Supplice!
And here it is, the first official announcement of my new project entitled “Supplice“. Some of you may already know about it since I’ve hinted at it here and there. Supplice is the project I’ve dreamed of putting together for the past few years now. It officially started on June 14th of 2009 and has undergone quite a few changes since it’s conception. As of now I have finalized almost all of my goals for the project.
Supplice will be a Boom compatible megawad with a mountainous number of features for Doom II. It will have many influences taken from the look and feel of games like Doom 64 and Quake. I’m treating the entire project as if it were a part of the Doom lineage, and as such there is a new story and other things to reflect this. There will also be a bunch of new monsters, some new weapons, a horde of new graphics, and many other changes that will help to bring about the look and atmosphere I’m shooting for. More importantly, it will be a culmination of all the mapping techniques I’ve learned since I started building maps for Doom. And I plan on having a blast putting it together.
From here on out you can look over the main project goals of Supplice as well as some possible FAQ’s I thought people might have.
Goals
- To create, from scratch, a set of 32+ maps for Doom II in Boom format for singleplayer and, possibly, COOP.
- The set will be split into 6 episodic sets of 5 maps each, with the player being killed at the end of each episode (ala Scythe II). Maps will be playable from pistol start as well as map by map.
- The main design focus of the maps will be on interesting layouts and architecture with moderate amounts of detailing. The gameplay will shift somewhere between moderate to slaughterfests and probably everything in-between.
- I’m shooting for a different atmosphere and feel from Doom for the maps; similar to Doom 64 in many aspects. To help facilitate this, there will be many new graphics, sprites, sounds, a new texture set and hopefully an entirely new soundtrack.
- There will be a number of new monsters and even some enhanced weaponry. The majority of the Doom II resources (weapons, monsters) will remain in-tact. The idea is to mix-up and add-to Doom II’s gameplay potential.
To summarize, this will be a project between a few fellow Doomers who enjoy making new content for the game. It will focus on gameplay, architecture, and visuals. It will have it’s own feel and atmosphere but at the same time will still be connected to the Doom feeling. Most of all, it will be a project that will allow me to use and put into practice what I have learned so far in regards to mapping…as well as a new learning experience. And we’re going to have fun with it!
I’m sure some of you will have questions, so I put together a FAQ. Click “Show” to open the spoiler and view the FAQ.
F.A.Q.
Q: When will it be done?
A: Ahahahaaaaaaahahahahaha…ahaha…arrghhgirgle….*plop*
Q: But seriously, any idea when it will be released?
A: The development schedule is currently on an indefinite scale, so no. Ideally I would want it to be done in a somewhat timely manner (ie. a couple years at the most). But right now it’s done “when it’s done”.
Q: How far along are you now?
A: Since your reading this, it means that I’ve moved out of the pre-planning/pre-alpha stage. No mapping has been started yet; I’ve been working on getting the resources in and finalized first for a few months now. I will not begin any mapping until the largest majority of the resources are finished and ready to use. As it’s turning out, getting the resources together is a project in itself.
Q: Why are you copying Scythe II? Can’t you be original for a change?
A: Scythe II is one of my favorite megawads, and I like how it progresses with it’s episodic setup. Also, I’m really thinking of Supplice as a tangent to the Doom storyline in a way, so this setup is ideal. And no, I can never be original. You guys should know that by now.
Q: Why Boom format? Why not ZDoom or Eternity or some other, more advanced format?
A: I struggled with this question quite a bit actually. It boils down to this: Boom is highly compatible with most ports these days so it can reach a larger audience, I’m able to do just about all of my enhancements in dehacked, and mapping in Boom format is the perfect balance of simplicity with new features. If I went with a format with piles and piles of features, this project would just start to become bigger and bigger in scope. I’m only one man and it’s going to be difficult enough to do this amount of mapping on my own, so Boom’s balance is perfect.
Q: “Possibly COOP”?
A: Yea well, here’s the thing – I won’t know if it will work well in COOP until I can get some mapping and testing done. COOP is definitely a bonus and I will work hard to make it compatible. But Supplice is singleplayer first and foremost.
Q: Will you be releasing the episodes seperately, just like was done with the Scythes?
