=========================================================================== Advanced engine needed : Doom2.exe or compatible PRBOOM USERS USE COMPLEVEL 2 OR MAP20 WILL BREAK Primary purpose : Single play =========================================================================== Title : Back to Saturn X E2: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks Version : 1.0.1 Filename : btsx_e2.zip Release date : 08/13/2020 Author : Esselfortium and the Back to Saturn X team Email Address : [redacted] Misc. Author Info : I Invented The Moonwalk (And The Pencil Sharpener) Description : Tower in the Fountain of Sparks is the second 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 E2: 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 the following: * btsx_e2.txt (that's this file!) * btsx_e2a.wad * btsx_e2b.wad * btsx_e2.deh * map20_for_old_ports.zip (see below) Vanilla or Chocolate Doom users should load btsx_e2a.wad and btsx_e2b.wad alongside the btsx_e2.deh patch. Source port users should only need to load the two wad files together, or just drag and drop btsx_e2.zip itself. Users of certain outdated source ports will need the map20_for_old_ports.zip, which is further explained by the text file within it. =========================================================================== * Full Credits * Primary Artwork : Sarah "Esselfortium" Mancuso Sven "ptoing" Ruthner Xaser Acheron Additional Artwork : Matt "RottKing" Cibulas Andrew "Minigunner" Rowlodge Music : James "Jimmy" Paddock Stuart "Stewboy" Rynn Sarah "Esselfortium" Mancuso Xaser Acheron Eric "The Green Herring" Baker Playtesting and : Boris "dew" Klimes Quality Control Robin "hawkwind" Palmer Heather "Seele00" Hathaway tchkb Michael "Marcaek" Fraize Gus "Alfonzo" Knezevich Shannon "CSG" Freeman Guanlan Chen (GarrettChan) William "[WH]-Wilou84" Huber Jazz "jmickle" Mickle j4rio and Ribbiks (MAP31) Andromeda Story : Gus "Alfonzo" Knezevich Level Design : Xaser Acheron Mike "Use3D" Alfredson Eric "The Green Herring" Baker Matt "RottKing" Cibulas Paul "Skillsaw" DeBruyne Richard "Tarnsman" Frei Adrian "DeathevokatioN" Hanekom Brett "Mechadon" Harrell Boris "dew" Klimes Sarah "Esselfortium" Mancuso John "Tango" Oksasoglu Bjorn "Vader" Ostmann James "Jimmy" Paddock Josh "Joshy" Sealy Brad "Vorpal" Spencer Matt "MTrop" Tropiano Adam "Khorus" Woodmansey =========================================================================== * Map Listing * --- EPISODE II: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks --------------------------- 01 Joshy/Esselfortium/dew: Shadow Port 02 Tango: Underwater Explosions 03 Brad Spencer/Xaser: Wings of Thorn 04 Use3d/Tarnsman: Dirty Water 05 Xaser: Episode Hub 06 Vader: Useless Inventions 07 The Green Herring: Shrine To The Dynamic Years (Athens Time Change Riots) 08 Matt Tropiano/Tarnsman: A Blue Shadow 09 DeathevokatioN/Esselfortium: Adverse Wind 10 Esselfortium: Eureka Signs 11 Xaser: Episode Hub 12 Skillsaw: Demons Are Real 13 Jimmy/Tarnsman: Nation Gone Dry 14 Mechadon/Vader: Shocker in Gloomtown 15 Vader: The Theory of Broken Circles 16 Xaser: Episode Hub 17 Xaser: Steeple of Knives 18 Skillsaw: Optional Bases Opposed 19 Tarnsman: Unbaited Vicar of Scorched Earth 20 Tarnsman/Esselfortium: Speedtraps for the Bee Kingdom 21 Khorus/Esselfortium: Bulldog Skin 22 RottKing: Bite 23 Xaser: Episode Hub 24 Tarnsman: Perhaps Now the Vultures 25 Mechadon: Unstable Journey 26 Xaser: Beneath A Festering Moon Secret 31 Joshy/Esselfortium/dew: Fireking Says No Cheating =========================================================================== * Music Listing * 01 Stewboy - Alien Jungle 02 Stewboy - 94 03 Jimmy - Twilit Jungle 04 Esselfortium - Lost City 05 Esselfortium - Mystproj 06 Jimmy - Encased 07 The Green Herring - Free from My Shackles 08 Jimmy - The Night Guard 09 Stewboy - 95 10 Esselfortium - Noir 11 Esselfortium - Mystproj 12 Jimmy - Mist At Dawn 13 Jimmy - Scattered Ashes 14 Jimmy - Enigma 15 Jimmy - Geometry 16 