ELEMENTS.WAD
UAC has been trying to stage a counter- attack on Hell, via the realms of the four elements: Air, Water, Earth and Fire. The effort has gone awry, the demons...
This WAD is corrupt, it may not load or play correctly.
Filenames
elements.wad, ELEMENTS.WAD, elements.zip
Size
1.34 MB
MD5
5baa2983e6af1aad7bf57c9b8b142226
SHA-1
d8b26bbe3ea7428a13dca863e37896eb9c92bcf8
SHA-256
3bd25b85098f2c0ed70c9ed23b7d3c7268014b8c0798363ab13952a8cfa02a5c
WAD Type
PWAD
IWAD
Doom
Engines
Doom
Lumps
155
Maps
E1M1, E1M2, E1M3, E1M4, E1M9
Download
Read Me
========================================= ELEMENTS.WAD - The Four Elements of DOOM? ========================================= ELEMENTS is a set of missions that replaces much of Episode 1. Please read the storyline in the text file ELSTORY.TXT. To use elements, run elements.bat or type "doom -file elements.wad elmusic2.wad". ====================================================================== Title : ELEMENTS.WAD Author : Neal Ziring Email Address : [email protected] Description : UAC has been trying to stage a counter- attack on Hell, via the realms of the four elements: Air, Water, Earth and Fire. The effort has gone awry, the demons are winning, and you have gone in to eliminate all opposition. Additional Credits to : iD, for such a great open technology! R. Quinet & B. Wyber (Authors of DEU), B. Neisius (dmmusic, dmgraph, dmaud), R. Rossbach et.al. (idbsp), C. Reed (BSP 1.2x), K. Wilkins (wacker), Jens Hykkelbjerg (Rmb), Pharses (Dshrink), S. Kearney (1 mus file), M. Coyne (2 mus), All my beta testers specially Joe and Mike, Corel Corp., Digital Expressions, Aldus, Various sites on the net for MIDI files. (and my wife for putting up with this..) ====================================================================== * Play Information * Episode and Level #s : E1M1 - E1M4, E1M9 Single Player : Yes Cooperative 2-4 Player : Yes (designed for 2, mainly) Deathmatch 2-4 Player : Yes (untested, E1M4 could be good) Difficulty Settings : Yes (substantial variation) New Sounds : Yes (all music, two sounds) New Graphics : Yes (new textures, titles, startup) Demos Replaced : None Notes : The Pwad file elements.wad does not contain the new music selections. Selections of classical music are in elmusic2.wad, and pop music (sorta) is in elmusic1.wad. All the graphics are in elements.wad. For more information, see elnotes.txt * Construction * Base : New levels from scratch Build Time : 100 hours (whew!) Editor(s) used : DEU 5.21 Tool(s) used : dmgraph, dmmusic, midi2mus, dmaud, idbsp, bsp12x, rmb, wacker, dshrink, PaintShop Pro, SB Wave Studio, Music Sculptor, Aldus Photostyler, CorelDRAW, Corel PhotoPaint. Known Bugs : Occasional dark vertical lines with joined partially transparent textures. One instance of the veil effect (hard to find, doesn't hurt play). Funny transient falling floor effect in FIRE, just a quirk of the DOOM engine, not really HOM. [Note: Dshrink has been applied to these maps, that makes this Pwad unsuitable for map editing. Anybody who wants the unshrunk maps to use, just contact me via email.] * Copyright / Permissions * Authors MAY use this level as a base to build additional levels. You MAY distribute this DOOM add-on in any electronic format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file intact. The musical selections in Elmusic1.wad are copyrighted by the various musicians and are distributed for personal, private use only. * Where to get this WAD * FTP sites: infant2.sphs.indiana.edu (and mirrors)
========================================= ELEMENTS.WAD - The Four Elements of DOOM? ========================================= ELEMENTS is a set of missions that replaces much of Episode 1. Please read the storyline in the text file ELSTORY.TXT. To use elements, run elements.bat or type "doom -file elements.wad elementm.wad". ====================================================================== Title : ELEMENTS.WAD Author : Neal Ziring Email Address : [email protected] Description : UAC has been trying to stage a counter- attack on Hell, via the realms of the four elements: Air, Water, Earth and Fire. The effort has gone awry, the demons are winning, and you have gone in to eliminate all opposition. Additional Credits to : iD, for such a great open technology! R. Quinet & B. Wyber (Authors of DEU), B. Neisius (dmmusic, dmgraph, dmaud), R. Rossbach et.al. (idbsp), C. Reed (BSP 1.2x), K. Wilkins (wacker), Jens Hykkelbjerg (Rmb), Pharses (Dshrink), S. Kearney (1 mus file), M. Coyne (2 mus), All my beta testers specially Joe and Mike, Corel Corp., Digital Expressions, Aldus, Various sites on the net for MIDI files. (and my wife for putting up with this..) ====================================================================== * Play Information * Episode and Level #s : E1M1 - E1M4, E1M9 Single Player : Yes Cooperative 2-4 Player : Yes (designed for 2, mainly) Deathmatch 2-4 Player : Yes (untested, E1M4 could be good) Difficulty Settings : Yes (substantial variation) New Sounds : Yes (all music, two sounds) New Graphics : Yes (new textures, titles, startup) Demos Replaced : None Notes : The Pwad file elements.wad does not contain the new music selections. Selections of classical music are in elementm.wad, and pop music (sorta) is in elmusic1.wad. All the graphics are in elements.wad. For more information, see elnotes.txt * Construction * Base : New levels from scratch Build Time : 100 hours (whew!) Editor(s) used : DEU 5.21 Tool(s) used : dmgraph, dmmusic, midi2mus, dmaud, idbsp, bsp12x, rmb, wacker, dshrink, PaintShop Pro, SB Wave Studio, Music Sculptor, Aldus Photostyler, CorelDRAW, Corel PhotoPaint. Known Bugs : Occasional dark vertical lines with joined partially transparent textures. One instance of the veil effect (hard to find, doesn't hurt play). Funny transient falling floor effect in FIRE, just a quirk of the DOOM engine, not really HOM. [Note: Dshrink has been applied to these maps, that makes this Pwad unsuitable for map editing. Anybody who wants the unshrunk maps to use, just contact me via email.] * Copyright / Permissions * Authors MAY use this level as a base to build additional levels. You MAY distribute this DOOM add-on in any electronic format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file intact. The musical selections in Elmusic1.wad are copyrighted by the various musicians and are distributed for personal, private use only. * Where to get this WAD * FTP sites: infant2.sphs.indiana.edu (and mirrors) ********************************************************* ELNOTES: ========================================= 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 designers of the Cleimos add-on episode have posted a very interesting tool that removes redundant side-defs from a map. This reduces the number of sidedefs that the DOOM engine has to load from the Pwad, thus slightly improving performance. To get this tool, grab the CLEIMOS episode. 2. The IDBSP node builder - The Idbsp node builder seems to generate the most accurate and fastest BSP tree, based on personal experience. Unfortunately, it is the hardest to use. It also has the nasty habit of merging adjacent sectors even when those sectors will eventually serve a different purpose. If you can deal with these problems, it does a good job. 3. The RMB reject-map builder - The reject map provides the DOOM monster-control algorithm with short-cut information about which sectors are invisible to the occupants of other sectors. Without this information, DOOM has to cast sight-lines from the monsters to the players to decide whether the player is visible to the monster. DEU5.2 generates an empty reject map, forcing DOOM to compute an awful lot of monster-to-player visibility. IDBSP generates a fair reject map, typically with about 20% rejects. This is also the level one observes in the official iD missions. RMB generates tables with much higher reject rates, more commeasurate with the real sector-to-sector visibility of the map, usually 80-90%. This improves performance by reducing the amount of monster-player visibility that DOOM needs to compute. For more information, snarf RMB11.ZIP, and read the manual. NOTES ABOUT THE MUSIC ===================== All of the music in Elmusic1 was assembled as MIDI files from the Internet. Much of the music in Elmusic2 wad taken from two Doom classical music add-ons, Classics2 by S. Kearney, and Clasmus by M. Coyne. All the MIDI files were modified and tweaked in Music Sculptor (Alpha-Omega Software) before being converted to Doom MUS format and inserted in a Pwad. In most cases this simply meant cranking up the volume and assigning unique channels. The musical selections are: Mission Name/Artist Source -------------------------------------------------------------------- Elmusic 1: E1M1 Another One Bites the Dust/Queen Internet E1M2 Run to You / En-Rage Internet E1M3 All That