76
Random Chat / Re: The Thread of Excessive Rage
« on: July 11, 2021, 12:58:31 AM »
The more I read about Windows 11 the more I want game companies to start targeting Linux.
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77
Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing
« on: July 08, 2021, 09:31:35 PM »
Just finished Rush!
MAP10: It opens up with some nice indoor combat areas, sprinkled with some decent traps and monster spawns. At the end it throws you into a large arena with swarms of cacodemons and hell knights, a handful of cyberdemons, and way too many arch-viles (though thankfully they give you an invuln sphere to help you deal with them). My strategy for dealing with this was to kill off the pain elementals at the center of the arena, run around to force some good, old-fashioned infighting, take down the arch-viles with the invulnerability sphere, then pick off the remaining demons. Fun as hell.
MAP11: The opening is balls to the wall, reminiscent of the earlier slaughter-focused maps in the pack. Just over half of the kills happen near the beginning, with the rest being chonksters that appear when you snatch the skull keys. Gotta give a special shoutout to the arena that ultimately allows you to grab the yellow key. It didn't really have a lot of enemies, but between the little bit of verticality that arena provides and the enemy selection it's a bit on the nasty side. The red key, which is just a brute force assault, pales in comparison. As with MAP10, the final fight mercifully gives you an invuln sphere that gives you just enough time to deal with the copious amounts of arch-viles before letting you leisurely pick off the rest of the demons.
MAP12: Hoo boy, this is a biggun. 1234 enemies, a large, intricate level design, and some nasty monster traps. By far the toughest level of the WAD, but it remains pretty manageable as long as you're good at spontaneously forming exit strategies and knowing just when to switch from the rocket launcher to a closer range weapon. It's a seriously great culmination to everything you've gone through up to this point, and a fantastic way to cap things off.
So, final thoughts: this map set is excellent. It doesn't overstay its welcome, has some adrenaline pumping moments, some great traps, and has some much needed moments of downtime between swarms.
On a side note, it's kind of funny how quickly I'm plowing through WADs that earlier this year I never thought I'd have a chance at beating. Just a little bit of practice and persistence is all it takes, I suppose!
Next stop: I dunno. Ancient Aliens, maybe?
Edit: YEP, Ancient Aliens.
MAP01: Berserk. A bunch of lower level enemies (with a couple of hell knights and revenants) and a cyberdemon turret, along with some really sweet visuals. Kind of a fun gimmick, and nothing too difficult as long as you stay on your toes.
MAP02: Definitely a more conventional map. Basic key/switch hunt, with a decent number of low level enemies. Pretty easy stuff.
MAP03: Another map that uses the monster turret concept, though this time with arachnotrons. Fairly tight quarters, overall, and plenty of opportunities to encourage infighting and save ammo. Very fun!
MAP10: It opens up with some nice indoor combat areas, sprinkled with some decent traps and monster spawns. At the end it throws you into a large arena with swarms of cacodemons and hell knights, a handful of cyberdemons, and way too many arch-viles (though thankfully they give you an invuln sphere to help you deal with them). My strategy for dealing with this was to kill off the pain elementals at the center of the arena, run around to force some good, old-fashioned infighting, take down the arch-viles with the invulnerability sphere, then pick off the remaining demons. Fun as hell.
MAP11: The opening is balls to the wall, reminiscent of the earlier slaughter-focused maps in the pack. Just over half of the kills happen near the beginning, with the rest being chonksters that appear when you snatch the skull keys. Gotta give a special shoutout to the arena that ultimately allows you to grab the yellow key. It didn't really have a lot of enemies, but between the little bit of verticality that arena provides and the enemy selection it's a bit on the nasty side. The red key, which is just a brute force assault, pales in comparison. As with MAP10, the final fight mercifully gives you an invuln sphere that gives you just enough time to deal with the copious amounts of arch-viles before letting you leisurely pick off the rest of the demons.
