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#skulltag
cryptidrei · 4 months
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The Butterfly Effect
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This is Armageddon 2 Invasion, an old Doom mod from 2008. It adds a lot of new enemies, some of which are from other FPS games, like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, etc. I had to cheat a little for my playthrough since this is meant to be played on cooperative survival lol.
This is one of the most nostalgic Doom mods for me. I saw a video of this being played on youtube around 2008 when it came out and it introduced me to Skulltag, which was a sourceport made for multiplayer Doom (it has since been replaced by Zandronum). I didn't know english very well at the time, so I was completely out of the loop on sourceports and stuff like that. Prior to that I'd only play Doom on Doom95 because that's what came bundled with my pirated copy downloaded off of the internet lol.
This is the epitome of 2000's Doom moding on advanced sourceports. It just packs the maps with several monsters from several different sources, art style consistency is in no way a concern. And honestly, that's very charming! It was a more innocent time, when just being able to bring stuff from other games into the doom engine was novel enough to elevate a mod on it's own. You see a similar modding philosophy in stuff like Knee-Deep in Zdoom, and Aeons of Death, where it just bloats the mod with a billion custom enemies, and weapons because that was new and exciting.
But back to Armageddon 2 Invasion, I give it 100% credit for getting me into Doom modding, which became a big hobby of mine for a long time, though I severely slowed down nowadays, due to lack of time and also focusing more on other creative pursuits (and also a heightened ambition to make full on indie games instead of just mods). It also had a domino effect in my life! Through skulltag I met my first long-standing circle of online friends, and eventually my girlfriend! Life is funny like that. You see a cool mod on youtube that has all these crazy monsters in these Serious Sam-like invasion maps, and several years down the line you can trace you meeting your soul mate directly to that seemingly innocuous moment in your life. And that's not even mentioning everythign else that happened in between and since either. Friendships blossomed, and some died, several skills I've honed due to becoming a modder, dreams of making my own game, many a drama came and went, an interest in learnign more about programming and 3D modeling grew within me, and even more personal matters, like experimenting more with my sexuality and gender, since I felt much safer toying with those concepts around my rowdy friends than around my stick in the mud, conservative family.
It just goes to show, sometimes the most banal moment can completely flip the script. Maybe you're watching some random video on youtube (or tiktok nowadays for the younguns), or reading a post or fanfic, or anything really. Maybe it shows you something so cool, so amazingly kick ass, the literal coolest thing ever for your developing brain, that it completely changes the course of your life.
And that dear reader, is the beauty of life.
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wadbot · 10 months
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shinFFA2.wad: Shinobi.cl Free-For-All map pack 2nd edition MAP19: Deadly Simple (-217, -272, 24) Author: Wladimir Flores Date: 2008-07-27 Description: Deathmatch only. Designed for ZDaemon. Skulltag works, but some maps just don't work/look right. You've been warned.
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doom-nerdo-666 · 1 year
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Doomguy should obviously remain silent outside of voice sounds but i think the reason why the Skulltag "hehee" sound is memorable is because it sounds close to his "voice" (The stock sounds id used in the original games).
Meanwhile, Brutal Doom and its ilk give Doomguy a rather "heavy" voice that sounds different, even if it's partially based off Quake 3's Doom (Specially with the taunt sound he had).
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(Here he sounds a bit "fat" compared to the voice above, hope the VA doesn't feel hurt by my comment tho)
Meanwhile, that one Quake 1 port had a video comic where Doomguy officialy spoke for the first time (With an even heavier voice) and the PS2 port of Quake 3 had a "Caleb from Blood wannabe" type voice in the game's files but it does sound closer to his potential voice.
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Then there's this Doom comic fandub which makes Doomguy sound like someone's impression of Ash from Evil Dead. Makes sense considering one of Doom's influences.
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His voice in Eternal? It also falls under some of the above of making him sound "heavy" (Also, here's some unused voice lines from Eternal).
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(Why am i saying "heavy"? My vocabolary sucks here but i can't think of better words)
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astrobstrd · 2 years
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2022. GAME OF THE YEAR. OK?
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Hey folks, season's greetings. Runner-up for most sentimental gamer 2021 here and I got a bug up my ass to write about video games. It's equal parts games that did and didn't release this year. Forgive me for any run-ons or excessive commas, this started as a piece on one game on the list and then became a top 10, then it spiraled out of control a tad as I forced myself to write more. Regardless, I'm happy with it and you can check it out under the read more. Happy holidays!
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GUNDAM EVOLUTION
Gundam Evo is so goddamned weird. It’s a great game that I cannot recommend anyone jump into now. I really enjoy the core gameplay loop and what it does versus a game like Overwatch— the dash and boost system serve as a salve to the ever-present hero shooter roll-out problem and offer a little bit of movement unpredictability, the lack of clearly defined roles prevented the game from having a dichotomy of “hard” or “soft” tank and support units, and, generally, I found myself having more fun with it than I could recall having with OG Overwatch at the time. Every time I think about going back, however, I remember that it’s one of the clearest examples in recent memory of a publisher just not really giving a shit about its product.
