Random key and monster placement

Does anyone know a mod which does a decent random monster placement for the original Doom 1/2 Wads?

AEons of Death defines several monsters in one class, so you will meet another monster on the same place after every re-playing.

That's the maximum. Doom can't define monsters randomly without using things, because monsters are things.

Okay, sorry, I'm not good at Doom working mechanics, but IMO random playing is impossible.

ok, i thought it should be doable for an experienced coder and I was actually quite sure that something like this would be already out there by now.


I imagined something like this:
basically a plugin for an editor that takes roomhight, floor, and closed doors into account.
checks which weapons and how much ammo are available and then places the monsters accordingly and recompiles the wad.

I guess this probably wouldn't be fun on every level, but i guesss it might be quite challenging on a few.
Also "total" randomness would probably result in alot of frustration but if the "randomization" would take place inside a somehow predifined manner (comparable to setting up waypoints for bots ) in order to avoid screwups it might work.

Katamori said:

AEons of Death defines several monsters in one class, so you will meet another monster on the same place after every re-playing.

That's the maximum. Doom can't define monsters randomly without using things, because monsters are things.

Okay, sorry, I'm not good at Doom working mechanics, but IMO random playing is impossible.

There are about a thousand monster randomizers out there. The recipe for most of them is simple:
- Grab everything you can from Torm's site
- Put it all in the same file
- Write random spawners for each monster and weapon
- Create a thread about your cool mod and bump it constantly while asking why nobody is interested

There are maybe two or three that are actually worthwhile being looked into. The rest, no matter how well or poorly they're made, are just redundant. Try Scalliano's shuffle. It's not a disproportionately huge thing, it keeps things graphically and thematically consistent, and it's still one of the oldest so it's not too much of a "me too" mod.

Aeons of Death is good if you want to stress test your RAM. Heh.

Doohnibor said:

ok, i thought it should be doable for an experienced coder and I was actually quite sure that something like this would be already out there by now.


I imagined something like this:
basically a plugin for an editor that takes roomhight, floor, and closed doors into account.
checks which weapons and how much ammo are available and then places the monsters accordingly and recompiles the wad.

I guess this probably wouldn't be fun on every level, but i guesss it might be quite challenging on a few.
Also "total" randomness would probably result in alot of frustration but if the "randomization" would take place inside a somehow predifined manner (comparable to setting up waypoints for bots ) in order to avoid screwups it might work.

The thing is that maps are more complicated than a series of room with monsters in them. The layout and other features of the map (presence of barrels, crushers, etc.) make it too complex for a simple program to decide which monsters would fit best and where. Even random map generators like Oblige cheat a bit in this respect.

Gez said:

The thing is that maps are more complicated than a series of room with monsters in them. The layout and ....

That's why I mentioned the "waypoint" example. To be a little more precise, in this case it would mean that an additional file for each map would have to be created by a human. This file would specify areas where the randomizer can place which enemies and how many of them...
This was just a quick example and of course it's a bit more complex than that...

Herculine made a randomizer for GZdoom here:

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=16453

Remember though if you don't like it, it's of no fault of the author, you are just terrible at the game. That is the only reason anyone could not like this wad. :P

i downloaded herculine and i looked at a youtube vid of shuffle.
herculine is full of random new items, weapons, monsters etc...
shuffle seems to be basically the same....

Both of them are actually not what I was looking for.
I probably should have mentioned that I want ONLY the original doom weapons, sounds, monsters etc... no addons. Sorry for not pointing it out in my first post.

So if anyone knows a randomizer that is limited to the original doom content, please let me know.

thanks

heh, I'll pimp scoredoom. I think it does great doom-esque monster placement out of the box with the add-on pack. http://www.scoredoom.com/
If you don't like the placement you can edit your own with a fairly straightforward config file.

By tweaking the sdcustom.ini file, you can get rid of extra custom monsters and only randomize doom monsters. The doom weapons are left intact, except the more powerful weapons have alt-fire. Just unbind that key/button ;)

EDIT: As far as the fancier stuff you are looking for. no, it doesnt do that.

... so you say scoredoom. well, i guess i'm gonna check it out then. i have seen a few vids before but was not interrested because of the "addons".
good that you mentioned it's possible to turn all that off ; )

Doohnibor said:

... so you say scoredoom. well, i guess i'm gonna check it out then. i have seen a few vids before but was not interrested because of the "addons".
good that you mentioned it's possible to turn all that off ; )

Yeah, I tend to play with all the extra stuff in the add-on pack (that is configurable), but at its core scoredoom is only about adding a fully fledged scoring system to regular doom.