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Tormentor667

"The Last Strongholds a.t. Abyss to Hell" (May,31th)

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Hey dudes :)
ok, the thread is running now for a week over at ZDoom.org and I think, Doomworlders now should also know what it's all about :)

How did the project start out?
After I played Starcraft for some hours on the Battle.net (one of these Bullet Time maps, where you have to defend your entry against several thousands of monsters), the idea of creating a kind of "Assault DooM" game came to my mind. I thought about a player or more players defending their base of incoming enemies, several waves of them in several levels and maps. So I started to work on a small test-map and asked for some little script help (only a monster-count) in the ZDoom forums, nothing serious as you can see.
After I have started the thread, a few ZDoomers developed small scripts and we talked about the stuff and how they could improve it. Later on that, Chilvence began working on a advanced version of randy's script, and, thx god, he is a goddamn good coder :) I told him several of my ideas I had in mind and he integrated all of them (and some more of his own good ones) into a large script (3,88kb!!!) and well, now I'm working on the maps and Chilvence does some fine-adjustment to the script itself :)

So, what is your project now going to be about?
It's very easy to explain: You are a marine (surprise) and your job this time is not to infiltrate a base and kill all enemies and stuff, this time <ou have to defend a base of your own against incoming waves of evil demons and bad minions! Every once in a while, you will get powerups, new weapons, health and ammo between each wave and you will really need that, because each wave gets harder, with more and stronger enemies trying to get into your base. The enemies main goal is to reach a special point in your base itself. As soon as they manage to get there, you have lost and the game is over. In some maps, this is very easy, because your base has just one entry, other maps have bases with 3 entries, so you have to open your eyes wide and be pretty careful ;)

How many waves / levels will there be?
Each level consists of about 10 - 20 waves, each wave consists of 10 - over 100 enemies, and my plan is to create at last 15 or more maps (levels).

Is also some new stuff planned in this project?
Indeed :) I will also add some new demons, mostly some altered original ones, like the RocketLauncher Zombie, the RailgunArachnotron, the HighSpeedPinky. As soon as .64 is out, I will also try to add some new weapons (Mine Thrower, Railgun, Vulcan Cannon).

What about other special things?
I have also planned to include some "themed" assault maps, for example the defence of "Castle Wolfenstein" of incoming nazi-monsters, the defence of a city part in a "Duke Nukem" city or the defence of a hell base agains "Marines" (BFG, Plasmagun, SSG, etc.) and hopefully also some other 3D Games :) So, just wait and be surprised ;)

Do you have some screenshots of the maps?
The maps are still under construction but at the bottom you can finde a few :).

Anything else I need to know?
I will use this thread as a "newscenter", where I will update from time to time with new information and screenshots of the maps itself :)

...and now, give me some comments on what you would like to see and what you think about the idea itself!

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Alpha Screenshots

Some UAC Base inner part, where you will likely get your items from within a combat defense.


One outer part of another stronghold map, you see a isle in a lava sea, where monsters start spawning. Your mission is to prevent them to move across the bridge and reach your UAC portal.


One city map. This time once again, you have to prevent monsters to reach your UAC base in this downtown areal of earth ;)

Minor Title Changes
At the very beginning, the working title was "Assault", later I changed it to "The Lost Stronghold at the Abyss to Hell" because it was supposed to be only one map. But now, as plans have changed, also the title needs an update. "The Last Strongholds at the Abyss to Hell" is now just the subtitle of my project. I'm still looking for a one or two word title which exactly fits this thing, so if you think you have something creative in mind, let me know :)

Alpha Progress Report
4 maps are now almost finished, some minor detail is left, I have to add the mapinfo stuff, a fitting skybox with graphics and I have to playtest it. But this is only possible as soon as Chilvence's amazing script is finished and this is only possible in return, as soon as .64 is released *g* But it is ok, because I'm not in the mood of playing doom and testing my maps. I just create them, do visual stuff and I just wait until all the other things are finished. So far, I'm about 5% finished with the project *g*
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Beta 1 Screenshots

