DWBS

A good battle is what I like most about Doom! give me a good firefight!

YOU have f$*%ing got to play it! Sounds silly, but I have never laughed so hard playing a single-player DOOM level. great scripting so far -- very efficiently used. Sprites and textures are good too. I haven't gotten too far into it yet, but I have a strong feeling this will be IMO the best _conversion_ levelset ever. Where does CYB find time for all this stuff??!!

I haven't played Cyb's new level so I can't address his work. But I did read his comments on his page so I will address that. I understand Cyb's desire to maintain hordes of monsters while scripting the hell out of a hub. And I think he has identified some of the problems a map designer will encounter while striving towards such a goal. Cyb, I've been there too. But please don't look at DOOM2000 as typical DOOM. We did not design it as such. So your comment about a lack of monsters is not a problem, but an intentional design feature on our part. We know this will not make some folks happy. But while you may not agree with our approach, you should respect it. I look at the style of DOOM2000 more in line with Half-Life. Can anyone honestly say that when they first played Half-Life they were blown away? I remember wandering around going WTF? I think I wanted to kill every scientist who told to to do this and that after 15 minutes or so (tough to do when you don't even have a weapon). But then the experiment goes awry, all hell breaks loose, and Half-Life became THE game (IMO). And I am not saying DOOM2000 is on the same level as Half-Life. Just that the style and approach in design is similiar (not intentional BTW). I guess what I am saying is: Don't look at DOOM2000 as another set of DOOM levels in a hub environment. We are trying to create a realistic, immersive environment like you find in Half-Life. So is scripting beneficial to the game, even if you no longer can support hordes at every turn? All depends on what you are trying to accomplish. I think you can do both. Anyone who has reached MAP05 of Hub 1 knows you can have hordes attacking. ZDOOM and scripting now make the MAP author's job far more diversified (complicated?). But the answer to the question is up to the MAP author(s). And always has been. :) Paul Schmitz

to me the only reason i still play doom is because of its unrealistic battles with like a billion monsters. in games like half-life you only fight a few things at a time and that is okay but sometimes tedious. not to say that a more realsitic emmersive doom wouldn't be cool, but remember, doom is still doom.

Yeah Half-Life had few things to fight, but (if you don't get too lost) there was always something happening. Also, Half-Life has that stellar AI in it, which compensates for not being able to fight 15 things at once. Four or five grunts at once is enough, thank you. The Doom AI is horrible, which is why it should never be done as a Half-Life type deal. That's also one of the things that keeps Doom great. Doom is just about the only game where you can have a ton of monsters in view without slowing up the game. In any Quake engine game you can't have too many models in view or the game slows down to nothing. But then like I said, it's very hard to keep up the Doom signatures while doing all sorts of scripting, so something has to suffer somewhere.

Hmm I disagree about the 'WTF?' halflife factor- I nearly orgasmed playing halflife and having the walking meat talk to me. Unlike most people I couldnt bring myself to kill the innocents either.

I don't really think you can compare wads like MM and Tei Tenga or normal Doom: the objectives of each are different. The real question that has to be answered is, did the wad accomplish what the author intended? If so, then it was successful. I always want people to enjoy what I am doing or at least find it interesting. However, I make all my maps to please myself. If I have reached the goal I set for myself, then I have done all I can. The real crime is when you compromise your own standards in producing your product. Rick Clark

I couldn't agree more. And I think all 3 big scripted levelsets achieve what they set out to.(primarily) I don't particularly care for UT or Unreal as much as Quake3; but if it's your thing-go for it. Teitenga plays like DOOM, the other 2 are conversions.

The subject says it all. I played Teitenga, downloaded massm but haven't seen Doom2000. Thanks MegaMole

People are always whinging on about how newer FPS games can't have hordes of monsters, but so what? Besides the fact that the enemies in these games are generally much tougher than the Doom fodder, whilst Doom CAN have hordes of monsters, it is actually quite rare. Except in things like HR and HR 2, but they're pretty much unplayable to anyone except a Doom god anyway.

I LOVE Massmouth. The most fun doom wad I've played in a very long time. <P>Anonymous, Doom2k is at http://www.teamtnt.com/doom2000 but Massmouth is much more fun.

