Minicharge - MBF resource/mod [v1.3 new BFG sprites 5/25/20]

[Tango]

>>>>>>>> DOWNLOAD MINICHARGE <<<<<<<<
^{(last updated: v1.3 - 5/25/2020)}

 

Minicharge is an MBF-compatible mapping resource and gameplay mod. It's basically a lite version of Supercharge, but given the limits of even MBF dehacked, there's a lot of things from Supercharge that can't be ported over. Though it does work as a gameplay mod, beware that any mapsets with their own dehacked or decorate work will probably be borked in some way, though hopefully not completely unplayable.

 

REQUIREMENTS:

• MBF-compatible port needed (Pr/GLBoom+ on complevel11, Doom Retro, GZDoom, Zandronum, etc.)
• Requires a Doom 2 IWAD to play (doom2.wad, tnt.wad, plutonia.wad, etc.)
• If you use Minicharge as a gameplay mod, it's strongly recommended to load it LAST, after all other wads
• Probably will not play well with other mods or mapsets that have significant gameplay tweaks
• Will not work on Icon of Sin maps (spawn cubes won't work properly, but maps will otherwise probably be playable)

 

FEATURES:

• New monsters and tweaked behavior! The Diabolist from Supercharge replaces the Archvile, Cacos fire slower projectiles, Arachnotrons fire in bursts of 4, rockets have a smaller splash radius, etc.
• Smooth weapon sprites! Courtesy of @VGA's Black Ops mod, which was used as a base.
• Faster weapon switching!
• Lean pickup messages, similar to the ones found in Supercharge

 

SCREENSHOTS:

Spoiler

 

 

 

GIFS:

Spoiler

 

 

VIDEOS:

Spoiler

 

MONSTER INFO:

Spoiler

Most monsters have new sprites in addition to their altered behavior and stats.

 

• Archvile -> Diabolist: Fiery-red cousin of the Archvile. Summons exploding plumes of fire beneath the player’s feet that linger for a few moments for area-denial. Punishes you for not watching your footwork. Base health raised 700 -> 750. Invulnerable to explosion damage.
• Cacodemon: Base health reduced 400 -> 380. Projectile speed reduced 10 -> 6.
• Demon: Speed raised 10 -> 12. Bite animation is a few frames faster.
• Spider Mastermind -> Dark Cardinal: Floating brethren of the Cyberdemon. Fires Arachnotron shots as a pretty fast pace as long as target is in sight. Has exceptionally low pain chance. Is now vulnerable to explosion damage. The fact that it flies means it will slightly "break" existing maps that have Spiderdemons.
• Baron of Hell: Health reduced 1000 -> 750. I don't know what else to do with this monster; suggestions would be most welcome!
• Cyberdemon: Health reduced 4000 -> 2200. Rocket speed increased 20 -> 25. Rocket explosion radius reduced 128 -> 96 (this applies to player rockets as well).
• Arachnotron: Fires in bursts of 4 bullets with a small pause in between, rather than a more constant stream.
• SS Guy: Replaced by Chaingunners.
• Lost Soul: Health reduced 100 -> 30.
• Pain Elemental: Upon death, explodes in a radius of 80 units, damaging players and monsters alike. This is to discourage blocking Lost Soul spawning.

 

WEAPON INFO:

Spoiler

All weapon swap times greatly reduced, and all weapons have smooth animations.

 

• Chainsaw: No changes.
• Fist: No changes.
• Pistol: Fires a bit faster than vanilla.
• Shotgun: Fires much faster than vanilla.
• Super Shotgun: Fires a bit faster than vanilla.
• Chaingun: Fires a bit faster than vanilla.
• Rocket Launcher: Firing startup delay removed. Delay in between shots reduced. Rocket explosion radius reduced 128 -> 96.
• Plasma Rifle: Projectile speed increased slightly.
• BFG: Projectile height doubled to more closely match sprite; sprite reduced in size slightly

 

 

KNOWN BUGS:

Spoiler

• I replaced some of the non-blocking gore decoration in the game (eg blood pools) to accomodate for some of the new behavior. In PrBoom+, the replaced decor simply doesn't spawn in maps anymore. However, in more advanced ports, any such decor that is otherwise visible at level start will briefly show the replacement object before fading out of existence. This shouldn't be game breaking, but I intend to fix this at some point.

