Mutant Freespace

Mutant Freespace is a state in an ancient arcade video game, Defender, and its sequel, Defender: Stargate. When I say state, I don't mean a country or part of one. What I mean is like a condition. In Defender, you had humans walking the planet surface. These humans would be picked up by alien Landers who would bring the captured humans to the top of the screen and merge with them. The resulting being looked like a combination of the alien Lander with a soft, gushy human center. This delicious being was called a Mutant. The world in Defender wasn't all that large so there were only ten humans roaming the planet surface. If and when the alien Landers finished off the last of the humans, the planet surface would explode and the player of the game was then in this condition called Mutant Freespace.

So, taking this premise to its logical conclusion, I will export this ancient alien story to the world of Doom. Doomguy, in his earlier life answered the call of the Astro Blaster; "Fighter pilots needed in sector wars!" After much early successs he later had his spaceship destroyed by the alien hordes but was able to escape using his strap on rocket pack which allows Doomguy to travel in space to avenge the loss of his UAC Marine brethen who've now all been captured and mutated into fierce mutants which bring hell to Doomguy's life.

In essence, I'm using twenty year old technology to convert a thirty-two year old game into a forty-six year old game. Nyah!

This rendition is playable (barely) with sv_infiniteammo set to 1 (true). It was designed to be played in the Zandronum port in a Deathmatch WITH monsters setting. For DMFLAGS people like me, that means adding 2048. But +sv_infiniteammo 1 works too. I set the time limit to three minutes myself. I've also provided eight co-op starts so if one wanted to run a server where players couldn't hurt each other, the option is available to them. There should be no difference in enemy/health/armor item counts between them as well as for single-player. In single-player, one may drop down the command line in the HUD by pressing the tilde (~) key and then typing sv_infiniteammo 1 and hitting enter.

For anyone who wants to purchase a handheld egg beater, they're available from Wal*mart's website. If the pizza slices make you hungry, I'm partial to slices from Antioch Pizza, Rosati's or Pizzeria Scotty.

There are several things of note:

1. This is targetted for the Zandronum source port. I did, however, test it to a degree and found it to work in ZDoom 2.8.1. By extension, that means it should work in other ZDoom-based ports such as GzDoom, LzDoom and UzDoom. But if it doesn't, I do NOT owe you a refund!
2. It barely resembles Doom. If that kind of thing makes you queasy, maybe you would rather go play some boring piece of extravagant architecture instead.
3. This is meant for multiplayer DM with a server set to infinite ammo. All enemies and treats exist in single player as well but if you're going to try it that way, you'll want to pass the sv_infiniteammo 1 console command. (and quite possibly, IDDQD too!)
4. The only weapon is plasma rifle; no pistols, shotguns, rocket launchers, BFG, bayonets, knives, brass knuckles or submachine guns. Okay, fine, there's fist and chainsaw too.