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Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (1.0.3)

Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2020 4:42 pm
by ArcturusDeluxe


CURRENT UPDATE: v1.0.3 (11th May 2021) - see near bottom of this post for changelog

Project Osiris is a remake/reimagining of the Amiga FPS game Alien Breed 3D, using the GZDoom engine.

Alien Breed 3D was a valiant attempt at creating Doom but for the Amiga, a machine that really wasn't suited for such tasks. The pixels were huge and the viewport was tiny, but it was a technically impressive shooter considering the limitations. It even had some features over Doom - the water effects were amazing and it supported room-over-room and even texture-mapped 3D models. It was my first real experience of a proper 3D first person world in a video game so it was somewhat of a revelation to me. It may not be as tightly designed as Doom (honestly some of maps are pretty bad), but I have a lot of nostalgia for it, and it has a place in my heart.

So, I decided my first major Doom engine project would be to recreate it and also iron out some of the issues of the original, and hopefully make some improvements on the way. Having seen a few other attempts at remaking this game not reach fruition, I thought I'd step up to the plate and have a go at it myself!

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Features
  • All 16 maps from the original game converted and adapted. The maps have been given aesthetic improvements, tweaked item and enemy placement and even some extra shortcuts, secrets and surprises, but they also remain true to the spirit of the original game. Look out for an additional secret map too, based on an obscure demo of the original game I found on Team 17's FTP server. The level has been expanded and now features an intense final battle. Keep your eyes peeled for those secrets!
  • New textures and visual effects have been added. Dynamic lighting is used on many objects and some areas of the maps now have coloured lighting where appropriate. Additional textures have been added to denote teleporters, and doors that require switches to open (very handy on MAP11!)
  • New HUD, designed not to take up most of the screen this time! It now fits into a familiar Doom status bar format, or a fullscreen HUD if you prefer maximum viewage potential.
  • All 5 weapons from the original game, including new redrawn graphics and visual effects - also an additional one that didn't make it into the original game, the knife, for when you're out of ammo or you just feel like getting stabby. You can also switch back to the old weapon graphics if you're a fan of the hugest pixels!
  • Various new items including body armor, small health packs, ammo drops and and map terminals have been added. All the old items now have new, shinier sprites too! And the original item graphics are included as an option if you want.
  • All the original aliens are present and are angrier than ever. They now have diagonal angle views (the original game only had side, front and back,) some now have death animations where they didn't before, and some have been completely overhauled graphically. The two boss enemies are also back, now with new mechanics! Look out for those in MAP08 and MAP16.
  • Three difficulty levels, that do more than just increase monster counts! The hardest setting will make the aliens that much more deadly, fast and accurate. If you just want to chill and kill some aliens however, an easier mode is there for you, offering you more protection against enemy attacks.
  • A new soundtrack by me under my musical name, Null Divisor, featuring 17 music tracks in total. Contains a cover of the original tracker theme tune, and updated versions of the incidental music cues. The in-game tracks give a whole new sense of atmosphere to the game, featuring ambient soundscapes and occassional pumping electronic beats. Listen out for references to other music in the Alien Breed series too!
  • Lots of additional sound effects added, such as new alien idle/death sounds, picking up items, elevator and door sounds, and more!
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Screenshots
Spoiler:
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Q/A

Do I need a Doom 2 WAD to run this game?
Nope! Simply run osiris.exe (just a copy of GZDoom) in the zip, or load the ipk3 into your existing GZDoom.

Why is there a copy of GZDoom in the download?
I expect people from the Amiga community who aren't necessarily into the Doom modding scene might be playing it, and I wanted to make things easier for them. Please note the included release is for Windows 64-bit - though you can run it on Linux and Mac if you get your own copy of GZDoom and put the ipk3 into it. If you're into Doom mods and running GZDoom already, feel free to just move the ipk3 into your usual place. Be sure to run it as an iwad, it's its own game!

Is this a 1:1 remake of the original AB3D?
No, lots of things are different either on purpose to hopefully improve the experience for a modern audience, or due to limitations of the engine or my coding ability.

Is it finished?
Yes! Though I will of course continue to update the game as necessary. I also plan to add more maps from coverdisk demos of the game, but these have a different visual style and different enemies and weapons, so they will take some more time to finish. Look out for these in the future!

