Aliens TC | ALITCWAD.WAD
Justin Fisher (with Richard Love)
It's logical, though, is it not? After all, Doom was originally conceived as a licensed Aliens game, even seeing some talk with 20th Century Fox, before the then-fiercely independent id Software decided to move on with an original IP to maintain creative freedom. The end result was sort of a cross between Aliens and Evil Dead, which of course meant that Aliens has always been a part of Doom's DNA. You can see that influence in the game, especially in its darker, moodier moments, such as E1M2 with its dark tunnels and mazelike design. It certainly would follow that someone would essentially backport Doom into the Aliens shooter it originally was.
Some of you -- especially if you're younger -- might be wondering what Aliens even is. Aliens, and the wider franchise it's a part of, is a classic of sci-fi horror, a tale of isolation and fear in deep space, hunted by drooling, insect-like monsters, bio-engineered by some long-ago entity, which move fast, kill messily and bleed acid. And as Aliens shows, not even a heavily-armed squad of tough, battle-hardened marines are prepared for the fury of a nest full of the things. I would highly recommend you watch Alien and Aliens (the two go together) before you play this.
While it's called a "total conversion," Aliens TC is in practice only a partial conversion. It makes heavy use of Doom 1 textures, Fisher presumably deciding there was no sense in not reusing textures that already rather effectively embodied the kind of sci-fi installations he wanted to create. Some of the assets are likewise frankensteined together from other assets -- the textures and sprites used for the hive areas are a good example of this, being largely Doom's hellish bones-and-sinew textures tinted green and some of the tortured corpses (the kind you can see on display in Doom's E3M4: "House of Pain") being used as hapless colonists. Nevertheless, "total conversion" by 1990s standards is still an accurate term if only because it removes most of the trappings of its mother game -- the UAC is gone outside of errant logos on crate textures, there are no demons, and of course the plasma rifle and BFG are gone (in the former's place is the smartgun which functions much the same and the latter is a broken powerloader to punish cheaters that otherwise does not appear anywhere in the campaign.) The chaingun and rocket launcher are both also gone, replaced by a gun that I suppose is meant to be the pulse rifle but looks nothing like it, with its electronic readout showing in green or red depending on whether you have bullets or grenades loaded. The pistol, shotgun, and of course Doomguy's mug remain unchanged. Even the music goes unchanged, which is why it's preferable to just mute it (or put on something more appropriate -- I like to use the Alien Trilogy soundtrack, myself.)
The monster roster has been radically changed, obviously. There are only five enemy types now, all of them xenomorphs. Facehuggers are a frequent appearance, especially with the dozens upon dozens of eggs scattered throughout most of the maps. Their lunge attack doesn't do a lot of damage, but they can do it repeatedly in a short time, which can rapidly drain your health. There's two types of alien warriors, one that doesn't explode in a shower of acid, and one that does, and the only way you can tell the difference is the exploding ones don't make any noise. Alien drones are smaller, still use the imp alert noise, and spit acid balls at you. And finally there's the alien queen, who stomps around and tries to slash you but has no distance attack. All seem to have been created from 3D models, but the conversion to sprites is pretty ropey and pixellated. One cute feature was the use of motion sensor pings as monster sounds that were louder or quieter depending on your distance to the xenomorph making it. It's such a clever design, working within the more primitive state of Doom modding back then, with no hope for a motion sensor, to still recreate, as best as possible, one the film's most iconic features.
Of course, playing this thirty years on you might find the level design to be distinctly of that "1994" variety; while the mapping is very much a product of its time, with misaligned textures, empty rooms that serve no obvious purpose to the setting, and a generally liminal ugliness that I personally think is part of the charm... to be quite honest, I don't think Aliens TC would have worked nearly as well without its labyrinthine design, something that unlike all the other "features" I've been sad to see disappear from mapping trends in the last couple decades. If I had to pick a level as truly bad even by the standards of the time, I'd pick the secret level, an attempted recreation of the massive alien derelict (as seen in the first Alien film) by Fisher's friend Richard Love. It's certainly playable, but most of the level is in pitch black, which -- depending on what source port you might be using -- may prove untenable.