The game sits at a sub-1k player count on Steam, with no way for people in certain regions of the world to even play the game, the console versions took a full two months after initial release to hit digital storefronts, and there’s no backfill system in any capacity. For a game to have such promise in a world where only one hero shooter really survived the late ‘10s burnout period, then to fizzle out so quickly… it’s just kind of a bummer. I would not be surprised if the game is shuttered by this time next year. Still, the time I spent with it felt immensely satisfying.
FORTNITE
Yeah. I fell in last year, (completely by coincidence, when they put the skanking emote in, if you can believe that, which you shouldn't,) and now that I can play Zero Build, my playtime's only gone up. I've also watched as the remaining capital G-I Games Industry folks I follow, who poked and laughed at the Tower Building Gaming For Children also fall into the exact same hole. So... lmao.
I think as you get older you do look for a few more opportunities to have a common activity that you nor your friends really pay a whole lot of attention to but use as a vehicle to shoot the shit. That's Fortnite. It's like getting drunk at a baseball game in the middle of the day for late millennials. It also has full patch cycles that are genuinely, unabashedly, very fun. We got dirtbikes and gravity hammers and fuckin Doom Slayer now man! It's great!
Oh, and to defend my honor just a little, I've spent a grand total of $14 on it. I caved to buy the Rasputin and Gangnam Style emote. What are you, the IRS? Leave me alone.
SONIC ROBO BLAST KART 2
...henceforth referred to as SRB2K because I'm not typing all of that out again, is not a live service game, and also a mod for Doom. It's (probably) the best Sonic kart racer ever made, and it's all built in a game that has nothing to do with the little blue freak. It feels fantastic to play, and it evokes the same feeling of fuzzy-warm coziness that I got from playing a lot of Skulltag one winter. I spent quite a lot of time in late January and February compiling user created SRB2K mods, hacking together soundpacks for existing characters, and screaming into a microphone as I careened through some of the best and worst maps I've ever played in a racing game.
DEAD BY DAYLIGHT
I pretend to hate this game and sometimes I do.
And now it's time for
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Let's find out!
10) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
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Man, was this a fun surprise! I’ve never been the biggest turtles guy, but I am enough of one to have a favorite that I’ve picked almost entirely on the basis of color and weaponry. (It’s Don, for the record.) I am also enough of a fan of cooperative side-scrolling beat-em-ups that playing this whole game in a little under four hours with a group of friends was a complete blast. I have this weird hang up where I just can’t play these games solo. I think most beat-em-up devs also know that the real meat is in flying through them with a buddy or three or five. (After all, the only way I was ever going to finish Double Dragon: Neon, a game that I love but was definitely not the target market for, was playing it in co-op a year after its release.) That all being said, the fact that TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge allowed for six players at a time is as perfect as it is completely batshit and overwhelming. I’d routinely lose my place altogether as the genuinely fantastic backdrops and battle arenas turned into a flurry of blows and flying footclan bodies, and I simply did not mind.
While my time with it didn’t last long, I couldn’t help but admire the fact there was enough depth in the combos and strategic use of heavy moves, super attacks and thug-juggling technique to potentially make the game worth replaying. This is not even mentioning the genuinely fantastic sprite, level and sound design work. Fast, fun, and punching above its weight class as a title that was free day one on Game Pass, a fact of the gaming landscape that I constantly feel like we’re on the verge of having a reckoning with. Anyway!
9) Rumbleverse
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I must preface this blurb with the fact that I have completely fallen off of Rumbleverse and I am genuinely sad I don’t have more to say about it. It’s been probably 3 months since I last fired into Grapital City, but the pull to go back amidst my neuroses and general malaise has been strong. It’s one of the few battle royale games where the insane love for its inspirations and the dedication poured into the game itself both shine right through. From the looser fighting game influence in its move priority and combo systems, to the completely unmistakable wrestling mark DNA, Rumbleverse is authentic and just plain fun. Compared to your bog-standard, shooty-bang-bang battle royale, the hype, guttural-noise-inducing moment ratio is off the fucking charts here, and that’s reason enough for me to include it.
By the way, every now and then I’ll hear people bemoan the fact that there are no melee-focused battle royale games. The fact that this game did not once and for all solve this quandry for people despite being the best implementation of that concept? It makes me want to scream.
8) Marvel Snap
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Don’t look at me like that.
I really didn’t expect to like Marvel Snap. I’m not a comic book or superhero movie guy, but it’s amazing what being both free and available on Steam can do for you. Despite starting a little rough and having some growing pains in making decks that I actually wanted to use, the game of Snap itself is undeniably fun and incredibly easy to fall into. As of the time of writing this, I’m collection level 593 and I can no longer deny that I’m just playing it for giggles. This is the game that the certain-Blizzard-card-game-playing-me of 2017 wanted and just didn’t realize. Despite the whale bait in this very obviously mobile card game being clear and evident, and the fact that there is no way to assuredly get cards you want before level 500, I still somehow feel like this is the one online CCG I’ve seen that treats you with some modicum of respect... so long as you pace yourself and play in chunks. The quick nature of Snap, of course, isn’t really conducive to this, but you really just have to chalk that one up to terrible, awful, no-good, very bad mammalian reward responses.