Can you do Alien Breed 3D 2: The Killing Grounds next?
Nah, I was never really a fan of it, so the nostalgia isn't there for me. Sorry!

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Thanks to Rayman the Hedgehog, Ozymandias81, Kinsie and DrPyspy for helping me out and/or letting me use stuff they made! Also HUGE shoutouts to John Girvin, whose work on extracting the original AB3D maps was basically vital for this project not to take a million years. There are further credits given inside the .ipk3 and/or during the end credits roll of the game.

This is my first Doom engine project and the first time I've released a big project to the world in general. Aside from the awesome help I've gotten this is mostly a solo effort by me, and I'm not a pro at game design or anything like that, so please bear with me if you have any problems!

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Changelog
Spoiler:
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Download

Download Project Osiris v1.0.3
Itch.io mirror
Note: If you're not using the included exe, please run the game as an IWAD/IPK3, not as a mod for Doom 2. GZDoom will pick it up as it's own game, or add the game as an IWAD to your launcher of choice.

Download Kinsie's Project Osiris Sounds
These are some crunchier sounds you can load as a mod, if you want a more retro Amiga-ey feel. Seperate thread about it here.

Older Versions
Spoiler:

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8 BETA)

Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2020 5:07 pm
by Enjay
Seems very nice so far. I've only played the first two maps but it's been fun.

BTW, if your game is meant to be entirely stand alone you can delete the game_support.pk3 file from your distribution. That will prevent the exe detecting GOG and Steam installs of Doom (etc) and opening the IWAD selection dialogue.

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8 BETA)

Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2020 7:33 pm
by Artman2004
Doors don't work. Fix please.

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8 BETA)

Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2020 7:46 pm
by Artman2004
Update: Doors work, I'm just a complete dumb-ass

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8 BETA)

Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2020 8:10 pm
by Cherno
Very nice, I was waiting for a complete Alien Breed 3D TC for years, as all other attempts have been abandoned over time. I expect you to open a thread over at the English Amiga Board as well :!:
ArcturusDeluxe wrote: Why is the shotgun both pump action and double barreled?
The original was like that. I dunno. It's a future space shotgun?
A weapon like this was called a "Moe Szyslak Special" on tvtropes.org. Quake II has a similar shotgun. Rule of cool, eh?

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8 BETA)

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 12:53 am
by SallazarSpellcaster
Cherno wrote:Very nice, I was waiting for a complete Alien Breed 3D TC for years, as all other attempts have been abandoned over time. I expect you to open a thread over at the English Amiga Board as well :!:
ArcturusDeluxe wrote: Why is the shotgun both pump action and double barreled?
The original was like that. I dunno. It's a future space shotgun?
A weapon like this was called a "Moe Szyslak Special" on tvtropes.org. Quake II has a similar shotgun. Rule of cool, eh?
There's a real shotgun called the DP-12 - an actual double-barrel, pump action shotgun produced by Standard Manufacturing; it's fed through the back, holding 2 shells in its chamber, with another 7 and 7 in reserve for each barrel, letting it hold a max total of 16 shells. It looks nearly identical in shape to the Quake II shotgun, the only difference is that it only fires one barrel at a time, instead of both, before cycling - it does load the two barrels at the same time, however. It could, in theory, be modified to fire both barrels at once -though that would dislocate a normal person's shoulder.-

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8 BETA)

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 1:25 am
by 3336655445
the new cool TC?

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8 BETA)

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 3:02 am
by Ozymandias81
Damn someone resurrected this finally, awesome ArcturusDeluxe ! After the little Gloom TC this is fantastic news, hope something for similar for Breathless will happen one day, so we will get all 3 best Amiga fps exported to GZDoom. Nowadays in a modern Amiga X5000 with gpu you can even play Quake 3 or RTCW, and on pc you can install AmiKit 8 and with proper configured plugins even run mentioned FPS from there, but this is different since it feels like a remastered HD port and that's cool. Can't wait to play it when I have time, commenting here to pin the thread and not forget it :)

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8 BETA)

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 7:59 am
by Barry Burton
Thank you so much for making this. I ended up playing until 4 am this morning! My girlfriend wasn't impressed but I was. :P

I've only played up to level 8 but everything seems great so far. The sprite work is really well done. I feel the game could benefit from some brightmaps for, say, the monitor screens etc. Though that's obviously something that could come down the line.

