Asphalt

Hmm... Duke Nukem 3D was a game with an "obscene amount of environmental interactivity". And it came out 2 years prior. And was infinitely better under any possible aspect. In Half Life, as far as I remember, all of that supposed "interactivity" was limited to repeatedly destroying an undisclosed number of damn crates and exploiting a terribly implemented wannabe-physics system that wasn't even capable of getting right the basic baricentre of objects, in order to get to some locations that would be otherwise unaccessible. Every once in a while, pushing a button to do random, completely unnecessary stuff. I think you are just deliberately glossing on the fact that Half Life was released five years later, had probably more than twenty times the budget, and was powered by a game engine that was basically THREE generations more advanced, just so that you can not see what's more than evident. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And remember that back in the 90s just a six months difference could mean doubling or even tripling the computational capabilities of available hardwares and the technological efficiency of related softwares... imagine five years... Look. I get that they are completely different games, and resonated in a VERY different way. They are both objectively quite bad if you ask me, albeit for different reasons. But consider that C7 had been made by a small independent software house, with a team of about ten people that had to work simultaneously on multiple projects to stay up to the day. They were developing Zorro and Operation Body Count in that same period. Half Life instead had been developed by what was already a large company, had a basically an unlimited budget because Gabe Newell was a millionaire thanks to his previous career at Microsoft, afforded to license what basically was the absolute best game engine ever seen for that era, and was distributed by Sierra, possibly the biggest retailing and marketing company of that time. So yeah. C7 is a not a good game. But still far better and noteworthy than Half Life. At least it had some justification for not being one. There was no such thing as "online controversy" back in 1993. There was no online, basically. What I was mainly referring to is the fact that they'd been working extensively for a year on a game that had been very much hyped by the gamers community, while being conceived to be (at least initially) "satanism-centered" in a time when there had already been fervent discussions by a government-lead censorship commission about limitations and bannings to impose over the video game industry due to the raising popularity of violent and immoral games like Mortal Kombat, Splatterhouse, Lethal Enforcers, Night Trap and others, that back then were easily available to children, in spite of presenting very adult-oriented contents. It was that same exact timeframe. And id Software was an independent company that relied on selling their products for an income, even if they were pretty successful already. They most certainly needed to limit REAL controversy in order to not get their game retired from the market entirely. I think I remember it mentions it briefly in the Masters Of Doom book, I may be wrong, I read it a long time ago. But as you said, they had to cut references to swastikas, they didn't use many of the sprite ideas they had already drawn for the alpha versions (mainly the unholy bible, reversed crosses, and some of the more gruesome background tiles and embellishments), and it's clear that they had a lot of other content that was left behind in the cutting room. Romero even released some of those unused graphics a couple years ago. Who knows how many other ideas were left off. Thanks for understanding my point perfectly. And again, sorry for the very late response and for bumping this thread up again. I haven't had much time to hang on here as of late.

I know that the "basic concept" of "dimensional portals" and "accidental crossovers" have obviously not been invented by Corridor 7. Basically EVERY game that was ever made in the 90s share that same premise of space portals to alternate universes, if you think about it... I mean, literally every game... Turok, Serious Sam, Chasm, among the others, even without having to bother venturing to completely different genres where you'd find stuff like Another World, Outcast, Dreams To Reality, Heart Of Darkness, etcetera. There's dozens of them. But one thing is having a base concept, a different thing is THE PLOT being exactly the same. Hence why I said it's plagiarized. Because it is. Yeah, nothing wrong. But Doom and Quake have very little to do with actual experiments, that you never see in-game and are only mentioned in the manual as something that's maybe happened, who knows when and who knows where, plus the settings are completely different. Doom opens a portal to Hell, Quake to the reign of chaos, or whatever, so technically there's no aliens in any of those games either. Quake is designed as a gothic horror game. And even Doom was initially conceived that way, with lots of references to satanism and the occult that had to be cut to avoid controversy, and many are still there. Both games are set sometime in the far future, not in present-day world. And in both games, the story is not by any means confined to the base. In the case of Quake, the military base doesn't even appear at all, because the action takes place in the four realms of the Netherworld, and it's you going down there, not monsters coming to Earth. Doom takes place in Hell for three episodes out of four. Corridor 7 and Half Life, instead, share the exact same story, the exact same tone, the exact same atmosphere, colorful alien invaders, and the exact same location being a research labs facility, with offices, storage areas, computer stations, etcetera. Both games, even if in different ways for glaring reasons, directly show you the experiment and the portal being opened at the very beginning, with hostile lifeforms exiting from it, and the fact that you are confined to the techbase is a central part of the gameplay. You only experience the alien world at the very end. Half Life even had the wall-mounted powerchargers and first-aid packs, just like Corridor 7. Quake and Doom, and Turok, and Chasm, and many others, all had their own distinct identity. Half Life 1 stole that from Corridor 7, and to me it's so blatant it hurts. Sorry for the late response.

