Gameplay Mod [v1.1] The Failmage of Finland - Local Cat Mage Obliterates Himself, Foes With Illegal Homemade Magic Spells

[MundyC]

 

The Failmage of Finland is a slightly unbalanced, slightly gimmicky Ultimate Doom/Doom II gameplay mod that I made over Spring Break, primarily to refamiliarize myself with GZDoom and DECORATE. It serves as a partial successor to Adventures in Moth Sorcery, another mage-themed gameplay mod I made in 2022.

 

This mod replaces our boy John Stalvern with a catboy mage named Clarence, who casts messed-up and illegal magic spells he created instead of approved spells by the Magic Consulate. He also sucks at casting the spells as they like to backfire on him, and also resorts to regular firearms when angered. Weapons are (mostly) replaced with spell books that teach you surprisingly sadistic spells, which are (mostly) powered by mana instead of ammo. The items and powerups are also replaced with a blend of magic artifacts and random junk that fits their effects. It's definitely one of the gameplay mods of all time!

Download! (v1.1)

 

In case it wasn't clear from the first paragraph; unlike AIMS, this mod is GZDoom-only. I initially tried to make it in DEHEXTRA, but gave up after a day and switched it over to GZDoom. In addition, it's advised to only play this mod with mapsets that leave the player and weapons untouched. Think TNT + Plutonia, Hell Revealed , Eternal Doom, and so on. Though if you're a gameplay modder like me, you probably know this by now.

 

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Doom II - Downtown

 

The Plutonia Experiment - The Twilight

 

Eternal Doom - Fire and Stone

 

Equinox - MAP10

 

Weapon Replacements (Spoilers?):

Spoiler

Every weapon in this gameplay mod has an alt fire mode, as well as a small chance of an allegedly humorous mishap! (I'm not covering the ammo or item replacements here. This section is long enough as is!!)

• Brass Knuckles: High Kick. Channel your inner karate master and kick your enemies to death. Obtaining the Shit Kickers will greatly increase your High Kick's attack power and speed, at the cost of worse fails.
  • Primary Fire: Kick an enemy with your right leg. Deals about as much damage as the vanilla punch, but at faster rate.
    • Fail: Leg cramp or pulled muscle. Deals two or four damage, depending on Shit Kicker status.
  • Secondary Fire: Perform a dropkick with both legs. Deals over twice as much damage as the primary, but needs a small windup. Can also be used to move faster.
    • Fail: Double leg cramps. Deals four or eight damage, depending on Shit Kicker status.

 

• Chainsaw: Aether Rift. Use Dark Energy (rocket replacement) to summon projectiles and items from the Aether, that magic place where lost objects go! Its behavior makes it the only spell that can't injure Clarence in any way.
  • Primary Fire: Create a black rift that summons a random "lost" projectile. The projectiles that can be selected are faster equivalents of every Doom II enemy projectile, minus the Cyberdemon's rockets. Uses 5 Dark Energy.
    • Fail: The projectile doesn't show up.
  • Secondary Fire: Create a white rift that unleashes a magic skull projectile, which spawns a random item upon hitting a surface. These items can range from small health items to non-Dark Energy mana to even powerups like the Bigger Hat or Shit Kickers. Uses 20 Dark Energy.
    • Fail: The item doesn't show up.

 

• Pistol: Organ Torsion. Twist, bend, and even crush the organs of any enemy that dares to attack you. The very first spell you've come across while playing this mod.
  • Primary Fire: A quick snap of your fingers, which painfully bends and twists a random organ in an enemy. Deals 2.5x more damage than the vanilla pistol. Uses 2 Blue Mana (bullet replacement).
    • Fail: The spell ends up affecting YOUR organs, dealing six damage.
  • Secondary Fire: Plant a instant bomb inside an organ that completely obliterates it. Deals 12x more damage than the vanilla pistol. Uses 10 Blue Mana.
    • Fail: The spell obliterates one of YOUR organs, dealing 30 damage.

