[DEVLOG] Alien Breed 3D 2: The Killing Grounds total conversion for GZDoom

[CravenCoyote]

The release of Doom was a great day for PC users. For Amiga users, however, it was just another nail in the coffin. FPS games were uncommon on the Amiga, and John Carmack himself said that the Amiga just wouldn't be capable of running Doom. But the Amiga community just wouldn't take no for an answer. A select number of games were released for the system including Gloom, Fears, Alien Breed 3D and Alien Breed 3D 2: The Killing Grounds.

 

It needed a beefy Amiga to run it. RAM upgrades, accelerator cards, even add-on graphics cards. Few people got to experience this game... until emulation made it accessible to the masses. But by that point, the game was still clunky, unoptimized, and just generally unplayed by many.

 

So here I am introducing my devlog for a total conversion project of Alien Breed 3D 2: The Killing Grounds (TKG) for GZDoom.

 

The excellent Project Osiris, headed up by @Arcturus, is a total conversion of the first game and definitely worth checking out. TKG, however, has not been done nor do there appear to be any specific plans to do so.

 

I've been hard at work on this project. It'll take me a while to do. This thread serves as a way to keep me motivated and to ask advice/seek help from time to time. I have never done a total conversion before. I'll be using some resources from Project Osiris to assist me, but TKG is almost a different game to the first. Most of TKG's resources have been released for free online but they can be a bit awkward to work with - at least it's something.

 

 

Spoiler

 

Alpha video of first map to demonstrate what I'm working on. Apologies for the video quality, I have no idea what's been going on with my computer lately but it seems to hate a lot of stuff!

 

More updates to come as I make more progress.

 

Edited September 5 by CravenCoyote

[tom3kb]

Pump action shotgun with two barrels 😁

[CravenCoyote]

39 minutes ago, tom3kb said:

Pump action shotgun with two barrels 😁

 

Haha, that's actually from the original game. The second one is a semi automatic double barrel shotgun but I've not managed to create that just yet. 

 

First up will be getting the Mine to work

[Gez]

2 hours ago, tom3kb said:

Pump action shotgun with two barrels 😁

That only uses one ammo per shot, too.

 

 

I suppose that like the first AB3D, sprites only have the cardinal direction. The armored or robotic enemy in that video seems to only ever be seen from the front. ²So will you be adding diagonal views to the new enemies, too?

 

 

[CravenCoyote]

3 hours ago, Gez said:

I suppose that like the first AB3D, sprites only have the cardinal direction. The armored or robotic enemy in that video seems to only ever be seen from the front. ²So will you be adding diagonal views to the new enemies, too?

 

The only sprites available for the armoured alien were the red variant which I've managed to convert to blue with some re-draws and cleanups. I believe the Amiga would recolor them on the fly, but could be wrong.

 

There are actually side views and back views for this monster but they never had diagonal views. I'd like to add them but I'm not sure I'm skilled enough to do it myself properly. I created the death frames, the original had none at all.

 

The Triclaw monster was the same, and I've made a rear facing diagonal view to it, but not done the front yet. I've also added death frames for this monster. I'll have to showcase what I have for if anyone would like to help. I'll try and do that later when I'm back at my computer.

 

3 hours ago, Gez said:

That only uses one ammo per shot, too.

A definite oversight on my behalf and has now been changed 😁

Edited July 7 by CravenCoyote

[CravenCoyote]

The below is outdated. We are now using voxels for monsters and items.

 

Spoiler

Blue Armored Alien

Notes: Additional frames are needed and they all need some work doing to them in some way or another. It is also an asymmetrical monster which needs to be taken into account.

 

Front Walk / Front Diagonal Walk

 

Side Walk

 

Rear Walk / Rear Diagonal Walk

 

Death

 

Front Fire

 

Front Diagonal Fire

 

Side Fire

 

Rear Fire

 

 

Triclaw

Notes: Diagonal views need to be enlarged a little.

 

Front Walk / Front Melee / Front Diagonal Walk

 

Front Diagonal Walk / Front Diagonal Melee

 

Side Walk / Side Melee

 

Rear Walk / Rear Melee

 

Rear Diagonal Walk / Rear Diagonal Melee

 

Death

 

Edited August 5 by CravenCoyote

[CravenCoyote]

Mines are now working. Hope you all like flames and gibs!