MAP12: Hoo boy, this is a biggun. 1234 enemies, a large, intricate level design, and some nasty monster traps. By far the toughest level of the WAD, but it remains pretty manageable as long as you're good at spontaneously forming exit strategies and knowing just when to switch from the rocket launcher to a closer range weapon. It's a seriously great culmination to everything you've gone through up to this point, and a fantastic way to cap things off.
So, final thoughts: this map set is excellent. It doesn't overstay its welcome, has some adrenaline pumping moments, some great traps, and has some much needed moments of downtime between swarms.
On a side note, it's kind of funny how quickly I'm plowing through WADs that earlier this year I never thought I'd have a chance at beating. Just a little bit of practice and persistence is all it takes, I suppose!
Next stop: I dunno. Ancient Aliens, maybe?
Edit: YEP, Ancient Aliens.
MAP01: Berserk. A bunch of lower level enemies (with a couple of hell knights and revenants) and a cyberdemon turret, along with some really sweet visuals. Kind of a fun gimmick, and nothing too difficult as long as you stay on your toes.
MAP02: Definitely a more conventional map. Basic key/switch hunt, with a decent number of low level enemies. Pretty easy stuff.
MAP03: Another map that uses the monster turret concept, though this time with arachnotrons. Fairly tight quarters, overall, and plenty of opportunities to encourage infighting and save ammo. Very fun!
78
Computing / Re: Got a Laptop
« on: July 07, 2021, 07:05:57 AM »
Congrats! Looks like a pretty solid little gaming box. It looks like they actually bothered to put a decent cooler on it, which is nice to see in light of all the "gaming ultrabooks" (ugh) that have been coming out in the past few years.
And yeah, definitely keep pushing to get that sucker fixed. It's hard to say how big of an impact that'll have without seeing it in person, but at best it's an annoying cosmetic defect and at worst (like if the fracture is on the panel itself) it's a ticking timebomb.
And yeah, definitely keep pushing to get that sucker fixed. It's hard to say how big of an impact that'll have without seeing it in person, but at best it's an annoying cosmetic defect and at worst (like if the fracture is on the panel itself) it's a ticking timebomb.
79
Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing
« on: July 07, 2021, 06:54:33 AM »
There's a ton of little stuff like that. It kind or ranges from frustrating (having your bullets pass right through enemies due to how hitscans are handled) to potentially exploitative (enemies receiving splash damage multiple times). All in the name of getting this sucker to run on a 386, I imagine!
As far as why the hitscan thing happens, it's due to moreeeee optimizations. Doom has a data structure called the blockmap. In the WAD file, this will carve the map into 128x128 unit slices, logging all of the linedefs that fall within each of those slices. After the engine loads the level, it also adds things to the list, tracking enemies, items, players, and decorations in the blockmap structure as well. This is used to accelerate collision, but it does have one notable downside. Here's a visual of how one scenario may look:
The numbered squares are individual blockmap blocks. The green object is the player, and the red object is a large enemy (let's say, an arachnotron). You can say with quite a bit of certainty that the player is in block 3, but what about the arachnotron? Well, when it comes to thing-to-thing collision everything will work correctly, since the projectile or object is physically travelling, but what about hitscans?
One of the shortcuts that Doom does is to use blockmaps to determine whether it's even possible for a tracer to hit a target. The problem here is that it only factors in the origin. As a result of this, despite the fact that a large amount of the arachnotron spills over into blocks 1, 3, and 4, only tracers that pass through block 2 are considered. If you were to aim at this arachnotron's left or right legs with a chaingun and pull the trigger, you'd miss every single shot. While the problem gets far worse with wider enemies, this can even be observed with pinkies and even former humans (if you're particularly unlucky).
It's important to note that this affects anything that uses hitscan tracers, including the BFG9000. The BFG can deal over 3500 damage to a single target if the ball and all of its tracers land within said target, and getting this high of a damage roll isn't all that uncommon (roughly 1 in 8, which is pretty favorable in terms of RNG). This is more than enough to kill the spider mastermind with one shot (she only has 3000 HP, and the odds of your BFG rolling that much damage is roughly 50%!), but in practice it's a bit more rare due to this issue. Because she's a whopping 256 units wide (large enough to fit in four blocks, minimum) it requires you to aim at just the right part to ensure that as many tracers as possible land within the block that her origin falls in. Given the size of her hitbox, I'm not even sure that it's possible for all of the tracers to land (you're going to be standing a minimum of 128 units away from her origin point, after all) so the odds of getting that coveted one-hit kill is pretty low in practice, with 2-3 being a more realistic number.