I know the one thing that people just cannot shut up about is the game’s brevity, but it really is important to herald. As someone who’s played half-hour Hearthstone matches, it’s an undeniable factor in its continued popularity. After a particularly rough two days in late November where I kept snapping and kept playing despite losing six(!) ranks, I remembered an extremely salient realization I had while falling out of love with MOBAs a few years ago— if it sucks bad enough, you can leave. You can hit da bricks, so to speak, if you’re not making anyone else suffer as a result of it. If you’ve put a handful of your chips on black the last six spins and lost every time, it's okay to walk away from the goddamn table.
Latent gambling impulses aside, Snap is undeniably fantastic, and not even the only card game I’ve been playing this year.
7) Downfall: Slay The Spire
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I’ve played a lot of Slay The Spire. It’s probably not even a fraction as much as the truly dedicated card gaming wizards that I’ll occasionally see screenshots from on the Community Hub, but damn, I love that game. Slay The Spire also came to me in a weird time; I was knee deep in my graveyard shift job at a gas station and spent my evenings, (7AM-11AM on any given day,) trying DESPERATELY to find a game that didn’t require too much of me but was still engaging enough to play between smoking pot, drinking, doing laundry, or all three. I bought the game on a whim, knowing only that it was a rogueli(k)(t)e and a card game, then fell ass over end into a Spire shaped hole.
Downfall: Slay The Spire is a lovingly crafted mod that pretty much just serves as an excuse to get me to play even more of this damn game. From the incredibly well-translated boss characters to the Hermit’s ability to pass as a character that Mega Crit would’ve made themselves, Downfall is fantastic. It could easily pass as an officially released expansion, and it's something I’ve already lauded over in the Steam Reviews for it
6) HYPER DEMON
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This shit is bananas, man. I loved Devil Daggers so, so much, and despite still being squarely stuck 50 seconds away from the Devil Dagger, I swear I will get it before I shuffle off this mortal coil. And you’re gonna give me another lofty goal to strive for in a completely different game 6 years later? Fuck you m4tt. I love you m4tt.
I’ve played 3 ½ hours of HYPER DEMON so far. It was all in one sitting. I was amazed I didn’t forget to breathe during all of those 210 minutes. It’s the exact same all-consuming, focus demanding immersion that Devil Daggers ensnared me with in 2016. It’s Devil Daggers: Puzzle Fighter. It’s a cocktail of cosmic horror, Windows Media Player visualizer, Quake 3 montage over-editing, what I imagine the visual sensation of DMT looks like, and pure, unfettered skill-based FPS ecstasy. HYPER DEMON holds you to the sanding belt of its incomprehensible blazing-fast iridescent horrorscape and is unfeeling to whether you can handle it or not. I want more.
I need to play more. I will be playing more. I live to serve SORATH.
5) Super Mario 64 — B3313
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I have never completed Super Mario 64. In fact, to my recollection, I never actually owned a copy of it despite having an N64 around the time of its release. I did, however, play an awful lot of this Super Mario 64 romhack in January. It has stuck with me ever since.
In second? grade I’d pass the controller at my best friend's house, as each of us desperately tried to clinch the red coin star in Lethal Lava Land or not tumble off Cool, Cool Mountain. In my teens I’d boot up an emulated copy through Project64 and try, to my behest, to play a game that paled in comparison to the breadth of experiences I’d already had with, at the time, recently released games. (Of course, when your high watermark is something like Garry’s Mod with workshop support or Just Cause 2, anything else feels like hoop and stick.) Even still, I appreciated what Mario 64 meant at both of these stages of my life, for one reason or another. Now, as an adult who claims to have a pretty good understanding of video gaming history, that respect has only deepened.
As a kid, I could recall broad strokes of the in-game world when I was away from the Mario Sanctioned Zone of my best friend’s house. The general layout of the first floor of Peach’s Castle, the first Bowser stage, the royal slide, as well as strange fragments of the hub world architecture scattered through my brainspace. In the days after a hang-out or sleepover, I’d devise ways to get around stages in my head, but SM64 never stuck in my craw for long amounts of time. Yet, I still had moments where it was forced back into my consciousness.
During a particularly shitty bout with the flu when I was about seven, my child brain conjured up visions of a castle that… sort of existed. In between retching up anything that wasn't saltines and soup, half-watched segments of Nickelodeon’s Games and Sports channel, and confronting the sickly taste of bile and lemon-lime Gatorade, I’d pass in and out of dreams, seeing feverish facsimiles of Mario 64. Strange floating voids that might’ve resembled a run-up to Bowser, Tick-Tock-Clocks that didn’t seem to match up with what was on the cartridge, and impossibly long hallways that bled into one another.
