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Lightning Hunter

Invisibility is Dog Crap

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So, I'm sure this has been talked about before in the history of DoomWorld, but who else agrees that the Invisibility is by far the most useless item in Doom, and quite possibly all the old ID games? The projectiles are already super easy to dodge, so what does the invisibility do? It makes you dodge INTO the projectiles. Killing a Baron in close quarters is far worse with invisibility on. Without invisibility, you can dodge a Baron's projectiles only several feet away, by predicting when he will throw it and strafe to the side accordingly. With invisibility, you end up dodging straight into the projectile when he tricks you by throwing it sideways - into your dodging path. I find myself getting hit more often with invisibility when I get tricked by monsters throwing fireballs into my dodge path.

The only time invisibility is EVER useful is when you encounter a group of Chaingunners or Shotun guys. With their instant-hit weapons, they miss instead of being 100% accurate. I've only run into this scenario maybe twice in my Dooming history. Most mappers tend to place the Invisibility near Barons and bosses, where it is absolutely useless. I mean seriously, we don't need the Cyberdemon shooting missiles wildly in all directions. I find myself leaving this powerup behind to collect dust, only grabbing it at the end to get 100% on the stats. There is nothing more insulting than finding an invisibility in an ultra hidden secret place. They may as well place a pile of dog crap in there as a reward instead. It is almost as bad as the poison Mushroom found in the Mario Bros special levels that kills you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ujezYyq0r4

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It's not all that great, but I don't think it's worth launching into a spergy, two-wall tirade over.

Zdoom makes it moderately more useful though, since then monsters won't wake up until you shoot.

It's also nothing like the Poison Mushroom (which is supposed to kill you; that's the entire idea), I don't see how you're coming to that conclusion.

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Invis is super-useful in one specific context: fighting hitscanners. It's practically invulnerability when facing a lone Spider Mastermind. :P

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Useful against multiple arachnotrons, lost souls and just for the fun of creating more chaotic and "random" infighting than usually.

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Xaser said:

Invis is super-useful in one specific context: fighting hitscanners. It's practically invulnerability when facing a lone Spider Mastermind. :P

It's reputation would probably be better if it was used in situations like that rather than just being slapped on for the sake of a reward. Or not used at all.

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Xaser said:

Invis is super-useful in one specific context: fighting hitscanners. It's practically invulnerability when facing a lone Spider Mastermind. :P


Yup, I said this in my original post. The problem is that mappers rarely ever place invisibility around hit-scan monsters.

This post was more of a rant than anything, because the last 10 or so custom megawads I've played has invisibility placed in the worst spots. Fighting a Cyberdemon or several barons in a cramped room with invisibility makes me want to rage quit. It doesn't help that some of the recent WADs I played were notorious for being difficult. There is nothing like fighting barons in a cramped room with 10 health and invisibility. Not only do you have to avoid getting hit once, but the barons randomly throw the fireballs sideways.

vdgg, I guess you are right about Lost Souls, but this is something else that I never run into. Mappers just typically aren't that smart about placing Invisibility. They are more like fillers in secret areas.

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Lightning Hunter said:

Yup, I said this in my original post. The problem is that mappers rarely ever place invisibility around hit-scan monsters.

This post was more of a rant than anything, because the last 10 or so custom megawads I've played has invisibility placed in the worst spots. Fighting a Cyberdemon or several barons in a cramped room with invisibility makes me want to rage quit.

That's not a matter of the blur sphere being bad, that's just an obnoxious map :V

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Lightning Hunter said:

Yup, I said this in my original post. The problem is that mappers rarely ever place invisibility around hit-scan monsters.

This post was more of a rant than anything, because the last 10 or so custom megawads I've played has invisibility placed in the worst spots. Fighting a Cyberdemon or several barons in a cramped room with invisibility makes me want to rage quit.


Scythe MAP27, I'm guessing? It's interesting how it forces you to use the PI against the 3 Cyberdemons, and I actually enjoyed the randomness factor quite a bit.

