Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (v1.0.3)

[Arcturus]

 

Project Osiris is a remake/reimagining of the Amiga FPS game Alien Breed 3D, using the GZDoom engine.

Alien Breed 3D was a valiant attempt at creating Doom but for the Amiga, a machine that really wasn't suited for such tasks. The pixels were huge and the viewport was tiny, but it was a technically impressive shooter considering the limitations. It even had some features over Doom - the water effects were amazing and it supported room-over-room and even texture-mapped 3D models. It was my first real experience of a proper 3D first person world in a video game so it was somewhat of a revelation to me. It may not be as tightly designed as Doom (honestly some of maps are pretty bad), but I have a lot of nostalgia for it, and it has a place in my heart.

So, I decided my first major Doom engine project would be to recreate it and also iron out some of the issues of the original, and hopefully make some improvements on the way. Having seen a few other attempts at remaking this game not reach fruition, I thought I'd step up to the plate and have a go at it myself!

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Features
 

• All 16 maps from the original game converted and adapted. The maps have been given aesthetic improvements, tweaked item and enemy placement and even some extra shortcuts, secrets and surprises, but they also remain true to the spirit of the original game. Look out for an additional secret map too, based on an obscure demo of the original game I found on Team 17's FTP server. The level has been expanded and now features an intense final battle. Keep your eyes peeled for those secrets!
• New textures and visual effects have been added. Dynamic lighting is used on many objects and some areas of the maps now have coloured lighting where appropriate. Additional textures have been added to denote teleporters, and doors that require switches to open (very handy on MAP11!)
• New HUD, designed not to take up most of the screen this time! It now fits into a familiar Doom status bar format, or a fullscreen HUD if you prefer maximum viewage potential.
• All 5 weapons from the original game, including new redrawn graphics and visual effects - also an additional one that didn't make it into the original game, the knife, for when you're out of ammo or you just feel like getting stabby. You can also switch back to the old weapon graphics if you're a fan of the hugest pixels!
• Various new items including body armor, small health packs, ammo drops and and map terminals have been added. All the old items now have new, shinier sprites too! And the original item graphics are included as an option if you want.
• All the original aliens are present and are angrier than ever. They now have diagonal angle views (the original game only had side, front and back,) some now have death animations where they didn't before, and some have been completely overhauled graphically. The two boss enemies are also back, now with new mechanics! Look out for those in MAP08 and MAP16.
• Three difficulty levels, that do more than just increase monster counts! The hardest setting will make the aliens that much more deadly, fast and accurate. If you just want to chill and kill some aliens however, an easier mode is there for you, offering you more protection against enemy attacks.
• A new soundtrack by me under my musical name, Null Divisor, featuring 17 music tracks in total. Contains a cover of the original tracker theme tune, and updated versions of the incidental music cues. The in-game tracks give a whole new sense of atmosphere to the game, featuring ambient soundscapes and occassional pumping electronic beats. Listen out for references to other music in the Alien Breed series too!
• Lots of additional sound effects added, such as new alien idle/death sounds, picking up items, elevators and door sounds and more!

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Screenshots

 

Featuring inset screenshots from the original AB3D! Yes, the resolution really was that low!
 

 

 

 

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Q/A

Do I need a Doom 2 WAD to run this game?
Nope! Simply run osiris.exe (just a copy of GZDoom) in the zip, or load the ipk3 into your existing GZDoom.

Why is there a copy of GZDoom in the download?
I expect people from the Amiga community who aren't necessarily into the Doom modding scene might be playing it, and I wanted to make things easier for them. Please note the included release is for Windows 64-bit - though you can run it on Linux and Mac if you get your own copy of GZDoom and put the ipk3 into it. If you're into Doom mods and running GZDoom already, feel free to just move the ipk3 into your usual place. Be sure to run it as an iwad, it's its own game!

Is this a 1:1 remake of the original AB3D?
No, lots of things are different either on purpose to hopefully improve the experience for a modern audience, or due to limitations of the engine or my coding ability.

Is it finished?
Yes! Though I will of course continue to update the game as necessary. I also plan to add more maps from coverdisk demos of the game, but these have a different visual style and different enemies and weapons, so they will take some more time to finish. Look out for these in the future!

Can you do Alien Breed 3D 2: The Killing Grounds next?
Nah, I was never really a fan of it, so the nostalgia isn't there for me. Sorry!

