Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition

[Kinsie]

I'd be curious to hear an elaboration on the "downgrade" bit, honestly - Night Dive's track record isn't exactly flawless, but I haven't seen or heard of anything obviously missing or broken in this new release.

[Individualised]

There seems to be an issue with the way the game handles exiting intermission/fluff screens - for example if you're currently holding down a key while you exit a level, the game thinks you've pressed a key while on the intermission screen, so you only see the intermission screen for about half a second before it disappears. Since you have to walk in order to exit a level this pretty much happens all of the time. It happens with the game over screen too. Is this bug known?

Edited August 3, 2023 by Individualised

[G19Doom]

Let‘s gib some ice!

[Major Arlene]

4 hours ago, Kinsie said:

I'd be curious to hear an elaboration on the "downgrade" bit, honestly - Night Dive's track record isn't exactly flawless, but I haven't seen or heard of anything obviously missing or broken in this new release.

People just genuinely seem perturbed they have to pay money because people worked on making ROTT actually playable. The horror.

[Kinsie]

 

[PsychEyeball]

9 hours ago, Major Arlene said:

People just genuinely seem perturbed they have to pay money because people worked on making ROTT actually playable. The horror.

I'm wondering if it's because people didn't have to pay for the Doom and Quake remasters so therefore, they expect every remaster project to just be a free upgrade.

 

The thing is that Doom and Quake are huge shooters that everyone knows and most likely already bought. And of course, these franchises are Bethesda driven and it's obvious this company has the clout and money to just let people get the new versions of the games for free. Both games also have the benefit of having a very strong porting community; with either game, there are lots of ports which can run the game better than it ever did way back when they first got released.

 

On the other hand, Rise of the Triad is nowhere near as well known, sold nowhere near as many copies than either Doom or Quake, was already antiquated in the tech department when it came out and even though the source code was made available eons ago, do not have a definitive source port either. Icculus was very crash-prone and is super outdated today, WinRottGL is extremely inaccurate, looks super washed out and butt ugly and finally ROTTexpr, while being pretty close to being definitive, is not very user friendly and has a few control hiccups which can hamper the experience (and the project also seems dead having not being updated since 2 full years).

 

So yeah, charging 20 bucks for ROTT today makes sense contrary to what some people would believe. This wasn't some passion project that only 1-2 people worked on, there was a full team behind this effort to bring back an obscure game with a cult following.

[aloysiusfreeman]

ngl, never was aware of ROTT. Gonna look forward to playing this eventually (in a few months or year :\ )

[Revenant100]

15 hours ago, Kinsie said:

but I haven't seen or heard of anything obviously missing or broken in this new release.

As I'm sure you've heard by now, ROTT fans around the globe have been up in arms regarding the truly calamitous omission of omissions: the acclaimed GUNFINITY selection warning.

 

 

[D4NUK1]

1 hour ago, PsychEyeball said:

I'm wondering if it's because people didn't have to pay for the Doom and Quake remasters so therefore, they expect every remaster project to just be a free upgrade.

 

The thing is that Doom and Quake are huge shooters that everyone knows and most likely already bought. And of course, these franchises are Bethesda driven and it's obvious this company has the clout and money to just let people get the new versions of the games for free. Both games also have the benefit of having a very strong porting community; with either game, there are lots of ports which can run the game better than it ever did way back when they first got released.

 

 

 

Also, they port the game to consoles and hopefully also get new players to buy the Port that would be only buy, download and play. Instead of also get Source Ports that may or not work if you're not so tech savvy.

[sdfk]

me and my partner have been playing it since night of launch, for anyone who's sitting checking it out i recommend just getting it bc it is a Wonderful port imo (as someone who could only get winrottgl to work on my machine, it is infinitely better than that port). i think if anyones been having issues with multiplayer that might mainly be an issue with lack of players since this game is still pretty obscure so there aren't gonna be a ton of deathmatch servers up quite yet until there's a more sizable playerbase.

 

regardless, singleplayer seems to work pretty much flawlessly and the only thing that comes close to a bug that i've personally found which feels even a little bit noticeable is the shrooms powerdown seeming to render in a way which feels wrong to me (altho i might just be wrong about how it renders in the original game lol)

[Edward850]

1 hour ago, sdfk said:

regardless, singleplayer seems to work pretty much flawlessly and the only thing that comes close to a bug that i've personally found which feels even a little bit noticeable is the shrooms powerdown seeming to render in a way which feels wrong to me (altho i might just be wrong about how it renders in the original game lol)

We haven't changed anything about shrooms mode, though I wonder if that's the problem? It could be the effect is heavily dependent on resolution but if it is, much like Dooms per pixel spectre effect, we wouldn't be able to change it.

