TNT 2: Devilution (Final beta released)

[P41R47]

55 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

Do you mind explaining what's a narrative environment? Thanks.

 

The proper plot of Evilution, the one with the massive spaceship full of aliens, can only be interpreted, in some way, by the names of the different maps, and by some little part of the map. For example: We start the game in System Control, a map where the little computer rooms tries to be somewhat similar to a control station where Doomguy was. In Human BBQ we advance into the enemy territory, and see, in the first room, how the monsters are making a BBQ, in Power Control, Doomguy reach a base and deactivatea mechanism that let he make his way into the next map. In Wormhole we can interprete it in two different ways:1) Doomguy stumbled with a facility where UAC made their experiments with portals, and we get to see a snippet of the other side, or 2)Doomguy reach a UAC facility that is soo corrupted with the forces of hell made their portals start to malfuction and we see, again, the other, more sinister side. In this two interretations at first we can assume that all the corpses in the other side are the one Doomguy left after his battle, but then, we found a new caver in the other side, showing that the map is in htat form by corruption.
Hanger is a somewhat mischievus with the title, because there is no proper hanger in all the map, but it can be interpreted as Hang-er ass Doomguy hanging on into the infested base he stumble now; in this level, we see a proper command room with a lot of computers and electronic devices. In Open Season, Doomguy infiltrates into somekind of radioactive plant, with a reactor room recreated in it. We can assume that Doomguy deactivates this Power Plant, because the next set of levels got a lot of dark areas and tilting light areas, as if this ares were malfunctioning. The text screen here said to us tha we had bandoned the experimental labs 

In Prison we fight our way through a proper Prison, with te central structure being a cell ward. In Metal we have one of the most out there things in a Doom map, yes that room just before of the final big one, in that room we see that, somehow, this base is recording or sending some kind of signal, and after we activate the switch, we are granted the TNT logo... this is a nod to the team, and also its some kind of statement the alien forces leave there, like their mark, as a pirate flag to pirates.

I can go further explaining level by level the little things that team TNT leave in the levels to tell their story, but i think that you can grasp what i mean with narrative enviroment with the walltext up there... And @Gez here explained it in a few words and with the proper usage of english lenguage...
 

7 minutes ago, Gez said:

I suppose it's environmental story-telling. When you put in little details that don't have an impact on gameplay but give the feeling that things happened here, like clues and evidences around the scene of a crime.

 

For example, suppose you want to put a shotgun in a room. You can just drop a shotgun, sure. But you can also drop the shotgun next to a marine corpse, and perhaps place around some other pools of blood and demon corpses. Perhaps put some "damaged" versions of the texture around the scenes, the ones with bullet holes or burn marks or clawings. Then when the players arrives in the room, they're not just picking up a shotgun that was standing there because gameplay considerations said this was a good place to put a shotgun, they arrive at the scene of a battle and can pick up the weapon of a fallen warrior.

 

Or perhaps it's the key needing to progress further into the level that was brought to wherever it's found by someone who initiated lockdown when demons appeared in the base and then tried to flee but perhaps died from his wounds or perhaps some demons had already broken through and caught up with him. Okay so it's Doom and you're kind of limited to telling stories through laying out corpses, but it works!

After posting a few hours back, i went and double-checked again TNT Revilution maps, and yes, there is a lot of enviromental story-telling in them. Adapted to modern standars in level design. What happened that i didn't saw it? Well, at first, my ability at playing this game is somewhat poor, i can only beat and enjoy mapsets witha difficult a little more heavy than Doom 2. Yes, i can't beat almost all the new mapsets out there. Its no shame. I play for fun. So now i'm replaying them in the lowest difficult. Well the difficulty factor for me is important to the experience. In my first run, if i remeber right, i played it in HMP, and yes, TNTR has a higher difficult that the original TNT, so i can't properly enjoy it and check the subtle enviromental narrative in them. My bad with that, sorry if i offended somebody with my sentence.

But, for certain, more details that don't have a proper impact in gameplay, as Gez said, would be great in every mapset out there.
Old maps from the early age of doom modding had a lot of this, thats why i enjoy more the older wads out there.
TVR! and Hell2Pay are great examples of this kind of wads that greatly uses the enviromental story-telling.  

[GarrettChan]

@P41R47I guess you played Evilution more than once and Revilution maybe only once. I can understand that the first time (or even first few times), you're busy learning the maps or whatever, so you don't have the time to pay attention to details.

[P41R47]

6 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

@P41R47I guess you played Evilution more than once and Revilution maybe only once. I can understand that the first time (or even first few times), you're busy learning the maps or whatever, so you don't have the time to pay attention to details.

