Idea for new doom weapons mod "realistic damage"

Over the past few months I have been going on a wad fest to find the really, really awesome weapons mods for doom II. Most of what I found and tested was pretty good (With the exception of Edge mods - WHY DOESN'T EDGE LET YOU BOOST THE SOUND QUALITY LIKE ZDOOM?)The thing that bugged me about them was:
Some were over-kill, meaning you could wipe everything out with minimal chance of getting killed
Some had had way too much ammunition you could carry, so that also took the challenge out of playing on UV
Some weapons did LESS damage, that's a big no, and some made the monsters ludicrously overpowered with weapons that take too many shots to bring them down.

The mod idea I have is to make a "reality damage" doom mod that makes your weapons cause the kind of damage they would do in reality. Think of it like this: The doom shotgun fires 12 gauge shells, I'm assuming. A single 12 gauge shell at point-blank should be more than enough to drop a zombie, imp, lost soul, pinkie, and (maybe) a hell knight. To balance the shotgun, you just nerf it's accuracy to hell, so it's impossible to use it as a sniper-gun like the normal shotty. Having it fire slower would also increase the challenge with this weapon. Lowering it's ammo to 20 shells max w/o backpack would also balance it - that's 20 confirmed kills if you can get close to the bad guys and don’t miss.

The double shotgun fires 2 shells at a time (obvious), reloads even slower, and has even lower accuracy than the shotgun. It fires the same # of projectiles as the shotgun, only it causes 2x the damage.

The reason for the shotgun being more accurate and both guns having the same # of projectiles is so you have a reason to switch between the guns - you use the shotty for the "small" demons, and the double shotty is more geared for fighting the big demons. You still take the small demons down with the single shotty as fast as the double shotty, but you don't waste 2 shells in the process and you can reload quicker.

The doom handgun is a desert eagle. That's a .357 caliber handgun. .357's are BIG guns, and they fire big bullets as well. You can't really have a uber hand gun as that kills the reason to find bigger firearms. But you don't want to be defenseless, so give the handgun a lot of damage, normal accuracy (dead on fist time, spreads if still used rapidly after), and slow ROF. If you fire a desert eagle in one hand as fast as you can, you will really degrade its accuracy, along with your arm muscles. It can still cause a ton of damage, you just have to drop the pistol's ammo to 40 rounds w/o the backpack. Think of its damage value as enough to kill a zombie w/ 1 - 2 shots, an imp with 2-3 shots, and a pinkie with 4-5 shots. Not bad for a starter, but you only get 40 - 80 bullets so you have to spend them wisely.

Let's say the chain gun fires .50 caliber bullets. That would make it a death machine if you translated that kind of damage into doom, so you nerf it's accuracy up as well so it fires like a pistol: the first shot is always on target, and everything after spreads around, plus giving it its own ammo source that's different from the pistol's would help. The chain gun doesn't have to fire very fast, as the .50 cal ammo should eat through just about every demon in the game really quickly. But you’re also holding it like a sub-machine gun. Have you ever played Battlefield Vietnam? Try being a machine-gunner and fire a machine gun while you’re standing up. The ONLY way you will hit ANYTHING like that is to fire it very slowly, so you can recover from the kickback, that’s why you nerf it's accuracy up very badly, pistol style.
The chain gun should have 100 rounds max, w/o the the backpack. The M60 was belt-fed like the doom MG, and its boxes held 100 bullets at a time. (Or 200, if you wanted to carry the extra weight) So it would make since for you to only get 100 / 200 rounds in your ammo box, which I'm guessing is strapped to the doom marine's belt and feeds ammo into the chain gun that way. A REALLY, REALLY good idea would be to change the chain gun skin so it has a green ammo box attached TO the chain gun. This would look realistic, and pretty damn cool to boot!

The chainsaw would work better if you slashed with it instead of just thrusting it forward. You get more force into your attack, and it causes more damage without wasting gasoline just holding it in the air while pressing the button. The chainsaw has to slash through its target completely before it kills it the first time, and the demon you use it on determines how fast you slice through it. Little demons like Caco's, zombies, imps, and pinkies would make perfect targets because they aren't very thick-skinned compared to some of the other bad guys. So if you attacked a zombie, the chainsaw would take 3 seconds to slice through him and kill him the first time. A bigger demon, like a mancubus, would still die from the first slice; the catch is it takes longer to slice him up.
And once you've attacked something, you *can't* pull back if somebody gets your back or sides until you've killed your target, so you have to choose when to use the chainsaw wisely. This way it's still a weapon of mass destruction, it just requires some strategy now. Having it cause pain every time it hits also increases its reality factor - I wouldn't feel very good if someone were trying to slice me up with a chainsaw.

