How did I not see this earlier ... this is awesome! For those interested, I'm that Lead Programmer, it was my first game ever, way back in 2001 (released 2003) and we (me and the rest of the fresh out of Uni/first job team) pretty much made it up as we went along! Some great observations in the comments, some wrong ones also ... It was our own engine (not a quake 3 mod) ... for the time it was pretty good, but plenty of mistakes made along the way that now after years of development are glaringly obvious to me. As I have worked with more and more games/engines I can still see bits of the Evolution engine that were great, but by any standard its old old tech now! It was originally developed as a multiplayer only game (ala Unreal Tournament, our favourite game at that time) .. The single player game was forced in at record time after being mandated from higher up. I had never made a game before, never mind written AI code ... it was definitely a trial by fire when suddenly given the task of making it single player! The end AI (artificial ignorance) was a result of lots of unbalanced values in their behaviours, and a really poor navigation system that had big gaps in the data .. I had never heard of navigation meshes at that time, so it comprised of navigation points the artist placed into the level .. with such bad tools and such a tight deadline it was no wonder it didn't hold up. Its a pity Gamespy is gone .. all the fun went into multiplayer (like the mage Black Hole spell that was purely designed to troll your opponents by dragging them over a pit!). The voice over in the intro was one of our artists, who recorded the entire speech after work in an empty office and strained his voice so much he could hardly speak for the next 2 days. The music was great ... there are no high quality source versions around ( or are there ;) ) Thanks for ripping it apart Ross, it hasn't stood up at all, but the guys have all moved on since, learnt a lot and have been part of some great games over their careers .. everybody starts somewhere. I still look back fondly at the game and time spent at EFX. I put in way too many hours, and like so many games stories it ended with everyone being made redundant the day it was released, but at least we tried to make an awesome game ... pity our ambition far outstripped our ability at the time!
I dunno if his intention was to "rip off" Warhammer/40k. He can probably fill in more, but I'm assuming it was a mix of tribute to something they love, and deadlines forcing a slap-dash story for single player. I can say he worked on Total War:Warhammer, so he did eventually get to work with the GW licence.
Mr. Ziggy Gun Jesus says in the Gospel of Browning that Plastic weapons are a Sin. Also Petty Officer John writes in the Gospel of The Chief that Jesus is "Finishing the Fight".
@@Shaymin00000 Was... Was that on purpose? 1:17 in the video is ross saying "The only way to go to a new level is to touch a *POLE* " If it was, you're a genius.
Population of the Hell city of Dis: a few barons of hell, some cacodemons and the spider mastermind. Population of the Hell city of Dat: People who genuinely like most of the songs (and their style of rock) in That Ski Game.
Apparently the lead programmer Mark Rowley went on to work on an actual Warhammer game, Total War: Warhammer. I wonder if he brought this game up during the interview.
We didn't quite find the magic, but we found something more important: the fact that while this game was flawed as hell, Ross is filled with determination. It takes more than being janky and flawed to dissuade him, even if there are a few factors that can. (the Labyrinths of Revenant, for instance)
The cookies in Sint Nicolas are actually pepernoten, which are just little popcorn-sized balls of gingerbread. So, essentially they're cookies except easier to binge-eat. Stay away from them.
I am so glad that these pseudo single player abomination games aren't released anymore. They just release MP only games and don't try to pretend there is a singleplayer built from a Frankenstein monster of multiplayer functions. Those are the darkest gametimes...
The maps almost seem to resemble a team of map makers becoming more skilled as time goes on. First few levels are meh, but by the end they have a good grasp of the engine.
It's because of this video that whenever AI in a game does something I don't want it to do (like run away from me), I whisper-shout, "Seramiel! SERAMIEL!" at it.
I have a theory about those first two games. It's possible they were a school project. Prof provided the assets and said 'make a Christmas game out of this,' two of them made first person shooters, and decided to post them on shareware sites after they got graded. Certainly the best explanation I can conjure.
See, the reason this works as a Christmas episode is because you basically did the same thing as Jesus Christ. Except, instead of dying for our sins, you suffered through a terrible game so the rest of us didn't have to.
No it was an Unreal Tournament game that wasn't even intended to have a single-player component, made by people who were fans of Warhammer but had so little time and resources to design something more original that they just slapped this together to meet an unfair deadline. On top of that the task of making the singleplayer was dropped on the dev team last minute, while they were already struggling to make the deadline for just the multiplayer, and none of these guys had ever designed A.I. for a game before.
Isn't that what happened with Starcraft? I know that it happened with Warcraft, except Warcraft was based off of Warhammer Fantasy. ...and now I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if the spacey aspects of World of Warcraft's Legion expansion were at least partially inspired by Age of Sigmar.
Its like Ross's channel/fanbase has such a pure aura around that no one wants to mention this sacred spot on youtube for the sake of keeping it pure or else im going crazy.
Actually, I wish Ross had tons more followers. Really he deserves them. As for referencing, Ross I'd say if anything has the "Anchorman" trait. Almost everything is quotable. Sadly though, in Ross's case he's not always well known enough for it to count as a reference or be searchable to point people to him - instead people just think you're stealing the joke. Plus I'm nowhere near big enough to divert attention ANYONE's way. Quite the other way around, he was originally set to do a voice for me (diamond bloke he is helping out us lil guys) in 'Undertale Voiced', but then schedules conflicted (though he is acknowledged in the final episode's credits). And as everyone does, I have an XCOM unit with his VP, they just need to turn up. Beyond that it's rather hard to find ways to point at him as there isn't much overlap era-wise between the games he plays here and the games most content makers would play / discuss.
