[Resource][DEHACKED/BEX] Soulbruiser of Hell

[WH-Wilou84]

Hello,

As I'm currently testing DEHACKED monster ideas for some Boom projects here and there, I've decided to publicly share a couple of them as resources for other mappers to use in their own creations.

The first one is the Soulbruiser of Hell, a strong Baron-like creature based on Björn "Vader" Ostmann's Bruiser Demon sprites found in Knee-Deep in ZDoom (and on Realm667). With its stupid spamming retentless fire attacks, it's designed to be a dangerous and somehow durable mid-boss that will definitely spice up most situations.

The archive linked below contains :

• wh_soh_v2.txt : The text file.
• wh_soh_v2.wad : the main wad, which contains the monster sprites, sounds, and DEHACKED patch.
• wh_soh_TestMap.wad : a test map for the monster, that has to be launched alongside the main wad.

Monster analysis :
Health points : 1500
Radius : 25
Height : 70
Speed : 8
Pain chance : 15
Attacks : volleys of fireballs and homing flaming comets, heat burst (upon dying)
 

How to use :

If you want to use the Soulbruiser of Hell in your maps, just extract all of wh_soh_v2.wad's resources (including the DEHACKED lump), put them in your own wad using your wad editor of choice, and then place a Commander Keen in your map. The Commander Keen will be replaced by the new monster upon launch.
Please note that the Soulbruiser of Hell uses a lot of frames from the Wolf3D SS nazi (and from the Pain Elemental resurrection sequence), so the nazi is now replaced by a blood pool.

Test map :
Also included is a basic test map (wh_soh_TestMap.wad). It's a small hellish fortress with four different battle scenarios involving the Soulbruiser of Hell.
Warning, these fights are very dangerous and are a good show-off for the new monster's abilities, I think.

You may get a (down)load of this hothead here : http://www.mediafire.com/file/bldhc29vh8y74jy/wh_soh_v2.zip

Edit : /idgames link : https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/combos/wh_soh_v2

Edited September 30, 2018 by WH-Wilou84

[baja blast rd.]

Awesome. Compared to the afrit, its obvious kin among popular custom monsters, it's a lot better balanced; its concentrated might can still one-shot a very healthy player, but the attack is more telegraphed and interesting to dodge. Since it is ground bound, it also shouldn't have the afrit's serious problem of being so much weaker in more spacious areas when hovering high. The heatburst is interesting. It adds an unconventional skill element to one-shotting it with the BFG, or tysoning it (lol). The player can avoid damage by backing up immediately upon its death. So it's a good thing that the damage isn't dealt immediately. Fun monster. 

 

Here's a playthrough for the test map in sequential order. :) 

 

whtestmap_rd_cpt.zip

Edited March 24, 2018 by rdwpa

[printz]

1 hour ago, WH-Wilou84 said:

Pain chance : 15

Careful, this is even less than that of the Cyberdemon, a supposedly superior monster.

[Pure Hellspawn]

4 hours ago, printz said:

Careful, this is even less than that of the Cyberdemon, a supposedly superior monster.

 

• Archviles have a lower painchance than any monster.
• Arachnotrons - which are superior in combat to a Hell Knight - have double the pain chance. In fact it's the same as the Cacodemon which is extremely inferior.

Edit: This monster is powerful.  I put it up against an Spiderdemon and it won easily. I also tried it against a Cyberdemon and the Cyberdemon won 2 out of 3 times barely losing the 3rd. This monster is no joke, and in fact the only thing keeping it inferior is it's HP.

Edited March 24, 2018 by Pure Hellspawn

[WH-Wilou84]

@ rdwpa : yeah, I didn't want players to be able to just brute-force their way through this thing with the BFG without some kind of added risk, that's the main reason for the heat burst. Besides, it makes sense considering how the death animation looks.
 

Comparing it to the venerable Afrit is fair : they both belong to the mid-boss tier and obviously their attacks are based on the same projectiles. I hope that this monster is interesting enough to claim a spot in future releases, and, more generally, I'd like to see more diversity as regards to custom monster usage in the years to come (Valiant and Ancient Aliens already helped a great deal in that regard).
 

Thanks for the demo, as usual you've completely destroyed my minions without breaking a sweat. :)
Let's say you've won round 1 against the Soulbruiser of Hell, but he'll be back with a vengeance. :p
 

@ printz : hmm, well there's still a good chance a SSG blast stops this thing in the middle of its attack routine, so it's all fine by me.
But thanks for the note.

