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Fenriswolf

Making Melee monster challenging...

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Hello!
Currently I am working on a project and it is nearly done but when I do my test runs, I am not quite happy with the flow of the battles. The problem is this:

- The maps have large outdoor enviroments
- most of the monsters do melee-battle

I cannot really change both of those things. If you want to create some kind of wasteland/desert map, you simply have to create big, rambling outdoor areas. And most of the monstersprites have melee weapons and therefore it would be dull to let them shoot missiles.
The heart of the problem is this: As long as the player has just a melee weapon, everything is ok and it is easy to balance the battles. but as soon as he gets a ranged weapon, he can spot the enemies on long distance and shoot them dead before they reach him. When I give them more hitpoints, attack and make them faster, the battles are even more boring and long and the player does a simple hit and run tactic to kill them. Now if I reduce the ammo for the player, so that he is forced to do melee more often against those (stronger) monster, it is a game breaker again, because he will die very, very fast.

So do you have any idea how to solve this problem? I have but this in Doom General because I do not really have a (technical) editing question but I wanted to ask you, as a gamer, what kind of melee monster you would fear even in rambling areas. Maybe some special abilities etc?
Thank you for your advise!

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If you're using decorate you could always buff the melee monster's speed ,or even give them a charge attack similar to a lost soul. Attack range buff might also help if possible.

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Their movement animations could be invisible (for example the reptilian that swims in swamps in Hexen).

Probably too difficult to implement in Doom, but they could have some teleport ability independent of map linedefs... the Enderman in Minecraft was probably the most horrifying experience I've ever had in a video game (not joking).

They could enter some sort of "turtle mode" if shot, that is stop moving and put up some kind of defense, e.g. centaurs in Hexen.

You could recycle sprites with ranged enemies, so the player can't predict if an enemy is ranged or melee (again Hexen is a theme here... some centaurs just use a sword, some shoot blue toothpaste).

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There are little things you can do, like increase the speed and decrease the pain chance.

On a larger scale, it's best to understand the purpose of melee monsters in combat. They are the tanks of the game that soak up ammo, and block the shots of the player. On their own they're probably the least threatening monsters, but with the right composition of enemies they play a key roll.

It's good to mix melee and ranged monsters. If the player concentrates of the melee monsters, then the ranged monsters get a better chance to attack. If the player concentrates on the ranged enemies, then the melee monsters are allowed to get in close and become a threat. Both are needed for dynamic challenging gameplay.

If you have large areas with mostly melee monsters, given the attributes of DOOM-based gameplay (ie a super-speedy player), it's going to be pretty tough to make challenging, enjoyable maps with the same depth as tighter maps that utilize both ranged and melee monsters.

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Make them faster than the player, or fast enough that the player gets intimidated and starts retreating a lot, losing ground and getting cornered.

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printz said:

Make them faster than the player, or fast enough that the player gets intimidated and starts retreating a lot, losing ground and getting cornered.


An excellent example of this is the Ghost out of Psychophobia. It also screams it's head off, which would probably disrupt proper aiming.

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I also noticed that fast Demons in Doom appear to be smarter. The zigzag chasing AI really gives them an edge when they're fast, making it easier for them to block and corner you.

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instead of power up all the monsters, try to make them different. in other words, to make a map challenging (in my opinion) you need a kind of variety of class :
tank melee figthers : not very fast, lot of health (like doom baron of hell) or whit some annoying defence behevior (like hexen guy with the shield).

scout melee figthers : very fast, low damanging but with hight attak rate, you can also make some of them stealth or ghost like (A_fastchase reccommended!).

tank or scout missile figthers : as you like it, fast or slow, less or more damanging if well placed they are always a pain. (do you ever tryed to make some granedelauncher-stile actor? it's funny!)

good modding!

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I'll use the demon as a comparison here...

Reduced pain chance (nearly zero) will make it harder to prevent them from cornering you, especially if they have a lot of hit points.

Reduced delay between the initial attack frame and the frame that deals damage will make running into one a more dangerous affair. For comparison, it takes a demon 16 tics to attack after entering it's attack state.

Increased speed, but I'm not necessarily just talking about its speed parameter, but also the duration of its chase frames.

Reduced radius will make it advance up and down stairs, and through doors much more fluidly. Be careful of doing this in conjunction with really high speed values, as the monster could possibly pass through walls.

Increased radius will have the opposite effect, but can be used to help make a monster block shots intended for other targets.

Giving them the DROPOFF flag will allow them to leap over tall ledges (or instantly drop in vanilla Doom).

Giving them the NOCLIP flag is pretty fun too! But this only makes sense for ghost-like monsters.

In my opinion, melee monsters are very important and can pose as significant threats if designed properly and/or used in numbers. You can of course add other mechanics, such as the charging/leaping effect someone mentioned earlier. There's lots you can do with melee monsters!

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Desert areas are not as flat as most people suppose. They are full of dips, dry washes, slight rises, small rocks, and large rocks, and boulders. Because everything is uniform color, they are hard to see with any distance.
Put in some of these in every direction and the ability of a ranged weapon to dominate an area will diminish.
Mix the depths from 1/4 man-height to about a man-height and they will play well. Have only a few areas with slopes too step for a monster to climb, so monsters do not get trapped, and only slightly get guided.

This should have minimal impact on your design while giving the slight cover that the melee-monsters need to get close.

Monsters will not be able to effectively hit the player while 3/4 deep in a dry wash.

Also the mix of 3 or 4 different monsters also helps. While the player deals with one, others will get themselves close.

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Could do it old school Legend of Zelda style and have them only vulnerable from behind or the side but are stunnable in some way so you can get in a position to damage them. That'd make taking these melee monsters head-on a challenge, you'd have to play more defensively.

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