@@ExEBoss It could just be that Konami was thinking of getting into the arena shooter market before other projects took priority. perhaps what little work may have been realized was shipped off to be a tax write-off. That, and/or the devs ambitions outwieghed their skill and wound up with a huge mess. It would be nice to see if the multiplayer aspect can be entertaining, but that would require at least 16 willing persons. The lack of a manual doesn't help as well.
@@ExEBoss actually more often what seemed to happen back then is a game developer and some artists have half a solid idea, start making a game, and then run out of money. They get a publisher (Konami here) to bail them out, give them enough money to release the game, but are given an insane deadline, like "we want this project gold by next month" so the game developers take the levels they already have, pad them out with bot-matches using the multiplayer mechanics, and send it off.
@Dohn Joe You're probably right, but i think @BillyJoeJimBobX also has the right idea. It's highly likely from what I know about this kind of stuff that they wanted a big epic space opera sort of game and they spent their money making those nicer later levels since they likely had a clearer vision of the climax and more drive to work on it. They probably ran out of money/time and someone in charge made the decision to pivot to multiplayer focus to try and salvage something from what they already had and just tack something on to the beginning of the campaign to justify those later levels. Hindsight is 20/20, and its easy to say you'd do something different, but if it were me, I'd have just made a really nice first level with lots of exposition, cut the Neo-Cyber-Santaur heel turn and Satan's lieutenant diversion entirely, and just jump right through the portal to hell at the end of the first or second level. There's also player expectation to consider though, and even more so back then players seemed to value total play time over the quality of time spent, or at least the emphasis magazine reviews put on playtime made it seem that way. Anyway, the crammed in multiplayer levels, bad bot AI, and PC exclusivity could be chalked up to either multiplayer focus that throws the single player to the wayside, or running out of time/money. The large number of playable characters and cheats that only apply to multiplayer are signs of multiplayer focus as well. That large roster and the quality of those later levels tells me they cared at some point in the process though, so running out of resources partway through seems pretty likely to me. Half-educated stab in the dark: They ran out of money and went to Konami and showed them those later levels they'd already mostly finished to convince them. In return for support Konami wants them to switch to multiplayer to try and ape the success of Unreal Tournament 2003 and crunches their time-frame to try and beat Unreal Tournament 2004 to market. They do as they're told, but have to reuse a lot of the multiplayer stuff they're making to finish the campaign on time/under budget.
No word of a lie, I find all the reviews of games you do really fascinating and engaging. So many games I personally might never have seen or play, but presented in such a good way keeps me glued. Thanks for the great videos
10:38 I don't know if that's actually coherent writing, but the script itself is definitely Tamil. That's an old minority language in the South of India and in Singapore that was one of the many languages spoken in India before the arrival of Hindus.
They're all three the same person just at different points in his life. Sseth is when he's a young edgy memelord, Mandalore is when he's a bit older and trying to be more presentable and pretending he has his life together, and Ross is once he's old and still thoughtful but also slowly losing his mind.
Dude, while looking at the bible, I recognized the writing. It's tamil. Just a random collection of tamil alphabets. Practically gibberish. Why is their bible in tamil that's hilarious.
I can't quite put into words how much I look forward to your "Game Dungeon" videos, Ross. They're just so much fun to watch; I'd never play these games myself but I'm glad someone does. It's almost like you're a games librarian, cataloging games for simple posterity - maximum respect to you, my dude.
I seem to remember an old programming book that walked users through creating a Wolfenstein 3D engine with Christmas themed assets. I bet these games are the result of amateurs learning game design using that book. Too bad I cannot recall the name, but there were literally dozens of similar books at the time (early 90s).
Oh man, Apocalyptica.I played this game years ago off a CD i bought at a flea market then i eventually lost it and ended up thinking this game was a really weird fever dream i had. Love you Ross and Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to all fans of Ross! As I sit here in my underwear, my family all having gone to bed, I find myself grateful for the little things in life. Such as the figure that has corralled us all her: Mr Ross. Excellent content and semi regularly? What more could I ask for. Love and happiness to everyone in the comments and to Mr Ross himself. Happy holidays, friends. xx
Or DUSK. That game takes you on a fun trip to Hell too. Just be wary of the Cowgirls, they'll fuck you up something fierce unless you keep dodging their insane attacks.
Odd Luck Like Marathon Infinity. A Doom clone style of 2.5D FPS where you try to prevent who can only be described as Azathoth from getting out of his solar bathtub. Confusing time travel to corrupted events of the previous Marathon game abound, as do bad futures where the elder God is free being included as secret levels, not counting the one in the prologue.
Of course the game would crash! It's Christmas, there was no way it wasn't going to crash! Ross you are the best. This has been one of the hardest Holiday Seasons for me personally, dealing with a lot of loss. When I saw your tweet that a video was going up in a couple hours, it legitimately saved me from doing something drastic. Thank you so much for everything you've done, and Happy Holidays to you and Magda!
Thanks, I always feel like I need to get more videos out when I see comments like this. While I have a lot of false starts, I have a plan to hopefully get more out next year without compromising much.
Merry Christmas to my favorite Wallace and Gromit fan, Ross Scott! You existing, video or no, is the greatest gift I could receive from RUclips each and every year without hyperbole. Here's to another wonderful year together to you, your wife and to the fanbase who loves you like no other.
At 18:00 that is classic late 90s, early aughts 3D level design for you. For games made after 2006, no devs wasted time on things that weren't important. So levels only included areas that made sense or were useful. In early 3D games they made a ton of stuff that seemed "cool" but a lot of times had no purpose whatsoever. Games like Kingpin and Redline had a ton of areas like this, where you just go there and it's just some complex empty space for absolutely no reason. Even GoldenEye 64 had maps like this. Just large empty areas you were led to for no reason at all.