Nick, saying 'a ton of monsters' or 'hordes' was an exageration on my part. I meant that Doom can handle seven or eight monsters in view (something which is quite common) while Quake engine games cannot. It's not so much of a complaint against other FPS, but one of the things that makes Doom such a damn great game even after all these years.

The ACS in Massmouth is done very well. EVERY other map I've seen thus far has presented scripting in just about the same way: -pause- check out this neato effect -continue playing-. Even Rick Clark's levels have yet to use scripting to do many things beyond cutscenes; this is the first wad to use them to alter gameplay.

The only thing I have to pick at is Cyb's reasoning as to why levelsets with scripting have very few monsters. It's not because it's difficult to predict how the monsters are going to activate scripts, because all you have to do is remove the flag for "activateable by monsters" on whatever linedef is executing the script (correct me if I'm wrong, please). IMHO it's because those who use scripting generally do it to show off a cool effect they thought up, and their wad has no other reason for existing. Massmouth seems to have had the levels and monsters and whatnot completed before scripting was added to enhance things.

Uh, heh, When I first heard of it, I thought 'mass mouth' had something to do with blow jobs. Man! How dissapointed I was to find absolutly NO sexually related content in this level set... uh, nevermind... Anyway, those bats in the cave were REALLY annoying and I gave up playing sevral times because of them (damn you cyb, LESS HEALTH IS GOOD).... Everything else is cool. I like the usage of the guards from HL and everything. L33tness Cyb...

good job on mass mouth cyb. I'm an old school doomer who absolutly despises z-doom and all it stands for. Way back in the day, the only cool effects i ever saw was true 3d bridges created by using various mapping tricks and great archatecture (sorry, i can't friggin spell) I'm a fan of Doom Dammit and i figured that massmouth was worth a try. I can honestly say that combined with a good plot, scripting can enhance the experence as one plays doom. The interactiveness strings the player along, like he is actually choosing his outcome in the game like "pleasing the worm". Some wads with numerious bad guys that seem to have no plot are played to complete the level. However, i've found with scripting (sorry, i'm new to some of this stuff, the only scripting i do is in de-hacked), the game goes beyond the plot of "to finish and get to the bess". With games like doom2000, and mass mouth (havn't played tengi tai yet), theres so much to interact with that it draws the player away from his origional goal, and gives him a chance to take in the atmosphere, and the plot at the same time.

Yeah what the HELL is with those fucking bats? I play on -fast, and the bats kill you INSTANTLY. I had to godmode my way through those caves, y0.

At first I loved the game, until I got to the third mission. <P>Not only is it really hard to kill the bats, but you can't see them either. It becomes much less fun when you have to lure all of them out of the cave. <BR>Next item of interest, you have to remember to save often, which is something I usually don't do. I consider it to be cheating. But the thing is, if you die, and start over, you start without weapons or ammo, and only the opening level (where the worm gives you your first mission) starts you off with some ammo. <BR>Without at least your primary weapon it makes fighting even the first enemy of mission one very difficult. <BR>All the other levels contain ammo, but no weapons. <BR>And the last mission contains absolutely NO ammo. I always run out after the second monster, and then, I can't even attack the rest with my close range attack because it's been replaced with a zippo, which causes no damage. I got a bit frustrated, played with degreelessness, but didn't use any weapons cheats, and found that I was constantly surrounded by enemies that no matter how I try, I couldn't dodge. <BR>Doesn't this sound a bit odd?

yeah shooting down six troopers with the ssg has to be the most fun thing about doom. like in the early maps of doom2 .. map02-map04 especially .. mmm

Everytime I try and download the zip I just get an error page...

Any help would be appreciated.

I gotta say that Mass mouth is one of the few projects I've actually enjoyed. It was hilarious and had great design. Congratulations Cyb on this great creation. :)

Okay, the bats have been the major complaint so far. It is possible to beat them however, I've done it a few times (and I'm nowhere near great at Doom). First off, without the BFG replacement, it's fairly impossible. You need the blue key to get that though. If you don't want know where the blue key is, well I won't tell you. If you do, then highlight this post (I hope these threads support html). Also, saving was intended because the game was meant to be played all the way through. That's why you can't find any weapons or ammo too often. Also, when you're back at the worm's moon, check in your room (hint hint). I wouldn't consider it cheating. Plus you're probably pissed off because the first two levels are really easy by comparison to the third (the levels where you actually fight I mean). The blue key is in the lava near the start area.

