[Rise of the Triad '13] - v 1.4 out - THIS is my DOOMSTICK!!!

Grimthwacker

Alternate Proposed Thread Titles:
"LAN Partying like it's 1995"
"Ludicrous Gibs! GOOOOOOOO!!!"
"The FPS We Need, Not The One We Deserve"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGOr3PTLKM4
Developer: Interceptor Entertainment
Publisher: Apogee Software
Platforms: PC, XBLA, PSN
Price: $15 (Pre-order on PC to get the Apogee Throwback Pack for free)

So what the heck is this?
In 1995, between the time when Doom truly kickstarted the then-nascent FPS genre and Quake and Duke Nukem 3D would refine it to a more sophisticated state, Apogee Software (who published many of id's original titles such as the Commander Keen games and Wolfenstein 3D) made a little game called Rise of the Triad, which condensed all the crazier aspects of the FPS in the day into one manic blast of a game. Level design was filled with stuff like traps, touchplates and pushwalls, levitating plaforms and stairs, and keys aplenty, while the focus was on blowing anything and everything up with an entertaining arsenal of missile weapons and power-ups. While it's considered a cult classic in circles, the current incarnation of Apogee and recent developer Interceptor Entertainment have decided to reboot the title - as far as aesthetics and graphics engines are concerned (utilizing Unreal Engine 3), while keeping the core fast paced run 'n' gun gameplay intact.

SINGLEPLAYER!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yFWQS-pew8
Worry not, the team spent their time on this aspect first and foremost, essentially recreating the original game as much as possible while adding their own new touches. The plot (such as it is) is still the same as the five members of the elite United Nations H.U.N.T. squad (each with their own unique stats and playstyle) stumble upon the headquarters of the doomsday cult "Los Oscuridos" lead by their nefarious leader El Oscuro. What follows is much wild shooting of many, many mans - sure, you have conventional guns that don't run out of ammo, but the real fun comes in the missile weapons, from the basic Bazooka and Seeker Missiles, to the more powerful and unpredictable Drunk Missiles and Flamewall rockets. Also peppered among the way are all the familiar power-ups (and power downs!). Ballistic and Asbestos Armor? They're here. Psychedelic 'Shrooms mode and Elastic Mode? Yep. Literal God Mode? Yessir. Dog Mode? Bark yeah!

Also of note for purists is the fact that the entire original soundtrack is being re-recorded, but you can also toggle on the original sounds and music, so no whining.

MULTIPLAYER!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWhsZAhfyqc
This video should give you all you need to know about multiplayer in this game - it's classic stuff from the mid '90s and Quake 3 era, chaotic and lightning-fast with explosions and bullets flying everywhere. Deathmach and TDM are a given, but I wouldn't be surprised if more modes like Capture the Flag are also included.

MOD SUPPORT!
The team has already confirmed that the game will be mod-friendly putting Steam Workshop support as one of its bullet points. Don't be surprised when people start coming up with wild new map ideas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFLrciK_dfw
So, How'd I Do?

Darmak

Fuck yeah, this game is lookin good. I might even pick it up when it hits Steam, depending on how my money situation looks.

Grimthwacker

It's interesting to note that Interceptor was originally working independently on other Apogee/3D Realms related projects like a interceptor-entertainment.com/portfolio/duke-nukem-3d-reloaded/ before this, so I guess they're really the best choice all things considered. I'd preorder, but I brought the original RotT from GOG earlier this year when it was on sale.

DiannaoChong

They had total biscuit playing it for like 30 minutes and you could hear the grin through his voice as he played. the devs all but said "we put in iron sights on pistols because of fuckheads. they dont do anything"

This looks exactly like the FPS we need in a gen of CoD genericness.

Grimthwacker

DiannaoChong wrote: »

They had total biscuit playing it for like 30 minutes and you could hear the grin through his voice as he played. the devs all but said "we put in iron sights on pistols because of fuckheads. they dont do anything"

This looks exactly like the FPS we need in a gen of CoD genericness.