[Kinsie]

16 hours ago, Edward850 said:

We haven't changed anything about shrooms mode, though I wonder if that's the problem? It could be the effect is heavily dependent on resolution but if it is, much like Dooms per pixel spectre effect, we wouldn't be able to change it.

It's definitely different in end result. There's a very intense environmental squash/stretch effect in Ludicrous Edition. Here's a direct comparison from DOS Dark War v1.3 and LE.

 

 

15 HOURS LATER EDIT: A quick check at other source ports suggests that this is a new addition to LE.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Kinsie

[HorrorMovieRei]

ROTT is one of my favorite games of all time and I couldn't be more pleased with the port. I'm very happy it allows you to choose between the new or old lighting, and that it stays true to the oldschool way the autoaim worked when you turn freelook off (I was quite scared that was gonna be removed in favor of freelook). It really lets you have a reasonably purist experience but without having to deal with janky sourceports, or DOSbox and it's miniscule resolution that turns everythign farther than 5 meters into a 8x4 pixels bauhaus painting. The cut beta content is the stuff of dreams, I've wanted to see those implemented back into the game since I first played it. The new episode kicks ass too. I would compare it to Blood's "Deathwish", but the ROTT equivalent of that (really clever that NME fight btw). Also happy I can finally experience ROTT multiplayer insanity.

 

Glad for the Monk HP nerf too, and that you can toggle it on and off. Though in this regard I don't care about being a purist, by all means nerf the shit out of those monks.

 

My only complaing is that if you break one of el Oscuro's eggs with bullet weapons the game will almost 100% of the time crash. This is probably a known bug already that will be patched, but couldn't hurt to mention.

[Kinsie]

1 minute ago, HorrorMovieRei said:

My only complaing is that if you break one of el Oscuro's eggs with bullet weapons the game will almost 100% of the time crash. This is probably a known bug already that will be patched, but couldn't hurt to mention.

Yeah, it's known, Oshry says it'll be fixed. Still worth mentioning, mind!

[GooberMan]

I have in fact personally fixed that bug. It'll be in the first patch.

[Kinsie]

It's all monks again.

 

In addition, the first patch is out, along with some loose plans for what may or may not follow once the teams' QuakeCon hangovers fade.

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

On 8/3/2023 at 3:44 AM, Fletcher` said:

It even lets you specify the OPL chip to emulate so that it even sounds exactly the same.

To be pedantic, Ludicrous Edition's OPL emulation isn't at all accurate to how the DOS version sounds. There are at least two "versions" of the DOS game's soundtrack, as its OPL instrument bank was updated for v1.3. Ludicrous Edition doesn't match either of them.

 

Edit: Whoops, you're right. I just checked the OPL options. You can choose the patch set.

 

On 8/3/2023 at 8:25 AM, Dweller said:

I'm guessing the SC-55 recordings are about on-par as Strife: Veteran Edition's?

I don't know if it's due to a specific SC-55 device being used or if the songs just weren't recorded properly, but there are a number of minor issues with the game's current SC-55 recordings:

• Reverb is completely missing from the starts of tracks (listen to Work Day for example).
• There are weird "fluttering" artifacts in the recordings (listen to the start of Havana Smooth or Evin Rude).
• The tracks do not loop smoothly. Note and reverb tails are abruptly cut off when the track loops (due to the recordings not being loop friendly). This is even more noticeable due to the missing reverb at the start.

MusicallyInspired's recently updated OGGs do not have any of these problems. I'm curious as to what exact Sound Canvas device was used for LE's recordings, as I wonder if there are differences in the reverb algorithms or such between different SC-55 revisions.

Edited August 6, 2023 by TheUltimateDoomer666

[janiform]

I've been having so much fun with this ROTT rerelease. It's basically my dream version of ROTT. Many thanks to everyone involved.

 

One issue I've had with Ludicrous Edition is that the Steam overlay is kind of iffy. I don't get the achievement notifications in-game (the little popup in the lower-right corner), and the F12 screenshot key only occasionally works. The only other Steam game I've had this issue with is the Quake rerelease, so maybe my PC has some issue with something Night Dive is using. If anyone else has dealt with this, I'd appreciate any suggestions.

[Individualised]

37 minutes ago, janiform said:

I've been having so much fun with this ROTT rerelease. It's basically my dream version of ROTT. Many thanks to everyone involved.

 

One issue I've had with Ludicrous Edition is that the Steam overlay is kind of iffy. I don't get the achievement notifications in-game (the little popup in the lower-right corner), and the F12 screenshot key only occasionally works. The only other Steam game I've had this issue with is the Quake rerelease, so maybe my PC has some issue with something Night Dive is using. If anyone else has dealt with this, I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Are you running Linux? Are you using Intel graphics? Do you see the notification show up but just as a blank square with no text? I get this issue with Celeste and it seems to be a Steam for Linux (and maybe Intel graphics) issue as far as I've read.

