Ancient Aliens - final version on idgames

[skillsaw]

Ancient Aliens is a megawad featuring 32 colorful, action-packed maps for Boom compatible ports and a soundtrack composed by stewboy.

Ancient Aliens began as a personal project but eventually mappers AD_79, esselfortium, Joshy, lupinx-kassman, Pinchy, stewboy, and Tarnsman joined the fun and left their mark on the project. Special thanks to dew, AD_79, Altazimuth, and Tarnsman for helping out with testing. And of course a huge thanks to stewboy for all the awesome music!

Story
Go on a journey to discover the truth about the enigmatic origins of human civilization...

I'm not saying it was aliens, but.. the truth is out there.

Soundtrack
Check out the soundtrack by stewboy on Bandcamp!
https://stuartrynn.bandcamp.com/album/doom-ancient-aliens-ost

Screenshots


MAP27: "Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls" by skillsaw


MAP22: "Acerola-Orion" by esselfortium


MAP10: "Gift of Denial" by skillsaw


MAP11: "On the Origin of Spacies" by skillsaw


MAP15: "Wormhole Junction" by skillsaw


MAP24: "Culture Shock" by lupinx-kassman


MAP16: "Leave Your Sol Behind" by skillsaw


MAP18: "Illuminati Revealed" by skillsaw


MAP26: "Egyptian Metaphysics" by Tarnsman


MAP08: "Ancient Aliens" by skillsaw

Play Info
Ancient Aliens has been tested in ZDoom, Eternity, PrBoom-plus 2.5.1.4 (complevel 9) and Zandronum. The maps have been balanced for pistol starts but continuous should be fine if that's your preference.

ZDoom and Eternity provide story screens and menu-selected episodes. Additionally, Ancient Aliens uses ACS to play sound effects occasionally in ports that support ACS such as ZDoom and Eternity. Using ZDoom or Eternity is highly recommended.

Gameplay mods should work if they use .png graphics. If the mod contains a custom palette, you will need to adjust load order so that the Ancient Aliens palette is used. You'll know something is wrong if all the textures look garbled.

Credits

Design
skillsaw

Additional Design
AD_79
esselfortium
Joshy
lupinx-Kassman
Pinchy
stewboy
Tarnsman

Music
stewboy

Testing
AD_79
Altazimuth
dew
Tarnsman

Resource credits are included in the text file.

Map Listing
MAP01 - "The Ancient Navajo Wolf Warp" by skillsaw
MAP02 - "Sanctum of the Wastes" by skillsaw
MAP03 - "Arachnotron Arrival" by skillsaw
MAP04 - "Bad Medicine Men" by skillsaw
MAP05 - "Last Refuge of the Anasazi" by skillsaw
MAP06 - "Sinkhole Showdown" by skillsaw
MAP07 - "Dare to Fly Where Eagles Soar" by skillsaw
MAP08 - "Ancient Aliens" by skillsaw
MAP09 - "The Nectar Flow" by Joshy
MAP10 - "Gift of Denial" by skillsaw
MAP11 - "On the Origin of Spacies" by skillsaw
MAP12 - "Magenta Heat" by skillsaw
MAP13 - "Polychromatic Terrace" by skillsaw
MAP14 - "Blazing Boulevard" by skillsaw
MAP15 - "Wormhole Junction" by skillsaw
MAP16 - "Leave Your Sol Behind" by skillsaw
MAP17 - "Daylight Under a Dark Sol" by skillsaw
MAP18 - "Illuminati Revealed" by skillsaw
MAP19 - "Crash Landing" by skillsaw
MAP20 - "Code" by AD_79
MAP21 - "Cyberbullying: Beyond Earth" by skillsaw
MAP22 - "Acerola-Orion" by esselfortium
MAP23 - "Trinary Temple" by Pinchy
MAP24 - "Culture Shock" by lupinx-Kassman (additional mapping by skillsaw)
MAP25 - "Xenoarboreum" by skillsaw
MAP26 - "Egyptian Metaphysics" by Tarnsman
MAP27 - "Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls" by skillsaw
MAP28 - "Floating Arena" by Joshy
MAP29 - "The Ones Behind It All" by skillsaw
MAP30 - "The End" by skillsaw
MAP31 - "Grey Dwarf" by stewboy
MAP32 - "Ossuarium Exoterre" by skillsaw