I had a passing knowledge of the “every copy of SM64 is personalized” “meme” before playing B3313, and saw increasingly convoluted icebergs and the Wario Apparition, (something that thankfully doesn’t show up in this romhack,) as laughably goofy addendums to already lame gaming creepypastas. The general idea of this hack, despite being fueled by this mix of amateur horror, is something still so genuinely fascinating to me. It's not even really the concept of a game with a “personalization AI,” but moreso the idea of imperfect memory. Things might be changing without any input from some spooky and malicious entity pulling the strings, you just can't remember what these places looked like. Those who are as equally fascinated with B3313 as I am use that term— “fever dream.” They use it liberally when talking about the general feel of the romhack, while also mentioning that at some point during their childhood, they would also have dreams about parts of Mario 64 that didn’t exist, or were slightly off. As one of those people, B3313 nails that exact feeling one-hundred percent.
Super Mario 64: B3313 is a fever dream come true. It’s a slurry of beta, demo-build and original content that bleeds into areas from the retail copy of Super Mario 64. Despite its brief, eyeroll-worthy, yet awkwardly fitting brushes with metatextual horror writing, (enter this cave if you want to see your deepest fears unfold!!!!!!!!!,) the main conceit of this strange, alternate-history beta-dump Mario romhack still hits like a guided missile to my brain. The seldom-played yet still familiar memories of Peach's Castle turn from a welcoming environment into an LSD: the Dream Emulator-esque maze of doors to entirely different castles, alternate versions of existing Mario worlds, densely foggy ominous hallways, and harshly inhuman architecture. It’s bizarre, surprisingly unsettling and manages to evoke a sense of familiar unfamiliarity.
B3313, Wet Dry World’s Negative Emotional Aura and the Personalized Copy concepts are at a bizarrely interesting confluence of childhood imagination, video game folklore, niche meme culture, and, most importantly to me, the impermanence of memory. It already feels like decades ago that we were telling people that, no, Nelson Mandela did not die in prison, the Berenstain bears’ surname was just being misremembered, and, uh, that Taco Bell never had “medium” sauce, but there’s something weirdly different about the foggy, self-aware recollection of sections from Peach’s Castle that never actually existed. There’s an unspoken understanding in YouTube comment sections and other circles versed with B3313 that none of this is, y’know, for real. It’s all gotten a bit tongue and cheek and suffocatingly ironic now, and while some would consider this a horrible breaching of kayfabe, I see it as a necessity to prevent B3313 and other experiences like it from becoming deeply lame, reminiscent of the early days of extremely self-serious YouTube ARGs.
There’s a seal that you break at some point if you came up playing video games. It’s the realization that everything in the game you’re currently playing is there on the disc. Emotion engines and curated experiences cannot magically conjure a completely unique experience specifically for you. With digital games, automatic updates, and the increasing capabilities of neural networks and AI, this becomes a harder point to make, but we’re not quite to the point where games can just generate new assets out of thin air. New content speeds through pipelines for still-alive service games, patch notes get nailed to the theoretical doors of your chosen Gaming Chapel, yet ghosts do not haunt hardware. There is no “personalization AI” present in a two-decade old N64 rom, and with how fast information travels and the fact that leaking video game news and secrets is basically a goddamned industry now, most games don’t get to keep their secrets for long, no matter how much I may want them to.
As you do with the childhood loss of innocence, you learn to eventually understand and cope with the feeling that games are not infinite dream machines made for you and you alone. However, you inevitably replace that malaise and disappointment with the fact that these collections of data and if-then statements still have so, so much to share with you. Experiences like B3313 come along from time to time to serve as a haunting reminder, though. This romhack is a transmission from a moderately different yet hauntingly similar reality that threatens to plunge you back into the depths of childlike mystique, wonder, and, funnily enough, horror, but with your current adult understanding and awareness. It’s equally as enticing as it is terrifying.
I know part of it is just getting older, not having enough space in your head for everything, and generally just "recording over" less important events in your life, but I've realized in the last few years that I don't remember parts of my childhood. I'm not talking year long spans or anything like that, but traumatic experiences that my brain has blotted out, or lengths of time that I just used to remember very succinctly. I don't think my childhood was any more or less extraordinary than anyone else's, probably on the "less" side of that spectrum, actually, but… it just feels weird. In finding old TV show uploads and reliving games from that time period, I feel like I've been trying to piece it back together or convince myself that I shouldn't. I think this romhack, in its own way, helped me cope with a little bit of that.
Playing B3313 is tasting honey lemon cough drops as I sweat into my childhood bedsheets, drifting in and out of tenuous sleep in my dark bedroom in the middle of the day. In its own weird way, it’s beautiful.
4) Hitman: World of Assassination
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Thanks for sticking with me through that.
Up until recently, I always felt like an outsider when I said I was a fan of the Hitman games. I loved Blood Money when I was at the ripe old age of 10, and loved watching Tom Bowen’s “How Not To Play Hitman” series slightly more than actually playing it. I did end up finishing Blood Money, eventually moving onto Silent Assassin and, for some reason, Codename 47. I could not finish the first, nor stomach the latter, and it always made me feel like… a poser, I guess? They were pretty “hardcore” games at the time, known for stringent stealth and detection mechanics, and looking at forum posts and videos at the time it felt like I wasn’t getting The Full Experience by not being a bad enough dude to play them, let alone get Silent Assassin ranks. The World of Assassination trilogy has blown that locked door off the fucking hinges for me.
