I have created a Chaos Engine TC for Doom.

[Cherno]

Here is the main thread:
Doomsday Machine - A Chaos Engine TC for Doom!

Doomsday Machine aims to bring the Amiga classic The Chaos Engine into the world of first-person shooters. You need the newest GZDoom and doom2.wad to run the TC.

Gameplay overview:
Choose between three different characters:

• The brigand is an allrounder with average speed and health. He is armed with a rifle. His special power is the shotburst, which shoots powerful bullets all around him.
• The Preacher is fast but fragile. He is armed with a lightning gun that is weak but it's rays travel through enemies. His special power is a first aid kit he can use to heal 50 health points.
• The Navvie is strong and slow. He is armed with the powerful bazooka. His special power is the dynamite. Throw it into a group of enemies to kill them all.

While exploring a level, keep an eye out for ambushes. Cave entrances and holes in the ground will appear that spawn monsters. Kill monsters to collect the coins they drop (no use for cash yet, though). Special powers work as follows: If you have unlocked one (such as the special powers you get from the start as part of your chosen character), you will first use all you have collected of the same kind before using the universal special power items (orange bars in your status bar). If you haven't unlocked a special power, you will simply run out of that item when it is depleted. So, special powers are exlusively used for your unlocked powers.
To open the exit door, you have to activate a certain number of nodes by shooting them until their outer shell breaks.
Silver and gold keys open of close different paths through a level. Sometimes, collecting items or just reaching a certain spot will do the same.

Tips for new GZDoom users:
Display Options -> OpenGL Options-> Texture Options -> Texture Filtering Mode: None (shows nice and crisp textures with Dan Malone's awesome pixel art)
Mouse Options -> Always Mouselooks ON (some weapons have no autoaming, like the Preacher's lightning gun. You can't kill small enemies like beetles with them without mouse aiming!)

The Guru Meditation on Youtube has uploaded a very detailed instructional video should you have any trouble getting the game to run.:
[ Show youtube player ]

Check out the zDoom forums thread above for more information, or take a look at these screenshots directly:

[malko]

Not my favourite type of game but anyway, COOOL & like the screen shots !
Special mention for the point below : WHAOU !!!

[...] including alomst complete replicas of the levels. [...]

[dlfrsilver]

incredible. Now pray that the BB don't discover that

[Cherno]

One of the things that inspired me was this twitter post by Antto Koponen, described in greater detail on his DeviantArt page:

[Dastardly]

Heh, looks fun. Sacrilege, but fun

[trixster]

This is remarkable

What an amazing effort!

[Cherno]

I will have nightmares from converting the node sprite frames so they look right in first person view

[Gzegzolka]

I am not sure if I like it. It is interesting and it took lot of time to create it.

[gimbal]

Ha ha Amazing! I can imagine those damned murder frogs are even more aggravating in first person.

The sky texture is rough though, it really does no good to the aesthetics.

[dreamkatcha]

Wow, that's certainly been a labour of love! Amazing work. It's so surreal seeing 2D Chaos Engine in 3D out of the blue like that.

[Anubis]

That really looks awesome and very retro. Love it!

[Cherno]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Ha ha Amazing! I can imagine those damned murder frogs are even more aggravating in first person.

The sky texture is rough though, it really does no good to the aesthetics.

Funn,y I thought the sky texture looks appropriate for the victorian post-apocalyptic seting. I wonder if one with a higher resolution would clash with the pixel art of the rest of the game world? The HUD weapons have a similar issue.

[Predseda]

That spining gif reminds me a lot action zone set-ups from Masters of the Universe, like Skeletor's Snake Mountains or Hordak's Fright zone

[oscillik]

The skybox texture looks to be a standard DOOM II one. Since this is using glzdoom, I'm guessing a less pixelated skybox texture can be used but I'm just making an assumption there

[Cherno]

It is indeed one of the normal vanilla Doom2 sky textures. Any texture could be used but I didn't bother with finding another one since the brown one did suit my need

[cloverskull]

Cool, nice work!!

[jotd]

that looks neat. Reminds me of the aborted attempt to create Gods with extruded pseudo 3D backgrounds. I'll try it soon. The 3D animation already awesome.

"I'm not sure if I will ever sit down and create more levels, mostly because of the heavy work involved in scripting all the ambushes and puzzle elements."

Kroah created a Chaos Engine level viewer with all events & monsters, by reading the orginal files (and a lot of reverse engineering). Data can probably extracted from there.

[Cherno]

Originally Posted by jotd

that looks neat. Reminds me of the aborted attempt to create Gods with extruded pseudo 3D backgrounds. I'll try it soon. The 3D animation already awesome.



Kroah created a Chaos Engine level viewer with all events & monsters, by reading the orginal files (and a lot of reverse engineering). Data can probably extracted from there.

I used The Chaos Construct to recreate the first two levels including exact placement of each ground tile and items, as well as game logic for ambushes and so on. I couldn't have done it without this tool.

Making new levels is probably easier than before because I know a good workflow, but it would also mean having to create all the props like the stone pillars with faces on them and new monsters, and I don't even dare to think of the work that preparing the second world would mean Which is a shame since the second world in paticular has great aesthetics with all the steampunk machinery, walkways and buildings.

I was on the verge of abandoning this TC even before releasing it but then pushed myself to get it to the presentable state it is now in. I wanted to move on to other (or rather, older) projects and knew that I would always feel guilty had I not at least shown the community what I accomplished so far. Unfortunately, due to the complex nature of the TC, it is unrealistic to hope for someone else to step in and continue working on it. We will see what the future brings My hope that I could at least inspire someone to try something similar, or maybe even some publisher notices it and gives funding the development of a new Chaos Engine game some thought.

[jotd]

To cheer you up: it took me 1 whole year to re-create the 4 Gods levels on my remake, bu t I had the graphics (I just scaled & reworked the colors/smoothed them manually).

It took me 10 years to create a satisfactory version, using reverse engineered code (thanks Kroah again) & new original 4 levels

[Superman]

Wow that's very impressive.