 

 

CURRENT TODOS:

Spoiler

• Fix replaced decor bug on GZDoom and related ports
• Find a more interesting replacement for the Baron of Hell
• Find a more interesting replacement for the Plasma Rifle
• Add colored pickup messages for GZDoom

 

 

OLD VERSIONS:

Spoiler

• version 1.0
• version 1.1
• version 1.2

 

MAPSETS USING MINICHARGE:

• Friday Night UDM3 by @Tango
• Atomic Island by @guitardz and @loveless

Edited May 25, 2020 by Tango

[Xenaero]

I'm a sucker for universal mods that spice things up, great stuff.

[Walter confetti]

pretty cool!

[TheWolfman00001]

This looks amazing, I will definitely give this a play!

[Tango]

11 hours ago, Voltcom said:

This mod is just friggin awesome! I'll probably keep this in my autoload for a while now!

It's similar enough to Doom's stock content but definitely adds it's own style! And those Archviles man... so good.

 

thanks so much Voltcom :D I am so glad to hear you enjoy it! and you're in luck because I just updated to v1.1! the download link in the OP has been updated. here's a rough changelist for version 1.1:

 

• reduced the volume of the Diabolist explosion, and Mancubus comet explosion sounds
• changed the player's plasma projectile to use the same death sound as the Arachnotron's plasma
• restored the rocket projectile speed back to vanilla (I found that in practice, the 25% increase made fighting Cyberdemons really obnoxious)
• sped up the weapon switching even more! many thanks to Noiser and Linguica for sharing their knowledge on fast weapon switching
• slightly scaled down the rocket explosion sprites, since the explosion radius is itself smaller
• fixed the Dark Cardinal's death animation in some ports - it had a frame with a -1 duration that halted the animation in some ports

 

these changes will be rolled into the next version of Friday Night UDM3 as well

[hawkwind]

Just tried this with both gzdoom and prboom+ in mbf complevels and found that the bossfight at map 30 doesn't work right. No "backward" message at start, no rotating bosscubes and no enemies spawned. Unless I'm missing something ...

Edited November 8, 2019 by hawkwind

[Tango]

51 minutes ago, hawkwind said:

Just tried this with both gzdoom and prboom+ in mbf complevels and found that the bossfight at map 30 doesn't work right. No "backward" message at start, no rotating bosscubes and no enemies spawned. Unless I'm missing something ...

 

oops, I didn't even think to test IoS stuff. thanks for the report hawkwind - really appreciate it! I poached some dehacked frames from the IoS actors but tried to leave enough to not break them completely, though I did use all the IoS-specific sound effects for other things, so I knew at least the sounds would be off. my first priority for Minicharge is for it to be a mapping resource, so I'm ok with IoS being broken if that's what it takes to get me the extra frames I need, but I admittedly didn't even think to test that stuff at all. I'll do some messing around with it and see if I can make any minimal changes to fix it, but if it's nothing trivial, then I'll probably just end up including some ZDoom-specific decorate code to fix it in at least those ports for the next version. in the meantime, I will add a note to the OP about this

[Lila Feuer]

You never cease to impress me, would this work on Eternity?

[Tango]

1 hour ago, Lila Feuer said:

You never cease to impress me, would this work on Eternity?

 

haha thanks :D I haven't tested in Eternity specifically, but it very well ought to!

[TheWolfman00001]

Alright, so this was a long time coming, but here I am with my overall opinion on the mod (from what I have played of it). In a nutshell, this mod is amazingly well put together and provides a solid gameplay experience that doesn't stray too far from traditional doom formula but makes significant changes that result in lots of the enemy and weapon roster being more fun to play around with (albeit the changes to monster behavior and weaponry make the overall difficulty of the mod much more easy than vanilla). Honestly all this mod would need at this point would be the replacements to the Plasma Rifle and Baron Of Hell (and also the partial invisibility sphere if that is possible) and this would definitely be my go-to gameplay mod for ports such as PRBoom+ or Crispy Doom (It actually still is, I am just saying that you have a gem on your hands tango, if you have the time you should keep working on this :D) due to the general quality of the new content as well as gameplay balance being top-notch.
 