 

Yeah, thats what just happened @GarrettChan. I played Final Doom a few years back, around 2010 or so. And, at first, i didn't like it a lot. But i remember that i liked TNT a little more than Plutonia, don't know why, maybe the subtle horror vibe some levels had. And maybe i liked Evilution a little more than what i believe at first, because i founded myself playing it again and again, getting frustrated with the massive later levels and always lamenting it flaws and hoping to find a wad that take the enviromental story-telling to the next level.
In 2017-2018, i found Hell2Pay, Perdition's Gate, and Revolution! (TVR!) wads that i highly recommend not only for the well designed levels and good gameplay, also for the pretty good narrative they had. Icarus (a wad that really needed a new dehacked patch back then, fortunately for us. @NightFright made a really good mapinfo patch with new story that i recently made into dehacked for myself), is the best wad with enviromental story-telling that i played by team TNT. I need to beat Eternal Doom to properly talk about it, but i can't convince myself to Struggle (Antaresian Legacy is other mapset with a lot of enviromental story-telling that i really enjoyed) with its vastness, its get tedious pretty fast.
A.L.T is the wad that excels in enviromental story-telling; Eviternity also does it pretty good, but maybe Eviternity achieve it thanks to the OTEX and not soo much for the clues left in the maps as it had no backstory at all, at least, in the .txt.

 

Recently i found myself reading the story that comes in the .txt of the wads and playing the ones where i can feel the authors really put a lot of effort into the backstory. It really adds a lot to the experience while playing the mapsets, even if they are old or bad mapsets, the experience changes completly, and also gives some kind of direction to all the massacre around.

[ReaperAA]

@P41R47 Have u played BTSX wads?

[P41R47]

Yeah, @ReaperAA, i'm totally digging them again. I played BTSX1 a few years back and a few maps of BTSX2, but, as with Revilution, didn't care much about it. I was in specific ''i want horror in everything'' mood, so i played it, but i really skipped a lot of it. I grown up from that phase and started seeking a more retro feel for playing. So now, that i found a port that had all the things that i want, Doom Retro, i'm replaying everything and degusting them like it was the very first time. And it really feels like a first time!

Back in the '94, I spend all my chilldhood's evenings playing Doom V1.666, yes, i didn't played Thy Flesh Consumed till much later, around 2010, so playing Back To Saturn X feels like playing Doom for the very first time. Its really mesmerising that its a vanilla wad. It feels GIANT in comparison to Ultimate Doom.

[GarrettChan]

13 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

so playing Back To Saturn X feels like playing Doom for the very first time.

To be honest though, BtSX Ep1 later maps are quite difficult IMO. At least they are not at the same level of Doom 2. I think they are probably somehow match Plutonia's difficulty.

[P41R47]

Yep! That true, @GarrettChan, for some time i hated all maps that goes the plutonia way... and, somehow, that almost all the doom community taked the Plutonia style. But thats not a problem right now. I grown up from the phase to demostrate myself what i can do, now i just wanna had fun, delight myself with compelling maps, and just had a good time sharing my exp. with all the nice people here.

So i'm a pussy!

Yeah!

P-U-S-S-Y-!

WANTED! is my favorite movie!

 

I play in ITYTD if the mapset is unforgiving even in HNTR.

I like some challenge, but not something that goes far beyond... Perfect Hatred in UV. Challenging but not unfair. I don't like much the approach of thinking all the map as a puzzle, i like tight encounters, but maps that take that to the whole map like 5 Rooms of Doom, Sunder, or other slaughter-ish and uber hard maps like Hell Revealed 2 are not of my taste per ce. I play them, of course, but in the most easy difficulty. So i hate when the difficult settings are not properly implemented in the wads. I know we are all veterans here, 30 years old (and more) people playing their beloved chilldhood game, but come on! A mapset that is so unfair that i get prompted to rage quit is not something i want for having a good time, really.

I don't discard properlly made puzzle mapsets like Absolutly Killed, Killing Adventure, Noye, Cyberdreams, and some others. They are fun and challenging but for thinking in some way out-of-the-can.

So Devilution team, please, take that in consideration. I don't know your mapping philosophy, but team TNT gave us an adventure, an experience, that can be enjoyed beyond the difficulty of the mapset. I hope TNT2: Devilution will be as good, or even better, to what TNT Evilution was when it first saw the light.

[GarrettChan]

7 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

I don't like much the approach of thinking all the map as a puzzle

I want to show my no damage UV Max run of Perf... eh... not again...

 

I totally understand your approach. That's why I feel you have played Evilution multiple times. These old games require foreknowledge most of the time and I don't deny they are hard and even not enjoyable when you do blind playthrough. This is the biggest difference between new and old games IMO. That's why new games like to use check points so you don't need to manually save or whatever (of course, sometimes having the feature of manual save is good), or punishing games tend to keep the sessions short (good example would be Super Meat Boy, most of the levels are shorter than 60 seconds).

[P41R47]

39 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

I want to show my no damage UV Max run of Perf... eh... not again...

 

I totally understand your approach. That's why I feel you have played Evilution multiple times. These old games require foreknowledge most of the time and I don't deny they are hard and even not enjoyable when you do blind playthrough. This is the biggest difference between new and old games IMO. That's why new games like to use check points so you don't need to manually save or whatever (of course, sometimes having the feature of manual save is good), or punishing games tend to keep the sessions short (good example would be Super Meat Boy, most of the levels are shorter than 60 seconds).