Hence the third of my proposed alternate thread titles. This is the kind of game I grew up with, the kind of kick in the pants the genre needs after becoming rote and stale - Bulletstorm was one of the few examples of how a developer tried to do that, but wound up buried in its own image (too bad things aren't looking good for People Can Fly after Gears Judgement).

Big Dookie

I'm definitely getting this. I really hope it ends up doing well, I badly want to see a resurgence of the old-school FPS genre.

Grimthwacker

Just a friendly reminder that this is still a thing being released within the next week. . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DRgu2lDBaA

Big Dookie

So, this released today. Anyone give it a shot yet?

I'm going to install it when I get home and give it a whirl tonight. Looking forward to some crazy deathmatches.

Grimthwacker

My preload just finished, but the game will have to wait until later. First impressions to follow. . .

Grimthwacker

All right, one stage in and I already love the way they handled this game - the speed, the pace, the clever placement of secret areas littered around like a good Doom map; this is an RoTT modernization done right. The H.U.N.T. members are a hell of a lot more vocal (in a good, cheesy one-liner way!); I'm rolling with Thi Barrett for that faster movement speed on Hard and it's that right balance of challenge without too much frustration (yet. . .).

For anyone on the fence, this is the best review of the game one can imagine, accepting and even reveling in the sheer absurdity that Interceptor went with:

Rise of the Triad is a glorious ode to rocket jumps, circle-strafing, and twitch shooting. It’s a surprisingly faithful adaptation of a 20-year-old game that feels utterly refreshing to play.

Edit: Fun fact - you don't even need to reload your bullet weapons in single-player mode. It's just something cool you can do.

Big Dookie

But... why would you be using bullet weapons anyway? :rotate:

In other news, they really need to fix the performance issues in this game. It's a real shame, because otherwise I think it's pretty great.

Waka Laka

I've spent a few hours on ROTT and I'll give a break down of the good and bad.

GOOD
- Fast, fluid fun. Feels like an old school shooter (1996-1999) era.
- Responsive controls
- Some good level design
- No health regen, thank fuck.
- Ridiculously powerful and fun guns.
- Secrets, Secrets Secrets!
- Responsive and frenetic MP
- Cheap, I've spent more on lunch before.
- Gloriously gory.
- Awesome metal soundtrack
- Stays true to the franchise.

BAD
- Some maps aren't balanced for 12+ players and can feel like a fucking mess in Deathmatch.
- Gun drop is annoying, if you have a rocket based weapon, and you run over another it will instantly replace it.
- Obnoxiously bad voice acting at times. Often protagonists comments will repeat several times in a space of 30 seconds.
- Glitches that actually affect game play (getting stuck on walls, falling through level, models disappearing, scripted sequences locking you in an area, a few bad hitboxes).
- Quite a bit of enemy repetition,
- Graphically not on par with Killzone, or Crysis, but I don't think it aims to be. It wants to remain responsive and fast.
- Some platforming can be frustrating, especially in combination with the wall-grabbing glitches

I can summarise and say "Fun,but flawed". Will wait and see what the first patch will be like.

Drake

I'm one of the lucky people who are getting by without any performance issues. The only problem I had was the horrible UE3 mouse smoothing, but a simple ini tweak later and that was all sorted out.

So far my only real gripe is I haven't managed to connect to a multiplayer match yet. And I've encountered some of the glitches that Waka Laka mentioned, but nothing egregious or terrible so far. The most amusing one occurred while I was running around with the god mode power up. I got hit by a spike wall but since I was invulnerable I ended up clipping through the wall and getting trapped on the other side until the power up wore off and the wall killed me.

Otherwise I'm loving the hell out of it. It's the most retro of the retro shooters out yet.

Drake

I beat the first episode earlier today. I have stuff like Dishonored and Tomb Raider sitting around. The shit people rave about.

All I can think about playing is Rise of the Triad. I guess I'm just broken or something.