Here's hoping we see some custom maps made for this. That'd be super cool. Perhaps a community project later on?

Anyway, from a former Miggy stalwart, thanks again for making an old man feel young again. :)

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8.1 BETA)

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 8:40 am
by ArcturusDeluxe
Thanks guys, I just updated it with a few fixes to potentially game-breaking bugs with lifts, as well as removing the game_support.pk3 as Enjay said (thanks for the heads up!). Also, most crucially of all, fixed some minor typos in some of the intro story texts. It's like a whole new game! (not really)

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8.1 BETA)

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 9:56 am
by Cherno
I think this is pretty much a perfect TC so far, which keeps the look and feel of the original game intact, while adjusting and improving where it makes sense. You should certainly be proud of your work!
My thoughts in detail:
  • The lighting of the maps is excellent and you did a great job replicating the smooth transitions between light and shadow.
  • Speaking of which, When playing the original game I seem to remember, due to the pixelated nature, that in faraway dark areas, you could always see some pixels of the enemies moving in the dark distance. I think that for this reason, this TC would benefit from brightmaps tremendously, as has been suggested above. Eyes for the beholder and dogs, and so on. Also, the computer screens would also look nice with brightmaps, and even better, some simple animation.
  • The difficulty felt right; enemies hit hard and can overwhelm you if you are not careful. Medkits are in the right places and not overly abundant, as it should be. This is a very old-school type of game where you really need make sure that you don't waste any healing items and remember where you left some in case you need to go back when low on health.
  • I think I only found armor several levels in; might be an idea to include it in earlier levels.
  • Ammo felt about right as well. I always had either shells or cells when the shotgun or plasma gun ran out.
  • The shotgun sprite felt weakest to me, if any gun could use improvement, I think it's this one. Maybe add some more sheen to it? The standard rifle looks great, especially since you kept that white muzzleflash. It tends to stunlock the alien soldiers, though. Maybe decrease their painchance?
  • The grenades are exremely bouncy and they are not fired very far, this felt very annoying to me. I wished they would have a tiny bit more range and would bounce less.
  • The dogs seemed to be more dangerous in the original game; here, they are more of a nuisance since I think they are slightly slower, and attack less often.
  • The snails are very slow, this is probably true to the original game, but it makes them less of a threat.
  • In level 8, I liked that you barred the way to the upper platform; it makes the fight against the walker far more suspenseful.
  • I found the brown water in the sewer level (2?) less appealing than the blue water that is used throughout the game; It does fit a sewer, though. The blueish tint when underwater could be more pronounced.
  • The default interact key could be bound to "E" as well as Mouse2.
Overall, again, a great accomplishment which brings everything to the table, even details like the level start text.

I just played this up to level 10, and I seem to be stuck. I collected the red and yellow keys, opened the red door and now I've got nowhere else to go. The green and blue keys are nowhere to be found. The snail monster behind the red door dropped nothing.

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8.1 BETA)

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 10:13 am
by ArcturusDeluxe
Thanks for all the feedback Cherno! I'll definitely take it all on board.
Cherno wrote: I just played this up to level 10, and I seem to be stuck. I collected the red and yellow keys, opened the red door and now I've got nowhere else to go. The green and blue keys are nowhere to be found. The snail monster behind the red door dropped nothing.
There's a quite big but very dimly lit door in the dark computer area before where you collect the yellow key in the big room with the elevator and the flamethrower. I've highlighted it with lamps in the latest patch I put out today, as someone else got stuck in the same place. Sorry about that!

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8.1 BETA)

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 3:37 pm
by Cherno
You could post on DoomWorld as well, this deserves more exposition :)

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8.1 BETA)

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 4:39 pm
by Dude27th
OH MY GOD! I'll give it a chance as soon as I can :D
It looks cool from the screenshots already ^^

UPDATE:
At the moment some proportions look off , but it may be for the aspect ratio.
The new weapon sprites looks like they lack detail as well considering that they have a higher resolution now (Looking at the shotgun principally) ...
Regardless looks cool still !

Re: Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (0.8.1 BETA)

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2020 6:07 am
by Cherno
The corpses of flying monsters (Beholders) tend to fall down onto still-living monsters, I have looked at their code but they do the same stuff that Cacos do in their death state, so I'M not sure what could be the cause.