Killing Time (PC) Monster Randomizer

[BFG]

a monster randomizer for Doom based on Killingtime (PC). I was a big fan of the game and really wanted to play through doom maps with the assets.

Link:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/killing-time ... /downloads

Credits:

---

Ect0s for his extremely hard work ripping the sprites
Studio 3DO for making the game which the entities have come from.
GAA1992 for ripping the wasp sprites!
DBThanatos for using his projectile code as a base, and making mixers popular.
ShadowLink223 for learning how to do jumping in monsters.
torridgristle for ripping the Egyptian god.
Zanieon for using his fire code as a base for projectiles.
Dynamo for ripping sprites and doing most of the coding.
Tristan885 for showing enthusiasm with KT and ways to rip the sprites and ripping the 3d0 sprites.
Impie(Two) for releasing the sprites to DoomWorld.
Tormentor667 for using his Catharsi's attack as a base.
LogicalFallacy for helping me with 'give to target'.
Mike MacDee for organizing all the data.
Becky 'Burger' for helping fans get access to the game's data.
I hope I didn't miss anyone!

[Someone64]

Even though it wouldn't exactly fit since a lot of the enemies aren't even carrying guns it would be nice to add more ammo drops as some maps tend to rely more on enemy ammo drops than ammo placements. Playing on vanilla for example it causes me to resort to using fists against most enemies.

[Ringman]

This is really cool, but I wish someone could do something with all the resources from the 3do version. I really liked the crazy fmv sprites they used in that game.

[BFG]

I love the 3DO sprites, I think Ect0s is working on ripping those next!

"Someone64" add more ammo drops

agreed, I will make all the monsters in the former human spawners to drop their original items.

[Dr_Cosmobyte]

Thanks for the credits, but i took the sprites from etc0 as well.
I only wrote the decorate and positioned the offsets for Aracnocide

[Ravick]

Even though it wouldn't exactly fit since a lot of the enemies aren't even carrying guns it would be nice to add more ammo drops as some maps tend to rely more on enemy ammo drops than ammo placements. Playing on vanilla for example it causes me to resort to using fists against most enemies.

Same here. It wouldn't be a problem to have enemies dropping ammo they are not carrying, Heretic does just that. (It is odd that the dragons drop arrows, but... anyway.)

[BFG]

I actually always liked that about Heretic, because you never know what an enemy would drop and it kinda rewards you for killing the monsters. I made those changes, and a few tweaks on the enemies healths. I also added 3 temporary 3D0 enemies that Tristan885 ripped, thank you!

[ect0s]

I love the 3DO sprites, I think Ect0s is working on ripping those next!

I'm still working on it.

I should have more time come winter - My work is seasonal and its still pretty busy (60+hours/weekly).

I'm currently on a short vacation and did look at my code for the 3DO version and made some small amounts of progress. I can find and extract single Cells (Sprites) but theres still some issues converting them into a usable format. Cells on the 3DO console have a number of subtypes and quirks I need to work through, though the SDK's and reference materials I've found are helping somewhat.

I'm also working on a few other games that are relatively easier - just as a change of pace. I have a tool for Fortress of Dr Radiaki thats reading and splitting data from its archives cleanly but I need to work on some code to convert all the files to something a bit more usable.

In terms of the PC build of killing time, I did spend a few hours cleaning my tools up a bit yesterday. I'm still cutting down and organizing the code into a single extraction script.

Tristan also helped me find a demo copy of killing time, and I plan on doing a quick extraction of that to see if there are any differences.

Was there any issues using my Ripped Assets (Wasp etc)? And is there anything I can do format wise to make the assets easier to use out of the gate?

[Dynamo]

Interesting. I coded killing time enemies in DECORATE myself back in august, but never released them. I wonder how they compare to your version. I tried to make them fairly close to the original game, while you seem to be going more for a custom style (not that there's anything wrong with that). Good work

[EddieMann]

Will you eventually release a demo video?

[BFG]

@Ect0s
Take your time, we all really appreciate all your efforts in doing this
It was all easy to work from, the only issue was SLADE's way of displaying the sprites in alphabetical order it would number the sprites 1,10,11 as aposed to 1,2,3 but it was an issue with the editor I used and easy to get around.