The only real complaints I have with the mod are mainly that the regular shotgun fires just a little too fast, and could potentially be OP considering the DPS over the chaingun is much higher as well as having burst damage capability and being ammo effecient, Also the replacement for the Spider-Mastermind is not much of a threat due to the fact that you can dodge it's projectiles with ease, which isn't helped by the fact that the projectiles themselves are very sluggish (I was able to kill one with a berserk fist in Plutonia 2 map 27, it's that easy). Overall though, this mod is great and any of you reading this should definitely try it out :D

[Tango]

cheers @TheWolfman00001, really appreciate it :D

 

you're definitely right about the difficulty. I built this as a mapping resource primarily (and mostly for myself, not counting on anyone else really getting mapping use out of it), so unfortunately some things are going to be too easy when used as a gameplay mod, the replacement for the Spider Mastermind being a good example. I'd love to come up with a replacement for the plasma rifle and baron though, but I've still not thought of something satisfactory to do with either of em.

 

I'll do some more testing with the shotgun speed and consider nerfing it a bit, though I am admittedly pretty attached to its speed right now haha. in any case, thanks again Wolfman :D

[TheWolfman00001]

3 minutes ago, Tango said:

cheers @TheWolfman00001, really appreciate it :D

 

you're definitely right about the difficulty. I built this as a mapping resource primarily (and mostly for myself, not counting on anyone else really getting mapping use out of it), so unfortunately some things are going to be too easy when used as a gameplay mod, the replacement for the Spider Mastermind being a good example. I'd love to come up with a replacement for the plasma rifle and baron though, but I've still not thought of something satisfactory to do with either of em.

 

I'll do some more testing with the shotgun speed and consider nerfing it a bit, though I am admittedly pretty attached to its speed right now haha. in any case, thanks again Wolfman :D

No Problem <3

[TheWolfman00001]

@Tango I was testing out Minicharge using MBF 2.04 and I found this strange oddity with the cacodemons lol

Edited December 29, 2019 by TheWolfman00001

[Tango]

17 hours ago, TheWolfman00001 said:

I was testing out Minicharge using MBF 2.04 and I found this strange oddity with the cacodemons lol

 

haha what wad is this? I think the caco projectile death sound in Minicharge uses one of the icon of sin or commander keen sounds, so if whatever wad you're playing replaces that sound (and you had the map wad loaded after Minicharge), this is what would happen. what a pleasant surprise

[TheWolfman00001]

47 minutes ago, Tango said:

 

haha what wad is this? I think the caco projectile death sound in Minicharge uses one of the icon of sin or commander keen sounds, so if whatever wad you're playing replaces that sound (and you had the map wad loaded after Minicharge), this is what would happen. what a pleasant surprise

I was using Whispers Of Satan.wad with it, which I didn't think would replace sound effects because it's never listed on the doom wiki. I am going to check the files and see if that sound effect is in there in the meantime, and I will let you know what I find

[TheWolfman00001]

@Tango Okay, went into slade and the first thing I saw was that sound effect at the top of the data list lmao. The devs of Whispers Of Satan had a sense of humor it seems

[TheNoob_Gamer]

Spoiler

Is the player corpse intentionally left blank in the wad, or a replacement sprite isn't available? 
(Jenesis MAP01 - used mainly for illustration purposes. I got the error when tested with the IWADS too. On Eternity.)

EDIT: I'm blind, sorry. I may look at fixing the issue and send the file back to you.

Edited January 2, 2020 by TheNoob_Gamer

[Gez]

On lundi 30 décembre 2019 at 5:13 AM, TheWolfman00001 said:

@Tango Okay, went into slade and the first thing I saw was that sound effect at the top of the data list lmao. The devs of Whispers Of Satan had a sense of humor it seems

Turns out, you did get this. Lalalalala!

[TheWolfman00001]

Just now, Gez said:

Turns out, you did get this. Lalalalala!

YOU WILL NEVER GET THIS! YOU WILL NEVER GET THIS! LALALALALALA!

[VanaheimRanger]

I am thinking to use this in a WAD I started working on a little while ago and want to understand a few things better before I decide for sure.

• Diabolist is "Invulnerable to explosion damage."  Does this mean just splash damage, or all explosive damage?  Would hitting it directly with rockets not hurt it?  Want to make sure so placement of this monster will always be in a way that the player could kill it with more conventional weaponry.
• If I load this as a resource in the Boom config will the new monsters and weapons be on things list like they are when I use Supercharge in UDMF?
• SS Guys are replaced by chaingunners.  So, are ther 2 different chaingunners now or are both the same?  Is this just to get rid of SS Guys on wolfenstein maps?
• Are the new trees and plants you added in Supercharge also in this?  If not, could I pull some of them from Supercharge to replace some of the decorative things I don't plan to use?

