CatacombGL - source port for the Catacomb 3D games

[Master O]

On 3/31/2019 at 5:13 PM, Arno said:

I've just released version 0.2.0 !

This new release features some significant improvements, such as:

• Support for the Catacomb Armageddon! All levels and monsters are present. Requires the Catacombs Pack from GOG.com.
• Game selection screen with the option to manually browse to a folder with game data. Suggested by @Master O.
• Support for x64 builds. Implemented by Arsen "Honeybunch" Tufankjian.
• Support for full screen and borderless windowed mode.
• In game help screens. Accessible via the F1 key.
• Customizable player turn speed. Suggested by @doomjedi.
• Customizable player run button. By default, the run button is not bound to any key, since the original games did not support running. Suggested by doomjedi and Tricob.

Enjoy! And as always, please let me know if you encounter any bugs or have some suggestions for improvements.

 

Suggestion:

 

Multiplayer DM once after all 3 Catacombs games are supported.

Edited May 18, 2019 by Master O

[Arno]

6 hours ago, DoomN00b said:

I'm having a tremendous amount of problem with the keyboard configuration in this port - it would appear as if international keys are not supported - unlike in GZDoom, the engine cannot detect the approximate keys when pressed - as such, I cannot assign my regular control keys.

 

Is this an inherent limitation of SDL2? What can I do to alter the source code to support my additional keyboard-keys? Does your port call for some kind of UTF-table? Might that be the problem?

 

Thanks for bringing this problem to my attention.

I think in general SDL2 supports international keys, but in the source port I'm actively blocking some keys from being assigned. Like ESC, which is needed to open the menu, and the numerical keys, which open scrolls. But I was in fact blocking way, way more keys than needed. I tried to fix this. Can you please check if the development build in the attached zip file solves your problem?

 

4 hours ago, Master O said:

Suggestion:

 

Multiplayer DM once after all 3 Catacombs games are supported.

 

Once the Catacomb Adventure trilogy is supported, adding Catacomb 3-D: The Descent would be the next thing on my todo list. :-)

I haven't considered multiplayer DM yet. I can imagine that you're curious about how it would look like, but I wonder if in practice it would just end up as an exercise in spamming fireballs.

 

 

CatacombGL-bin-0-2-1-x86-keyboardfix.zip

[DoomN00b]

14 hours ago, Arno said:

 

Thanks for bringing this problem to my attention.

I think in general SDL2 supports international keys, but in the source port I'm actively blocking some keys from being assigned. Like ESC, which is needed to open the menu, and the numerical keys, which open scrolls. But I was in fact blocking way, way more keys than needed. I tried to fix this. Can you please check if the development build in the attached zip file solves your problem?

 

CatacombGL-bin-0-2-1-x86-keyboardfix.zip

 

Eyy! That worked! Thank a lot dude. ^^

It doesn't display the keys, but it does respond to them, and that's good enough for me! :D

Btw... If I may be so bold, I think you should consider merging your source-code with ECWolf, and thereby adding powerful modding tools to your build! = )

Edited May 19, 2019 by DoomN00b

[Arno]

7 hours ago, DoomN00b said:

 

Eyy! That worked! Thank a lot dude. ^^

It doesn't display the keys, but it does respond to them, and that's good enough for me! :D

Btw... If I may be so bold, I think you should consider merging your source-code with ECWolf, and thereby adding powerful modding tools to your build! = )

You're welcome! I very much appreciate your feedback; it definitly helps me, as well as other players.

The names of the keys are obtained from SDL2. I suspect that some keys are not displayed, because the source port uses the limited font from the game itself. That font only contains bitmaps of the standard ASCII printable characters. Characters like "æ" or "ß" are not part of the font and therefore cannot be displayed. It's not impossible to solve; I could draw the missing characters myself. :-)

 

The current source code stores the monster and item behavior in structures that resemble a DECORATE format. So I did some preparations with future mod support in mind. But it still has a long way to go. My main focus now is to get all four games supported.

