How To "Fix" The Spider Mastermind?

[Deadwing]

The few times I've placed them my strategy was:

 

- Make them teleport to random specific spots.

- Place them in a way they don't in-fight with each other/other enemies.

- Give the player a BFG so he can kill them quickly to end the battle or the focus of the battle can change to something else.

- In-fight buddies.

[NeoWorm]

I was playing with some ideas some time ago when I was trying to do proper magic attack animation for SMM.
First I wanted him to be untargetable by other monster just like Arch Vile. Than to make it proper boss with phases. When it hits half HP it becomes invincible (complete with inverted black and white palette) and spawns four orbiting drones that are high enough for him not to hit. As long as the drones are alive SMM is invincible. Maybe it could repeat that phase twice, it would need testing.

As for the magic attack, I had few idea, none my favourite. Mass ressurect of monsters around, Teleport player right in front of him (with animation and delay similar to Archvile attack), BFG attack with long tell (slowly materializing the BFG ball above it's head), and even stopping monster around from infighting and force player (or just the current target of SMM) to be also their target.

[djnr]

Spiderdemon doesn't need to be "fixed", because it can already be used in interesting (if limited) ways. However, I saw this topic, came up with a couple ideas, and threw together a proof-of-concept dehacked. Warning, it cannibalizes zombieman and imp states, so make sure to avoid maps with those enemies.

 
spidertest.zip

 

Load it up in Doom 1 and go to E3M8. Pop an IDFA and test out various weapons, cover, etc against her! (BFG is still about the same though unfortunately, but maybe that's OK -- compare with BFGing a cyberdemon)

 

What it does:

- Change her attack pattern to a 20 round burst over ~2 seconds. First shot has a long delay before the other 19, to give you time to get out of the way. Besides that, the fire rate starts fast and slows down a bit towards the end

- After the 20 round burst, shoots out a floating mine (imp fireball) that explodes after ~2 seconds

- Also shoots out the same explosive mine whenever her pain state is triggered

 

Obviously needs tweaking before it's ready for an actual project, but it's just a POC and I'm happy I was able to hack it together as I envisioned it.

 

Feel free to steal, modify, and/or use as inspiration. (because I probably won't do anything with it)

[ApprihensivSoul]

I was thinking of giving it the Guass from D2 since that fits the canon description of "Super Chaingun", then I saw your post.

 

Spoiler

8 hours ago, rzh said:

Trust me, you don't want to make it faster and smaller.

 

 

 

That said, I've always liked the idea of a more powerful burst-firing Mastermind, that attacks more often, has a faster attack rate, and a long warmup before attacking to allow stunning.

This might work well with the faster moving, lower size versions, and especially with lower painchance, as the stunning before each volley shouldn't be sure thing. 

Also, what should her Magic attack do? I always thought it was either given to the Pain Elemental or the Archvile, but I don't know which, and how would you reinvent that without cloning? Perhaps summoning self-destructing lost souls like in New Doom?

Edited December 22, 2023 by ApprihensivSoul

[Maximum Matt]

Get it to fire rockets as well as the chaingun.  That'll make the bastard a real threat

[donke]

Hmmm

What if she had a flamethrower instead of her chainshotgun?

Like an stream of flame (aka, a stream of limited ranged plasma projectiles) that uses the "explode" codepointer

Edited April 12 by donke

[TF_Doomer]

Generally for me the Chaingunner does the same job in a way more versatile way. If you changed the spider demons weapon to maybe something like a BFG blast or something close to it as the Arachnatrons have plasma guns why can the Mastermind have a better version of the Plasma gun? It would make her a way more dangerous threat as a boss and it wouldn’t throw balance as a few chain gunners can do her job way better and you don’t have to make a giant arena to fit them in! 

[donke]

Yeah 

make her fire a steam of plasma projectiles like the arachnotron, but with a smaller delay between shots, and maybe then after a few shots, she goes back to walking 

 

Or if you are evil, make her shoot five revenant rockets 

[ChaingunChaCha]

I think Struggle changed her to use rapid plasma bolts. Might be mixing up wads but worth checking it out.

[donke]

Well, struggle uses both the chainshotgun and plasma

[Captain D!psh¡t]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:22 PM, Stupid Bunny said:

 The bee mastermind

The Hornet mastermind 

[Captain D!psh¡t]

Also

Speaking of an plasma shooting spider mastermind, maybe her plasma bolts move twice as fast compared to the arachnotron's plasma

[Lila Feuer]

Twin chainguns and a BFG, so the Spider Demolisher on the Realm.