Hello. Just dropped by to say that the new atmosphere you gave to this game is really captivating. Even if it's a completely different genre, it sort of looks like if Thief The Dark Project had been made with a good sprite-based engine instead of that crap of a 3D thing they used (I'm a fan of the Thief series, but I always thought that the first two games had very poor graphics, and they were bugged as hell... I remember wishing the guys at Looking Glass had gone with the same engine they used for System Shock, but whatever). Anyway, this game gives me those same kind of Victorian-dark / steampunk vibes, but with guns. And I'm liking it a lot. Really cool atmosphere for a retro FPS. I never owned an Amiga machine, so I don't know if I will ever be able to play this and how, but it's a great project indeed, and I'm really happy for it. Keep up the good work!!

Half Life. Surely an unpopular opinion, but to me, it literally SUCKS. It had terrible animations. Vastly outdated graphics. The gunplay was unbearable. That damn crowbar felt fake as fake can get. Movements gave no sense of gravity, nor connection with the environment at all, because the engine was calibered horrendously. And this is a problem that also plagued the other games that were powered by that same technology, like Counter Strike and Gunmen Chronicles. In retrospect, it didn't invent anything, because apart from the cutscenes integrated in the viewpoint, everything had been already introduced and implemented far better in other games that were released years prior, Marathon, System Shock, Duke 3D, Turok, just to name a few. The story, an experiment gone wrong that opens a portal to an alien world inside a secret military base, is literally plagiarized from Corridor 7, whom I had played years before. And yet, somehow, it was promoted by marketing and critics alike as a total masterpiece, which made me disrespect it even more. Half Life 2 was a little step up, but still is one of the most over-rated shooter games of all time. Especially since that same year we also got Far Cry and Doom 3, and in comparison it simply doesn't stand a chance.

Frontiers Of Pandora. Looks incredible so far. And I hope in the future they'll also expand it with the islands seen in the second film.

I still enjoy them, I guess because I grew up with them. Wolf 3D, Corridor 7, Nitemare, Rise Of The Triad. I had played them before ever knowing about Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem. Maybe ROTT I started playing around the same time as Doom, but I can't remember that clearly. Anyway, those were definitely my first FPS experiences and back at the time I liked 'em a lot. They contributed in shaping me as a gamer. I'm quite sure I didn't even care about the limitations, and all the levels looking the same, I just remember the good fun I had. Also another game that I played in my very early days is Stonekeep. A little different, (it's a dungeon crawler RPG), but still all planar and grid-based. So I think mostly it's a matter of being accustomed to raycasting engines from the start, and as I got older I learnt to appreciate those games for their historical value, and because they had been a fundamental part in the development of the technologies that moved the industry to more advanced 3D engines. I find them fascinating. I think even some new releases, like Merger 3D and Templar, are worth a shot. Templar is free-to-download on ITCH, if someone's interested. Short but good. It reminded me of Witchaven, but with guns.

