Ideas for complimentary custom monsters

[40oz]

I feel there needs to be another monster that fire at offset angles, like the mancubus or sorta-revenant. Like an imp that throws two fireballs at once, or a cacodemon that belches three. I also like the concept of how the pain elemental blows up into more lost souls. I like the idea of a monster that breaks up into smaller monsters when killed, creating circumstances where its more beneficial to leave him alive than it is to kill him right away. Maybe a monster that is small and weak and when killed, comes back to life as a bigger tougher version of himself. Another thing that would be nice is a type of rapid fire monster like a chaingunner or arachnatron that is always standing still, so you don't need to put it on a pillar/platform/cage for it to not go anywhere.

[Arctangent]

40oz said:

Maybe a monster that is small and weak and when killed, comes back to life as a bigger tougher version of himself.

This is actually a cool idea. Maybe make the first form have an attack that's hitscan or a fast and / or homing projectile that does non-threatening damage, but will take a toll on your health if you leave it be too long. But killing it immediately isn't the best option, because it transforms into a lightning-fast melee brute that you can't even take advantage of to help you clear the room because it won't infight, at least not until you're dead. Nothing too difficult to handle on its own, but you don't want to have to deal with it while you have other threats to worry about.

[geo]

kb1 said:

I'm looking for ideas for general-use, low-to-medium powered non-boss monsters. Less hps than barons, with reasonable weaponry. Monsters where you can comfortably add a handful of them in the room, and practically expect them to be killable, using standard Doom weapons.

Please think in terms of complimentary capabilities. In other words, your monster should work extra well in situations when it is joined by some other Doom monster. This suggests that your custom monster's capability should not tend to induce monster infighting (no exploding BFG mushroom monsters :)

So, please describe your monster ideas, their weapons, and how they might compliment other Doom II monsters, or fill in a gap that's missing in the Doom II lineup.

I've posted several times on Doom World monster AI suggestions for this and other games.

Not much programming? Fast strafing hit scan monster. Its time Doomgun have a taste of his own medicine.

Complimentary?

Healers / defenders. One enemy makes another if not a group invincible or heals them at a rate only bigger weapons will take them out. You need to kill the healer / shielder first. It doesn't even have to be healing or shielding, but it raises DEFENSE or OFFENSE of allies within a surrounding area. If no one is in the radius, then it attacks the player.

Poisoners, why hurt the player when you can shoot at his feet and have the radius become a toxic cloud that the player can't enter without taking damage? I'm not sure how you'll do the visuals, but whatever. Aiming at the player's feet results in accuracy that won't just be circle strafed around.

Grenaders, pipe bombers. Make them pretty and have them bounce around. Shambler? Make sure it has particle effects to trail behind it. I say grenaders and pipe bombers, because they bounce around walls rather than homing in on you. If the player hides, these can get to the player.

Interesting projectilers. Why have an imp fireball get destroyed on impact when you can have it bounce 2 or 3 times? A projectile that when it hits the wall fires smaller projectiles. More interesting than that, a gravity or black hole projectile that when it hits, it pulls you or anything else toward it. Does it hurt you? No the poisoners do that, instead it sticks you there until its done so other things can hurt you... it is complimenting after all. The closer you are to the center, the less you can fight against it until its done.

Chainsaw or melee weapons. I don't mean overhead easy to dodge, I mean side swinging enemies that have a hit radius. Like swinging a baseball bat rather than chopping firewood.

In your face enemies. Dogs that are quick and require you to duck shoot them... well maybe not duck, this is Doom after all. Think trite. Something quick and numerous that gets in your face so if you rocket them they're too close. The enemy itself can explode, but its brethren are immune of course! Think ticks i guess.

Wanna get real FPS, go over to Half-Life 2 with the blinders. Something in your face that temporarily blinds the player with a white screen. Then you just wait til it wears off while shooting everything around you.... wasting ammo.

