=========================================================================== Advanced engine needed : Doom2.exe or compatible Primary purpose : Single play =========================================================================== Title : Back to Saturn X E1: Get Out Of My Stations Version : 1.1.4 Filename : btsx_e1.zip Release date : 08/14/2017 Author : Esselfortium and a lot of wonderful people Email Address : [redacted] Misc. Author Info : Everybody Thinks I'm A Raincloud (When I'm Not Looking) Description : Get Out Of My Stations is the first episode of Back to Saturn X, a three-episode partial conversion for Doom II. Back to Saturn X is fully compatible with Doom2.exe and Chocolate Doom. It has also been tested with Eternity Engine, PrBoom-Plus, ZDoom, GZDoom, and Risen3D. =========================================================================== IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT LOADING BTSX E1: BTSX has been split into two wad files, which must be loaded together. This has been done in order to work around an obscure vanilla crash involving wads that exceed 4046 lumps. Included in this zip archive are three files: * btsx_e1a.wad * btsx_e1b.wad * btsx_e1.deh Vanilla or Chocolate Doom users should load both wads alongside the btsx_e1.deh patch. Source port users should only need to load the two wad files together. =========================================================================== The Story So Far : The tether has been severed. A chain to the moon lies crumpled in a strewn array of blank screens and static. The Saturn X Research Station falls silent for the first time in three decades. Alarms ring out as the crisis escalates, and soon, Union Aerospace knows it can no longer ignore the deafening silence left in its wake. Time progresses. Three weeks. I arrive, and the director frowns as the briefing begins. When she speaks, the flag unfurls and the heavens split in half: They will send me to investigate. I'm to be sent on a blatant doom trip, a three-year journey from which there will be no return. My fate is irrelevant. Spit me out from your cosmos, seal me into a portable mortuary, and ship me away. As this reluctant journey begins, my goal is clear: arrive, assess, evacuate. The nightmare I had hoped would never arrive has become my sole purpose. I disembark, waking up the stars as my vision begins to blur... ... Awakening from cryo-sleep, the icy breeze is shattered and a sense of deja vu grips me in this solitary land. Although I am a newcomer to the stage, I can't help but find a sense of familiarity in this "lone space marine on the eerie rock" act. For my final performance, I have come back. Back to Saturn X. =========================================================================== * Full Credits * Artwork : Sarah "Esselfortium" Mancuso Sven "ptoing" Ruthner Music : James "Jimmy" Paddock Stuart "Stewboy" Rynn Sarah "Esselfortium" Mancuso Elric "Darkhaven" Sullivan Simon "Sirjuddington" Judd Xaser Acheron Playtesting and : Boris "dew" Klimes quality control Robin "hawkwind" Palmer Terra "Seele00TextOnly" Hathaway James "Phobus" Cresswell "Super" Jamie Bainbridge William "[WH]-Wilou84" Huber Story : Xaser Acheron Level design : Kim "Torn" Bach Matt "RottKing" Cibulas Ed Cripps Paul "Skillsaw" DeBruyne Travers Dunne Matthew "Foodles" Edwards Richard "Tarnsman" Frei Brett "Mechadon" Harrell Simon "Sirjuddington" Judd Nick "Hobomaster22" Laurent Sarah "Esselfortium" Mancuso John "Tango" Oksasoglu Bjorn "Vader" Ostmann Trevor "Iori" Primmett Walker "Pavera" Wright =========================================================================== * Map Listing * --- EPISODE I: Get Out Of My Stations ------------------------------------- 01 Esselfortium/Tarnsman: Back to Saturn X Radio Report 02 Torn/Esselfortium: Postal Blowfish 03 Skillsaw: The Room Taking Shape 04 Esselfortium: A Good Flying Bird 05 Pavera: Total Exposure 06 Iori/Esselfortium: Mix Up The Satellite 07 Vader: Metal Mothers 08 Esselfortium: Get Out Of My Stations I 09 Esselfortium/Traversd: Some Drilling Implied 10 Skillsaw: A Proud And Booming Industry 11 Ed: The Colossus Crawls