Operation Eisenfaust: Origins Level 15, 16 & 17

Level 15, Cold Feet, is another level that utilizes the train theme. However, it isn't as dominant as it was in some of the previous levels. While you start out on a rail road, the rest of the level is really a combination of mutant work spaces and locker rooms. In the original version of the game, i.e. Sonder, the locker rooms were meant to be the sleeping areas where the prisoners were resting/hiding/stacked up together in inhumanly small spaces. This is quite the change, going from that to lockers containing weapons, and as such I think this level took a bit of a hit in terms of atmosphere. It is a lot less dark and depressing. Whether that's good or bad depends on the player, but I would say that locker rooms don't really get a reaction out of the player, they just are lockers and that is that. This is in contrast with the original barracks, which make the player empathize even more with the suffering of the prisoners.

That said, I do think the allegory of mutants - prisoners does work. It is both a reference and a subversion of the original Wolf3D, where the mutants were your enemies. This prequel to episode 2 of the original shows you the experiments on these (poor) creatures, and perhaps it even makes you feel empathy for them. It works both as an allegory and as a prequel to Wolf3D. So while there is the disappointment that we didn't get to share our original vision, I think something quite different and interesting came out of it. Something that is perhaps slightly less on the nose.

The final thing that I want to mention about this level is its size. It's big, and one of the things I tended to do with the maps for this mod is to almost entirely fill up the 64x64 grid. It was 8 years ago when I started working on this mod. I was a lot younger at the time, in my teens, and with that comes the mindset that everything needs to be bigger. You tend to think more in terms of quantity than quality. Everything is less balanced because you want the maps to be as big and full as possible. I think that youthful naivety sometimes shows in my maps, at least for me.

Speaking of levels that had their atmospheres changed completely because of the translation from Sonder to Eisenfaust Origins, I will now discuss level 16: Blood Check. In the original version of the mod, this was a crematorium. The change from crematorium to mutant experiment area is perhaps slightly less big than the change from barracks to locker rooms, but it does change the feel of the level completely. The crematorium had brown bricks, ovens, burned bodies and corpses lying around, which in this version have been replaced by brown steel and mutilated mutants. While this is still horrible, it is easier for the player to detach themselves from mutilated mutants than from mutilated, burned prisoners. Again, whether this extra shock, this darkness, is a pro or con to the game remains to be seen, but it does mean that the level has turned out differently than intended.

One distracting element of this level is the music. It is the theme from Basic Instinct, and I really don't think it fits the level. While at the time I didn't care much about the music that went with the levels, as I assumed the player didn't as well, I do care about the music much more now, and this is a total mismatch. While most of the music has been borrowed from various sources, I think most of them fit quite well. Of course, it helps that I'm not always familiar with the original sources where the music comes from. I can imagine it being distracting for someone that is familiar with it. But this track sticks out like a sore thumb to me, and it would have been even worse had it played under the original version of the level.

I have talked about how, during development, we used to have a coding feature that allowed us to have two different types of shading: one for inside, i.e. under a ceiling, and one for outside. An earlier version of this level featured this coding feature quite obviously: inside it was dark, outside it was very foggy (you couldn't see far). This was an interesting dynamic, and it's unfortunate that it got lost.

As for the boss, I wanted to portray him as a coward; hence I made the decision that he wouldn't leave his office, he would only shoot from there. It's a change of pace from all the other bosses, and I imagine it must also be nice to fight a boss who doesn't blow himself up with his own rockets.

Level 17 is a level I don't have much to say about. Its title, Brain Freeze, is probably a pun courtesy of Doomjedi, as I'm fairly certain I didn't name the map that way originally. Apart from that, it's a fine level. Somewhat shorter than the others, but because of that it feels like a nice breather inbetween somewhat more intense levels. It's almost a remix level in a way, as a couple of areas were taken from discarded levels: the library part with the officers, the open area with the (soup) mutants (originally a square full of prisoners) and the beginning area were all taken from discarded levels. It's a nice, calm level that allows the player to take a breath before Dean's level 18 ramps up the action once again!

You can download Operation: Eisenfaust Origins HERE.

You can watch Balames' playthrough of level 15 below;

                                                     

And Balames' playthrough of level 16 can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDnNzli6c38

And finally, Balames' playthrough of level 17 can be found here;

Operation Eisenfaust: Origins Level 13 & Level 14

Level 13, Departed, is the first level to contain a theme that is going to be a major element of the upcoming levels: trains. In this level, you only get a hint of them, as they are either behind fences or are used to signal the end of the level. But after this level, they become a major part of the levels. Of the graphical themes I could use in the game, the trains are one of my favorites. They are new, almost never used within Wolf3D mods, and in themselves they are inspiring textures for a mapper to use. Ideas for train areas come by quickly. It's why these next couple of levels are some of my favorites of the whole game.