Grimthwacker

I haven't been having any performance issues at all - in fact, I tried "Ludicrous" settings for the achievement for kicks, and it still ran smoothly. Outside of MP lag, it's been great for me.

I'm still loving some of the reactions and sound bites I'm getting - Thi going "Holy shit! Flying bodyparts!" when I ludicrous gib somebody won't be getting old soon.

Drake

Interceptor has dropped a hotfix for a couple of issues today, and they have announced that a patch will be coming in four to five weeks to address the performance issues people are experiencing. At first I was like fuuuuuuck that's a long time to wait but then some good sense that I haven't quite been able to smother yet kicked in and told me that this is probably a decently realistic time frame to expect a good, comprehensive update from such a small team.

And yeah, I've hit some performance issues now that I've started on Episode 2. Nothing that wrecks the game for me, but it's not as smooth an experience as the first episode was. I'm still very positive about this game, and I hope that Interceptor delivers on this planned update so the experience is universally satisfying.

Also; I managed to get in on some TDM last night and man it was a ball.

Grimthwacker

E2M2 - Loved the idea, was irked by the fact that platforming really needs to be tightened up. It's too easy to overshoot things or get caught in parts of the geometry; hopefully this'll be addressed in the big ol' patch coming up. Otherwise, it was the most "Rise of the Triad" level in the game so far (both in terms of craziness and challenge).

Waka Laka

I'm up to E4L4 and the difficulty and puzzles have ramped up. There are new enemy types and they can be tough, but I'm still enjoying it.

Alice Leywind

I am really enjoying RoTT, but yeah. The performance issues need to be fixed. It's not a very pretty game, there's no reason for it to run this badly. Otherwise, I'm really enjoying it...With the caveat that yes, E2M2's jumping puzzle was really awful.

Grimthwacker

Also of note: there's a bug that messes with any armor you might have active when you restart from a checkpoint after being killed; it might still show up on your HUD, but you'll effectively have no protection. Hopefully that also gets resolved in a quick-fix or the big patch.

Alice Leywind

Grimthwacker wrote: »

Also of note: there's a bug that messes with any armor you might have active when you restart from a checkpoint after being killed; it might still show up on your HUD, but you'll effectively have no protection. Hopefully that also gets resolved in a quick-fix or the big patch.

I learned that the hard way with the boss of episode 1....the really hard way.

Grimthwacker

Oh, I actually just learned something through GAF: remember that Interceptor was working on a Duke 3D remake that went silent apparently due to Gearbox's interference? Turns out they can still release it non-commercially. Odd, considering Interceptor ported the first 2 Duke Nukem sidescrollers to iOS, but they were still under Apogee's name, so I guess anything "officially" Duke is under Gearbox's purview.

heenato wrote: »

Grimthwacker wrote: »

Also of note: there's a bug that messes with any armor you might have active when you restart from a checkpoint after being killed; it might still show up on your HUD, but you'll effectively have no protection. Hopefully that also gets resolved in a quick-fix or the big patch.

I learned that the hard way with the boss of episode 1....the really hard way.

Yeah, that made things a bit more difficult than it should have been. Especially since that Asbestos armor gets completely fried by those fire waves in Phase 1 - it just took patience, pattern recognition and knowing when to resupply/heal up. I just started the level over each time.

Drake

Just finished up e2m2 with a few GODDAMNITs and a couple of OK WHAT THE FUCKs, but looking back at it, it was fun stuff. The challenges were just the right length to keep it fun, with just the right amount of rage inducement to make the post challenge murder-sessions super satisfying.

e2m3 was pretty fucking glorious. This isn't the most polished game, by far, but goddamn I'm having a good time.

Waka Laka

Just finished it. Ridiculously fun game.Though I basically had to glitch one boss to defeat it, weird shit.

HeraldS

What are the specs on this game? It looks like fun and I remember the original fondly so I'd like to give this a shot if my laptop can handle it.

