Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20151224121621/@comment-1496755-20160329104514

Death, please tell me you did not spend three hours typing this :P

Of course games from different years cannot be put in the same category - this is especially true for the 1990's when technology advanced at amazing speed. Just imagine how little time it took to make the transition from Commander Keen to Doom - about two years. Then shortly afterwards we got Descent, with real textured 3D models and complex level structures... and one year later - Quake. Then 3D-accelerated cards came along and there was an "explosion" of previously undreamed-of stuff, which you are more familiar with (that's the late 1990's). And it all happened so fast! Furthermore, the big focus back then was on expanding and improving game engine functionality and interactivity, whereas nowadays the main focus is on improving the "cool looks" of the graphics.

True, Quake was the end of an era - several eras, in fact. The end of the shareware age, the end of the simplistic/fragmented shooters age, the end of 2D sprites, etc. It was the bridge between the older titles and the new generation (the Half-Life generation as some people call it). Other genres started blooming too - especially strategy and RPG.

To understand these underwater mechanics, you have to keep one thing in mind - early 1990's technology had many limitations, so developers had to "cheat" it, i.e. use various tricks to circumvent that and achieve the effects they wanted. The moving and rotating "3D" objects in Hexen are a good example of this - it's a complicated process where the object exists somewhere outside the boundaries of the playable area, and what you see is a rendering of the object moving or rotating (even though it does not actually move or rotate, only its rendered image moves/rotates). Now, zDoom/GzDoom are advanced enough to actually perform these actions for real, but vanilla Hexen had to rely on this trick. Early underwater areas were also a trick - submerging would simply "teleport" you (instantly) to another room, which is the "underwater place", with the proper underwater effects applied. This trend extended to fan creations too - using Doom's engine bugs to create "special effects" or illusions of 3D effects was a staple of PWADs from 1996 onward.

Oh, I know how DeHackEd works - I've tinkered with it, mostly around the time I played "Obituary" (a famous Doom 2 PWAD with some serious DH tweaking). They created some pretty sick stuff like rocket launcher troopers or semi-invisible enemies... but since the AI remains unchanged, the rocket guy often fires at you at point-blank range, which gets him killed as well :P

I got a taste of GL's advanced options, I was particularly curious about the stained-glass window reflections. It was cool, though glitchy when there are other windows nearby. Transparent water is cool too, though levels were not designed with this in mind, meaning you could see some rough stuff that is otherwise concealed by the water (like those holes in E1M3).

We did use floppy disks quite a bit during the early days - imagine installing Corel Draw (for Windows 3.11) from a package of 10 disks. It's installing, and someone has to stay there and insert the new disks when requested. The only 5.25 disks I still keep are my first copy of Spear of Destiny - a birthday gift. I have it as an electronic archive now, but I keep the old disks due to their sentimental value. I'll show you a photo sometime... CDs came a bit later, and we were in awe of this new tech at first. I had a collection of VHS tapes too - though the old Universum VCR isn't working properly anymore.

Yeah, I usually go straight to the latest videos. I'll take a look at your playlists too.

For me, headphone troubles are usually cable-related. Even a small connection issue could compromise sound quality or cause one channel to go mute.

Various projects, you say... I'll keep an eye on your channel then ;)