ALIENS: The Ultimate Doom (Beta 9.2)

Hell yeah, gonna be blasting these alien scum after work

My impressions so far:

You should pick better audio clips for the Marines: I can tell they are from the movie, as in some of them, you can clearly hear gunfire in the background. It is weird to hear that when there is no one else around.

Whenever I select the Motion Tracker, I get a "Unknown script 797" message.

My previous point stands: there really should be a mode where you only encounter Xenomorphs. Constantly running into fellow Marines ruins any sense of dread and isolation that you would expect from a game set in the Aliens universe. It also makes the Motion Tracker even more useless than it currently is, as friendly NPCs visibly cannot stand still. On one of my attempts, I went through E1M1 without encountering much resistance: only a few Xenomorphs near the exit and they seemed to have serious pathfinding problems. At the very beginning of E1M2, a huge wave of Xenomorphs started massing before me, yet did not attack me: I just stood there and watched them move around like a bunch of headless chicken.

Watching NPCs fight each other is more confusing than fun: all you have to do is sit back and watch them do all the work for you. So far, I barely had to shoot anything.

I am not a big fan of the music. What happened to the eerie wind noises of the preview videos?

I get noticeable performance drops whenever there is an explosion, an Alien getting gibbed or intense action in the vicinity.

JohnnyTheWolf said:

My impressions so far:

You should pick better audio clips for the Marines: I can tell they are from the movie, as in some of them, you can clearly hear gunfire in the background. It is weird to hear that when there is no one else around.

Whenever I select the Motion Tracker, I get a "Unknown script 797" message.

My previous point stands: there really should be a mode where you only encounter Xenomorphs. Constantly running into fellow Marines ruins any sense of dread and isolation that you would expect from a game set in the Aliens universe. It also makes the Motion Tracker even more useless than it currently is, as friendly NPCs visibly cannot stand still. On one of my attempts, I went through E1M1 without encountering much resistance: only a few Xenomorphs near the exit and they seemed to have serious pathfinding problems. At the very beginning of E1M2, a huge wave of Xenomorphs started massing before me, yet did not attack me: I just stood there and watched them move around like a bunch of headless chicken.

Watching NPCs fight each other is more confusing than fun: all you have to do is sit back and watch them do all the work for you. So far, I barely had to shoot anything.

I am not a big fan of the music. What happened to the eerie wind noises of the preview videos?

I get noticeable performance drops whenever there is an explosion, an Alien getting gibbed or intense action in the vicinity.

Some maps don't jive as well as others due to the way they're made. Nevertheless, I will be developing custom maps for this. Aliens the ultimate doom has traditionally been a game play conversion mod. At any rate, those incidents are rare based from my play testing. Also, those spawning rates are different with every playthrough; no two times are the same.

Those issues you saw on E1M2 are not anything to do with the pathfinding or my coding. Rather, it is because those maps have line definitions that block monsters. This is something can't be helped unless I write a ACS that makes them pass through them, but that could break the gameplay of some maps

As for the Motion Tracker, I've been in contact with doomero-21 about making it a half-circle. That binded key was supposed to deactivate the tracker actually; it was just not gotten around to.

As for performance, it runs fine for me with a quasi decent pc. But I get lag when I put it on the highest graphics settings.

As for the Marines, I find that they help to keep the balance of the game. This mod is more of a sci-fi action/horror (as a game play conversation mod) than a survival horror. Nevertheless, I want to create more of a survival horror for the official maps. At any rate, think of this mod as if Contra was a 2.5d shooter, and they managed to make it explicitly about Aliens. This is why there actually is a song from the contra arcade ost in the game. The other songs were taken from Avp(SNES), alien 3 (SNES), and Alien(arcade).

I have been contemplating changing the difficulty level, to a choice of spawning rates. Because the difficulty should be essentially the same on all levels, due to ammo dispensing and enemy/ally ratio. They all produce the same amount of faction diversity; it's just the amount that changes. The "easiest difficulty" still present challenge, but in a much less chaotic gameplay experience. This could also help players determine which rate of spawning works best for their PC.