This really looks like it was made with 40k in mind, but after some work had already been made, they were forced to remake it into their own thing. Almost like E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy. It has some striking similarities: like faux 40k, padding out a single-player game with MP maps, the whole divine aspect of both games.
E.Y.E. is some strange game... but I liked it a lot, best 2€ invested in a game. I wish the developer do a sequel or remake with more polish it would be a blast. Perhabs Ross can give it a shot :)
The multiplayer in this was actually pretty decent, it had that kind unbalanced balance that most old multilayer games had and it made it super fun to play casually cuz every class was OP as shit so it was just mayhem
Hey Ross, I'm just gonna say that you're content is some of the best here on RUclips. Absolutely love it. Any time you release a video it's always such a treat and worth the wait.
My brother and i simulataneously, independently of one another with no prior coordination on our parts, checked to see if there was a new Game Dungeon upload for Christmas eve and there was not. By the time he got to my house, lo and behold there was and we're watching one of our favorite channels together on Christmas Eve. Thanks Ross ❤
2:28 See, THIS is why I used eye-gouging like green as my transparent color when making RPG Maker sprites. Used, past tense, because now I work in GIMP where I don’t even have to bother with that.
Woolie? I think Pat is probably the one who ruined this one. Everything he said in the (FINAL) video was so backhanded and full of disdain for developers and the fans.
@@thepickles8833 Please don't tell me we aren't going to be doing some conspiracy grumps bullshit where we try and figure out who's fault it was. They told us why, pets just leave it at that and not try and find some drama that will make one side look more wrong. Plus I think the comment was saying how Woolie was the one to break the news first.
Ross, will you ever visit "Severance - Blade of Darkness"? This is an amazing game, abandoned and lost today. There is much you could talk about it. Bloody as hell, best 3rd Person Combat System to date, amazing lighting effects, great level design/architecture and pure fun to play.
replacement manual: that site you've checked has a user-made guide on how to retreive seemingly unavailable documents from it, it requires fixinga link manually.
Merry Christmas, Ross. I was feeling kind of ill this morning, and not sure if I'd be able to make it to see my family, so I sipped ice water while watching this Game Dungeon. An hour later I felt way better. Thanks for your amazing work.
I have been waiting for months constantly checking your channel just to see if a new RGD was uploaded. This has single-handedly made my christmas a whole lot better.
I found the magic sometime in middle school when I started watching Freeman's mind! Seriously thanks for the years of entertainment, Ross! Merry Christmas!
As soon as I saw the Ninja and the goofy soft graphics, I knew right away this was the Pie In the Sky 3D game creation engine. I recall my Grandmother buying me the software when I was a kid. All the sound effects, UI layout, and items are all almost the same. I still have the CDs laying around somewhere. I recall adding Mortal Kombat and Mystery Science Theater 3000 sound effects in the game and made my own office level. This brings back good memory's for me! media.moddb.com/images/engines/1/1/31/p3d_000.png
Just a quick note from another guy who's played those terrible Christmas shooters for an audience before: they're made with Pie in the Sky Software's 3D Game Creation System, an engine that honestly was kind of ahead of its time with some of the features it had (but as usual with such cases, the technology wasn't there to make them FUN so a lot of it was irritating) but never really got used for anything good. The reason I bring this up is because Terror in Christmas Town was displaying an error that's common with the engine: some 3DGCS games require you to run them with a specific command at the DOS prompt and it's a crapshoot whether that's the game's .EXE or GO.BAT or something else entirely. You'll often find that running a game the wrong way will result in playing with no sound and getting kicked back to the DOS prompt when you die.
Would the hell citadel remind you of citadel in unreal tournament? It's a CTF map with lava, a chute right to the flag, teleporters that damage you if you try to return through them, big bridges and floating maces that when turning on super jump in Unreal Championship on Classic Xbox (where I know this map from) are fun to reach. I even had a dream once in the early 2000's circa 2002 to 2003 or so where I used a Halo gravity lift in a metal tower to reach one of those things, then run and do a swan dive Tomb Raider 3 style off one of those spikes, and land in a river of lava I could survive swimming in let alone get close to that looked like it was from Xalax from Lego Racers 2. I was also accompanied by Kim Possible throughout all of this and she could survive liquid stone at 7000 Celsius or more too. Her mission clothes as well, which I could see today as a potential _bad_ thing, except back then I didn't know what sex actually was, nor the proper names for genitals until at least 2005 to 2006.
I'm going to assume that this is one of those many games that came out around the same time that "Tribes" and "Unreal Tournament" was out, and the game was designed as a "Team multiplayer tournament game" first and a crap single player game second? I'm willing to bet that the game was made so that all the characters were supposed to be played by other players in a big, multiplayer team game, but if you didn't have other players, any character on the team that didn't have a player controlling it got run by the crappy AI. Sure, they put a "Story mode" in there for a single player game, but the main design of the game was most likely that people would play this game as big, multiplayer team tournaments, I'll bet. They REALLY wanted to be another "Unreal Tournament".
What's funny is the backstory of Septivar is that he's basically a zombie in power armor, apparently he gained sainthood after his body was torn to shreds by neo-satanists.
How did I not see this earlier ... this is awesome!
For those interested, I'm that Lead Programmer, it was my first game ever, way back in 2001 (released 2003) and we (me and the rest of the fresh out of Uni/first job team) pretty much made it up as we went along!
Some great observations in the comments, some wrong ones also ...
It was our own engine (not a quake 3 mod) ... for the time it was pretty good, but plenty of mistakes made along the way that now after years of development are glaringly obvious to me.