 

[paraj_38340]

Awesome work! FYI there's work on the Amiga side bringing the game (very slowly) more up to date (warning very long thread: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=111090), and even on-going development on a mod by Karlos (https://github.com/0xABADCAFE/karlos-tkg) going 20+ years.

[Warboss_Gegguz]

GOD I NEED THIS!

I love Alien Breed, but Team 17 seems content to completely ignore that these two games happened (even though they reviewed extremely well) and Amiga emulation is such a nightmare. I've spent HOURS sifting through different rips/cracks, system setting, drive setting, every manner of troubleshooting to get killing grounds to work... To absolutely 0 effect. 

 

Project Osiris was fantastic and completely came out of left-field for me, and I'd love to see someone give the Killing Grounds the same treatment. If only so I could actually fucking play it in some capacity.

[Dynamo]

Incredible! I am really looking forward to this, Project Osiris was truly an amazing project and to know there is a kind of equivalent for the game's sequel is heartwarming. Keep up the good work :D

Really curious what @Arcturus thinks about it too :)

[TMMMS]

this looks absolutely awesome except for that comical ptooing firing sound from the blue armored alien

 

 

[Kinsie]

8 hours ago, Dynamo said:

Really curious what @Arcturus thinks about it too :)

I learned about this project through him mentioning it in Twitch chat last night, oddly enough.

 

 

[CravenCoyote]

The layout drafting of MAP02 has begun.

 

 

13 hours ago, paraj_38340 said:

Awesome work! FYI there's work on the Amiga side bringing the game (very slowly) more up to date (warning very long thread: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=111090), and even on-going development on a mod by Karlos (https://github.com/0xABADCAFE/karlos-tkg) going 20+ years.

They are! I'm not sure whether their project is specific to the Amiga or whether it'll be able to run on Windows systems, but I look forward to it's release. Nothing quite beats the original, after all!

 

13 hours ago, Warboss_Gegguz said:

GOD I NEED THIS!

I love Alien Breed, but Team 17 seems content to completely ignore that these two games happened (even though they reviewed extremely well) and Amiga emulation is such a nightmare. I've spent HOURS sifting through different rips/cracks, system setting, drive setting, every manner of troubleshooting to get killing grounds to work... To absolutely 0 effect. 

 

Project Osiris was fantastic and completely came out of left-field for me, and I'd love to see someone give the Killing Grounds the same treatment. If only so I could actually fucking play it in some capacity.

If you need help to get it running, I can offer my setup to you. The game is kind of clunky in terms of controls, so just be warned. It feels much nicer to play in the Doom engine (or maybe that's just because it's now what we're used to?).

 

13 hours ago, TMMMS said:

this looks absolutely awesome except for that comical ptooing firing sound from the blue armored alien

I share your sentiment here. The project is being worked on so naturally things will change. The blue armored alien uses an Energy Blaster weapon that I couldn't find the sound for, so the sample there was used as a place holder because it's surprisingly similar. The correct sample has now been added to the project but it does still very much sound like a comical ptoo.

 

13 hours ago, Dynamo said:

Incredible! I am really looking forward to this, Project Osiris was truly an amazing project and to know there is a kind of equivalent for the game's sequel is heartwarming. Keep up the good work :D

Really curious what @Arcturus thinks about it too :)

 

5 hours ago, Kinsie said:

I learned about this project through him mentioning it in Twitch chat last night, oddly enough.

I'm extremely humbled to announce that Arcturus has joined me with this project. He's helped a lot already with his previous work on Project Osiris as a base, and is actively assisting with the development of this TC. In the few days I've been talking with him on Discord, he's helped to ensure that the footstep sounds are now working, has located some textures I was having trouble finding, has begun mapping, and has offered valuable feedback on the project in its state so far. 

[Arcturus]

Hi all, I'm glad someone's heading this one up! After the mammoth task of doing the first one I don't think I have it in me to port The Killing Grounds all on my own, but with someone else at the helm I'm very happy to support and contribute to the project. Even though there are a lot of issues with TKG in general (and hopefully we can smooth some of those out along the way) it still sits in a tiny, weird corner of my heart, so it's very cool to see.