I was running the new gzdoom's highest graphics, and I got it to work best for the "easiest"(lowest spawning rate.) This actually felt like a survival horror experience, and it looked amazing.

Okay, I think I have figured out the cause of my performance problem: my GZDoom build was a day old. I downloaded the newest one to date and it is running much smoothly now.

I was also lucky enough to encounter mostly Xenomorphs on my latest attempt, which would have been genuinely terrifying had not been for the AI issues and the occasional interference of Synthetics and Marine NPCs. Still, it was the most fun I had with the mod as of yet.

I am also not sure why you decided to add Predators to an Aliens-themed game. I am not necessarily against their presence, but then, it would make more sense for the mod to be renamed to "Aliens Versus Predator".

Yeah, very nice mod, but how hard could be just an option to add only aliens? Not all enemies to be turned aliens, some of them just are eggs for decoration or nothing at all to compesate how hard aliens are. For sure, not only me will enjoy it. :)

Regards.

Indeed, blasting Xenomorphs is fun.

I've been working on developing 9.1, which will replace 9.0

I have been reading the feed back, and I've taken a lot of it into consideration.

-zombiemen replacement spawners now possibly spawns Warriors, Drones, and Runners, that will wander the map. Thus, that motion tracker is going to come in handy.

-I have developed "Skirmish Spawners", they are like the battle spawners, except they spawn a single monster from any particular faction.

I have mixed some of the doom monster replacements with skirmish and battle spawners. So there is a chance of getting a big squad of droids, or horde of xenomorphs from time to time. Thus the spawn still creates a potentially intense conflict; but its not as overwhelming as the current version. Also, by replacing the zombiemen with a single spawning enemy, you won't get absurd things happening, like 20 xenos spawning in front of you at the start of MAP01 for Doom 2.

I want the game play experience to have some slow moments, with only a couple monsters, and then it radically changes, gears, and a horde of 10 xenos will emerge. Basically, I want it to feel like an unpredictable roller coaster ride.

Also,

I highly recommend updating to the new gzdoom version in order to get rid of that horrible lag. The most recent version allows the game to play flawlessly.

Speaking of the newest GZDoom build, am I the only one who cannot use the mouse in menus anymore? Worse, the Windows mouse cursor now replaces the crosshair. :S

Ask that to DRDTeam forums, not here, JohnyTheWolf.

So I followed your advice and played on the easiest setting. Indeed, it seems to be the most enjoyable mode so far. Maybe it is just a coincidence, but I have yet to run into a single Marine NPC, which helps making the experience more stressful and immersive.

Here's a progress report:

I have re-organized the way the enemies spawn to create a more suspenseful gameplay experience. Now the Xenomorphs will spawn primarily; with a small chance of it being the other enemy-types. There is an even lesser chance of it being Marine allies. Nevertheless, theres' still a small chance of the battle-spawner producing a horde of 10, particularly with the imp-replacement spawners. Ergo, maps like e2m2, will be more chaotic, due to the fact that all of the vanilla-enemies there are imps. Battle-spawners also have a chance of occurring on higher level enemies, such as Hell Knights. However, they still spawn at a lesser chance than the current build.

In addition to the new layout of the enemies, I have also totally re-balanced the item, ammo, and heath drops. Now, to fit a more survival-horror style gameplay; these provisions will be more elusive. Dead bodies of your comrades will spawn randomly throughout the map. Theses dead bodies are sources of ammo, as each of drop various types of ammo. Everything will be randomized, and placed in different areas, at the start of the map.

Right now, I'm currently working on making each of the decorative objects have "physics". The player, or enemy, will be able to walk into objects, and knock them over. It looks pretty awesome when a horde of xenos are charging towards you, as they knock random objects out of their path. It helps to create even more chaos, and it makes the monster look even more relentless in their pursuit to kill. Most importantly, it helps to eliminate the issue of actors getting stuck in these objects.

I hope I can release an Beta 9.1 sometime tonight, or possibly tomorrow.