As I have worked with more and more games/engines I can still see bits of the Evolution engine that were great, but by any standard its old old tech now!
It was originally developed as a multiplayer only game (ala Unreal Tournament, our favourite game at that time) .. The single player game was forced in at record time after being mandated from higher up.
I had never made a game before, never mind written AI code ... it was definitely a trial by fire when suddenly given the task of making it single player!
The end AI (artificial ignorance) was a result of lots of unbalanced values in their behaviours, and a really poor navigation system that had big gaps in the data .. I had never heard of navigation meshes at that time, so it comprised of navigation points the artist placed into the level .. with such bad tools and such a tight deadline it was no wonder it didn't hold up.
Its a pity Gamespy is gone .. all the fun went into multiplayer (like the mage Black Hole spell that was purely designed to troll your opponents by dragging them over a pit!).
The voice over in the intro was one of our artists, who recorded the entire speech after work in an empty office and strained his voice so much he could hardly speak for the next 2 days.
The music was great ... there are no high quality source versions around ( or are there ;) )
Thanks for ripping it apart Ross, it hasn't stood up at all, but the guys have all moved on since, learnt a lot and have been part of some great games over their careers .. everybody starts somewhere.
I still look back fondly at the game and time spent at EFX. I put in way too many hours, and like so many games stories it ended with everyone being made redundant the day it was released, but at least we tried to make an awesome game ... pity our ambition far outstripped our ability at the time!
commenting and liking it soo ross can see it!
@Lord Inquisitor Shadowlord I'd like to know too...
Cool! What have you been up to since Apocalyptica?
you can probably get multiplayer to work for this using gameranger or something if it's set up.
I dunno if his intention was to "rip off" Warhammer/40k. He can probably fill in more, but I'm assuming it was a mix of tribute to something they love, and deadlines forcing a slap-dash story for single player.
I can say he worked on Total War:Warhammer, so he did eventually get to work with the GW licence.
"I wander around, my team deserts me, and I die"
Wow, they really nailed the multiplayer experience
"I'm being sabotaged by my own team!"
Imagine a fat guy living in a trailer saying that and you have the Wings of Redemption stream experience.
"I require healing".
Just add taunts.
S_cker for silk ribbon ?
and jesus said to his disciples don’t play robots because you use too much ammo
That's a quote right there :D
Mr. Ziggy Gun Jesus says in the Gospel of Browning that Plastic weapons are a Sin. Also Petty Officer John writes in the Gospel of The Chief that Jesus is "Finishing the Fight".
666 likes oh no
@@Shaymin00000 Was... Was that on purpose? 1:17 in the video is ross saying "The only way to go to a new level is to touch a *POLE* "
If it was, you're a genius.
Mr. Ziggy
Baby Jesus says that bullets are the seeds of victory!
You can't feel the magic if you can't FIND THE MAGIC
redsun1211 And hear no evil apparently extends to big cat roars, so we can't hear the roar either. Guess they aren't loose after all.
@@lionocyborg6030 nah, they're just not evil.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 it was a joke.
City of Dis, and it's less known sister-city, the City of Dat.
I make that joke in my head every time. For the past 20 years.
City of Dis, population: Deez guys. Dat: Doze guys
You walk in to the city of Dis and people just start trashtalking you
Population of the Hell city of Dis: a few barons of hell, some cacodemons and the spider mastermind. Population of the Hell city of Dat: People who genuinely like most of the songs (and their style of rock) in That Ski Game.
there is also the City of Wat.
Playing on god mode is thematically fitting in this game
MrNiklous The Emper- I mean The LORD, God, protects.
Ah, a Holiday Special. Now things are starting to make sense, more on this later
Thanks Admiral
It is Christmas Admiral. Don't you need to spend time with your family?
@@chrispy9229 you're right, excuse me while i go spend time with my family
You made my day, thank you.
@@TheMaabusAdmiral hahahaha the hero we always deserved but never knew... more on that later.
Apparently the lead programmer Mark Rowley went on to work on an actual Warhammer game, Total War: Warhammer. I wonder if he brought this game up during the interview.
It's like Streum On Studio going from E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy to Space Hulk.
+SpookyTown your profile picture is spooky.
@@adenowirus Didn't know that was the same studio
Well, he got hired, so I'm guessing not.
No wonder it reminded me of 40k
FIND THE MAGIC
the magic is BULLETS.
The bullets are made of MOLD.
magic drugs make your problems go away
Sometimes I think about cheese
magic is in the air
We didn't quite find the magic, but we found something more important: the fact that while this game was flawed as hell, Ross is filled with determination. It takes more than being janky and flawed to dissuade him, even if there are a few factors that can. (the Labyrinths of Revenant, for instance)
No, Ross is filled with DETERMANATION
He's a trooper. Neo-God bless him.
The real magic was the friends we made along the way
He is filled with DETEMMIENATION
We found each other.
40k and Quake got drunk and ended up in bed together.
Developer: "Sir should we make a quake or 40K knockoff?"
Executive: "Yes"
Who's the mother, though? :thinking:
@@nicefloweytheoverseer7632 i think it must be Quake
Describes this game perfectly!
They should keep doing that
The cookies in Sint Nicolas are actually pepernoten, which are just little popcorn-sized balls of gingerbread. So, essentially they're cookies except easier to binge-eat.
Stay away from them.
plus its not a "Kerst" game :P
Lol
I actually loved the art style on that one. & would love pepernoten.
This game feels like it was developed backwards.
KaedeLanyo lol
I am so glad that these pseudo single player abomination games aren't released anymore. They just release MP only games and don't try to pretend there is a singleplayer built from a Frankenstein monster of multiplayer functions.
Those are the darkest gametimes...