(G)ZDoom doesn't use the blockmap to determine hitscan collision, which means that every single unit within the mastermind's 256x256 hit box can be affected by a tracer. If you get close enough, your odds of getting a OHK on her skyrocket right up to that theoretical 50% figure. It's impossible to not kill a spiderdemon in two BFG hits unless you simply can't get close enough.
Even before I got into this level of engine analysis I wondered why bosses went down so much faster in ZDoom. I'm glad I know now, at least!
As far as why the hitscan thing happens, it's due to moreeeee optimizations. Doom has a data structure called the blockmap. In the WAD file, this will carve the map into 128x128 unit slices, logging all of the linedefs that fall within each of those slices. After the engine loads the level, it also adds things to the list, tracking enemies, items, players, and decorations in the blockmap structure as well. This is used to accelerate collision, but it does have one notable downside. Here's a visual of how one scenario may look:
The numbered squares are individual blockmap blocks. The green object is the player, and the red object is a large enemy (let's say, an arachnotron). You can say with quite a bit of certainty that the player is in block 3, but what about the arachnotron? Well, when it comes to thing-to-thing collision everything will work correctly, since the projectile or object is physically travelling, but what about hitscans?
One of the shortcuts that Doom does is to use blockmaps to determine whether it's even possible for a tracer to hit a target. The problem here is that it only factors in the origin. As a result of this, despite the fact that a large amount of the arachnotron spills over into blocks 1, 3, and 4, only tracers that pass through block 2 are considered. If you were to aim at this arachnotron's left or right legs with a chaingun and pull the trigger, you'd miss every single shot. While the problem gets far worse with wider enemies, this can even be observed with pinkies and even former humans (if you're particularly unlucky).
It's important to note that this affects anything that uses hitscan tracers, including the BFG9000. The BFG can deal over 3500 damage to a single target if the ball and all of its tracers land within said target, and getting this high of a damage roll isn't all that uncommon (roughly 1 in 8, which is pretty favorable in terms of RNG). This is more than enough to kill the spider mastermind with one shot (she only has 3000 HP, and the odds of your BFG rolling that much damage is roughly 50%!), but in practice it's a bit more rare due to this issue. Because she's a whopping 256 units wide (large enough to fit in four blocks, minimum) it requires you to aim at just the right part to ensure that as many tracers as possible land within the block that her origin falls in. Given the size of her hitbox, I'm not even sure that it's possible for all of the tracers to land (you're going to be standing a minimum of 128 units away from her origin point, after all) so the odds of getting that coveted one-hit kill is pretty low in practice, with 2-3 being a more realistic number.
(G)ZDoom doesn't use the blockmap to determine hitscan collision, which means that every single unit within the mastermind's 256x256 hit box can be affected by a tracer. If you get close enough, your odds of getting a OHK on her skyrocket right up to that theoretical 50% figure. It's impossible to not kill a spiderdemon in two BFG hits unless you simply can't get close enough.
Even before I got into this level of engine analysis I wondered why bosses went down so much faster in ZDoom. I'm glad I know now, at least!
80
Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing
« on: July 05, 2021, 03:36:49 AM »
Yet more Rush!
MAP07: Kind of a return to basic slaughter, with some of the snow even melting to mark the occasion! Nothing really difficult here, but it's fun.
MAP08: Another straightforward slaughter. This one proved to be fairly tricky, taking a few tries for me to figure out the best place to stand so that I didn't end cornered with 39274 revenant rockets heading straight towards my face. It starts off fairly tough but it peters off by the end, and the last two arenas are frankly a bit of a disappointment after the leadup.