Damn, that sounds really cool Kontra, especially the enemies knocking stuff over.

After wrestling with the coding a bit, I managed to get the physics of the objects to work well. Randomspawners don't make for good projectile deaths, which was a big part of the issue. Rather, like the enemy deaths; randomized multi-death states of the projectiles, is better for spawning new decorations. I have fully modified all of the objects in 9.0 to have physics, but I want to double, or even triple their variety for the next update. Further, I need to build a plethora of noises that sound like objects being banged around.

I will most-likely make every one of these objects destructible, to bullet and fire damage (Acid too?, could be odd though.)

Instead of making all of the air-tanks combustible, I will make a green colored version that will explode upon receiving gun and fire damage.

Moreover, I will continue to work on the new and improved xenomorph sprites. I would have finished them 3 times over by now, but I keep distracting myself by creating other new feature.

Here is a demonstration video of "physics" I have made for the clutter objects. Now, players, and the enemies will never be stuck in awkward spots due to where they spawn. Now, they simply "knock" the objects out of their path.

Also, special thanks to scifista42, and gez for their suggestions, in helping with the crashing bug.:
https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-editing/86161-many-bouncing-objects-solved/

How to enable the atmospheric wind noises from the video?

I would rather have them over the very distracting SNES soundtrack. :S

JohnnyTheWolf said:

How to enable the atmospheric wind noises from the video?

I would rather have them over the very distracting SNES soundtrack. :S

I'm going to remove the SNES soundtrack completely, and replace it with the ambient wind noise.

Really? I thought you liked it. :o

JohnnyTheWolf said:

Really? I thought you liked it. :o

I do, but they're osts from other games. I want to create my own original ambient sound track one day, similar to that of the Aliens (1979) ost. My friend, who is a sound engineer with premium quality equipment said he would help me produce it. Right now the wind noises are a place holder.

Sweet! :D

However, are you talking about Alien (1979) or Aliens (1986)?

JohnnyTheWolf said:

Sweet! :D

However, are you talking about Alien (1979) or Aliens (1986)?

Whoops lol I meant to say Alien (1979)

http://www.moddb.com/mods/aliens-the-ultimate-doom/downloads/aliens-the-ultimate-doom-beta-90

Here is beta 9.1

I have adjusted the enemy spawning to be more survival horror-esqe. Moreover, I have polished the game a bit as well. Further, I have the new interactive objects included in this version as well.

A massive improvement all around! :D

As far as I can tell, the only thing that prevents your mod from being truly great is the pathfinding issue I brought up earlier. Oh, and I still *hate* the Marine NPCs: this time, they actually managed to get me killed when I accidentally got between them and Xenomorphs. :(

http://www.moddb.com/mods/aliens-the-ultimate-doom

http://www.moddb.com/mods/top

Wow, Aliens: The Ultimate Doom is now number 1 on moddb!

This is number one? Fuck Brutal Doom, this is all we need.

Is this compatible with Brutal Doom?

Linguica said:

Is this compatible with Brutal Doom?

==--==
*Inserting_the_Darude_Sandstorm_joke*
==--==
Sure it is, why it shouldn't? *you_know...*

BTW mod really touching my nostalgic feel. Great work!

Sergeant_Mark_IV helped with this mod, so he can be happy for this as well.

Are you going to release a resource wad for this? I'd love to do my take on a (non-randomized) Aliens mapset.

Youtuber, G̶A̶B̶R̶I̶E̶L̶ L̶O̶U̶P̶ has created two playthrough videos of Aliens: The Ultimate Doom combined with Aliens: (TC). Despite some missing textures, and such; I have to say, it looks pretty good! I feel a bit inspired to make an official version of the two that work perfectly with one another.

dethtoll said:

Are you going to release a resource wad for this? I'd love to do my take on a (non-randomized) Aliens mapset.

As soon as I stop being a lazy about it, I intend to.

Looks really cool, a few textures kind of clash, but who cares?! :)

Will give this a spin this evening!