+KaedeLanyo your profile picture is totally wicked.
@@mosshivenetwork117 Thank you so much, I made it myself a long time ago. After the awful day i just had, that's great to hear.
The maps almost seem to resemble a team of map makers becoming more skilled as time goes on. First few levels are meh, but by the end they have a good grasp of the engine.
_[Inarticulate gravel sounds]_
_[Inarticulate gravel sounds]_ vs. _[Remain silent]_
Battle of the century right there!
@@Brunosky_Inc It's gotta be [Remain silent], there's just nothing that comes close!
SEREMIAL HEAL ME
HEAL ME MOOOOORE SEREMIAL
Rexels Tom Sara Mile, the shittiest Christmas white mage of all.
Excuse me, don't you happen to have your profile pic in good resolution? I'd really like to have that one in stock.
The AI is so bad that it looks like it's another real player just screwing with Ross.
Pelmenji That makes the AI good.
@@kabob0077 It makes it a good AI but a bad team mate
Man 8th edition 40k looks weird.
It's actually Battlemace 42M.
adenowirus MAGNUSSSSSSSSSS
@@ElementalrxKX NEEERRD!!!!
I love all of you.
What the fuck... I'm just gonna lay an exterminatus right there, ALRIGHT FIRE!
It's because of this video that whenever AI in a game does something I don't want it to do (like run away from me), I whisper-shout, "Seramiel! SERAMIEL!" at it.
"Precache evil... I wish Windows had this option"
This is pure genius.
"Win or Kiss? Christmas goodbye!" made me choke on my coffee, and now I'm dead. :'(
Now we have a Ghost of Christmas Jokes. Thanks Ross.
No seriously, thank you for the video this month Ross
I guess they never kiss, huh?
It‘s worth dying over Ross‘ content.
rip
Ross going *"...What?"* over pieces of inaudible dialog made me laugh every time.
I could make out "you're not going home" but that was about it.
I have a theory about those first two games. It's possible they were a school project. Prof provided the assets and said 'make a Christmas game out of this,' two of them made first person shooters, and decided to post them on shareware sites after they got graded.
Certainly the best explanation I can conjure.
See, the reason this works as a Christmas episode is because you basically did the same thing as Jesus Christ. Except, instead of dying for our sins, you suffered through a terrible game so the rest of us didn't have to.
Wouldn't that make for a better Easter game, though?
Nah, an Easter game would be when Ross makes another video after the holidays. It can be his resurrection.
@@LydiaLeetz ...I still kinda want to suffer through it too though....
It's actually a fun game as long as you avoid the single player and have friends to bring along for multiplayer.
A new Game Dungeon episode? Merry Christmas, indeed!
Right!? I need more Game Dungeon in my life.
Konami made pachinko machines using the wrong franchises.
BLESSED BE SANTA ROSS
The Krinkles and Ross Madness Christmas crossover extravaganza; coming to a theater near you
Sup Krinkels,Merry XMadness
Out of every place I expected you to be, this isn't one of them.
Calm down, soyjak
I will not be surprised if this was planned as 40k game but they couldn't secure warhammer license.
No it was an Unreal Tournament game that wasn't even intended to have a single-player component, made by people who were fans of Warhammer but had so little time and resources to design something more original that they just slapped this together to meet an unfair deadline. On top of that the task of making the singleplayer was dropped on the dev team last minute, while they were already struggling to make the deadline for just the multiplayer, and none of these guys had ever designed A.I. for a game before.
Isn't that what happened with Starcraft? I know that it happened with Warcraft, except Warcraft was based off of Warhammer Fantasy.
...and now I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if the spacey aspects of World of Warcraft's Legion expansion were at least partially inspired by Age of Sigmar.
Merry Rossmas Everyone!
Hey its you, I find it simply amazing how SO MANY niche popular youtubers know about Ross's content but NEVER talk about it. Strange.
Its like Ross's channel/fanbase has such a pure aura around that no one wants to mention this sacred spot on youtube for the sake of keeping it pure or else im going crazy.
And to all a good old game!
Actually, I wish Ross had tons more followers. Really he deserves them.
As for referencing, Ross I'd say if anything has the "Anchorman" trait. Almost everything is quotable. Sadly though, in Ross's case he's not always well known enough for it to count as a reference or be searchable to point people to him - instead people just think you're stealing the joke. Plus I'm nowhere near big enough to divert attention ANYONE's way.
Quite the other way around, he was originally set to do a voice for me (diamond bloke he is helping out us lil guys) in 'Undertale Voiced', but then schedules conflicted (though he is acknowledged in the final episode's credits). And as everyone does, I have an XCOM unit with his VP, they just need to turn up. Beyond that it's rather hard to find ways to point at him as there isn't much overlap era-wise between the games he plays here and the games most content makers would play / discuss.
OverEnglishMan And a Happy New Game Dungeon
something tells me this was made with a multiplayer focus in mind, and single player was just an afterthought.
*+Dohn Joe* Isn’t singleplayer always an afterthought to these triple‑A$$ publishers?
@@ExEBoss NOW back in the day it was other way round
@@ExEBoss It could just be that Konami was thinking of getting into the arena shooter market before other projects took priority. perhaps what little work may have been realized was shipped off to be a tax write-off. That, and/or the devs ambitions outwieghed their skill and wound up with a huge mess.
It would be nice to see if the multiplayer aspect can be entertaining, but that would require at least 16 willing persons. The lack of a manual doesn't help as well.
@@ExEBoss actually more often what seemed to happen back then is a game developer and some artists have half a solid idea, start making a game, and then run out of money.
