Soulcrusher 1.3 (Officially a cacowards runner-up!)

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Alterworldruler
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a is out!

Post by Alterworldruler »

Estopolis wrote:Well actually one part of the final boss's first form in particular that required attention.
The tracking blue waves followed with the large spread of waves going at the same time.

Not sure if it was two seperate attacks at that time or if it worked together, but still when those overlapped that required some thinking to dodge.

Thank you for all the hard work on this mod. It's a good one.
I'm surprised it's not getting that much attention though.
I suppose I could make the second form trickier, i'm just worried about the perfomance because last time I tweaked things, let's say that I had to spend a week trying to figure out why things lagged further until freeze. But i'll take a stab at it, I have some ideas.
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Alterworldruler
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by Alterworldruler »

Little bump, I updated the main post with a little gift to those who played it, a FAQ explaining the mod's history and answering few questions regarding that. Enjoy.
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by PFL »

In my face preview you got there :-) I'm gonna in my face play it :-) This seems like a danderous journey; I hope I can make it back with some thoughts.
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by Machalite »

There's a texture missing in Malice PD, where the large elevator is that leads to the generator-looking thing.
Spoiler:
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Alterworldruler
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by Alterworldruler »

Machalite wrote:There's a texture missing in Malice PD, where the large elevator is that leads to the generator-looking thing.
Good to know, i'll fix it when I get around it, right now I am sort of on a hiatus.
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by rsl »

Hi!

I just wanted to drop my two cents on this great project...
I have been playing through the first levels so far, and I am finding it very enjoyable - the mission-like structure of the mod, the guiding voice, the new weapons and monsters... But most of all the environments, that I found very peculiar in terms of atmosphere and choice of colours. :D
I would also like to point out a couple minor points that I guess could be taken into account when making the next release:

- I can't see/use the inventory when in fullscreen mode. You should really add it! :)
- Power-wise, the pistol is properly tuned as a starting weapon - however, once you find another more-powerful weapon that uses the same kind of ammunition (not wanting to spoil it here), it becomes really redundant. Perhaps giving it some peculiar property would make it stand out with a purpose even in later levels. :wink:
- And finally, several player sounds and the sounds of certain new enemies seem unchanged from vanilla DOOM. I probably overlooked some document detailing this or a related fix, but I figured I'd just point it out anyway. :roll:

In summary, this is a great project with lots of original content and good gameplay. Keep it up! :D
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by Zhs2 »

I disagree. This mod feels pretty inconsistent thanks to the mix of recolored and scaled Doom monsters and the (Dark Forces inspired?) "police" monsters. Speaking of monsters, the first boss is about as spastic as your fists, and most of your weapons feel somewhat underpowered compared to those of your enemies (as tested on the second highest difficulty, no less, since I know you've mentioned that most people play on Normal.) What this mod needs is quite a bit of polish: maybe some neat stuff to do with weapon offsets, monster behaviors, spell-checking for character dialogue, possibly more intuitive or interactive dialogue (in some shape or form instead of simply a black screen with a bit of text on it,) and a more responsive shop script. Otherwise, I feel like it has the capability of turning into something spectacular if made right.
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by SamVision »

Yeah I wouldn't call this a beta. There is some major potential here, but at this momemt it feels iffy. The HUD, weapons, and enemies in particular need a major overhaul.
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by Sarah »

Alright Alter, time for a partial review since I have finally made it past the half-way point. I'm a mapper more than a player, so I'll start there.
ATM, I'm only a few attempts into the Outer City map, which is currently my favorite. I believe it was some shots of that map that caught my eye originally.

Now to sum up what I've seen with one word: AWESOME!!! The maps are sprawling designs of genius that really capture the mood and idea of Soulcrusher. It would seem that you've left almost no corner untouched. You've blended 3D floors with classic Doom flow and designs to make some mind bending routes. The use of dynamic lights really accent the whole thing which really helps draw you into the game. The texture use is excellent and really helps Soulcrusher stand apart from other mods out there. I have to say, I really feel like I'm running through mega-corp facilities. Now the Outer City map, which originally drew me to this project is easily my favorite design wise. Immediately on start I was convinced I was in a city. Street lights, city-scape skybox, brick buildings, and streets full of enemies, it was all there. I really liked the graffiti too, excellent touch!

