- The Making of Aliens: The Second Nukage Project Outline and Summary of Aliens:TSN Written by Kenneth Peng Additional Information by Chris Dennett * Project Background Originally, Aliens: The Second Nukage was to be a follow-up episode that ran with Aliens: T.C., a conversion patch made by Justin Fisher. The project followed for about one week before it ran into a snag. We wanted to create a level where the aliens fell from the ceiling and onto the players, but they wouldn't. The problem was traced to DOOM itself. All of the monsters would not fall off ledges willingly except the Lost Soul; a player had to blast them off with a rocket. We reverted to DeHackEd to fix the monster problem, but that just meant more headaches to get our patch to work with Aliens: T.C. One day later (actually it was just an hour), we decided to build our own conversion patch. Our goal was simply to make the best patch we could with Doom. Unfortunately, we weren't talented artists nor did we have access to an image scanner. I managed to find several graphic patches with the Aliens theme at ftp.idsoftware.com, the DOOM FTP site, and they were the basis of our patch. We took all the data and started to build our graphics and sounds. Almost one summer later, we had completed the patch. Admittedly, a lot of our graphics and sounds were from other sources, but that allowed us to put most of our efforts into the levels and action. Neat graphics and sounds are good, but it's the action and gameplay that makes a game great. We're not saying the other Aliens patches weren't good (we liked Aliens: T.C. a lot), but we wanted to have a different perspective than other patches. After playing our patch, you'll understand why we named our patch as such. * Project Overview and Intent After playing Aliens: T.C. countless times, we noticed that ammunition was scarce. I guess that's ok (and it fits the Aliens theme as well), but we wanted to be able to hose down the aliens. When I say hose, I really mean it. Making our patch centered around a military storage base gave us the excuse to put lots and lots of rounds. Lots. We also wanted to create our levels to work well with multiple players. A lone player is still able to pass all our levels if they're good enough, but with two players those aliens really get hosed (or as I say it.. nuked). When the going gets tough, the lead starts flying. * Project Design You know, the thing I hate the most about the computer programming community is the rare few that try to keep information to themselves. Those people think that by hording the information, they can make themselves more valuable. I really dislike those people. Anyways, I am about to detail the whole design and construction process of Aliens: The Second Nukage and tools we used. I hope that by releasing this information, others can make their own patches so we can all enjoy these neat patches. If I make one or more of those "info-horders" mad, then good. We began by choosing images we wished to use from the existing conversion patches with the Aliens theme. The graphics came mostly from Aliens - X by Frank Provo, AliensDoom by Dan Goldwasser, and Aliens - T.C. by Justin Fisher. Using NewWADTool by Denis Moller, we extracted all the images and modified them with Aldus' PhotoStyler SE (the CD-ROM version.. wow.. gaga). We cut and snipped until all the graphics were to our taste. Unfortunately, NewWADTool didn't quite like the GIF file format used by PhotoStyler, so we saved in PCX format and converted into GIF using a simple program I found at some FTP site I can't seem to remember. Still, NewWADTool didn't like that GIF format either. Luckily, Bill Neisius' DMGRAPH program took the images we made, and we used his program to put them into the WADs. The sounds and music in our patch came from many sources: from the other patches, sound files found at FTP sites, and from the movie itself. We choose the clearest sounds from available sources and then recorded those that we couldn't find (or weren't that clear). Using the utility programs that came with Soundblaster 16, we mixed and mixed and mixed until the sounds were perfect. Again, we had problems with NewWADTool accepting the file formats for the sounds. And once again Bill Neisius' DMAUD program came in and saved the day. We choose several pieces of music to use in the levels. We downloaded all the MIDI files we could find and then choose the best. Our only criteria for the music were a good beat and it had to roar. Too bad we only had Soundblaster 16s and not the 32 AWEs. The levels were created with EdMap Version 1.31 written by Jeff Rabenhorst. Each level has a certain theme to it, and we tried really hard to make it fun for the player. The levels aren't as easy as DOOM's Episode 1 nor are they hard like DOOM's Episode 3; they're just right (ok, with the exception of level 2). EdMap was extremely valuable to us, and we salute Jeff for making such a great program. Finally, the actual DOOM game dynamics had to be altered to suit our taste. We used DeHackEd by Greg Lewis to change DOOM.EXE. Justin Fisher's hatching facehugger egg found its way into our patch as well as his shootable green columns. They were just too cool not to include. Experimenting with DOOM, we isolated the nonessential frames and sounds to use for our own things. Thus, the oozing (and burning) barrel was created. We also created the shattering glass facehugger container and the sparking wires to add more character to our levels. The aliens are now able to fall from ledges, and the facehuggers now leap over obstacles to munch happily on the players. The NewWADTool did help us in ways other than extracting data from WADs. It allowed us to view and hear what was in the WADs quickly and efficiently. Without this program, our DOOM directories would be filled with tons of files. Also, NewWADTool cleans unused data space from WADs, and I managed to remove 2.7 megs of useless data from our sound WAD at one time. Kudos to Denis Moller for his program. The installation program, which simplifies our patch's use (we hope), was coded in Borland Pascal. I haven't bothered to learn Turbo C++ yet, so I used the next best thing. We figured that a lot of people will appreciate a patch that knows how to install, uninstall, and remove itself. Various other sources helped us a lot with our patch. Undoubtably, the Unofficial DOOM Specs by Matthew Fell was the most valuable. It allowed us to modify and change various aspects of DOOM that weren't mentioned by the other programs (like that text screen that pops up when quitting DOOM). If one of the previous programs didn't do something, we could look in the DOOM specs to find it and then alter them by hand. * Project Tools and Availability Aldus' PhotoStyler SE (got it with our SoundBlaster 16s) Aliens - X aliens-x.zip AliensDoom 2.0 aliens22.zip Aliens: T.C. alntc19.zip DeHackEd 2.4 dhe24.zip DeuSF 3.3 alntc19.zip DMGRAPH 1.1 dmgrap11.zip DMMUSIC 1.0 dmmus10.zip EdMap 1.31 edmap131.zip MIDI to MUS Converter midi2mus.exe NewWadTool 1.3 nwt103.zip Borland Pascal 7.0 Unofficial DOOM Specs 1.666 dmspec16.zip Those programs listed with a filename can be obtained from the DOOM FTP site at ftp.idsoftware.com. Chances are that some programs are now at a higher version. * The Flamethrower (M240 Colonial Marine Standard Issue) You'll notice that you never get the flamethrower in our episode. That's because it's way too powerful. In order to integrate the weapon into our patch, we'd have to make the aliens tougher or lessen the destructive power. The main reason, however, for not using the flamethrower was the ammunition cost - 40 rounds. Yikes! That's way too much for a weapon that we wanted to be fired almost as much as the pulse rifle. Not to mention it eats batteries - we could never come up with a good reason for that. As to date, there's no known way to change its cost. We finally decided to leave the flamethrower in the game, just not in our episode. It's just too cool to remove. * Project Summary Our patch simply rocks. We originally wanted to make a few extra levels that allowed us to hose aliens to our hearts' content, but the idea exploded into a full-blown project to make a neato conversion patch. This patch was developed simply to pass the time, and it was so cool that we had to release it to everybody. Counting all the times that we've shouted "Hose 'em!" and "Nuke 'em!", we think you'll enjoy our patch as much as we enjoyed playtesting it. DOOM on!! [Property of Biggles & Dupre, Inc.]