They get a publisher (Konami here) to bail them out, give them enough money to release the game, but are given an insane deadline, like "we want this project gold by next month" so the game developers take the levels they already have, pad them out with bot-matches using the multiplayer mechanics, and send it off.
@Dohn Joe You're probably right, but i think @BillyJoeJimBobX also has the right idea. It's highly likely from what I know about this kind of stuff that they wanted a big epic space opera sort of game and they spent their money making those nicer later levels since they likely had a clearer vision of the climax and more drive to work on it. They probably ran out of money/time and someone in charge made the decision to pivot to multiplayer focus to try and salvage something from what they already had and just tack something on to the beginning of the campaign to justify those later levels. Hindsight is 20/20, and its easy to say you'd do something different, but if it were me, I'd have just made a really nice first level with lots of exposition, cut the Neo-Cyber-Santaur heel turn and Satan's lieutenant diversion entirely, and just jump right through the portal to hell at the end of the first or second level. There's also player expectation to consider though, and even more so back then players seemed to value total play time over the quality of time spent, or at least the emphasis magazine reviews put on playtime made it seem that way. Anyway, the crammed in multiplayer levels, bad bot AI, and PC exclusivity could be chalked up to either multiplayer focus that throws the single player to the wayside, or running out of time/money. The large number of playable characters and cheats that only apply to multiplayer are signs of multiplayer focus as well. That large roster and the quality of those later levels tells me they cared at some point in the process though, so running out of resources partway through seems pretty likely to me. Half-educated stab in the dark: They ran out of money and went to Konami and showed them those later levels they'd already mostly finished to convince them. In return for support Konami wants them to switch to multiplayer to try and ape the success of Unreal Tournament 2003 and crunches their time-frame to try and beat Unreal Tournament 2004 to market. They do as they're told, but have to reuse a lot of the multiplayer stuff they're making to finish the campaign on time/under budget.
For a second I thought the intro wasn't there... this holiday season is full of surprises, it seems.
No word of a lie, I find all the reviews of games you do really fascinating and engaging. So many games I personally might never have seen or play, but presented in such a good way keeps me glued. Thanks for the great videos
What a great Christmas present, have a good one Ross
Hey, Ross. You're missing the intr... oh, nevermind.
"Brain dead glitch puppets" is one of the best things I've ever heard from this channel
10:38 I don't know if that's actually coherent writing, but the script itself is definitely Tamil. That's an old minority language in the South of India and in Singapore that was one of the many languages spoken in India before the arrival of Hindus.
At first he was CyberSanta, but it turned out he was really CyberKrampus.
He looks like a CyberFurry with half horse body.
My new dream mashup is now Ross, MandaloreGaming, and SsethTzeentach.
The PST podcast needs to get Ross as a guest
They're all three the same person just at different points in his life. Sseth is when he's a young edgy memelord, Mandalore is when he's a bit older and trying to be more presentable and pretending he has his life together, and Ross is once he's old and still thoughtful but also slowly losing his mind.
@@UltimateCarl holy cow
@@UltimateCarl This actually makes a lot of sense. Even too much sense.
Tehsnakerer too and maybe Stanburdman
Dude, while looking at the bible, I recognized the writing. It's tamil. Just a random collection of tamil alphabets. Practically gibberish. Why is their bible in tamil that's hilarious.
@@RaTcHeT302 good for u
@@RaTcHeT302 Did they have any magic?
@@RaTcHeT302 As well as heart disease and high blood pressure.
Because it looks cool probably.
its in tamil because it looks like super cool epic futuristic-holy writing whoaaa
I can't quite put into words how much I look forward to your "Game Dungeon" videos, Ross. They're just so much fun to watch; I'd never play these games myself but I'm glad someone does. It's almost like you're a games librarian, cataloging games for simple posterity - maximum respect to you, my dude.
I seem to remember an old programming book that walked users through creating a Wolfenstein 3D engine with Christmas themed assets. I bet these games are the result of amateurs learning game design using that book. Too bad I cannot recall the name, but there were literally dozens of similar books at the time (early 90s).
Did you ever remember the book's title? If you do, please update this message.
Check out LGR's review on Terror in Christmas Town! I believe he goes into that creation engine in that video too
BJ! We need you defending us with the MG42!
I'm sorry I didn't hear you, could you repeat that?
*THAT MAN IS A SPY!*
HA HA HA CLASSIC REFERENCE
DEFEND THE OBJECTIVE
I'm an Engineer.
Disarm the Dynamite!
NEIN!
BJ! Man the machinegun!
FOR THE EMPE-I mean
Uh. DEUS VULT!!
Deus in regnium
So it is game pretending to be inspired by Christianity ripping of WH40K which is ripping of Catholicism.
Its Catholicism, IN SPAAAACE
@@calihyena8369 Oy, Mel Brooks' Jews in Space aren't gonna like that...
FOR CHAOS
Oh man, Apocalyptica.I played this game years ago off a CD i bought at a flea market then i eventually lost it and ended up thinking this game was a really weird fever dream i had. Love you Ross and Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to all fans of Ross! As I sit here in my underwear, my family all having gone to bed, I find myself grateful for the little things in life. Such as the figure that has corralled us all her: Mr Ross. Excellent content and semi regularly? What more could I ask for. Love and happiness to everyone in the comments and to Mr Ross himself. Happy holidays, friends. xx
God yes they are, many sizes too small, pressing my testicles into my groin and causing me fearsome amounts of pain
@@wilbert0_
kinky.
It's Christmas. Treat yourself with someone else's underwear.
The headline here is if you want a fun trip to hell play Doom.
Or DUSK. That game takes you on a fun trip to Hell too. Just be wary of the Cowgirls, they'll fuck you up something fierce unless you keep dodging their insane attacks.
