Reviews - Wolfy_girl

Shoddy, bugged, outdated, abandoned, and very much lacking in the amount of Half-Life 2 mods that it supports. Not to mention that the added difficulty to the existing Half-Life 2 campaigns is absurd; even on easy mode it turns every enemy into a bullet-sponge. It's just not a fun way to play Half-Life 2 this way, unless maybe you're just looking to derp around with twenty or so buddies and nothing else.

If you want to make it just *slightly* playable, I highly recommend limiting the FPS using the game's Steam launch options. That will at least ensure that Synergy doesn't crash all the time. It doesn't "fix" the mod itself though; it's still really not worth the time at the end of the day.

More than just a Doom source-port. I'm including GZDoom in this, since GZDoom is ZDoom's successor these days. A good solution for a retro-styled FPS game, though different genres are certainly not impossible to do in ZDoom.

The only thing I dislike about it is the lack of proper documentation, especially regarding newly implemented features. Thankfully you can ask around on their forums, but it's still an annoyance that should be easy to fix.

The best 3D game engine that connected the old technology with the new, and still withstands the test of time thanks to Carmack's wonderful open source advocacy.

Source-ports are still being used to create beautiful mods and indie-games, and it looks like they won't go away for years to come.

Easy of use: anyone can make a Doom-level and master the techniques with practice, even when using an advanced modern source-port. If you were to make your game using a Doom source-port (or something like Chocolate Doom if you prefer idTech 1 the classic way), it means that the action always feels good, and that the game runs smooth on pretty much all systems (even older systems).

The Doom community is still very active to this day, and is open to discussing any game that runs on idTech 1. Plenty of people are willing to help you out with the technical side of things as well, if you're looking to fork it off into your own project. Retro is a popular style these days, so why not build your retro-styled game around the best first person shooter engine ever created? You won't regret it.

Poorly coded, poorly credited use of assets, awful childish "taunts", and unnecessary gameplay changes to a game that doesn't need any big changes in this regard make this mod really difficult to recommend.

Add to that a creator (Sgt Mark) who seemingly cannot take criticism from anyone, and publicly suggests a depressing person to commit suicide on a forum, and you got a recipe for one of the most overrated and poorly designed Doom mods to date.

Please don't support the creator of this rubbish. If you would like to play a 'polished' modernized version of classic Doom, give Beautiful Doom a shot.

Leadwerks 3 has a lot of improvements over the earlier versions. The editor's interface has been vastly improved, and it seemingly resembles Valve's Hammer Editor a lot now. This also means that the engine supports brushes, which is ideal for laying out interior level designs, and the workflow is really smooth, with textures and model importing being easy as pie. Community service is also very good, and Leadwerk's creator Josh frequently answers questions on the website's forum.

Be warned though that this engine is still mostly geared towards programmers, which means you need to have an experienced programmer on your team to do the compiling or learn it yourself.

There's a certain level of disappointment when you see a indie game that has very little story, and straight up rips elements from other more popular games. Unfortunately, The Curse of Blackwater is this kind of game. The entire design is stock, only using a couple of jumpscares, and one patrolling monster AI that looks exactly like a necromorph monster from Deadspace.

There's a classic saying, that when a game doesn't pull you in with either its story or originality, the game stops being a game and becomes labor instead. However, I wouldn't judge a game this harshly if it wasn't for the fact that this is a product you have to pay ten dollars for, while there are free games and even Amnesia custom stories on the internet that are way better designed than this game.

I can only hope that the creators are learning from their mistakes, and take on the advice and tips from the indie community.

Reality Factory is a underrated software package, which aims to make gamecreation easier for artists by taking out alot of the things that require programming. It runs on a modified Genesis 3D engine, which uses the (dated) BSP format, popularized by the first Quake games, and Half Life 1. Nevertheless, Reality Factory still supports a couple of modern features such as bumpmapping and it also has a large (although quiet) community to help fellow gamedevelopers out.

As I've said, Reality Factory's package is highly underrated, since alot of people tend to look only at the rendering engine. RF's website also has a couple of great detailed tutorials to get you started as well, and if thats not enough there's always the forum to help you out! Give it a try!