MAP09: A fairly open slaughtermap with plenty of hallways and opportunities to kick off some classic infighting, not to mention the opportunity to telefrag four cyberdemons. Kickass music, too (apparently it's a MIDIfied version of the Lava Powerhouse stage from Sonic Spinball).
Three maps to go!
MAP07: Kind of a return to basic slaughter, with some of the snow even melting to mark the occasion! Nothing really difficult here, but it's fun.
MAP08: Another straightforward slaughter. This one proved to be fairly tricky, taking a few tries for me to figure out the best place to stand so that I didn't end cornered with 39274 revenant rockets heading straight towards my face. It starts off fairly tough but it peters off by the end, and the last two arenas are frankly a bit of a disappointment after the leadup.
MAP09: A fairly open slaughtermap with plenty of hallways and opportunities to kick off some classic infighting, not to mention the opportunity to telefrag four cyberdemons. Kickass music, too (apparently it's a MIDIfied version of the Lava Powerhouse stage from Sonic Spinball).
Three maps to go!
81
Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing
« on: July 04, 2021, 06:57:25 AM »
More Rush!
MAP04: More wintery slaughter! Mostly wide-open arenas with a nice variety of enemies, plenty of opportunities for infighting, and a smorgasbord of supplies. I'd say the encounters are a bit trickier than MAP03, mostly due to the increased number of mancubi spewing fire every which way, but nothing too difficult to manage.
MAP05: Fairly light on the enemy count, with a bunch of close quarters combat. Bundles of imps and hell knights in tight spaces, with a bunch of bony bastards and archies running around. Definitely a nice change of pace and moderately difficult in some areas.
MAP06: Tricky, but not because of enemy count. I'd say this probably qualifies more as a puzzle map, featuring a fairly small level and a number of encounters in tight passageways and, thankfully, plenty of room to dodge. Aside from one cramped fight with two cyberdemons there isn't much of a challenge here, but I see it more as a way to wind the player down a bit. Like the last level, it's a good change in pace.
MAP04: More wintery slaughter! Mostly wide-open arenas with a nice variety of enemies, plenty of opportunities for infighting, and a smorgasbord of supplies. I'd say the encounters are a bit trickier than MAP03, mostly due to the increased number of mancubi spewing fire every which way, but nothing too difficult to manage.
MAP05: Fairly light on the enemy count, with a bunch of close quarters combat. Bundles of imps and hell knights in tight spaces, with a bunch of bony bastards and archies running around. Definitely a nice change of pace and moderately difficult in some areas.
MAP06: Tricky, but not because of enemy count. I'd say this probably qualifies more as a puzzle map, featuring a fairly small level and a number of encounters in tight passageways and, thankfully, plenty of room to dodge. Aside from one cramped fight with two cyberdemons there isn't much of a challenge here, but I see it more as a way to wind the player down a bit. Like the last level, it's a good change in pace.
82
Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing
« on: July 03, 2021, 04:48:40 PM »
I decided to move onto Rush, and went through the first three levels (of 12) levels today.
MAP01: This is a wintery techbase with wide hallways, TONS of imps, a handful of specters, and a couple of tomatoes, spooky bois, hell knights, and mancubi. The map basically starts you off with a berserk pack, and before I knew it I ended up doing a UV tyson run. Most of the beefier enemies (sans the cacos, one of the revenants, and the two hell knights) can be telefragged using a secret teleporter, so I went ahead and did that. Fun little map, and a pretty good indication of what to expect from this WAD: fairly straightforward gameplay with slaughtery elements.
MAP02: This one is a bit tighter, taking place entirely indoors. Imps and hell knights are used cleverly to restrict the player's movement in the tight passageways, necessitating the use of the super shotty and plasma gun (with the chaingun used sparingly to pick off faraway/squishy targets). There are a couple of larger arenas where the rocket launcher and infighting are your friends. Pretty tricky in some parts, and definitely a step up in difficulty compated to MAP01.