@@GmodPlusWoW Any game where you can dual wield shotguns is probably a good one.
Odd Luck Like Marathon Infinity. A Doom clone style of 2.5D FPS where you try to prevent who can only be described as Azathoth from getting out of his solar bathtub. Confusing time travel to corrupted events of the previous Marathon game abound, as do bad futures where the elder God is free being included as secret levels, not counting the one in the prologue.
I was going to make a 40k joke but Ross already made a reference.
I feel like this game itself is a WH40k joke.
Odd Luck Well, at least we know Ross isn't a Heretic...
I wanted to do a 40k reference but I thought tzeench would hate me
Apocalyptica actually looks like it has cool designs, and apparently good music. But oh man it looks so dull to play.
I feel like if you cleaned up the bugs and were able to actually play the entire campaign as 4-player co-op it'd be pretty damn fun.
@@UltimateCarl Oh how Id love too ... unfortunately Konami wont get back to me :/
Of course the game would crash! It's Christmas, there was no way it wasn't going to crash!
Ross you are the best. This has been one of the hardest Holiday Seasons for me personally, dealing with a lot of loss. When I saw your tweet that a video was going up in a couple hours, it legitimately saved me from doing something drastic. Thank you so much for everything you've done, and Happy Holidays to you and Magda!
Thanks, I always feel like I need to get more videos out when I see comments like this. While I have a lot of false starts, I have a plan to hopefully get more out next year without compromising much.
Merry Christmas to my favorite Wallace and Gromit fan, Ross Scott! You existing, video or no, is the greatest gift I could receive from RUclips each and every year without hyperbole.
Here's to another wonderful year together to you, your wife and to the fanbase who loves you like no other.
Merry Christmas, Ross. I feel a little less lonely this Christmas. Thanks for doing what you do.
At 18:00 that is classic late 90s, early aughts 3D level design for you. For games made after 2006, no devs wasted time on things that weren't important. So levels only included areas that made sense or were useful. In early 3D games they made a ton of stuff that seemed "cool" but a lot of times had no purpose whatsoever. Games like Kingpin and Redline had a ton of areas like this, where you just go there and it's just some complex empty space for absolutely no reason. Even GoldenEye 64 had maps like this. Just large empty areas you were led to for no reason at all.
This really looks like it was made with 40k in mind, but after some work had already been made, they were forced to remake it into their own thing.
Almost like E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy. It has some striking similarities: like faux 40k, padding out a single-player game with MP maps, the whole divine aspect of both games.
Watching the gameplay made me want to reinstall E.Y.E. lol
E.Y.E. is some strange game... but I liked it a lot, best 2€ invested in a game. I wish the developer do a sequel or remake with more polish it would be a blast. Perhabs Ross can give it a shot :)
They want to make another game at least. Or rather they had ideas for several years now. I hope they get to it.
@Jotaro97 That's sadly true, but without the low price and a steam recommendations I had never heard of this game or bought it blind :/
@@mconfuddle4028 I think the devs said they want to make E.Y.E 2 at some point.. Mayber after.. eh how their WH40k game is called
The multiplayer in this was actually pretty decent, it had that kind unbalanced balance that most old multilayer games had and it made it super fun to play casually cuz every class was OP as shit so it was just mayhem
Hey Ross, I'm just gonna say that you're content is some of the best here on RUclips. Absolutely love it. Any time you release a video it's always such a treat and worth the wait.
My brother and i simulataneously, independently of one another with no prior coordination on our parts, checked to see if there was a new Game Dungeon upload for Christmas eve and there was not. By the time he got to my house, lo and behold there was and we're watching one of our favorite channels together on Christmas Eve. Thanks Ross ❤
Rejoice! Saint Ross has graced us with his presence this merry Christmas eve.
Ross I love your videos man. They chill me out and are always fun to watch.
Multiple games in one video?? This is probably one of my best Christmas gift ever!! Thanks, Father Ross!
This is my favorite series on RUclips, the amount of detail and effort he goes into for these lost games is one of the reasons why I always come back
Thanks Ross, Merry Christmas buddy.
The Devil sounds like an edgy teenager trying to make a "scary voice" for his DnD campaign's main villain
Everybody! Don't shoot! I'm from the science team!
2:28 See, THIS is why I used eye-gouging like green as my transparent color when making RPG Maker sprites.
Used, past tense, because now I work in GIMP where I don’t even have to bother with that.
3:06
It's okay, Ross. Woolie already ruined Christmas last week.
it still hurts...
Just look at it this way sport, T W O C H R I S T M A S E S
Woolie? I think Pat is probably the one who ruined this one.
Everything he said in the (FINAL) video was so backhanded and full of disdain for developers and the fans.
@@thepickles8833 Please don't tell me we aren't going to be doing some conspiracy grumps bullshit where we try and figure out who's fault it was. They told us why, pets just leave it at that and not try and find some drama that will make one side look more wrong. Plus I think the comment was saying how Woolie was the one to break the news first.
You‘re still watching their shit? After their initial Machinima-run they were stale AF. I miss their old content though.
Ross, will you ever visit "Severance - Blade of Darkness"? This is an amazing game, abandoned and lost today. There is much you could talk about it. Bloody as hell, best 3rd Person Combat System to date, amazing lighting effects, great level design/architecture and pure fun to play.
its Poundland Warhammer
FOR THE GREAT ONE!
HEADS FOR THE HEAD PILE!
Your videos are the presents that keep on giving all year Ross, merry Christmas to you and your loved ones
Quite a good Christmas gift, thanks Ross!
It's not really a proper holiday until there's a Game Dungeon.
Thank you Ross! Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you and mag!