Grimthwacker

Well, I'd say to look on the Steam store page, but one of the big problems people seem to be having is poor performance even on systems that can handle it well - chalk it up to poor optimization on Interceptor's fault, which they're going to be addressing with the big patch in four or five weeks. If your lappy can handle it I'd say at least go with Medium settings to start and see what else can be added in the Advanced Options menu.

On another note, goddamn the fight with Krist in E2M5 took way longer than it should have. That chaingun of his tears you apart in seconds.

Drake

They've also said that the big patch coming in about a month is mainly the editor. They've said we can expect to see optimization patches hit as they get these issues ironed out. They were going to try to get some out this weekend, but I guess that didn't happen. Not that I expect miracles from a team that has like two guys working on the code, I'd rather wait a bit and see fixes that work.

Waka Laka

The framerate is odd yes it fluctuates between 45 to a crazy 240 fps at times. It never affected gameplay, but it was noticeable with massive frame tears when it went below 60.

AvistTorch

E2M2 and that spiral bridge in E3M3 nearly drove me insane, but aside from those, the game has been fun. I'm on E4M3 now. Get really massive slowdown when there's lots of particles, but performance is fairly stable otherwise. I'm on Medium settings, but my graphics card (Nvidia Geforce 660 GTX) should probably be able to do much better.

That NME fight was crazy even on Normal.

If you bring the first Firebomb from earlier in the level and bring down the second one, you can finish the fight really fast on Normal. That is more or less the only way to survive this monster. I actually had to *plan* the fight out in order to win.

I'll bet that doesn't do enough damage on Hard/Ludicrous, though. In those cases, you should weaken it with weaker weapons at the start instead of later because you want to finish it fast when it starts spamming those rockets.

The robots and monks are fun to fight. Here's hoping there are still some robots in episode 4.

Grimthwacker

I can confirm that your tactics still work like a charm against the NME on Hard; I actually managed to get the achievement for beating it within three minutes (although I got killed by a stray rocket just as it finished blowing up). Ridiculously frustrating fight, that was. It's great to see the monks in Chapter 4 aren't the damage sponges they were in the original game, but they can still kill you just as quickly if you're not careful.

Grimthwacker

Finally finished the game after an infuriating fight with El Oscuro - the second half was one of the most aggravating experiences I've had in a game in recent memory. Still, pretty much the only major blemish on a game that was very well executed as both a re-imagining of RotT and a fast paced throwback shooter in general. Oddly specific glitch: the game stuck "How'd I Do?" on a loop during the ending and credits (which showed how much Interceptor and the original devs put their enthusiasm into their respecive products - very nice touch).

Waka Laka

El Oscuro glitched to his death on the second half in my run. Hilarious.

Grimthwacker

Rather large update to the game today, which purportedly helps address some of the performance issues. I tried it with High settings cutting off some of the vestigial stuff like bloom, blur, and the like, and it ran just fine.

Ataxrxes

Downloading from Steam now. Played the original when it came out. Can't wait.

Grimthwacker

Just get ready for a real ball-buster, but if you enjoyed the original, you should know exactly what to expect. Also, Thi Barret is confirmed waifu tier. "WINGS, bro! I - I love wings!"

Alice Leywind

It runs slightly better to me. Not that much better but marginally playable now.

But fuck you game. If you're going to give me bullshit instadeath jumping puzzles, give me a checkpoint even remotely close to them, or GIVE ME A FUCKING QUICKSAVE.

Grimthwacker

What map are you on? Interceptor's been hearing a lot of requests for quicksaving/loading, and they're trying to figure out some way to integrate that sometime in the future from what I believe.

Alice Leywind

4-2. Checkpoint in question is "Barreling down" I wouldn't MIND as much, if it didn't make me slog through the two enforcers beforehand every time. One of which is almost impossible to kill because of the spike traps blocking my shots.

Grimthwacker

The next major patch should be available tomorrow (9/9), and include a lot of improvements. Also, a new shotgun weapon is getting ready to be added, and Interceptor's asking people to vote on the five finalist names.

TOGSolid

I kinda wish my buddy's suggestion had made it to the end cause it's a lot more clever than the actual final five: Diversifying Laceration Cannon.