MAP03: This is a straight up slaughtermap. You start off in a room packed to the brim with supplies, open the door, and are greeted by the first 94 enemies (out of 333, in a fairly small map, too!). The arenas are mostly open, taking place in outdoor fields or large caves (aside from a tighter, indoor tomb at the end) so there's plenty of room to dodge and maneuver. I didn't find this to be too difficult, even being a step back in difficulty from MAP02, but it was fun as hell. I didn't bother to do any secret hunting until the very end, so I ended up missing out on an invulnerability sphere near the beginning of the map. Whoops.
Overall, I'm enjoying it. I imagine it's going to get harder in general as I go along, but the difficulty seems to be pretty even-handed so far, with the map designers giving you plenty of resources to do your thing. The maps are fairly average in terms of raw detail (especially when compared to something like BtSX), but the maps are well laid out and are very easy on the eyes.
MAP01: This is a wintery techbase with wide hallways, TONS of imps, a handful of specters, and a couple of tomatoes, spooky bois, hell knights, and mancubi. The map basically starts you off with a berserk pack, and before I knew it I ended up doing a UV tyson run. Most of the beefier enemies (sans the cacos, one of the revenants, and the two hell knights) can be telefragged using a secret teleporter, so I went ahead and did that. Fun little map, and a pretty good indication of what to expect from this WAD: fairly straightforward gameplay with slaughtery elements.
MAP02: This one is a bit tighter, taking place entirely indoors. Imps and hell knights are used cleverly to restrict the player's movement in the tight passageways, necessitating the use of the super shotty and plasma gun (with the chaingun used sparingly to pick off faraway/squishy targets). There are a couple of larger arenas where the rocket launcher and infighting are your friends. Pretty tricky in some parts, and definitely a step up in difficulty compated to MAP01.
MAP03: This is a straight up slaughtermap. You start off in a room packed to the brim with supplies, open the door, and are greeted by the first 94 enemies (out of 333, in a fairly small map, too!). The arenas are mostly open, taking place in outdoor fields or large caves (aside from a tighter, indoor tomb at the end) so there's plenty of room to dodge and maneuver. I didn't find this to be too difficult, even being a step back in difficulty from MAP02, but it was fun as hell. I didn't bother to do any secret hunting until the very end, so I ended up missing out on an invulnerability sphere near the beginning of the map. Whoops.
Overall, I'm enjoying it. I imagine it's going to get harder in general as I go along, but the difficulty seems to be pretty even-handed so far, with the map designers giving you plenty of resources to do your thing. The maps are fairly average in terms of raw detail (especially when compared to something like BtSX), but the maps are well laid out and are very easy on the eyes.
83
Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing
« on: July 02, 2021, 11:21:11 PM »Next stop: Back to Saturn X: Episode 1.
And...done!
Pretty fun ride, I've gotta say. The early parts were generally stronger than the later bits, but the penultimate map was *chef's kiss* fucking brilliant.
MAP19 probably stands out as the most frustrating one due to sheer developer dickishness, since they decide to do a cacodemon and pain elemental swarm at about the halfway mark. In advanced ports like GZDoom this isn't an issue, but in vanilla-accurate ports this is a huge issue. I prefer to play maps in the port that they're intended for, and since BtSX is a vanilla-compatible WAD that means PrBoom+ with complevel 2.
The reason that this particular combination of enemies is an issue is because there are certain cases where vertical height isn't considered in the Doom engine, and enemy melee attacks aren't one of them. Couple this with the fact that all objects with collision have infinite vertical height and you've got a recipe for disaster. Cacoswarms in tall, vertical maps are awful because you'll just be walking along, your movement will suddenly stop, and you'll start taking massive melee damage out of nowhere. Couple that with pain elementals shooting lost souls and you're in for a world of pain. There are a bunch of little hidey holes that you can lure them to, but that's not fun. Blasting swarms with a rocket launcher is fun.
Which leads me to MAP24. BtSX isn't particularly slaughtery, but that changes. I wouldn't say that it's comparable even to stuff like Go 2 It, but the encounters are focused around dealing with chaos, prioritizing enemies, and, in one case, blasting hordes of imps into tiny little giblets. So fucking good.