Marathon has probably been the first FPS to rely on a solid and well-constructed narrative in order to create a world that actually felt "real" and "immersive", as opposed to competitors that only offered an all-action approach. The story and the lore were the identity of the game. To reboot it as a yet another useless online PvP game is just the STUPIDEST THING EVER. What were they thinking?

Just wanted to share that every new update about this project brings tears of joy to my eyes. I also looked on the Facebook page. Everything looks so evocative and charming. The transitions from book to gameplay, the time-lapse scene. Just everything. You are nailing just everything. Great, great job on the design for this. Watching those little in-game glimpses, it's almost as if you could feel the scent of old pages coming from some long forgotten bookshelves. Keep up the good work. You are onto something really unique.

Hello, I've been playing this in the past days and I think that by now I have finally managed to learn how to use the special moves quite well. This mod truly is a lot of fun once you get the rhythm of it, and the Bounty Hunter game mode is really addictive. You made a great job in balancing it. Anyways, I'm still here because I wanted to ask you how to do the wall jump. I've tried many times but I think I've never been able to use it. Do you need to jump against the wall on a certain angle or press the jump key at a specific timing? I can't seem to make it work. For those who are interested, here's a small gameplay video of me. (At one point in the video I also tried to do a wall jump but without success.)

Man, in order to play this TC you just need to unpack the files, copy your DOOM2.WAD within the "Data/Jdoom" folder, and then click on "LaunchCorr7TC.bat". There's no need to learn how to operate Doomsday at all, it just runs on it, but it's automatic. Launch the batch and the game will work fine by itself. Which finally brings me to something I'd wanted to do for a while now... THIS TOTAL CONVERSION IS COMPLETELY AWESOME, and the most badass way to experience Corridor 7 in the 2020s. I discovered it some two or three months ago, when I was searching for news about another Corridor 7 project, and I've been playing it since then. To be able to play that game with the features of modern engines, lighting, mouselook, etc, has been a complete blast!!! So thank you Vermil for your amazing job!! It brought so many good memories back, and I'm really thankful for it!!!

Well, thanks for the reply. This mod is high quality work already, but I'm confident that with some trimming you will even be able to find room for more improvements, so I'm glad if I can be helpful in some way. Great to hear about the idea of an intro tutorial. That would be a perfect way to practice the various techniques without the constant anxiety of being melt by some fireballs. XD Yes, I was talking about that. Maybe you could insert some melee-specific brawl training within the tutorial as well. Or even a list of possible different combos like in proper fighting games. As for the problem with the options menu, in the subsequent launches the keyboard configuration had been saved, so I don't really know why the first couple of times it didn't do it. I'll have to try and get better at this then. Melee combat is really engaging but it gets tough with more powerful enemies, and it's easy to get blocked 'cause they come to you from all directions. I guess mastering the special moves will really make a big difference on that. I like the fact that this mod introduces a different way to play Doom, and is well done enough to keep the interest and don't feel frustrating. Great job and thanks for all the information. Take your time, and as I said, keep up the good work!! I'll be waiting for future updates!!

