Topic: The Enemy Within -- 15th Anniversary Edition (announcement thread)

[Kaiaatzl]

Yes, time to reveal a project I've been keeping mostly under wraps.
It seems The Enemy Within is generally accepted to be among the cream of the crop of Descent singleplayer missions, right alongside gems like Plutonian Shores, Orion Nebula Project, and The Entropy Experiment.  It's the only Descent mission pack to have its own TVtropes page!  And, since it's coming up on fifteen years since it's release, and I was... vaguely... involved with its creation, I think it's high time it got a big update so that we can all discover it all over again.
Think of it like the Star Wars special editions, except not like that because it's actually good.

My roadmap right now is to have all the bells and whistles ready by the middle of next year, which is the actual anniversary.  We'll see how that goes, of course.  Here are the cool things I'm definitely doing, the cool things I'm probably doing, and the cool things I really want to do but might not be realistic.

Definitely happening:
Compatibility with Rebirth, D2X-XL, and hopefully at least partial compatibility with Chocolate Descent, potentially with separate versions to take advantage of each port's unique strengths.

An all-new original soundtrack, one that finally does justice to the insane map designs in ways neither the midi tracks nor my 2010 attempt at an OST ever could.  It'll include instrumental songs, ambient songs, and even a few vocal tracks to highlight some of the levels and setpieces that really stick out to me.  Expect to hear a mix of D1 style techno-industrial music and D2-style guitar-driven metal, all with a flavour that's uniquely "Enemy Within".
Progress on this is about 45%  I'll probably post some preview tracks sometime soon.

New voices for all of the custom robots in the pack -- except maybe Thief, out of fairness concerns.  This has been really cool to get to do and it's turned out better than I ever believed it could.
Progress on this is about 95%  It's just some of the bosses that are left to do.  There's a sneak peak at some of this down below.

Various bugfixes.  I particularly want to fix the broken cockpit textures on level 23, the broken Warlord model on level 25, and some very noticeable texture alignment problems on level 20.  Plus anything else I find in the course of testing this stuff.


Stuff that's probably happening:
A D2X-XL version with fully hi-res textures (courtesy of Pumo), some neat visual effects, and unique music tracks for the secret levels.

A Rebirth-specific version with full exit sequences for every level that makes sense to have them, and the restored D1 door sounds from Xfing's patch.  This will rely heavily on input from other people, so we'll see how it goes.


Stuff that's maybe happening:
If I can get Darkflamewolf's permission, I might try and rebalance the level 25 boss arena to make it less frustrating.  If she'd rather it not be changed, though, I'm okay with that.

And maybe even more, if I come up with some other cool thing.

Here's a video that shows off some of the new enemy sounds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AMjvlq7_ZU

And I'll add some preview music tracks sometime in the next few days.
Hopefully this is enough to get you all as excited for this as I am.

[Kaiaatzl]

Doublepost, yech, but it's okay 'cause I've got content to share

Four preview music tracks, showing off all three -- ambience, instrumental, and vocal -- styles.  The logic for using three has to do with the different degrees of theming and abstract design between different maps in the set, which I see as a great opportunity to give these songs some more variety -- something neither of the previous soundtracks for TEW really has.

Instrumental tracks are still going to be the most common style, so that's reflected in what I've chosen to show off.
Sorry for using google drive links, but I don't trust the upload function here given how this site is kind of slipping through the event horizon of its own personal black hole.

Turbine (Level 10 track -- instrumental)

Shimmer (Level 7 track -- ambient)

Betrayers (Level 21 track -- instrumental)

Exposure (Level 19 track -- vocal)