ZDoom

Players don't need to have information spoon-fed to them. If there's anything that's important to know, they'll figure it out themselves. Hell, for most games, learning the game by oneself is one of the best parts!

@BlackRabite: That's what I was thinking, but given how many whiny bitches there are on the internet who give up at the first sign of things not being obvious or don't read text files to obtain the simplistic little hints given I think it might be worthwhile.

I think a training mission would be cool. A lot of games have training levels, but the option is usually there to not play the training mission.



You could do something similar with an episode menu or by just having an optional exit near the start of the training map.

Red Faction FTW...

Me and Josh were doing something similar for Skulldash, so it might be worth it..

@Enjay: That was my intention, as the wad was episode based. You'd go to MAP00 and be told a few things, like what colour means what for the first two episodes, and about flying, and also told about odd switches (like the fly-through one) that are likely to turn up. It'd go:

Spore Training
Episode 1
etc.

@All: Ok, seems that it'd do no harm to have an optional training mission, wheras not having it may cause some whining and silly complaints from those too lazy to read the text file. Guess that solves that one then. I'll start my final monster making tomorrow then.

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And whilst I'm collecting opinions...

You may not see it, but the Episode 1 INTERPIC is based off of the Wolf3D TITLEPIC. I was planning on doing a Virus version of Doom 2's TITLEPIC for the Episode 2 INTERPIC, and a PacMan-esque Virus scene for the Training mission INTERPIC in the event of having one, and each secret map was going to get it's own INTERPIC too, as they'd all be rather easter egg like (got two of those planned out already, and the third has a few ideas for it)... but what about Episode 3? Any suggestions for a TITLEPIC to parody? Preferably from a game more recent than Doom2 but not something like BioShock. A screenshot of the TITLEPIC would help as I may not have seen it before.

Why not do a Duke Nukem titlepic parody?

Or one parodying this?

Ah, now Enjay's one is nice and ironic. I think I'll do that

Cheers

Those will get done sooner or later. I think probably sooner, so I don't forget.

EDIT: Oh, and I considered the DN3D one myself earlier, but decided it would be difficult to make a Spore pose like that.

Ben2k9 wrote:

Enjay wrote:

Phobus wrote:@Ben2k9: There's a game called Virus?

Yup. I played it first on the Amiga.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_%28video_game%29

no not that one (however i have played that one), it was basically "Descent in your PC!" and had a gimmick of using your desktop items as stuff, you flew round destroying Viruses and stuff, it came out in about 2000 or so

Someone probably already said it, but that's Inner Space. Hell, that game was well ahead of its time, with factions, items, space combat, racing, and support for every windows ever.

DoomRater wrote:Inner Space.

**Fires Scud Missiles at you**

That was a damn FUN game. I still have my diskette X)

Operation: Inner Space, actually. Still for sale, as well.

I finally got around to playing the demo of this. I have to say it was great fun and a very refreshing change of pace, but I did have some issue with it.

1) It took me awhile to realize there were switches on some walls that I had to use to proceed. This probably came from the fact that I associated the gameplay more with Descent than Doom. (For this reason I would say a tutorial level would be very helpful -- or perhaps just a hint system built into the first few levels?)

2) I noticed you can "fly up" by holding the jump key (spacebar for me), but it's very slow, and there's no way to "fly down." I checked the controls menu but there are no mod-specific controls and the standard ones for swim/fly down don't work. This might not be something you can't fix, but it detracts heavily from the game, IMO. If the game is going to depend on you being able to manuever well in the air, being able to move up and down quickly is a necessity. It would be a shame if this couldn't be fixed.

3) There was a sizable learning curve involved in getting the shots from the ship to aim correctly and hit the (generally smallish) turret and flying enemies. Not sure how you can address this one, but of course any game focusing on flying players and enemies is going to involve more difficult aiming.

4) Some of the geometry in the first demo level was tricky to manuever around, and I got stuck often. In particular, the pits to the right and left of the starting area (each containing a powerup) were difficult to move in, and I got caught up on some of the pillars on the pyramid later in the level. Again, this could be a learning curve thing, but it's frustrating. Perhaps you could add invisible blocking lines to smooth out these areas?

Fly down by using crouch.

@HotWax: Point 1) will be addressed in the Training mission which will be released with the full Episode 1 release, and updated for the full game release much later.

Points 2 and 4) will be addressed in the next version as I've made it so that the fly/swim down controls now do work as intended, due to some help provided by members earlier in the thread... 4 will only be helped because you can go straight down as well straight up though. The geometry does take some getting used to in places, but more often than not vertical motion helps.

Point 3) Is difficult to address without changing the game sadly. However, the reduced accuracy with the first weapon does help to an extent as the spray of fire is useful for hitting smaller enemies that are harder to aim at. On the plus side, most later enemies are larger, with only one or two being smaller than the basic flying enemy.

And thanks

@DoomRater: I don't think that works I'm afraid, as it was never implemented in ZDoom itself. However I've added to the scripts now to make the player a properly flying entity, so it's ok.

DoomRater wrote:Fly down by using crouch.

That was one of the first controls I tried.

@Phobus: Glad to hear you've got it worked out. That was my biggest issue with the demo. I can now say I'm really looking forward to playing the full game.