@Dynamo
Thank you, Ah, I didn't realize you had made them before! my original goal was to make them as close to the original as possible, but I haven't played the game in a few years and coded them mostly by memory, I did change a few of them to fit with the spawners so that they were are similar threat to the original Doom monsters.
I had also made a Bodycount and Tekwar 'randomizer', but most of the BC monsters only have front frames, and WildWeasel's custom TW monsters were more interesting than accurate ones who mostly shoot the same blue laser

@EddieMann
I do not have a YouTube account sadly, but another user posted this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOfmtKMPqtk

[Ringman]

I love the 3DO sprites, I think Ect0s is working on ripping those next!

I'm still working on it.

I should have more time come winter - My work is seasonal and its still pretty busy (60+hours/weekly).

I'm currently on a short vacation and did look at my code for the 3DO version and made some small amounts of progress. I can find and extract single Cells (Sprites) but theres still some issues converting them into a usable format. Cells on the 3DO console have a number of subtypes and quirks I need to work through, though the SDK's and reference materials I've found are helping somewhat.

I'm also working on a few other games that are relatively easier - just as a change of pace. I have a tool for Fortress of Dr Radiaki thats reading and splitting data from its archives cleanly but I need to work on some code to convert all the files to something a bit more usable.

In terms of the PC build of killing time, I did spend a few hours cleaning my tools up a bit yesterday. I'm still cutting down and organizing the code into a single extraction script.

Tristan also helped me find a demo copy of killing time, and I plan on doing a quick extraction of that to see if there are any differences.

Was there any issues using my Ripped Assets (Wasp etc)? And is there anything I can do format wise to make the assets easier to use out of the gate?

I'm not promising anything, but is there anyway I can help with getting the sprites out. Professionally I'm a software engineer, and while I'm a newbie at game hacking, I have dabbled in it. I'm not entirely familar with the 3do's cell format. Is it a compression issue? Is there any way we can brute force the translation through some kind of trial and error based on what we KNOW about the sprites vs what we know about the current format. It may not be the BEST way to do it, but it can go a long way to getting some progress made. If its time consuming I understand, but if you want me to look into it I'll try.

I just beat the 3do version finally, this mod made me want to go back and give it a go. I've never played pc version, but it looks like the level design is much superior. It'd be cool to see a doom tc that combines elements of both versions. I quite like the 3do version, in spite of all its flaws. Its a unique experience.

[BFG]

Tristan885 was actually working on a GZDoom mod that combines both the PC and 3DO game into one, he had made the first level of the 3DO version but lost it on a HD failure. He said that he plans to continue the project from scratch after he has finished his college work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0azYgmAzA34

[edgymemester]

I had also made a Bodycount and Tekwar 'randomizer'

That sound pretty cool. Someone made an Operation Body count weapons mod a while back, it could go pretty well with it:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/v1d0tw74u ... 282%29.zip

Was the mixer ever released?

[ect0s]

I'm not promising anything, but is there anyway I can help with getting the sprites out. Professionally I'm a software engineer, and while I'm a newbie at game hacking, I have dabbled in it. I'm not entirely familar with the 3do's cell format. Is it a compression issue? Is there any way we can brute force the translation through some kind of trial and error based on what we KNOW about the sprites vs what we know about the current format. It may not be the BEST way to do it, but it can go a long way to getting some progress made. If its time consuming I understand, but if you want me to look into it I'll try.

I just beat the 3do version finally, this mod made me want to go back and give it a go. I've never played pc version, but it looks like the level design is much superior. It'd be cool to see a doom tc that combines elements of both versions. I quite like the 3do version, in spite of all its flaws. Its a unique experience.

Theres a few issues.

Cells have multiple types:

With/Without Internal Pallet. This internal pallet gets mapped to an internal colormap within the 3DO hardware, if my reading of the SDK/Docs are correct.

With/Without Compression - Seams like a simple Packedbits scheme (described as Packed/unPacked in docs).

With/Without 'Fill' and 'Masks' -
-FILL marker means that one Cell takes data from a Previous Cell (still testing this)
-a Mask Describes transparency or anti-aliasing of the previous/next Cell (still testing this).

What I have currently is a script that attempts to extract cell images from the disk image via a search, then reading some values and calculating an end off the file. This works for ~60% of the cells.

Last night, I found that some Cells have multiple PDAT sections (Pixel Data). These tend to be animations from what I can tell, but I found these markers outside of animation headers.

The WORD I had assumed was a length of the PDAT field is wrong on these subsequent PDAT sections, so I'm working on figuring out what that means.

All Code is in extremely simple python.