================================================================
Title                   : Chex Quest Conversion and Update
                          Phase I

Filename                : Cquestp1.WAD

Author                  : Original graphics, sounds, and levels
                          by Digital Café.
                        : Conversion, repair, and updating by
                          Mark Quinn (a.k.a. Boingo the Clown)

Completion Date         : Thursday July 10, 2003

Email Address           : boingo_the_clown@hotmail.com 

Web Pages               : http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/
                          http://members.fortunecity.com/doomskin/

Misc. Author Info       : Overstressed, overweight, overtired,
                          oversexed, and undervalued.

Description             : This is a conversion of the old Chex
                          Quest TC and its add on, Chex Quest 2,
                          into a single wad file with all of the
                          DooM IWAD elements removed.
                          This wad represents the first phase my
                          plans to update and improve Chex Quest.
                          See below for a more detailed
                          description.

Additional Credits to   : Digital Café for making Chex Quest in
                          the first place, the DooM Legacy team.
================================================================

* Play Information *

DooM Source Port        : Requires DooM Legacy version 1.30 or
                          higher running DooM 1.9 or Ultimate
                          DooM. *It should be noted that this
                          version of Chex Quest runs as a PWAD,
                          not as an IWAD, like the version I
                          started with.*

Episode and Level #     : E1M1, E1M2, E1M3, E1M4, E1M5
                          E2M1, E2M2, E2M3, E2M4, E2M5

Single Player           : Yes
Cooperative 2-4 Player  : No
Deathmatch 2-4 Player   : No
Difficulty Settings     : Not implemented
New Sounds              : Yes
New Graphics            : Yes
New Music               : Yes
Demos Replaced          : None

* Construction *

Base                    : Chex Quest 1, and Chex Quest 2
Editor(s) used          : DooMCAD 5.1, WinDEU 5.24, ZenNode,
                          DEHackED 3.x, Wintex 3.4, Wintex 4.3
Known Bugs              : Mosquitoes, ants, cockroaches, moths.

================================================================
* Detailed Information About this Wad *

Way back in 1995, Ralston Purina released Chex Quest, a slightly
modified version of DooM with its own IWAD on boxes of its Chex
cereal.  The game had been developed by Digital Café.

About twelve days ago, I was on the Tucows site, and came across
a "new" entry. It was a "new" release of Chex Quest by Scifience
Studios, claiming that it was a whole new version of Chex Quest
with openGL support.  This is actually what it said:

  "Chex Quest is the ultimate adventure for game fans of all
   ages. This game was originally distributed in cereal boxes
   in the mid 1990s, but was available only for Windows 3.1. 
   Now, the game has been re-released with enhanced graphics
   and gameplay for both Windows and Macintosh!"

I downloaded the file and installed it, and it just turned out
to be the same old Chex Quest, but with a copy of DooM Legacy
included with it, and a copy of Chex Quest 2.  What's more, the
Chex Quest IWAD contained many of the sprite graphics, and most
of the episodes from The Ultimate DooM, which technically makes
their Chex Quest IWAD warez, and the Legacy development team was
not credited at all.  Chex Quest was not even fixed up to run
properly with Legacy.  In openGL mode, many of the levels had
invisible walls.  This version of Chex Quest was just crying out
for somebody to fix it, and I was just the man for the job.

After a week of intensive work, I am proud to say that this
version of Chex Quest looks ... um ... exactly the same.

"If it all looks the same," you may ask, "what exactly was done
to it, and why did it take almost every waking hour of a week to
get it to this state?"

Well, here is your answer:

The Chex Quest and Chex Quest 2 wads both used the same levels
(E1M1—E1M5), and redefined many of same sprites patches and
textures, thereby making the two Chex Quests incompatable for
inclusion in a single wad file.

The first and most obvious thing was to extract all the levels
using Wintex 3.4, and run them all through ZenNode. ZenNode is a
DooM node builder needed for running maps in openGL mode without
without those missing walls. Since including the would be warez,
I deleted all of the DooM IWAD graphics and levels.

