Most creative DEHACKED custom monster?

I'm looking into some dehacked monsters examples to create my own, but the tool seems quite limited, at least at a first glance. Still, some wads do create some pretty impressive new enemies, like the Arachnotron version in Valiant (which spawns an arachnorb) and the Titan in Struggle.

What are your favorite ones? And which ones do you think are the most creative?

Tons of maps by Obsidian have utilize DEHACKED in creative ways. There's this one gem in particular.

Batman Doom and its Killer Croc who can pick up and toss rocks at you.

Ok, I will start with something less obvious:

1)Insane Weapons Patch

This was made in 1996, but this wad has some really impressive stuff (well, at least for it's time), like Hell knights shooting grenades (like actual ones, with arch trajectory and stuff), arch viles unleashing lightning bolts, and then, after death, turning right into the orb of infinite monster resurrection, and more other really weird and wacky stuff. It might not hold up visually, or it's just strange in overall, but I feel like this is quite important part of the DEHACKED history, and it perfectly demonstrates, just how far could boundaries be pushed.

Link:https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/combos/insane

2)Struggle : Antaresian Legacy

This is quite a modern one, but still, it's definitely a gem, when it comes to custom monsters. It has wide variety of new enemy archetypes, and what's even more important that it utilises frames really efficiently, I would suggest to take a look at it.
Link:https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/strg

3)4 Seasons of Doom

It has trash imps, I mean, do I need to say more? (Ok, it might not have some insane custom monsters, but it's still pretty amazing wad, it definitely deserves more love, so, if you have some free time, give it a shot)

Link:

4)Eviternity

It has some really cool late game custom monsters, well, and besides, it's bloody amazing wad, if you didn't play it yet, well, what are you waiting for? These kind of works are the only thing justifying our existence (well, and maybe some good morning coffee).

I will try to think of some more wads, but Catpho is right, Obsidian makes some really cool stuff with dehacked, I definitely recommend checking his works.

Batman Doom had some of the most creative uses of DEHACKED, from simple stuff such as having the joker have 2 different attacks as he grew weaker to Killer Croc, who picks up rocks on the floor an throws them at the player. First time i played it i remember thinking 'How do you do that?', not to mention that opening the wad it's evident from how the sprites were stored on the wad how much work went into the DEHACKED to make a coherent game

6 minutes ago, DMPhobos said:

Killer Croc, who picks up rocks on the floor an throws them at the player. First time i played it i remember thinking 'How do you do that?'

I'm still wondering; it seems like something that should be impossible with what DeHackEd has to offer.  Was it ever explained?

But is the rock a projectile thing?

4 hours ago, Linguica said:

The most creative custom monsters in DeHackEd were, and remain, those in Batman Doom.

The two-headed chaingunners that jump off the backs of arachnotrons when they die in All Hell is Breaking Loose would like a word

Actually that still doesn’t touch some of the dehacked ingenuity in Batman Doom but you know. Also The Sky May Be definitely deserves mention

Some of the shit they pulled in Wheel of Time was pretty extreme. Over the top perhaps, but certainly creative.

And let's not forget the Decompress Daemon from STRAIN. "The what?", you may ask. They didn't actually use it in the end, but it is in the WAD, replacing the SS Nazi. The idea was to have levels where there was a breakable glass dome/windows/whatever, presumably protecting you from the vacuum of space. If it got broken, these little invisible fuckers would rush in and kill the player on the spot (even if invulnerable).

Talking of breakable glass, Terror Mall was an early (1994) wad that featured some fun dehacked stuff. That was still in the days of binary deh patches; the linked zip includes a text deh in the "fixed" subfolder for use with modern ports and later versions of dehacked.exe.

1 hour ago, Grazza said:

And let's not forget the Decompress Daemon from STRAIN. "The what?", you may ask. They didn't actually use it in the end, but it is in the WAD, replacing the SS Nazi. The idea was to have levels where there was a breakable glass dome/windows/whatever, presumably protecting you from the vacuum of space. If it got broken, these little invisible fuckers would rush in and kill the player on the spot (even if invulnerable).

That's interesting, if you summon one in ZDoom it's an invisible "thing" that kills you instantly, or if in god mode, it's constantly pushing you everywhere at a high speed until it corrals you and basically umm, "fucks" you against the wall, kinda like a sprite-less Terry enemy. I also tried summoning a minister to see if they could infight, but apparently he walked into the "thing" and got pushed miles away, while the "thing" was still into me.

Bear in mind that some ports lack very faithful dehacked support and/or alter vanilla behaviour (which may or may not be comp optioned). In such cases some anomalies are likely. In this case it's probably to do with "God mode isn't absolute" being turned off.

I think DeHackEd has an interesting value proposition which more advanced scripting doesn't provide. It is so limited in its scope - you can't really do anything new, just reorganize and reassign what is already there - that it forces you to be much more tactical and practical in your design choices. I would love to be able to put together a new generation of DeHackEd that can be used with the vanilla EXEs that let you do even more, but I would need the expertise of people like @xttl to make anything like that happen...

