Fragile-Violence - Kill everything (and die) in just ONE HIT (Dehacked-based mod)

[TheNoob_Gamer]

 aka Hideous Destructor: Ridiculous Edition

 

Imagine that Hell somehow captured you (thanks to your incompetence) and instead of killing you outright for what you have done, they casted a curse upon you, imprisoned you and forced you to relive your adventures through the curse. This is one of the hypothetical results.

...As you can tell from the title, you can kill every monsters and projectiles in just 1 hit, with some notable exceptions.

To counter your glass cannon ability:

• The Hellspawn has forced you to carry a single nail-powered, fast-firing handgun (that shoots nail projectiles, obviously) with relatively low ammo count (36/72). In addition, every single ammo-related pickup (not including backpack) has been replaced with this nail ammo.
• Everything has become much more aggressive (e.g noclipping zombiemen) and some have new tricks up their sleeve.
• Armor has been removed completely, and medkits is much more rare now. You also start with 31HP, with your total max HP being 100. This prevents you from dying to hazardous environments.

 

Despite my efforts of balancing the mod and trying to stray the scope of the project away from being a jokewad, this was not designed to help you win anything (and crashes are guarranteed on certain ports) (Doom 2's map02 for instance, and basically any E1 wads). Some enemies might be too powerful (the revenant shown in the gameplay video) Thus, feedbacks and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Although, slaughterwads are recommended for this, assumming you always have enough ammo and/or skills.

 

 

GAMEPLAY VIDEO

 

 

Have fun! I may make a demonstration/POC map for this later.

1hp.zip - Credits and additional technical info are included in the .txt file

 

1hp_v1.1.zip - 12/6/20 version

 

(This should run with any MBF/BEX-compatible ports - including Crispy Doom. For compatiblity reasons, if you are playing on PRBoom+, launch the port with the parameter -complevel 11. Also may work with WADs like Scythe 2, because I kept the pushover enemies completely intact. You may try fiddling around with load orders or SLADE 3 if all else fails.)

 

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BORING AS HECK MOD INFO THAT YOU SHOULD READ TO PREVENT RAGEQUITTING

Spoiler

 

The bestiary

 

Everything that is not mentioned in here are untouched and only attack and move faster.

Also, enemies that use melee attacks as their secondary don't insta-kill you, assumming you have more than 40HP.

 

• Zombiemen have their head accidentally cleaned off, but thanks to Satan's resurrecting skills, they now function like a weaker version of Demons. As mentioned above, they can also break realities and physics now, making them a tricky foe to fight against.
• Shotgunners now attack with dual fat fireballs.
• Imps retain their vanilla movement speed, but attack much faster and in a 2-burst fashion.
• Chaingunners attack similarly to Eviternity's Cybruiser - they shoot a projectile first and then try to pin you down with their deadly hitscan bullets.
• Lost Souls will randomly alternate between shooting a plasma ball and their usual charging attack. They also explode upon dying - thus new sprites.
• Demons/Spectres now move EVEN faster than -fast, making them a hard target. Their bites are sure to kill you instantly, in most cases, but they are much more clumsy in doing so now.
• Think of Cacodemons as flying imps.
• Barons are miniature Cyberdemons now.
• Spiderdemons are grown up Arachnotrons. THEY TAKE 4 HITS TO KILL.
• Cyberdemons shoot a rocket, then 2 revenant balls, then 3 mancubus fireballs. ALSO NEED 3 HITS TO BE KILLED.

 

Your weapons - explained in detail

 

• The AC-97 nail pistol was given to you by a mysterious, cybernatically enhanced being during one of your many trips across unholy realms. This weapon is so strong in your home dimension that Hell forced you to use it exclusively during your banishment. You fire this at a decent fire rate as mentioned above, with pretty much perfect accuracy. The nail projectile itself deals ~500 damage (and probably more, I don't know how exactly does Doom's RNG table with on modified values), and can be easily destroyed by enemies' attack.
• You managed to cheat the curse by bringing a pocket axe with you also. This has x8 damage compare to vanilla fist, and you swing it moderately fast. Despite the enhancement, the weapon itself is best used as a last resort tool, as with the case of your vanilla starting weapons.

More weapons (and 1 more ammo type at most) might be added if you have interesting suggestions.

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by TheNoob_Gamer

[RonnieJamesDiner]

I really wasn't sure what to expect with this, and was rather hesitant about it, admittedly. But I just went through the first 3 maps of Doom II with it, and holy shit this is intense and fun! This is just wonderfully unexpected.

 

The enemy buffs/changes are fantastic. I've never felt such intensity going through Entryway, and Underhalls took me a solid 15 minutes alone just to finally beat without savescumming. The new zombiemen are the stuff of nightmares (in a good way), and I love the rest of the cast that I've encountered so far.

 

By far the smartest thing you did with this, I think, is making every enemy projectile shootable with the nailgun. That adds such an incredible depth to the gameplay, and actually lets you play aggressively. I think this mod would just feel cruel and unfair without it, honestly. Awesome decision.

 

My only critique so far is the hitbox on the nail projectile itself, it just feels way too big. More often than I would have liked, I found it colliding with geometry or monsters I wasn't aiming for, even when the sprite itself looked like it should've cleared them no problem. Yeah, a smaller hitbox on the projectile is a little less forgiving in terms of accuracy, but having the ability to pull off really precise shots between actors or through doorways/windows would be very nice. 

 

Either way, I'm having an absolute blast with this so far. It's quite a rush! Part of me already wants to try making a map specifically for this :P

[TheNoob_Gamer]

@RonnieJamesDiner Thanks for playing and glad you are having fun with it (lol) 

 

Nice to know you like the enemies so far, but as mentioned, things could get really hectic and unfair later. (The Cyberdemon and the Revenants are the biggest offenders imo), so if you fight them, please tell me of what you think!

