"(File)Size Matters" 64K Compo (Judging not underway)

[Beed28]

Still waiting for the reviews on the other entries. It's not fair if only three people got their entries reviewed, now, would it?

[TheMightyHeracross]

Doomshock

The crosshair is not visible in Doom 1. This is because you used a MODWALL texture, which is only in Doom 2. If you change it to something like a BIGDOOR it will work in all of the Doom games.

[kodi]

@TheMightyHeracross
Thanks for letting me know. There's also a bit on the gast gun that doesn't show up in doom 1 IIRC. The mod has a boatload of issues

[wildweasel]

Still waiting for the reviews on the other entries. It's not fair if only three people got their entries reviewed, now, would it?

Alright already...as much as I had other things I wanted to do, I'll see about getting some of these done. I'll pick a random one and see what I can do.

[wildweasel]

Double-posting in my own thread because I feel like it. Here's a review of Combine_Kegan's Blastmaster. More to come as I do them. [edit] Cambertian's zelda magic powder got a review as well.

---

Combine_Kegan says:
and with that, Blastmaster is ready

I've tested this in GZDoom 1.8, and it should be just fine for the future versions as well.

If you wanna play it on Zandronum, you'll have to use the 3.0 version, sorry!

Quick rundown on controls:

Push primary to fire bombs, hold it down when you pick up a blast mod to use a secondary attack, this works with all ammo types.
Push secondary to punch, hold it to use your laser pistol.
Punch bombs to move them around safely
Shoot bombs to detonate them early, with new effects

Uh, just play with stuff and get a feel for it.

THE REVIEW:
First-person Bomberman. That's a thing that, once in a while, I realize I still want. And that's basically what Blastmaster is: take Doom, but swap all the guns for Bomberman-style bombs, and then throw a crapton of other things at it. (Well, arguably it's more like Bomber King/RoboWarrior, but at that point we're arguing semantics...) There are many different types of bombs available, from classic blasts to fragmentation shells to homing plasma. But in addition to your bombs, you also get a melee attack and an off-hand laser pistol, both of which have multiple levels of upgrade as well. And then there's the fact that the bombs explode differently based on whether they're left to detonate on their own or if you expedite the process by shooting them with your laser, AND the fact that the different bomb mods also come with their own charge attacks that behave more like regular guns...the amount of options available to you is positively staggering. Oh, AND the various Augs that grant you a handful of passive effects, like replacing your melee attack with a chainsaw, making your ammo regenerate, or what-have-you.

ORIGINALITY SCORE: 16/20
Combine_Kegan demonstrates the same level of creativity that went into GMOTA and Combined Arms earlier in the year. Very little of the arsenal in this weapon can be said to be just token weaponry; even the blast mod shotgun feels more like Unreal Tourmanent's Flak Cannon, and the laser pistol does more than just straight damage, since it also serves as a bomb modifier to an extent. The only reason this doesn't get a perfect score is that, well, there are other submissions that went even crazier with their concepts than this did!

EXECUTION SCORE: 40/50
Through regular play, I wasn't able to find any outstanding bugs or balance issues, but if I might be honest, I found it rather awkward to switch between weapon modes. Presumably because of the animations and extra functions involved, Blastmaster's various weapon modes require a separate set of key bindings, which are presumably meant to replace the default weapon-slot key bindings. Some weapon functions - like the remote bombs - require you to select a mod twice. And yet, to my knowledge, the Reload and Zoom keys went unused...

INGENUITY/TECHNIQUE SCORE: 26/30
The mod's 59 KB download size comes not from graphics, sounds, or texture work (though the Textures lump takes up 54 KB on its own, when uncompressed); there is a staggering 136 KB of Decorate code in this file, more than half of which is solely dedicated to the main Bombgun. All names and labels are intact with no need for shortening or obfuscation to save on size. The Textures work is commendable as well, with the various powerups, icons, and the entirety of the Transformer-like Bombgun being done with no additional graphics or sounds lumps. The only new graphic in the file at all is the Titlepic.

PENALTIES: --
The mod was submitted on time with a file size of 59 KB, well within the limits. No penalties.

FINAL SCORE: 82/100

---

cambertian says:
Here's a BFG replacement for you lovely folks: Link (no pun intended)

Based off of the Magic Powder from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Turns monsters into fairies that heal the player.

Tested with ZDoom dev builds.