Ceiling hangers. First of all why not? It doesn't have to have a tongue, but it can damage the player if they're not looking up. No one looks up. That's why Half-Life has a tongue on their hangers.

Shielder. An enemy with a shield immune to direct gunfire. You can take them out by circle strafing around, but if they've seen you, they're always facing you, so then you need to either run or rocket a wall to jib them from behind.

Flanking floaters. Why be in your face when you can be behind it? Something that specifically stays a radius away from you until it gets to an angle behind the player. Then it darts in. This forces the player to turn away from the action. It doesn't even have to float, but it can cloak.

Teleporting Flank gun. If you want to get really crazy with programming, have a monster that shoots an ally, then shoots at the player. The second shot teleports the first shot ally. The player will naturally dodge the second projectile, well that just teleported an enemy behind the player wherever the projectile hit.

Enemies exploding enemies. Dead Space taught me aim. There is no aim in Doom. So just don't shoot the enemy. Shooting them makes them explode into smaller enemies that you'd rather not face. Yo dawk I hear you wanted inemies in your inemies!

IT'S A TRAP! Body on the wall you've seen 100 times before? Person hanging from the ceiling that isn't alive? Well if you have your back to them they turn into an enemy. The player will then check every dead body to make sure it doesn't spring to life. Wasting ammo.

Screamers. Imagine no one sees you in a room full of enemies when you have a pistol and not much room to strafe. Its designed for you to walk past as their all at their consoles to get a double barreled shotgun at the end. Then a screamer sees you and awakens all the enemies. Probably better in zombie games than Doom.

Dead body thrower. Yeah like an arch vile, but why resurrect enemies when you can throw them? This might need to be a more Baron of Hell style enemy, but hey I'm just throwing out ideas.

Yeah I'm done typing.

[fraggle]

Linguica said:

I think it would be neat to see an area denial monster, e.g., one that spawned little hell portals on the ground around you that persisted for 10 seconds or so and dealt heavy damage if you touched them.

did you just propose a poop demon

[VGamingJunkie]

40oz said:

Another thing that would be nice is a type of rapid fire monster like a chaingunner or arachnatron that is always standing still, so you don't need to put it on a pillar/platform/cage for it to not go anywhere.

That sounds like a mounted turret gun, like the ones from Duke 3D.

[Gez]

Linguica said:

I think it would be neat to see an area denial monster, e.g., one that spawned little hell portals on the ground around you that persisted for 10 seconds or so and dealt heavy damage if you touched them.

Hexen's Death Wyvern is basically this, its fireballs explode a first time when hitting the ground and then a second time a few seconds after; I think the idea behind it was to emulate the ground getting superheated and becoming damaging until it cools down. Anyway the result is that you have to be aware of where the dragon's flame hit (there's no visible marker after the first explosion) and keep away from that area until the second explosion.

[Arctangent]

geo said:

Chainsaw or melee weapons. I don't mean overhead easy to dodge, I mean side swinging enemies that have a hit radius. Like swinging a baseball bat rather than chopping firewood.

Well, Doom monsters have a melee arc of 180 degrees, technically; you can teleport behind a Demon and it'll bite you with its butt if you're still in range. The reason why melee isn't that threatening in Doom is because of range and the monsters' attack point; with how delayed monster attacks are in Doom, it's very simply to just backpedal out of their piddly melee range.

Especially with Demons and Revenants. All other melee monsters will fire their projectile if their melee attack misses. Demons don't have a projectile and Revenants use different attack code pointers in their missile and melee states, so they're both hilariously easy to kite.

Especially Revenants, since if you're too close they won't even bother to try to go into their missile state.

[geo]

Arctangent said:

Well, Doom monsters have a melee arc of 180 degrees, technically; you can teleport behind a Demon and it'll bite you with its butt if you're still in range. The reason why melee isn't that threatening in Doom is because of range and the monsters' attack point; with how delayed monster attacks are in Doom, it's very simply to just backpedal out of their piddly melee range.