 

 

[Master O]

23 hours ago, Arno said:

 

Thanks for bringing this problem to my attention.

I think in general SDL2 supports international keys, but in the source port I'm actively blocking some keys from being assigned. Like ESC, which is needed to open the menu, and the numerical keys, which open scrolls. But I was in fact blocking way, way more keys than needed. I tried to fix this. Can you please check if the development build in the attached zip file solves your problem?

 

 

Once the Catacomb Adventure trilogy is supported, adding Catacomb 3-D: The Descent would be the next thing on my todo list. :-)

I haven't considered multiplayer DM yet. I can imagine that you're curious about how it would look like, but I wonder if in practice it would just end up as an exercise in spamming fireballs.

 

 

CatacombGL-bin-0-2-1-x86-keyboardfix.zip

 

If CatacombsGL supports modding, that doesn't prevent people from potentially adding new weapons to make DM less repetitive.  Who knows?

Edited May 19, 2019 by Master O

[AJOgames]

On 5/18/2019 at 1:59 PM, Arno said:

 

Thanks for bringing this problem to my attention.

I think in general SDL2 supports international keys, but in the source port I'm actively blocking some keys from being assigned. Like ESC, which is needed to open the menu, and the numerical keys, which open scrolls. But I was in fact blocking way, way more keys than needed. I tried to fix this. Can you please check if the development build in the attached zip file solves your problem?

 

 

Once the Catacomb Adventure trilogy is supported, adding Catacomb 3-D: The Descent would be the next thing on my todo list. :-)

I haven't considered multiplayer DM yet. I can imagine that you're curious about how it would look like, but I wonder if in practice it would just end up as an exercise in spamming fireballs.

 

 

CatacombGL-bin-0-2-1-x86-keyboardfix.zip

Besides, there are no in-game player sprites, I can make some though, however I don't know if the engine (an earlier version of the Wolf3d engine) supports multi-directional sprites, I say this  because enemies and projectiles in Catacomb 3D, Abyss, Armageddon, Apocalypse, and HoverTank 3-D only have front-facing sprites.

which makes me believe it was either an engine limitation or a memory limitation.

 

I mentioned engine limitations because it was most likely a feature not yet implemented into the engine, since it was still under development when Catacomb 3D was released. 

I mentioned memory limitations because Softdisk, who distributed all of these games, were very stubborn about memory size, mainly because they only sold games on smaller scale (memory-wise) floppy disks, I don't know if it was 3.5 floppies or some other kind, (I'm only 19, I didn't really grow up with floppy disks, so I can get really confused with the various types of floppy disks) but that is why for example Keen Dreams didn't have music, even though there were some planned, these planned music tracks would however be used in later Keen games. (it's also why I believe Catacomb 3-D only has one music track throughout the entire game.)

 

But yeah, If you want me to create in-game Player sprites for multiplayer, I can do that, all you have to do is ask, I'll make sure it stays within the EGA color palette for that more "authentic" feel. :)

[Arno]

21 hours ago, AJOgames said:

Besides, there are no in-game player sprites, I can make some though, however I don't know if the engine (an earlier version of the Wolf3d engine) supports multi-directional sprites, I say this  because enemies and projectiles in Catacomb 3D, Abyss, Armageddon, Apocalypse, and HoverTank 3-D only have front-facing sprites.

which makes me believe it was either an engine limitation or a memory limitation.

 

I mentioned engine limitations because it was most likely a feature not yet implemented into the engine, since it was still under development when Catacomb 3D was released. 

I mentioned memory limitations because Softdisk, who distributed all of these games, were very stubborn about memory size, mainly because they only sold games on smaller scale (memory-wise) floppy disks, I don't know if it was 3.5 floppies or some other kind, (I'm only 19, I didn't really grow up with floppy disks, so I can get really confused with the various types of floppy disks) but that is why for example Keen Dreams didn't have music, even though there were some planned, these planned music tracks would however be used in later Keen games. (it's also why I believe Catacomb 3-D only has one music track throughout the entire game.)