At this point I'm trying to decide what to play next. I'd like to go back to doing level-by-level breakdowns, but we'll see.
Speaking of slaughter maps, I ended up playing a legit slaughter map. It was on easy, but that's a highly, highly relative term in this case (1817 enemies in a single arena
). Behold, Dimensions MAP01 on Hey, Not Too Rough:I did some narration on this one, but my mic ended up picking up too many mouth noises for my liking (hence why it's unlisted). I've been practicing it on Hurt Me Plenty, which is a decent jump up in difficulty. I'll probably do another video when I manage to beat that consistently without saves.
84
Random Chat / Re: The Lamest Topic Ever Conceived
« on: June 25, 2021, 12:19:19 AM »It's a big leap, but not quite ready to put in the ~4 weeks I think I should to put in since I've been there so long. If I want out by October...I should try and figure everything out by September, and if I want out earlier, I need to get off my ass and start planning.
The length of time is a tough hurdle to jump. I've been at my current place for almost eight years, and I imagine that quitting would give me some pause even if I already had something lined up. There's a certain comfort in stability.
As of today I was told my work will have masks as OPTIONAL, so that's a thing im not going to complain about.
My workplace still has a mandatory mask policy, but I get the vibe that they might be lifting that soon. They're starting to put in transitional plans to get the programming team back into the office on a rotational basis. The current plan seems to be bringing us in one week and having us at home for three, which I'm pretty okay with. We have to support industrial systems to some degree (one of the programs I wrote interfaces with a conveyor belt system, for instance) so it's impossible to have us completely at home.
The 3DS seems like a really solid homebrew machine—it definitely helps that Rosalina supports remote debugging with devkitARM-gdb over WiFi, which neither of the other consoles I've had to run homebrew on (NDS, Wii) seem to be able to do.
The Vita would be so much more pleasant to develop for if it had remote debugging support. My technique for getting MZX working was to write to a log file and hope that the OS was able to flush it to Flash before the application crashed.
I looked into ways to read the core dumps on my development box, but it seems like the usefulness of said dump was pure RNG.
A modern Amiga 1200-compatible (or similar) devboard/computer would rule, though.
Fuck yes.
85
Random Chat / Re: The Lamest Topic Ever Conceived
« on: June 18, 2021, 01:57:31 PM »
I ended up doing that twice. Once to leave a job that had me barely over the poverty line and working in inner city Baltimore (now that was a life experience) and once to leave a 60-80 hour a week job. Sometimes you've just gotta make a big change like that. If you're not going anywhere at your current place, you can definitely do better elsewhere. Just make sure you have enough of a safety net to fall back on if things don't work out. The economy is a bit rough right now.
As far as the microchips go, I've gotta say, the 5G reception around my area really sucks, and I'm not magnetic at all. This is bullshit.
I had pretty minor reactions to both of my shots. The first shot hurt a bit longer and made me lethargic. The second one gave me very mild queasiness (went away within 12 hours) and left me wired, to the point where I didn't even feel remotely tired until around 8AM.
Kinda seems like the vaxx vs. no-vaxx thing is largely done on the honor system. Ohio's current mandate seems to be that masks are not required for vaccinated folk, but I don't see anyone checking for vaccination cards or anything. Of course, doing that would be stupidly unwieldy. I think they're treating it as a "go at your own risk" sort of scenario, and if anything our numbers have been holding fairly steady. With about half of the state vaccinated and plenty of people carrying around antibodies from the actual viral payload, I think it's starting to run out of viable hosts.
Gotta say, it's really great to be able to go out and actually have a human reaction with someone. It's amazing how much you miss simple things like that when you've been shut in for way too long. Not looking forward to potentially catching the cold and/or flu again, but I'd say it's worth it at this point.
As far as the microchips go, I've gotta say, the 5G reception around my area really sucks, and I'm not magnetic at all. This is bullshit.
I had pretty minor reactions to both of my shots. The first shot hurt a bit longer and made me lethargic. The second one gave me very mild queasiness (went away within 12 hours) and left me wired, to the point where I didn't even feel remotely tired until around 8AM.