[galileo31dos01]

What a cool monster, actually, what a hot monster. The nicest thing in combat is that simple circlestrafing or dodging from a close distance isn't enough to avoid all of its projectiles, thus turning in a priority focus when paired with archviles others of the same group. The cinematic death is a very  neat addition, I don't really know how deadly it can be for the player because I always stayed away from it upon dying. 

 

About the map, played on UV, no demos yet. The second and third arenas were only ones that took me several tries, in the second one I used the soulbruiser to demolish the others while also calling the archie's attention. Third case I used the homing rockets to hit some of the archies, so I could focus on one at a time. A funny thing is that playing each arena from pistol start changes some things from playing them continuously, such as the pain elemental in the third case not spawning in unless you shoot, but on "continuous" it'll teleport in as soon as you hit the door. In the fourth arena, infighting for the win, these guys needed to be busy with something else, so I could kill the archy, and then off them, it only took one death but it wasn't real hard. 

 

As a custom monster I feel like it could perfectly own the spot of a semi-boss enemy, or a high-tier since the word "boss" in Doom doesn't fit with anything other than the IoS imo. Valiant added cybruisers and pyro knights for something a bit more striking than a HK/baron while also much less tanky than a cyberdemon, so I think your soulbruiser would be ideal in similar cases, only this one shoots so much stuff that it'll require more careful placement. I don't believe it inferior to the cyberdemon in any way, other than speed. I also tested it like Pure Hellspawn did, the results were similar, the cyberdemon could kill it since he gets pushed away enough to avoid all the soulbruiser projectiles, original spidey on the other side gets pain chanced a lot, but the one I use didn't loose. In other words, its HP and pain chance are the most important combo imo, and I'd love to see it used in future (mega)wads. Perhaps I'll use it someday. 

[VGA]

@WH-Wilou84

 

Maybe you want to check out these Dehacked monsters I created? (Resources are not mine)

 

 

[baja blast rd.]

On 3/24/2018 at 1:28 PM, Pure Hellspawn said:

 

• Archviles have a lower painchance than any monster.
• Arachnotrons - which are superior in combat to a Hell Knight - have double the pain chance. In fact it's the same as the Cacodemon which is extremely inferior.

 

Archviles have a low pain chance, but it is scaled appropriately to their slow attack. A SSG burst or a stream from the plasma rifle can interrupt them before they finish an attack quite regularly. Their attack also has quite high coverage, so evading it in a sufficiently hectic fight can be more demanding than any other (non-zombie) monster. Due to that confluence of factors, their pain chance, though quite low on paper, represents a fairly large "pressure valve" reducing the danger of their attack in practical scenarios. (Although of course it does have minimal effect in controlling their movement and thus their resurrection abilities.) 

 

[Just to avoid that common thing where someone replies to a larger point I'm not actually making, I think the Soulbruiser's pain chance as it currently stands is perfectly fine, and I didn't notice anything about it while fighting it.] 

Edited March 30, 2018 by rdwpa

[baja blast rd.]

On 3/24/2018 at 9:25 AM, printz said:

Careful, this is even less than that of the Cyberdemon, a supposedly superior monster.

 

The cyber's particular mechanics give it a weird interaction with painstuns, I feel. The cyber's pain chance is probably about ideal (for the player) among 'low values' currently. Make it somewhat higher, but keep it low, and the BFG ball interrupting the pattern during two-shots becomes a bigger annoyance without any real benefits elsewhere -- because you still don't be in a scenario where you have to gamble purely on suppressing a 50/255 chance cyber. Make it half of its current value, and then a full helping of point-blank tracers is now many times less effective at stopping the cyber from firing (although that is more of a luxury to smooth out two-shots with less-than-ideal timing). A lower painstun paradoxically can make many types of cyb fight less demanding attentionally, as the key challenge when fighting one in say a 256x256 box is constantly repositioning yourself to avoid or minimize splash, and the cyb will be snapped out of its attack pattern less and thus remain more stationary, meaning fewer instances of repositioning required. Another part of the challenge is accounting for when the cyb starts another volley immediately after being stunned, which is a moment of much higher danger.

 

Anyway, I think one important takeaway from these two cases is that pain chances within similar ranges can't be compared directly, for a variety of reasons. Everything depends too much on the specific mechanics of the monsters involved.  

 

Edited March 30, 2018 by rdwpa