Bite-Sized Threat - a very simple vanilla gameplay mod with scarce ammo and hard-hitting guns

[Scypek2]

Are you tired of beefy bullet sponges? Do you miss the tension of wolf3d's 99 bullet limit? This may be for you.

 

Bite-Sized Threat is a vanilla-compatible gameplay mod that speeds up the pace of Doom by drastically reducing both monster health and ammo available. Here's what it offers exactly:

 

• all monster health is reduced to about 25% of what it originally was... except for lost souls, they only get 1 hp. It just feels right.
• barrels get more fragile too. Have fun.
• both ammo pickups and max ammo gets reduced to about 25%.
• rocket pickup size wasn't gonna get any smaller, but I swapped the rocket launchers with rocket boxes, so that you get 2 instead of 5.
• one consequence of my changes is that all melee weapons get a major buff, comparatively... good for them.
• another consequence is that super shotgun, chaingun and BFG no longer outclass the shotgun, pistol and plasma gun so much. This time, every bullet counts, and no gun is too weak to use.

 

Overall, the mod vastly speeds up the action without decreasing the difficulty too drastically. I've tried it out with a few wads already, and it's fun, that's for sure.

 

The .deh file is the only required part of the mod. The .wad file has a copy of it embedded, and also replaces one sprite to make things consistent.

 

Pictured: The opening of MAP04 of Going Down, and the only sprite replacement in the mod.

 

Try it out! BiteSizedThreat.zip

 

I just hope it's not gonna ruin normal Doom forever for anyone.

Edited February 26, 2021 by Scypek2

[Stupid Bunny]

Quote

except for lost souls, they only get 1 hp. It just feels right

You had me at this, it’s what they should’ve fucking had in the first place

 

I’ll give it a spin, it does sound like something I could get really into.

 

EDIT:  Yeah I tried it out and it's really fun.  It's definitely satisfying to be able to one-shot most small enemies with the pistol, one-punch a knight with the berserk or one-shot an archvile with the SSG, and to mass-gib hapless zombiemen with the chainsaw (these mods that reduce monster health always show spectacular results on zombiemen.)  I could definitely see doing playthroughs with this...I feel like you could easily use the chainsaw as your main in this because the reduced health of the monsters means you're a lot less likely to get screwed by the RNG and without trying I bet I could cut down an archvile before he finished his attack sequence.  I've just rediscovered an appreciation for the chainsaw anyway so I can't wait to give it a spin on a whole WAD.

 

Good work.

Edited February 26, 2021 by StupidBunny

[Scypek2]

I think my favorite part was seeing how many enemies the regular shotgun can take out at once. That, and shooting barrels with a pistol and knowing they'll blow up when I want them to. Mowing down that one flock of lost souls in The Waste Tunnels with a chainsaw was fun too, though.

[Noiser]

Y E S !!
(so many good projects released on a row... I will definitely give it a try)

Edited February 26, 2021 by Noiser

[Karl515]

A simple mod that perfectly executes what it sets out to do. It may make your playthrough much easier than playing with the vanilla weapons but due to the ammo's scarcity it still feels fun and engaging. Doesn't add much nor take something out of the experience. 10/10 mod makes me happy that lost souls can be killed by a fart.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

This mod turns out to be greater than I expected, really interesting concept on alternating gameplay statistics! The radical ammo and health change do indeed force you to take a new approach when playing maps; and I think TDRR's Vanilla Randomizer would make a great companion mod for this.

 

The only thing I feel like worth pointing out is BFG's ammo consumption rate. Considering that there are many BFG-centric maps (Going Down's map19 being a particularly notable example), the fact BFG still consumes 40 cells make them rather hurtful to play through. Changing the consumption rate (which apparently is possible in vanilla) to something like 15-20 is probably better.

 

Spoiler

I hope I haven't pissed off anyone by digging this thread up. I just found this to be a really cool mod.

 

[Scypek2]

I'm always happy to see someone care enough to comment on my threads!

 

Interesting idea... though it would make the plasma gun even more ammo-inefficient compared to the BFG.

 

The randomizer seems really fun too! I'd have to check it out.

[D4NUK1]

How i never heard of this .wad?

This can make some map with low enemies feels like a situation of attack or be killed. Don't know how to use it on maps like going down. xD

[Shepardus]

Had a quick spin with this. The ammo scarcity changed how I approached levels more than I expected, which is neat! Seeing a zombieman spontaneously combust from another zombieman hitting it is pretty funny too.

 

Edit: The .wad version doesn't have the change that swaps the rocket launcher and rocket boxes, while the .deh version does. Not sure if this was intentional.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Shepardus

[dmdr]

just played a bit of Valiant: Vaccinated Edition's MAP31 using this and it was both surprisingly well balanced and fun as fuck. Awesome mod!