Kinda seems like the vaxx vs. no-vaxx thing is largely done on the honor system. Ohio's current mandate seems to be that masks are not required for vaccinated folk, but I don't see anyone checking for vaccination cards or anything. Of course, doing that would be stupidly unwieldy. I think they're treating it as a "go at your own risk" sort of scenario, and if anything our numbers have been holding fairly steady. With about half of the state vaccinated and plenty of people carrying around antibodies from the actual viral payload, I think it's starting to run out of viable hosts.
Gotta say, it's really great to be able to go out and actually have a human reaction with someone. It's amazing how much you miss simple things like that when you've been shut in for way too long. Not looking forward to potentially catching the cold and/or flu again, but I'd say it's worth it at this point.
86
Random Chat / Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« on: June 14, 2021, 02:59:44 PM »
On my current built I just used an inordinate amount of zip ties when I built it. Thankfully I haven't had to fiddle with it too much post-build (all I did was upgrade my NVMe and SATA drives, so it was just a matter of using what was already there).
I did find a picture of my late high school build (the PC I would have had from around 2001-2003) last year, and...oof. Talk about a spider web.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I made my first few posts on arch0wl.com with that PC.
I did find a picture of my late high school build (the PC I would have had from around 2001-2003) last year, and...oof. Talk about a spider web.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I made my first few posts on arch0wl.com with that PC.
87
Random Chat / Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« on: June 11, 2021, 09:20:46 AM »
This kind of makes me feel both happy and meh, but I ended up ordering a new prebuilt PC the other day. It makes me happy because I'm finally getting a new GPU without paying scalper's rates, and it makes me feel meh because I had to order a prebuilt PC just to get a goddamned video card.
That said, it's a Falcon Northwest rig, so at least I know I'm in good hands. They don't offer as many choices as their competitors, but I actually consider that to be a good thing in this case. They have a relatively small number of high-end components that they know work exceptionally well together, and they have a reputation for quality going back to when Quake II was literally the hottest new online game. They also won me over by responding to my questions within ten minutes via e-mail.
Fun fact: this is going to be the first primary gaming system I've owned since 1997 with an AMD processor. My last one was my trusty AMD 80486DX2-80. I've had a couple AMD systems since then (like my Presario 2140US craptop and my last StepMania PC) but they weren't my primary systems.
So yeah, pretty excited. Kinda sucks not being able to build it myself, but at least I can rest assured that at the end of the day they'll probably do a better job than I could.
That said, it's a Falcon Northwest rig, so at least I know I'm in good hands. They don't offer as many choices as their competitors, but I actually consider that to be a good thing in this case. They have a relatively small number of high-end components that they know work exceptionally well together, and they have a reputation for quality going back to when Quake II was literally the hottest new online game. They also won me over by responding to my questions within ten minutes via e-mail.
Fun fact: this is going to be the first primary gaming system I've owned since 1997 with an AMD processor. My last one was my trusty AMD 80486DX2-80. I've had a couple AMD systems since then (like my Presario 2140US craptop and my last StepMania PC) but they weren't my primary systems.
So yeah, pretty excited. Kinda sucks not being able to build it myself, but at least I can rest assured that at the end of the day they'll probably do a better job than I could.
88
Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing
« on: June 05, 2021, 05:48:22 AM »
Just finished Plutonia. Gotta say, it really started to drag near the end. While in part of the second episode, as well as the secret levels, the enemies are placed in such a way to ensure that they have relatively good synergy, the final few levels just felt...rushed. There's one monster spawner in MAP28, for example, that just spawns a whole bunch of enemies in a large arena. Pretty much the only way that room would be even remotely difficult is if you were doing a pacifist run, speedrunning, or something like that. The map gives you plenty of cells, rockets, and shells, and just lets them sort of trickle into the room. I get the feeling that fight was supposed to be some sort of big, epic encounter, but all I did was circle strafe through it and I got out without a scratch.