This time with skyboxes :) Check also the screenshots over at wadsinprogress.info with some more altered screenshots of the 3 first maps (with skybox!)
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Beta Screenshots of "360° of Defense"

A view at the outer part of the base. Outside, a sandstorm bursts small sandparticles through the air which is very foggy ;)


One view of the mainroom of your base, which you have to defend, you see some detail, some gateway and some strange platforms ;)


Same room, other angle, more detail and stuff :)

Now, I'm fully into my resources (Doom2 stuff and Nightmares texture pack addons) and I think, all the stuff I can create now, is rather interesting :)

BTW, did I mention that my AthlonXP2100+ almost crashes in 3D Mode while editing this high detailed base? *g*
--------------------------
Ok, thats all the info I have so far, now you can comment on this )

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Some small Update:

An alpha screenshot of Map07 on which you will defend a UAC base against a majority of air demons :) Very funny indeed *g*
I made this in 30 minutes thx to DoomBuilder :)

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Try not to make it too detailed. It looks great but too much detail might slow down peoples PC'S.

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This is indeed very strange :( If someone posts a new thread without any screenshots and information, everyone talks about (not to mention the usage of the newproject-tag) but if you fill up your thread with information and screenshots, nobody seems to be interested :(

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Wow.....you have an eye for good, unique looking detail that I don't often see in doom maps.

Keep it up.

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Tormentor667 said:

What sort of maps and what sort of other new things would you like to see in this Mod???

I was going to advise a desert base, yet it's already here.
So my suggestions:

Space Station Not many people actually made some good looking space stations (with exception of vracks and RTC, hehe)
Swamp Myself, I love foggy mysterious maps where every crack of overgrowing weeds can be a sign of an aproaching enemy. Simply add rain to such a map and voila-awesome experience
Thunderstorm castle A medieval setting (use of slopes damnit, to achieve gothic architecture) in the middle of an ocean (plain water, not lava :-P) with thunder crashing. Most of the action takes place outside the castle in it's massive courtyards where the lightning is the only light source...
Cyberspace This can be wacky. Plenty of crazy coloured walls, crampy music and strange data flowing here and there, like shots of web sites (tough the cyberspace in Hacx stinks).
Doom 64 flavoured map Brutally rip the textures and add plenty of coloured lighting (with high sector values so it's not uber-dark) and made a D64 flavour-fake 3d floors, a scrolling clouds skybox and plenty of spawning monsters from thick air. A little terraformers crushing the ground in the distance. You could mix both-the base and hell themes here, like the east side being an outpost and the west being some hell palace.

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Always like to share toughts with people.

You wrote that the player is suppose to defense the base, right? Well, how about setting up some operable cannons? They could be fixed mortars which shoot a projectile that drops on the ground and can damage a group of enemies, but takes time to reload. A security-grid that kills approaching enemies, but needs a lot of time to regain power is also a neat-o. And ofcourse why not stationary machineguns. Plain-You walk to a gun, the player gets Player_PROP Frozen (NOT TotallyFrozen, so he can turn arount and fire) and give him a new gun that represents a super-duper macihnegun. When player presses space he releases the machine gun and his weapons are back. Nice. Naturally such fights will require a lot of monsters, but it'll be more fun guarding the base than actually blazing trough 1000 monsters (thinking of Deus Vult now :-))

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Nice looking shots there Tormentor. :) I like your idea of having to defend the base(s) from hoards of critters. I dunno if this was mentioned yet but what about a map where you have to defend a good sized bridge over a lava field or slime pitt.

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I like the swamp idea, too bad there are not really any swamp-like textures in Doom ;)

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Definately a good idea, Tormentor, with some good maps as well!

This is indeed very strange :( If someone posts a new thread without any screenshots and information, everyone talks about (not to mention the usage of the newproject-tag) but if you fill up your thread with information and screenshots, nobody seems to be interested :(


People tend to post in threads for shitty maps more than the good ones for some reason (example: all those shadowrunner threads that got needless amounts of attention)

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Yeah don't take it the wrong way Tormentor, I'm very excitied about this project but don't say much of anything.

