What if the beta, hitscan arachnotrons were the ones in the final game?

[Maximum Matt]

2 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

 

When you accidentally shoot a plasma round into your giant cybernetic mother while trying to kill a human

[Lila Feuer]

1 hour ago, Maximum Matt said:

When you accidentally shoot a plasma round into your giant cybernetic mother

 

LEWD.

[Amaruψ]

4 hours ago, Tycitron said:

 

When mom had a heated argument with dad and she's going to exert her anger on you instead.

[Sonikkumania]

4 hours ago, Tycitron said:

 

Battle of Berlin, 1945, colourised. 

[Lila Feuer]

Spiderdemon super chaingun or PPSh-41?

 

Me: They're the same weapon.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Lila Feuer

[idbeholdME]

19 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

What about cyberdemons with hitscan rockets? We need to have that!

I vote for hitscan Lost Souls.

Edited October 31, 2023 by idbeholdME

[cannonball]

They perform the same role as the weaker cyberdemon as seen in the likes of some Ribbik’s wads. Though the smaller size of spiders is an extra over the over sized mother. I had fun using them both in Deadly Standards E4 and of course in the final episode of Return to hadron. That said I am glad they went for the plasma variant as these offer more to the mapper than simply having a small spider mastermind.

[Scypek2]

33 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

I vote for hitscan Lost Souls.

 

Now that's a blast from the past!

 

Also, the Wolf 3D Wolfendoom mod by ArEyeP has both hitscan lost souls and hitscan imps. Fun stuff!

 

Hitscan cybie rockets are an obviously terrible idea... explosive hitscan for the player, though? That sounds like fun! (I once made a dehacked mod where every BFG tracer explodes. Very overpowered, very dangerous, very satisfying)

Edited October 31, 2023 by Scypek2

[Lila Feuer]

@Scypek2 It also has a very creative mutant replacement which I believe was a nod to STRAIN's Polydrone which survived as the Guardian Cube on R667.

[Gez]

4 hours ago, Scypek2 said:

explosive hitscan for the player, though? That sounds like fun! 

The BFG10K from Skulltag is just that. A rapid-fire explosive hitscan gun.

[SealSpace]

Holy shit, Arachnotrons were originally hitscan in the beta version of Doom II?

 

Damn, I learned something new and interesting today.

Edited October 31, 2023 by SealSpace

[Individualised]

4 minutes ago, SealSpace said:

Holy shit, Arachnotrons were originally hitscan in the beat version of Doom II?

You couldn't beat it, there was no Icon of Sin yet /s

[SealSpace]

2 minutes ago, Individualised said:

You couldn't beat it, there was no Icon of Sin yet /s

Not sure if that was a response to my type of writing "beta" as "beat".

 

or if you were seriously telling me that you couldn't beat it (which I now know thanks to reading doom ii's page on tcrf).

Edited October 31, 2023 by SealSpace

[Individualised]

Just now, SealSpace said:

Not sure if that was a response to my type of writing "beta" as "beat".

 

or if you were seriously telling me that you couldn't beat it (which I now know thanks to reading doom ii's page on tcrf).

It was a joke about the misspelling, since at that point in development you couldn't beat the game yet.

[SealSpace]

Just now, Individualised said:

It was a joke about the misspelling, since at that point in development you couldn't beat the game yet.

I figured as much. 

[SealSpace]

Anyways as for my actual set of responses in light of learning about all this...

 

if Arachnotrons were hitscan in the final game, we'd be seeing a much more durable but slightly slower(?) version of the Chaingunner. 

 

It would be the tougher and harder cousin of the Heavy Weapons Dude.

 

And "Dead Simple" would have been much harder to beat, since you're facing Chaingunners with just a little over 7 times their HP. Plain and simple. 

Edited October 31, 2023 by SealSpace

[magicsofa]

I made an arachno variant with a double shotgunner attack (fires 6 pellets), much lower HP (but more than a chaingunner), faster and with a smaller hitbox. In 10 years when I finish the megawad that it's for I'll show it to you :P

 

It works as an addition to the roster, but I wouldn't want to completely remove the projectile-stream mechanic which is what would be the case if the plasma change never happened. No other monster fires a constant stream of slow(ish) projectiles, so yeah you'd be missing out on a whole facet of combat situations.

