[Wolfenstein: Blade of Agony] v3.1 released (p204)

[Caligari87]

Small pipedream, I would like to see the models converted to voxels personally. I think it would help the visual style mesh a little better.

[RockstarRaccoon]

Small pipedream, I would like to see the models converted to voxels personally. I think it would help the visual style mesh a little better.

It would also tank the framerate in a game that has existing performance issues.

[Solid_Beard]

I will tell what are my impression's of this great Mod.

It's gonna be a long list of thing's.

What I liked :
The game atmospheres. Especially in chapter 2.
Impressive details !
The infiltration mission in Chapter 2 !
Updating the sprites !
3D tanks !
That feeling of Indiana Jones film's !
It looks like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein New Order !
What Wolfenstein 2009 should have been !

What I did not like :

The music of Medal of Honor and Call of Duty (Michael Giacchino). They don't feel right in Wolfenstein. MoH and Wolfenstein are two different things. Wolfenstein, as you know have element's of pulp, adventure, horror and Sci Fi feel that doesn't need a drama feel to it. Not that I don't like dramatic element's in it, Machine Games with their New Order take I liked a lot the idea to humanize the character's in the chaos and I empathize with them and with the music of Mick Gordon help carrying what BJ has going through (I notice that you put some track's in the game ). However with the Medal of Honor music doesn't match with the tones of Wolfenstein. Not that I asking to take the music with a similar direction of WTNO and I'm not saying that Giacchino music are bad, they are great. But with those dramatic and heroic tones don't really fit with Wolfenstein: Medal of Honor is more grounded than Wolfenstein. But I understand why you put them. I can see that you guys have played all the good WW2 shooters. You add a sense of nostalgia of those games in this one as a homage of gamers that played those games and I'm one of them . If you feel that the MOH music should still in BOA than fine. I'm gonna act as a jerk here but I made a personal soundtrack for me.

This is a little nitpick but I also got the same problem with the level design in the first chapter it seems a little Wolfenstein and more Medal of Honor to me.
But the second chapter is much more closer to Wolfenstein.

In operation Stahlhimmel everybody here will agree that you cannot see the snipers that you have to kill to proceed.

The most frustrating things
In the Eisenmann operation I had difficulty in the part where there is the Timer (was it really necessary ?) though you have 20 minutes of time you don't have enough time to look for secrets. Also I had some difficulties with the ammunition: you don't have much ammo and I couldn't have more from the enemies and I was playing on Hard difficulty (Nicht besonderes) and I had to use a cheat to refill. I think you should put somekind of ammunition depot or a supply truck full of ammo before you go down.

What do I want in Chapter 3?

I will tell you some of my ideas.

New weapons such as the Stg44 and maybe the Wolfenstein 09.

The Tesla gun (perhaps not like the ones of the previous Wolfenstein).

New enemies like RTCW black guards and RTCW Ubersoldaten.

If BJ returns to Wolfenstein (again) make a big or split the levels.

The Tyrfing can Destroy's nazi tanks!

I thought a stealth mission but not similar to the last mission of chapter two where you have to use a Nazi uniform and avoid the Gestapo. The mission sees BJ searching resistance fighter's who have some vital documents and they are hidden in a house on a small town (any European city occupied) and the Nazis are hunting them looking at every home and questioning on the scary civilians and he tries not to To be seen by the Nazis, otherwise every nazi soldier in the city will get him quickly right away and BJ would have no chance to fight back. BJ doesn't not have much ammunition against everyone and the only option is to be silent. Then when he finds the partisans, the Nazis find them and start a gunfight that moves from inside of the building up to the roofs where a zeppelin arrives and in the end they flee with a vehicle and the nazi chase them.

Ok maybe it's too much.

I know I said I do not like to see elements of Medal of Honor in Wolfenstein but you could also make a mission where BJ has to destroy a Flakturm ( You know that level in MoH Airborne?)

I would like to see another level set on a train.

That's all for now, I hope that my suggestions are clear and useful for your next project.

I also want to thank you for having released Chapter 2 with all these nice updates. At that time when they had announced Wolfenstein The New Colossus I was in the mood to play a Wolfenstein game that I did not play yet. And Blade of Agony came at the right time !

Also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m_giioppT4

[Nash]

Small pipedream, I would like to see the models converted to voxels personally. I think it would help the visual style mesh a little better.

8-)

I agree RE aesthetics, but, in addition to the performance problems as already mentioned... I don't think pitch and roll works with voxels. Pretty sure a lot of the static meshes placed in the world also have pitch and roll information, so voxelizing the statics would just break the object placement visuals.