Grimthwacker

ROTT V1.1 is now LIVE! Here's the big deal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VDa7_vIPyo&feature=player_embedded

ROTT Patch 1.1 Changelog:

*Note: this changelog does not take into account the thousands of meshes replaced, merged or removed to improve overall game performance

General Fixes:

* Playable character speeds balanced and better jump control
* Taradino: 2.5% Slower
* Doug: 7.5% Slower
* I .P: 5% Slower
* Thi: No Change
* Ben: No Change
* Larry: 2.5% Slower
* Leo: 2.5% Faster
* John: 7.5% Slower
* Lorelei: 2.5% Faster
* Groz: 5% Slower
* Bob: No Change
* Arturo 2.5% Slower
* Nolan 5% Slower
* Fabio: 2.5 % Slower
* Hoeg: 7.5% Slower

* Added Anti-Cheat/exploit leaderboard prevention
* Changed multiplayer listing server to be more stable
* "Disabled crosshair" no longer resets when hosting a new server
* Default Mouse Sensitivity is now 25
* Default FOV is now 85
* Weapons no longer disappear when picking up other weapons when in God mode
* "Yes / No" no longer re-selectable when exiting the game. Yes means yes. NO MEANS NO!
* “The Feiner Things" achievement fixed
* Firebomb viewmodel is now displayed correctly in 5:4 resolutions
* Tweaked blood hit effect for performance gains
* Tweaked God mode explosion effect for performance gains
* Blood Spray from gibs effect capped to increase performance (entrails are enabled by PhysX support in launcher)
* Overworld Map - E4L4 box no longer shows over checkpoint selector
* Added Walk function (default Left Shift)
* Decals are now active by default
* Health bonuses are now based on percentages
* Game brightness is now saved properly
* Split missle is now saved upon reaching checkpoints
* Fixed infinite ammo projectile weapons glitch
* In-game FPS counter can now be turned on permanently in main menu
* Popup combo information can be turned off in main menu
* Fixed HUD fade issue
* HUD fade and size is now restored upon checkpoint load
* If crosshair is disabled it'll no long show up while aiming
* Robots no longer block weapons once they are dead
* Fixed God mode weapon switch exploit
* Key rebind issue fixed
* Lightshafts are disabled by default
* Fixed suicide achievement exploit
* Breakable objects that don't inflict damage will no longer cook health
* Removed Drunk Missile spin down delay (You don’t have to wait for it to spin-down anymore)
* Fixed corrupted checkpoints when starting game from overworld and then restarting from
checkpoint
­* Reduced split missile put down time when empty
* Weapon Loadout Exploit fixed
* Removed pointless main menu idle state

General Multiplayer Fixes:

* Added popup message after disconnection from multiplayer server
* Projectile based weapons will now properly count kills after instigator dies
* Added new map playlist manager with map rotation
* LDKDedicatedServer will now filter out all alphanumeric characters from server name
* Added new multiplayer map browser
* Fixed non-moving Interpactors (GADS, etc)
* Fixed players touching an interpactor, the camera would move to a random position
* Fixed multiplayer music not playing properly
* Fixed Mercury mode lasting FOREVER
* Fixed issue with some players turning invisible (superpowers not allowed)
* Added dedicated Team spawns for TDM/CTF modes
* Taradino and Lorelei no longer have stretchy gibs in multiplayer
* Spawn points in Team Deathmatch are no longer random
* “Weapons free” voiceover is re-implemented
* Flamewall is no longer eating all asbestos armor and health. Now deals 75 dmg over the duration of 5 secs.
* “Combat starts in…” -sound no longer restarts every time a player joins a match
* Getting killed while the game ends no longer allows you to move around while the scoreboard is displayed
* Pistol is now selected by default after running out of ammo for other weapons
* Firebomb in multiplayer now does 25% less damage (75 dmg. per. explosion)
* Multiplayer main menu no longer breaks if you have console on while getting kicked out of a game