This is probably a good time to talk about the many, many versions of Aliens TC. As best my research could bear out (with archive.org down for the last week and change I was unable to check their archive of the old cdrom.com FTP server) Aliens TC officially came into the world in October 1994 -- I couldn't find an exact date, but Doomwiki offers a suggestion with a citation pointing to a Usenet post talking about it dated October 19th, 1994. Based on what the post actually says, I don't think this can reasonably be cited as a release date, however -- but the actual window for its release would be pretty narrow. (This would actually make it the oldest Aliens first person shooter -- beating out Alien vs Predator for Jaguar by at least a day.) It's my understanding that as with many larger projects of the era, the original packaging was something of a bear to actually install; it was later repackaged (for easier installation) in early November 1994 by Olivier Montanuy, the developer of early editing tools DeuTex and DeuSF, and it is this repackage that has led most sources to assume a release date of November 3. In 2000, Doomworld forum elder and current Night Dive employee Quasar repackaged it again, this time in a much more simplified format that breaks out the DEHACKED wizardry into separate .deh and .bex files for easy source port use, and though it's 24 years old, it's still the best way to play the original version of Aliens TC. You could, however, go further, and play Kontra Kommando's 2017 "remaster" for GZDoom; it features redone lighting across the board, use of dynamic lighting for various props new and old, a flashlight (which I disabled and replaced with Flashlight++ 9.1) and numerous fixes and other changes. I've played both the original version and the remaster, and both have value. There's a certain charm to playing the original, with its old-school 1994 charm (and of course it's source port-neutral) but the 2017 version manages to breathe in a little new life into those corridors with its lighting changes. In the years since the 2017 release, someone has picked up where Kontra Kommando left off and continued to polish the release, putting out a version 1.5 most recently as of this writing.
If you don't like Aliens TC I don't know what to tell you. Granted, there's been a lot of advancements in Doom modding (and modding for other games!) in the thirty years since -- including some newer, more advanced Aliens mods -- but Aliens TC showed what was possible. Even today in our post-Brutal Doom, post-Eviternity world, Aliens TC stands as the granddaddy of modding. Counter-Strike, DOTA, DayZ -- Aliens TC walked so they could run. Some of the Aliens games released since then really could have taken a few cues from Fisher's magnum opus. Colonial Marines, I'm looking at you.2017 version
(As a side note, Aliens TC did in fact have some lasting influence on a future game... it just happened to be 1998's Trespasser, a first-person adventure title in the Jurassic Park cinematic universe that was ironically probably better known for running like shit on even cutting-edge hardware than being able to see the player character's boobs when you looked down.)
Get it on Doomed Speed Demos Archive (2000 repack)
Get it on ModDB (2017 version, 1.5 update)
E2M1: Landing Pads
The first map, famously devoid of enemy; instead, Fisher slowly builds tension as you explore the lower depths of the hangar complex searching for the blue key that will get you out. Good use of movie samples set the mood, and while it's a bit maze-like, it's nothing on what you'll face ahead. If you want a version of this map with monsters, give E3M2 (the second bonus map) a try.
E2M2: Atmospheric Processor
It's quiet when you start out, but as you push deeper into the facility you'll find the hive sections, dripping with secretions that block your way and trip you up. Even here it remains quiet until the xenos start coming out of the god damn walls, at which point you're going to be surrounded and searching through a terrifying maze for the way out.
E2M3: Med-Labs and Operations
A recreation of one of the more iconic sequences from the film, your job here is to reach open passages that you must slam the red buttons to seal off lest you want to deal with way more xenos than you really have the ammunition for. It's a pretty intense level, complete with a very long, tense tunnel crawl.
E2M4: Med-Labs and Operations
Time for more action, complete with aliens dropping from the ceiling (source-port dependent -- thanks to years of behavior changes under the hood, this is actually broken in GZDoom unless you're playing the 2017 version.) It's a recreation of the film's big climactic scene, where the aliens break into the medlab and some of the characters escape into the air ducts and sewers, making for one big maze just crawling with bugs.
E2M5: Atmospheric Processor
Another fight through an infested maze of tunnels. This level was originally intended for the E2M3 slot to better follow the plot of the movie before being moved to its current slot to take advantage of the (at the time hardcoded) secret exit. It also used to be much bigger, but it had to be split in half, with E3M1, the first bonus level, being the excised section. Even at half size, it's a sprawling complex with xenos roaming everywhere. Once you get outside you're not done yet, but the end is in sight. Are you brave enough to find the secret exit?
E2M9: Alien Host Ship
Richard Love
The oddball of the bunch, "Alien Host Ship" is, in short, a slowly-unfolding, featureless, dark maze. As more of the maze opens up, more xenomorphs come out to get you. It's a cool idea, and makes good use of a little-used stock Doom texture, but the map is a little one-note. You actually will run into a queen in the egg chamber, but you can just run around her.
E2M6: Atmospheric Processor
One more dive into the steamworks; it starts off atmospheric as you work your way down into hive, with some great ambushes across a big, nasty maze, surrounded by a ventilation network that gives at least the illusion of multi-leveled design. This is probably the best map in the bunch; I had a lot of fun with it.
E2M7: Alien Hive
Picking up where the last level left off, it's time to find your way back out, with lots of vent crawling (including a nasty drop back into the main lair if you go the wrong way.) It's a much smaller map than its predecessor, just your job is going to be cut out for you as xenos will be coming for you hot and heavy as you work your way back up to the landing platform.
E2M8: The Sulacco
Yes, that's how it's spelled (though there's an update mod that fixes it.) Just a boss level set entirely in the docking bay. The dropship -- bulky and weird-looking as it is in the primitive Doom engine -- and the vents that surround the map can help keep some distance between you and the queen. There are powerloaders here, but they're effectively useless, so hopefully you brought enough ammo to take down the big momma.
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