I then moved all the Chex Quest 2 levels over to episode II. 

Here is where all the work began. 

Since many of the textures from Chex Quest 1 are overwritten by
the textures from Chex Quest 2, so I had to change the names of
Chex Quest 2 patches, create new textures with them, then edit
the Chex Quest 2 maps to include these new textures in place of
the old ones. 

The sprites for three "new" flemoids in Chex Quest 2 also
overwrote thier Chex Quest 1 counterparts, so I had to rename
the Chex Quest 2 sprites, then use a hack patch to duplicate
the imp and the demon and assign them the new sprites. The CQ2
sprites intended for the baron of hell were simply transfered
to the hell knight. 

The same thing went for several scenery objects. 

I then had to edit the Chex Quest 2 levels to use the new
monsters and things. 

The most annoying thing I found was the numerous patch clones.
That is to say that a number of patches appeared several times
with different names. I can only assume that the developers did
this in order to make the DooM IWAD levels appear to be Chex
Quest levels. There is no other practical reasons I can think of
for this. 

I had to get rid of these extra patches, so I moved all of the
patches to a seperate directory, and slowly moved some of the
patches back. If a patch listed in one of the textures was a
clone of one of the patches I already moved, I edited the
texture entry so that the first patch was used, instead of the
clone. 

By the time I had finished, I had removed about 1.5 Mb of cloned
patches from the wad. 

Finally, I played through all the levels, and made sure there
were no screwed up or missing textures, and made whatever
adjustments were needed. 

A few notes on some of the other things I did:

Because the existing version of Chex Quest did not have graphics
for all of the DooM menu titles or any of the Legacy menu
titles, I went ahead and created some, filling in the inventory.
The new menu titles match the existing ones of course.

In the screens shown between levels, a dark line would appear
around the animations.  I edited the animation graphics so as to
eliminate this problem.

The Chex Quest 2 interlevel screen could not be animated where
it was in episode II.  I moved it to episode III, where it would
animate correctly.  To replace it, I came up with a new graphic
based on the Chex Quest CD cover illustration.  Getting this
graphic looking right in the DooM palette took me the better
part of a day.  Groan.

Since the flemoids are supposed to be teleported away, instead
of being killed, the original Chex Quest had similar teleporting
graphics for the flemoids' exploding deaths.  This left some
extra  sprite graphics when I eliminated the exploding deaths
altogether with my hack patch.  I decided to add the extra
sprites in to the regular death sequence of the biped (sergeant)
flemoid, and found the resulting version of the animation to be
excellent.  I did the same with some of the other flemoids.  The
comonus (trooper) flemoid had only four frames in its death
sequence, which didn't look very good.  To make it look better,
I created five new sprites to round the death sequence out to
nine frames, which looks much better.  The hack patch also
removes the flemoids from the games completely at the end of
their death sequences.  Occasionally, however, a flemoid will
get caught under a closing door as he dies, and will be 
squashed!


    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So ends Phase I, the conversion phase, of my Chex Quest project.

Phase II, the beautification phase, will involve detailing of
the Chex Quest maps, adding some new graphics, and generally
making Chex Quest look better. This does not mean that I will be
making any major changes to the way the levels are put together
however. I do believe the gaqme play, which was meant for young
children, should be left intact.

Phase III will be the stage in which new maps are made and added
to Chex Quest.

Before anyone mentions it, I do have Chex Quest 3, a user made
wad, but I do not like it much, and have not decided whether or
not I will add it yet. The original Chex quests were meant to be
played by young kids, and the maps as correspondingly simple.
The Chex Quest 3 maps are much harder, and are not really in
tune with the spirit of the originals, so I am not in any real
hurry to add them.

The final phase, phase IV, will complete the process of
rebuilding Chex Quest as a complete IWAD.  Until then, however,
my version of Chex Quest will have to remain as a PWAD, rather
than an IWAD.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Copyright / Permissions *

Authors may use this level as a base to build additional levels.

You MAY distribute this WAD, provided you include this file, with
no modifications.  You may distribute this file in any electronic
format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file
intact.