Replacement docs went down almost entirely, but you can still get the documents. Somebody in the chat on that site gave instructions on how to do so.
Merry Christmas, Ross. Best of luck to you, your wife and your family.
Thank you for the game soundtrack, much appreciated.
replacement manual: that site you've checked has a user-made guide on how to retreive seemingly unavailable documents from it, it requires fixinga link manually.
Thank you so much for uploading the soundtrack to this game. The snippets in your video didn't do the music justice; this stuff is amazing.
*HOW TO NOT FIND THE MAGIC*
All you had to do was find the damn magic, Ross!
Merry Christmas, Ross. I was feeling kind of ill this morning, and not sure if I'd be able to make it to see my family, so I sipped ice water while watching this Game Dungeon. An hour later I felt way better. Thanks for your amazing work.
Do E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, Ross!
I reccomend mandalore gamings review of it.
I think that would be right up his alley.
@@nsalegit9482 I'm good, thanks.
Kröd Mändoon idk who asked but ok
@@krodmandoon3479 Your loss.
I like how when he stood on the enemy plate it went down instantly
Win or kiss
I guess they never kiss, *huh?*
stop. stop right now!
IT'S TIME TO STOP
FUCK YOU THAT WAS MY IDEA FIRST
how do you delete other people's comments
You got a boyfriend, I bet he doesn't *hit* ya!
I have been waiting for months constantly checking your channel just to see if a new RGD was uploaded. This has single-handedly made my christmas a whole lot better.
Weren't you unable to open the door, because the other team had your cog? There was a bad guy right there when you died with a huge cog over his head.
Nope, while he was trying to open the door, the HUD indicated he carried the cog. The bad guy got the cog only when Ross died.
I found the magic sometime in middle school when I started watching Freeman's mind! Seriously thanks for the years of entertainment, Ross! Merry Christmas!
Apocalyptica. Not to be confused with the band Apocalyptica.
Ross, I've actually been rather depressed this holiday season and watching this made things seem a little brighter so thanks.
19:50 Truly, He works in mysterious ways.
The Monty Python Lancelot analogy had me in stitches.
It's important to remember Jesus first every Christmas, so I make sure to watch Ross.
As soon as I saw the Ninja and the goofy soft graphics, I knew right away this was the Pie In the Sky 3D game creation engine. I recall my Grandmother buying me the software when I was a kid. All the sound effects, UI layout, and items are all almost the same. I still have the CDs laying around somewhere. I recall adding Mortal Kombat and Mystery Science Theater 3000 sound effects in the game and made my own office level. This brings back good memory's for me! media.moddb.com/images/engines/1/1/31/p3d_000.png
I think you took the term 'cold opening' too literally
Just a quick note from another guy who's played those terrible Christmas shooters for an audience before: they're made with Pie in the Sky Software's 3D Game Creation System, an engine that honestly was kind of ahead of its time with some of the features it had (but as usual with such cases, the technology wasn't there to make them FUN so a lot of it was irritating) but never really got used for anything good. The reason I bring this up is because Terror in Christmas Town was displaying an error that's common with the engine: some 3DGCS games require you to run them with a specific command at the DOS prompt and it's a crapshoot whether that's the game's .EXE or GO.BAT or something else entirely. You'll often find that running a game the wrong way will result in playing with no sound and getting kicked back to the DOS prompt when you die.
Find the magic.
Win or kiss.
Touch my pole to proceed to the next level.
Thanks for getting this out in time for the holiday, Ross. Merry Christmas.
I really wanna see Ross play Warhammer, shadow of the horned rat. I remember it looking amazing for 95, with decent maps and not half bad Sprite work.
"Win or Kiss ~ Christmas Goodbyes" sounds like some Touhou song
Would the hell citadel remind you of citadel in unreal tournament? It's a CTF map with lava, a chute right to the flag, teleporters that damage you if you try to return through them, big bridges and floating maces that when turning on super jump in Unreal Championship on Classic Xbox (where I know this map from) are fun to reach.
I even had a dream once in the early 2000's circa 2002 to 2003 or so where I used a Halo gravity lift in a metal tower to reach one of those things, then run and do a swan dive Tomb Raider 3 style off one of those spikes, and land in a river of lava I could survive swimming in let alone get close to that looked like it was from Xalax from Lego Racers 2. I was also accompanied by Kim Possible throughout all of this and she could survive liquid stone at 7000 Celsius or more too. Her mission clothes as well, which I could see today as a potential _bad_ thing, except back then I didn't know what sex actually was, nor the proper names for genitals until at least 2005 to 2006.
The layout felt really similar to LavaGiant actually.
This video mentions gamer dementia before the term existed. Nice foreshadowing, Ross!
10:37 That's Telugu script (one of many South Indian languages)
"The game is crazy!" to hear such validation brings me so much joy.
I laughed until tears, this is absolute brilliant episode, comedy gold!
Thanks for the first Christmas gift of 2018 :D We're already off to a great start! Merry Christmas, Ross!
I'm going to assume that this is one of those many games that came out around the same time that "Tribes" and "Unreal Tournament" was out, and the game was designed as a "Team multiplayer tournament game" first and a crap single player game second? I'm willing to bet that the game was made so that all the characters were supposed to be played by other players in a big, multiplayer team game, but if you didn't have other players, any character on the team that didn't have a player controlling it got run by the crappy AI. Sure, they put a "Story mode" in there for a single player game, but the main design of the game was most likely that people would play this game as big, multiplayer team tournaments, I'll bet. They REALLY wanted to be another "Unreal Tournament".
What's funny is the backstory of Septivar is that he's basically a zombie in power armor, apparently he gained sainthood after his body was torn to shreds by neo-satanists.