ZDoom

I only got to play a little bit so far, but I am impressed! Such vibrant colors! What's next on the agenda as far as the next episode is concerned?

Is the source for this available somewhere? I'd like to be able to build it with GZDoom instead of ZDoom.

Woolie Wool said:

The first five maps are great, but starting when you swim under the barrier after the purple door in E1M6 the level design gets really assholish and occasionally just plain unfair. E1M7 had an inverse difficulty curve where the first few minutes are just insane and then you're left to explore in relative safety once most of the snipers are taken care of. I could do with a lot fewer long-range potshot enemies--sniping using the double paintguns is tedious and hard on the neck and back from having to practically put my face into the screen.

Had you finished the whole episode when posting this or did you stop at E1M7?

I recently finished E1M8, which was more reasonable. I'll probably do E1M9 tomorrow.

So (thus far) it's only E1M7 and the second half of E1M6 that really need some gameplay work?

2squary4me.

I would put this game in my square coffin when I die.

Spoiler: About the E1A5 secret...

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Does it require jumping combined with another secret, or have I missed something else?

jpalomo wrote:Is the source for this available somewhere? I'd like to be able to build it with GZDoom instead of ZDoom.

The executable has not been changed. Just one entry in zdoom.pk3. You could get it to run in GZDoom via "-iwad", but it might think that it is Doom2, and not save your settings in the "Square" config namespace.

Played through the episode on Hard last night. So far, the only bugs I've found were in E1A6. Namely, 12 enemies that are tagged as secret. Things 402, 404-411, and 1274-1276 are the enemies in question. Also, I occasionally fall through the bridge above the dam near the end of the level. I can't reproduce it reliably, but by that time the elevator's been activated, so I just take it back up and try again.

Yes... YES! The Square has arrived!

Veinen wrote:So (thus far) it's only E1M7 and the second half of E1M6 that really need some gameplay work?

E1M9 was mostly fine until that fucking

Spoiler:

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fight. Why is a cute little game about a purple square on medium ten times harder than Doom II on UV?

edit: you probably know who the boss is anyway but in case you don't...

A sniper/railgun weapon would be nice for the later levels, it get's a little too hard too fast.

A wild BUG appeared!

Pressing F12 during the tally screen breaks the camera script.

Anyway, I've now played all the SP maps after finishing E1A10 and overall I think the mod is way too punishing, especially since it's a game unto itself and not a Doom mod, and it's harder to recommend such a game to friends if I have to follow it with "but it will kill you, a lot". Plus there are a lot of cheap, frustrating moments where you don't have any chance to react or are faced with enemies that you don't really have an answer for aside from trying to snipe with the paintgun and sloooooowly chip away at them. Here's what I recommend to make the game more accessible and fun:

* Reduce the general difficulty to resemble more Doom registered episodes 2-3, roughly matching easy/medium/hard to Doom 1 HNTR/HMP/UV. Perhaps another skill could be added between the current 4 and 5 (call it "Moving Like a Parallelogram" ) representing Doom II UV. Skill 5 would still be completely insane because duh.
* Reduce velocity of most enemy projectiles to 12-15, and the Cannon Jerks' cannonballs to 10. Give the cannonballs some sort of audio cue (a rolling ball noise? Sure, it's not actually rolling on anything, but who cares?) so you can hear them in flight.
* Nerf the Tritankle, make its attacks projectiles or raise its pain chance or something, it's really obnoxious to fight and slows gameplay to a crawl as you carefully inch out of cover, take a shot, and pop back in (reloading if you take damage).
* Tighten the spread of the shotbow a bit to give the player more options at medium-long range and give it something to distinguish itself from the quad cannon aside from "being worse".
* Increase the speed of Hellshells in flight. Make them do more damage to the boss so they're not completely useless against him.
* Make the boss less likely to teleport, and put a timer in that makes him unable to teleport for a little while after a previous teleport.
* Fuck those fucking fish, the ridiculously fast, nigh-impossible to hit sons of bitches! I hate them!

Spoiler:

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I'd suggest having Slax draw some sort of illustration for each of the three stages of the end sequence. If you give us as ridiculous a scenario as a "giant cheesy comestible" floating in space, I want to SEE the goddamn cheese wheel in the ending screen, holes and all!

You didn't complain about much other than E1M6, 7, and 9. Was the rest mostly good, and more fair?

Yes.