She Wants/ Ace of Base Internet E1M4 VV / (the "awesome" midi collection) Internet E1M9 ??? / Satriani Internet Elmusic2: E1M1 Air on the G String/JS Bach Internet E1M2 piano sonata? / Solfeggi Internet E1M3 'Hall of the Mountain King/E Grieg Classics2.wad E1M4 Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring/JS Bach Clasmus.wad E1M9 Rendez-vous II/JM Jarre Clasmus.wad All of the selections from the Internet come from the big MIDI archive site in Europe: ftp.cs.ruu.nl. A good site for MIDI and for MIDI tools is louie.udel.edu. ---- caution, spoilers below... search forward for end-of-spoilers to skip them. ---- SPOILERS FOR THE PLAYER ======================= The text below tells you how to find secret areas and solve various puzzles in Elements. Read this only if you are really frustrated. 1. Air (HMP and UV) If you are having trouble finding the red keycard, you need to get down into the floor of the main courtyard. Look for something to help you jump the railing. 2. Air To get the chainsaw, you need to go to the freezer by going through the kitchen. It is concealed off the Imp study lab. 3. Air The teleporter maze is accessible from the very first room, don't forget to hit every switch you see. 4. Water Finding the underwater tank is easy, just make sure you explore all the watery passageways after you leave the big empty tank on your way to the beach. 5. Water The beach is tough partly because the water is full of poison. If you find the radiation suit on your way to the beach, you can wade part way out into the water and shoot the monsters from a safe distance. 6. Water The biggest secret area in Water is difficult to reach, you need to hit a switch concealed in a very dark side corridor, then run back to a nearby secret lift platform. When you arrive in the secret area, you might choose to dash for the switch to trap the monsters in back part of the room. After eliminating them, just search the room very carefully. There are two secret doors to find. Finding all the secrets will make the BFG accessible in a nearby room. 7. Earth Jumping the pylons over the big lava pit is fairly difficult, at least I have trouble with it. Hit a nearby switch to raise the first pylon, and also grab a radiation suit out of the nearby secret closet. 8. Earth Finding the rooms that lead to the secret mission (E1M9) requires a little looking, but not too much. First, you cannot get there without hitting two switches, the first lowers a transporter pad that you can use to get to the second switch. The second switch opens the way, look around the big cave to find it. 9. Fire In order to complete this mission, you must have the red key. You do not need the yellow key to finish, but you do need it to get to some of the secret room. In the room where the pink shaved gorilla demons come teleporting out of the walls to eat your face, there is a hidden door that leads to the place where those demons were waiting. Get the key there. 10. Fire If you are having trouble beating the Cyberdemon in the final arena in this mission, well, you're not alone :-) There is a secret room from which you can pummel the cyber with near-total impunity. Just look around for it. 11. Undivine The computer map is available here, as is the BFG. Check carefully near the beginning of the mission for a small secret room that holds the computer map. Use the computer map to find the other secret area. If you have any other questions about these missions, send email to [email protected]. ---- end-of-spoilers ---- FINAL NOTES =========== I hope you enjoy playing Elements. If you like it and have the opportunity, send me some e-mail about it. I love getting letters. You might also enjoy my only other major Doom add-on, Subway21, available wherever fine Pwads are sold :-) If you didn't like Elements, please send me some suggestions so I can do a better job next time. Thanks. Neal Ziring [email protected] ********************************************************** ELSTORY: ========================================= ELEMENTS.WAD - The Four Elements of DOOM? The Story ========================================= After your successful mission through the Phobos base, the Deimos base, and the Inferno itself, the Space Marine Corp. decided to counter-attack the denizens of hell. The realms of the Four Elements were chosen as the way-stations: the realms of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. With substantial assistance