Latest News

New Vavoom

A new version of Vavoom has been released. It features more improved Strife support as well some bug fixes and implemented some requested features.

Heretic & Hexen Soundtracks

I just got word that both Hexen and Heretic soundtracks are available for download at Sycraft website and in his own words:

"Though I was never as big a fan of Hexen as I am of Doom, it is still a great game in its own right, with some really cool music. Up to this point, I have been unable to find any soundtracks for Hexen like there are for Doom and Heretic. So, with a little encouragement, I went ahead and made one. Like with the Doom soundtracks, it is made to work with the Doomsday engine.

A good deal of time has passed since I did the Doom soundtracks, and the equipment I own and have access to has changed significantly, therefore this soundtrack is version 3.0. It sounds quite different from the Doom soundtracks since it was made primarily with Roland hardware, whereas the Doom soundtracks were done exclusively with Creative Labs (Emu) hardware. I will be redoing the Doom soundtracks to version 3.0 in time.

Also there are three different versions of the soundtrack available, a normal, high and low quality version. The only difference between these versions is the bit rate they were encoded at and hence the size. The normal quality version is encoded at 128kbps (quality 4) nominal and is what I highly recommend to most users. The high quality version is encoded at 256kbps (quality 8) nominal and is good if you own high grade sound equipment and want the most from the soundtrack. The low quality version is encoded at 45kbps nominal (quality -1) and should only be downloaded if space or bandwidth is at a premium.

I finally got around to finishing off a Heretic soundtrack, which now caps off my collection of Doomsday soundtracks. I left Heretic for last since, as a whole, the quality of the Heretic soundtracks out there is better than the Doom ones. It is much smaller than the other soundtracks, because Heretic has fewer and shorter songs than the other games."

You can find the Hexen soundtrack available in low, normal or high quality here and the Heretic one here!

RavenGames back online

After some dificult times here at RavenGames, we're back online for good. A new team emerged around sneax, EuT and myself to continue the project!
Lets hope we can give it a boost. You can expect the usual daily news flood sometime during this next week.

Happy New Year for all!

Heretic 3 by the community?

Slyrr, maker of some cool MD2 models for Heretic, proposes a new project: a jHexen TC called "Heretic 3: The heart of D'Sparil". He can make the models/animations and SkyJake promised to make the code, but the project sorely needs mappers, after all 27 all-new maps need to be made. For more information, see this page and this forum thread.

(Source: raven-games.com)

Vavoom Engine version 1.15 released

Vavoom is a source port based on sources of Doom, Heretic, Hexen and a little bit from Quake. Supported platforms are DOS, Windows and Linux.

Features:

* Polygonal engine with colored lighting, with software mode, OpenGL and Direct3D support, and any resolutions up to 1600x1200
* Translucency. Some things are translucent, also spectres' partial invisibility is replaced with 10% translucency, so they are really hard to see now
* Complete support for freelook (look up & down) in all games
* A powerful language to describe game logic, Vavoom C - now you can forget about DeHackEd and DDF!
* 100% client/server architecture with in-game joining
* Quake-style console, with key bindings
* Ability to play AudioCD tracks
* Indirect support for DeHackEd - utility to generate Vavoom progs out of DEH files
* Crosshair
* Jumping
* And many other cool things...

Developed by Janis Legzdinsh the new 1.15 version was just released:

"After some thinking I decided not to go with another beta but rather do a full version, so here it is - version 1.15 is waiting for ya! There ain't any serious changes since beta, the only thing to mention here is a little bit improved network games, so now there should be less lag (I would like to get some feedback on how it works now).
I hope soom I will be able to more work on Vavoom than now, so stay tuned!"

Take a look at the Vavoom homegage!

Doomsday Engine updated to version 1.7.8

Like the previous release two weeks ago, this one has bug fixes and
some new features. The highlights:

-A new master server. The old DirectPlay hack has been dropped. If
you're upgrading, make sure your cvars are set up as described on the
Multiplayer page.

-Various netgame bug fixes. Note that quite a number still remain,
but they mostly affect jHexen.

-jDoom (finally) lets you shoot at floors and ceilings with
lineattack weapons (pistol, shotguns, chaingun), if you're so
inclined...

-Some HUD weapon sprites in jDoom were adjusted: the plasma rifle's
shooting frame was all wrong and the muzzle flash of the super shotgun
and rocket launcher were slightly out of sync.

-Several jHexen fixes: dedicated server crashing at level change,
messages not showing up on clientside, client sometimes crashing at
level ...

Take a look at Doomsday Headquarters.

Doomsday Version 1.7.7 And SourceForge

This release fixes a couple of bugs and has some minor new features.

* Graphics glitches fixed: high-resolution flats with alpha channel were garbled, possible sector lightlevel overflow on clientside (e.g. jHexen map 26), jHeretic status bar flickering.
* -texdir2 option wasn't working correctly. The texture paths were checked in the wrong order.
* Switch texture pairs are now loaded at the same time. This removes a momentary stutter when using high-resolution textures.
* Support for custom particle textures, somewhat akin to S.Zenith's particle mod. The differences: textures must be named ParticleNN.ext, where NN is a two-digit number between 00 and 31. The first texture is thus e.g. Particle00.tga. pt_tex* flags are defined in Special.ded and begin from the value 100.
* Flat particles stick to planes and follow them if they move (both floors and ceilings).
* Particle radius may have a random component (Generator:Stage:Radius rnd).
* jDoom: console variable player-air-movement added. Controls the player's movement speed while airborne, allowing jumping onto ledges. The default value is 1, which is quite weak but effective enough.

The Doomsday Engine has been registered on SourceForge.net The sources are now released officially under the GNU General Public License. If you're interested in becoming a developer on the project contact SkyJake at Doomsday HeadQuarters.

Doomsday Engine update

The Doom II Retexturing Project sends word that they now have a high-resolution version for all the textures in Doom II. Way to go, guys! The whole package is a tad large, though (180 MB).

There's a couple of new models being prepared for the next release of the model packs: Ophidian for jHeretic and Ettin for jHexen. They should be available for downloading soon.
The Fourwinds FTP server that hosts the downloads was offline for a while. It should now be working again.

You can take a look at Doomsday Headquarters homepage here.

Doomsday Engine version 1.7.6 released

A lot of news from Skyjake´s Doomsday Headquarters:

Doomsday Version 1.7.6 has been released.
Noteworthy things regarding Doomsday 1.7.6:

* Since a number of people have contacted me with reports of problems with Doomsday's default sound code, there is now a more compatible choice: dsCompat.dll contains routines that use DirectSound 6. It's activated with the -csd command line option. If you're having sound-related problems you should give it a try.
* Particles can now have a flag that causes them to be rendered flat against a surface if they're close enough to it. This is utilized by jDoom's new blood effects (in Defs\jDoom\Particles.ded). This is no match for actual decals, though. For instance, particles don't actually get stuck to the surface they're touching. They merely stop moving. This means they won't follow moving structures or scrolling textures. It's not a very serious issue, though.

The jHeretic model pack was updated:

* List of released models.
* New additions include: colored orb statues (used with locked doors), D'Sparil on foot, hanging skull, tall and short pillar (all courtesy of Slyrr).

The jHexen model pack was updated, too:

* List of released models.
* The seven tombstones have now models that more closely match the original sprites.

You can check it all out in here.

The Northern Dwarven Mines

Our Xmas present for Heretic fans is a 9-level episode with lots of snow, going by the name "The Northern Dwarven Mines". See here for screenshots and the download link.

For more news, see the News Archives.

For news on other games, check out RavenGames Daily.