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years

Need ideas for DEH D1 enemies.

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Hey everybody!

I am about 7 levels into a vanilla UltDoom 1.9 (4 ep) megawad with some Dehackery.
Now that I have found out Dehacked can use all the D2 coding resources (i.e. states, things and sounds) I feel like I need some additional monsters to give my levels more variety and difficulty than the original e1-3 of doom, but with the same feel.

I need some *ideas* for new monsters, or enhancements to old ones. I am trying to stick to a D1 vibe so I don't want to bring in Hexen, D2 or even (well known) 667 Beastiary monsters, but rather ones that could be thought to be 'missing' in D1. I can't really draw new sprites either, so they'll likely be variants of already existing monsters, or unused alpha ones.

So far I have is this:

-Lost Soul replaced with one with a ranged (i.e. Imp) attack (ala STRAIN).
-Three baron variants, each a different colour, and all attack more aggressively and with more damage.
-a brown baron with about 800hp
-a grey baron with 'normal' hp + attack aggression
-the red baron, which has the health of the original baron and the speed of a cybie.

any thoughts? (also, does anybody have a cleanly sprited version of that unused 'Red Blob' monster Romero released?).

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Hi, I would tend against making so many baron variants. Barons are a pretty boring enemy for the most part anyway (essentially being an imp with a lot of health), and just varying up the HP of them (like the brown baron you mentioned) adds almost nothing to the diversity of the bestiary. I'm not sure what you mean about not adding in d2 style enemies but it sounds like you're gonna severely limit yourself.

The only baron variant that I can think would make a cool replacement/addition would be the cybruiser, a baron that shoots rockets (i prefer them with HellKnight hp though, 1000hp gets really tedious)

The flying imp enemy sounds very cool though, that was definitely something missing from both doom 1 and 2.

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I was thinking about the same thing recently, so here are ideas: Use these sprites of D3-style Wraith and make him a standard melee-only enemy with low health, it should fit Doom 1 style. Another one: Blood Fiend (or something with similar sprite set) who acts like a demon and has same health but also shoots fireballs. Add some relatively low HP flying enemy, maybe Afrit or Aracnorb. Also add some enemy with spread and homing projectiles, but preferably low health. Generally, avoid enemies with medium/high health, they're nothing but tedious to kill. Potential threat of a monster should match the time needed to kill it.

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Make a monster that shoots a projectile twice or thrice in a row. Survive in Hell has barons that shoot twice, that often caught me by surprise.

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jmickle66666666 said:

I'm not sure what you mean about not adding in d2 style enemies but it sounds like you're gonna severely limit yourself.


Oh, all I meant is that I just didn't want to copy/past a doom 2 monster into doom 1. I might make analogues however, i.e. the chaingun major, just not based on doom 2 monster sprites.

Also, with the Baron variants, I'll try giving each a unique attack and severely nerf the HP. I chose to vary the Baron because of Doom 1 lacks semi-powerful enemies, like the Vile.

scifista42 said:

Generally, avoid enemies with medium/high health, they're nothing but tedious to kill. Potential threat of a monster should match the time needed to kill it.


I agree with this, especially considering I am working with no double shotgun. I'll nerf the Brown Knight down to the Hell Knight's HP, and nerf the harder Baron variants to about 700-800 + give them more dangerous and damaging attacks.

With your enemies, I forgot to mention I made a Deh-recoloured grey "melee imp", kinda like those ones in Cold as Hell, so I might just give that the Wraith sprites and sounds. I might replace the Red Baron with the Afrit too, with a spread attack. I'll add the Fiend, but unsure on the arachnorb as it is based on a D2 enemy.

Memfis said:

Make a monster that shoots a projectile twice or thrice in a row. Survive in Hell has barons that shoot twice, that often caught me by surprise.


Ok, done that with the Gray Baron. Adds quite a bit of variance to the gameplay despite its simplicity.

What do people think about a suicide zombie or a chaingun major?