I can't download this damn thing!! Everytime I try, I either get a XOOM error page or when I finally do download it, the ZIP is corrupt. What gives? I can read the text file, but WinZip won't extract the .wad. Poop. =(

Cyb...why is the primary weapon (the laser gun) so weak?

> Cyb...why is the primary weapon (the laser gun) so weak? <P>Yeah . . . . not like the doom pistol . . . .

I'm not dissin' Cyb here or anything, but the concept of a boss guy giving you missions to complete is right out of a Half-Life mod... I don't remember what it's name was, but I beleive Cyb actually had an update about it a while back. The HL version was pretty similar too; the second level took place in some Tibetian mountain palace where you had to capture some butterfly or something. Still, MassMouth is an enjoyable PC, no matter how you look at it.

I think that's Redemption but you receive your orders from the G-Man which is not really a 'boss'. There is a Half-Life level set where the end boss sends you on a mission to save the aliens but Mass Mouth isn't like that one at all.

Dude, the idea of a boss sending someone on a mission has been around forever. Thief for instance (which was out before Half-Life, and thus before Redemption) has that plot. Actually I had half of this finished when I installed and played thief (early January) and I was amazed at how similar the plot of massmouth was to the plot of Thief at one point (tho the plot of Thief). Anyway, my point is there's only so many plots to games you can have. At least a Doom engine game anyway. At least it wasn't a 'you're all alone in hell and all you have is a pistol' type plot. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

This wasn't a bad mod, but I did have a few grumbles: 1: The third level 2: The last level 3: The lack of fist graphics 4: The eye 5: The worm 1: The third level was imposible, cause those bat things were TOO hard. 2: The last level had hardly any ammo and I was't sure how to kill the huge end thingy. I tried to squash it under the cage doors (Star Wars style) but it just got stuck in the floor, so I had to stand there next to it shooting with the desert egale until it died. Boring. 3: Why did the fist have no graphics atall? 4: The eye should have at least done SOMTHING. 5: The worm should have been called the Pit Worm, becuse that is what it is called.

1) Use the plasma rifle or the sonic blaster and they go down easy
2) There's another switch that opens up the bars (right next to the one that closes them), depending on how much ammo you have, it takes anywhere from 2-4 closes to kill him.
3) Listen to the sound when you hit something. He's biting (since he has a huge mouth).
4) That was the whole point, it DIDN'T have any sort of powers, it was legend behind it. All it was, was valuable.
5) The pit worm from OpFor was also huge and he didn't talk. I used him for the boss guy because he seemed to fit the part.

Anything else?

First of all, let's not start to talk about a style the heavily scripted levels have, because there are like three of them around. My opinion is that the best way is to use scripting as a tool to immerse the player into the level's world. It should just complement Doom's original gameplay, not replace it. And that's what we are trying to do in PD2; to maintain Doom's own gameplay, but also bring new elements to the game with ACS. Tei Tenga and Doom2000 were good in scripting, but especially Doom2000 as levels really sucked. Let's not forget the great-looking and playing levels that were order of the day before many people got into ACS. When people started to use ACS in their levels, it seems that they forgot to design levels that were great in every aspect, not only ACS scripting. And what comes to Cyb's newest effort, the scripting is really good (plot and theme aside), and "complemets" the gameplay. But oh no. Where's the level design? Try to think playing the Mass Mouth level set without scripting. Would it be as good? I don't think so. The level design is non-existent, and without scripting the levels would be a waste of time. I have nothing against Cyb, I just hate the news he puts on DoomNation. Funny is ok, but WHEN IT'S FUNNY! I know sense of humour is a personal thing, but come, can't the man write even one good news thing without any stupid comments or lame jokes. Bottom line: Mass Mouth has pretty good scripting, but the level design is bad, and the idea is just stupid. Cyb really has too much free time (I have done something similar with ACS scripting with BuckaZoid, but it's something that took us 5 hours to finish, and we won't release it :)! And remember, all this above is just MY PERSONAL OPINION. It seems that in that Legacy bash we did last May people forgot that. Personal opinions, remember?