Edited January 8, 2020 by guitardz
One more question, dammit!

[ReaperAA]

The Diabolists can be killed by direct rocket damage. They are only immune to splash damage and thus require 2x rocket hits to kill (like cyberdemon or SMM in vanilla).

[Tango]

7 hours ago, guitardz said:

Does this mean just splash damage, or all explosive damage?

 

@ReaperAA speaks the truth, I just meant splash damage - sorry for the confusion D: it's immune to splash damage in the same way that cybs and masterminds are in vanilla, as ReaperAA notes. this is not the case for the diabolist in supercharge, but unfortunately I had to make the diabolist here immune to splash damage because otherwise it could blow itself up with its explosions, which seems pretty unfortunate. there's a very easy workaround for that in zdoom though, so I didn't have to make that concession in supercharge thankfully!

 

7 hours ago, guitardz said:

If I load this as a resource in the Boom config will the new monsters and weapons be on things list like they are when I use Supercharge in UDMF?

 

unfortunately GZDB doesn't seem to parse dehacked files at all like it does for decorate in all the zdoom-based map configs, so it's a mixed bag here. the diabolist shows up properly sprite-wise but is still named the archvile, the SS guy looks like his usual self, and the mastermind looks and takes up just as much space in the editor as its vanilla self with no sign of the dark cardinal at all. if you'd be interested though, I'm pretty sure I could easily throw together a modified Boom configuration for GZDB-based ports that you could put in your Configurations folder, which would properly display and name everything. if you end up using Minicharge and would like to have something like that, let me know and I can put it together and throw a download up in the OP as well for the whole world to enjoy. to clarify, this wouldn't replace any existing configuration, it would be an entirely new one based on the existing Boom one.

 

7 hours ago, guitardz said:

SS Guys are replaced by chaingunners.  So, are ther 2 different chaingunners now or are both the same?  Is this just to get rid of SS Guys on wolfenstein maps?

 

they should be exactly the same, so just one type of chaingunner overall. I ended up using most of the SS guy's dehacked frames elsewhere, so just replacing him with the chaingunner meant that the SS guy technically still exists (as a chaingunner) but doesn't need any extra frames.

 

7 hours ago, guitardz said:

Are the new trees and plants you added in Supercharge also in this?  If not, could I pull some of them from Supercharge to replace some of the decorative things I don't plan to use?

 

they're not in Minicharge by default (though I did include a few of them in FNUDM3), but yeah you could definitely nab whatever from Supercharge and put em in your own Minicharged resource wad! if you end up doing that and run into any issues converting the PNGs in Supercharge to palettized images for Boom, feel free to reach out and I can lend a hand there.

[VanaheimRanger]

Thanks, for all the answer's, Tango.  I am about tos sit down and play a bit of FNUDM3 to get a feel for the monsters and weapons.  I feel like it's gonna be pretty solid to go in my mapset I'm doing.

[Gez]

4 hours ago, Tango said:

unfortunately GZDB doesn't seem to parse dehacked files at all like it does for decorate in all the zdoom-based map configs

Dehacked files are much harder to interpret, since they're not a definition of new content but a modification of pre-existing content. To truly parse dehacked files, you'd have to have a full Doom actor state table that you can reference to see the modifications that are being done.

 

SLADE has the ability to parse a built-in configuration, so you can put a "SLADECFG" lump in your wad it'll read stuff from it. It's kinda strange that the DB family never got the equivalent with a DBCONFIG or something. Yeah, parsing DECORATE is fine and dandy but it doesn't help for dehacked mods.