from UAC, gallant space marines forces established garrisons in each of the four realms. Some of them were relatively quiet, other more difficult to pacify, but work proceeded toward the counter-invasion for several months. Until last week, the planners and officers guiding the campaign were confident and optimistic. Then urgent reports began to arrive about difficulties in the Earth and Fire garrisons. Reports from the realms of Water and Air followed, and reinforcements were sent. It became clear that the lords of Hell were acting to defend the ingres to their domains with their customary blind ferocity. As "Enemy Tactics Special Technical Advisor" your job has been to agree with everything that the commanding general has to say. You've been sitting at a desk for months, with only an occasional break with a rocket launcher practice at the base firing range. You are with the general in the comm. shack when the last message comes in from the shattered remnants of the reinforcing column: "There's so many! Here they come!" You wait for the orders: new reinforcments, bigger weapons, bolder strategies... When you hear the general order an emergency retreat, your resolve hardens. You beat those hell-spawn &*$@^#! once, and lived to tell about it. Those guys that died to build the garrisons deserve better than a cowardly "retrograde action" in response! Grabbing your trusty pistol out of its holster, you buckle on your helmet and head for the portal to the realm of Air. The technician on duty hands you a couple of extra clips, and a piece of gossip: "Some of the grunts, sir, have been saying as there's a fifth realm, worse than the rest. Be careful, sir." As you step through the portal to Air, you smile, briefly, grim anticipation...
========================================= ELEMENTS.WAD - The Four Elements of DOOM? ========================================= ELEMENTS is a set of missions that replaces much of Episode 1. Please read the storyline in the text file ELSTORY.TXT. To use elements, run elements.bat or type "doom -file elements.wad elementm.wad". ====================================================================== Title : ELEMENTS.WAD Author : Neal Ziring Email Address : [email protected] Description : UAC has been trying to stage a counter- attack on Hell, via the realms of the four elements: Air, Water, Earth and Fire. The effort has gone awry, the demons are winning, and you have gone in to eliminate all opposition. Additional Credits to : iD, for such a great open technology! R. Quinet & B. Wyber (Authors of DEU), B. Neisius (dmmusic, dmgraph, dmaud), R. Rossbach et.al. (idbsp), C. Reed (BSP 1.2x), K. Wilkins (wacker), Jens Hykkelbjerg (Rmb), Pharses (Dshrink), S. Kearney (1 mus file), M. Coyne (2 mus), All my beta testers specially Joe and Mike, Corel Corp., Digital Expressions, Aldus, Various sites on the net for MIDI files. (and my wife for putting up with this..) ====================================================================== * Play Information * Episode and Level #s : E1M1 - E1M4, E1M9 Single Player : Yes Cooperative 2-4 Player : Yes (designed for 2, mainly) Deathmatch 2-4 Player : Yes (untested, E1M4 could be good) Difficulty Settings : Yes (substantial variation) New Sounds : Yes (all music, two sounds) New Graphics : Yes (new textures, titles, startup) Demos Replaced : None Notes : The Pwad file elements.wad does not contain the new music selections. Selections of classical music are in elementm.wad, and pop music (sorta) is in elmusic1.wad. All the graphics are in elements.wad. For more information, see elnotes.txt * Construction * Base : New levels from scratch Build Time : 100 hours (whew!) Editor(s) used : DEU 5.21 Tool(s) used : dmgraph, dmmusic, midi2mus, dmaud, idbsp, bsp12x, rmb, wacker, dshrink, PaintShop Pro, SB Wave Studio, Music Sculptor, Aldus Photostyler, CorelDRAW, Corel PhotoPaint. Known Bugs : Occasional dark vertical lines with joined partially transparent textures. One instance of the veil effect (hard to find, doesn't hurt play). Funny transient falling floor effect in FIRE, just a quirk of the DOOM engine, not really HOM. [Note: Dshrink has been applied to these maps, that makes this Pwad unsuitable for map editing. Anybody who wants the unshrunk maps to use, just contact me via email.] * Copyright / Permissions * Authors MAY use this level as a base to build additional levels. You MAY distribute this DOOM add-on in any electronic