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boris said:

I like the swamp idea, too bad there are not really any swamp-like textures in Doom ;)

Hexen swamp textures? Hmm.
In Doom?! GSTVINEs to the maximum on most of the walls, zimmers and ashwalls (the brown ones) oughta be good. Then some rain (maybe the fog isn't the best idea yet, a dark swamp can also be atmospheric, I remember one from Exhumed, had no fog, was dark and cool too), but the biggest enigma would be the sky. I guess Hexen's foggy sky, or, a greyscale version of RSKY1. More GSTVINes on Marble walls, maybe some brown slime falls and plenty o' brown slime. Dark Browns and green and grays and You've got it.

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Nmn said:

I guess Hexen's foggy sky, or, a greyscale version of RSKY1. More GSTVINes on Marble walls, maybe some brown slime falls and plenty o' brown slime. Dark Browns and green and grays and You've got it.

Thx to skybox, this won't be a big deal ;)

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This is a nice idea. I once had ideas for something very similar but zdoom was unknown to me then so I couldn't bring it to life.

I really like all the screenshots here and I can't really pick which is my favorite, except maybe map07. They all look too good :)

Personally, I would like to see a map that resembles something from Aliens, like the colony. Can't wait to play this. ^_^

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And don't forget the Caco invasion, it's allways cool.
Try don't to make the maps so large in terms of duration of the gameplay, or it should turn quickly monotonous like map20 in Cyberdemon Army (even with that ultra cool architecture).

An idea I have for a project like yours is an asteroid that "floats" above hell (like Deimos at the end of The Shores of Hell".

Also you can add some scripted marines in defensive positions to help the player.

Oh, and if it is posible (I know you have the skills), a coloured version of the Revenant that looks like the one of DOOM 3.

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Oh by the way: Here some preview stuff of the suggested "Canyon Map":

You can see a part of the path leading downwards through the canyon. In front of you, there is a nice hellish castle ;) The skybox itself isn't finished and the way downwards will also still get some more detail to spice things up :)

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What would be pretty cool is if you were given warnings (maybe by some trick pda or something) as to when and where the next wave would be approaching from.

Imagine being stood on the machine gun turret happily mowing down cacos when suddenly you get a distress call to say that a group of pinkies have broken in through the sewer system. Make the player take risks on how long he can ignore these threats from within :)

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@DanJ - Well, you will actually already get some messages and statistics on your defence not shown on the screenshots at the moment.

In the right upper corner you get info on the time you are already defending and how many enemies you have killed. On the upper left, you will see which level you are already beating and the number of the wave, which is incoming.

In the lower left corner, you will get some informations between each wave (what happens next, what things have actually been spawned and other info).

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Definitely make a swamp map. The desert one looks really good. And DEFINITELY use the stationary gun idea. Nothing could make the mod more fun than using different stationary guns in each map- a tank cannon in the desert map, a minigun in the swamp, a railgun for the space station, etc. stuff like that.

If you add the above, the project will be extremely kickass. And it already looks amazing and fun anyway.

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This project does sound very cool, I'll definetly be playing this once it's released.

I'll understand if the following isn't possible with ACS but what I'd like to see is a proper highscore save system. So that I can come back and try and beat my best clear times on each map.

Also another good weapon apart from the static guns would be static remote mines (with time delay before refire) or remote crushers (eg at the gate to the base) triggered from a control room.

You could even set up cameras to watch different areas of the base, so eg you wouldn't announce the waves as soon as they start but if you watched the cameras then you'd have early warning.

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The Remote Mine weapon is very interesting and I like the idea.

But I'm not going to add "surprise waves", you will always know, what's on it's way, and believe me, it's hard enough.

The interesting thing I (Chilvence) added, is that after Wave number X, I can run a specific script (for example earthquake, explosion and a new gateway being opened in the map) which adds a new spawning area for monsters :)

And the camera thing might be interesting.

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I think the wave idea is pritty dum, so can you make the level like
reguler maps with out the wave thing

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dude this post is waay old. please do not post on any topic more than 3 months old.

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