Paranoia Will Destroy Ya (Final)

[ReX]

PARANOIA: 5 levels, set in a Military Research installation in the desert South-West of the U.S. The main focus of the research is in Genetics, so there are a variety of Labs and computer centers. There are also waste and water treatment areas, storage bays, speciment containment areas, and power generators. Being a military installation there are armories, barracks, security posts, holding cells, and a Medical Center. There is even an Administration section (with offices), as well as bathrooms, a lounge, and vending machines. Plus lots of human and alien enemies!

These levels extensively use Half Life textures, weapons, and enemies. They also feature a cool new sky, and scripting. ZDooM features include translucency, laser and force-field barriers, underwater environments, true elevators, colored lighting, fog, slippery surfaces (ice), quakes ... the list goes on.

And best of all, it's available for download NOW!

ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/doom2/levels/doom2/Ports/p-r/paranoia.zip
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/doom2/levels/doom2/Ports/p-r/paranoia.txt

[boris]

I've not yet played complete through it (somewhere running around in map04 or so), but this one looks really nice! But IMO it would be even cooler if you'd used some HUB structure and maybe some more interactive elements.

[geekmarine]

Not bad, except why are all the sprites gigantic? They look cool, except I can't get over the fact that they are all way too tall. Isn't there any way you could shrink them?

[ReX]

boris said:

I've not yet played complete through it (somewhere running around in map04 or so), but this one looks really nice! But IMO it would be even cooler if you'd used some HUB structure and maybe some more interactive elements.

Actually I tried a "quasi-hub" structure with my previous set (called Phoenix), and it seemed like a lot of work (even though I was not using ZDoom). There, in each level you saw some areas that you could not access until later levels. (Conversely, in later levels you saw some areas that you had visited in earlier levels.) I had to plan the whole set (all 5 maps) up front, and it seemed like a big task.

Could you give me suggestions for interactive elements? I incorporated as many ZDooM features as I was familiar with. I found myself struggling with the logic in scripting, so I kept the scripts generally simple. But thanks for your comments.

[ReX]

geekmarine said:

Not bad, except why are all the sprites gigantic? They look cool, except I can't get over the fact that they are all way too tall. Isn't there any way you could shrink them?

You're right about the sprites for the human enemies being too tall (I made a mention of this in the Gameplay.txt file.) Unfortunately, that's the height of the sprites in Cyb's original file. To adjust the size of those three human enemies I would have had to do it for nearly 150 frames, which is a fair amount of work. Plus, when resizing (especially downwards) the picture loses resolution, so that the smaller sprites look like crap.

I wonder if there's another way of resizing without a lot of work and without losing picture resolution.

[boris]

ReX said:

Actually I tried a "quasi-hub" structure with my previous set (called Phoenix), and it seemed like a lot of work (even though I was not using ZDoom). There, in each level you saw some areas that you could not access until later levels. (Conversely, in later levels you saw some areas that you had visited in earlier levels.) I had to plan the whole set (all 5 maps) up front, and it seemed like a big task.

Could you give me suggestions for interactive elements? I incorporated as many ZDooM features as I was familiar with. I found myself struggling with the logic in scripting, so I kept the scripts generally simple. But thanks for your comments.

Yes, it is hard work to do a real HUB structure, but can add much atmosphere to a level set like that.

For scripting I could think of breaking walls where then enemies come out, having to destroy some gigantic machine or whatever. The possibilities are endless. Especially when you look on Skull Tags (based on ZDooM) new editing features.

[ReX]

Actually, at the end of the 5-level set there is a breaking wall. No monsters come out, but by breaking the wall you find an opening to a cave and a passage to escape the installation. (You'll notice that I've set up the breaking wall slightly differently from your breaking wall in acsstuff.wad.) I thought about using the breaking ceiling trick in acsstuff.wad, but got lazy. Also, I tried duplicating your ceiling fan script, but no matter how much I tried I couldn't get it to work. I even copied your script (using my own fan sectors), but it wouldn't compile (I use WadAuthor). So in Level 3, to get rid of the radiation in the Radiation Lab, I simply used a script to change the sector colors until there wasn't any color left. When the player enters the lab he/she notices the fans (which are animated textures), and is supposed to assume that the switch turned them on.

I thought about the gigantic machine destruction, but it seemed like it had already been done so many times (Teitenga, etc.) So I settled for explosions and minor earthquakes instead. Maybe I'll check out Skull Tag. As I mentioned, my scripting skills are very limited, and I did what I could with my little knowledge.

Many, many thanks to you, Wild Man, and others on this forum for all your help.

[boris]

For the ceiling fan: it's not the sectors who are important, but the lines which actually make the fan. Have a look at the lines in acsstuff.wad. They all have a special id assigned which is used in the script.

Oh, and there are people who are less skilled in scripting ;)

[Guest Firebrandt]

ReX said:

You're right about the sprites for the human enemies being too tall (I made a mention of this in the Gameplay.txt file.) Unfortunately, that's the height of the sprites in Cyb's original file. To adjust the size of those three human enemies I would have had to do it for nearly 150 frames, which is a fair amount of work. Plus, when resizing (especially downwards) the picture loses resolution, so that the smaller sprites look like crap.

I wonder if there's another way of resizing without a lot of work and without losing picture resolution.

In EDGE you could use sprite scaling.

[Grul]

Cool! Some pretty ugly textures and sprites, but nice architecture. Weird sounds... But that crowbar kicks ASS!