A: I wasn’t planning on it from the beginning, but I may change my mind. It all depends on how long the project ends up taking.
Q: Will you be raping my computer with insane amounts of detail?
A : I dunno…yea probably.
Q: Why are you adding new monsters and changing other things? OR *insert complaint about changing stuff here*
A: This project is not meant to be an entirely classic endevour, and as such there will be some new stuff. The weapons that will be tweaked will still function very closely to their original Doom counterparts except that they will be a little more powerful. The goal with the weapons in question is to bump up their teiring since I have always felt they were lacking in comparison to the rest of the armament. There were a number of monsters that I’m not even going to use (ie. SS Nazi, Keen, Icon of Sin, etc) and so I decided to use that as an opportunity to add some new monster behaviors. All but one [and 1/2] of the original Doom monsters will remain intact. Balance is a very big goal with all of these changes and I’m confident that they will enhance the overall experience in Supplice. If you don’t like changes or new things, then you should probably look elsewhere.
Q: Why are you bothering with a story?
A: Initially I wasn’t going to bother with a story when I first started the project. However as the project got fancier and fancier, I decided that I’d use an old fanfic I wrote a few years ago as a base for the episodes and the project as a whole. I’m almost thinking of this as a Plutonia or Doom 64 in that it will a part of the Doom line. I’m not going to spoil anything, but the story does connect in some ways to the original Doom, although not directly. In the end though, the story is more of a skeleton than a driving force of the project.
Q: What sort of gameplay can we expect?
A: Singplayer mapping is something that I, unfortunately, don’t have a whole lot of experience with right now. I really enjoy wads like Suspended in Dusk, Scythe II, and similar, so I imagine it will reflect some aspects from those map sets. I can say that the episodes will be more difficult as you progress.
Q: You said that it will have an atmosphere similar to Doom 64. What exactly do you plan on doing to achieve that?
A: Many things, actually. I’m planning on using an entirely new set of textures created by the talented esselfortium. They are a bit moodier than your normal Doom resources and they fit perfectly with my goals. There are also going to be sprite replacements for all of the weapons and many other items. The majority of the graphics (fonts, etc) will be replaced. And there’s also plans for a brand new soundtrack; ambient, dark, drone and stuff like that.
Q: How much of this work is going to be yours?
A: As much of it as possible. Originally, one goal of mine was to create anything and everything that was going to be used in the project by myself. As things changed though, the scope became a bigger and more in-depth, and I had no choice but to look outward for help. Right now I’m getting help with some of the sprite work, the textures, and the music. Some of the monster sprites are from existing projects and games.
Q: When will we see some screenshots or progress?
A: Whenever I get something worth showing. Probably not until a map or two is in progress.
Q: What does Supplice mean?
A: A quick Google search will tell you that it’s a French word meaning torture or torment. I got the idea to use it as a name for my project from Armored Core 4. It fits perfectly for a Doom project and I really like it.
Q: Aren’t you working on other projects like Vaporware, TSoZD, etc? Won’t a project of this scope take up all of your time?
A: Yes I am signed up to work on other projects, and I do plan on contributing to them even with Supplice in production. There is no question that Supplice will take an enormous amount of time to complete. However, I still plan on contributing to other projects with some good time and priority management, so no worries.
Q: You’ll never finish this, your too lazy and the workload is too huge.
A: Uh, is that a question? Barring anything serious, I have no plans on canceling this project nor changing many of the goals as they are now. The worst-case scenario is that it turns into a Mordeth 
Q: Can I help? And who’s currently on the team?
A: I definitely welcome any and all help, but right now it’s going to be delegated to music/sprite work only. Later on down the line though, I will need some dedicated and discrete testers. My team currently consists of Jimmy91 (he’s helping with just about everything) and NeoWorm (hopefully will be able to do some spriting work for me). If your interested, please feel free to contact me.
Once the project progresses more and has something to show, I will probably start some project threads and a WIP page so everyone can keep up with the development. Until then, any announcements regarding Supplice will be relegated to Mekworx, so please feel free to spread the word :). Also be sure to check out the Supplice design page; I will be archiving all of the project information as well as screenshots there.
Got any other questions or comments? Feel free to send them!