Feels quite strange for me to be the first one responding to this. Gotta say it looks very promising. The gameplay is a lot of fun, but the special maneuvers are pretty difficult to control because the action is a little too frenetic for my taste (I played the standard "Bring it on" difficulty). Most certainly, it will only be a matter of time before one gets to master all the commands, but the first approach is a little intimidating, and soon I found myself only gunning the enemies down one after another, because trying to do special moves had me surrounded by monsters while I was trying to understand how they worked. As I said, it will take some time to get accustomed to them, and maybe I didn't use the best key-binding possible, so I'll have to make some more tryouts. A thing I found a little annoying is the fact that when you kill enemies, many times the ammo coins they leave happen to fall down the arena and you can't put your hands on 'em. Maybe you could make it so that they're automatically "captured" when the player is near. And the player is near quite often because even if the arena is quite large, most of the times it's close-quarters combat from what I've seen thus far. I liked the weapons a lot. The Assault Rifle that alt-fires to Combat Shotgun is dope as Hell!! The melee combat with punches and kicks is super fun to use, and once you implement the melee key to work with weapons equipped too, it will probably be even cooler and save the day on more than one occasion. I don't know if it's already that way, but I think you could also consider to add some combos like in beat em up games, when you press the buttons in a certain order, with a certain timing, it makes special things. Nothing too fancy, even just things like Mouse1 Mouse1 Mouse2 Mouse1 again. You get the idea. Maybe just three or four simple combos that deal different attacks. I would suggest to change the "spear" divekick to just clicking the Trait button while mid-air. Just a thought, but having to jump, press Trait and then fire seems a little too complicated, given that jumping lasts only for fractions of a second. A couple things I think could use some improvements, but I bet you already know: 1) In the options menu, when you assign new keys to the various commands, I didn't find a way to save the configuration, and so every time you quit the game you have to setup everything yet again. 2) After the end of the mission, the game remains stuck on the scorecard table, no matter what keys you press. The only way to get past this, apparently, is to press the 'esc' key and pause to the main menu. I'm sure in the future releases you will insert some options like "End mission" or "Try again" instead. Also, could you please explain the exact mechanics of the game? I've seen there are those clock-shaped tokens that give you more seconds when you break them, but I didn't understand what happens exactly when you break a green one and the countdown appears. (On a side note, please, insert a token that slows the time, ala Max Payne. Slow motion combo kills would be awesome). Then, the ammo coins. When you kill enemies you get some ammo, but it's never enough to properly refill your weapons. Are there also other ways to reload? Because I got both firearms empty very quickly and enemy waves kept coming. The final thing is, how do you regain health? If you manage to balance well all of these aspects, I think this mod has a tremendous potential!! And last, just out of curiosity... do you plan on replacing the monster sprites later in development? Cause I think this mod would work wonders with some original custom monsters instead of the basic Doom ones. Just sayin'. P.S. I also got a crash one time, and here you will find the log if you want to check why the error was generated. I'm totally incapable of interpreting it, but maybe it will be helpful to you. I was using GZDoom 4.8.2 CrashReport.zip ______________________________________ Ok, I'm editing this because I've played some more and I've seen that the ammo coins already get captured as you walk nearby, but still many of them fall down in the pit... maybe you should enlarge the radius of attraction, and make it a little quicker so that they get to you instantly when the monster dies. I've seen that every coin just gives you one bullet (or am I wrong?), so when you fire with the machinegun or shotgun the ammo gets drained very quickly. Pistol is definitely better for ammo management, but it gets less and less effective as the enemies become stronger. As of now, I die or time runs out pretty much always when there's Revenants in the map, and to kill them, Cacodemons and Hellknights it takes A LOT of bullets. I've also seen that the green clock tokens start the "combo time", but what does that mean exactly? How does it work? I've had other crashes like the one above, and they happen always after the second time you play the mission and try to play again. It gets to some kind of memory exception, if that helps. Again, sorry for the long long post everybody. Keep up the good work!!

I don't know if it really compares to Deathloop in that aspect (I've never played that). But I think Brink is free to play now, so you may give it a chance and it won't cost you anything. ;)

Brink. So sad it got completely overlooked, especially since it's a far better game than all of those Overwatch / Valorant hero-shooters crap that people play today...

Wow, this looks super-cool!! The "This could also work as the setting for an all-new sci-fi themed game" kind of super cool. Screenshots have that vibe. I second the opinion of those who are pushing for a walking-sim styled release. I think that just to have the opportunity to explore a map so detailed would be neat. A thing you could take into consideration (I'm not an expert, I think it's possible but I don't know if it would be viable or too time-consuming) would be to maybe just add some text-based clues scattered throughout the base, like interactive computer screens or Doom 3's PDAs, in order to give some back story and create atmosphere, even without any monsters at all. Maybe it could work. Anyways, great job!!!