I'd love to use voxels for my project too, if it weren't for the speed optimization issues and the lack of pitch and roll support... being able to support software mode users, as well as meshing better with the pixelated look is the advantage of using voxels...

[jazzmaster9]

The music of Medal of Honor and Call of Duty (Michael Giacchino). They don't feel right in Wolfenstein. MoH and Wolfenstein are two different things. Wolfenstein, as you know have element's of pulp, adventure, horror and Sci Fi feel that doesn't need a drama feel to it. Not that I don't like dramatic element's in it, Machine Games with their New Order take I liked a lot the idea to humanize the character's in the chaos and I empathize with them and with the music of Mick Gordon help carrying what BJ has going through (I notice that you put some track's in the game ). However with the Medal of Honor music doesn't match with the tones of Wolfenstein.

This was what I thought to... until I actually played BOA and realized how much the MoA soundtrack suited the mod. This mod is more than just Wolfenstein in GZDoom it's a homage to all the great WW2 shooters of the past that includes Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty.

[Solid_Beard]

This mod is more than just Wolfenstein in GZDoom it's a homage to all the great WW2 shooters of the past that includes Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty.

Well I actually notice while playing the Mod and mention that.

But I understand why you put them. I can see that you guys have played all the good WW2 shooters. You add a sense of nostalgia of those games in this one as a homage of gamers that played those games and I'm one of them .

[Tormentor667]

Thanks kindly to all of you for the suggestions so far. Be sure that we are really considering all of the stuff we get from you!

[-Ghost-]

Personally I really liked the music. I don't think many shooters have been able to top the original MOH/COD OSTs in terms of feeling fitting to the setting.

I agree with the low ammo in the first chapter being an issue. It feels like there's not really a way to use the ammo smarter, either, like using the environment or infighting to get rid of enemies. So I'd say either increase the ammo/weapon drops, or place more environmental ways to kill enemies on the map, like various explosive devices in rooms/walls, etc so you can get more bang per bullet.

[Caligari87]

Oh! I just thought of something that's been bugging me. Enemies passively "standing guard" in ambush mode when there's obviously a gunfight going on around the corner. This became so predictable it's practically a cliche. "Whoops, another bend in the hallway. Betcha there's 2-3 Nazis standing at the next intersection watching for me."

What I'd like to see is more separation of sound areas (probably via doors) instead of relying on deaf/ambush enemies. Let enemies go active when they hear me shooting their buddies down the hall. Let them go active if they hear a yell or death (stealth kills excepted, obviously). Use the design of the level to prevent them from getting to me or swarming en-masse, if that's a problem.

Additionally, only fully unaware enemies should use the "stand passive" state. If an enemy is in deaf/ambush mode but has obviously heard the player and is waiting for them, they should have an "aiming"/"pre-fire" aiming state so when the player sees them they're already locked and loaded, ready to fire, instead of looking like they're surprised. It would make progression feel more like "they know I'm here and they're setting up ambushes" rather than "everyone's stone deaf in this place."

[Wiw]

The music of Medal of Honor and Call of Duty (Michael Giacchino). They don't feel right in Wolfenstein. MoH and Wolfenstein are two different things. Wolfenstein, as you know have element's of pulp, adventure, horror and Sci Fi feel that doesn't need a drama feel to it. Not that I don't like dramatic element's in it, Machine Games with their New Order take I liked a lot the idea to humanize the character's in the chaos and I empathize with them and with the music of Mick Gordon help carrying what BJ has going through (I notice that you put some track's in the game ). However with the Medal of Honor music doesn't match with the tones of Wolfenstein. Not that I asking to take the music with a similar direction of WTNO and I'm not saying that Giacchino music are bad, they are great. But with those dramatic and heroic tones don't really fit with Wolfenstein: Medal of Honor is more grounded than Wolfenstein. But I understand why you put them. I can see that you guys have played all the good WW2 shooters. You add a sense of nostalgia of those games in this one as a homage of gamers that played those games and I'm one of them . If you feel that the MOH music should still in BOA than fine. I'm gonna act as a jerk here but I made a personal soundtrack for me.

I did suggest the music from War and Remembrance, but I don't know if there's enough of it to go around.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

This is from a -fast point of view (I turned it on because it seemed daft that the Reich's finest were so slow to take aim), so it will be slightly different:

• What gameplay aspects did you like?

Well, most of it tbh
Particularly liked the fan sections, it's good to have something different in there. Also the fact that the stealth mission in E2 could also be beaten in the conventional shoot-em-up way...was quite satisfying to empty my ammo supply in there. (esp. given the ropey nature of the patrolling stealth enemies, who can't see a full-grown man crouching in front of them)

• What gameplay aspects where frustrating?