 

• Shotgun: Extreme Brain Hemorrhage. When you encounter an enemy that seems a bit tough to deal with, just give their brain a massive hemorrhage! That'll do the job.
  • Primary Fire: Clap your hands together and make an enemy's brain bleed profusely. Similar to a vanilla shotgun, but with less spread, more damage, and one extra pellet. Uses 1 Red Mana (shell replacement).
    • Fail: You forget to charge up the mana. This doesn't damage you - it only wastes time as you fix your mistake.
  • Secondary Fire: Summon a "flesh jitter", a screaming red skull that passes through enemies and "jitters" their flesh, causing it to become unstable. Enemies killed by a jitter are insta-gibbed. Uses 4 Red Mana.
    • Fail: The flesh jitter blows up in your hands, causing a 32-damage explosion.

 

• Super Shotgun: Partial Implosion. Cause a small section of an enemy's body to violently explode, dealing tons of damage! You can also use it on yourself to fly like a bird!
  • Primary Fire: Charge up and cast an instant implosion on an enemy (basically a hyper-fast rocket). Deals 40 to 320 damage. Uses 2 Red Mana.
    • Fail: The implosion happens to you, causing a 48-damage explosion.
  • Secondary Fire: Cause an explosion underneath your feet, lifting you into the air. It's much like an arch-vile jump, but a bit more powerful and only removes 2 HP. Uses 4 Red Mana.
    • Fail: You use way too much force in your explosion, dealing 48 damage and sending you flying into the air.

 

• Chaingun: Unleash Murder Hornets. Use your reserves of Blue Mana to summon murder hornets - whether just their stingers or the bugs themselves - to maximize pain and suffering!
  • Primary Fire: Shoot a volley of four murder hornet stingers at an enemy. It's a hitscan attack that deals slightly less damage than the chaingun, but is cheaper to fire (1 Blue Mana to summon four stingers).
    • Fail: Clarence shoots the stingers into himself, dealing 12 total damage.
  • Secondary Fire: Summon a murder hornet itself. It's a fragile creature - only having 15 HP - but makes up for it by being a more powerful, lightning-quick Lost Soul. Costs 20 Blue Mana to summon one hornet.
    • Fail: The murder hornet dies upon the initial impact with a surface.

 

• Rocket Launcher: Dark Conjuring. Summon the shadow people during your battles! You can either fire explosive "dark bombs" or summon "bonewolves" to fight for you. There are three bonewolf types that can be summoned, all with specific usages.
  • Primary Fire: Unleash a dark bomb, which is essentially a faster, more damaging rocket. Costs 5 Dark Energy.
    • Fail: The dark bomb drops to the ground after a second of flying.
  • Secondary Fire: Summon a projectile that quickly falls to the ground, spawning a bonewolf as it lands. There are three types; in order, they are the melee-only Emaciated Bonewolf, the flying Newborn Bonewolf, and the tanky Healthy Bonewolf. Costs 50 Dark Energy to conjure one bonewolf. (Take care to not fire it directly into walls - the bonewolf can get stuck.)
    • Fail: The summoned bonewolf is hostile towards you.

 

• Plasma Rifle: Gyrojet Pistol. Sometimes, you just want to shoot enemies instead of blasting them with silly spells. With this jet-powered pistol, you can do exactly that.
  • Primary Fire: Fire a single, fast-moving gyrojet bullet. Deals 8 to 80 damage.
    • Fail: The bullet stops flying after a second, falling to the ground. It can be picked back up.
  • Secondary Fire: Charge up a gyrojet bullet, causing it to become faster and more damaging. It also explodes upon contact with an enemy. Costs two Gyrojet rounds.
    • Fail: The bullet explodes in the gun, causing a 64-damage explosion.

 

• BFG: Gyrojet Heavy Carbine. This heavily-modified gyrojet carbine was worked on by your mother before her passing. It pushes those little jet-powered bullets to their maximum potential, eviscerating any enemy shot with it.
  • Primary Fire: Fires two "powerful" gyrojet bullets, which have a 37.5% chance to explode upon contact. Deals 18 to 144 damage per bullet.
    • Fail: The second bullet explodes in the gun, causing a 32-damage explosion. A very rare occurance.
  • Secondary Fire: Charge up and shoot a "gyrojet nuke", which causes a gargantuan explosion upon contact with an enemy. The projectile deals 40 to 320 damage on its own, with the explosion dealing at least 960 to 7,680 damage. Costs 20 Gyrojet rounds.
    • Fail: The gyrojet nuke explodes in the gun, causing a 200-damage explosion. A very rare occurrence.