 

Yeah! Thats exactly what i think, @GarrettChan!
I love Super Meat Boy! So i love Demonfear's, Scythe's and Perdition's Gate's short and challenging levels.
I don't like at all but i can, somehow, enjoy a little of I Wanna Be The Guy! Same with Deus Vult I&II, Sunlust, Valiant, and other mapsets with savescumming a lot... Until i rage quit because i can only play 1 or 2 minutes before dying again:P
Short and challenging over massive and unfair.
TNT had massive maps, but even in those maps, the encounters were tight and challenging... Don't count METAL. That level in higher difficulties is practically nonsense.
Maps like map03 from Ancient Aliens... the one with the infinite Arachnatrons, are totally suffocating, not having even time to breath. Probably its feels good after many tries to finally finish it, but if the only problen were the arachnatrons that would be fair. But that map had the arachnatrons AND pretty hard encounters. Surely if i finished it in UV i would feel like a DoomGod, but how much time i need to spend doing that?
So yes... ITYTD for me, and that why there are different difficult settings.
Difficult setting are grace for people like me when properly implemented.
But everybody is free to aim their work to who they want.
So well... C'est la vie!
 

Edited October 30, 2019 by P41R47

[Tycitron]

So hows it going now? been awhile.

[Valboom]

Hype!

[P41R47]

Totally hyped!

Hope this finaly sees the day of the light.

[Tycitron]

Yup still super hyped! might go replay the old 2009 demo again.

[Mk7_Centipede]

27 minutes ago, Tycitron said:

Yup still super hyped! might go replay the old 2009 demo again.

 

dont do it!  just wait!  

[StalkerZHS]

I will be ready to make a midi/opl dual mix when it arrives

[GarrettChan]

TNT: Foreverevolution ;P

[Tycitron]

1 hour ago, Mk7_Centipede said:

 

dont do it!  just wait!  

ahhh alright i guess

[Jaws In Space]

5 hours ago, Tycitron said:

Yup still super hyped! might go replay the old 2009 demo again.

None of the maps from the 2009 demo will be in Devilution. Only 2 of those maps made it over to Revilution, both of which were removed when I took over that project.

[Tycitron]

14 minutes ago, Jaws In Space said:

None of the maps from the 2009 demo will be in Devilution.

Oh interesting...

[P41R47]

43 minutes ago, Jaws In Space said:

None of the maps from the 2009 demo will be in Devilution. Only 2 of those maps made it over to Revilution, both of which were removed when I took over that project.

Oh, shit... i'm drooling!

[Gez]

8 hours ago, Jaws In Space said:

None of the maps from the 2009 demo will be in Devilution. Only 2 of those maps made it over to Revilution, both of which were removed when I took over that project.

Kind of a Ship of Theseus thing going on with this project.

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

4 hours ago, Gez said:

Kind of a Ship of Theseus thing going on with this project.

Wow. I haven't heard that phrase since college. And I still remember the joke the teacher told as an example.

 

A man walks into a small country store in the hills of Kentucky. In a glass case on the wall behind the counter is an old, weathered, well-used woodsman's axe. A sign under the case reads 'Once belonged to Abraham Lincoln.' The man is amazed. He asks, "That axe really belonged to Lincoln?". The proprietor says "Yep. It's had two new heads and three new handles, but it was Lincoln's."

 

To get back on topic: when Revilution was released, the links to Convilution were removed. The reason given was 'because of Devilution'. Does that mean some maps from Convilution could end up in Devilution?

[FearTheReaper]

I prefer "while identical in all other ways, are not identical if they exist at two different times" applied even to people. Since identity is just a program and idea is a virus, a name but objects and people, their actions, creations do exists, even if relative. Past or future you is not you, only here and right now. Only these finished Devilution and Revilution are the real ones as the result of people choices.

As for Convilution from what I recall most of these maps were like beta phase or so, it's interesting to play for what is worth but lacks substance. It feels like bootleg version of TNT...

[Marcaek]

8 hours ago, Gez said:

Kind of a Ship of Theseus thing going on with this project.

 

The parallels with Plutonia 2's development cycle are eerie.

[Bucket]

*update on Devilution thread*

"oh shit, there's an update on Devilution"

*click on thread*

"hey any updates?"

 

4 hours ago, FearTheReaper said:

I prefer "while identical in all other ways, are not identical if they exist at two different times" applied even to people. Since identity is just a program and idea is a virus, a name but objects and people, their actions, creations do exists, even if relative. Past or future you is not you, only here and right now.

WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY

[Marcaek]

Regarding progress, there has been plenty in the form of endless tweaks and bugfixes, so nothing fancy to show off. Testing team is working round the clock breaking what they can though.

[sincity2100]

I'm glad that Devilution is still going, it has been 10 years since it's developement, I uploaded few maps in it and one of them ended in Revilution, the other is in Convulution.

 

So far when I'm looking at the screenshots, it looks visually stunning, I hope we see the final product real soon.

[StalkerZHS]

Release an open beta?

 

Black Mesa and Revilution did and they were able to squash a few things pretty easily.

[Bucket]

NO IT A SEKRET

[lirui1001]

2000 years later