[Kinsie]

That and it's nice to not have to set up an Amiga emulator with every setting cranked to the 90s equivalent of Crysis specs and a hacked hard drive image to try and squeeze every last godforsaken frame out complete the duology, right?

 

I'm definitely curious about how the maps will be handled. The original game's maps were, uh, perhaps not amazing, shall we say, but Arc did a great job of polishing the turdier bits of the first game to a mirror sheen. If nothing else, at least they won't be quite as aircraft-carrier levels of empty.

[0x4BADC4FE]

7 hours ago, CravenCoyote said:

They are! I'm not sure whether their project is specific to the Amiga or whether it'll be able to run on Windows systems, but I look forward to it's release. Nothing quite beats the original, after all!

 

Hi!

 

That'll be us. I tried to sign up normally to the forum the other day when I stumbled over this project but for whatever reason, the confirmation email never arrived. I cancelled it but it seems the username/email are now burned into the database forever.

 

Long story short, the source code of the original game was released way back in around 1997. At that time I was working on a mod (on my A1200 / 68040) using the very flaky tooling and between crashes and reboots having a bit of fun. The source code drop was great but it was next to impossible to use (basically just a dump of a directory). I gave up modding the game when i got a better CPU card and started playing with Quake.

 

Fast fowards to 2022, EAB user pipper managed to get the original sources into a buildable state. This got me interested again and a few of us have working on improving it since. I discovered my old mod in a backup drive and decided to get that going again. That's in it's own repo separate from the engine, builds of which are bundled into the mod for simplicity.

 

We all agree that the game felt unfinished and deserved a revival. We've added a few non-breaking changes to the engine to support graphics cards (still software rendering), game modding, including per level wall and floor texture overrides, inventory limits and even rudimentary achievements. Everything is still built on the original game code.

 

I see you are now editing the Docking Ring level. In my mod, that's a human built structure in orbit that has been captured. There's an only slightly out of date video of it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4jdwHhF-bQ

 

Really looking forwards to seeing what you and Arcturus come up with, Project Osiris is awesome.

[Kinsie]

Great to see the Amiga side of things here. It'd be nice to know how things work in the original game - I remember reading a Retro Gamer article talking to a programmer (the programmer?) on the original AB3D2 and they mentioned there being a bunch of complex-for-the-era AI squad behaviors ("alright, this is where we last heard a sound from, now let's split up and look in different directions...") that were by and large useless since you never really saw them happening on screen and they only served to eat up CPU time. Not sure how true that is, but it'd be rare for a programmer to make up stories about how they screwed up by being too clever!

 

The mod you're working on looks great. Great lighting detail, really getting a lot out of the engine. I'll have to keep an eye out and see how it develops!

[0x4BADC4FE]

6 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

Great to see the Amiga side of things here. It'd be nice to know how things work in the original game - I remember reading a Retro Gamer article talking to a programmer (the programmer?) on the original AB3D2 and they mentioned there being a bunch of complex-for-the-era AI squad behaviors ("alright, this is where we last heard a sound from, now let's split up and look in different directions...") that were by and large useless since you never really saw them happening on screen and they only served to eat up CPU time. Not sure how true that is, but it'd be rare for a programmer to make up stories about how they screwed up by being too clever!

 

Team AI definitely exists but it might be a bit grandiose sounding. Aliens can be assigned to teams. All aliens in the team share information on player detection. They use the network of control points to navigate the level (this being one of the biggest PITA for modding, you have up toi 100 control points and up to 256 zones, any of which can have upper and lower spaces. Every map begins off with every alien humping the nearest wall until you spend ages sorting out that for them). If an alien in a team sights the player, the other aliens in the same team assignment will try to reach a place they can attack from. Some logic that is configurable from the mod tooling is not implemented though. There's no real retreat behaviour, for example.

 

6 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

 

The mod you're working on looks great. Great lighting detail, really getting a lot out of the engine. I'll have to keep an eye out and see how it develops!