Especially with Demons and Revenants. All other melee monsters will fire their projectile if their melee attack misses. Demons don't have a projectile and Revenants use different attack code pointers in their missile and melee states, so they're both hilariously easy to kite.

Especially Revenants, since if you're too close they won't even bother to try to go into their missile state.

I think I knew about the 180 melee arc at some point in my life, but I clearly forgot about it. The in your face enemies are more to block the big guys as they get into position... but that's nothing a pinky couldn't naturally do.

[Linguica]

Arctangent said:

Well, Doom monsters have a melee arc of 180 degrees, technically; you can teleport behind a Demon and it'll bite you with its butt if you're still in range.

Then don't you mean... 360 degrees?

[Arctangent]

Linguica said:

Then don't you mean... 360 degrees?

I'm used to defining stuff like this by half the arc under the assumption it would be mirrored, shhhh.

[scifista42]

Arctangent said:

you can teleport behind a Demon and it'll bite you with its butt

You shouldn't have phrased it like that - now somebody would make a wad where demons with modified sprites would attack this way!

You're right about the kind of stupid backpedaling, but I still find it incredibly fun and exciting in case of Revenants. If you shoot them, they might retaliate with a missile anytime if you're not in their melee range at the right time. Then when they punch you and you don't leave their melee range soon enough, you get damaged relatively heavily. Danger is there.

[AD_79]

scifista42 said:

You shouldn't have phrased it like that - now somebody would make a wad where demons with modified sprites would attack this way!

I actually want to see this now.

[VGamingJunkie]

scifista42 said:

You shouldn't have phrased it like that - now somebody would make a wad where demons with modified sprites would attack this way!

You're right about the kind of stupid backpedaling, but I still find it incredibly fun and exciting in case of Revenants. If you shoot them, they might retaliate with a missile anytime if you're not in their melee range at the right time. Then when they punch you and you don't leave their melee range soon enough, you get damaged relatively heavily. Danger is there.

I usually find it far easier to go in and out of melee range with the Revenants so that I can avoid getting damaged while keeping them from firing rockets, it's a lot easier to weave in and out while blasting it with the Super Shotgun than it is to have to deal with its homing missiles.

[Maes]

scifista42 said:

If you shoot them, they might retaliate with a missile anytime if you're not in their melee range at the right time.

Actually, even if you're in their melee range, they will retaliate with a missile up-close if you shoot them first. There's no way to attack them with impunity. But you can just fuck around with them if you keep within melee range all the time and evade them/keep just out of their reach.

[scifista42]

Maes said:

Actually, even if you're in their melee range, they will retaliate with a missile up-close if you shoot them first.

I was under an impression that they wouldn't, otherwise the popular Revenant bottlenecking strategy wouldn't work in most cases. Can anybody confirm it? Preferably by source code presentation and explanation, rather than just testimony.

EDIT: I looked at the code myself, and you were apparently right, see my post below.

[SyntherAugustus]

A variant of the arch vile where if it lands a hit, a trio lost souls spawn around you.

[Job]

BlackFish said:

A variant of the arch vile where if it lands a hit, a trio lost souls spawn around you become a lost soul for 30 seconds.

FTFY

[scifista42]

I've found this in "p_enemy.c" of Doom's source code. P_CheckMissileRange function is always called by A_Chase right before performing missile attack, and the attack will be performed if it returns true:

boolean P_CheckMissileRange (mobj_t* actor)
{
    fixed_t	dist;
	
    if (! P_CheckSight (actor, actor->target) )
	return false;
	
    if ( actor->flags & MF_JUSTHIT )
    {
	// the target just hit the enemy,
	// so fight back!
	actor->flags &= ~MF_JUSTHIT;
	return true;
    }

    ...

    if (actor->type == MT_UNDEAD)
    {
	if (dist < 196)	
	    return false;	// close for fist attack
	dist >>= 1;
    }

    ...

}

Indeed, the check for MF_JUSTHIT flag (=monster was shot) will make the function return true, even before the MT_UNDEAD (=revenant) check will be performed that would return false. So you were right, Maes.