The weapons are intriguing. Maybe I'm just a bit to used to being Gordon Freeman, but I found I was able to make it through most encounters with only the shotgun. The incendiary shells and the, I'm guessing since it caused awesome explosions, attached grenade launcher seemed to be just about all I needed. The alt-fire on the pistol did make it useful for taking down groups of low level enemies. I never really found a use for the actual grenade launcher. The plasma rifle, guessing again since I was usually too busy shooting to read corner text, was useful against cyborgs and the strange Terminator-esque things that would get back up. The alt-fire railgun was nice but the delay usually meant I missed and just wasted ammo. So, all in all I'm a bit torn on the weapons.

Before I start, I do realize that you aren't done with the enemies yet and this is only a beta. I liked the police, both variants, although they did seem a bit easy. I suppose those are your Zombieman/Shotgunguy equivalents. Jumping Pinkies...different, not bad, just different. Quick shotgun blast and I moved on. The Terminators were usually the bane of my existence. I can't tell you how many times I would take one down, go running by and then suddenly get shot in the back. But quite the opposite from bad, I like them. I like the fact that they get back up sometimes and other times you manage to blow their head clean off! Then there are the cyborgs, baron replacements? A serious challenge those are. They jump around and fire a blue spread that can be hard to dodge. Again though, shotgun takes care of them pretty quick. Then there are the reused Doom badies. The flying revenants???????? Flying revenants?????!!!! Yeah, I'm not quite sure what to say other than you've beefed them up and took them down. Just treat em like a revenant. Then the mancubus that fires rockets, plasma, and I think one more but I can't remember what. They're too slow in my opinion. It was too easy to just fire off a rocket and duck behind a corner while it retaliated then repeat. Then I met the fast aracnotrons(please forgive my misspellings - that doesn't look right to me :oops: )....all I could think of was King Arthur yelling, "Run away!!!!!" But I couldn't because they can keep up. But they don't have a lot of health and a couple of quick pops with the shotgun did them in. Now I'm not quite sure but I thought I saw a Pain Elemental spawning some sort of Lost Soul replacement. The LS replacement I did meet and destroy, and it also exploded, so no doing that up close to it :wink: . Then there were some strange mutant things I just popped and ran on through. And of course there was the white Doom Marine guys with sonic weapons. I know those have a name, I just don't remember what. Overall a good mix of enemies, some enhanced Doom enemies, others not. I look forward to the the finished lineup.

I've been through one boss battle, and a battle it was. Both the shotgun and the rifle got used extensively to take this guy down. The arena was perfect too. I really loved hitting one of the jump pads and launching myself across the room while shooting down at the guy. There wasn't a whole lot of cover unless you went up, but I do realize that you aimed to keep players moving through that.

Let's see, anything else? Yes, the shop system needs to be implemented more fully. Although I do have to ask, if you're a guy going on a rampage through some mega-corp's facilities, why would you stop to shop and better yet, why would anyone want to sell anything to you? It might be too late now, but I think I would have reorganized the game setup so that you basically returned to a home base kind of map between missions. There you could have a shop, or a whole market area since I remember you mentioned a resistance group in the story. And speaking of the story, I do have to recommend a bit of spell-check. I looked past it but it can really break immersion for some people. Also, I like the beserk stim idea that increases damage. Very Bioshock :D I'm gonna give this 7 out of 10 seeing how this is still a beta. I think if you give your enemies a major overhaul altogether you will really have something here, Alter. Wait, you already do! This is really cool! Keep working on this!!!
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by NeuralStunner »

Zhs2 wrote:This mod feels pretty inconsistent thanks to the mix of recolored and scaled Doom monsters and the (Dark Forces inspired?) "police" monsters.
Do you not understand the concept of "my artist left so I have to use placeholders until I can get something better"?

I think your other points have some merit, but they almost get disregarded entirely.
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by Zhs2 »

Not that it really matters in the scheme of gameplay, but damn, I'm reminded of why I don't really post here often. Look at that guy above you and tell me that others had not had the same impression, much less a lack of willingness to read through the entire topic to determine that this was fact (or heard it on IRC.) It's definitely not directly mentioned in the first post.