[Tango]

I just released Minicharge v1.2 - download link in the OP has been updated! here's a changelog:

 

• added new blood decals for ZDoom-based ports (the same ones in Supercharge, which were pulled from @Gifty's excellent Dead Marine mod)
• fixed an issue with the chaingun going into negative ammo when it was fired starting from an odd ammo count number; thanks @guitardz for the bug report!

this chaingun bug was a pretty weird one to fix, which I'll explain here briefly in case anyone else in the future encounters a similar issue with dehacked or bex and chaingun -1 ammo. the dehacked work in Minicharge is based off of @VGA's work in Black Ops. as part of Black Ops, the frame count for the chaingun is greatly increased (just like every other weapon). because of the new smooth sprites and corresponding dehacked work, the two firing frames for the chaingun are on frames 52 and 1020 (compared to vanilla's 52 and 53). and on top of that, the action for the firing frames in Black Ops is A_FirePistol instead of the vanilla A_FireCGun. A_FirePistol does not seem to have any ammo safety checks to prevent ammo from going into negative values, while A_FireCGun does.

 

so I first tried just switching the chaingun firing frames in Minicharge to use A_FireCGun instead, but this had its own set of issues. the negative issue was fixed, but now if I expended all the chaingun's ammo starting from an even ammo count (and therefore ending at 0), the chaingun would switch out, but no new weapon could ever be switched in. and similarly, if I tried to pick up another weapon while firing the chaingun, the weapon switch would hang indefinitely. I tried a few different things - changing the duration of the A_Refire frame, removing the fast weapon swap for the chaingun, etc., but each attempt only led to more issues.

 

to fix the issue, I had to put the second firing frame back on frame 53, so that the two firing frames matched the vanilla chaingun (frames 52 and 53), and also make sure those frames used A_FireCGun for the safety checks. the chaingun animation is unchanged from the player's perspective because I rerouted all the other frames around accordingly, and now the negative ammo issue is fixed, and the weapon switch issue is absent. I don't know if this behavior and apparent need for firing on frames 52 and 53 are documented somewhere else, but I got clued in by looking at @fraggle's Vanilla Doom smooth weapons mod, which retains the usage of frames 52 and 53 for firing, while slotting all the smooth frames in between those. thanks fraggle!

 

though to clarify, the weirdness with frame 52 and 53 seemed to not be present in other ports I tested (Zandronum, Doom Retro), so maybe it's just a PrBoom+ thing.

[Tango]

Minicharge v1.3 is here, and the links in the OP have been updated. rough changelog:

 

• added new pickup sprites for rocket ammo to match the projectile itself
• increased plasma projectile speed from 25 to 30
• recolored plasma projectile and rifle firing sprites to be green, to match the BFG
• recolored cell pack sprite to be green instead of amber
• added tweaked BFG weapon and projectile sprites and animation from Supercharge
• fixed negative ammo issue with the plasma rifle

 

in the next update, I am planning to focus on adding optional, ZDoom-specific frills to Minicharge, so that anyone playing in a ZDoom-based port gets extra goodies like alternate deaths and gibs (from Supercharge), weapon screenshake, shell casings, more accurate monster projectile firing offsets, and maybe some other things I'm forgetting, all of which would be optional and have a toggle in the menu.

[rparhkdtp]

I've been using several non-zdoom mods for over a year, but I think this is the best of the best.

[TheWolfman00001]

I know this page has been dormant for a while now, but in the past few days, I've been wanting to ask if Minicharge will ever receive another update? Out of both Mini and Super I've always preferred Mini on account of the simplicity of gameplay compared to Super as well as Mini using MBF dehacked rather than zscript (which is just awesome). This mod has always been a favourite of mine and given that I'm planning on going back to playing Doom in the coming months, this has been something that is on my mind.

Edited April 28, 2023 by TheWolfman00001

[Tango]

13 hours ago, TheWolfman00001 said:

I've been wanting to ask if Minicharge will ever receive another update?

 

appreciate you asking! eventually I think it will, it's just a matter of making the time for me. I've been wanting to convert this all to MBF21, and use the advanced capabilities of MBF21 to add in all the missing monsters from Supercharge, include all the alt deaths, make a gibs system similar to supercharge, etc., and I don't think it would be a terrible amount of work given the existence of decohack.

 

but I've been working on my new mapset for so long that if I make any time for doom these days, I direct it solely towards getting that set across the finish line. remaking Minicharge for MBF21 is more or less top of my list after my current project though. I can't really give an estimate for when that'd happen, but it's on my radar for sure! I'm getting pretty close with my current project so I'm hoping for sooner rather than later, but my ability to estimate doom workloads is completely unreliable lol

[dmh094]

For sure will have to give this mod a go. Looks pretty damn fun! 

 

Keep up the good work!