The three newest Hitman games are wonderful romps. As someone who’s been following Giant Bomb for a decade and loved their Hitman coverage and content, it feels like I’m just copying their homework here, but oh well. From throwing homing briefcases and walking around as a clown with a WA2000, to actually seeing the bald beauty's story wrap in the third chapter, Hitman asks you to take these games as seriously as you can. While you’re still definitely Agent 47, (nom de guerre, Tobias Rieper,) and still definitely going through an actually pretty good plot thrust in between garroting sociopathic billionaires, you are given carte blanche to steal so many clothes, chuck so many wrenches and empty as much lead into bystanders as possible with very little restriction. It's this distinction that I feel makes stuff like World of Assasination and, in my opinion, the Dead Rising series work. Comedy is often a hard thing to do in games, and I feel it's best left up to player expression and interpretation in most cases.
Whenever possible, I WILL go for alert-less stealth runs in any game where it's possible, and I killed hours meticulously reloading checkpoints, or missions wholesale, in the World Of Assassination trilogy back in February just to get Silent Assassin. But I also had plenty of moments where I had to break my own self-imposed restrictions to, for example, shoot Vanya Shah right in the back of her smug head and beat a quick, immediately exposed retreat as I let the exhausted sweatshop workers she rules over see her body careen two stories to the ground below her. This was a moment so satisfying that I am struggling to not reinstall the game right now and record a clip myself. (By the way, while Hitman has never been about killing people who don’t deserve it, WoA’s targets ride a hell of a line between being laughably sociopathic and ripped from the headlines of [what is hopefully not] the near future. I really do admire it.)
Hitman had some of my absolute favorite moments this year and, despite it pushing you strongly to a lot of those moments, they never felt unearned. I often yearn for the desire to feel like I truly was the brain genius who earned my moments, but Hitman helped lessen some of that stringency on myself while still allowing me to push my understanding of the game. From throwing Erich Soders’ replacement heart into the trash to whacking the Janus in a send-up to Blood Money’s A New Life, it’s some of the most satisfied I’ve ever been getting lead to water.
And, god, that fucking mission in Berlin? Insane. Insane. I know people talk up Dartmoor a lot and it does deserve it but… man.
3) Dicey Dungeons
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In the midst of my summer-time seasonal depression, nothing was really working for me. I found myself pouring over what was on PC Game Pass, writing off games that seemed like too much of an undertaking after I’d completed a certain, lengthy RPG earlier in the season. Dicey Dungeons was a blip on my radar once upon a time, but had slipped through the cracks of my memory until I scrolled past it in my Xbox app, then inched my way back up to it.
I am both surprised and not that I spent SO much time playing Dicey Dungeons this year. As a man that will play any rogueli(k)(t)e you put in front of me at least to the completion of one successful run, it’s basic fuckin’ math. It’s the logical conclusion of just how rudimentary you can make a roguelike and have me still play it.
It’s also, by technicality, the third god damned card game on this list.
Dead simple— Dicey Dungeons is a game of rogueli(k)(t)e Yahtzee with RPG classes, inventory management, and an absolutely fantastic soundtrack that has me picking up my chiptune defending sword-and-board once again. The fate of your runs are, with some influence from the player, entirely up to literal dice rolls. I truly love just how much the game leans into being a stone-cold RNG fest, down to the fact that the entire thing takes place in a game(show) of fate hosted by an anthropomorphized Lady Luck. Its writing and enemy design is sickeningly, saccharine sweet and just a tiny skosh insufferable, but it never gets in the way of how rock solid and addictive the game itself is. So much so that I squeezed this damn game dry of content.
I’ve seen quite literally every piece of new content the game has to offer shy of the Halloween expansion, (it turns the game into a lethal puzzle thing, just not my cup of tea,) and I still had to stop writing this section of the list to go play a quick round. Played Robot in Parallel Universe with a decisive victory against Madison, in case you’re curious. And I cranked the volume in the boss fight for the first time since I turned it down to catch up on podcasts and video essays while whittling through the end-game hard modes. Lifeline goes completely insane as does the rest of the soundtrack. I was throwing ass in my kitchen making sandwiches listening to this months ago. This game just rules.
2) Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon
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Of all the ‘guys’ I have claimed to not be in this GOTY list, I am, maybe least of them all, a turn-based RPG guy. I’ve tried, multiple times to breach them, and the best I can get is about halfway through most mainline Pokemon games before the tedium of Okay Now You Go battling gets to me. And yeah, I know, I just got done rattling on about two different card and dice-based roguelikes that are also turn based but… that’s different, y’know? I’m not just highlighting Firaga and watching an animation play out, I’m throwin’ dice and channeling lightning orbs and…
Look, it’s not important. What is important is I finished my first fucking Yakuza game this year. And it was the goddamn turn based RPG! Yakuza 7 is one of the most charming and enjoyable games I’ve played in my life! And it’s a turn based RPG!
