Supplice - standalone GZDoom FPS - now available on Early Access

[Falksi]

Just finished the demo. It was OK, the targeting is very nice, the weapons you get with the demo all pretty groovy too with both the assault rifle and shotgun feeling very satisfying for early game weapons. The maps are steady enough, with some nice little trap like setups in there.

But despite the positives I didn't take to it that much tbh. It was a bit too blotchy and felt a little bit flat to play overall. I'd definitely recommend folk try it as there's lots of stuff which may snag you, but it didn't me. Part of it is probably because I'm playing Arthurian Legends too, and that's bagging my sack more.

 

[Baron Dupek]

ABG once again shows what to expect in less known game

 

[Strig]

Art syle reminds me of Ion Fury,. At any rate, WL'ed.

It ought to. Ion Fury had Aleksander Kowalczyk on board, the lad responsible for the spritework in Supplice. A couple of years back he uploaded a few process videos which I found very helpful.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzD9tU3AqgPGkGL1BDqNJzg

Visually it looks great. I give it points for making the best looking game they could make with the engine instead of making the game ugly on purpose 'cause retro lmao.

It's probably not the best they could do with the engine but they picked a style and worked from there to offer something worthwhile. Meanwhile Cultic, the Spiritual Successor™ to Blood, puts a pixelated diarrhea filter over an admittedly okay-ish presentation to make it look more like shit. I think many of these devs think old games looked like garbage and have little to no understanding of either aesthetics or technical limitations that influenced them.

 

[Lyric Suite]

ABG once again shows what to expect in less known game

Do you play a woman or a parrot?

 

[udm]

ABG once again shows what to expect in less known game

ABG is a true bro, always silent, always vigilant

 

[toughasnails]

Meanwhile Cultic, the Spiritual Successor™ to Blood, puts a pixelated diarrhea filter over an admittedly okay-ish presentation to make it look more like shit. I think many of these devs think old games looked like garbage and have little to no understanding of either aesthetics or technical limitations that influenced them.

Cultic's dev is p defensive of that retro filter from what I saw on the steam forums... At least he allows the players to disable it, even if he has to enabled by default.
It looks to me as a misguided attempt to emulate the look of Blood's software rendering in hardware renderer... Which is admittedly difficult, look how long it took for GZDoom to develop options that emulate the look of the original software lighting and it is still p imperfect.

 

[Strig]

Cultic's dev is p defensive of that retro filter from what I saw on the steam forums... At least he allows the players to disable it, even if he has to enabled by default.
It looks to me as a misguided attempt to emulate the look of Blood's software rendering in hardware renderer... Which is admittedly difficult, look how long it took for GZDoom to develop options that emulate the look of the original software lighting and it is still p imperfect.

That's pretty much obvious and the filter would be a fun option, smilar to what Dusk had on offer, but for Cultic it's the default. He must be aware that it looks like shit and has fewer colors than Blood's palette allowed. I can excuse games looking like pixelated dog vomit because the author lacks the skill to make them better while at least trying to do something interesting. What I can't abide by is actively making games look worse with some misguided attempt to make them feel more retro. Pick a genre, pick a style, pick a period and try (and I do really mean try, you don't even have to succeed) to match the best games had to offer back then. Simple as.

 

[Riskbreaker]

Cultic's spritework is a (far) bigger problem than that toggleable filter.
The thing is, you can very much tell that the guy is putting some earnest effort into that thing. The environments actually look perfectly fine, with some great lighting - the demo map wasn't made by someone who thinks that the old Build games looked bad or who took to their style as an excuse not to put much effort into his game's visuals. But it's a solo show and this guy isn't omni-talented. And it shows. Both the weapon sprites and the cultist sprites look poor, and in this case their low resolution does look like an excuse. I guess he either couldn't pay someone to do sprites for him or couldn't fin someone with whom he could work intimately enough.

 

[Strig]

Cultic's spritework is a (far) bigger problem than that toggleable filter.
The thing is, you can very much tell that the guy is putting some earnest effort into that thing. The environments actually look perfectly fine, with some great lighting - the demo map wasn't made by someone who thinks that the old Build games looked bad or who took to their style as an excuse not to put much effort into his game's visuals. But it's a solo show and this guy isn't omni-talented. And it shows. Both the weapon sprites and the cultist sprites look poor, and in this case their low resolution does look like an excuse. I guess he either couldn't pay someone to do sprites for him or couldn't fin someone with whom he could work intimately enough.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Earnest effort doesn't have to yield a perfect fruit of the labour. I really don't mind how the sprites look, they're not as bad as you seem to imply. The graphic style is rather serviceable and how is the filter masking its weak points by making everything look way worse? It's like the guy baked a cake, not the prettiest cake in history, but it could be a tasty treat for your tumtum even if it doesn't deserve an Instastory. And then he decided to empty his bowels and pour the resulting diarrhea all over the frosting. Not even a regular diarrhea but something you produce after visiting an Indian restaurant where they stir the curry rice with the same hand they wipe their asses with after shitting in the designated back alley.

 

[toughasnails]

My only problem with Cultic's sprites was with the gun ones, they look too low res. But that could be easily alleviated if he downscaled them to maybe 60-70% of their current size.

 

[SpellSword]

will it come out on gog?

The trailer looks pretty good. I'd buy it if it is released DRM-Free on GOG.

GOG is already selling a game that uses the GZDoom engine (Hedon) so if the developer wants their game on GOG it won't be the first one based on a Doom port which will hopefully increase the chances that they'll agreed to sell it.

Also the publisher Hyperstrange already has a game on GOG (Jupiter Hell) so maybe that will help make it happen?

