Catacomb Abyss - EP1: Down to the Mausoleum

[@DarkhorseSJ]

Wow, nosalgia! I remember using "Norton Commander" as like a DOS interface to get this up and running on my old 386 dx66 PC. Brings it all back. Well played, lad.

[@MadJak91]

Yop! That was a fairly popular file manager and DOS shell on Win95-98 to run DOS programs when you did not know how to boot into MS-DOS. Me and my bro used it as well :D

[@FlockOfHawks]

Gosh ! i only know this world from its presence in the Samsara Re GZDoom Ubermod , where it is one of my favourites . Ever so grateful for this upload 🙏

[@FlockOfHawks]

"Ankle deep in guano" probably inspired id to Ep1's title ?

[@FlockOfHawks]

( maybe add a 0:00 entry in the 👍 desc to activate yt's indexing ? )

[@MadJak91]

The mod is what sparked my memory about Catacomb 3D and I found out it has long since received a source port :D Admittedly, if you play one map, you played most of them but by Apocalypse they tried a few somewhat different things. It is pretty charming though in the texture and enemy designs! You can say the series is unofficially to Heretic and Hexen what Wolf3D is to DOOM. Some of the area names have somewhat amusing names ;D

[@FlockOfHawks]

@@MadJak91 Pretty admirable Automap - i watched the video for a couple of hours at 0.75 speed and it didn't bore me 1 second : i cannot watch or play Wolf3D bc of all the ns symbols and that Worst Austrian Ever 's horrible portraits everywhere ; this Game is i.m.o quite cool though - i'm looking forward to another episode or two & hope to play it myself next month ( currently unable to play due to relatively pleasant i.r.l circumstances - life can be sweet at times , even to an oldtimer as me - spring came early this year / decade :o)

[@arnoansems6704]

@@MadJak91 What I like about the texture and enemy designs is that they're all restricted to the 16 colors of the EGA palette, which gives the game a very colorful and distinct look and feel when compared to the other early first person shooters.

[@arnoansems6704]

Thank you for showcasing the CatacombGL source port in your video. I appreciate it!

[@MadJak91]

It filled the same void as ECWOLF did for Wolf3D and BStone for Blake Stone. Quite good already! I plan to go through the trilogy on the current 0.5.4 tag since it supports Linux now. So far I only have a graphical note that on maps with yellow floor the player marker is not visible. But if I recall correctly the automap was also in vanilla but only accessible through a cheat.

[@arnoansems6704]

@@MadJak91 Thank you for the compliment, as ECWolf and BStone are well known and high quality source ports. And thanks for the feedback on the yellow floor automap issue. I'll have it fixed in the next release. I'm looking forward to your upcoming videos on the Catacomb games!

[@MadJak91]

It is a good port! And it finally forced me to look at the source of these games too :D