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Details for RealCombat
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The Doom games and most PWADs for Doom are great to play. However, at one
time or another, the player can feel invincible compared to the lowly grunts
and even the monster bosses sent against him.

This PWAD is designed to be the antithesis to that design. Instead of making
the level hard with tons of powerful monsters, I prefered to make the player
weaker and more vulnerable. He would be armed with weapons that are comparable
to real-life in lethality, ammo limits, and other behavior. He would also be
equiped with the gear a future soldier would likely posses, including nightvison
goggles, first aid / stimulants, performance enhancing armor, and other such
implements.

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-The player is equiped with an unlimited-use nightvision scope that actually works
really well. I want to put this on a battery somehow, so you can't just leave it
on all the time, but it's KEYCONF-based, and I can't put it in scripts, because it
interferes with the injury scripts.
-Injuries are also included in this PWAD. The player, when badly wounded, experiances
a darker, red tinted screen, as well as a heartbeat that speeds up and gets louder.
You'll know when you need to use the first-aid feature. Open wounds will result in
steady loss of life through bleeding. The player must tie off his wounds, one at a time,
if he does not wish to bleed to death (tying off requires going to a slow walk).
-Another useful feature is the addition of sub-status messages giving you more info on
what's going on. For example, if you hit an key, and start running slower and your guns
disappear, the HUD tells you that you're tying off wounds. Eye-candy, perhaps, but
also useful in it's own way.
-All of the guns have an ammo capacity comparable to Halo, and require reloading, which
is managed through scripts and variables which keep track of the clips remaining.
Also included are ejecting bullet shells which vary depending on the gun you're using.
The shells spawn at your feet, however, not your gun. This is a bug I can't seem to
get past.
-A slightly less useful feature is the ability to select one of 18 Doom II tracks to
listen to while you play. It's sort of like a radio, but not... :) Anyway, this feature
will be greatly expanded later on. Cool, huh? I'll even set it up so that CDs can be
played (hopefully).

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For this, I chose the PC game Halo for my visual and audio needs (one can also
get a hold of my Halo Weapons Mod for ZDoom). Almost every sound you hear in
this level was extracted from Halo with the HaloMapTools v3.5 by MonoxideC.
Many sprite graphics were also obtained through this method, in additon to
screenshots of the weapons (carefully edited, of course. And I don't want to
hear about "crappy 3D weapon rips").

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The inspiration for the archetecture and general "look" of this level, not to
mention the soldier graphics, came from MARINES.WAD by (crap, I deleted the
textinfo file!). The idea has been greatly expanded upon, of course, and improved
considerably. Unfortunetly, a Doom community weaned on the fat-clay-model look
has dubbed the soldier sprites ugly (no offense ment to those who thought so).

If you want the soldier sprites back, you'll have to do some DECORATE editing,
because many of the frames don't match up. Thankfully, most of the soldiers share
everything but the attack sequences, so you can Copy/Paste a lot. No only will this
add to the atmosphere, it makes the level harder because the soldier sprites blend
in with the "bland" color scheme :). However, an added side effect is you will not
be able to tell what class the soldiers are.

I may remake the original DECORATE soldiers and release them separately, if there
is any public desire for them (perhaps I'll even improve the graphics a little)

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I chose ZDoom for this project mainly because it's the only port I've ever really
played with. Besides, the scripting, special effects and gameplay enhancers are
second-to-none. Scripting is used intensivly in this level, mostly because of the
lighting effects and interactive environments. However, I must admit that my script
organization skills (particularly in respect to numbering) are very lacking ;).

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With respect to Multiplayer, this PWAD was designed, built, and scripted with Co-Op
play in mind. However, this feature has not been sufficiently tested (as of the time
of this writing) and thus may not perform as expected. However, I'm fairly confident
that I've done everything possible to make it work, even if I needed to duplicate
some scripts for respawns. As for DM, there are no DM starts or anything of the sort.
You could start a co-op game and then hide from each other, but that's kinda boring
unless you're into that. Even then, the damage ratios won't be the same until
custom weapons are implemented. It would be mostly like a regular Doom deathmatch.

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On environment interaction, I've tried to make this PWAD as realistic as possible.
I plan on having destructable plants, breakable machinery, and usable computer systems
of a sort. Current features include breakable windows, an operating generator system,
shootable lights, climbable walls, and barbed wire that hampers your movement unless
destroyed. On a side note, the only thing preventing me from adding vegetation is a
lack of realistic sprites. *coughhelpcough*

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Details ChangeLog (most recent first):

-Feb 2, 2005: First wrote DETAILS to explain more about the WAD
-Feb 6, 2005: Some grammer errors, updates on features
-Feb 19, 2005: Revised the section about the soldier sprites
-Feb 19/20, 2005: Included new energy feature
-Mar 18, 2005: Deleted and added some references to removed/added features
-Mar 21, 2005: New music feature mentioned
-Mar 22, 2005: Deleted some more references to removed features
-Mar 23, 2005: Some more minor changes
-Jun 17, 2005: Removed obsolete stimpack reference