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A ghost that can sacrifice itself to raise a monster. Make it use the archvile frames for walking, and make the resurrection sequence (hardcoded to a frame number) go to 0 (disappear) as soon as possible (I think you can just put 0 duration there)

A monster that when killed releases such a ghost, probably invisible, non-clipping and harmless, that follows you until it encounters a corpse, which it will raise. Basically a monster that once killed will still result in another living monster. Tip: you can use the chaingunner death to spawn a soul on death.

A monster with a "Jedi" attack, using an archvile attack without the fire. It will only do 20 damage, but surely if it sees you.

A spiderdemon that shoots BFG blasts (edit the arachnotron plasma).

Just put chaingunners. Or even double chaingunners, just to fuck with the player. Use some bestiary graphics if you want.

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years said:

I'll nerf the Brown Knight down to the Hell Knight's HP, and nerf the harder Baron variants to about 700-800

I still think it's a lot of health. Many people criticize even Lost Soul for having too much health, such a lowly threatening enemy should better die in one shotgun blast. Acceptable if you make your monsters super-threatening and then use them sparingly as minibosses, IMO.

years said:

suicide zombie

They might be annoying, unless used well (see a recent megawad Valiant). Moreso, they're not so trivial to implement in DEHACKED. If you want them to explode upon melee attack, but also upon death, they will kill themselves during the melee explosion and immediately enter their death state and explode once again, dealing 2x damage to the player. There are workarounds for sure, I've mentioned some ideas here. Valiant used MBF-specific codepointers to implement them, that don't work in vanilla or standard Boom.

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scifista42 said:

Acceptable if you make your monsters super-threatening and then use them sparingly as minibosses, IMO.


All the barons now have varied attacks, with the Grey having a double attack and the Red shooting like a mancubus. They are used basically as minibosses much like the barons were in the original doom. Hopefully that makes them more fun.

scifista42 said:

They might be annoying, unless used well (see a recent megawad Valiant). Moreso, they're not so trivial to implement in DEHACKED.


I'd take it that by 'annoying' use of suiciders you mean 'not hiding right behind an unopened door, leaving you with little chance to defend yourself'? I've tried to avoid that, but I still like the jump scare/paranoia they cause in close quarters, as long as its fair. I'll play a little further into Valiant as a reference.

I have also managed to get them working flawlessly in Deh simply by making the death and melee reference state the same, so they don't die twice.

Now, what to do with the Cyberdemon... is making him an Annihilator too boring?

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years said:

I have also managed to get them working flawlessly in Deh simply by making the death and melee reference state the same, so they don't die twice.

You didn't - they will still die twice, that's exactly the problem I'm warning you about. Going to a state referenced as death will not kill the monster if his health is still above 0. The melee explosion (his own one!) is what kills him for real. Being killed makes him automatically enter death state, in this case it means re-enter the same state as the melee was, which means another explosion.

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Yeah. With MBF codepointers, there's one for getting the monster to kill itself (in MBFedit.wad, it's used to get a cyberdemon that commits suicide when it sees you). I haven't checked but I bet it's what the suicide bombers in Valiant use: in their melee attack, they kill themselves, and then the explosion comes from the death state.

Of course you can consider the problem of the double explosion to not be a problem, but an incentive for players to shoot them even at close range. If the suicide bomber is killed, the explosion deals only half damage compared to if it detonates on its own! :p

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scifista42 said:

You didn't - they will still die twice, that's exactly the problem I'm warning you about. Going to a state referenced as death will not kill the monster if his health is still above 0. The melee explosion (his own one!) is what kills him for real. Being killed makes him automatically enter death state, in this case it means re-enter the same state as the melee was, which means another explosion.


Well somehow I got it working, as I am only seeing and hearing one explosion even when he kills himself with a 'melee' attack, and it works in Vanilla ultdoom 1.9. I might of done something else to get it working (I don't know what an MBF codepointer is.). I can provide evidence for when I release a beta of the WAD soon!