[magicsofa]

On 12/21/2023 at 5:15 PM, djnr said:

Spiderdemon doesn't need to be "fixed", because it can already be used in interesting (if limited) ways. However, I saw this topic, came up with a couple ideas, and threw together a proof-of-concept dehacked. Warning, it cannibalizes zombieman and imp states, so make sure to avoid maps with those enemies.

 
spidertest.zip

 

Load it up in Doom 1 and go to E3M8. Pop an IDFA and test out various weapons, cover, etc against her! (BFG is still about the same though unfortunately, but maybe that's OK -- compare with BFGing a cyberdemon)

 

What it does:

- Change her attack pattern to a 20 round burst over ~2 seconds. First shot has a long delay before the other 19, to give you time to get out of the way. Besides that, the fire rate starts fast and slows down a bit towards the end

- After the 20 round burst, shoots out a floating mine (imp fireball) that explodes after ~2 seconds

- Also shoots out the same explosive mine whenever her pain state is triggered

 

Obviously needs tweaking before it's ready for an actual project, but it's just a POC and I'm happy I was able to hack it together as I envisioned it.

 

Feel free to steal, modify, and/or use as inspiration. (because I probably won't do anything with it)

 

I tried this and I kinda like it, although the windup for the chaingun is a bit weird. I think the delay between the first and second shot could be smaller to make a more regular "bell curve" in terms of delay between firing frames. Also the bomb should be shot out first in my opinion, and travel faster. Actually shooting a few of these during the attack would be cool to reduce player's safe area.

[Captain D!psh¡t]

Hmmmm

Maybe she could also have her secondary magic attack 

Maybe her summoning bfg tracers

Edited May 3 by Captain D!psh¡t

[Artinum]

The main problem with Mama Spider is her sheer size. She's easily the biggest monster in Doom or Doom 2, and that seriously limits her movement. It also makes her a very easy target - if you can find a friendly corner somewhere with a little cover, you can shoot her in the leg until she dies while she's helpless to fight back. It also means that she's easily struck by any stray shots from player or monster, and her attack is prone to anger other monsters and spark infighting.

 

The best approach is probably to put her in a nice, open arena, possibly up high - that way, getting close to her is extremely difficult without being shot full of holes (because that hitscan chaingun is a horror at range). Then movement isn't such an issue, and the large hitbox is ameliorated somewhat by distance.

 

One trick that MyHouse included, which worked rather well, was to make its Spider Mastermind a non-target - that way, it didn't matter how much other monsters got hit by stray bullets, they'd ignore them. The Spider remained an issue for the player to deal with.

[yakfak]

i kinda like to place a bunch of masterminds in areas you can't possibly fight them until you've found better weapons! like make sure they can't see each other and then litter a whole cave system with masterminds who represent such a serious level of attrition that you can't clear the whole place at once - you have to bring cells from other parts of the level just to fight them at all

 

(posted by remove skill from and add frustration to doom levels crew)

[Captain D!psh¡t]

On 5/3/2024 at 12:14 PM, yakfak said:

i kinda like to place a bunch of masterminds in areas you can't possibly fight them until you've found better weapons! like make sure they can't see each other and then litter a whole cave system with masterminds who represent such a serious level of attrition that you can't clear the whole place at once - you have to bring cells from other parts of the level just to fight them at all

 

(posted by remove skill from and add frustration to doom levels crew)

Noice, great idea! :D

[JamesBone]

I skipped using the SMM at all as a fight, and just used it a generic sound effect. It's level-wide sound of it dying, and has no sound clipping. So if you telefrag it with another Player, then it will make an explosion sound anywhere in the map. Thought it was nice way to add a sound effect for vanilla DOOM mods.

[Captain D!psh¡t]

Interesting 

 

Meanwhile 

I made a dehacked patch that does the following changes to the spider mastermind

(it kinda affects the arachnotron too)

 

The spider mastermind:

•Her width is now 80 instead of 128

 

•Her speed unit is 16 instead of 12

 

•Her painchance is now 20/256 instead of 40/256

 

•her walking frames last for 2 tics instead of 3 tics, except the walking frames that make sound

 

•there is an A Explode function that lasts for 1 tic that triggers after each of her metal sounding walking frames

 

•her pre firing frame last for 10 tics now instead of 20

 

•she now a volley of 14 bullet projectiles with an 3 tick fire rate instead of her neverending shotgunner 4 tick fire rate hitscan (the projectile is an modified arachnotron projectile with double the speed)

 

Since i changed the arachnotron projectile, the arachnotron also shoots those special bullet projectiles, albeit, on an slower fire rate 

 

Those changes, in my opinion, made the spider mastermind much more fun to fight and also much more formidable 

 

 

Did i mention that the sound of those bullets is the same as the super shotgun booming sound?

