Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom

[saimon69]

That darn Walker! I was stuck there when was playing this on the 1200!

[Cool_amigaN]

Over the years I had lost hope for AB3D and its sequel. Especially given all the instabilities TKG faced on MorphOS and because its source code was considered as a mess to be fixed. So, I can't stress how important this project is! I 've just finished the game and I think that it could easily be considered as an official remake. Think it plays and looks like the original developers envisioned it, 25 years ago! My remarks so far:

- Difficulty is fine. 1-2 armors could be useful to further balance it and perhaps in-game saves could be turned off, to further increase it.

- Optional original rocket launcher is cool to have back

- Jumping switch on/off should be located in the options menu to further enhance the modernized experience

- Grenade launcher definitely needed rework on height/bounce (higher and heavier 'nades), so that's one matter less on the to do list

- Having the demo level playable would be great

- Remake should have been shipped with CD32 music imho as default. BTW, how does one make use of the mega.nz link it was provided beforehand? It's an .ipk3 but don't know how to handle it.

- Enemies' pathfinding is excellent. Only water effect seems lacking compared to the original.

- Does it support linked / co-op gameplay in its current state?

- Could some arenas be made to have a multiplayer deathmatch provided that network capabilities of gzdoom could be imported? Cause I think that the game could shine on amiga parties once again.

- Hope you reconsider your stance towards TKG. I saw your posts on gzdoom forum but since zGloom has already been released, Genetic Species (imho the pinnacle of Amiga FPS) is a lost cause and Citadel has also been taken care of, then only ones remain are Breathless, Fears and TKG (with the latter being the most advanced).

[Dunny]

I saw on the gzdoom boards that someone has ripped Breathless. I'd be willing to give that one a go, as the engine is a lot simpler than AB3Ds.

Also if someone rips FEARS (maps and sprites), then I'll do that too

[Nobby_UK]

I had the GZDoom Icon short-cut on the Desktop = Boring
Then I thought 'Can I change that ?' and remembered a .bmp renamed as .ico might
First try 320x256 looked squashed, So cropped it to 256 square = good enough
Just made a 400 square one, slightly zoomed (from cover art) in + brightened.

[Cobe]

Originally Posted by Cobe

Finally! I wanted this for a long time!
Though I'll be still waiting for Amiga port...

I got it working very well on RPI2 Raspbian with gzdoom 3.4. Went through first level, all's fine.

Now, one stupid question, how do I save options?

And one irrational, can I make it more pixelated?

Answering to myself.
It seems its silently crashing on exit so. gzdoom.ini was staying 0B thus no config saved. At end i manually edited it.
Blur of near textures was most anoying to me. Switching from opengl to sw render did the trick and i can use lower resolutions.
Now i wish i have pi2 connected to crt like i had pi1 with retropie few years ago

[Cherno]

Originally Posted by Cobe

Answering to myself.
It seems its silently crashing on exit so. gzdoom.ini was staying 0B thus no config saved. At end i manually edited it.
Blur of near textures was most anoying to me. Switching from opengl to sw render did the trick and i can use lower resolutions.
Now i wish i have pi2 connected to crt like i had pi1 with retropie few years ago

Not sure if that's what you mean, you can turn off texture filtering in the Texture Options menu, while still using OpenGL.

[Cobe]

Yes, that was the first thing I did, change filter to "none" wich also did the job but still when I lowered the resolution it looked like only fonts got bigger.

[ArcturusDeluxe]

Originally Posted by Cool_amigaN

- Difficulty is fine. 1-2 armors could be useful to further balance it and perhaps in-game saves could be turned off, to further increase it.

Thanks, though I can't remove in-game saves, it's kinda built into the engine. I think it's good to have the option in case players aren't as skilled and are having trouble with a particular section, though.

Originally Posted by Cool_amigaN

- Jumping switch on/off should be located in the options menu to further enhance the modernized experience

The levels were never really designed to make use of jumping anyway, I can think of maybe one section (the teleport on the boxes bit in map04) where it would be any use. If you really want to jump you can force the Allow Jump flag on under Gameplay Options, though.

Originally Posted by Cool_amigaN

- Having the demo level playable would be great

Working on it! Might take a while though as it has a lot of different assets from the main game and the conversion process is a bit harder.

Originally Posted by Cool_amigaN

- Remake should have been shipped with CD32 music imho as default. BTW, how does one make use of the mega.nz link it was provided beforehand? It's an .ipk3 but don't know how to handle it.

I was never a big fan of the CD32 music myself but enough people have asked that I'm going to add it. I want to compose new ambient background tracks to be more like the original Alien Breed and give it a darker atmosphere, so I'll add both versions as an option at some point.

Originally Posted by Cool_amigaN

Enemies' pathfinding is excellent. Only water effect seems lacking compared to the original.

Yeah, the water is an engine limitation I'm afraid. GZDoom doesn't have enough shader support to do it yet. If it ever does I will look into improving the effect, because yeah the original AB3D water was amazing!

Originally Posted by Cool_amigaN

Does it support linked / co-op gameplay in its current state?

