A lot of people seem to be keen on playing Ghoul’s Forest 3 on Skulltag again, but are having trouble finding the patch that fixes the texture problem.

You can grab it here. The link is also uploaded on the GF3 page.

As for Ghouls vs Humans, I’m leaving it alone for a while so I can catch up on other projects (impings). It seems pretty stable at the minute. I will start working on it again when some ZDoom bugs eventually get fixed, and they get implemented into Skulltag.

It’s been a while, but finally there’s a list of games that I’m actually looking forward to this year. While I have been buying games that are fairly decent, nothing has made me count the days down like Smash Bros Brawl or Street Fighter IV did. Here’s a list of games I’m looking forward to playing this year, or later. I don’t have enough to make a top 10 list, so I’ll just list them in no particular order.

Serious Sam HD (360)

This sneaky little gem was announced only a few days ago, and it’s already got me on the edge of my seat waiting for a release date. Serious Sam HD is a remake of my second favourite game ever, coming soon for Xbox Live Arcade and PC. It boasts updated visuals and a preview of the Serious 3 engine, which will be used to make Serious Sam 3 (also announced, but I think we’re far from seeing that so I won’t list it). I’ll be picking this up for the 360. With achievements, online play and voice support, I’ll be plowing through Egypt all over again, probably for months on end. Serious Sam kicks ass.

Diablo 3 (PC)

Diablo 2 was another one of my faves, so it was great to hear Blizzard have been working on a sequel all this time. Me and my friends jumped into the world of Diablo and played it for at least a year none stop. It was great. Even though we ran through the same dungeons and chapters over and over, it felt different every time thanks to the map and monster randomization. The different classes and ways you could level them up just piled on the replay value. When my friends started fading away from the game it did start to get a bit repetitive, and I stopped playing too. I’ve tried to get back into it, even after it was updated recently, but I just couldn’t. I’m hoping Diablo 3 will fill the gap in me which craves (this is starting to sound wrong) the dungeon exploring, action adventure gameplay that I once loved. Knowing Blizzard, I’m pretty sure they won’t cock it up.

Splatterhouse (360)

Of all the retro classics I wanted to see a 3d sequel to, I did NOT expect one to be Splatterhouse. Announced back in 2008, this is the reason I bought a 360. Splatterhouse was a classic side scrolling gory beat em up created by Namco. It started out in the arcades and made it’s way onto consoles with two ports. I loved playing Splatterhouse 2 when I was little, and the idea of a brand new Splatterhouse game just gave me joygasms. I used to have dreams of what it would be like. I never thought it would actually come true though! When I heard about it I knew it was time to get a 360. Even though the trailer looks like something from a crappy Saw clone, I’m still biting my nails in excitement to whack some gory monsters into walls with whatever I can get my bloody hands on.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (360)

Marvel Ultimate Alliance was essentially two of my favourite things coming together. Marvel characters and Diablo’s gameplay. What almost seemed to be too good to be true, actually turned out to be a decent game. There’s a ton of characters to choose from (it is Marvel after all) and level up in your own way, just like in Diablo. The game was just oozing with Marvel characters, villians and locations. The gameplay, while a bit repetative, was satisfying as hell when beating down a huge boss like Galactus with your powered up hero. One thing that impressed me was the networking. On the 360 you can play a flawless game of MUA, which includes every single detail that the singleplayer offers, including cutscenes and special boss fights. The game is pretty long, but it still left me and my friends craving for more. Thankfully more is on the way.

Time for an upgrade. Here’s the list of changes since GVHv2 b2.

Note: There is no new map pk3 because there are no map changes.

• Marine: All weapons changed so there is NO delay between pressing the fire button and your shots coming out.
• Marine: Increased damage of the machinegun slightly.
• Hunter: Normal arrows damage increased (it took like 9 to kill Sjas)
• Hunter: Normal arrows can now use magic. Doesn’t make too much sense but whatever, it’s there for any normal arrow users.
• Hunter: Completely removed the change arrow type delay. The weapon changing sound is also played locally so you can’t go around annoying people with it.
• Hunter: Lightning now effects Jitterskull more. Two shots to take him down. Damage remains the same for Sjas and Ceepers.
• Sjas: Given the no gravity property. This effects his death animation so he doesn’t drop down. This change will be reverted in the next version or so.
• Misc: Fixed Uncle Jitterskull’s message with GVH:EW. Yes he has to be there, I get a lot of feedback and bug reports thanks to him.
• Misc: Fix Recharged and Skillfully dodged achievements. You can no longer obtain them the “old way”.
• Misc: Changed long lump names that were causing problems in Skulltag 97E.