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If the explosion happens in the very first state of your melee/death animation, then it's logical that both explosions occur at the exact same time (because the first explosion IMMEDIATELY kills the monster, which IMMEDIATELY changes his state to death state and the explosion is IMMEDIATELY performed again). You cannot distinguish them visually, but you can feel that you got doubled damage from the explosion. Death sound is played afterwards, which means it's only played once (during the real death sequence).

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scifista42 said:

If the explosion happens in the very first state of your melee/death animation, then it's logical that both explosions occur at the exact same time (because the first explosion IMMEDIATELY kills the monster, which IMMEDIATELY changes his state to death state and the explosion is IMMEDIATELY performed again). You cannot distinguish them visually, but you can feel that you got doubled damage from the explosion. Death sound is played afterwards, which means it's only played once (during the real death sequence).


Ok, that explains it. Still, they function more or less as they should, and as Gez has said, gives you more incentive to kill them before they get up close. I might have a look at the workarounds you linked anyway.

The only issue now is that I am having chocdoom do strange things by using doom2 things in doom 1, like not spawning things and crashing randomly. Checked with chocorenderlimits and everything should work, and is only happening in a specific level (which is large). Hm.

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Aside from exceeding static limits, maybe you've used multipatch textures as middle textures? Those are the most common problems that cause vanilla / Chocolate Doom crash.

Things are probably not spawning because the Doom2-specific DEHACKED monster IDs are hardcoded not to spawn in Doom 1. Thankfully, you can change these IDs via DEHACKED. Give them unique numbers, then put things with these numbers into your map (not the monsters as the editor shows them!), then they will spawn. As I've told you here.

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Yep, changed the ID of the bomber to a new one rather than rather than a doom 2 object and it works fine. It was an odd bug which caused half of the enemies not to spawn, despite being well under the vanilla sprite limit. You are absolutely right once again Scifista! Also, thankyou!.

I am now up to E2M8, and all I can think of now is 'double teleporting annihilator/cybies'. Would be it be too agitating to have homing splash-damage rockets? I like printz idea of respawn ghosts too.

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years said:

homing splash-damage rockets

If you don't find it a shame to sacrifice your only available homing projectile (replacing Revenant's one, otherwise it won't work) for a boss monster instead of commonly encountered monster, I say make it happen! :)

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Some more ideas (not all are monsters, though):

- a solid decoration that moves when you're out of its sight. Use chase and chaingunner refire codepointers for this. Beware of the risk of trapping the player forever, which happens easily if it's a 64-wide corridor closed by a door

- a permanent resurrection area, where killing monsters is ineffective because they keep rising

- a new monster, which can be done with only three frames: the Wrath. It looks like the Heretic disciple but is inspired from Quake Mission Pack Dissolution of Eternity. It has a revenant-like attack.

- BFG barrels! Their explosion uses BFG radiations instead of standard booms. When you destroy them, the effect can be unpredictable because their radiations have directions. When monsters destroy them by accident, you can be targetted!

- sentient, killer barrels. I'd much rather see this than stupid AHHHHHH zombies. Especially if these barrels fly like lost souls.

- self-replicating lost souls

- a monster that self-destructs and is replaced by some other monster. Use the final boss attack codepointers for this. Beware that you need to have all Doom and Doom 2 monster slots (except former humans and bosses of course) valid for this to work correctly.

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printz said:

- a solid decoration that moves when you're out of its sight. Use chase and chaingunner refire codepointers for this. Beware of the risk of trapping the player forever, which happens easily if it's a 64-wide corridor closed by a door

Good idea for a puzzle based wad. The player's goal will be to outsmart/outmaneuver game objects that cannot be killed but they block the player and move using Doom's predictable monster AI (with various gimmicks and known engine limitations involved) to obstruct player's path to the exit, and that are placed cleverly to require player's logical thinking to outsmart them. If he screws up, he must restart the map (fist would be replaced with a suicide weapon), just like in puzzle games. This was off topic.

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