The mutants with the gas rockets and the drones from E2 are a bit OP...maybe add +NEVERFAST to them?
The space map...mainly due to having no guns for so long, combined with low health/armour before the first gun and the laser troops being nastier than the standard hitscanners.
I wasn't a fan of the invisible/unshootable turrets either, they're easily mistaken for snipers. (and health/ammo being wasted on them as a result)

• What would you like to see in an improved version of chapter 1 and 2?

Protection for using the gun turrets...I'm pretty sure I didn't use the one in Paris due to certain death.
IIRC Paris didn't have much health either, perhaps more is needed.
A much earlier gun pickup in the space map, or extra health/armour/grenades before the existing gun pickup.
Bigger blocks to hide behind in the space map's arena fight. (that whole set-piece is the worst bit of all on these settings)
More breakable stuff! (doesn't feel right that we can smash chairs and coffee cups but not lamps or other bits of furniture)

• What would you like to see in an all new chapter 3?

More global missions in places that aren't just forests. (someone mentioned Japan, that would be neat if the oriental look can be recreated)
Possibly a mission on board a ship, as I don't think we've had one yet. Or even an Indo-China jungle map with a mission to blow up a railway bridge
The undead soldiers from the end of E2.
More equal use of both shotguns (there seemed to be far more use of the standard trenchgun in E2 compared to the other one with the 4-shot clip) and also the Sten gun.
Perhaps a few more puzzle-y sections like the fans etc.

• What will most likely make you use cheats or the console commands because of that?

Any of the frustrating issues mentioned earlier, although I refuse to give up mostly.

[Graf Zahl]

I just noticed that this mod is adding some postprocessing shaders and does not work with GZDoom anymore.

Please keep in mind: The postprocessing shaders will NOT be added to GZDoom before I start on a Vulkan renderer - and that's still several months off to start and a lot longer to complete. I absolutely do not want a new feature in that may have an impact on how this development will go and still be able to change it to work better in the new context. Keep this feature in and you'll be limited to QZDoom for a considerable amount of time. I'm not sure if you want that.

[Graf Zahl]

Doing some performance analysis of C2M0_B which suffers from excessively high think times.
Like I expected it all comes down to visual effects being used too liberally. Here's the stuff that makes it slow:

- The StarParticles are the worst of all. There's more than 100 spawners for those and they are always active, even if the player is in an entirely different part of the map. Suggestion: Activate them only if the player is near. Use some scripts to selectively enable and disable them when the player leaves the area where they are. This is approx. 1/3 of the entire think time in this map. I am aware that they can be disabled through an effects CVAR but that's utterly counterproductive. Use them more efficiently and that CVAR won't even be needed! There's more than 100 spawners for those in the map but in most cases only a fraction can be visible.

- The LaserShooters are the second worst. Again they are constantly active and doing a LOT of processing. Suggestion like above: Deactivate them if the player cannot see them. In this case it gets compounded with a lot of DECORATE hackery that's extremely inefficient at the task it performs, which massively contributes to the processing time as well.

- The third and last one that may be optimizable: BaseOrb. This gets spawned in extremely large amounts by some pads. Like above the vast majority of these can be avoided if they only spawn this stuff if the player is actually nearby or at least reduce their numbers.

The 3 items above constitute roughly 70-75% of this map's entire think time and addressing them should make it a lot more playable. Other maps should be reviewed for similar items requiring too much processing time even when not needed.

[Gez]

On a gameplay perspective, I'm going to second the frustration at the very many pointless invisible walls. sometimes they really don't make sense, e.g. a small crate (the kind you need to jump on to reach places in many missions) surrounded by invisible walls. Why? You can walk around it so it's not like it's blocking a path.

In the infiltration mission, I found a path to get on the other side of the gate by the roofs. But, again, invisible wall get in the way. Why? You're supposed to go through the sewers. Hey it's not a bad thing if there are multiple ways to reach a place, that was like the main appeal of games like Deus Ex -- and IMO for an infiltration mission you'd be well inspired to take cues from Deus Ex.

[Caligari87]

I just noticed that this mod is adding some postprocessing shaders and does not work with GZDoom anymore.

BoA team, this makes me sad! GZDoom's been my sole port of choice for well over a decade and (no offense to QZDoom) I'd like to keep it that way. You can always do an enhanced re-release in the future when this stuff gets into GZDoom; there's no need to chase experimental eye-candy, especially when it's likely to change implementations.

Sorry, I knee-jerked this pretty badly. It's not my place to dictate the direction of the project, and it's not like it's impossible for me to swap over to QZDoom if that's what's needed. You guys do you.