That’s horrifying!
I don’t need to sing the praises of any of Ryu Ga Gotoku’s games. If you’re following me, you’re probably fully bought into the series or have heard people around you audibly get boners for Goro Majima and Kazuma Kiryu. In fact, I find it incredibly difficult to write anything new or provocative about this game that hasn’t already been said, but I just feel so strongly about it. It’s the insanely fun video-game-meets-real-life premise and immeasurably loveable cast of misfits that excel. It’s the heat moves. It’s Zhao. It’s the raw passion, genuine heartbreak, and joy of just being here that really got me. It’s Zhao again. Combine all that with an active battle system that satisfies the goopy goblin gamer brain’s need for near constant input and man? I’m set.
I know through cultural osmosis that Yakuza is a series about a few key things: compassion, loyalty, the bonds we share with others, and what loyalty really means. Yakuza 7 obviously has all of this in spades, but especially what it has to say about the lower/working class, anyone unfortunate enough to be homeless, sex workers, and those from impoverished backgrounds is so effortlessly excellent that it makes me excited to go back and play this series from the word go. I’ll miss the hell out of Ichiban and the shonen protagonist brand of fire-blooded vigor and bullheadedness he brought, but I’m excited to (…eventually) start anew.
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1) Jabroni Brawl: Episode 3
Here we are. Finally. I’m not only writing something about a released version of Jaykin Bacon Jabroni Brawl, but I also genuinely feel it’s my game of the year. And now that we’ve arrived at this juncture I just keep thinking… what the hell do I even say about this game? I found something, but fuck, it took a while:
It must be said that I was raised in a triple parent household: I was brought up by my mother, father, and the Source engine. When I was 9 years old, I tuned into a mid day re-run of the now anicent television program The Screensavers that showed off version five of Garry’s Mod. At that point, I’d already played scattered chunks of the short, but enthralling Half-Life 2 demo we had on our family computer, (of course, the Icthyosaur jumpscare and being teleported to Ravenholm scared me right off,) but hadn't picked up the game. I begged my poor cash strapped father for a copy probably too many times, and after we both realized the pirated copy he nabbed wouldn’t be compatible, got a Half-Life 2 & Counter Strike: Source double pack for me as a birthday/Christmas gift.
I loved Garry’s Mod. I’ve got no clue how many hours I poured into version 9 before its subsequent release on Steam as an officially sanctioned mod, but let’s just say it was a lot. In December 2005 I joined the Facepunch forums, learned the difference between models and textures, corrected a lot of spelling mistakes, had my first bouts with navigating Windows folder directories, definitely made some crude sex poses, and found my first group of online friends shortly thereafter. I would eventually slowly slip away from regular patronage to Facepunch sometime in the early 2010s, but the impact it had on me as a youth is unquestionable. We can talk about whether it was a net good some other time though.
Before this gets too far into navel gazing and nostalgia, I’ll say that along the line I played a wonderful mod for Half-Life 1 called Half-Life 2: Jaykin Bacon Source that serves as the genesis for Jabroni Brawl. It’s a mess, but up until its Facepunch-branded revival and subsequent alpha/beta tests, it was the only thing I’d ever played like it. It’s full of ripped assets from other mods, purposefully goofy voice acting from its shithead (lovingly) teenage creator, and plenty of stuff taken from the then-recent Metal Gear Solid 3, a game I had also fallen in love with prior. It was dumb fun that I have forced multiple groups of friends at varying stages of my life to play and have a ludicrous amount of attachment to.
And Jabroni Brawl: Episode 3 is that, all over again, from the faithfully recreated weapons and impenetrable Facepunch callbacks, to the fact that this more or less ended up being a surprisingly official-feeling love letter to anyone who has ever made anything in either Source or Goldsrc. Jabroni Brawl knows what it is, and that’s all it is. It’s a deathmatch mod for and by the people still cherishing the rapidly atrophying muscular structure of a game engine that just won’t seem to die. It's for the people who want to get a group of people together on a Friday and throw friction grenades at/fart on each other. And that's all it needs to be to knock it out of the park.
Source and its modding scene still means a lot to people, myself included. For a lot of us weirdoes, it was a playground that evolved into a way to make friends, hone skills and even turn interests into hobbies and jobs.
But hey, this is getting KINDA GAY!!!!!!!!
Jabroni Brawl is frenetic FPS bullshit. It’s terminally stupid, rough around the edges, and unbelievably fun with the right people. Jabroni Brawl is gaming. It’s e-sports. It's, dare I say, hobby-grade. And it’s a complete goddamn miracle. I mean, fuck, this is probably the one project to start on Facepunch and actually see the light of day, right? Even seeing the Tales From The Galactopticon models in the customization menu made me feel positively ancient.
Here’s an in-game clip of a good friend killing himself in maybe the funniest way I’ve ever seen. Take care, and Feliz Navidad.
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the-arcade-doctor · 1 year
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I just came up with a new concept for the pile.
A Doom mod built around some of Zandronum's multiplayer modes like Skulltag, LMS, and Invasion.