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Thanks to Rayman the Hedgehog, Ozymandias81, Kinsie and DrPyspy for helping me out and/or letting me use stuff they made! Also HUGE shoutouts to John Girvin, whose work on extracting the original AB3D maps was basically vital for this project not to take a million years. There are further credits given inside the .ipk3 and/or during the end credits roll of the game.

This is my first Doom engine project and the first time I've released a big project to the world in general. Aside from the awesome help I've gotten this is mostly a solo effort by me, and I'm not a pro at game design or anything like that, so please bear with me if you have any problems!

 

For more info, check the ZDoom forum thread - with lots more information and project history. The dev of the original game even shows up there at one point!

 

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Download Project Osiris v1.0.3

Itch.io Mirror

If you're not using the included exe, please run the game as an IWAD/IPK3, not as a mod for Doom 2. GZDoom will pick it up as it's own game, or add the game as an IWAD to your launcher of choice.

Bug warning: if you're on a non-Windows machine it might throw up some errors about DEFCVARS.txt? Someone mentioned it being an issue. The fix for now is to just go into a ipk3 in a zip program and delete DEFCVARS.txt - it's not vital and just sets up the default configuration.

Edited May 11, 2021 by Arcturus : updated download link

[Cherno]

I vouch for this TC! This is the definitive edition of Alien Breed 3D.

[Rudolph]

That is so cool! I knew Alien Breed because of the relatively recent (and frankly not that great) Alien Breed: Trilogy reboot, but I did not know they made a FPS.

 

Thanks a lot for your good work! I am going to try this right now.

[LadyMistDragon]

I remember hearing about this a few years back. It's awesome to see some concrete results!

 

[Arcturus]

Just did a quick bugfix on this, some stuff was broken on MAP08, and also had some issues running the game on Linux. So yeah, it's 1.0.1 now!

[Artman2004]

Glad to see how far the project's come since last year!

[Arcturus]

Put out another bugfix update! Sorted some issues - some enemies were misplaced and music volume being zero would bog down the framerate. Sorted now!

Download Project Osiris v1.0.2

 

Shout out to Kinsie who did a little mod with a collection of replacement sounds which are a bit more crunchy and Amiga-y. Maybe you'll like them better than mine!

[Arcturus]

Another update! A couple of other bugfixes, but mainly, the music from the CD32 version is now included as standard, as I got permission from Bjorn Lynne! You can switch between the my new soundtrack and the classic one on the fly by going to Options > Sound > Soundtrack.

 

Download Project Osiris v1.0.3

[thestarrover]

I remember a friend of mine playing the original version on his Amiga many years ago. It is very nice to have the opportunity to play again this  good game on modern machines. Amazing job!

On 4/17/2021 at 1:24 AM, Arcturus said:

The pixels were huge and the viewport was tiny,

I think that it was the main problem of the game. If I recall correctly there was an option to zoom the point of view but with a big loss of resolution.

[Arcturus]

On 5/12/2021 at 6:15 PM, thestarrover said:

I remember a friend of mine playing the original version on his Amiga many years ago. It is very nice to have the opportunity to play again this  good game on modern machines. Amazing job!

I think that it was the main problem of the game. If I recall correctly there was an option to zoom the point of view but with a big loss of resolution.

Thanks! No problem!

Yeah in the original you can press enter on the keypad to zoom in. It's technically the same resolution, it's just the sheer chunkiness is laid bare. Thing is though, once you get into the flow of playing the game you don't notice it as much, at least that's what I find. Maybe I'm just desensitised to it at this point!

Edited May 17, 2021 by Arcturus

[Lazlo Panaflex]

Aww Yesss! Just downloaded.

Big fan of Alien Breed from back in the day. Better Aliens game than any of the official ones from that time period.

 

[thestarrover]

3 minutes ago, Lazlo Panaflex said:

Big fan of Alien Breed from back in the day. Better Aliens game than any of the official ones from that time period.

 

I totally agree!

[eqagunn]

Hi. Any way to get the HUD into the corners? Currently, the higher the UI Scale is the more centered it gets:

 

EDIT:

I have created a patch for HUD to be in corners. The position of Armor and Vitality have also been swapped to have it in more natural order. Also made to be completely scalable! If anyone's interested you can get it from here. Either overwrite the files within the Osiris.ipk3 or autoload it. See screenshot of it in action:

 

This has to be by far the best way to experience this game. Thank you for providing us with the means to do so. Played through it whole while getting all kills and secrets on the way. Secrets were more on the wall-hugging side, but that was expected. Found it enjoyable overall.