[The_SloVinator]

Most folks would hate them, probably more than Chaingunners. Personally, I wouldn't mind them as hitscan enemies force me to adapt in strategies/movement & all that but the final version Arachnotrons are a bit more original obviously as there is no other demon using plasma attacks.

[Rudolph]

14 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

In 10 years when I finish the megawad that it's for I'll show it to you

Are you referring to Magic Doom?

[SealSpace]

On the flipside, if the Arachnotron was hitscan in the final game, we'd essentially have just one more carbon copy of the Spider Mastermind and Chaingunner.

 

And we would be starving for something as unique as a projectile equivalent of the Chaingunner. Spamming endless volleys of plasma projectiles in their target's direction.

[SealSpace]

And as far as the Samsara Doom mod goes, replacing Arachnotrons with rapid-fire hitscan non-boss enemies from some of the games represented in the Samsara Monster Mixer would actually feel even more fitting in regards to context and balance lol. 

[Scypek2]

9 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

@Scypek2 It also has a very creative mutant replacement which I believe was a nod to STRAIN's Polydrone which survived as the Guardian Cube on R667.

 

It's creative for sure. And the author's website says it was made between 1995 and 1996, which suggests it predates STRAIN by one year! My favorite thing about Wolfendoom's cube enemy was the fact that it also had a harmless decorative variant, and made for a perfect trap when placed facing away from the player.

 

But my #1 favorite among many cool Wolfendoom things has to be the void transitions between Earth and Hell. Two plain rectangles that become infinite horizon... I just can't get over the simple beauty of it. And it made for some really atmospheric levels.

[Lila Feuer]

@Scypek2 Wow I didn't know that that's actually kind of insane. I credit STRAIN because I beat it like three years after I had released an early version of my LILA-DOOM mod for Doom's 25th and learned that the repurposed Guardian Cube I included (which I setup to behave exactly how the Wolfendoom version behaves, with a delayed wake up, no alert or roaming sounds, hitscan attack, even the fake outs via inert placements that do nothing but are in the WIP update now shootable to really put the player on edge even more) I was like "Awww Doom already had this thing?" but it looks like my honorary and rather obscure reference to a Wolfenstein 3D partial conversion is actually a fresh and original monster idea so that makes me happy! Haha.

And yes those fake holo-walls or whatever their term is in the community, maybe @DNSKILL5 can help me out here, were put to excellent use and the "portal" between Earth and the other dimension was seriously wow. I was really hoping due to what seemed like a lack of source code changes I could get the mod to work in ECWolf but outside of the maps, graphics and sounds (and some extra work iirc to get the new endscreens to load properly) those hacky portals are treated like impassable walls and I had to noclip to get to the other side. Afaik there isn't an ECWolf conversion proper for Wolfendoom yet.

[DNSKILL5]

Yeah, hollow walls are made by putting a passable object (such as an enemy or static sprite) into a wall in Wolf 3D. They can be dangerous though, as if you shoot whilst inside a hollow wall, it will alert all enemies (except the guards placed with the deaf floor code) in the entire level, but they can be used to make hidden rooms or passageways, surprise ambushes, etc. It was a more popular “hack” around the time that WolfenDoom mod was made, but isn’t used as much these days. 

[Lila Feuer]

I learned how they worked finally yay! Very cool. This is a big part of why I like these old game engines is because of those little nuances and quirks, be they intended or not.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Lila Feuer

[magicsofa]

10 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Are you referring to Magic Doom?

 

Why yes! (Magic Doom II that is) It won't be 10 years I promise... I just can't really get into it until I finish the current project or my head will explode :)

[CravenCoyote]

Are there any Rocket Spiders? Because I'd love me some rocket spiders.

[TheCarsEdge]

if they were hitscan then i'd probably hate them even more :)

[Gez]

Plasma arachno? Hitscan arachno? Insert *porque no los dos* meme here because All Hell is Breaking Loose! has the ultimate in spider-like combat spam technology with the arachnotron jockey!

[Coopersville]

We'd be posting on hereticworld.com instead.