John Romero's Daikatana (Mar 21, 1997 prototype)
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| John Romero's Daikatana (Mar 21, 1997 prototype) | ||||||||||||||||||
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A prototype of Daikatana for the PC.
Notes
Readme
Daikatana Pre-Alpha Project Pre-Alpha March 21, 1997 This is the earliest version of Daikatana that exists - it’s only two months in development and has only 2 levels started. I began writing the design document (GDD) for Daikatana in February 1997 while my first few programmers were learning the Quake tech: Kee Kimbrell, Shawn Green and Jonathan Wright. Matt Hooper (dabug) and John Anderson (Dr. Sleep) were making levels. The runnable levels in this pre-alpha version are E1M3 and E2M3. Here are the instructions for running these levels: 1. Run glkatana.exe 2. The console will come up. Type: map e1m3<enter> 3. You are in the game - have fun! 4. When you’re tired of e1m3, type ~ 5. Type: map e2m3<enter> 6. When you’re tired of e2m3, press F10 to quit Here are the keyboard commands (the romero.cfg will be the default) Left Turn left Right Turn right Up Move forward Down Move backward SPACE Jump ALT Use (door, switch,etc) CTRL Fire ESC Menu (barely works) ~ Console (for next level) C Down (in noclip mode) D Up (in noclip mode) 1-4 Select weapon This version uses the original Quake engine but in 640x480 mode. You can change the resolution with command-line parameters - here’s an example: glkatana.exe -fullscreen -width 1024 -bpp 32. Experiment! Searching the directory structure, you’ll be able to see by the config files who was working on the team back then: myself, Noel Stephens (programming), Shawn Green (programming), Matt Hooper (map design) and Bill Nadalini (testing). The real treasure trove of this version lies in the graphic files you’ll find in the data\skins directory and data\sprites directory. These are pure shit and the reason why I went through so many artists at the beginning of this project. All the skin files are 640x480 and the art is just atrocious and embarrassing. A 640x480 texture for AN ARROW??? Yes, the legends are true. Just look at these awful graphics. The furry boots, the rat, the Buboid, etc. All just awful work. None of these skins made it into the final. THE LEVELS To bring up the console, press tilde (~). You can type noclip to toggle walking through walls and god to toggle god mode. Type notarget to see monsters in their pre-awakened state (like the Griffon on e2m3!) You’ll find lots of crazy stuff with these keys. Press ~ again to put away the console. In E1M3 (dabug), you can go into the first room and see several items to pick up and press a switch (ALT) to let you into the next area. You’ll see a Prisoner, Slaughterskeet and an Inmater soon. Your weapon is a prototype of the Ion Blaster (nothing comes out but it hits targets). You’ll recognize some of the prison cells from the final e1m3 level. Using noclip, you’ll see the prototype Thunderskeet in a couple places as well as an early Sludgeminion in the sewer. In E2M3 (Dr. Sleep), you’ll see some artifacts, the Centurion and the Griffon. You shoot the prototype Disc of Daedalus. You’ll recognize parts of this level from the final game but boy did it change! Daikatana experts: You’ll immediately go to the config files and modify them yourself and see lots of interesting commands in there that you can play around with. If you want to start the program in windowed mode, create a shortcut and add -window after glkatana.exe. You can enable the crosshair with crosshair 1 among other things. Here’s some information from one of Daikatana’s foremost experts, DI-Meister: You can also record and play in-game demos. Note: this command must be written into the console BEFORE loading a map. Example: record demo_01 map e1m3 To stop the demo, you type: stopdemo To play the demo, you type: playdemo demo_01.dem Another useful command is the disconnect command. This quits the current map immediately. Note: the say command (default key: T) doesn’t work in this version. MAKING SCREENSHOTS You can make screenshots with following console command: bind "your key" "screenshot" Replace "your key" with a key of your choice. The screenshots will be available in data\config folder and are .tga files. And So... Calling this version a pre-alpha is correct but alpha was still years away - it should really be called "Start Of Development Version". At the same time we were creating this version, the PR/Hype machine was just building up while we were still trying to learn the tech and make a game. Ion Storm was growing quickly - little did we know what kind of ride was ahead of us. The beginning of the change-over to the Quake II engine was still a whole year away. But we were planning on shipping Daikatana for Christmas 1997. What a crazy idea that was. A new company, a new team that hasn’t worked on a game before...what was I thinking? DUMB. This is definitely a treasure trove for Daikatana fanatics. If you have questions, post them in the Daikatana forum on http://rome.ro. Enjoy! John Romero November 25, 2004 |
Screenshots
Gameplay (e1m3)
Gameplay (e1m3)
Gameplay (e2m3)
Gameplay (e2m3)