- Could some arenas be made to have a multiplayer deathmatch provided that network capabilities of gzdoom could be imported? Cause I think that the game could shine on amiga parties once again.

I haven't really looked into doing multiplayer, and unfortunately I never really expected anyone would want to play it in multiplayer and didn't really design it with it in mind. I'm not sure if GZDoom's network play is very well developed either. Everything I've read suggests Zandronum, a fork of an older version of GZDoom, is the better port for doing multiplayer, but then that requires reworking the mod to support it, which could be a lot of work. If enough people demand it I'll certainly think about it, and there's always the possibilty for someone else to adapt the game if they want, but honestly it's not something I'm personally that invested in, sorry!

Originally Posted by Cool_amigaN

- Hope you reconsider your stance towards TKG.

I just don't really have a lot of nostalgia for it I'm afraid, and it would be hard to conjure up the motivation to recreate a game I don't care for that much.

Sorry if some of the answers weren't quite what you were hoping, but I'd rather be honest than bullshit you or dodge questions. Hope that clears up some things though and your feedback and kind words are appreciated!

[ArcturusDeluxe]

If you guys are interested I posted up some info and screenshots about the demo maps that I'm adding to this!
Long story short I'm adding the AF71 playable demo and the AA68 rolling demo maps, with some edits and additions to flesh them out (especially the rolling demo one) and clean them up. They'll be accessible as a mini bonus episode. Also I haven't confirmed for sure (dunno why someone would lie about it though?) but it seems like Andrew Clitheroe, the main coder for AB3D, showed up in the ZDoom thread, so that's fun, and slightly scary for me! Hopefully I get some good feedback!

[Foxman]

Great News, looking forward

[Nobby_UK]

I'm interested

Just started level 15 --- not finding many secrets though

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by ArcturusDeluxe

If you guys are interested I posted up some info and screenshots about the demo maps that I'm adding to this!
Long story short I'm adding the AF71 playable demo and the AA68 rolling demo maps, with some edits and additions to flesh them out (especially the rolling demo one) and clean them up. They'll be accessible as a mini bonus episode. Also I haven't confirmed for sure (dunno why someone would lie about it though?) but it seems like Andrew Clitheroe, the main coder for AB3D, showed up in the ZDoom thread, so that's fun, and slightly scary for me! Hopefully I get some good feedback!

Damn thats cool. Now Andy can finally see what the game was supposed to look like :-)
For the record, I played through the game and it sure felt like I remember it from back in the day. (Except now final boss was easier with quick save ;-)
Again, thanx for doing this, much appreciated.

[Foxman]

So i played trough, and i have to say Alien Breed 3D was really a great game back then!

It wouldn't have to hide from the big PC games (with decent resolution and storage options). A really good shooter of its time.

The walktrough is now finished, so if you don't know what to do, have a look here

This mod i can only recommend it to any shooter fan.


Here is the walktrough:

[ Show youtube player ]

[Nobby_UK]

Finished !!!

Phew !

[apex]

Is anybody working on an Amiga version using ZDoom or Boom?

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by apex

Is anybody working on an Amiga version using ZDoom or Boom?

I don't think those engines can currently handle it.

[eXeler0]

Converting it to another Doom engine would be like a port.. it would lose something in the translation. Most important thing is probably that the engine needs to support large enough levels. The rest can probably be compromised in one way or another without totally breaking the experience.
But is still a lot of work that needs to be done.

Edit:
Btw, someone (Christopher Ream) was doing a version for Odamex wich in turn was ported to Amiga by the great NovaCoder.
[ Show youtube player ]
To be brutally honest, this version looks nowhere as authentic as ArcturusDeluxe's version but kudos for the effort. Maybe there could be some asset and tool sharing between the projects.

[Cherno]

While reading through all the games that were never released over the decades, I stumbled upon "Alien Breed: Conflict", which was to be the third installment in the Alien Breed 3D saga.

https://www.unseen64.net/2010/04/22/...ast-cancelled/

ABC is a darkly futuristic, real-time 3-D strategy game. The player takes control of a small band of special operations soldiers as they fight for the freedom of their people. These guerrillas carry out dangerous missions behind enemy lines using guile, cunning, stealth and strategic abilities. Missions, including assassinations, strategic destruction, information retrieval and prisoner rescue, will be attempted by the player as he develops his skills of tactical combat.

You’ll get to develop your own characters with the skills you desire, deploy your units with predefined orders, command multiple groups, define your own tactics and select your weapons of choice.

The singleplayer missions in the game are said to be vast. Team17 will also focus strongly on multiplay and will run dedicated servers to save player stats and rankings.

It looked much closer to the movies, and 2D Alien Breed games (II in particular).

[honx]

i like that alien breed 3d port!
is it just for me or is water in sewer level brown instead of blue?

and what exactly do i have to do with cd32 music fix.pk3 file?
i copied into game folder but it doesn't change anything.

[honx]

or do i need a cd32 cd in drive or an iso-image mounted to have music?
and is there any windows icon available for alien breed 3d (.ico file)?