West 12 Traversd/Skillsaw: Underground Initiations 13 Esselfortium/Skillsaw: I'll Replace You With Machines 14 Foodles/Esselfortium: Big Chief Chinese Restaurant 15 Mechadon: Tricyclic Looper 16 Esselfortium: Get Out Of My Stations II 17 Esselfortium: Navigating Flood Regions 18 Sirjuddington/Esselfortium: Cyclone Utilities (Remember Your Birthday) 19 Tarnsman/Esselfortium: Bingo Pool Hall of Blood 20 RottKing: U.S. Mustard Company 21 Hobomaster/Tarnsman: Failed Experiments & Trashed Aircraft 22 RottKing/Skillsaw: Gonna Never Have To Die 23 Esselfortium: Get Out Of My Stations III 24 Tango: Tough Skin River 25 Esselfortium: ??? Secret 31 Skillsaw: Optical Hopscotch 32 Skillsaw: The Hard Way =========================================================================== * Music Listing * 01 Esselfortium - Entering 02 Esselfortium - Phobophobe 03 Stewboy - Drilling By Night 04 Esselfortium - Clonk 05 Jimmy - Atmospheric Pressure 06 Darkhaven - Nanonucleonic Cyborg Summoning 07 Jimmy - Conductor 08 Esselfortium - Waiting 09 Jimmy - Untilted 10 Jimmy - Coal 11 Jimmy - Yaw 12 Jimmy - Liquid Luck 13 Jimmy - Escape Velocity 14 Stewboy - 24 15 Jimmy - Quicksilver 16 Esselfortium - Waiting 17 Esselfortium - Dirt (v2.0) 18 Sirjuddington - Untitled 19 Jimmy - Faultline 20 Jimmy - The Cry 21 Jimmy - Heliotrope 22 Esselfortium - Womp 23 Esselfortium - Waiting 24 Jimmy - Within Reach 25 Esselfortium - Undersea 31 Esselfortium - Bitmap 32 Jimmy - Atomic Title Screen: Jimmy - Back to Saturn X Intro Stats Screen: Jimmy, Essel, and Xaser - BTSX Intermission Story Screen: Darkhaven - Wait For Dawn =========================================================================== * Additional Credits * MAP05, MAP06, MAP20, and MAP24 feature additional mapping by Esselfortium. Most maps feature additional balancing, coop setup, and bugfixing by Dew, who also recorded DEMO3. MAP11 features additional mapping by Skillsaw. Various maps have had their monster teleports bugfixed for vanilla's savegame behavior by Tarnsman. Automap cleanup has been done by Tarnsman, Seele00TextOnly, and esselfortium. Various OCD alignment fixes have been taken care of by Seele00TextOnly. DEMO1 and DEMO2 were recorded by Alfonzo, who also provided par times. ZMAPINFO and DEHACKED were provided by Xaser. Fixed sprites were provided by Revenant100 and Da Werecat. Additional testing and assistance was provided by The Green Herring, ConSiGno, Kate, Marcaek, Fisk, Alfonzo, Altazimuth, Turbo Saber, Da Werecat, and Catoptromancy. Thanks to RestlessRodent, AndrewJ, CodeImp, MaxED, and Sirjuddington for the amazing editing and testing tools that made this wad possible! =========================================================================== * Difficulty Settings: Serving Suggestions * Back to Saturn X was designed primarily for the Ultra-Violence skill, but all skill settings have been fully implemented! We initially used the first episode of Alien Vendetta as our guideline for target difficulty, but as development continued, the mapset became harder and more unrelentingly paced. If you consider Alien Vendetta E2 or Plutonia too hard on UV, consider playing at a lower skill setting. Difficulty adjustments were aimed towards making the maps easier, not emptier, and the mapset has been tested thoroughly by team members who themselves prefer Hurt Me Plenty or Hey Not Too Rough. All maps were designed around pistol starts, but feel free to play continuously! Item balance has been tweaked in order to limit the trivializing nature of equipment carryovers. Maps will feel easier, as is generally inevitable with continuous play, but you shouldn't be completely swimming in ammo. (And yes, withholding the backpack is intentional!) Extra multiplayer-only monsters and resources have been added to provide extra challenge for cooperative play. Given the prevailing trends in modern PvE netplay and the widespread use of C/S ports that relax player limits, resource balance does not target any particular player count. It is assumed item respawn will be used in coop games, so play without it at your own risk! All maps have been tested to be completable with