Thanks!

The lighting is all faux - I have different coloured versions of various key textures. The game engine has some frustrating limitations still - there are only 16 possible wall texture slots and 16 floor/ceiling textures. The wall textures are only 32 colours (from the 256) but you can use any power of 2 width span offset at any multiple of 8, so I make the most possible use of each one.

Allowing overrides lets me replace textures for a level that would make no sense otherwise, e.g. stone walls in a spaceship. I use that for all sorts of things.

Here's the first level, showing off some of the features. 

 

 

[0x4BADC4FE]

@CravenCoyote

 

If I may make a suggestion, one of the justifiable criticisms of the original game was that, with a couple of exceptions, the levels became visually monotonous. Things that I would call out that you might consider altering a bit:

• Repeated use of the same subset of textures even in places where they might not make any sense, e.g. the cracked white stone texture area in level C, which is supposedly still in space. Maybe it's a converted asteroid but whatever.
• Lack of texture variation along large expanses. Just the same texture tiled over and over.
• Lack of vibrancy. There are some exceptions here but the game is overwhelmingly grey. AB3D had a lot of interesting colour variation - in part because it actually had a faux 12-bit RGB display.
• Lack of height variation. Many levels are depressingly flat for a 2.5D game engine, especially given the vertical scale which is possible and the fact you can create Room over Room designs.
• Poor lighting. Some areas are just completely bright, which gave no opportunity to show off any of the lighting effects.

There are also some gameplay issues:

• Hoard all the things. The lack of carry limits means all you have to do is stockpile the crap out of everything. Maybe that's a neat option for easy mode but I think that ruined the game really.
• Questionable enemy placements and firepower. This is just a lazy way to cope with the fact the player is basically godmode by the middle of the game, thanks to hoarding.

 

[CravenCoyote]

Some updates to show for MAP02 progress

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

@0x4BADC4FE, the Doomworld registration is broken, using an alternative method to log in is the only way that seems to work. I think if the name you initially tried to sign up with isn't activated within 24 hours (ie by clicking the link in the email that never sends) then the name is freed up again.

 

You've done some fantastic work there and really pushing the Amiga capabilities to their limits. I wish you the best of luck with the project!

 

You've also given some fantastic suggestions, and ones that I agree with.

The immediate thing that pops out is the repeated texture use. The trouble is trying to keep the pack as close to the original as possible, but still keeping it fun and interesting. Consequently, subtle changes are being made to the maps and coloured lighting being used to try and help keep areas engaging. They can also help with some of the maze-like layouts of some of the maps. The lighting also helps with the colour variation you mentioned, though certainly not the same as a good texture.

 

Hoarding is something that we've considered and spoken about already. The idea is to be able to allow the player to increase their health/ammo etc to more than what Doom would allow, but also set a limit so they're not just a walking pack mule that's armed to the teeth with a million hitpoints. It also makes searching for pickups more enjoyable, so I totally agree with you there.

 

The firepower aspect is something that Acturus mentioned to me. We're considering spacing out the weapons better across the maps so there is a more natural progression when it comes to beefing up the player's arsenal.

[0x4BADC4FE]

That looks awesome :D

 

Regarding the whole question of inventory, the way I've approached it is to allow mods to set an inventory limit for each class of ammunition. This doesn't affect the original game, only games that have the corresponding property file. This is also why I introduced the achievements mechanism where the modified game can define achievements and rewards for them. Rewards are not only immediate things but also modifications to the carry limits. 

 

An interesting aside about collectibles in the original game is that they can provide any combination of the different ammo classes (including the ones that only aliens use and you have no weapob for), health and jetpack fuel. I intend to make use of this mechanism by allowing a collectable item to give some unusuable ammunition class that the inventory modification mechanism recognises as a carry limit change. Thus things like backpacks and bandoliers could be a thing. For editing, it's all stored in a JSON file that I transform into a binary for the runtime: https://github.com/0xABADCAFE/karlos-tkg/blob/main/Editor/ActiveData/game.props.json

 

So my general plan is to start off with the player having quite modest carry limits but boosting them both by the collection of special items and completing certain achievements. I added a level best time mechanism to encourage replays of completed levels too, thereby increasing the chances that anything the player missed will be found/acheived.