 

I will look into the nail.

 

1 hour ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

Part of me already wants to try making a map specifically for this :P

Oh yes, go ahead. I've played some maps of yours so it's interesting to see what could come out of this :)

[plums]

So I played around with this for a bit and it was kind of fun. It's definitely a unique take on a gameplay mod. There's a few things that I think prevent it from being a seriously playable mod though.

 

The biggest is that there are just too many situations in Doom where dying in one hit is unfair, especially with the more aggressive monster attacks. The tension it brings makes for a different experience, but Doom level design often has a bunch of unavoidable ambushes, and with those you're basically at the mercy of the RNG with this mod. If you wanted to develop this further, one idea might be to use ZDoom and give the player 3 "hearts" or something, and have all enemy attacks take away one heart and give a small window of invincibility, like in many platform and other 2D games.

 

The other thing is that despite you changing several monsters, many of them end up feeling very samey in that they're all aggressively-firing things that die or kill you in one hit, which really encourages you to play from behind cover and makes any further differences in the monsters much less appreciable. The new zombiemen are the notable exception, but they're also really irritating to deal with.

 

Other minor things: I agree that the projectile size is too large, especially when you have no hitscan weapons; 36 nails felt like an annoyingly low limit; and the arachnotrons making the nail-firing noise sounds kind of silly.

 

Anyhow it was still fun for a bit, and levels specifically designed for it could be pretty interesting.

 

edit: Oh yeah, being able to shoot down monster projectiles is awesome, and would be a really cool feature in a more normal gameplay mod.

Edited June 12, 2020 by plums

[TheNoob_Gamer]

Thanks for the feedbacks - I will take most of your responses into consideration! A couple things I want to response/address:

 

25 minutes ago, plums said:

The biggest is that there are just too many situations in Doom where dying in one hit is unfair, especially with the more aggressive monster attacks. The tension it brings makes for a different experience, but Doom level design often has a bunch of unavoidable ambushes, and with those you're basically at the mercy of the RNG with this mod.

Then again, there's the 50 HP cap, and most monsters here can't still kill you outright upclose in melee. I agree that ambush combat scenarios have become pretty commonplace nowadays, so I'm thinking of turning of the "obstacle" flag on monsters so you can pass through them? Thoughts?

 

27 minutes ago, plums said:

I agree that the projectile size is too large, especially when you have no hitscan weapons

36 nail limit

You have the axe; but if the size of the projectile bothers you, how would you reduce the size then?

The ammo limit was intended to bring a more tactical feel to the mod, but looking back, maybe I was being too stingy. 

[plums]

49 minutes ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

I'm thinking of turning of the "obstacle" flag on monsters so you can pass through them? Thoughts?

Would have to try it to see, but it's worth a shot.

 

49 minutes ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

You have the axe; but if the size of the projectile bothers you, how would you reduce the size then?

The ammo limit was intended to bring a more tactical feel to the mod, but looking back, maybe I was being too stingy. 

By size I meant the hitbox like @RonnieJamesDiner said. In a non-ZDoom port where you're always going to have some auto-aim, combined with the cover-reliant gameplay, I just felt there were too many situations where I was shooting the walls despite my best efforts.

 

One thing about the ammo count is that ammo isn't in general hard to come by, you just can't stockpile much of it, so it necessitates a lot of backtracking. Having a reduced amount is good, too much and the player could just hold down fire in too many situations, but I think the limit could probably stand to be upped to 50/100 or so.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

Updated the mod - link can be found in OP.

 

Changelog

Spoiler

• Enemy projectile speed has been tweaked.
• Ammo cap boosted from 36/72 to 52/104. Also you can now pick up more ammo.
• Fixed some GFX issues.
• Nail radius reduced.
• Every enemies, with the exception of Spiderdemon and Cyberdemon, can be passed through now - this increases the axe's effectiveness a bit.

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by TheNoob_Gamer

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Hmm, it appears I need access to download the update?

[TheNoob_Gamer]

6 hours ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

Hmm, it appears I need access to download the update?

Oops, sorry! Link fixed.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Still playing around with this, and having a blast -- the update seems good for the most part. I also finally met the rest of the monsters, and everything seems quite fun and challenging to face. Here are a few more notes I've had:

 

• The "pass through enemies" feature seems to have neutered the Zombiemen a little too hard. They're just extremely easy to dodge now, and feel a lot less impactful.
• The Cyber Barons infight way too easily, even from their own splash damage, and any sort of crowd of them just obliterates itself almost instantaneously (granted it's a little funny to watch). It would be nice if they didn't infight at all, I don't know if this is an option for you.
• Also on the topic of the Cyber Baron, it might be nice if it used that custom walking sound effect normally accompanying that sprite (if that's an option for you).

 

Those were the big ones that stuck out to me, at the moment. Otherwise, still enjoying the hell out of this!

[Aaron Blain]

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=48392&sid=623dabd54ac55f078c44190af291bd76

 

If you haven't tried it yet, check out ContraDoom. (There's a working DL at the end of the thread.)

[Dimon12321]

Headless zombiemen can run through the walls!?? Oh sh*t

Also, is it possible to kill Icon of Sin with this gun?

Edited June 13, 2020 by Dimon12321

[TheNoob_Gamer]

2 hours ago, Aaron Blain said:

If you haven't tried it yet, check out ContraDoom. (There's a working DL at the end of the thread.)

Contra Doom was actually one of my inspirations for this mod, but thanks for reminding me of it :)