WRATH: Aeon of Ruin - new Quake engine game from 3D Realms

[Curratum]

Every time I watch gameplay videos for arcane dimensions, the quality blows me away. Then I look at wrath and think to myself. "Is this really made by the same people?". Even the newest levels released for AD a few months looks like they had more thought put into them.

Even though I'm a huge fan of AD and I also think Wrath is like a poor man's AD despite being a commercial game and AD being a mod, I actually liked how the second wave of released levels played. With the difficulty on Hard, the game was no longer a joke and a walk in the park. I died a few times, had some absolutely fierce close fights and spent a lot of the level at or around 15-25 hp, which felt good.

I think the lower detail is not so much due to them being lazy. We may have had our disagreements with Skacky in the past, but I have to admit he's amazingly talented and doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would purposefully skimp on detail in a commercial game.

I think they may have been going for a generally lower poly look that mimics Quake 1's stock game polycounts more, who knows.

 

[geno]

People said Quake 1 used the same color palette being brown and green everywhere

And blue

 

[luj1]

Level design notwithstanding, they had a chance to make it interesting with the weapons and enemies. Doesn't look like they innovated anywhere, it's shameful.

The last thing we need is people trying to reinvent the wheel. I can't think of an instance over the past decade where a retro shooter tried to be "fresh" and "innovative" with its enemy and weapon designs and didn't suck because of it.

You just don't fix what's not broken.

You don't have to kill zombies with shotguns in every game, in a brown world, till the end of time, you potato head. Changing weapons and enemies isn't "reinventing the wheel"

 

[Riskbreaker]

Every time I watch gameplay videos for arcane dimensions, the quality blows me away. Then I look at wrath and think to myself. "Is this really made by the same people?". Even the newest levels released for AD a few months looks like they had more thought put into them.

Eh, I imagine that people tend to have the excess of the likes of 'Tears of False God' in mind when they make comparisons like this, forgetting how inconsistent AD is as regards the complexity of geometry and sizes of individual maps. As is to be expected given its nature and that is certainly no knock against it.

 

[Biscotti]

I wouldn't say that. People were singing AD's praises long before that map was released. What maps would you even consider lacking complex geometry outside of stuff like the E1M1 remake, or AD's version of the wind tunnels? There's a couple behemoths in terms of size, but I always got the impression AD is mostly talked about due to its usage of complex geometry, cool architecture, great additions to the Quake monster roster, and just all around being a great Quake experience.

 

[UserNamer]

Arcane dimensions is super cool, top notch settings, cool looks, great variety of settings. Excellent enemy variety and the original monsters plus redesigns/variants are great (non base / non variant monsters work well gameplay wise but aesthetically not as good). It seems a lot of the charm from ad or quake is missing in wrath

 

[luj1]

AD is the apex shooter experience, nothing comes close in my opinion. I only wish that RPGs could one day have such detailed environments.

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1000410/view/4589698632264671264

Content Update #3 is LIVE NOW!
Brand new level, new enemy and a new artifact - all part of this content update!

Greetings mortal! We are back with a third major Content Update and there's a lot new stuff for all of you to enjoy, explore and exterminate!

This update brings in a brand new level called The Hollow - a forest choked with ancient trees and forgotten ruins. Delve into the heart of the long-corrupted woods and discover the new Trinket of Deflection, an Artifact that summons an arcane shield. Activate the Trinket of Deflection in emergencies to ward off enemy projectiles or go on the offensive and unleash bullets, bones, and blood. But beware the Lurker, a new aquatic abomination waiting in the depths.

Changelog

Additions

• 1 new level, The Hollow
  
• 1 new enemy, The Lurker
  
• 1 new artifact, Trinket of Deflection
  
• Updated enemy encounters in The Mire and The Priory and artifacts in The Undercrofts, The Mire, The Gardens and The Priory

General

• Added timestamps for saves
  
• Added a lot of destructible furniture to the indoor sections of The Priory
  
• Increased brightness across the board in the indoor sections of The Priory
  
• Tweaked many enemy positions and setups in The Priory
  
• Overhauled logic in The Priory so that sequence breaking still spawns things correctly
  
• Significantly decreased self damage with the Retcher and the Slag Cannon
  
• Mouse setup and keyboard binds are now separate menus
  
• Added crosshair scaling options
  
• Added toggle viewpunch scale

Bug Fixes

• Fixed rare cases of enemy cysts killing the player instantly regardless of health and armor, though this might still happen very rarely
  
• Fixed a logic bug in The Gardens
  
• Fixed a variety of bugs in several levels
  
• Fixed rare instances of unkillable Wretches
  
• Fixed skating Widows
  
• Fixed frame skips/lag in The Mire’s swamp when firing the Shotgun’s primary
  
• Fixed being able to fly when crouching on top of urns
  
• Fixed rare cases of enemies spawning at 0 0 0 when re-entering a map
  
• Fixed rare cases of Oppressors freezing after death
  
• Fixed a bug where jumping while walking stopped you in the air

Weapon & Enemy Balance

• Changed the Retcher's attacks slightly: primary attack cysts can now attach to surfaces and act as proximity mines. Players can shoot their own cysts to detonate them. Secondary attack cysts now bounce.
  
• Increased max ammo capacity for the Fang Spitter to 150 (was previously 100)
  
• Reworked the Executioner’s charge and turning speeds
  
• Wretches now give 15 health instead of 20 when the Life Siphon is used

Known Issues

• There may be rare instances of faces that are completely black or have weird lighting going on; this is a byproduct of a new map compiler we’re using. These issues will be solved for the release version.

