoles I own are capable of downloading it) but I'm already calling bullshit on the bolded statement, simply because you can't get more enemies than Doom 2 without each level becoming more packed than a Tokyo subway station.

No idea about that mod but I can tell you Scythe several times goes way beyond onscreen enemy numbers from any official WAD.

[Edmond Dantes]

Finished Episode One of Blood. It was kind of surprisingly to hear Caleb show an emotion other than "snarky bastard" and "hates everything."

Gave Episode 2 a spin but haven't seriously attempted it yet. I'm shamed to admit I had to resort to quicksaving to get through Ep1, so I'm thinking of attempting it a second time just to do it better.

Speaking of which, out of boredom I launched up Doom just to see if I could beat Episode 1 quickly and without dying. No saves. I ALMOST made it, getting to the next-to-last map (Central Processing?) before getting blindsided by an exploding barrel and an imp fireball. On Ultra-Violence.

Oh well, there's always next time...

[Ed Oscuro]

I like Ep2's maps more than the first - a lot more. Just got through the couple of horror-house movie inspired maps, good stuff in there. Digging the new weapons although I don't use the alternate explosive types (aside from the aerosol spray, which explodes in altfire - seems wasteful; instead I use the main fire usually which seems to have increased damage at point-blank range, and can ignite enemies in the first half second or so). There are some bugs with secret counts in a few of the levels though. The Haunting has at least two spots which can repeatedly trigger the secret get message.

Also, Super Secrets! Keep a look out for them.

[drauch]

The ending of Episode 1 gets me every time. Rest well, Ophelia! Just replayed it a bit myself recently. The last stage before the boss is a bit tricky, especially with the amount of puzzles--or buttons, really--that can kill you with a wrong move. Other than that it's a fairly smooth ride with some patience until the flame dogs start appearing.

[BIL]

I seem to recall being startled by Caleb's reaction the very first time I reached the end of Blood ep1, haha. My CDR copy lacked any documents and would never play the opening CG right, so I had no idea WTF was meant to be going on. Not a bad feeling.

[Edmond Dantes]

Well, I decided to cut down the difficulty... with me, the first time thru I just wnat to see how the story goes, its on replays where I get concerned with mastering it, so I'll play Episodes 2-5 (I keep forgetting how many episodes Blood actually has) on a higher difficulty later.

Tho on that note, I'm starting to realize that while I like Blood, I am starting to see why its a cult classic instead of a genre-defining game like Doom was (besides being released after Quake, I mean). Blood arguably is more innovative, but playing them both back-to-back, Doom really feels like the more well-done game. The levels are concise, whereas Blood's sometimes feel way too big and sprawling for their own good. Doom's weapons were satisfying and would finish the popcorn enemies quickly. Blood arguably lacks "popcorn" enemies--even the weakest monsters either take five shotgun blasts, or else are hard to hit (the rats/spiders/hands) due to the bizarre aiming whenever you have to look up or down. I've also noticed that sometimes the hit radius/splash damage/damage in general logic doesn't make sense. For example I was trying to throw dynamite through a window... it landed on the sill, exploded, but left the two cultist and one fat puking dude who were standing right there unfazed. So, it only counts if it goes inside.

I'm starting to realize I never liked swimming or flying, especially when you're trying to surface (or swim down) but can't because something is above/below you, in addition to how the aiming becomes crap when you have to look up or down. I'm not sure why that is it but it seems like skewing the POV also misplaces the hitbox, putting it somewhere other than where the sprite is. Fortunately, I realized recently you can kill the spiders by stepping on them...

Don't get me wrong, it's still a great game, but its a game with some issues (and yes, some of these same issues are true of Duke Nukem 3D as well)

[Ed Oscuro]

Aside from a few obvious logic bugs with secrets (and I also didn't quite get one of the puzzles to work the right way in The Bowels of The Earth - still completed it without cheats) there definitely are some funny things going on. Apparently one of the things holding back a modern Windows port of the game is that people don't quite understand how it implements room-over-room. It looks great, but as you say, dynamite tossing is a literal crapshoot. The first level of the third episode is crazy difficult to go through without quicksaves, because they don't pace ammo collection well (even if you've gone and scoured everything you can find, even secrets) and you soon end up with nothing but dynamite to toss up over a ledge into a group of Innocents to try to target the cultists behind them.

I won't lie; I'm not bothering to play it without autosaves or trying to do secret hunting (I'm alt-tabbing out to The-Postmortem's secrets guide for clues, though I still find quite a few on my own). There's a bit of satisfaction going through the level on the second-hardest difficulty, but at the same time I don't care about dealing with prone cultists dodging shotgun blasts, and some of the other pretty unfun aspects of the difficulty. It's just not well-made enough that I feel like I really should take it on its own terms. So when foresight helps, I will go ahead and replay a short section a few times to get the best outcome I can. Hey, actually that's probably more fun than just dying at random times and going back to the start - I'm still having difficulty really figuring out some of the wonky stuff like hitting gargoyles in midair with dynamite, or figuring out what situations will cause flares to fly right up to the ceiling over enemy heads, or how to figure out which ledges are going to catch projectiles. Oh, and getting squashed behind / between doors in new and interesting ways is a game in of itself! (Why do sawblades never seem to hurt Innocents, even when they cause the blades to become painted with blood?)