Please note that I know there’s still some bugs floating around in the latest version, like Pink Creepers and such. These are ZDoom bugs that still need to be fixed for the next version of Skulltag. I can’t do anything about without wrecking other stuff I’m afriad. Be patient! For this reason I suggest you play GVH with 97D3. Don’t worry, plenty of servers are still using this version.

Download from filefront

Already people are going bonkers over the changes I’ve made. Most of these are human complaints, so let’s go over what I think would be good to change. Remember, if you disagree with any of these now is the time to tell me. Comment below!

Marine

Suddenly people have decided that the shotgun has become useless, most likely because I took their autoaim away. Regardless, I would like to make the shotgun more usable without the need for autoaim. My suggestion is more spread, more bullets but less damage to counter the extra bullets. I’m not certain how many extra bullets or how big on the spread but I will have a play with it.

(17/06/09): Perhaps making the pellets come out AS SOON as you hit the fire button, it would make it better? I will have a play around with this.

Now, the machinegun damage. Seems I lowered it too much! Once again people are forgetting this weapon exists. I will increase the damage again, but ONLY BY A LITTLE. With such a fast firing rate it should be enough.

Hunter

People don’t seem to be too happy with 3 lightning arrows to kill Jitterskull. After trying to tackle skilled Jitter players I felt the same way. I won’t increase the damage, but I WILL make jitterskull less resistant to it. So this means that it will take 2 hits to kill Jitterskull and Sjas BUT it will still do 50 damage to Sjas. Have to keep in mind Jitterskull is not the easiest to hit.

(18/06/09): Instant weapon changing. That little bow raising animation is a bit redundant as you can tell what weapon you have selected from the icon at the bottom right anyway. I doubt anyone will have any objections to this.

(18/06/09): Something that’s been bugging me for a while. The magic attacks from each hunter weapon type are exactly the same, and the normal arrow doesn’t have one at all. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about different altfire attacks for the bow types. I don’t know how this will effect gameplay so the following are simply IDEAS. If you think it’s worth giving them a go comment below and I’ll consider throwing something like these in the next version.

Decided againt the above. Gives the Hunter too many options and generally makes him easily the most fun to play.

Cyborg

KA-BULLSHIT

(22/06/09):  This was causing sooooo much trouble, so I had to scrap the whole idea. Unfortunate, because I think I could have worked well online. You wouldn’t think that it would be so hard to do, but due to the nature of Skulltag getting confused between client and serverside things you just never know what’s going to happen online. After a good hour or so of trying to get this thing to work, I’ve decided to throw in the towel and try something else. I’m not sure what yet. This is a sad day for the ‘borgs

Other

• Uncle Jitterskull’s message messes up, I know I know. GVH:EW causes this but I’ll fix it for the next beta (hopefully the last time you’ll see him!).
• Fix Recharged and Skillfully dodged achievements (both ARE obtainable btw).
• TRY to fix the Pink Creeper problem. As far as I know it’s a skulltag bug so don’t count on this being fixed by me. (18/06/09) This is a ZDoom bug.
• (17/06/09) Fix long lump names that are causing missing graphics/sounds and music problems.

DeathBR1ngeR has opened up a new server with GVHv2 and a spanking new mapset. Well, it’s not new at all but it’s one of thsoe underplayed ones. Crucified dreams the first mapset that was tested with GVH, and some of the maps on there worked really well. The server uses a maplist that should be best suited for GVH gameplay (aka no sneaky creeper escape tunnels). The server is using Skulltag d3 due to the bugs in the newer versions of Skulltag.

Join in if you’re getting a bit tired of the old GVH maps. Don’t forget you’ll need GVHv2, Crucified Dreams and Skulltag 97d3 to play on this server. Enjoy!