EDIT: Wait a moment, maybe not...

This is a part of A_Chase, the only function that can call melee and missile attacks:

    // check for melee attack
    if (actor->info->meleestate
	&& P_CheckMeleeRange (actor))
    {
	if (actor->info->attacksound)
	    S_StartSound (actor, actor->info->attacksound);

	P_SetMobjState (actor, actor->info->meleestate);
	return;
    }
    
    // check for missile attack
    if (actor->info->missilestate)
    {
	if (gameskill < sk_nightmare
	    && !fastparm && actor->movecount)
	{
	    goto nomissile;
	}
	
	if (!P_CheckMissileRange (actor))
	    goto nomissile;
	
	P_SetMobjState (actor, actor->info->missilestate);
	actor->flags |= MF_JUSTATTACKED;
	return;
    }

Check for melee range is performed first, which means that the code with P_CheckMissileRange will not be executed at all. So, no!

By melee range, I was referring to the common <64 units one, not the revenant-specific <196 no-missile-range. It is true that if you shoot a revenant, he might retaliate with a missile if you stand between 64 and 196 units from him. But not when you stand within his 64 unit actual melee range.

[Maes]

scifista42 said:

Can anybody confirm it? Preferably by source code presentation and explanation, rather than just testimony.

I hope that the wiki is good enough for you, as I'm too lazy to record a demo or go into the source code right now.

Revenants have a unique characteristic unlike any other monster that has a melee attack: when the distance to its target is less than 196 units, the revenant abandons its missile attack completely and attempts to close to melee range; if attacked and hurt however, it will still immediately counter-attack with a single missile.

I thought the bottlenecking strategy was, well, meant to bottleneck them without attacking. It can infamously be done on The Great Bicycle Mystery MAP15, where there's an alcove allowing you to keep unharmed while surrounded by literally hundreds of angry revenants, hoping that the infighting will other monsters will thin their numbers enough for you to make a rush.

scifista42 said:

It is true that if you shoot a revenant, he might retaliate with a missile if you stand between 64 and 196 units from him. But not when you stand within his 64 unit actual melee range.

But then won't it simply, you know, just punch you? ;-) In any case, this second kind of "bottlenecking" that you propose, by keeping closer than 64 units to any monster with a melee attack, has nothing to do specifically with revenants. It sounds like a Tysoning strategy, not the revenant bottlenecking everybody is more familiar with.

scifista42 said:

Check for melee range is performed first, which means that the code with P_CheckMissileRange will not be executed at all. So, no!

True, it's performed first, but it might still fail and allow P_CheckMissileRange to be called (this also depends on the target's radius, the player must actually be closer than 52 units for the attack to occur, not just closer than 64). The Revenant's "extended" melee range is not actually used in P_CheckMeleeRange. It's only checked for in P_CheckMissileRange, and then only if a retaliation isn't pending.


In any case, what you were referring to (keeping just at the limit of melee range) is a Tysoning strategy. I'd hardly call that "bottlenecking" when you have to keep on your toes and you're constantly one or two tics away from getting scratched/bit/punched, and it's not something specific to Revenants, either.

[Shadow Hog]

One I've kinda wanted to see are a small enemy that hops around toward you and is something of a pain to shoot, but has amazingly low HP and can be spammed liberally a la zombiemen - kinda like the spider enemies in Powerslave or Headcrabs in Half-Life. For when I want quick cannon-fodder, but even a lowly zombieman is a bit much for the situation. I suppose Doom's autoaim would make these things trivial, though.

Another is an enemy that will lunge at you from far distances and do pretty bad damage if it connects - like Fiends from Quake or the Gargs from Doom 2 the Way id Did's MAP31. I suppose Lost Souls fill a similar niche (except they fly), although I never really felt that they were quite the threat that the two I highlighted were. I'm not entirely sure why that is, alas.