It contains a cast of cartoonish characters that each have a special ability and weapon set, such as, if you were to allow me to use the character, Springy lacking ground speed but having a higher jump and more air acceleration.
And shit, that's just TF2 with extra steps.
oooh sounds fun, i might consider once i get like a trademark for springy in place tf2 with extra steps is tight. /ref
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noir-ish-bee · 1 year
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So, someone made a mod for Skulltag Doom that implements TF2-style gameplay. On an unrelated note, I just installed Zandronum. Doom Builder and Slade
A N D N O N E O F Y O U W I L L B E P R E P A R E D F O R T H E C H A R A C T E R S A N D M A P S ( A N D A L L T H A T L O R E A N D S H I T ) T H A T I 'M A B O U T T O S T I R U P-
OHHHHHH BOYYYY
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m39 · 1 month
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Doom WADs’ Roulette: Revenant Awards 2009
REVENANT AWARDS 2009 EDITION (I’m not mixing the names of the most popular movies of the previous years with Doom stuff anymore; I got sick of it)
We are almost at the end of the journey, folks. We are just mere steps to say goodbye to the 2000s and its roster of WADs. We still have a couple of WADs from that decade that weren’t mentioned by the Doomworld guys, but we aren’t focusing on those today.
Today, we will be looking at the 2009 roster of WADs, and choosing (providing there are more than one in a category) which one gave me the most fun. Starting with-
FULL DECK OF DIAMONDS – BEST 30-32 MAPS LONG MEGAWAD OF THE YEAR
Okay, let’s be honest with this one people. There is no actual choice for this one since we are putting NewDoom Community Project II against fucking Killing Adventure. Guess which one gets the award?
NDCP II has its own share of problems, starting with many of its maps getting tiresome if you decide to marathon them, inconsistency in the difficulty sliding, and two new enemies that are an unintentional annoyance at best; but on the other hand, it gave me much more fun than its predecessor, not to mention being miles better than that.
Killing Adventure, meanwhile, boils down to the mediocrity fest that fails in what it aims to be – a joke WAD.
So there is no surprise that the former WAD wins this category in the source port section.
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BIG FUCKING WAD – BEST 33+ MAPS LONG MEGAWAD OF THE YEAR
Now, this case is kind of another conundrum for the lack of better words, since we have two winners by default – Whispers of Satan and Plutonia 2; both winning this award in a source port and vanilla sections respectively. I just want to talk slightly more about these two WADs here and choose which one gave me more fun (spoilers – it’s Whispers of Satan).
On the one hand, WoS is a more accessible WAD than P2, has less-mangled maps, and is much more diverse with themes than the latter. On the other hand, Plutonia the Second has much harder maps (if you’re in for a greater challenge) with next to no copy-pasted areas, and its plot feels more self-aware than WoS’.
In my case, it all boiled down to preferring getting annoyed by copy-pasted areas rather than by getting mobbed from every side of an area with next to no cover that isn’t the previous safe haven-turned room.
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OFF THE WALL – BEST PARTIAL/TOTAL CONVERSION OF THE YEAR
This is where it gets interesting. We have six WADs in this category, and half of these felt like a waste of my time. Happy Time Circus II and Cheogsh II, despite both being declared runners-up by Doomworld, felt like a slap in the face due to the former being annoyance incarnate and the latter being a massive disappointment as a sequel to the not-perfect but still really good map. Legacy of Suffering had its cool moments but I would recommend taking a look at this WAD out of curiosity sake rather than for being really good.
Harmony is a definitive step up when it comes to fun factors compared to the previously mentioned WADs, but it still has questionable decisions; particularly the original soundtrack and hitscanners being more bullshit than the Doom ones. Demons of Problematique 2 looks great and has interesting mechanics, but the boss encounters tend to be annoying, along with the music tracks related to these. Lastly, Tribute might be an old, janky WAD that requires Skulltag of all source ports to properly play and has moments of outdated humor, but if you manage to make it all work, you might realize that this WAD is a shit ton of fun to play, greatly utilizing the source port's exclusive items, while also doing its own things on the same level of quality.
So, yeah, there is no more arguing here, Tribute gets the award. I can only hope that my (partial) bias towards this WAD being made by a Polish dude won’t sour my taste to it in the future like it did with Hidden Mountain Factory.
If I could choose only the WAD that can be played on GZDoom, I would give it to DoP 2, which I mark as an honorable mention in this category.
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OTHER AWARDS
And now for the moment, you didn’t wait for – the default winners.
Starting with Pug of Pink (2-7 maps) and its winner – Hell Ground; probably the best WAD out of the entire 2009 roster. Almost everything in this WAD is great IMO.
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And as for the Golden Spider (8-9 maps), we have Mapgame, one of the better Doom I episode replacements.
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CONCLUSION
Well… this is it, people. That’s basically all that I have to say about the 2000s Cacowards. Time to take a look at some of the leftovers from the 2009 roster, and then one, last WAD from that decade before taking a break and choosing the best WADs of the 2000s after that. And after selecting the winners of that decade… well… let’s just say there are two, final WADs to discuss. One that will be talked about more likely in terms of my memories with it, and the other mocking things that were popular with the WAD community back in the early 2000s (especially the ones that were like the just aforementioned former one).