[Iori Branford]

Ess Tee Aey Ell Kay Yee Arr here, DRM-free and heavily discounted!
http://www.gog.com/promo/stalker_series ... omo_060214

[Edmond Dantes]

So now I'm attempting the second episode of Wolfenstein 3D. I think I'm gonna wind up being like BIL and only playing on Death Incarnate.

Also I tried out Macenstein SDL: The Third Encounter, which is a port of the Macintosh version of Wolf3D to Windows PCs (it runs on Windows 7 64-bit... I tested it). For those who don't know, the Mac version has all the levels from the console versions of Wolf, as well as all the levels from the original PC version, but also enhanced graphics and new music, sounds, and new items and weapons. One thing I don't like tho is that the nazis only have forward-facing sprites, so they're always looking in your direction. No more stealth. On the whole tho its a good version, but I still like the original DOS version the best.

... Hey, I have a question for all old-school FPSers:

What's the earliest game you've used a Mouse + Keyboard setup with?

For me, I play Doom and Wolf3D (and games that use their engines) purely with the keyboard. I tried a combo control scheme, but there's no way to make the mouse as sensitive as I desire. With the keyboard, I can turn around fast, but with the mouse I have to move it all the way across the pad to turn around completely, and this is the prime reason I don't use the mouse in those games (what's odd though, is John Romero and the official Wolf3D hint book claim that your skills will shoot up if you play with a mouse. I highly doubt they tried an all-keyboard setup tho).

For me, Duke 3D, Quake and Blood are the earliest I use Mouse and Keyboard, since in those you can set the sensitivity high and the ability to look in any direction at a moment's notice is very important in those games, while in Doom and Wolf you never really have to worry about what's above or below you.

[Ed Oscuro]

I use mouse on everything I can. Sensitivity settings for long sweeps or short precise movements are something the keyboard doesn't switch up well enough for DOOM or even Wolf 3D (imo).

[Edmond Dantes]

By the way Oscuro, I've been meaning to ask. You're named after the villain from Rise of the Triad, right?

Any thoughts on that game? (I just acquired it myself... enjoying some ludicrous gibs).

[BIL]

Now that I have the Wolf3D TC, I use a mouse with every FPS I play. Formerly I would KB vanilla Wolf3D, but only since it has no WASD setup and keys are the better compromise. Both options are totally awkward compared to true WASD's fully independent movement and aiming.

In every FPS I've played (basically everything id/Raven up to DOOM III, plus most of the 90s Build engine stuff), I've never had trouble tuning my mouse so that a 180' turn requires only an inch's horizontal movement at most. I like to go with a bit less sensitivity - multiple 360s in the same span would be easy if I were into that. Modern source ports like zDOOM make this even easier.

Being able to look up and down is actually very useful in certain DOOM maps, where you're forced to rely on autoaim otherwise. Even if mlook bothers you though, you can just disable it in zDOOM, the Quakes, etc.

[Edmond Dantes]

With me, I like to make it so that I can look anywhere at a moment's notice, which means I demand LOTS of sensitivity. In Duke 3D and Blood for example, I turn the sensitivity as far as it'll go, and then go to Advanced Mouse Settings and turn the X and Y scales up as far as they'll go. To me, that's the perfect level of sensitivity.

I tried playing Wolfenstein 3D that way, but unfortunately the highest sensitivity... isn't high enough. It feels too slow and stiff. If there's a way to make it more sensitive that I haven't discovered yet, let me know.

In zDoom though I do like to use the same setup I use for Blood and Quake, since the mouse can be as sensitive as I like. Squeak, mousey, squeak!

[Ed Oscuro]

You're named after the villain from Rise of the Triad, right?

Sure thing. RotT's shareware episode is fun; shame about the full version (which I only played a long while after I put this handle in circulation). Actually went by the rather more generic NME for a while...

I actually usually go one further on mouse aiming in DOOM - since I get the benefit of looking up and down, I can take the added precision requirements too and I turn off autoaim generally. You get the feeling that missed shots are made up for with extra ammo in the same way that many maps were apparently designed with extra ammo to make up for player sloppiness.

[BIL]

I think BDOOM is actually coded to forcibly disable autoaiming, regardless of zDOOM menu setting, in order to prevent hax0r headshots. So you really want to play that particular mod with mouselook enabled.

[Edmond Dantes]

RotT's shareware episode is fun; shame about the full version

... shame?... implying the full version is bad somehow?

[Ed Oscuro]

RotT's shareware episode is fun; shame about the full version

... shame?... implying the full version is bad somehow?

It's not as consistent and some of the maps feel really low-quality.