Being able to do stuff like assigning actions to any state (not just states that already have an action) and adding even just a few extra blank states to play with would work wonders for expanding what dehacked can do. Having extra actions that allow enemies to shoot a wider variety of projectiles or whatever would be a total game changer but I can't even fathom how that would be possible. Still, a man can hope

MBF added stuff to Dehacked and so did Doom Retro and Crispy Doom.

So last year using community resources I expanded my SMOOTHED mod (which has smooth vanilla animations) to create a bigger beastiary for Doom and allow for interesting stuff for new megawads like bosses that drop keys. Without replacing any vanilla thing. But noone gave a crap :(

I do not remember this mod at all. If you have a BEX-compatible smooth animations mod you should make a thread that purely advertises that and not focus on the additional features (chainsaw zombies etc).

edit: ok so it appears to be for EXTRA-extended BEX ports, which means Doom Retro and Crispy Doom exclusively?

12 minutes ago, Linguica said:

I do not remember this mod at all. If you have a BEX-compatible smooth animations mod you should make a thread that purely advertises that and not focus on the additional features (chainsaw zombies etc).

 

edit: ok so it appears to be for EXTRA-extended BEX ports, which means Doom Retro and Crispy Doom exclusively?

Yes, it needs the MBF additions and a *lot* of extra blank states in the Dehacked table for the smooth animations, thing IDs etc but only those two port authors made the changes.

SMOOTHED PLUS is basically my SMOOTHED mod with extra enemies and keys. These extra enemies have to be placed on the map or be summoned by the console, they don't replace existing enemies.

Here is the SMOOTHED mod thread with a simple explanation

14 hours ago, VGA said:

Yes, it needs the MBF additions and a *lot* of extra blank states in the Dehacked table for the smooth animations

Adding the extra blank states to other ports would be quite simple, just some lines to add to text files as far as ports such as GZDoom or Eternity are concerned. (No need to change actual code.) There just need to be someone who actually makes the request.

I'm not trying to toot my own horn here(really I'm not, this was my first map so it's kinda crap), but I made a thing  back in 2016 that used dehacked enemies. A lot of them are just standard stuff, but I did make this one choking marine that had a chest burster lost soul explode out of him, which was probably the best thing about it tbh.

I found it pretty neat how in Blood TC zombies faked their death with an extended pain state. Sure, you could ruin the illusion by continuing to attack them, but it still makes them closer to their Build Engine counterparts than I would have thought possible.

There was an ancient Doom mod called "Zombie Doom" which was an over-the-top violent zombie mod that included some wild dehacked effects like...

• Chainsaw zombies who, when killed, dropped sentient chainsaws that attacked you.
• Dehacked bloodstains on walls.
• Chickens replaced health kits and, when killed would drop guts you could eat for one hp OR you could kill them with a rocket launcher or flamethrower and turn them into a turkey for much more health.
• An insane grenade launcher that somehow utilized the BFG seeking abilities with the death explosions from the Icon of Sin to cause massive columns of explosions that were weighted by gravity and would absolutely annihilate most enemies (I think the author even broke the mod and couldn't figure out how to replicate this effect in later releases.)
• Zombies that could have body parts blown off as you attacked them.

It's not a monster as such, but Hostage Rescue 3 features a creative use of dehacked, to enable the player to jump in vanilla, albeit at a price.

Dangerous medikit from REKKR

3 hours ago, Gez said:

Adding the extra blank states to other ports would be quite simple, just some lines to add to text files as far as ports such as GZDoom or Eternity are concerned. (No need to change actual code.) There just need to be someone who actually makes the request.

I made the request two years ago to the prboom+ author, LOL, you can guess how that went. Now it's dead, too. Maybe an Eternity author can add it.

I can't believe noone thought to add blank states and uasble IDs all these decades. It is easy to do and doesn't mess with compatibility at all.

I wish I could at least add different projectile types (and spawn them in different angles)

36 minutes ago, VGA said:

I made the request two years ago to the prboom+ author, LOL, you can guess how that went.

Yeah, that's why I mentioned GZDoom and Eternity, not PrBoom+. ;)

33 minutes ago, Gez said:

Yeah, that's why I mentioned GZDoom and Eternity, not PrBoom+. ;)

Graf would get an aneurysm if I was busting his balls about extending Dehacked for modding lmao :D

17 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

There was an ancient Doom mod called "Zombie Doom" which was an over-the-top violent zombie mod that included some wild dehacked effects like...

 

• Chainsaw zombies who, when killed, dropped sentient chainsaws that attacked you.
• Dehacked bloodstains on walls.
• Chickens replaced health kits and, when killed would drop guts you could eat for one hp OR you could kill them with a rocket launcher or flamethrower and turn them into a turkey for much more health.
• An insane grenade launcher that somehow utilized the BFG seeking abilities with the death explosions from the Icon of Sin to cause massive columns of explosions that were weighted by gravity and would absolutely annihilate most enemies (I think the author even broke the mod and couldn't figure out how to replicate this effect in later releases.)
• Zombies that could have body parts blown off as you attacked them.

I remember this mod but I don't think I played it.  Or maybe I did, but it was in a super-early state.  Wasn't it in black & white too?

How did the wall bloodstains work?  I know you can turn the blood into a projectile that "dies" into a blood pool but I don't understand how you could do anything special for walls.