Because it is and it sounds very goooood :D

Edited May 8 by Captain D!psh¡t

[Captain D!psh¡t]

On 5/8/2024 at 7:08 PM, Captain D!psh¡t said:

Interesting 

 

Meanwhile 

I made a dehacked patch that does the following changes to the spider mastermind

(it kinda affects the arachnotron too)

 

The spider mastermind:

•Her width is now 80 instead of 128

 

•Her speed unit is 16 instead of 12

 

•Her painchance is now 20/256 instead of 40/256

 

•her walking frames last for 2 tics instead of 3 tics, except the walking frames that make sound

 

•there is an A Explode function that lasts for 1 tic that triggers after each of her metal sounding walking frames

 

•her pre firing frame last for 10 tics now instead of 20

 

•she now a volley of 14 bullet projectiles with an 3 tick fire rate instead of her neverending shotgunner 4 tick fire rate hitscan (the projectile is an modified arachnotron projectile with double the speed)

 

Since i changed the arachnotron projectile, the arachnotron also shoots those special bullet projectiles, albeit, on an slower fire rate 

 

Those changes, in my opinion, made the spider mastermind much more fun to fight and also much more formidable 

 

 

Did i mention that the sound of those bullets is the same as the super shotgun booming sound?

Because it is and it sounds very goooood :D

This was generally an attempt of mine 

But idk 

Im still experimenting on making the spider mastermind dangerous, and more importantly, fun to fight 

[Captain D!psh¡t]

One idea i have is to make her basically a personafied version of plutonia

 

[Captain D!psh¡t]

Hmm 

Maybe she shoots a voley of revenant rockets when she flinches 

 

 

Edited May 15 by Captain D!psh¡t

[The BMFG]

Id give her more HP obviously. Replace her chaingun with something projectile instead, but give her a new hitscan attack in the form of her scrapped magic.

[Captain D!psh¡t]

Hmmm

Interesting 

I tried something similar, using double archvile zap damage (without the blast damage), and takes around 20 tics before shooting the player with that magic

 

I also made sprites of that attack, being her conjuring an teleport fog looking explosion from her beeg brain

[Tiramisu]

Quick answer is to fix the blockmap, as that's where her main woe (being blocked by infighting monsters) comes from. If I'm not mistaken it would also allow her to actually reliably block corridors of the same width as she is without Doomguy randomly slipping past (a baffling weakness, honestly). If fixing blockmap is not an option, then she should prevent enemy retaliation like the Archviles. Either way like people said her hitbox itself should also be reduced a bit to match the sprite better.

 

If we're talking something more unique, then I just had an idea on how it would be funny to give her an "overdrive" mode, where after a few seconds of chasing she stops for a second, does a rev-up sound and suddenly becomes 2x faster, skittering around like an actual spider. This would certainly make her a lot harder to ignore - once you hear that stomping in overdrive you have to keep your eyes peeled to see where she pops up next. EDIT: Wait a minute, this is basically an Archvile lol

 

BFG weakness should be kept as it is, one-shotting masterminds is one of the funniest things in DOOM :p

Edited May 15 by Tiramisu

[Captain D!psh¡t]

Ok

As a test, i increased the speed of my projectile based mastermind from 12 to 22 for funsies (and changing her walking frames to 2 tick rate instead of 3 tick rate)

 

And oh GOD is she a menace

[LegendaryEevee]

@DSC The most Terrifying use I've ever seen of the Spider Mastermind is in the "Going Down" WAD Map07 (their Dead Simple clone).  Plays like normal, arachnatrons, and mancubis but after them you get flooded with Hell Knights and Demons.  Finally through the second wave you get pinned at the bottom of a staircase in a small office building with a Spider Mastermind roaming free as like 20 some Revenants chase you down.  A Free Roaming Spider Mastermind with 20 some Revenants chasing you down literally is the most terrifying thing ever.  Tight quarters means you blow yourself up with the Rocket Launcher.  You may hide from the SMM but then the Revenants will barg in wherever you are and take you out.  Perfectly captured the feeling of being trapped if you've not seen it definately check it out.  I'll see if I can find someone's footage of the level (I haven't played it for a while).  This is a fight you don't forget once you've gotten through it.

 

Here's Decino almost getting rocked by the trap

 

Edited May 16 by LegendaryEevee

[Aeddes666]

I use this.

Not ideal, but SMM can tank CyberD on a 1vs1.

[Captain D!psh¡t]

Neato

Meanwhile, i made those

 

One modifies just the spider mastermind, to make her an supremely agile chaingunner 

 

The other modifies her and the arachnotron 

It makes her an supremely agile projectile shooter, which shoots non hitscan bullets that have double the speed of an vanilla arachnotron's projectile (and because it uses the arachnotron projectile, it alters the arachnotron too. So, i made changes to the arachnotron too, making it less tanky, but more agile and with an less wide collision box)

 

Those files are vanilla deh file patches

 

Have fun