Monday, May 28, 2018

Game Recommendations

I would like to start reviewing games as recommend and not recommended. I find many reviews to be unhelpful and give high marks to games I find totally uninterested in.

My approach will be that I will play the game up to the return period and make a determination if the game is good or not. I will not play a game to completion as there is no point for my purposes to do that. If the game is not good within the trial period then playing further would only encourage a person to risk their time and money.

I've played these games recently:

Not Recommended:
Sonic Mania
Tomb Raider (2013)
Sonic Generations
Farcry 4
Warframe

Recommended:
Doom (2016)
Beyond Two Souls
Uncharted 3
Overwatch
Edge


Sunday, March 5, 2017

I saw an interesting Custom Quake-Editor today. Something based on net-radiant. Not sure exactly what it is. Found it from the mapping channel on Discord #QuakeWorld.

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Quake Retexturing Project

I saw a new picture of Quake with the Quake retexturing project which looks better calibrated in brightness. This is a more fair comparison to how I configure Quake. You can judge which looks better. Retextured is the first image. The original way I play is the second.


Sunday, July 3, 2016

Doom Guide Added

I've added the Doom Guide page. It currently includes the following information:


  • All the names of official episodes in chronological order, including the new episode from 2012!
  • The official order of maps from Master Levels which I looked up from Doom Classic Complete, since there was originally no official play order.
  • How to load custom WADS / maps with plenty of explanation and examples, including how to load John Romero's new E1M8b and E1M4b.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

What Quake is Supposed to Look Like

A big part of playing classic Quake is getting it setup, patched and configured to look classic and great at the same time. I believe that Quake should be setup a very specific way to get the best looking picture while staying true to its original look.

These are the settings I use:
SourcePort: QuakeSpasm
Resolution: 640x480 (4:3 aspect ratio, not widescreen)
V-Sync: ON
Brightness: All the way down (this sets the black level correctly so the picture isn't washed out)
Multi Sampling: Full Screen Anti-Aliasing 8x
r_wateralpha: .4 (somethere around here, transparent water)
r_skyalpha: .4 (somewhere around here, allows first sky layer to be transparent for better effect)
Vis patch the game for transparent water
Colored light with .lit files for colored lighting, hey the consoles had it!
Original textures of course and no anisotropic filter, which I don't think QuakeSpasm supports anyway.
Quakespasm doesn't support glass reflections, but if it did I'd probably turn that on since the original GL-Quake supported that.
The great thing about QuakeSpasm is that it supports full-bright texture so the lamp textures look like they are on rather than painted on a pole. GL-Quake didn't support that, but software quake did ironically. You can see a comparison here that shows what I'm talking about.

This is how I think Quake looks the best:

But, this is how many play quake with modern graphics and it looks worse. This is not the only way, but this is from QuakeWorld, which is the worst offender. As you can see written below "Quake" texture this is using the re-texturing project too. It does not look better. It is possible it would not look as bad if the textures could be imported to QuakeSpasm with the settings I use, but I can't test that because QuakeSpasm does not. I respect all the hard work with the re-texturing though! They just recently finished the mission pack 2 textures too on Quake's 20th birthday!

I think it is unquestionable that the top picture looks better!

Sunday, June 19, 2016

QuakeWorld Summer

Summer of QuakeWorld is live now! Watch the final match !

Post Class Doom on an Alien World

This is definitely post-classic Doom. To play this kind of wad I don't think a source port like Crispy Doom is going to cut it, and Certainly not good ol' Chocolate Doom. I think zDoom would be needed. I haven't gotten much into post-classic Doom, but I might soon.