 

But yeah, If you want me to create in-game Player sprites for multiplayer, I can do that, all you have to do is ask, I'll make sure it stays within the EGA color palette for that more "authentic" feel. :)

The Catacomb 3D engine is indeed limited to front-facing sprites, as there is no support for multi-directional sprites. With a bit of a hack the developers made the little bunny in Armageddon hop in two directions, but that's as far as it goes. But I suspect that aside from the engine limitation, the development time was also a major limitation. Softdisk had a release schedule of one game every two months. Creating eight-directional monster sprites would be very challening with such tight deadlines.

 

It's not impossible to add support for multi-directional sprites in CatacombGL. But at this moment I don't want to give a hard promise on such a feature, because it currently looks like I'll be busy with just the must-have features for at least another year. I haven't really decided yet which direction to take when I get there. We'll see. :)

Have you considered creating a Catacomb-inspired 16 color player sprite for Doom multiplayer?

[Blake00]

I had a similar/opposite problem when I was making my monsters for my Quest for Glory IV 3D Hexen Zdoom mod where because battles in the original Sierra point & click adventure game Quest for Glory 4 were fought side on (like street fighter/mortal kombat) and most monsters didn't engage in any attack until in that side battle mode, I had no frontal attack frames for nearly all the monsters. So I had to sit there manually drawing the front sprite frames of these monsters using their side and back and non battle shots as a reference, and then make more frames so that they animated. It literally took me months.. never again lol!!!

 

So yeah someone could design nice side and back sprite frames for all the Catacomb monsters using the frontal ones as a reference but it'll be a lot of work haha. You do get faster and better at it the more you knock down though.

[DoomN00b]

So, I just completed playing through Catacomb: Abyss, and I have some feedback, and feature-requests.

 

1. For some reason, the mouse-sensitivity in this game is incredibly high with my mouse! : O I've got turn-speed all the way down to 100, and sensitivity down to 0,5 as well as the manual adjustment on my mouse set to the lowest, and it's still hecka' fast! Could you implement the ability to decrease turn-speed even less than 100, and allow for even further down-adjustment of the mouse-sensitivity (than 0,5)?

 

Here are my specs so you can see what the specific hardware is:

 

MB: MSI Z370-A Pro
CPU: Core i3 8100 (quad-core)
GPU: nVidia GTX 1060 6gb
RAM: 16 gb DDR4

*MOUSE*: Zowie FK1

 

2. Inputting the warp-level codes is tricky, so could you by chance implement the console on the tilde-key? This would make it easier to activate and test cheats, for instance. ECwolf has an implementation of Debug-mode, with various shortcut commands, but I'm not very fond of that - the IDtech 1-4 way of doing it, with a drop-down command-line is far more elegant and powerful.

 

ECwolf way:

https://maniacsvault.net/ecwolf/wiki/Debug_mode

 

GZdoom way:

https://zdoom.org/wiki/Console

 

 

[Arno]

Thanks again for the detailed feedback! I really appreciate it!

 

The turn speed only affects the keyboard turn speed, so I think you only need lower mouse sensitivity. With the attached development build, you should be able to lower the mouse sensitivity down to 0.1. As a side note, Catacomb Apocalypse is accessible in that build, but neither complete nor fully tested.

 

There is actually a console available under the tilde-key, but currently it is read-only. I do have the intention to implement some console commands in there, similar to the console in  GZDoom or Quake. But so far I haven't given it that much thought yet.

I understand that console commands are preferable, but can you explain a little bit about what the tricky part is of inputting the warp-level codes? To warp to another level, I keep F10 pressed (backspace in Armageddon), then press W. When the dialog is visible I release both buttons and type the number of the level. Then I press Enter to close the dialog. I just noticed that the numerical keypad didn't work in the warp dialog, so I fixed that as well.

