Alien Breed Total Conversion for BOOM

[fishyfish]

Sure, Id be interested to see it. Potentially saves me from making unusuable graphics too (cos of palette "conflicts" I mean).

Where did you find the AB3d1 sources by the way? I keep finding references to it being in the ab3d2 src archive, but it hasnt been in any that Ive tried so far. Im just after the graphics rather than the sources themselves (although sources could be interesting to check for enemu AI, etc.).

[XDelusion]

Here:

http://aminet.net/search?query=Alien+breed

Sorry, forgot to put my palette file on my USB stick before I left home.

[XDelusion]

Fish: I just sent you a link to the palette in a PM.

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by XDelusion

In closing I will list in order of importance, a few things that AB3D has and what DOOM source ports have the features need to pull them off.

Please don't get me wrong: I appreciate your efforts, I checked out your initial level, and it's a decent start.

But you're using the wrong software. Yeah, I get it - Doom is cult, you like it and you're familiar with the tools. But spending ages to come up with a Doom engine that does about 90% of what AB3D has been doing just doesn't make any sense.

Quake should be able to handle AB3D, including bouncing grenades, enemy AI and stuff like that. There's a tool to convert level geometry from AB3D to quake format, there is (was) one guy already working on it and girv was giving hints (see thread on aw.net).

Check out this release, complete with 68k executable:

http://aminet.net/search.php?query=qbreed

It's an early alpha, just like yours. But it's a better start, becase the engine has everything you need to properly clone AB3D.

[NovaCoder]

Did someone mention [ Show youtube player ]

[XDelusion]

Sadly, QBreed is dead, read below at bottom of this post. :/

As for why I want to continue on with this project (that at times makes me want to pull my hair out), is because I'm one of those people who like to see what all I can push out of a limited environment, in this case it being an engine, but not just any engine. The very engine that AB3D's engine was designed to be a tribute to, and in some way a successor.

Also, this will allow me to feed my desire to release a DOOM Total Conversion that does not take advantage of many if not any of the new advantage brought to the table by source ports such as PrBOOM, GzDOOM, Odamex, and so on. As an editor, I have watched the DOOM scene change over the years. More and more features have been added, and much of the editing has been simplified. With that in mind it has caused me to trash my old efforts and redesign my yet to release Star Wars Total Conversion with some of these new additions in mind. At the same time it kind of depressed me because the classic DOOM, BOOM, and MBF knowledge I gained while learning how to edit, would now go to waste. On top of that it was kind of sad because some of the new DOOM Source ports were not portable, not to mention resource friendly when it came to some of the high end features they now support, such as OGG, 3D models and Hi-Res textures.

Needless to say, when Fish mentioned the idea of making an AB3D TC with the BOOM engine, it perked my interest! With this I could go back and take advantage of all the old school DOOM knowledge, as well as release something that would be available to the Amiga community at large. We've got BOOM which will run fine on 040's and above (which I would think most of us own by now), we've got Odamex on AROS which is still being fleshed out, but it works! We got PrBOOM GL for OS 4, we got PrBOOM software mode for MorphOS and AROS, and sometimes down the road we will also have PrBOOM Plus GL for AROS which I'm sure will then be portable to MorphOS and OS 4.

By supporting Boom and maybe later PrBOOM for classic Amigas, I can ensure that it will be fully compatible with all Amiga compatible enhanced DOOM engines, so I will in this way be able to develop and release a game for the Amiga community! More than that I will be able to bring back an Amiga classic that many will not play because of the small screen size and limited control scheme. But that's not all...

BOOM and PrBOOM have been ported to nearly everything including the Nintendo DSi, so in a way this will open to door to make AB3D broadly available.

Now without the addition of real 3D floors such as those you will find in GzDOOM, DOOM Legacy, cDOOM, the latest zDOOM SVN, and so forth, I will have to make a few adjustments to mimic the levels in the BOOM engine. I.E. I will be able to do room above room, and floors that you can walk above and below, but I can not get the enemies to walk on those floors, the floor above floor yes, but the 3d floor no as it will be a hack in the DOOM engine and not a true 3D floor.

Likewise I will not be able to do multi-tier stairs, I.E. a 3D floor above a 3D floor above a 3D floor. If I can, I have not figured out a way to pull it off yet, though even if I could, I still would not be able to do those on stair shoot outs that you find in one or two of the later levels.

That being said I can at least make a work around, replace the stairs with an elevator or something, then the rest of the level would of course play out the same as the original.

There may be other small sacrifices that I have to make in order to make this work, though I've not found anything major yet. What I intend to do to compensate though is add a few details to the maps and enemies that were not present in the original game, but will make it look better over all and less 1994, but without adding in anything that would take away from the original game experience.

Of course Alien Breed 3D only has 16 levels and DOOM II has a total of 32, so this will leave an additional 16 levels that I could create to take place after the original 16 in which case the sky is the limit and I could go all out with the new features that BOOM, and or MBF and PrBOOM offer.


Last but not least with the likes of Odamex and PrBOOM Plus I can make custom additions that would be available in a separate download. I.E. for Odamex you have a ton of On-Line features that compare to the features found in modern on-line games. On top of that you have sloped floors, an advanced scripting system, and a ton of other features found in zDOOM 1.22 and after. With this I could go very deep, but I want to finish off the initial project first before I set anything in stone.

