The Butchery - Beta Testers Wanted

[MartinHowe]

After a year and a half, the Butchery, of which some of you may have heard me mention in passing (and a few of you tested a very early version), is feature-complete and free of major howlers. However, inevitably there will be things that would be more obvious to fresh pairs of eyes and I'd like a few volunteers to test it and make suggestions and constructive criticisms.

On UV it takes me about an hour with maybe 80% items and secrets and 100% kills, but (a) I know what's coming and (b) I am an average player. Ideally, you need Heretic and HeXen IWADs to run it; without those, monsters from the ZDMRP replace the fantasy baddies and I'd be interested to know how it plays that way as well.

Because there are several hidden items and surprises, I don't just want to place a public download link to it and spoil it for everyone; so have a look at the screenshots (not all of the map is shown in these) and if anybody is interested in doing this, PM me via the forums. All the screenshots are 640x480 JPEG.

I have a few things to tidy up that I know about, so it would be available for actual testing sometime in the next couple of weeks (it could be any time between tomorrow and early May; depends on if I find any serious problems while doing that).










What do you all think?

[DaLLeN]

honestly?

[MartinHowe]

honestly?

That's the idea. If anybody think it's a POS just from the screenies, then fine, say so; but say why. Sure, some of it may be a bit weird for some people's tastes, but that's not what I mean; I mean for what it is, is there anything badly wrong (e.g., monster placement).

[Amuscaria]

The maps themselves looks pretty nice. I would remove that ettins mosnters and use something else though. Doesn't seem to fit too well. Also, you are using both centered and angled weapons; it's generally a good idea to keep weapons of the same type for consistency. I'm sure you can find a centered Assault rifle somewhere, i've seen one before. The maps with the alternating rows of pink and tannish skin textures needs some fixing. The pattern hurts the eyes. There are a lot more other skin textures in the doom2 wad, i suggest using more variation. Other than that, it looks pretty solid from the screenshots.

[ant1991331]

Looks cool, and that purple color on the Hell Knight thing looks cool too, howd you get the purple color, MartinHowe?

[Cutmanmike]

Hmm... To me it looks a bit... how we say in britain "all over the shop". Hexen creatures, huge intestine arena, purple baron of hell? Still, looks quite interesting from the screens.

[wildweasel]

It looks okay for the most part, outside of the weapon graphics. I notice that some of the default Doom stuff is still in place. Doom's rocket launcher was really not designed to be attached to one's ear, and it just looks dumb to have it at that angle on the screen. The CS weapons have been done too many times before and they don't really fit in unless you edit them to use Doomguy hands. The Hexen stuff - same as before, needs Doomguy hands. That M249 from Marine Doom has always sucked. And is that Cory Whittle's knife that I see in one of those? He explicitly states in his text file that you're not supposed to rip his edits.

[Cutmanmike]

And is that Cory Whittle's knife that I see in one of those? He explicitly states in his text file that you're not supposed to rip his edits.

Yet i've seen that knife used in a handfull of wads (99Weap.wad for one, to be specific).

[Phobus]

Right now, although I see some pretty cool bits (I like the look of the intestines area) most of it seems to lack co-ordination. However, that being said, a lot of it strikes me as interesting, and I don't really mind a lack of co-ordination as long as it's enjoyable.

[DaLLeN]

Hmm... To me it looks a bit... how we say in britain "all over the shop". Hexen creatures, huge intestine arena, purple baron of hell? Still, looks quite interesting from the screens.

that sums up my opinion quite nicely. well said

[wildweasel]

And is that Cory Whittle's knife that I see in one of those? He explicitly states in his text file that you're not supposed to rip his edits.

Yet i've seen that knife used in a handfull of wads (99Weap.wad for one, to be specific).

That's because Daniel doesn't make his own graphics and just rips everything.

[MartinHowe]

I can't answer all of the remarks without giving too much away, but suffice to say the map has a non-Hell theme; most the "out of sorts" areas are hidden away as secrets (after reading the mission briefing, it should make sense why/how they can exist at all).

I will say that the Heretic/HeXen monsters are there to stay - I like them and the Maulotaur is just so much cooler (IMO) than the Heresy Lord, cool as he is. Just use it without the H/H monsters if you don't like them (they're optional anyway, for people who don't have those games); but the HELL area would not look anywhere as cool, IMO.

I'll double check the knife copyright thing. Otherwise, I agree that the heavy weapons are crap -- when I started this, 96X and GZDoom didn't even exist; it was originally a DeHackEd based WAD If anybody can point me in the direction of a good WAD or WR, I need the following:

A shoulder-mounted RL to replace the uac RL
A M4/M16-style carbine/semi-auto rifle to replace the CG
A belt-fed heavy MG with ejecting shell-casings/belt-fragments
A commando-style serrated-edge knife

BTW, the baron recolourings were done using PhotoStudio and a bit of pixel-by-pixel hard work.

[wildweasel]

Shoulder-mounted RL: It might not quite be what you had in mind, but there's a pretty good one in Lame Duke. It's on 3D Realms' site (3drealms.com) but unfortunately it's down at the moment.

M4/M16-style rifle: Again not quite what you're looking for, but Paul released a really freaking awesome G36K here.

Belt-fed MG: Either the one from Powerslave (see ww-cash.wad if you don't have the game) or NAM/Napalm (see ww-opm.wad). Unfortunately, neither have the shell ejecting animations on the actual sprites - if you want those you'll have to add them yourself.

Knife: Scuba Steve's combat knife from Action Doom. It does look a little cheesy, but the quality is much better (in my opinion) than the ICD knife.

[Cutmanmike]

Knife: Scuba Steve's combat knife from Action Doom. It does look a little cheesy

A little? Have you seen the swipe on that thing?!

[MartinHowe]

And is that Cory Whittle's knife that I see in one of those? He explicitly states in his text file that you're not supposed to rip his edits.

According to the text file:

Code: Select all

* Copyright / Permissions *

Authors MAY use the contents of this file as a base for modification or
reuse.  Permissions have been obtained from original authors for any of
their resources modified or included in this file.

However, this was not uploaded by Cory himself, but by WW! I have revisited the original icd-deh text file after downloading it from Cory's site and it doesn't say anything one way or the other. However, as far as Ty is concerned, that means "no", so I'll have to find another knife. Damn.