 

CatacombGL-bin-0-2-1-x86-slowermouse.zip

Edited July 30, 2019 by Arno

[Master O]

On 9/10/2018 at 4:56 PM, Arno said:

I always had an interest in doing a source port of my own. However, I figured that creating a Doom source port would prove to be too time-consuming for me. That's why I secretly started developing a source port for The Catacomb Abyss in late 2015. There is of course already the excellent Reflection Keen source port, which supports all Catacomb 3D games. But rather then aiming for a Chocolate-style experience, I decided to go for a source port that offers improved visuals, based on OpenGL. So CatacombGL it is.

 

Updated 2019-05-14: version 0.2.1 is released, which includes various bug fixes.

 

Download CatacombGL v0.2.1 Alpha (GitHub)

 

Main features:
* Runs native on Windows 7/8/10.
* Hardware accelerated 3D rendering via OpenGL, supporting widescreen resolutions, a customizable field of view and an uncapped frame rate.
* Player, projectile and monster movement with floating point precision.
* Supports The Catacomb Abyss version 1.13 (shareware) and version 1.24 (as included in the Catacombs Pack from gog.com).

* Supports The Catacomb Armageddon version 1.02 (as included in the Catacombs Pack from gog.com).
* Supports WASD and mouselook.

 

Current limitations as of version 0.2.1:
* No support for game controllers.
* No backwards compatibility with saved games from the original DOS game.
* Only Adlib sound card emulation; no PC speaker emulation.
* No "demo" functionality (preview slideshow of Catacomb Armageddon and Apocalypse in shareware version).
* No fade-in effect when entering a level.

 

How to install:
CatacombGL does not run standalone, but requires the original game data (levels, pictures, sounds, etc) to be present on the system. The Catacomb Abyss game data can be obtained legitimately and free-of-charge by downloading the 1.13 shareware version. Various websites offer the shareware version for download, see for example https://archive.org/details/TheCatacombAbyss. Alternatively, the game data can also be obtained by buying the Catacombs Pack from gog.com, see https://www.gog.com/game/catacombs_pack. The differences between the shareware and commercial versions are purely cosmetic. The Catacombs Pack is required in order to run The Catacomb Armageddon.
The CatacombGL.exe can be run from any location. When started, a selection screen with an overview of all the supported games is shown. In case the Catacombs Pack was installed via the GOG installer, the game data will be auto-detected. Otherwise, it is possible to manually browse to the folder which contains either the Catacombs Pack or the shareware version.

 

If anyone experiences any issues or if there are suggestions for improvement, please let me know!

 

Screenshots

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

For people that do not care for widescreen support, texture filtering and OpenGL-style lighting: it is possible to switch that all off to get a more authentic look.

 

 

 

What else needs to be done for Catacombs GL now, out of curiosity?

[Arno]

On ‎6‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 6:15 PM, Master O said:

 

What else needs to be done for Catacombs GL now, out of curiosity?

At this moment I'm about half way in getting the Catacomb Apocalypse up and running. When that's done, the next step would be to integrate Catacomb 3D: The Descent into CatacombGL. Then there's also some stuff to do to ease maintenance, like creating an automated build and making the code less dependent on Windows-specific functions. That's pretty much the scope that I have in mind for a proper version 1.0.

[AJOgames]

On 6/12/2019 at 12:59 PM, Arno said:

The Catacomb 3D engine is indeed limited to front-facing sprites, as there is no support for multi-directional sprites. With a bit of a hack the developers made the little bunny in Armageddon hop in two directions, but that's as far as it goes. But I suspect that aside from the engine limitation, the development time was also a major limitation. Softdisk had a release schedule of one game every two months. Creating eight-directional monster sprites would be very challening with such tight deadlines.

 

It's not impossible to add support for multi-directional sprites in CatacombGL. But at this moment I don't want to give a hard promise on such a feature, because it currently looks like I'll be busy with just the must-have features for at least another year. I haven't really decided yet which direction to take when I get there. We'll see. :)

Have you considered creating a Catacomb-inspired 16 color player sprite for Doom multiplayer?

Not really, but I might do it in the near future.