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Obsidian said:

Scythe MAP27, I'm guessing? It's interesting how it forces you to use the PI against the 3 Cyberdemons, and I actually enjoyed the randomness factor quite a bit.


Nope; I've actually been playing Ultimate Doom WADs lately. I can't remember which one's had terribly placed Invisibility powerups, but they were NOT on purpose. More like laziness.

A final battle with invisibility being used to make it more challenging on purpose might actually be clever.

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(empty) said:

That's not a matter of the blur sphere being bad, that's just an obnoxious map :V


Even the original games have random useless invisibility spheres. Except the original games have so much health it's not an issue. They are still useless even then, however.

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Okuplok's map has one encounter based on this. As you're sitting on a bridge, there's an invis sphere you need to pick up to survive chaingunner hordes on both sides. The catch is the same trigger releasing those zombies also prompt a cyberdemon to pop on the other side of the bridge, as well as arch-viles to hinder your movement. Pretty clever.

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How is it "dog crap"? Do you mean all these times when i thought i was picking up a pink, pulsating ball, it's actually been a pile of shit? You should totally make a sprite for that btw.

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glenzinho said:

Back to Saturn X Map 07 for the invisibility win!

That's indeed what I had in mind when posting earlier. Possibly the best use of the sphere I've seen. :)

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Xaser said:

That's indeed what I had in mind when posting earlier. Possibly the best use of the sphere I've seen. :)

Ooh, I have to confess I haven't played Vader's map.. Better get into it!

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amputechture32 said:
Except in Doom95. :P

It can, too, if you know about the -emulate parameter ;)

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It can be quite useful in NM when you're just pushing through the map, not having to care so much about dodging projectiles can take a load off your back then.

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General Rainbow Bacon said:

How is it "dog crap"? Do you mean all these times when i thought i was picking up a pink, pulsating ball, it's actually been a pile of shit? You should totally make a sprite for that btw.

Here you go... Available with or without steam coming off of it. lol. By the way, you will need a source port that can load a PWAD containing sprite graphics. I tested it with ZDoom. Probably the easiest level to see it is in Doom II's "Dead Simple" (MAP07).

Disclaimer: This is the first time that I've worked with a Doom sprite editor (XWE) so be please don't hurt me. haha. In fact, this is the first Doom-related file that I've managed to actually complete and then release. It just so happens to be a steaming pile of shit, quite literally! LOL. Oh, and the steam looks a bit dodgy. I'm not much of an artist so that's why a no-steam version is offered.

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Give us an AVGN episode about the inv. powerup or GTFO

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It's usually seen as a shit item because it always seems to be placed for the most useless situations.

But nothing is worse than a compulsory pickup of the PI. THIS is just fucking EVIL.

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Partial Invisibility? No problem. Just stay still, and only dodge the projectiles coming toward you.

Sounds like a dumb idea until you're trying to pick off Revenant and Chaingunner 'turrets' and can't be bothered with an associated volley of Imp and Hellnoble projectiles.

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The only time I remember putting blur spheres near projectile monsters being a good idea was in facility.wad. Blur sphere + multiple cyberdemons = decent simulation of a skilled player lobbing rockets in your direction; great for dodging practice.

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For people who can't dodge for shit, it's probably one of the most valuable items in game.

I remember when i first started playing and i wasn't really acquainted with strifing. When i came across the partial invisibility power up, it made combat at that time a lot less painful.

Now however, i avoid it like the plague.

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I wonder if it's possible to dehack it and give it entirely new effect (faster weapons, higher damage, etc).

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MAP28 of Hell to Pay dumped you on top of an invisibility to set you up for a tricky Cyberdemon fight (at least, knowing the authors, I assume they were trapping you).

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j4rio said:

I wonder if it's possible to dehack it and give it entirely new effect (faster weapons, higher damage, etc).


Unfortunately, the only thing you can really do is replace them with an existing powerup, since all the powerup effects are hardcoded. You could get away with doing something like replace them with soulspheres, though.

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I still contend that blurspheres are useful when dealing with with mixed projectile hordes provided there's cover\dodging room around.

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