ideas to augment classic doom gameplay?

It's hard to think of things that would actually make this game better, but here are a few I thought of, like, with my brain or something...

1)enemy life meters, somehow made not to be too distracting. This way, say, you shoot an arachnotron among many, then circle around a building and know which one you last shot.

2)cyberdemon = "super" baron... mastermind = "super" arachnotron... so maybe in this particular hell dimension, there should be a "super" imp, "super" mancabus, cacodemon, pain elemental etc.

3)Having 1 line def be able to trigger multiple actions. I always wanted to do this in wadauthor... say, have a switch make some grand complex thing happen. Say it makes stairs go up in front, pillars lower on the sides, ceiling raise revealing enemies, and lights turn on, all at the same time. (I tried putting 2 line defs really really close together on a switch, but you're only allowed to switch one at a time).

4)Just an extra little thing.. each enemy type has a new animation and sound effect of devouring you when you die. This way, you would really feel like you got owned rather than just see your dead body surrounded by a bunch of now bored, still and purposeless imps when you die.

5)Maybe there's a way to do this with other wad makers, but not in wadauthor... it'd be fantastic to be able to select a whole bunch of sectors and simply raise/lower ALL of their ceilings/floors by any specified ammount, at the same time. This way you could make some complex thing with varying heights and raise the entire thing up. Also, the ability to flip, not just rotate sectors would be great. I also find it irritating that some actions are only triggerable by exclusively walking, or switching etc. But as was said, other software probably takes care of this.

x)I was just wondering how long it took id to decide that unlike monsters should kill eachother (actually in level 22 of hell revealed masterminds kill masterminds but I wonder if that's a bug). It's obviously a crucial decision that drastically altered gameplay. I ********ly like the decision they made. It adds extra strategy and chance. There are certain things that can't be done well due to it, such as approaching a huge room of chaingunners (they'll just kill eachother). I'm also glad they made arch viles not be able to resurrect cyberdemons, masterminds and other arch viles. Maybe the "super" arch vile could (#2 above).

Heh, do some reading...

1) Might be possible in Zdoom, but would also be annoying

2) EDGE, Eternity, Zdoom..all of them can do this (i made a super imp, it was yellow and fired caco fireballs)

3) Zdoom

4) Why?

5) Doombuilder

Yeah, I havn't used any of that software so maybe this topic is stupid.

4) why
It wouldn't add to the gameplay, just to the feeling of being in hell. In level 23 of hell revealed for example, there are a ton of imps and when they kill you they sort of look silly just standing there... of course this is zdoom which zooms out from your body when you die, so you would see them feast on you from 3rd person, perhaps just until you turned into gibs or a skeleton, then they'd stop.

A super reverant could be awesome. It'd be bigger, more decomposed and evil looking, slower perhaps, and do a sort of arch vile stance as it fires about 12 homing missiles at once.

A super pain elemental would be awesome too, bigger, slower, more twisted looking but have about 8 mouths and be hard as hell to eventually kill. I suppose the total lost soul count/level would have to be limited to prevent insanity.

bla bla.

w M w said:

5)Maybe there's a way to do this with other wad makers, but not in wadauthor... it'd be fantastic to be able to select a whole bunch of sectors and simply raise/lower ALL of their ceilings/floors by any specified ammount, at the same time.

I don't use WadAuthor but this is a common editor function. Most editors that I've used have this ability.

Doombuilder has this. It's all simple math.
For example-DB
Select several sectors. Go edit their properties. In their floor height and ceiling height You have blanks, right? That's because You selected multiple sectors. Now to raise their ceilings let's say-8 units high, type in into the blank fields:
++ 8
The ++ adds a number to the exisiting number and so raises floor/ceiling, like:
120 ++ 8 = 128
To lower planes type: -- 8, or whatever number.

3 - I´m also using an editor that is not capable of doing this, so I got used to clever trigger design. I mostly let the player hit a switch and let him cross several walking triggers shortly before, so it appears as one big trigger. The trick is to design it, say, in a pure simple hallway, where nothing could distract the player in the last moment and walk away after having triggered only half of the effects. Thus, I am reducing the amount of players that don´t behave like I planned to a small amount (I hope)

5 - There is also a trick if you´re using an old editor like me. You can recreate each sector out of the players reach and attach a "check sector" next to it, which has the desired height you want to raise the original sector to. Then, simply assign the sectors you designed this way to some "raise to lowest local floor height"-trigger.

x- You can watch two Spider Masterminds fighting each other in Doom2´s M28 "Spirit World" already (Hurt me plenty or above).

Actually i made a super revenant too, its black, with glowing red eyes and shoots twin missiles, i really should just release Ultimate hell, its not like i'll ever finish it

1: If you use models in jDoom, you get a rough visual indication of the monster's state of health.

2: Dehacked can be used to do this. Dehacked was designed for the original engine, and very few ports lack support for it.

x: Infighting works between all hitscan monsters, even when they are the same type. You can also get (e.g.) barons fighting each other, but it is a little rare - one of them needs to have done something like exploded a barrel that harmed another baron.

w M w said:

2)cyberdemon = "super" baron... mastermind = "super" arachnotron... so maybe in this particular hell dimension, there should be a "super" imp, "super" mancabus, cacodemon, pain elemental etc.

Skulltag has added "super" versions of some monsters, including Dark Imp (Imp), Blood Demon (Demon), Cacolantern (Cacodemon), Belphegor (Baron of Hell). There's also planned a Hectebus (Mancubus). Single player maps for Skulltag are currently scarce, but a few are out there (try the Wart series).

Great, I just downloaded doombuilder (gnu public license too which is good). That "++8" thing doesn't work in wadauthor (just tried it), so this'll be great... especially with that 3d view and stuff (I have to update direct x or something though.)

I forgot about map 28 since I so rarely play it. Now that I think of it, all the bullet shooting enemies can kill like enemies, so now masterminds make more sense.

That's a good idea, deathmatcher. (Just make sectors that don't belong with the rest of the map to influence the behavior sectors in the map...)

I'll have to check out dehacked someday, although I suspect a somewhat steep learning curve. I didn't know a barrel exploding baron would make another baron fight him...

I've been wanting to play a wad with new enemies for awhile actually. The only one with much modification I played is that weird one where the barrels are frogs... and the reverant mumbles some funny sentence, and you walk around in the sky etc. I'll see if I can get skulltag or something to work then.

w M w said:

I'll have to check out dehacked someday, although I suspect a somewhat steep learning curve.

I wouldn't say so - just load it up and start pissing about with it. I suspect good general knowledge of how Doom works is a help though, as this helps you make more sense of all the numbers (and what things like reaction time and pain chance mean).

I didn't know a barrel exploding baron would make another baron fight him...

For examples, check out the pacifist and tyson demos on E1M8 at compet-n (you can watch them using doom.exe, Eternity or Prboom). Also, Espi made a little map based around that idea.