format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file intact. The musical selections in Elmusic1.wad are copyrighted by the various musicians and are distributed for personal, private use only. * Where to get this WAD * FTP sites: infant2.sphs.indiana.edu (and mirrors) ********************************************************* ELNOTES: ========================================= 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 designers of the Cleimos add-on episode have posted a very interesting tool that removes redundant side-defs from a map. This reduces the number of sidedefs that the DOOM engine has to load from the Pwad, thus slightly improving performance. To get this tool, grab the CLEIMOS episode. 2. The IDBSP node builder - The Idbsp node builder seems to generate the most accurate and fastest BSP tree, based on personal experience. Unfortunately, it is the hardest to use. It also has the nasty habit of merging adjacent sectors even when those sectors will eventually serve a different purpose. If you can deal with these problems, it does a good job. 3. The RMB reject-map builder - The reject map provides the DOOM monster-control algorithm with short-cut information about which sectors are invisible to the occupants of other sectors. Without this information, DOOM has to cast sight-lines from the monsters to the players to decide whether the player is visible to the monster. DEU5.2 generates an empty reject map, forcing DOOM to compute an awful lot of monster-to-player visibility. IDBSP generates a fair reject map, typically with about 20% rejects. This is also the level one observes in the official iD missions. RMB generates tables with much higher reject rates, more commeasurate with the real sector-to-sector visibility of the map, usually 80-90%. This improves performance by reducing the amount of monster-player visibility that DOOM needs to compute. For more information, snarf RMB11.ZIP, and read the manual. NOTES ABOUT THE MUSIC ===================== All of the music in Elmusic1 was assembled as MIDI files from the Internet. Much of the music in Elmusic2 wad taken from two Doom classical music add-ons, Classics2 by S. Kearney, and Clasmus by M. Coyne. All the MIDI files were modified and tweaked in Music Sculptor (Alpha-Omega Software) before being converted to Doom MUS format and inserted in a Pwad. In most cases this simply meant cranking up the volume and assigning unique channels. The musical selections are: Mission Name/Artist Source -------------------------------------------------------------------- Elmusic 1: E1M1 Another One Bites the Dust/Queen Internet E1M2 Run to You / En-Rage Internet E1M3 All That She Wants/ Ace of Base Internet E1M4 VV / (the "awesome" midi collection) Internet E1M9 ??? / Satriani Internet Elmusic2: E1M1 Air on the G String/JS Bach Internet E1M2 piano sonata? / Solfeggi Internet E1M3 'Hall of the Mountain King/E Grieg Classics2.wad E1M4 Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring/JS Bach Clasmus.wad E1M9 Rendez-vous II/JM Jarre Clasmus.wad All of the selections from the Internet come from the big MIDI archive site in Europe: ftp.cs.ruu.nl. A good site for MIDI and for MIDI tools is louie.udel.edu. ---- caution, spoilers below... search forward for end-of-spoilers to skip them. ---- SPOILERS FOR THE PLAYER ======================= The text below tells you how to find secret areas and solve various puzzles in Elements. Read this only if you are really frustrated. 1. Air (HMP and UV) If you are having trouble finding the red keycard, you need to get down into the floor of the main courtyard. Look for something to help you jump the railing. 2. Air To get the chainsaw, you need to go to the freezer by going through the kitchen. It is concealed off the Imp study lab. 3. Air The teleporter maze is accessible from the very first room, don't forget to hit every switch you see. 4. Water Finding the underwater tank is easy, just make sure you explore all the watery passageways after you leave the big empty tank on your way to the beach. 5. Water The beach is tough partly because the water is full of poison. If you find the radiation suit on your way to the beach, you can wade part way out into the water and shoot the monsters from a safe distance. 