Now with PrBOOM Plus GL I will be able to do everything that PrBOOM can do, plus add in an OGG based sound track to assign to each level. Or I can use ambient tracks instead that can be triggered when walking into certain rooms and what have you. I.E. you go from a well lit room with no enemies that is playing peaceful bird chirping sounds and what not. Then you enter a elevator the ambiance stops and you begin to descend downward. When the elevator doors open and you step out into the dark underground room, the ambiance picks up again, but this time with something much more sinister.

On top of that I will be able to replace all the textures and sprites with Hi-Resolution ones which will really make the game look nice. Oh and there is no 256 Color palette limit with PrBOOM Plus GL either!

So in short, my choices are made based upon illogical passion.

===========

"Based on what I’d learned of the level data structure from the source code, I wrote a set of utilties that would convert the basic structure of AB3D levels to maps for id Software’s Quake 1 engine. Combined with a Quake mod to implement the AB3D game logic, this was QBreed.

It worked well enough for the early levels, but because the Quake 1 engine was built around 16 bit fixed point mathematics it couldn’t support the extent of map that was required to successfully convert some later ones. The floating point based Quake 3 engine supports the required map extent and I did have a version of QBreed running under Quake 3 at one point, but lacked the time to do anything more with it. This project too was abandoned, but you can download a snapshot of the final QBreed development directory here."

Source: http://www.weedoorsbanging.com/archi...-breed-3d.html


==============

[XDelusion]

Oh ya, and of course aside of the lack of true 3D floors, I will be lacking the ducking ability, and some of the ambient effects I mentioned above, but nothing major that would drastically hurt the conversion.

[fishyfish]

@XDelusion
thanks

re: quake engine vs doom engine:

Quake engine is too heavy to run well on most classic amigas as well, not to mention Doom "feels" more like AB3d as well. The Qbreed project was interesting, but it always felt like you was playing Quake still.

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by fishyfish

Quake engine is too heavy to run well on most classic amigas as well

True, it does require a 68060. But it's the only way to run a true conversion on a classic. With a Doom engine, the later levels will not have much resemblance to the original levels.

And I'd venture a guess that the majority of people interested in an AB3D remake would run it on more modern hardware, not on a classic.

not to mention Doom "feels" more like AB3d as well. The Qbreed project was interesting, but it always felt like you was playing Quake still.

The difference is that you can change pretty much every aspect of Quake without having to rewrite the engine - there are racing games using the standard Quake engine. You were playing an early alpha release, of course that didn't feel the the finished product yet.

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by XDelusion

Sadly, QBreed is dead, read below at bottom of this post. :/

girv's original project is dead, yes. But Andrew Loft took over and was working on it recently. The Aminet release I pointed out is from last November.

As for why I want to continue on with this project (that at times makes me want to pull my hair out), is because I'm one of those people who like to see what all I can push out of a limited environment

That's a very valid reason, I once tried to implement a point'n click adventure using "Garry Kitchen's Game Maker on the C64"

It just won't be a proper AB3D remake, that's all I'm saying. And you were asking for people who'd be capable of doing some heavy work on the Doom engine, at which point you're leaving "limited environment" territory anyway.

I just think the end result won't be close enough to AB3D. The level design was AB3D's strongest point, messing with that because of engine limitations isn't a good idea IMHO.

[XDelusion]

I know what you mean, DOOM is kinda of cramped to take on such an ambitious project as this, but I'll just look at it as a challenge. Even if it don't turn out to be a 100% clone on the Amiga port, at least I'll have produced something for it, and something I "think" people will enjoy.

On that note if the QBreed project has been revived then we'll have double the bliss!

Another thought I was having is that even if no one is pleased with my project in the end, that at least the resources will be available should anyone else want to start creating new AB3D maps for BOOM based engines. In fact this whole project when completed could easily be transferred over to a source port that does support 3D floors and what not, and it could then be made to be a more exact clone on it. I.E. if rumours about Odamex getting 3D floors are true, then we'd at least be able to play this AB3D TC in Odamex with 3D floors and all!

[XDelusion]

For the note. I don't want my work to be perceived as competition to the Quake project. Now that I know it is no longer dead, my enthusiasm has been renewed! Anyone got a link to the new project page...

If one exists?

[vulture]

Stupid question alert:
Would it be possible to enhance the original AB3D engine, since the sources are available, instead of porting it to another engine?

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by vulture

Stupid question alert:
Would it be possible to enhance the original AB3D engine, since the sources are available, instead of porting it to another engine?

Possible, yes. But apparently not worth the effort - the source code is in extremely bad shape, apparently. Everybody who tried to work on it ran away screaming.

[XDelusion]

I know... it would be awesome to see something done with those sources. :/

[Dunny]

This is a brilliant, noble cause and I salute you for it. AB3D was my favourite FPS of all time - I have very fond memories of it.

HOWEVER

The water effect was what set it head and shoulders above anything else at the time - are you going to be able to reproduce the refraction effect?

D.

[XDelusion]

Only in DOOM source ports that support real 3D floors such as GzDOOM, Legacy, cDOOM, and the like. Sadly not Boom unless such features are somehow added in.