Shame on me that I noticed it yesterday and not earlier: Hobomaster22 has released something that I have requested almost a year ago in the Doomworld forums, a comprehensive Doom frontend which also serves as a database for all the mods and maps in the style of D-Fend Reloaded (a DOSBOX frontend) or ECC2 (a frontend for any kind of emulators). The very impressive result which is currently still in development phase can be found here, and in the name of all those other doomers who love to have a sorted archive I suggest you take a look at the frontend, test it and give feedback so the author can do further improvements. It's a real great piece of work and a lot of things are already working quite well, but it still has some issues which need to sorted out. So go, help and support this brilliant piece of program!

The mapper Ribbick has recently released his Finely Crafted Fetish Film which is a set of 7 boom-compatible maps for Doom2 with a focus on puzzles and unusual layouts, created with anotak's lua functionality that is now part of Doombuilder X - without which this mapset wouldn't exist. The maps themselves feature a mixture of puzzle and combat elements: block pushing, switch/elevator setups, monster manipulation, platforming, and some normal slaughter fights here and there. Screenshots, further information and a download can be found here at Doomworld.

The community has already proven to be very creative when it comes to restrictions. Not only in the early beginnings of Vanilla but also in later days, just remember the 10 Sectors Contest of Doomworld in the late 90's. Keeper of Jericho had another interesting idea, that sets the boundaries of a Doom map to 5 sectors. Who thinks that this is boring might be more wrong than expected as the contest results prove in a very impressive way. But what do I talk, try it yourself.

After more than 23 years of Doom, I am still impressed how long we've come and what is possible with sourceports like GZDoom. The modder Alekv has proven once again that the only limit is your imagination (or your skills when it comes to scripts and stuff, but that's another story). He shows us impressively what's possible in his sidescroller jump&run mod Forest Adventure. Without further blabla, just watch the video and check the development thread.

This is more of a development blog entry and less actually news, but I think some people might be interested in how the development of Blade of Agony is currently proceeding. First of all, after turning the development and testing more private and less focused on sharing unfinished material with the community, things got a bit calmer. This doesn't mean that we weren't making progress at all. At the moment I am working on the third mission of chapter 3 which will focus on a small town setting heavily inspired by Medal of Honor's Snipercity with a few more surprises, twists and turns in the plot and a very interesting final battle towards the end of this mission.

Being in contact a lot lately with Graf Zahl were I finally have the feeling that I reached the limits of GZDoom as a port to create semi-modern projects like this. The screenshot to the right has been made by Nash who has actually a pretty decent machine but still, the FPS counter drops to 15 - 15 frames on a modern machine that runs a game more than 20 years old. Sounds crazy? Well, it's obviously possible. The main problem here is the wide open area, the town with all its houses, trees, actors, lines, sectors - the GPU and CPU have a lot to do each single cicle and that's what happens if the engine isn't made for settings like this.

With the help of Graf Zahl, improvements have already been made but it is already clear now that Blade of Agony won't work well with older rigs... or at least not fast. Sure, in our development team we discussed already a few times what to do: Reducing the amount of sectors, changing the setting, aiming for something smaller to make it also available for people with older systems. But in the end, we are not doing this primarily for everyone else, we are doing this mostly because it's fun for us.

When drafting new maps for the project, I don't imagine "What runs well" but I imagine "What plays and looks cool". Sure, if it would slow down my system as well, it would be different, but that's another story ;) Anyway, stay tuned, follow the development thread over at ZDoom.org where you will still find interesting replies from time to time.