A third that'd been kicking around in my head for a mod I'm likely never going to make is a melee enemy similar to Demons/Spectres, except instead of a lengthy, easy-to-dodge melee animation, this enemy does the damage the instant it's in range, without pulling to a stop first, and keeps itself deliberately as quiet as possible to avoid detection. In the context of that mod, it was a cloaked assassin who's quick and light on his feet, arms holding a knife or dirk under his cloak, prepped to slice it at you the instant he's in range to do so, and doesn't lose a step at that. It's a similar niche to Pinkies, but slightly more threatening because you can't just shuffle away slightly to avoid taking damage - you have to deal with it before it closes the distance.

[scifista42]

I was referring to bottlenecking combined with shooting the Revenant (preferably with an SSG) that's semi-unsafe and exciting.

Maes said:

(this also depends on the target's radius, the player must actually be closer than 52 units for the attack to occur, not just closer than 64)

P_CheckMeleeRange says:

if (dist >= MELEERANGE-20*FRACUNIT+pl->info->radius)
    return false;

MELEERANGE is 64. Player's radius is 16. 64 - 20 + 16 = 60. It should be 60, I think. This same "P_CheckMeleeRange" function is called by Revenant's A_SkelFist codepointer, so it's 60 too.

[Linguica]

Shadow Hog said:

One I've kinda wanted to see are a small enemy that hops around toward you and is something of a pain to shoot, but has amazingly low HP and can be spammed liberally

[Shadow Hog]

Linguica said:

http://i.imgur.com/ip5KsJB.jpg

I suppose I should've guessed Doom 3 had my back there.

(Confession: I've never played Doom 3.)

[VGamingJunkie]

Maes said:

Actually, even if you're in their melee range, they will retaliate with a missile up-close if you shoot them first. There's no way to attack them with impunity. But you can just fuck around with them if you keep within melee range all the time and evade them/keep just out of their reach.

I usually time it so I'm shooting the Revenant while it's trying to melee me so maybe that's why it isn't retaliating with missiles?

[Deleted_Account]

I want an incredibly agiated revenant that fires homing revenants.

[kb1]

geo said:

I've posted several times on Doom World monster AI suggestions for this and other games.

Not much programming? Fast strafing hit scan monster. Its time Doomgun have a taste of his own medicine.

I do like the idea of enhanced monster AI in theory, but I can't get past the issues it would cause, especially if applied to the original monsters. Doom's monster AI is essentially PacMan logic, with turn-around capabilities. But, we know and love it. Many players can play Doom in "auto-pilot" mode, anticipating every move the monsters will make. It is this "in-the-zone" feeling that gets lost when you go changing the AI, even slightly.

However, if applied exclusively to *new* monsters, you bypass those issues, ,and might end up with something interesting!

geo said:

...lots of great ideas...

Again, wow, tons of great ideas for monsters (from you, and everyone)! Many of them can be done with standard DeHacked as well. This leads me to a new idea.

[geo]

I only suggested new enemy ideas. You don't have to change the core game, just make more monsters for different maps.

[Maes]

MetroidJunkie said:

I usually time it so I'm shooting the Revenant while it's trying to melee me so maybe that's why it isn't retaliating with missiles?

It should still retaliate with a missile in the next possible tic unless you manage to keep within that pretty narrow "safe zone" between 60 and 64 map units. Any closer, and you will get punched (unless your weapon's timing allows you to keep it in a pain state). Any farther, and you swallow a missile.

I'm not sure if any monster -other than a pinky- can actually miss a melee attack once the animation has started. The pinky's damaging attack frame is quite delayed, that's why it often ends up biting uselessly at the air, but everything else is instantaneous, despite of how the attack animation may look.

[Da Werecat]

Maes said:

but everything else is instantaneous

The revenant's punch is faster, but it can easily miss if the target is quick enough. Pseudo-melee attacks of other monsters can technically miss too - it results in a fireball in your face.

[raymoohawk]

dont know if it was already mentioned but one of the conplementary monsters could be the still living revenant