Esselfortium - Mystproj 17 Xaser - Ominus 18 Stewboy - Birdsong 19 Xaser - Kashmoney Temple 20 Esselfortium - Ether 21 Jimmy - Stormwater 22 Esselfortium - Lurking 23 Esselfortium - Mystproj 24 Jimmy - Petrichor 25 Jimmy - Weather Warning 26 Xaser - Angry Science 31 Jimmy - Vinefort Title Screen: Jimmy - Back to Saturn X Intro Stats Screen: Jimmy, Essel, and Xaser - BTSX Intermission Story Screen: Darkhaven - Wait For Dawn End Screen: Esselfortium - Cruel =========================================================================== * Additional Credits * 02, 06, 07, 08, 12, 15, 17, and 18 feature additional mapping by Esselfortium. 04 features additional mapping by Seele00TextOnly. 09 features additional mapping by TheGreenHerring. 15 features additional mapping by dew. For this 2020-era "btsx_final2_reallyfinal" edition, yet more minor edits and bugfixes have been done all over the place by dew and Esselfortium. :) Thanks to Xaser for maintaining the compiled WAD, and providing the ZMAPINFO and DEHACKED lumps. Beyond the two levels he's directly credited for thing placements on, dew's contributions extend to virtually every map. His detailed gameplay recommendations are a big part of what's made BTSX what it is. Huge thanks to tchkb, GarrettChan, and Andromeda for their in-depth testing and assistance leading up to this "final" release. Bonus superthanks to Marcaek and Alfonzo for eagerly hopping on board to bring fresh perspectives to the maps late in development, and for helping with skill level refinement and the mad rush to the initial public release. Similarly, thanks to j4rio and Ribbiks for helping playtest MAP31! Automap cleanup has been done primarily by Seele00TextOnly and Tarnsman. Various OCD alignment fixes have been taken care of by Seele00TextOnly. Episode end-screen map is by Tarnsman. =========================================================================== * 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! 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. An alternative version of MAP16 (MAP16C) is included in the wad for co-op purposes (replacing the bridge raising/lowering effects with Boom silent teleports); this map will appear instead of regular MAP16 in Eternity and ZDoom, which should cover most of the co-op bases. For other ports, MAP16 will reconfigure itself when multiple players are present, making some visual compromises in order to avoid breakage in co-op. =========================================================================== * 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. If you prefer using OPL for Doom music, we've bundled BTSX with DMXOPL, a great custom patch set by Sneakernets that replaces Doom's stock GENMIDI lump to enhance the OPL instruments. Requires OPL3 (real or emulated). Your mileage may vary when using other soundfonts. 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, or OPL as an alternative option. =========================================================================== * 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-MAP27, MAP31 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 : 2009-2014, plus infinity years of procrastination Editor(s) used : Doom Builder, Slade, DeepSea, Photoshop, ProMotion Known Bugs : Hopefully none, but you know how it is. BTSX is never done. If you encounter visplane overflows or other buggy behavior when playing, please send us a bug report so we can look into the problem and fix it! May Not Run With... : Old versions of some ports have trouble with the ultra-optimized blockmap on MAP20. This optimization is supported in current versions of Eternity Engine, PrBoom-Plus (complevel 2 or 4), and GZDoom, so if you're walking through walls, update your port or use the patched (not vanilla-compatible) version in the included MAP20_for_old_ports.zip! Or just use vanilla :-) Aside from that, BTSX hasn't 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://www.doomworld.com/, http://esselfortium.net/