 

[Wunderbar]

Overly huge levels and the weird decision of allowing the player to play levels in any order is what drags this game down.

Wrath is like Arcane Dimensions, except every map is ad_sepulcher but with different coat of paint, and you can carry guns and consumables from one map to the other which breaks balance and forces mappers to design their maps with dynamic difficulty in mind. No wonder the game takes so long to be released.

 

[geno]

3DR - KillPixel
@here WRATH has been an immensely significant part of my life for many years now. Since 2013 I’ve poured nearly all of my time and energy into the quest of making WRATH a reality. Very early on my wife and I knew that in order to achieve our goals and maximize the (incredibly slim) chances of success, we would need to completely restructure our lives around the project. So we did that, and it’s been one hell of a journey. And now, WRATH is real. I say this only so you know that my decision has not come easy. I have stepped away from WRATH development as of October 2020. My role now is in the form of technical assistance for the team and mod tutorials for the full release. The rest of the team are still hard at work, along with some newcomers, and are taking the game across the finish line. WRATH is in a good place and I have total confidence that 3D Realms and 1C Entertainment will deliver an excellent retro FPS. I’ll be right there with you later this year playing it on launch day. I owe many, many people my thanks, but right now I’d like to thank you - watching people play and enjoy WRATH has been the most rewarding part of this entire adventure. As a token of my thanks, I’d like to reveal the last enemy proposal I modeled for the game:

From their discord channel.

 

[urmom]

Overly huge levels and the weird decision of allowing the player to play levels in any order is what drags this game down.

Wrath is like Arcane Dimensions, except every map is ad_sepulcher but with different coat of paint, and you can carry guns and consumables from one map to the other which breaks balance and forces mappers to design their maps with dynamic difficulty in mind. No wonder the game takes so long to be released.

Can you do part of one map until you get to a locked door, then go to another map to get the key, then go back to finish the first, etc.? That would make more sense IMO.

There's a couple of reasons why you'd want to do this:

1. All those textures take up memory.
2. You can have different people working on different maps simultaneously.

 

[Infinitron]

The track for E2M1, "The Flooded Dunes", the first map of the 2nd episode of WRATH: Aeon of Ruin.

 

[geno]

Good thing you can change game's OST with ease.

 

[Curratum]

This is what happens when someone gets too much praise and everyone treats them as a god, with no healthy and constructive criticism.

 

[Bad Sector]

I haven't played the game at all (waiting until it is properly released), what is the issue with the music, doesn't it fit the game?

 

[geno]

I haven't played the game at all (waiting until it is properly released), what is the issue with the music, doesn't it fit the game?

I don't consider Andrew a good composer and his stuff sounds too samey. It's like white noise to me. He doesn't have an interesting sound and his attempts to make atmospheric music are quite bland.
You can say it fits the game because it isn't out of place but it also doesn't do anything special.

 

[Curratum]

I haven't played the game at all (waiting until it is properly released), what is the issue with the music, doesn't it fit the game?

I don't consider Andrew a good composer and his stuff sounds too samey. It's like white noise to me. He doesn't have an interesting sound and his attempts to make atmospheric music are quite bland.
You can say it fits the game because it isn't out of place but it also doesn't do anything special.

That's exactly it. Andrew was able to make a few good riffs and metal bangers for Dusk and some of his stuff for Amid Evil works really well with the game's disparate worlds, but every time he tries more ambient and atmospheric music, it's really bland.

 

[Bad Sector]

I see, i thought you meant that it was bad and i couldn't see (or "hear" :-P) it because it doesn't sound bad to me. But i agree it isn't anything special either, i guess ambient stuff isn't his thing.

 

[Parsifarka]

Not bad bad but sounds like mediocre, Bandcamp-tier post-rock and everyone has been tired of that crap for the past twenty five years unless it's done really well -and this isn't.

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Infinitron]

Greetings, mortal... "Hollow Saturation", a WRATH track by Andrew Hulshult, is now LIVE for your pleasure this fine weekend. Enjoy the soundtrack while you kill everything in sight.

 

[Curratum]

Hulshult can write good, punchy riffs, but fuck me, his ambient stuff is so bland and uninspired, it makes me want to cry.

 

[Jenkem]

was supposed to be released "summer 2021" but no updates since january. at realms deep it was announced, shockingly, that it won't make it. and that's it. no news about when an update will even happen let alone the full release. they blame "muh pandemic" despite other devs seemingly being able to function just fine. they couldn't even bother making a trailer to show off new content or anything. they claim it's still being worked on, but I have my doubts.

the game is dead

 

[SharkClub]

Nah, it'll get released. For a game to be actual vaporware it either has to be being made by 1 guy in his bedroom getting inundated with feature creep (Project Zomboid) or it has to be extremely mismanaged to a point of no return (VTMB2). Even Duke Nukem Forever got released. You're right that developers using the "blame covid!!!!" excuse for game development being slow is stupid, considering game dev is one of the few jobs (especially in indie) where you really do not need to be in Game Developer Industries Office Building HQ™, it really isn't affected by covid rules that much. Plenty of game devs have been missing deadlines since the indie/steam scene began, it's nothing new to be blamed on covid.

 

[Jenkem]

nah the game is clearly dead or they would actually post a steam news article about the delay, so far the only reason people know of the delay is that it was announced at realms deep and apparently the lead level designer made a series of twitter posts explaining what is taking so long (tl;dr - quake engine is super hard and muh covid)

Why isn't this news posted on their Steam forums, or on their steam news feed for the game? Why was it not even posted by 3DRealms' own twitter account? Seems silly to me to try to argue "guys we are finally being transparent" while avoiding the most obvious places to update customers.