Pimping Paradox

In a couple of months, the project known formerly (and uh, presently) as "Paradox" will be 8 years old! This makes it quite probably the second oldest unfinished Doom project besides Mordeth E2 (yes Mord my maps are still being worked on! :) ). With this in mind, I realized that a good proportion of the present Doom community have probably never even heard of it, and many of those who have don't know what it's about.

What kind of project is this?

The original intention was for Paradox to be a 32 map TC for vanilla Doom (we didn't even have source ports back then), with a full set of new enemies & weapons but still set in the Doom universe. Things have changed since then though. Quite a lot in fact.

Over the years the project has been through something like four or five texture wads, countless team members (some of whom actually did work! See below for more), long periods of absoluletely nothing happening whatsoever, etc. A relatively short while ago I resumed work on it, and even though I'm now the only person actively involved, it's going great!

The current, heavily revised plan is for Paradox to be a 20-or-so map PC for ZDoom, with several new enemies & weapons, but all of the old ones there too. Though the original Doom (2) enemies won't exactly be common. There will also be an extended prologue called Wrath, whih will feature 10 levels and a few new enemies & weapons.

What's the story?

Set a decade or so after Doom 2, when mankind has seperated into several numerous petty factions, Paradox places you in the role one of the marines still loyal to the UAC. You've been sent in to investigate an asteroid base which has apparently been abandoned by one of the UAC's rivals, a militaristic group called the Solar Defence Initiative. Of course it isn't quite as abandoned as they thought...

Wrath features unconnected levels which are chosen through a mission select hub kinda thing and can be played in any order you like (except the last two). They explore the events that happen between the end of Doom 2 and the beginning of Paradox, and the UAC, SDI, Interplanatary Mining Core and other factions (I may even ask Shaviro's permission to include the RTC ;)) will all feature. Oh, and don't forget the hellspawn :P

What's done?

Well there's the texture wad (a behemoth of thing that's close to 15 megs in size), which is being used for both Wrath and Paradox, as well as Surge 3 and more than likely any future projects of mine. Nearly every single one of the textures included is a modified Doom (2) texture, meaning the Doom-look is retained whilst adding a huge amount of variety at the same time.

The weapons are also assembled (from various sources) and currently replace various Heretic, Hexen and Strife weapons, though once ZDoom v2.0.64 is out, they'll be coded up as brand new entities. These again will be used in all three of my current projects. The weapons will include all the original Doom (2) weapons, plus a bunch of new melee weapons, a revolver, a rifle, a machine gun, a grenade launcher, a mine layer, flamethrowers, a dual plasma gun, a plasma cannon, and more!

Level-wise, 8/10 of Wrath's levels have at least been started, with three close to being finished. ALL of Paradox's levels have been started, with many of them over 50% done and a bunch of them even pretty much finished.

Why should you be excited?

Besides myself the following people worked on Paradox's levels:
Andy Badarek (Memento Mori 2)
Rick Clark (Daedalus, the Apocalypse series)
Pablo Dictter (Alien Vendetta, No Hope For Life E1)
David "DaGGeR" Gevert (SlaughterDM)
Yashar "Gemini" Garibzadeh (Alien Vendetta, Hell Revealed 2)
Bjorn Hermans (Eternity, Serenity, Infinity)
Mike "Prower" Reid (the Seventh series, the Experiment)
Tomi "Lu-Wang" Rajala (Hell Factory, Raynor's Tale)

Also, Paradox and Wrath's soundtracks include a handful of extremely rare midis by Mark Klem (they were previously only available on his website for a couple of months in 1997, before he kindly donated them to the project), as well as several 'lost' midis by members of the Hacx team - including Marc Pullen - that Sam "Metabolist" Woodman graciously extended & improved.

When will it be finished?

When It's Done (TM). Though Wrath will be done sooner.

Nick Baker, before you start asking for help on your new mega-cool-and-whatnot project, make sure you have something to show first (screenshots, map downloads, etc). Keep in mind we've already seen thousands of upcoming projects that actually never got done.

give us some shots :((

I was going to apply to your project when you first posted it on your website a long time ago, Nick.

I've heard of it before :P

haven't we seen enough Mock wads? j/k! :P
hmmm, for Zdoom, interesting....

Ah great. I can't wait for this Nick. Don't let me down ;)

This sounds awesome. 15mb texture wad! Geez I thought my texture wad was getting bloated at 6.77mb :D

Heard of it before, saw the Wrath screenies on WIP, would really like to play it :)

GIVE US BOOBIES. I mean PARADOX.

sargebaldy said:

Nick Baker, before you start asking for help on your new mega-cool-and-whatnot project, make sure you have something to show first (screenshots, map downloads, etc). Keep in mind we've already seen thousands of upcoming projects that actually never got done.

give us some shots :((

And before YOU hit the "Reply" button, ask yourself; "Do I have anything worthwhile to say????". Quit bitching, biaaatch!


Nick I sent you an e-mail. Hope your e-mail is still valid.

Very eager to play this, I love textures! Started my megawad in late 96.