[Newbert]

On 7/5/2019 at 10:45 PM, Arno said:

At this moment I'm about half way in getting the Catacomb Apocalypse up and running. When that's done, the next step would be to integrate Catacomb 3D: The Descent into CatacombGL. Then there's also some stuff to do to ease maintenance, like creating an automated build and making the code less dependent on Windows-specific functions. That's pretty much the scope that I have in mind for a proper version 1.0.

IMHO Catacomb 3D is fully playable as it is (Reflection Keen) due to acceptable resolution and the option to adjust controls in-game (thanks to original game, not RK). Its the Catacombs Adventure series that was low-res and hard to play, thats why your port is great.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Newbert

[Arno]

On ‎7‎/‎30‎/‎2019 at 2:33 AM, Newbert said:

Its the Catacombs Adventure series that was low-res and hard to play

True, that's one of the main reasons why I picked Catacomb Abyss as the game to port. From a programming perspective, the game has potential. Gameplay and artwork were quite decent for a game from 1992, but I feel it is held back by the limits of its game engine.

But there were multiple reasons why I picked Catacomb Abyss. I fondly remember playing the game back in the 90's. It also helps a lot that the game is open source now. What's also a big plus is that anyone can try out the game for free, thanks to the shareware version.

[AJOgames]

I've run into issues trying to run Apocalypse in CatacombGL, when I open up CatacombGL, it detects the game, but when I try to play Apocalypse, it says it is unable to read files with the ".ABS" file extension, (examples, EGAGRAPH.ABS, GAMEMAPS.ABS, AUDIO.ABS) which I believe means that CatacombGL tries to look for Abyss files rather than Apocalypse files, (which have the .APC file extension)

[Arno]

18 hours ago, AJOgames said:

I've run into issues trying to run Apocalypse in CatacombGL, when I open up CatacombGL, it detects the game, but when I try to play Apocalypse, it says it is unable to read files with the ".ABS" file extension, (examples, EGAGRAPH.ABS, GAMEMAPS.ABS, AUDIO.ABS) which I believe means that CatacombGL tries to look for Abyss files rather than Apocalypse files, (which have the .APC file extension)

Sorry, currently only Abyss and Armageddon are supported. The binaries that I've posted in this thread are development builds and as such might contain bits and pieces of Apocalypse.

 

At this moment I've got pretty much everything in place for Apocalypse, but I still need to play test it some more. So an official release with proper support for Apocalypse can be expected soon.

[AJOgames]

On 8/10/2019 at 8:40 AM, Arno said:

Sorry, currently only Abyss and Armageddon are supported. The binaries that I've posted in this thread are development builds and as such might contain bits and pieces of Apocalypse.

 

At this moment I've got pretty much everything in place for Apocalypse, but I still need to play test it some more. So an official release with proper support for Apocalypse can be expected soon.

Sounds great! good luck on your project. 

[Arno]

Version 0.3.0 is out!

 

New in this release, among various fixes, is support for the Catacomb Apocalypse!

That means from now on the full Catacomb Adventure trilogy can be played with CatacombGL.

 

 

 

On ‎5‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 1:42 PM, DoomN00b said:

It doesn't display the keys, but it does respond to them, and that's good enough for me! :D

 

The font from the original games was quite limited. With this new release, I've extended the font with a bunch of extra characters. So hopefully all keyboard keys are displayed properly now.

 

On ‎8‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 6:44 AM, AJOgames said:

Sounds great! good luck on your project. 

Thank you!

[Master O]

6 hours ago, Arno said:

Version 0.3.0 is out!

 

New in this release, among various fixes, is support for the Catacomb Apocalypse!

That means from now on the full Catacomb Adventure trilogy can be played with CatacombGL.

 

 

 

 

The font from the original games was quite limited. With this new release, I've extended the font with a bunch of extra characters. So hopefully all keyboard keys are displayed properly now.

 

Thank you!

 

Now all that remains is Catacombs 3-D, right?

[Blake00]

Incredible..

 

You're doing gods work my son.

[Arno]

On ‎8‎/‎24‎/‎2019 at 4:24 AM, Master O said:

 

Now all that remains is Catacombs 3-D, right?

