Painkiller: Lost Alpha 2.0 mod

To begin with, I'll tell you a little about what this level was like in version 1.0. It was the most ordinary Painkiller level, which does not represent anything interesting. And the atmosphere of the level was completely different:

There was literally nothing interesting in Underwater Temple 1.0, nothing that a rework might be interested in. In addition, this version of the map was extremely unstable and constantly crashed the game. The reason was probably the wrong lighting. Fortunately, not so long ago, BlooDFloweR created lighting for the map from scratch. Then the level became almost completely stable, and such lighting was much more suitable for my idea of a rework.

Back in 2016, I wanted to create literally an Underwater Temple with swimming (or something similar) and an underwater atmosphere, but there were no ideas. But when I returned to modding in 2024, I saw a segment with swimming at the Drigva level in the Reload mod with underwater SFX suitable for me, and Astaroth also shared with me a special gravity box that can be placed on the level and create something like underwater gravity.

A lyrical digression. You may know that the engine has the IsUnderwater function, which creates the very underwater gravity. I'm almost sure that this was created specifically for Underwater Temple (the name speaks for itself), perhaps the developers wanted to show off their technologies even more by suggestion players underwater battles, but something went wrong, IsUnderwater was not completed, and the level was cut out. Gravity boxes from Astaroth are the same IsUnderwater, only not at the whole level, but in a limited area.

I started to have ideas about how to implement all this. I started by changing the atmosphere and arranging the gravity boxes. But it turned out that UT 1.0 was bad at absolutely everything, even in WayPoints. In short, this is what allows monsters to behave adequately at the level without getting stuck among objects. And in the first version of the level, there were problems with this. So I made new WayPoints from scratch, for which I had to create a simplified map geometry. I'll show you what the creation of WayPoints looked like:

Then the ideas began to appear by themselves. Diversify the bestiary of monsters, add more objects, interesting secrets and easter eggs (the level with the Illuminati and the statue of Cthulhu a priori cannot be serious, like the old version of the level), limit the player's movements, because the map is large and he could get where he shouldn't; I added more diverse effects, as well as a little interest, connected to the statue of Cthulhu at the end of the level.

The final touch was the audiovisual design of the level. I took the underwater effects from the Drigva level, added steps on the water and background underwater sounds. Castle Fight was replaced with another one, and a remix was made for Monastery Music by Smoshed90 with also underwater sounds.

In total, the work on the rework took about two months. I spent a lot of time and effort turning a banal, empty, poorly functioning and unremarkable level into something completely different - unique, non-standard, but at the same time working. I am satisfied with the work done. It was one of the most difficult levels I've worked on, but not the only one.

Thanks for your attention!

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