In that regard, Departed is somewhat of a filler level, a slow build-up towards the proper train levels. What I remember liking about it were the mine field and the forest areas, which makes it feel like you're both exploring the camp and surprising the enemies by going out and coming in the camp from all sides. Apart from that, I can't say much about it nor do I remember much about creating it. In that regard, it is a bit unremarkable, which is why I referred to it as a filler level and a slow burn in the first sentence of this paragraph. Not bad, but not outstanding compared to what is to come.

Level 14, Trains of Death, is a level that has left a bigger impression on me. The trains have a bigger role, sure, but that's not the only reason why it's better than the previous level. There's just more variety in this level: more features are being used (wirecutters, officers taking hostages) and there's just more variety in the level design all around. Bigger open areas combined with smaller, narrow spaces. It's just more interesting to play such a level, in my opinion.

You start behind a fence, though you immediately find the wirecutters, which allow you to go to the first open train area. It's an action-packed sequence, as you're surrounded by enemies from both sides. Some are in the train area with you, others are shooting from behind fences (which you can get to thanks to the wirecutters). After finding the key, you make your way to a locker area that is small and narrow, therefore requiring a different approach from the player in order to clear that area and get to the key.

The screenshot above is from the locker area. The reason why I chose this shot is because this used to be one of my favorite instances in the game. You might wonder why, as it looks relatively unremarkable now. But during the development of this game, during the period when AlumiuN was our coder, we used to have a feature where we could use different shading for indoor and outdoor areas. So when you looked at the area in the screenshot, the indoor areas used a lighter shading while a darker shading was used outside. Unfortunately I don't have any screenshots of it, but combined with the snow gently falling, it was quite the view. It is unfortunate that we had to let that feature go, as it looked amazing. But alas, that's the way things can go during the development of a mod.

You can download Operation: Eisenfaust Origins HERE.

You can watch Balames' playthrough of level 13 below;

And Balames' playthrough of level 14 can be found here;

Operation Eisenfaust: Origins Level 12

Level 12 is the biggest and most complicated level I made for this mod and the level where I found I could really stretch my mapping skills with all the amazing features we had to work with. There are a large amount of secret places, directional sprites and a whole lot more hidden throughout the level. I hadn't initially intended to make the map fill the full 64x64 grid but I got so excited with how the level was unfolding that I just wanted to keep working on it as much as I could. This level is probably the level with the most areas where you can get shot from without being aware that someone is there with fences and iron bars revealing other areas constantly. I like how open this makes the level feel while still giving it a confined yet labyrinthine look and feel.
Again in this level, I really like the mix up between indoor and outdoor areas which I feel really sets an atmospheric presence to the level. There was very little changes in this level between what it looked like as a SonderKommando level to as it appears in the final result. The mutant key (As it's called in Operation Eisenfaust: Origins) area was redesigned at a much later point I remember that but I can't recall at what actually stage, although it was prior to the planned Sonder release date.

This is a very difficult level to get 100% of everything on as there are so many secret and hidden little paths to take. There aren't that many actual secret walls though, with there only being 7 in the whole level. This is also one of the levels in the mod where a lot of people have had great difficulty finding all 3 level unlocking items. I can assure you there are 3 there and it is possible to get 100% of everything but you will need to be careful which way you push a couple of secret walls or you'll block yourself off from a couple of items.
Although it seems like there are a lot of guards in this level, there are actually only 168, which is only about 10% above the maximum for an original Wolf 3d map, they are just very well placed to surprise you and pick you off constantly which makes them seem like there are a lot more.

I'll try to include some other little things that you may not of seen each level I review also, so here's the original 'Disclaimer' screen from Sonder. This was the first screen you saw and appeared before the PG13 screen;

Trivia;
- The Actor and Static object limits for the mod were increased to 2048 and 4096 respectively!
- The Metal detector was originally intended to have a larger part in the mod, like the wire cutters, but the mappers found that they had trouble utilising it into their maps when mapping.
- The medkits were at one stage loaves of bread you could carry and use when needed.

You can download Operation Eisenfaust: Origins HERE.

You can watch Balames87 play through of Level 12 below;