the coop extras, even with only one player. In fact, players who seek extra challenge can treat this "solo-net" mode as a hidden "Ultra-Violence+" skill! (Fair warning, the final map is nigh-impossible from pistol start!) To start a netgame in single-player ("solo-net"): - In Prboom-Plus or Eternity Engine, run the game from the command line or a batch with added "-solo-net" parameter - In ZDoom (or derivatives), use "-host 1 +map map01" in the command line, or "map map01 coop" in the console. (The latter may not work in older ZDoom versions.) Although Back to Saturn X is otherwise vanilla-compatible, cooperative and solo-net are recommended for limit-removing source ports only. Due to the added multiplayer arch-viles, you're likely to crash out with a visplane overflow sooner or later if you try coop or solo-net in Chocolate Doom or Doom2.exe. =========================================================================== * Music Playback: Serving Suggestions * The easy recommended option is to use the Microsoft MIDI synth that comes with Windows. The soundtrack to Back to Saturn X was predominantly composed using the Roland SoundCanvas instrument set, which the Microsoft MIDI synth's instrument set was based on. That means you'll hear Back to Saturn X's music just as intended without having to set up anything special at all! Alternately, using a Roland SoundCanvas soundfont can provide great results, with similar but slightly higher quality instruments than the default Microsoft ones. Your mileage may vary when using OPL emulation or using other soundfonts. In particular, custom soundfonts usually give instruments wildly different timbres and volumes than what we intended when we composed and mixed these songs, so in many cases they leave BTSX's music sounding a bit muffled, reverby, and badly-mixed, rather than enhancing the sound quality like they're intended to. For that and other reasons, we recommend the default Microsoft Windows MIDI playback for most users. =========================================================================== * What is included * New levels : 27 Sounds : No Music : Yes Graphics : Yes Dehacked/BEX Patch : Yes Demos : Yes Other : No Other files required : None * Play Information * Game : Doom 2 Map # : MAP01-MAP25, MAP31-MAP32 Single Player : Designed for Cooperative 2-4 Player : Designed for Deathmatch 2-4 Player : No Other game styles : None Difficulty Settings : Yes * Construction * Base : New from scratch Build Time : 2009-2013 for the original release, followed by endless years of nitpicking and procrastination Editor(s) used : Doom Builder, Slade, DeepSea, Photoshop, ProMotion Known Bugs : Hopefully no more. Oh god. If you encounter visplane overflows or other buggy behavior when playing Back to Saturn X, please send us a report so we can look into the problem and fix it! In vanilla, the demo loop will desync under certain circumstances. May Not Run With... : Back to Saturn X has not been tested with gameplay mods, and we make no guarantees that it will work as intended with one. The maps have been carefully balanced for exciting gameplay with Doom's standard monster and weapon behavior: if you're playing with mods and run into issues, well... stop doing that. * Copyright / Permissions * Authors may NOT use the contents of this file as a base for modification or reuse. Permissions have been obtained from original authors for any of their resources modified or included in this file. There will be a full release of the texture resource after Back to Saturn X's three episodes are complete. In the meantime, please be respectful and don't take our stuff. Thanks! You MAY distribute this file, provided you include this text file, with no modifications. You may distribute this file in any electronic format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file intact. I have received permission from the original authors of any modified or included content in this file to allow further distribution. * Where to get the file that this text file describes * The Usual: ftp://archives.3dgamers.com/pub/idgames/ and mirrors Web sites: http://esselfortium.net/