Music Listing
MAP01 - "Flee"
MAP02 - "The Incessant Flow of Time"
MAP03 - "Depth Charge"
MAP04 - "Desk Lamp"
MAP05 - "Toe Jazz"
MAP06 - "Roof"
MAP07 - "Featherfall"
MAP08 - "Helljungle"
MAP09 - "The Demons Serenade"
MAP10 - "Vase"
MAP11 - "Spacetrain"
MAP12 - "Web of Steel"
MAP13 - "Gold Rush"
MAP14 - "Moonwalk"
MAP15 - "Hypercube"
MAP16 - "Space Jiggle"
MAP17 - "Other Side of the Moon"
MAP18 - "Trapeze"
MAP19 - "Long Night"
MAP20 - "20 Goto 10"
MAP21 - "Basement"
MAP22 - "The Last Dance"
MAP23 - "The Greater Good"
MAP24 - "Imaginarium"
MAP25 - "Alien Forest"
MAP26 - "Tales of Old"
MAP27 - "Garden of Lost Souls"
MAP28 - "Gigabridge"
MAP29 - "Colliding Nebulae"
MAP30 - "Yuletide"
MAP31 - "Tribal Dance"
MAP32 - "Birdsong"
Intermission - "Concentration"
Title - "Welcome to Egypt"
Text screen - "Martian Blues"


Download

Final
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/aaliens

RC3b (outdated)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/78a6xmqju45sigf

RC3a (outdated) (fixes major bug on map06 in prb+)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/8bfxr2az5b8i8fy

RC3 (outdated)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/y827iq9vo4iqx5r

RC2 (outdated)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/r0iqcd1vrqc9ooc

RC1 (outdated)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/5ptaah76c81rgsh

aa-tex final
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/combos/aa-tex

Edited June 5, 2023 by skillsaw

[Pinchy]

\ ';,,;' /

[Tarnsman]

Looks like complete garbage. You should feel terrible dumping this crap onto Doomworld. Go home and think about what you did.

[Tristan]

Wow, beautiful and fabulous screenshots!
Gonna give this one a whirl.

--
Oh dear.

[Breezeep]

Aliens are real

[yakfak]

this wad reveal made me resonate at the precise frequency necessary to enter into the collective unconscious and become suffused in happy thoughts themselves totally replacing my need for nourishment

[esselfortium]

Congratulations on getting this out! From what I've played so far it's damned amazing, you should be seriously proud. Thank you for letting me participate in it!

[HavoX]

Must. play. this. wad!

[Kira]

I was happy with my current backlog order, and you just changed everything. Those screens killed me! And seeing more skillsaw, Joshy and co maps makes this mandatory playing.

[kmxexii]

i was wondering about this the other day. but a full, varied megawad of neon-soaked bliss had not entered into my wildest dreams.

[baja blast rd.]

1) Am I dreaming?

2) Is map01 for real, LOL.

[dew]

Oops, people realized the wad is just a hallucination sooner than we anticipated. Or is it?

[DeathevokatioN]

Jesus Christ I'm blown away... what??? Am I dreaming??
Seriously, welldone dude!!!!

[MrGlide]

WOW, That looks amazing. Good job, I can see from the screens you've put a shitload of work into this, can't wait.(edit) Yup, just beat the first level and I'm floored, This a Amazing. This is definetly going to win a Caco-award. Fucking Bravo!!(edit2)I decided this was to cool to not share, so I pasted it all over facebook.

[Wereknight]

Oh my... OH MY!!!

What a badass pics I see!

Will play on next week!

[Roofi]

This is how Doom porn looks like.

[Suitepee]

Looks like next month's DWMC has just been confirmed.....

[Rayziik]

Goddammit. Here we go again.

I'm gonna stream this today, since I don't have anything else to do.

Link here, will go live within the hour.

[MrGlide]

Rayzik said:

Goddammit. Here we go again.

I'm gonna stream this today, since I don't have anything else to do.

Link here, will go live within the hour.

Today being mothers day might have a bit of a low turn out, I'd love to watch you but I'v much to do with my wife(shes at the salon right now.).

[valkiriforce]

Dang, another megawad? Congrats on getting this out there. :)

[UglyStru]

Jesus christ, I have no time to play this. I'm in the middle of LPing Flashback To Hell. I can't just drop what I'm doing for this.... or maybe I can... idk

[Acid]

Holy shit this looks amazing! Congrats on the release, gonna get to playing it real soon :)

[Not Jabba]

This...but...I...what???

[Jimmy]

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I'M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO PLAY THIS FOR AT LEAST A WEEK

EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE

[Scuba Steve]

[ReFracture]

Yes please.

[40oz]

Looks cool man! Congratulations!

[DeathevokatioN]

Seriously, thanks for your contributions to this community, skillsaw! :)

[thaquoth]

FFffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Holy shit.

And I have to finish a paper first. Goddamn.

[Ribbiks]

lots of snazzy recolors, looks like a metric ton of work was put into the assets alone. I clipped and cleved my way through and it's obvious there's a lot of neat ideas here, looking forward to getting the time to give this a playthrough (you did release it during finals week here :p). Kinda getting a vibe that's halfway between a joke-wad and what I thought btsx e3 was going to end up looking like.. The first map is one of the greatest things ever, btw.

very impressive that you're knocking out these monster projects so quickly. I wonder how long this one was under the radar? (a lot of the maps look like they were made in a similar design mindset as valiant, so perhaps they were made concurrently?)