I did everything after MAP32 (basically, MAP16 and on) blind with minimal saves, and the only time I died is when they decided to throw me into a trap that you have no hope of escaping without prior knowledge. I'm talking teleporting you onto a bridge with multiple revenants and hell knights in close range, so you die within a second or two unless you already have the BFG out. Another common occurrence would be putting you in a position where you're guaranteed to take damage, such as putting a high DPS hitscanner (i.e. a chaingunner) on a ledge with a slow, tanky enemy (i.e. a mancubus) underneath it to fuck with Doom's autoaim. Bullshit like that. A vast majority of the "traps" consist of monster closets with chaingunners and revenants, but they generally aren't placed in a particularly inspiring way.
Pretty much my mindset throughout most of the later maps was, "oh, a key. Grab it, get behind cover. Nothing can hit me. Take potshots at the hitscanners, then circle-strafe everything else. Done. Next room." I'm not sure if it's just me getting used to Plutonia's tricks, the on-the-job training I got with Go 2 It, or if the latter half just trails off hard, but the last hour felt like a slog.
Still, I would recommend it. I'd say there's more good levels in it than there was in vanilla Doom/Doom2.
Next stop: Back to Saturn X: Episode 1.
89
Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing
« on: June 04, 2021, 02:12:32 AM »
I had so much fun with Go 2 It UV that I played it a couple more times. I ended up recording a demo with 100% completion in 12:55. Here's a video:
And a few remarks (also found in the video description):
Now that I played through this a few times I should probably get back to, y'know, the rest of Plutonia.
And a few remarks (also found in the video description):
Quote
Port: PrBoom+ 2.6um (complevel 4)
Gotta say, when I started doing my first Plutonia UV playthrough recently I wasn't exactly looking forward to this map. However, it quickly wound up becoming one of my favorite commercially released Doom levels. There's just something immensely satisfying about it that I can't really put into words.
Overall, I was pretty happy with how this turned out. A few notable "meh" bits:
1) I know rocket dueling cyberdemons is inefficient, but my survival rate for that particular section is somewhere around 50% if I try to use the BFG. It's not even due to splash damage, it's because I tend to eat that particular cybie's rockets for some reason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
2) I normally don't run out of cells during the third courtyard battle, but the arch-viles were really being uncooperative. Still, could have been worse.
3) I think that's the first time I ate a rocket during the baron/cyberdemon fight at the end, and it startled me more than it probably should have. Doesn't help that I accidentally nabbed the last remaining megaspheres at near-full health right before that encounter. Whoops.
Now that I played through this a few times I should probably get back to, y'know, the rest of Plutonia.
90
Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing
« on: May 31, 2021, 02:38:05 AM »
Either I'm getting better at Doom or this map's difficulty is grossly overstated:
I died once due to hubris early in my first attempt, but aside from that it was a reasonably clean run, ending with 200% health/armor (I actually had to run around picking up extra megaspheres to get the 100% items count) and full ammo for all weapons. There's quite a few enemies (206, to be exact) in a fairly limited space, with a ton of arch-viles, revenants (it is Plutonia, after all), and cyberdemons strewn about, but that's counter-balanced by a metric assload of resources and plenty of possibilities for infighting. All in all, it's fun! I didn't find it particularly challenging aside from one courtyard outing that was a bit of a clencher (the four cyberdemons that were alive were spread out, so explosions went everywhere), but it was a hell of a lot of fun.
I died once due to hubris early in my first attempt, but aside from that it was a reasonably clean run, ending with 200% health/armor (I actually had to run around picking up extra megaspheres to get the 100% items count) and full ammo for all weapons. There's quite a few enemies (206, to be exact) in a fairly limited space, with a ton of arch-viles, revenants (it is Plutonia, after all), and cyberdemons strewn about, but that's counter-balanced by a metric assload of resources and plenty of possibilities for infighting. All in all, it's fun! I didn't find it particularly challenging aside from one courtyard outing that was a bit of a clencher (the four cyberdemons that were alive were spread out, so explosions went everywhere), but it was a hell of a lot of fun.