When Mike first uploaded Doom to Newgrounds, I remember being rather worried that the Flash Portal would be flooded with quick ports of open source games. I later found out he shared the same concern.

Flash forward to February and I realized how wrong I was. Alchemy had been almost completely forgotten. I say "almost" because advances were still being made with it, such as Michael Rennie's wonderful Flash port of Quake.

At that point I was still unable to get Alchemy working with much of anything. A few months later I tried again and I actually succeeded and, thanks to Mike's Doom port, was finally able to accomplish my goal of making a 3D Flash game.

While I understand some people may be against my decision to use an existing engine, I consider it... well, for this game, pretty much necessary, considering it's a spoof of an unlicensed SNES game that was just Wolfenstein 3D with the graphics and sounds changed.

To clarify, I am indeed against just taking existing games, changing them a little, and submitting them as your own. Super 3D Pig Feeder uses a modified version of Mike's port of Linux Doom, but it's a very different experience. It's its own game as much as, say, Hexen.

Super 3D Pig Feeder is the first Doom mod created specifically for Flash, so I wanted to set the bar high. Every graphic, sound and level is completely custom (which is legally required, actually). I decided to do things differently from other Doom mods as well, specifically taking advantage of the fact that S3DPF is a Flash game. And while most Doom games are fast-paced, visceral games, I feel you can only go so far with that, especially in a game in which you don't actually kill your enemies. I wanted Super 3D Pig Feeder to have a different style and feeling from other Doom games, so it's much more puzzle-based than usual, resulting in something more akin to Metroid Prime, or perhaps a first-person-shooter version of Monkey Island.

Esselfortium, an experienced Doom modder who helped me a great deal (if it weren't for him, really, SPF3D would be almost as crummy as the SNES game it spoofs), actually found one of the early puzzles really annoying. And I can understand that completely: he's used to things being done certain ways in Doom games, and I went in a crazy Sierra/LucasArts direction that goes against the logic he's familiar with. I stand by my decision, however; it's important to take crazy risks that may alienate people if you want to do something new. In other words, if you're a Doom veteran, you may not care for Super 3D Pig Feeder; you'll probably like it more if you aren't familiar with (or find it nice to get away from) the standardized conventions of Doom mods.

One final word to the inevitable "Newgrounds is for Flash, not for Doom mods" responses: I can sympathize completely with your sense of purity, and I hate to give the old "times are different now" response, but the fact is Flash games just aren't made in Flash that much anymore. Any given Flixel game was made in Flex or FlashDevelop, not Flash itself. The beautiful Brackenwood movies? Toon Boom, not Flash. What matters is the end result, not what it was made with. I think it's important to judge portal entries on what the person/people submitting it did, which is why I find it frustrating that people think so highly of music video Flashes to songs they like not because of what the animators did, but because they use already-good songs that the animators often didn't even get permission to use. So if/when you vote on or review Super 3D Pig Feeder, judge it based on its new elements. I started with an existing engine, but it was still a lot of work. Of course, if the final product isn't very good, it doesn't matter how much work was put into it, but don't think I just slapped new graphics and levels into an existing game. Finishing the game took over a month of doing practically nothing but working at my computer. Good level design takes careful consideration and planning. It was a challenge to implement puzzles using the Doom engine, which wasn't designed with puzzles in mind. In fact, level five required implementing a silent teleportation code that isn't even present in Vanilla Doom (for this I am in debt to Quasar`; I would have given up without him).

So anyway, I hope Super 3D Pig Feeder revives interest in Alchemy. I don't mean I want to see a bunch more Doom clones, but there are so many as of yet unexplored possibilities. Quake was ported to Flash, and look how much has been done with Quake mods. In fact, both Half-Life and Team Fortress were Quake TCs. That means that it's now possible to make a game like Half-Life for Flash. I intend to make a Quake TC, but I'm not interested in making another first person shooter after Super 3D Pig Feeder. Fortunately, the Quake engine is quite malleable and has produced games in completely different genres such as Quake Rally and Jaws. My Quake TC will probably be along the lines of those.

I make really long posts, yes. That's fine; I still have 27,233 characters remaining.