Question About More Spectre Related Enemies

How come they didn't use stuff like a spectre baron and stuff?

Because they would have been so laughably broken that nobody would want to play the game. Think about it.

A specter baron would be too mean, specifically in a dark area where the whole specter trait is usually best utilized.

I'm also not a fan of those ZDoom monsters that did the only appearing when attacking thing. I guess it was alright in Zen Dynamics for that City of Dis map though, probably because it was predictable enough when they started spawning where you had a good idea of where they were and weren't used to just catch you offguard and irritate you :s

BaronOfStuff said:

Because they would have been so laughably broken that nobody would want to play the game. Think about it.

Nonsense, I actually made a spectral baron last night, it worked just fine.
Only thing is, it doesn't load in my WAD when editing.

It inherits from the baron basically. i'll add a sprite list later though.
Maybe that's the problem.

Maybe they just wanted another melee monster but couldn't think of any new designs.

Hoodie said:

Maybe they just wanted another melee monster but couldn't think of any new designs.

Also, how do I make it more translucent? As in easier to see?
Do I increase the alpha amount or decrease it?

In many source ports you aren't seeing the Spectre effect as it was originally rendered. Originally, dude was pretty friggin' hard to see (especially at vanilla resolutions), and it was enough of an issue dealing with normal spectres back in the days when we hadn't been playing the game for twenty years. If you can barely perceive it AND it shoots, you're just sucking health off the player unfairly. Alternatively, there's little use in a monster being hard to see if it's going to shoot bright projectiles at you, and making projectiles harder to see would be awful for gameplay. Pinkys are normally only threats in the numbers they were used in in the original game due to their speed and the fact that their relatively high health for a basic monster meant you had to split fire between them and whatever shooting monsters were around before the Pinky got to you. It's the best candidate to have a Spectre variant because it would be a danger without becoming unfair. The threat of a Spectre is a similar enough threat to that of a normal Pinky for it to work. You make a Baron invisible and stick him in a dim room and all you're doing is reducing away the player's ability to react. It's a cheap shot. Doom is about dancing and calculating each best step, you can't take away a players' agency in a combat situation without messing it all up.

EDIT: Alpha 1.0 is completely opaque. Lower values are harder to see, i.e. Alpha 0.5 is 50% translucent.

I'd say, high resolutions made fuzzy sprites even harder to see. The noise is too fine and subtle.

How come they didn't use stuff like a spectre cyber and stuff?

I'll make a map that is nothing but consecutive dark pain sector tunnels filled with Spectre Masterminds, but only if everyone agrees to vote it for a Cacoward.

Da Werecat said:

I'd say, high resolutions made fuzzy sprites even harder to see. The noise is too fine and subtle.

For me, I feel like I can see the tiniest motion at a zillion yards on a high resolution, whereas the 'noise' generated by your just looking around on a low resolution can mask some motion, especially when things are dark to begin with. I always find the fuzzy effect obvious in, say, ZDoom.

The default fuzz effect in PrBoom, at least, is actually not quite dark enough (it uses a whole different algorithm) and definitely makes it harder to see enemies. I dunno about the ZDoom one.

Transparent monsters are very easily made in dehacked and with much less cost than a monster that uses new sprites.

The Civ said:

I'll make a map that is nothing but consecutive dark pain sector tunnels filled with Spectre Masterminds, but only if everyone agrees to vote it for a Cacoward.

Let's take that idea in a more interesting direction...all spectre revenants in a gothic/wood themed map named "Spooky Mansion."

40oz said:

Transparent monsters are very easily made in dehacked and with much less cost than a monster that uses new sprites.

I don't know why Enderkevin wants to use new sprites for making a fuzzy baron when such a monster can be created with just one line of code.

Actor FuzzyBaron : BaronOfHell 1337 { RenderStyle Fuzzy }

Linguica said:

The default fuzz effect in PrBoom, at least, is actually not quite dark enough (it uses a whole different algorithm) and definitely makes it harder to see enemies. I dunno about the ZDoom one.

Same algorithm as vanilla, though with high resolution the effect ends up looking different anyway IMHO. If it could somehow be done on texels rather than pixels it'd be more "faithful" in a way.

Gez: I guess I was referring to the algorithm used when you play the game at higher than 8-bit depth, where it's just a stippled gray overlay.

Spectre imps would have been good in my opinion. I think they were featured in this WAD: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?file=levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/rot90fix.zip

A spectre arch-vile and a spectre revenant, or maybe a group of these baldies, that would result in a more challenging experience for me.

ZDoom has stealth monsters; these are even harder than spectres. Invisible until hit, or are attacking.

With regards to spectres I can see a poe (cacodemon like ghost), a spectre like zombie (ghost), and maybe an imp. Other than that, I just don't see it matching.

If every monster had a spectral variant, Doom would have too much emphasis on monsters that can go invisible. It would turn into something silly like "Chameleon aliens".

printz said:

If every monster had a spectral variant, Doom would have too much emphasis on monsters that can go invisible. It would turn into something silly like "Chameleon aliens".

Indeed, something a lot of mods don't get right is that quantity isn't always best.

printz said:

If every monster had a spectral variant, Doom would have too much emphasis on monsters that can go invisible. It would turn into something silly like "Chameleon aliens".

I don't mean all enemies having a spectre variant, just stuff like imps and cacodemons.

The spectre only has one unique thing going for it, and you want to take that away? Does nobody care about the spectre's feelings?

specter chaingunner traps... ./thread