================================================================ Title : Pleiades Filename : Pleiades.wad; Pleiades.zip Author : Roger Ritenour Emale Address : ritenour@rlc.net Story Line : You are on a deep space mission when the alien invasion at Phobos occurs. The Starship Pleiades that is to retrieve you does eventually arrive, but it too has fallen to the aliens. Your first challenge is to take control of the Pleiades. From there, you fly her back to the Solar System where you will face a series of adventures against the aliens of the Phobos Invasion. Description : 11 Level quest for the ZDoom Port, v1.18b or later (will run on earlier versions, but some features used in Pleiades are not supported by them). Directions for running : Pleiades is a patch wad and is run with ZDoom using an IWAD file. The IWAD file can be Doom2, Plutonia, or TNT. (Note: if you have a functioning installation of ZDoom with anything but the shareware DoomI game, the IWAD requirement has already been met and nothing further is required to run Pleiades.) Unzip Pleiades.zip and place Pleiades.wad into a directory of your choice. To start ZDoom (from the directory you have ZDoom in), enter on the command line of the MS-DOS prompt something like: zdoom -iwad c:\doom2\doom2.wad -file pleiades.wad If you run this with Plutonia or TNT, the -iwad part of the command would be appropriately modified with the iwad's filename and path. The in the -file parameter is the location where you placed pleiades.wad. Note on screen resolutions: These levels have been optimized for speed and run nearly as fast as the original Doom II levels. (Somewhat slower areas are due to a couple of fairly long wide open views and complex structures using 2-side lines with transparent textures not typical in the original Doom II.) Generally, These levels run well at one resolution step lower from the best resolution your computer runs DoomII levels in; ie. if DoomII IWAD levels run well at 800 x 600 then you will see good performance of these levels at 640 x 480. Satisfactory frame rates have been obtained as follows: Pentium III, 600 MHz, (Home-build) (AGP video adapter) 1280 x 1024 K6, 500 MHz, (Compaq Presario) (PCI video adapter) 800 x 600 Pentium MMX, 200 MHz, (Clone) (PCI video adapter) 640 x 480 Pentium 133 MHz, (Clone) (PCI video adapter) 640 x 400 Less than 133 MHz, or any machine running an ISA video adapter, 320 x 200 Note on delays in loading: Wads with tall sky textures sometimes require extra time for loading, especially on older, slower machines. If the startup screen for ZDoom appears to lock up, give it at least 30 seconds for the loading process to complete before concluding that your computer has locked up. Multiplayer: For network play (cooperative and DM), using the command line under Windows DOS prompt or LINUX: zdoom -iwad c:\doom2\doom2.wad -file pleiades.wad -net [other machine 1] [other machine 2]... (-deathmatch) is your player number (1 through 8) with each player having a unique number. [other machine n] are other machines in the network, this can be either a host name or IP address. The last item, -deathmatch is inserted for DM play (the default is cooperative) Additional Credits : Paul Flechette, Beta tester. Derek Clemenze, Beta tester, Deathmatch (only here I could beat him since I designed the maps) Doug Ryerson, I borrowed a few of his textures from his ANTARES.WAD. Dave Swift, I borrowed his idea of shiny gold surfaces for a door textures from his H2HMUD01.WAD level. Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond music selection. ID Software, I redefined their COMPSTA1 and COMPTALL textures as animated textures to produce "living" instrument panels. Also, a couple of the sounds were borrowed from Quake and Quake II. Jim Flynn/Return, Tree Sprite and the opening music for solitude, Kanon. Midi.net Music resource for many of the musics in Pleiades. (Ride of the Valkyries, Tubular Bells, Mars) Michael Coyne, source for the music, Jupiter * Play Information * Episode and Level # : Map01 through Map11 Single Player : Yes Cooperative Player : Yes (untested) Deathmatch : Yes Map02, Map03, Map04, Map05 and Map10 are layed out for DM, other maps have the DM positions but for a variety of reasons, are not tuned for DM. Difficulty Settings : Yes, full range (all difficulty levels a little tougher than standard Doom difficulties, suggest starting at the easier levels until familiar with the layout. One special note: one of the things that really distinguishes the ultra-violence, is the scarcity of of ammo and health. You will have to think your way through and aim carefully; charging in with weapons blazing, will result in running out of ammo with many monsters left alive; But it is possible to dispatch all the monsters with the ammo available. New Sounds : Yes, many ambient and sequence sounds using ZDoom's new sounds capability. New Graphics : Many Textures, Flats, Sprites, 8 new skies that are full-tall for ZDoom, and Title Screens. New Music : Yes Demos Replaced : None ZDoom/Boom specials : Yes; water, sludge, colormaps, varying gravity, episode flow under control of the mapinfo lump, sound sequences, ambient sounds, water current, animations definition lump, and flat scrolling. (although there is not a single conveyer belt in the whole wad.) Notes on Conversion : Even though this Wad uses a lot of custom resources, an effort has been made to conform to and enhance the classic Doom story rather than to create something entirely new and unfamiliar. The story builds on the original Doom story. *Construction * Base : Based on the Pleiades and Phobos series by the same author originally created for Doom II. There are several totally new levels included, and the original Doom II version levels are significantly reworked with new features to exploit the advantages of the ZDoom/Boom ports. Editors/Tools used: WAD Builders: Wintex/Deutex, O. Montanuy Patcher, Jim Flynn (Wintex used in original Doom II levels, Patcher used in ZDOOM version) Level Editors: WinDEU32 5.23, R. Paquay, R Quinet, B. Wyber (still my tool of choice when it comes to close and detailed vertex placement, and DEU does not choke on ZDOOM/BOOM specials even though it cannot add them.) DETH 4.16b, J. Burden, S. Oke plus other contributors, (used primarily to create the ZDOOM/BOOM specials) ZETH (a variation of DETH adapted for ZDoom, used primarily to reverse engineer the ZDOOM demo levels) Waded, M. Ayres (used in some of the original Doom II versions) DOOMED (used for Doom II version of Starcity) (Multiple level editors used throughout history of development) Node Builders: BSP 1.2, Colin Reed (generally used in Doom II versions) NBLD 1.0, Jim Flynn (Used in final release) WARM11, Robert Fenske (used in history of development RMB, Jens Hykkelbjerg (reject map builder) (Multiple node builders used in development, In the final version, the maps are compiled under Nbld) Graphics Tools Corel Photopaint 6 and 8 CorelDraw 6 and 8 Sound Editing Tools: Syntrillium Cooledit 96, full registered version: Used for creation of many ambient and sound sequence wave files. Plus a portable tape recorder and a lot improvisations to create some of the custom sounds. Known Bugs : Running ZDoom version 1.18b can be problematic. The game can crash back to Windows with a page fault error or a Visual C++ runtime error. This appears to be prevalent when ZDoom has run consectively through several levels. Recommend saving at the completion of each level just prior to exiting and proceeding. Also, on each save, recommend alternating between at least 2 game-save slots because if ZDoom crashes during the save, that particular save may be corrupted. Exits of the game and restart with loading the saved game also seems to help in reducing the occurences of crashes. This problem appears to be pecular to just version 1.18b and not to earlier versions; but unfortunately, Pleiades uses some features not supported by earlier versions. * Copyright / Permissions * You MAY use this episode as a base to build additional levels You MAY modify these levels. If you do, please drop me a line, I would like to see what you come up with. You MAY distribute this this WAD in any electronic format provided you include this information file unmodified. If you use portions of this wad in other wads, all I ask is that credit be given to the originator, whether it is me or someone from whom I borrowed from.