Edited August 7, 2023 by Individualised

[janiform]

@IndividualisedNo, just Windows 10.

[Individualised]

2 minutes ago, janiform said:

@IndividualisedNo, just Windows 10.

Do you get the blank notification or no notification at all, and are you using Intel graphics?

[THEBaratusII]

On 8/3/2023 at 2:31 PM, sdfk said:

me and my partner have been playing it since night of launch, for anyone who's sitting checking it out i recommend just getting it bc it is a Wonderful port imo (as someone who could only get winrottgl to work on my machine, it is infinitely better than that port). i think if anyones been having issues with multiplayer that might mainly be an issue with lack of players since this game is still pretty obscure so there aren't gonna be a ton of deathmatch servers up quite yet until there's a more sizable playerbase.

 

regardless, singleplayer seems to work pretty much flawlessly and the only thing that comes close to a bug that i've personally found which feels even a little bit noticeable is the shrooms powerdown seeming to render in a way which feels wrong to me (altho i might just be wrong about how it renders in the original game lol)

 

It also didn't help that the game wasn't too playable in multiplayer via DOSBox aside from 2-player null-modem emulation to some degree. Meanwhile Blood Multiplayer (via DOSBox IPX tunneling) became a cult following during the early 2010s and there was lack of a proper source port during that time until BloodGDX and later NBlood was released.

 

Thank god for Ludicrous Edition! Aside from the rubberbanding issues (there were plans to improve netcode for the upcoming v1.1 patch) its more enjoyable than playing via DOSBox. Now it's a matter of putting efforts to grow a community and spreading the word of how fun and chaotic RoTT's multiplayer is, and that I am trying to do with my own Discord community, RoTT Central.

 

As for DOSBox, I managed to compile a modified ROTTIPX.EXE file that changes the game tics to the same ones as serial/modem play, so that could ease the latency for those curious. (It's currently on my website for those interested)

http://thebaratusii.razorback95.com/files.html

 

If anyone's ever interested in joining RoTT Central, feel free!

https://discord.gg/GaNQMFWwes

[Panzermann11]

I heard the original ROTT has a red screen flash effect when you get hurt that's only visible on original hardware, apparently it messes with the monitor to achieve this effect and it seems to be broken on DOSBox. I couldn't find any footage of this so I can't confirm if this is true or false. Can anyone confirm this (send video as proof) and if so, can they restore this effect in a patch?

Edited August 7, 2023 by Panzermann11

[GooberMan]

It's not broken in DOSBox. You're just plain not running it with a VGA card on a CRT.

 

The short story is that the effect changes the colour of the "overscan" region of an analog monitor. Modern monitors do not have this region available to them. Shrinking the gameplay area in a window (fullscreen or not) to have this border visible in a meaningful manner is the definition of a bad idea. Everyone except the five people who remember that effect will think it's a bug. As a remaster, the current effect of flashing the screen red a little bit is the far better way to go.

Edited August 7, 2023 by GooberMan

[Panzermann11]

On 8/7/2023 at 4:59 PM, GooberMan said:

It's not broken in DOSBox. You're just plain not running it with a VGA card on a CRT.

 

The short story is that the effect changes the colour of the "overscan" region of an analog monitor. Modern monitors do not have this region available to them. Shrinking the gameplay area in a window (fullscreen or not) to have this border visible in a meaningful manner is the definition of a bad idea. Everyone except the five people who remember that effect will think it's a bug. As a remaster, the current effect of flashing the screen red a little bit is the far better way to go.

Ah, I see. I didn't play ROTT back then and I never saw the effect in action, so I didn't knew much about this feature apart from what I remembered hearing. And I barely noticed Ludicrous Edition already has a screen injury effect.

Edited August 9, 2023 by Panzermann11

[betabox]

Wow, I remember that screen flashing effect. Saw it decades ago when I played the game and thought about it every now and then ever since. GooberMan's post would explain why I never saw it in the game again.

[janiform]

12 hours ago, Individualised said:

Do you get the blank notification or no notification at all, and are you using Intel graphics?

 

On the occasions when taking screenshots works, I see a very brief notification, but it's not blank. I don't recall any notifications for achievements. I don't think I'm using Intel (meaning integrated?) graphics.

[Kinsie]

Official editor documentation is up, so you can learn how to tame your snake, among other things.

[45th Parrallel]

I'm having an issue where launching the game directly into the editor has very stuttery and poor mouse control when you go to test a map. Is this a known problem? Running maps from the editor when launching the game normally doesn't have this issue

[Captain red pants]

Uh, it's been awhile since I've played Rott, are the moving walls meant to damage you? they gib the guards real good, but unless I'm against a wall I just get stuck for a moment