Correct. I'm quite looking forward to working with Catacomb 3-D. Although in the art and design department it lacks the diversity of the Adventure trilogy, it's still an interesting milestone in the history of First Person Shooters. It is after all part of the early work of John Carmack and John Romero. The game demonstrates how they were experimenting with technology and game design, which would later evolve into Doom. I think it would be nice to revisit such a game with a modern screen resolution and controls.

 

On ‎8‎/‎24‎/‎2019 at 10:49 AM, Blake00 said:

Incredible..

 

You're doing gods work my son.

Thank you! I feel blessed with the continued support for this project.

[Arno]

Here's a work-in-progress screenshot of Catacomb 3-D running in CatacombGL. I slightly modified the status bar, to make it suitable for widescreen resolutions.

 

[Arno]

Finally, version 0.4.0 is out!

 

New in this release is support for Catacomb 3D: The Descent. Additionally, there is now an option in all games for PC Speaker emulation, which was added by integrating the sound code from the Reflection Keen source port.

Since this is the first release which supports all four Catacomb 3D games, I've labelled it "beta". That means the source port now contains all the major features, but I would still like to make some small improvements and possible bug fixes before I call it final.

 

A small side note on Catacomb 3D: I'm aware that in the original DOS game you could get stuck a lot on walls. I've thought about replicating that behavior, but it's such an annoyance when navigating through tight corridors. So for now I've made the walls behave the same as in the other games, which means you can just slide along walls. 

 

[Master O]

On 1/2/2020 at 4:26 PM, Arno said:

Finally, version 0.4.0 is out!

 

New in this release is support for Catacomb 3D: The Descent. Additionally, there is now an option in all games for PC Speaker emulation, which was added by integrating the sound code from the Reflection Keen source port.

Since this is the first release which supports all four Catacomb 3D games, I've labelled it "beta". That means the source port now contains all the major features, but I would still like to make some small improvements and possible bug fixes before I call it final.

 

A small side note on Catacomb 3D: I'm aware that in the original DOS game you could get stuck a lot on walls. I've thought about replicating that behavior, but it's such an annoyance when navigating through tight corridors. So for now I've made the walls behave the same as in the other games, which means you can just slide along walls. 

 

 

You're doing a great job.  Keep up the good work.

 

Last I checked, you were also going to do an IWAD-like selection screen for all the games, which in turn would all be under one executable.  Also, allowing people to run their own music within the game like Descent Rebirth sourceports do for Descent.

Edited January 4, 2020 by Master O

[Arno]

Thanks, Master O.

The source port already runs as a single executable and the IWAD-like selection screen for all the games is also included.

 

I have no concrete plans yet for allowing custom music or other mod support. I would first like to work towards a proper 1.0 release, which involves some bug fixing, a few minor features to be added, along with some code cleanup and maintenance stuff.

 

[Master O]

6 hours ago, Arno said:

Thanks, Master O.

The source port already runs as a single executable and the IWAD-like selection screen for all the games is also included.

 

I have no concrete plans yet for allowing custom music or other mod support. I would first like to work towards a proper 1.0 release, which involves some bug fixing, a few minor features to be added, along with some code cleanup and maintenance stuff.

 

 

Speaking of minor features, you may want to add rapid fire if possible.  It's easier on the fingers.

[Jello]

Arno, I just want to say that you've done some awesome work on this. I can't believe it's been over a year since I've looked at this project.

 

I just got to play Armageddon for the first time in almost thirty years. Well, be fair when I still had an ME computer with a 3.5 floppy I did play it a few times, but that's been probably been 18 years. It's still special to me because it was the first FPS game I had ever played, before Wolfenstein 3D, and before Doom.

 

The Trees still piss me the fuck off though. Oh, you crowd me and cut me off, so I kill you, and I'm still going to have to walk back through your burning trunks.

 

I would like to ask you, do those things have something like an activation sector around them? As in, you have to walk so far past the tree to activate it, or timing? Because some of them just come to life, some wait until you walk past them, some seem to wait until you turn around. Same with the serpent women that start off as stone. I've always been curious about their behavior, because it seem to vary between them all.