 

[Curratum]

Bumping this because I'd rather have more discussion on this instead of the endless gender bullshit in the Selaco thread. On top of this, I think this is a much better game overall as well.

Supplice is a much more classic Doom-engine experience, it doesn't try to emulate its inspiration - Marathon, beyond the visual style and the pacing, movement and combat are unmistakably Doom-driven, which to me is a much better option that the weird mixed bag of Selaco.

The demo was immensely enjoyable, even though I spent 5 minutes looking for the way forward in the bigger demo map. This could be fixed with a scripted camera switch that shows you what last opened as you hit that latest switch and shouldn't be too hard to implement. It's not a deal-breaker, but then again, I have pretty good visual memory and spatial orientation and it could be a much bigger issue for some people, who knows...

At any rate, if you haven't played the demo, do it. Hopefully they manage to get it out in 2022 as planned.

 

[toughasnails]

I loved the demo too, I'm hoping the game won't be lost in the flood of boomer shooters like what happened to Arthurian Legends, ADACA etc. I just don't see that much talk about it, certainly it isn't as "flashy" nor does it have as much of a push as some other titles in the genre.
It would be a shame bc this is something that was in development for ages by people who definitely know what they're doing. When Supplice was first announced as a TC nobody could've guessed that the boomer shooter revival would ever happen.

 

[toughasnails]

The game is coming out early next year... in early access.

 

[Curratum]

 

[Tweed]

They seem like nice, stable people. So, still D1P?

 

[Fargus]

Looks bland, nothing special. And female protag? Missed me with that gay shit.

But i do like the dual wielding smgs.

 

[Curratum]

Looks bland, nothing special. And female protag? Missed me with that gay shit.

But i do like the dual wielding smgs.

Game is tight as fuck, best boomer shooter I've ever played and I've been playing them since they started making them. Play the demo on Steam.

Not buying it, seeing the dev is a ban-happy wanker, of course, will pirate it, but still, don't deprive yourself of the best retro shooter gameplay around.

 

[good fucking shit happen]

Game is tight as fuck, best boomer shooter I've ever played

How does it compare to Fortune's Run? This looks lame in comparison and it features those boring ass flying robot enemies that are always shit.

 

[Curratum]

Haven't tried the Fortune's Run demo yet. Give me 30 minutes.

 

[good fucking shit happen]

Haven't tried the Fortune's Run demo yet. Give me 30 minutes.

Took me an hour or so, the start is kind of slow.

 

[Curratum]

Well, Fortune's Run would have been great if its jumping mechanics weren't janky as fuck and you didn't need to get through an obligatory, unskippable SS2-like VR tutorial that relies on those janky jumping mechanics and which tutorial bugs out if you fail and "die" in the VR, and you can't restart it and need to reboot the whole game, so um...

I think the winner here is Supplice...

 

[udm]

Supplice is great fun indeed. Too bad the devs are cunts. Sorry to hear about your ban, Curratum

 

[toughasnails]

Yeah that's not worthy of a permaban even from the rest of your comments I saw in that thread.
You calling a number of other boomer shooters vaporware probably didn't help though. It seems like everyone of note in the boomer shooter scene is friends with everyone else so badmouthing other titles and devs probably won't endear you to anyone.

 

[good fucking shit happen]

Well, Fortune's Run would have been great if its jumping mechanics weren't janky as fuck and you didn't need to get through an obligatory, unskippable SS2-like VR tutorial that relies on those janky jumping mechanics

The jumping around part does suck a bit, but the verticality is better than in Supplice, where I missed jumping.

and you didn't need to get through an obligatory, unskippable SS2-like VR tutorial that relies on those janky jumping mechanics and which tutorial bugs out if you fail and "die" in the VR, and you can't restart it and need to reboot the whole game,

Strange, worked fine for me.

Just got done with the demo for Supplice and it feels too much like just another Doom total conversion for my taste. Don't get me wrong, it had a nice music going, very crisp textures and it wasn't ass. Is just that I've played Doom already and this mod isn't giving me new game release vibes. The combat is kind of lame since it's that way beyond Doom 1 combat, where they have to throw a ton of enemies at you and most of them aren't that interesting to fight. Like the shield guard alone in Fortune's Run is much more interesting than anyone in this lot. I can't really enjoy Doom bloat as I used to, it has to be Blood tier for me to really get my juices flowing. With enemies that demand different approaches, weapons and that don't just run at the player.

Didn't like the flying Dune worms or the robot flying enemies, just as annoying as I expected them to be. There are some imps that leap at you and a tankier Blood looking enemy that doesn't do much, as well as the standard dull zombies. Machinegunners suck ass to fight against since it's Doom and you're not given tools like throwable dynamite to deal with them like you had in Blood. The enemies are just as boring as the general character of the game, it reminds me of this free Doom total conversion that I played called Harmony. It was an okay mod, but it did nothing to stand out. Supplice has a more modern Doom mod feel to it, with faster shooting and enemies, and the bloated levels that somehow never get as satisfying as the first Doom episode, or anything from the original campaign of the first game. Despite the updated basic mechanics it still does very little for me.

Looks bland, nothing special.

Yeah, turns out this is the case. If you've played any Doom total conversion before this will feel like just another one of those. What's weird is that there are some that do work, by changing up the gameplay enough that it doesn't just feel like slightly tweaked and reskinned Doom. Hedon does that, switching things up enough that it becomes its own thing so it doesn't feel like you're stuck in the 1993 and fighting the same old ass imp and shotgun zombie with the same old weapons in the same old levels.