 

A few notes from my playthrough:

Spoiler

I was able to be under water indefinitely. LevelInfo mod I'm using that's showing me countdown for the oxygen remaining was sitting at 0:00 every time. As some of underwater areas had air pockets I assume this isn't intentional:

 

Just an inconvenience but Plasma Trooper cannot be killed with a single shotgun hit at close range on easy difficulty:

 

MAP14 - This hidden room feels like it should have been made to count as secret:

 

MAP17 - While other levels had an exit sign this one did not which caused me to prematurely finish the level and have to reload:

 

GZDoom v4.11.3 is showing these warnings in console upon startup:

 

I know you have no plans to do The Killing Grounds but if you ever change your mind I would love to play it. Perhaps one day someone makes it into an addon episode. Fingers crossed!

Edited January 22 by eqagunn

[Arcturus]

Hi @eqagunn, thanks so much for the feedback, very helpful! Some responses:

Spoiler

 

Yeah the HUD perhaps could do with some work, personally I didn't like the HUD going all the way to the edges as it seems too far away to check at a glance but you also have to set it to the right scaling for your resolution so it doesn't look too centered. I'll see what I can do with it on my end to make things more configurable.

 

Infinite underwater oxygen is actually true to the original game, despite there being air pockets. Perhaps the devs intended to have limited oxygen at some point? I decided to go along with the final game as released and keep it infinite. I feel like a lot of people find drowning in games to be a bit annoying anyway.

 

Plasma Troopers were made a bit healthier as they're projectile-based instead of hitscan, but for easy mode you might have a point. Will have a look and maybe tweak it.

 

Will fix the issues on 14 and 17, thanks!  In 17 the original version didn't have any Exit sign so I must have forgotten to add it.

 

The console warnings are just because the game hasn't been updated for newer GZDoom versions for a while and the config options have changed. I'm working on a big update and it'll be resolved there.

 

 

 

 

[eqagunn]

On 1/1/2024 at 4:08 PM, Arcturus said:

Yeah the HUD perhaps could do with some work, personally I didn't like the HUD going all the way to the edges as it seems too far away to check at a glance but you also have to set it to the right scaling for your resolution so it doesn't look too centered. I'll see what I can do with it on my end to make things more configurable.

I have since been playing REKKR, had to do some HUD rearranging for it as well (see before and after) and learned how to make it scalable. Your SBARINFO has positive values only which are offsetting HUD objects from top-left corner towards bottom-right. To have it offset things from opposite corners and towards opposite direction all you need to do is use negative values equal to width/height of the image! For example using DrawImage "FSSBAR1", 0, -26; and DrawImage "FSSBAR2", -91, -73; will make them stay in the corner for all resolutions and all UI scaling values set!

 

You can find my HUD addon attached and give it a spin! Personally I think corners are the way as otherwise it's blocking the view. And Vitality being before Armor is the way other games have wired my brain.

 

On 1/1/2024 at 4:08 PM, Arcturus said:

Infinite underwater oxygen is actually true to the original game, despite there being air pockets. Perhaps the devs intended to have limited oxygen at some point? I decided to go along with the final game as released and keep it infinite. I feel like a lot of people find drowning in games to be a bit annoying anyway.

Perhaps consider adding it as an optional feature if you want to stay true to the original with this. Although, with air pockets being there player's impression is that there was meant to be limited oxygen but it's bugged instead.

Edited January 22 by eqagunn

[Arcturus]

@eqagunn

 

Good news, these HUD issues should all be fixed next update as I'm rewriting the HUD in ZScript now and it is much more flexible! Bit of a learning curve for me but it's already working pretty well. There will be a HUD style selector (only two styles at the moment), an option to adjust the how close the elements are to the edge of the screen, and one to swap the armor and vitality around, and probably some other stuff too.

 

 

[ReaperAA]

Just completed by playthrough of this on the hard difficulty and it's pretty good. Granted, I found the combat gameplay to be so-so, with mostly relying on hiding behind corners to deal with them due to how damaging they can be (though the last map ended the mod on a high note). At any rate, this is probably far far better than playing the original game, which I have never played but seen some videos of it on YT.

 

The game also has a nice atmosphere and style to boot, so there is at least that reason for Doom players to try it out.