Oh, and before I forget: a script on the map STPRISON (the one that activates when you pick up the master computer card) doesn't terminate properly, and thus Baxter's speech and the autosave command get called repeatedly.
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by NeuralStunner »

Alterworldruler wrote:This mod won't be up on /idgames until I say it is ready, meaning that to reach it. All the content I have in mind must be complete, refined and all enemies must have their own custom graphics.
Nope, not directly mentioned at all.
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Alterworldruler
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by Alterworldruler »

Nero wrote: Let's see, anything else? Yes, the shop system needs to be implemented more fully. Although I do have to ask, if you're a guy going on a rampage through some mega-corp's facilities, why would you stop to shop and better yet, why would anyone want to sell anything to you? It might be too late now, but I think I would have reorganized the game setup so that you basically returned to a home base kind of map between missions. There you could have a shop, or a whole market area since I remember you mentioned a resistance group in the story. And speaking of the story, I do have to recommend a bit of spell-check. I looked past it but it can really break immersion for some people. Also, I like the beserk stim idea that increases damage. Very Bioshock :D I'm gonna give this 7 out of 10 seeing how this is still a beta. I think if you give your enemies a major overhaul altogether you will really have something here, Alter. Wait, you already do! This is really cool! Keep working on this!!!
I'm afraid the home city idea is out of question, neither the story or planned content structure would allow for a dedicated "home city" map. It's a good idea but I would need to modify the story/level progression which is already more or less laid out.
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Alterworldruler
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by Alterworldruler »

Spoiler:
I made an alternate hud (yeah I know it needs still few minor alignments) for those who can't handle the normal HUD.

Now I was supposed to release a minor build to address some issues but frankly, i'm just gonna release a new major build sometime later (Public Beta 3), do not expect new content (Let's say I hit a bunch of roadblocks so chances are, it may never get more content due some potential consistency issues), it's only there for bugfixes, filling in graphical gaps for the rest of enemies (important), removed weapon recoil and some other stuff.
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Re: Soulcrusher Public beta 2a (Now with a FAQ)

Post by OliveD »

I played this mod a few weeks ago, not sure if you've updated it since, but I'll give some feedback anyways.

The first thing that immediately stood out to me was the WALLS OF TEXT. It's nice that you wrote an entire story for this thing, but imo, just slapping 5 pages of text right before you can even start playing is not the ideal way to convey the story. I mean, I remember back when games had no plot in the actual gameplay whatsoever, and you'd just read the manual while the game was installing to know what was going on. I suppose it's similar here.

It's a relatively minor complaint but personally it really irked me. You could have drawn slides with the text over it comic book style at least- that's what I'm doing for the TC project I'm working on at the moment.

Aside from that, I was pretty pleasantly surprised. The textures are very unique and makes the levels a great change of pace from the usual stuff you see in Doom wads. No complaints with the levels, if for the fact that they're a bit confusing to naviguate and despite the map icons finding the objectives involved quite a bit of wandering through empty maps at times.

The weapons are pretty creative and I enjoyed using them, aside from the starting pistol which is total garbage as some people mentioned I think. The gas grenade launcher was my favourite, love the graphic for it and it's very fun to use imo. That said, some of the weapon graphics are simply odd. I'm not sure if you explain that in the story because I skipped through, but the huge green blobs attached to your hands are pretty confusing. Also, the animation for the fists is pretty terrible, it looks the main character is having parkinsons during an earthquake. The punches themselves are okay I suppose but it looks like the fists should be further away from the camera. There's some other minor stuff about the weapon graphics like the shotgun covering most of the screen when you reload the grenade thing and some of the animations just looking choppy and unfinished, but mostly, really nice art.

The map progression is kind of screwy, but I think you said some maps are actually missing from the mod, that'd explain it. Bosses were fine imo, I really enjoyed the boss fights in fact.

Anyways, I enjoyed Soulcrusher, but, in my opinion, feels like it has a major lack of polish going on. Not sure if you're actually in a position to fix some of the stuff I mentioned due to not having an artist, but it's mostly tweaking this and tweaking that.

Good job on the mod!

Edit: Actually, re-reading my post and re-thinking it, it might mostly feel that way because, it being (or not?) a TC, my expectations are set a bit over what I'd want for any level .wad. Still, really nice work, I don't mean to be too negative :)
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