THE REVIEW:
Maybe I just didn't play enough Zelda as a kid, but the powder I remember did more than just turn things into fairies...maybe I just wasn't playing the right game. =P

ORIGINALITY SCORE: 8/20
The BFG slot is home to all kinds of unique and unusual weapon concepts...this is the first time I've seen something on it that was intended for something other than directly killing things! Granted, it still _technically_ kills things, but it does so by transforming them into stuff that heals you... I suppose, though, from an originality perspective, I'm mainly disappointed that the magic powder didn't have more potential effects, like making the Cyberdemon sneeze or something.

EXECUTION SCORE: 15/50
From a balance standpoint, the Magic Powder not only replaces the rarest weapon in the game, but requires *A LOT* of Cells to use. A single click of the Fire button causes it to fire 60 cells' worth of dust (four projectiles), but holding Fire makes it continue firing and rapidly consuming your Cells. Once the enemy is transformed into a fairy, it will continue to seek you out, and will heal you before disappearing. The execution, on the other hand, suffers from some unfortunate coding errors: you cannot actually select the FairyBag once you've picked it up because it has no weapon slot assigned to it. In addition, I'm unsure why, but you do not receive the FairyBag when cheating for weapons, which initially had me wondering if I'd even managed to load the thing correctly. I suppose it's at least fortunate that Doom's bosses are automatically immune to morphing, otherwise this weapon would utterly trivialize encounters with Cyberdemons or Masterminds, but I was still able to clear Doom 2 Map08's Baron room in record time. There are also no sound effects (which, there is plenty of space in the file to slip in some Zelda-flavored sounds), and the view sprite is just the Doom fist with no real animation. There is potential for the idea, but if you plan on revising it, you might consider animation, sounds, and fixing the weapon slot.

INGENUITY/TECHNIQUE SCORE: 15/30
The codebase is as simple as simple gets; the fairy morph uses ZDoom's generic morph logic, in much the same way as Heretic and Hexen's morph artifacts, with no stylistic errors with most of the code (aside from the aforementioned missing weapon slot). The Textures lump takes up only 76 bytes, and is used only to mirror the Doom fist. The sprites, directly from A Link to the Past, take up only slightly more than one kilobyte. I do honestly feel like there's more that could have been done with this, but I can't really complain about the code being clean.

PENALTIES: --
This project was submitted on time and WELL under size. No penalties.

FINAL SCORE: 38/100
It has potential, but could use some work.

[Accensus]

With the risk of getting expelled to the useless bumps thread, I'd like to ask if there is any progress around this because it's really unrewarding to see so much dedication getting put for nothing. The same thing had happened to the compo Cutmanmike held and that's quite disappointing. If there is no interest in judging (and if that's unlikely to change), then either let someone else do it or officially close the thread, cause I'm 99% sure every contestant in here is still expecting some results. I don't care if asking for the 6th time will deduct points from my own entry or even disqualify me, as long as the rest of the people get their reviews. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. It's just not nice to keep people in the dark and give them false hope. Thanks for the understanding.

[wildweasel]

I'm really sorry about the huge delays. I've basically lost most desire to do these, and I know that's bound to disappoint a lot of folks, even in the knowledge that there's no prize. If someone wants to take over the judging, I won't get in the way of that. This is going to be a cop-out, but at the very least I'd like to congratulate everybody on their submissions, every single one, as I've seen some amazingly creative stuff out of all of the stuff I received. I'm happy that some have chosen to continue maintaining and updating their projects past the due date. But the more I look at what's left to do...the less I feel like doing it. So....again, monumental apologies to all of you, but I just can't do it. Consider this an open call for reviews, I suppose.

[Accensus]

That's better. Personally, I don't have much modding experience so my votes would be rather high. I think this should be done by people like Xaser, or PillowBlaster, or anyone who's been knee-deep in modding and has seen most. That way the truly unique stuff will get proper ratings. Another suggestion is people who've also worked on Cacowards.

[lizardcommando]

Aw man. I was hoping you'd get a chance to judge mine.

I have been making small updates here and there with my project since I first posted it up here in this thread. I haven't really decided what else to do with it at the moment.

[daimon]

That's sad to heard, but if it had to go in this way it must be this way, i think.
Hoping for a new judge for giving proper judgement...

[DeXiaZ]

That's sad to heard, but if it had to go in this way it must be this way, i think.
Hoping for a new judge for giving proper judgement...

Could it be a community judgement? Because I can offer my candidacy but I can't judge my own mods. That's a problem.