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1995-05-20
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=========================================
ELEMENTS.WAD - The Four Elements of DOOM?
=========================================
This file gives some additional background for Elements,
some information on the techniques employed to make
some of the rooms, textures, etc., plus hints and spoilers
if you have difficulty.
It is probably best to play Elements once or twice
*before* reading these notes.
NOTES FOR PLAYERS
=================
There are some areas of Elements that are bound to be a
challenge for the average DOOM player. Play carefully
and persevere, and you will be able to finish. If you
find some of the missions difficult, save often. Consult
the iD DOOM documentation for more general guidelines.
Elements is comprised of five DOOM missions:
Mission Name Decor
----------------------------------------------------------
E1M1 Air Sky, open-ness, carnage
E1M2 Water Waterfalls, beach, carnage
E1M3 Earth Caves, stone, lava, carnage
E1M4 Fire Flames, marble, blood, carnage
E1M9 Undivine Wood, blood, marble, carnage
The most difficult mission is probably Earth, or maybe Undivine.
Each of these mission is medium-sized, about the length of an iD
mission like E2M4 or E1M5.
All the missions have their share of secret areas. Some are well
hidden, others are pretty overt. There is at least one clue of
some kind to each and every secret area.
The four main missions of Elements do not contain the computer map
item. Instead, somewhere in each mission you will find the official
garrison map of that realm! The maps are accurate, but not quite
as detailed as the DOOM auto-map. Of course, you cannot carry it
with you! If you really want to find all the secret areas, go back
and look at the wall map, and compare it to your automap.
There are some areas in the maps that you don't want to miss, just
because they are so cool looking (brag, brag :-). Actually most
of this is stuff the beta testers remarked about...
- In Air, the teleporter maze composed of platforms
floating in the sky.
- In Water, the underwater tank with moving refraction
patterns on the walls and fish swimming by outside.
- In Water, the room leading the beach with the flashing
signs. The beach is okay, too.
- In Earth, the room with the orange walls with barons
behind them. Can you guess what that texture is?
- In Earth, the garrison commander's office, and the
nearby storeroom (didn't you ever think it was really
amazing that all the boxes in E2M2 where right side up?)
- In Fire, the Kanji character for "fire" occupies the
large central marble room.
- In Fire, the room with the floating monsters. Sorry,
you cannot possibly kill all of them in single-player
mode.
- In Fire, the final confrontation room has okay secret
areas. It is possible to kill the cyber without exposing
yourself to much risk, if you are so inclined.
- In Undivine, the invisible staircase through the cubes.
[This uses the newtechn/uac_dead technique of Martin Lim]
Over the course of Elements, it is possible to get all the weapons.
The table below shows where you can possibly find them:
Weapon Available In
---------------------------------------
Chainsaw Air, Water
Chaingun Air, Water, Fire
Rocket Launcher Air, Water, Earth
Plasma Rifle Water, Fire
BFG 9000 Water, Undivine
All of the missions use at least one key. In some cases
you may have trouble finding a particular key (for example, the
yellow key in Fire). All the keys that you really must have
to finish a mission reasonably easy to find.
NOTES FOR WAD BUILDERS
======================
Some of the effects and textures in ELEMENTS are a little
unusual, and I also went to a lot of trouble to try to make the
missions efficient to run (they're still slow in some places,
though, sorry). This section documents how some of the tricks
are accomplished.
1. Air: The "floating" teleporter maze -
This one was simple: the lower texture of the platforms
and the wall texture of the surrounding walls is just
the same color blue as the sky. It just takes some
fiddling to get it looking okay; it still isn't perfect. :-(
2. Air: The gray texture with the diagonal windows -
When you make a new texture for DOOM, simply place
the color cyan (r:0,g:255,b:255) where you want the
texture to be transparent. If you then use that texture
as the normal texture of a sidedef that belongs to a
2-sided linedef, then the player can see through the cyan
areas. This trick is used for the partially transparent
flames in Fire, and for the orange vine-like texture in
Earth (BTW, that texture is actually an extreme closeup
of a cantaloupe skin, taken from a clipart image CD).
3. Water: the "waterfalls" -
The DOOM engine has the ability to "flip" textures to
make them animated. Unfortunately, it seems that this
facility is hard-coded to certain sets of textures. There
are several such sets of textures: look for them with any
wad editor or a DOOM graphics tool like wacker. Simply
make up a set of related new textures, and replace the
patches that compose the textures that belong to the group.
Make sure you replace all of them, or it will look funny.
Note that when you use such a texture as the normal
texture of a 2-sided linedef, it will NOT animate. This
simple trick is also used for the flashing sign in Water
and the flashing red lights in Fire.
4. Fire: the suspended monsters, freed with a switch -
This is a Martin Lim technique, although I think I saw
it used once earlier. Actually, this version is a cheap
edition that actually can get through IDBSP and BSP12x.
To learn more about this technique, pick up NEWTECHN.ZIP
and read the text file. Basically, my cheapie version just
leaves off the lower textures from a high wall encapsulating
a low platform. This gives no HOM until the floor level
while it is falling is lower than the player's viewpoint but
higher than the surrounding floor. It lasts only a tenth
of a second or so.
5. Fire: the "safe" rooms
The reject map builder RMB by Jens Hekkelbjorg is a
really great tool. Using it, you can set up all kinds of
special conditions in the reject map, which will affect
from where the monsters can see the player. In Fire and in
Undivine, one of the least of RMB's tricks is used: the
"safe" sector. If a player is standing the safe sector,
no monster outside that sector can see them! The tool can
do far more - check it out!
6. Undivine: invisible staircases -
This is exactly the same feature that Martin Lim used to
such excellent effect in his Uac_Dead. Basically, you have
two nested sectors, both with floor and ceiling matching the
surrounding area. The outer sector has the same floor
height as the surrounding area, and the inner has the floor
height that you need to make the height of your step or
platform or whatever. The inner sector's lines have both
sidedefs pointing to the inner sector, and the outer sector's
lines have both sidedefs pointing to the surrounding sector!
For more info, consult Martin's Newtechn write-up.
Efficiency is an important concern for WAD designers, because a
slow-playing DOOM mission is not much fun to play. Elements uses a
few efficiency tricks to try to speed it up, even though it also has
lots of features that slow it down (animated textures and big rooms).
1. The Pharses brothers' Dshrink tool -
The designe