 

I did notice though, that if you turn vsync off, the mouse slows down to a crawl. Which, it doesn't matter too much, there's no real reason to run it with vsync off, but it's something that's there.

 

Other question, are you planning on putting in mouse 4 and mouse 5 controls? Right now it seems to only recognizes mouse left, right and middle. If it's not possible that's fine; I've played plenty of games that don't seem to recognize mouse 4 and 5. 

 

But again, great job on the project. It's nice to have a reliable way to play the Catacombs games again. They're not the best games ever made, but I still really like the creative variety in enemies, and the excellent pixel art on them, including the death animations. So yeah, thanks for working on this.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Jello

[Arno]

@Master O: Rapid (automatic) fire is a nice suggestion. Although it could be considered as cheating, I think some people will appreciate it as an option when facing the red demons in the final levels of Catacomb 3D. I will add it to the todo list.

 

@Jello: thanks a lot for the kind words and constructive feedback!

The behavior of the trees is perhaps not so sophisticated as it seems. After they've spotted you, they will wait a specified amount of time before they come to life. Each individual tree has its own specific wait time, which is encoded in the adjacent tile south of the tree object. The serpent statues and hanging skeletons work in a similar fashion.

 

The mouse sensitivity is indeed not working as it should. Someone else reported via Twitter that his mouse was way too fast with vsync enabled. So this is definitly something that I will fix on short term. In hindsight, I suspect that this is also the issue that @DoomN00b was experiencing in June, but at that time I could not link it to vsync yet.

 

I had the intention of supporting the mouse 4 and mouse 5 buttons, but unfortunately I never tested this, since I only have 3-button mouses available. I just looked at the code and spotted a mistake. Hopefully the fix will be effective.

 

Thanks again for the feedback; I really appreciate it!

 

Edited January 6, 2020 by Arno

[Jello]

That's really interesting about the static enemies. I was always racking my brain as a kid trying to figure out their behavior. So it's nice to know I wasted all that time spent on firing at them repeatedly from a distance to get them to wake up, walking behind them and then running back around, walking backwards while looking at them. Thanks for the clarification; knowing they're just individually set to a specific amount of time before they wake up makes sense. Doesn't mean I don't hate the trees, but at least I know there's no reason to play around with them trying to get them to wake up.

 

As for the mouse speed, I think it more depends on the DPI of your mouse. I have a mouse that has five different DPI settings, ranging from 400-2000. I usually keep it on the middle setting, 1200 DPI for pretty much everything. When I started playing the newest version it was all over the screen, small movements would do a 180 or more. So I tried it with VSYNC off, and it was extremely slow no matter what DPI setting it was on, or what I changed in the menu. Long story short, I set the DPI down to 400, and the game works pretty well. I still get occasional 180 flips from small movement, but very few. It feels very close to playing it with a mouse and keyboard when I was a kid. So, it seems some work needs to be done, but hopefully my experience will give you a bit more information.

 

Hopefully your mouse 4/5 fix works. I'd certainly be willing to test it out. It would be nice to be able to bind fire to mouse left, zapper to right mouse, and xterminator to mouse 4. But it's really not a big deal, I just don't like pressing my middle mouse button when I have two buttons on the side.

 

And lastly, I do agree about the automatic fire feeling like cheating. That's the reason the zappers are in the game, so you don't just use the magick missile the entire game. Maybe if it could still be fired at the same rate by clicking, but when the button is held down it fires more slowly, like Doom's pistol. But then it's just complicating everything more. Because if automatic fire was the same rate as clicking fire (because you can fire pretty fast when clicking), then it defeats the purpose of zappers. And besides, clicking in this game gave me training for Contra and Diablo. Although I will admit, my index finger felt it when I got done playing yesterday.

 

Anyway, thanks again for the great port, and for your hard work on it. It was really fun getting to play Armageddon again.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 7, 2020 by Jello