But until then, I’ll see you next time.
Bye!
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bestofmidi · 4 years
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requested by @pleaseregisterthisshareware !!!
“The Dance of the Spheares” written by Davie M Karlsson (Mind Xpander Produciotns 1996)
AFAIK, best known as the “Tetrinet” song, and also famous for its inclusion with the Doom port “Skulltag”
original midi at https://web.archive.org/web/20071010203749if_/http://cheezyblog.net/stuff/misc/tetrinet.mid
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bobo-tucci · 4 years
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(x)
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unholypimpin · 6 years
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Working on a remake for Satan’s Covenant Invasion, I’m remaking all the maps from the ground up.  So far map01 the 4 portals is complete.
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risottonendoroid · 6 years
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some skull transparents i did last night instead of sleep asdfgh feel free to use these for icons or whatever! no credit required.
look below for something special,,
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skullvins · 3 years
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yknow man I understand that vinskull is the common fandom way and probably the older way of writing the ship but man it's always been skullvin to me. I think it's because of how I came into the coroika fandom after book 11's viz release and missed all the drama, but still drew things and discussed it with some friends and came up with my own ideas and ships and such. only the SUPER ogs will remember the days of skulltage.
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wadbot · 2 years
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shinFFA2.wad: Shinobi.cl Free-For-All map pack 2nd edition MAP20: Green and Mean (1008, -656, -56) Author: Wladimir Flores Date: 2008-07-27 Description: Deathmatch only. Designed for ZDaemon. Skulltag works, but some maps just don't work/look right. You've been warned.
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doom-nerdo-666 · 2 years
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Doomguy's face HUD if it could come back
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(Left: Official render from a DE artist's ArtStation account. Right: Classic and QC faces comparison by MarphyBlack, including the Aspect Ratio fix)
An iconic feature in old Doom that didn't return in later games.
Could be because it seems goofy, that later games either had specific design decisions in mind or ingame Doomguy's face could've been remastered in a more faithfull way.
How do we make him more faithfull?
Aspect ratio fix.
Top of his head is flat, which even suits how Adrian Carmack drew William Blazkowicz' face in Wolf 3D and the guy from Catacombs 3D.
Hair is a specific light shade of brown.
Make his eyes a bit bigger, since Doomguy is a cartoon (Maybe even use the "HD" assets from some ports of Wolf 3D where enemy/bosses have their faces with more detail as reference).
Maybe even make it so his eyes are blue when he smiles and brown when he's doing the ouch face or whatever the explenation for that is.
Maybe make the art style cartoony/stylized, instead of something realistic or with too much detail, even if id engines have a focus on graphics.
I think a moving head mugshot in a HUD/status bar would work better if the art style was cel-shaded or a bit low-poly with some "stepped" animation.
How could it work in a new game?
At first, you try to make it as faithfull to the original implementation as possible, but with some new twists.
Make it animated in an idle state, where he looks around.
He gets angry when fighting or getting hit.
Happy when picking up something good or after a succesfull kill or clearing an arena.
Ouch face after high enough amount of damage.
Look to left/right depending on where he was hit.
Different types of deaths (Like how the PS1 and even 3DO ports have that face exploding animation): Being burned to death, drowning, being electrocuted, skeletonized by acid and frozen then exploding into ice shards.
Obviously bleeding and getting more damage, the lower the health is.
Bright "golden" eyes for Invulnerability, but make the face animated and not static.
Bright red eyes and maybe sharp teeth for Berserk.
Bright blue/purple eyes for Quad Damage.
Bright yellow eyes for Haste and make him move his head really fast.
Stolen from Quake: A floating pair of eyeballs when invisible.
Wearing the Light Amp Visor goggles when using it.
Wearing a gas mask/respirator when using the Radsuit.
Looking decomposed/skeletonized when using a "cursed" object like D3 RoE's Artifact (Think of this as an homage to that D3 mirror scene).
Make it react/emote to cutscenes and story parts.
With optional skins, give players costumization to make Doomguy wear funny cosmetics or something cool.
Maybe even add variety to his non-dialogue sounds: Pain grunts and death screams, laughs, angry grunts when punching something, “UNF” when interacting with walls, the other “UNF” when landing from higher falls, maybe sum “uh?” when confused and of course: The Skulltag “heheee” taunt.
Maybe there's other ideas that could make it more advanced or interesting.
Anyway, here's a video by Decino that shows how the original HUD face worked:
youtube
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splatlingpropaganda · 4 years
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dumps my traditional doodles on the sideblog again
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idclev22 · 7 years
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ST IMP
Health: 55
Radius: 20
Height: 56
Speed: 11
Melee attack: 2
Missile: SmallImpBall
{ Radius: 8, Scale: .75, Height: 6, Speed: 18, Damage: 2 }
Credits: Vader, ItsNatureToDie
Download: http://www.realm667.com/index.php/en/component/docman/?task=doc_download&gid=477&Itemid=
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