Edited July 11 by 0x4BADC4FE

[0x4BADC4FE]

It goes without saying that any art assets in my repo (which include a few from the first game that I reworked - I love the old mechwall fans) are free to reuse if you want. I did borrow a few from doom (ironically) and some I created from scratch.

[CravenCoyote]

I've been playing about with voxels for the first time in my life. Whether we'll use them as 3D models or not, I don't know yet. But they could be handy at the very least to work out better directional sprites.

 

[CravenCoyote]

14 hours ago, 0x4BADC4FE said:

It goes without saying that any art assets in my repo (which include a few from the first game that I reworked - I love the old mechwall fans) are free to reuse if you want. I did borrow a few from doom (ironically) and some I created from scratch.

 

Thank you for this, that's very kind of you, will be sure to let you know if we use any! Likewise, if we have anything that you can make use of, do feel free.

[Kinsie]

4 minutes ago, CravenCoyote said:

I've been playing about with voxels for the first time in my life. Whether we'll use them as 3D models or not, I don't know yet. But they could be handy at the very least to work out better directional sprites.

Not the worst option for a base, I've had a decent amount of success in my mod with rendering voxels out to sprites and giving them a quick touch-up after the fact.

 

One example, using a very rough voxelization I did myself based very very loosely off of a HUD sprite from Die Hard Trilogy:

[CravenCoyote]

2 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

Not the worst option for a base, I've had a decent amount of success in my mod with rendering voxels out to sprites and giving them a quick touch-up after the fact.

 

One example, using a very rough voxelization I did myself based very very loosely off of a HUD sprite from Die Hard Trilogy:

 

Loving that! Nice work

[hbsoft]

it is beautiful 

I always want to play ab3d2 on decent hardware 

 

 

[0x4BADC4FE]

Which voxel tooling are you using?

 

Some time ago in the EAB thread, I mused about the same possibility having been following the awesome voxel mod by Cheello. The game data structures do allow for the 8 rotation poses for sprites, but they were never implemented in the game, presumably due to memory constraints, especially given that most of the aliens used the bumpmapped format. For those that don't know, this format uses 5 images for each frame: A basic colourmap (100% ambient brightness) and 4 greyscale images of the same frame illuminated from left, right, above and below. The original artists used a 3D package for this (Imagine 3D I think, but I could be wrong) but omitted to include the original 3D model assets that were used.

 

Assuming a pure white voxel model could be extracted (and a corresponding colourised version), does the tooling allow for it to be rendered with parallel (infinite distance) directional lighting? I've never used anything that before either, so I have no clue. I also use Linux rather than Windows as my daily driver, so does anyone have any tips for stuff that is native or runs well under Wine?

[0x4BADC4FE]

The voxel triclaw looks pretty good. The original looks a bit more rounded. I must confess, I dropped the triclaw from my mod because I felt it was a bit of a ludicrous enemy. You tend to see it from the front most of the time and it looks like you're being attacked by an animated pair of Y fronts. I replaced it with the robotic globe as a form of security drone.

[CravenCoyote]

Some more voxels we've been working on! Remember, nothing here is concrete. Some of these items might change or be adjusted in some way (some still need to be 'dirtied' like the medkit).

 

Medkit

 

Shotgun Ammo

 

Energy Blaster Cells

 

Armor Shard

 

@0x4BADC4FE I'm using MagicaVoxel, then converting using VoxelShop then converting again online to .kvx format.

 

Arcturus is using a combination of MagicaVoxel and SLAB6 I think (SLAB6 doesn't like my vox files even if I follow the same steps Arcturus is following for some reason).

 

VoxelShop is java based and also has a Linux installation script. I'm not entirely sure how to use it effectively, but it does seem to do the job OK. You might be able to get MagicaVoxel to run under Proton or one of GloriousEggroll's Proton builds.

 

For the monsters in TKG, they do all seem to attack the player and noone else. It's my intention to allow infighting between them, and with that you should be able to see all sides of each monster. We're hoping to use all voxel enemies at this point and also hoping it isn't too ambitious!