6. Water The biggest secret area in Water is difficult to reach, you need to hit a switch concealed in a very dark side corridor, then run back to a nearby secret lift platform. When you arrive in the secret area, you might choose to dash for the switch to trap the monsters in back part of the room. After eliminating them, just search the room very carefully. There are two secret doors to find. Finding all the secrets will make the BFG accessible in a nearby room. 7. Earth Jumping the pylons over the big lava pit is fairly difficult, at least I have trouble with it. Hit a nearby switch to raise the first pylon, and also grab a radiation suit out of the nearby secret closet. 8. Earth Finding the rooms that lead to the secret mission (E1M9) requires a little looking, but not too much. First, you cannot get there without hitting two switches, the first lowers a transporter pad that you can use to get to the second switch. The second switch opens the way, look around the big cave to find it. 9. Fire In order to complete this mission, you must have the red key. You do not need the yellow key to finish, but you do need it to get to some of the secret room. In the room where the pink shaved gorilla demons come teleporting out of the walls to eat your face, there is a hidden door that leads to the place where those demons were waiting. Get the key there. 10. Fire If you are having trouble beating the Cyberdemon in the final arena in this mission, well, you're not alone :-) There is a secret room from which you can pummel the cyber with near-total impunity. Just look around for it. 11. Undivine The computer map is available here, as is the BFG. Check carefully near the beginning of the mission for a small secret room that holds the computer map. Use the computer map to find the other secret area. If you have any other questions about these missions, send email to [email protected]. ---- end-of-spoilers ---- FINAL NOTES =========== I hope you enjoy playing Elements. If you like it and have the opportunity, send me some e-mail about it. I love getting letters. You might also enjoy my only other major Doom add-on, Subway21, available wherever fine Pwads are sold :-) If you didn't like Elements, please send me some suggestions so I can do a better job next time. Thanks. Neal Ziring [email protected] ********************************************************** ELSTORY: ========================================= ELEMENTS.WAD - The Four Elements of DOOM? The Story ========================================= After your successful mission through the Phobos base, the Deimos base, and the Inferno itself, the Space Marine Corp. decided to counter-attack the denizens of hell. The realms of the Four Elements were chosen as the way-stations: the realms of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. With substantial assistance from UAC, gallant space marines forces established garrisons in each of the four realms. Some of them were relatively quiet, other more difficult to pacify, but work proceeded toward the counter-invasion for several months. Until last week, the planners and officers guiding the campaign were confident and optimistic. Then urgent reports began to arrive about difficulties in the Earth and Fire garrisons. Reports from the realms of Water and Air followed, and reinforcements were sent. It became clear that the lords of Hell were acting to defend the ingres to their domains with their customary blind ferocity. As "Enemy Tactics Special Technical Advisor" your job has been to agree with everything that the commanding general has to say. You've been sitting at a desk for months, with only an occasional break with a rocket launcher practice at the base firing range. You are with the general in the comm. shack when the last message comes in from the shattered remnants of the reinforcing column: "There's so many! Here they come!" You wait for the orders: new reinforcments, bigger weapons, bolder strategies... When you hear the general order an emergency retreat, your resolve hardens. You beat those hell-spawn &*$@^#! once, and lived to tell about it. Those guys that died to build the garrisons deserve better than a cowardly "retrograde action" in response! Grabbing your trusty pistol out of its holster, you buckle on your helmet and head for the portal to the realm of Air. The technician on duty hands you a couple of extra clips, and a piece of gossip: "Some of the grunts, sir, have been saying as there's a fifth realm, worse than the rest. Be careful, sir." As you step through the portal to Air, you smile, briefly, grim anticipation...
Maps