 

Questions and Answers:

• Q: Is this an April's Fools prank?
  • A: Kinda! While the release date is intentional and the gameplay mod itself is non-serious in nature, it is a genuine, polished mod with a decent amount of changes. (Well, as polished as a mod developed in nine days can be!)
• Q: Why did you follow up your Cacoward-winning total conversion Austrian Avian Association with this shit?
  • A: Good question!
• Q: No, seriously. Why did you make this?
  • A: To test my abilities, and also to de-rust my GZDoom and Decorate skills.
• Q: Hey, the Knochenhunds from AAA are in this mod! Are all of your major projects (Darkworld, AAA, AIMS, Failmage) set in the same "Mundyverse?"
  • A: You'll get the answer in my next Doom project :)
• Q: Will you be making another "speed-coded" gameplay mod next year?
  • A: No.

Edited April 15 by MundyC
v1.1 release

[Koko]

I love this silly fail cat
it's amazing how you made him so endearing with the whole backfire mechanic, had a blast playing this

[MundyC]

On 4/13/2024 at 9:18 AM, Koko said:

I love this silly fail cat
it's amazing how you made him so endearing with the whole backfire mechanic, had a blast playing this

Thank you! :)

 

I've just released a new update for this gameplay mod, v1.1. It's a small patch mainly consisting of tweaks, minor additions, and bug fixes.

 

Changelog:

 

Spoiler

General:

• Made certain aspects less intrusive and reliant on the base Doom II data:
  • The base WAD's title/credits will appear after the initial Failmage title/credit pics.
  • Clarence himself now has a separate sprite prefix (CLAR), a separate status bar face prefix (CLF), and a custom sound class (failmage). This should eliminate any major conflicts with enemies/NPCs/funny effects that use Doomguy's sprites or sounds.
  • The Aether Rift's primary fire now uses unique projectile entities that aren't tied to any WAD. They're still 98% identical in function to the Doom II enemy projectiles, only receiving different sprites and internal names.
  • Other spell sprites that were sourced from the base WAD have also been replaced with new counterparts.
• Custom player colors now show up on Clarence's sprites. The darkest greens on his sprites have been adjusted to make this work.

Weapons:

• General:
  • Fail messages are now green.
  • Alt-fire spells will now light up Clarence's hands upon their casting. (Aether Tear is unaffected by this change)
• High Kick:
  • Simplified the whoosh sound logic.
• Aether Tear:
  • Fixed a bug regarding the primary fire where Mancubus projectiles would never appear. There were two actor states with the same name, and the latter one fired Revenant projectiles. This also lowers the primary fire's fail rate, technically.
  • Primary fire projectiles now move 50% faster.
  • Fixed a bug regarding the secondary fire where only four Healing/Defense Crystals could spawn instead of five.
• Summon Murder Hornets:
  • Lowered primary fire fail chance from 4/256 to 3/256.
  • Lowered secondary fire fail chance from 32/256 to 24/256.
• Conjure Bonewolf:
  • Renamed to "Dark Conjuration".
  • The primary and secondary fires have been swapped.
  • Lowered primary fire fail chance from 32/256 to 24/256.
  • Lowered secondary fire fail chance from 64/256 to 48/256.
  • Bonewolves now telefrag any enemy they spawn upon. The chance of this circumstance happening is very rare.
  • Healthy Bonewolf projectiles are now the Mancubus-like projectile used by the Aether Tear spell.
• Gyrojet Heavy Carbine:
  • Removed erroneous transparency effect on the gyrojet nuke projectile.

 

[LadyMistDragon]

A video with the original version. I guess it's mostly supposed to be a buff but the shotgun replacement's secondary fire seems geared more towards larger groups of weaker enemies.