The rocket launcher should only have 5 rockets w/o the backpack. Rockets are HEAVY beasts, as well as the launcher, and are designed to put a HUGE hole through something via a warhead attached to a rocket-engine. Rockets should either have minor splash damage and ludicrous damage, or minor damage and MASSIVE splash damage. The first rockets would make good anti-boss weapons, because they concentrate their strength on one thing and cause maximum damage to it. The second rockets would make good anti-personnel rockets (Like rocket-propelled shotgun shells) because once they impacted they would sent shrapnel all over the place.
The first rockets would make great anti-boss weapons, while the second rockets would do better against little demons like imps, zombies, pinkies, etc. Because it would cause enough splash damage to kill a large crowd of them, and wound a large crowd of larger demons. You risk damaging yourself with the second rockets more than the first, however.


The plasma rifle would work better if it was a RIFLE, not a machine gun. I loved the Zdoom railgun.bex mod, but it often became my single-use weapon because it was basically a 600 round rocket launcher that causes no splash damage. The plasma RIFLE should fire a single round while the gun cools off / reloads, (like quake 2 rail gun) and still takes only 1 round. It should fire plasma bullets instead of energy cells, so it doesn't mess with the BFG. The max ammo w/o a backpack should be 25. Damage wise, it should still fire the blue orbs, but this is the difference: The blue orb (plasma bullet) can travel through certain demons, and detonates on the bigger ones. If it can go through a demon, it insta-gibs it. If it detonates into a big demon, it causes a good amount of damage.

The BFG is a really massive gun. I personally like how it will damage whatever's infront of you, provided you’re LOOKING at it when the energy ball detonates. That's the BFG's disadvantage. There are two paths the BFG can go, like rockets: one, it's a super-plasma rifle that causes the energy orb to go through big demons as well as small ones, and it causes constant splash damage as it travels along. When it hits something, it just blows up, along with anything that was close to it. This BFG's ammo would be 1 cell to fire, max ammo w/o backpack at 10.
Two, it's an instant-fire BFG. In Xaser's War zone mod, the BFG is a radiation gun that causes damage the moment you fire it- no energy ball, just damage to whatever's in front of you. Again, a great crowd controller, but if you want to make it useful against bosses, it has to have less ammo. Like 5 cells w/o a backpack, and 1 cell to fire.

This weapons mod would allow you to kill the demons REALLY quickly, but you have to balance the demons out as well.
Zombies: Cannon fodder anyway you put it, just up their firing chance and lower their accuracy. Bullets can kill humans from one shot, and the zombies are using guns like yours, so a fair balance is they have worse accuracy as they probably won't take time to line their shots up. They would be more likely to spray and pray. [PLSMRIFL instagibs]
Imp: fireballs do 60 points of damage w/o armor or fireballs that travel at running speeds and do 35 points w/o armor. Come ON people, those fireballs BURN YOU! I don't know that many humans who could survive long after being incinerated by a fireball! Scratches do 55 points. [PLSMRIFL instagibs]
Pinkie / specter: Insta-gib demon frags you in one hit. Players lazy enough to let them get that close really deserve to get whacked from the first attack. If you have armor, they drop your armor to ZIP and then cause full HP damage. Disabling their infighting with other monsters would be a must, or else you just end up using them as your weapons. The attack chance stays the same though. [PLSMRIFL instagibs]
Cacos: 30-point running-speed energy balls would be fair. Like the pinkies, it's your own lazy fault if you can't dodge their attack. [PLSMRIFL instagibs, but doesn't go through the caco]
Hell Knight: Moves 2x the speed now, and throws mancubus-sized green fireballs at normal attack chance / projectile speed and 65 point damages for the fireballs, 80 points for scratches.[PLSMRIFL does not instagib] [Unharmed by chainsaw]
Baron of Hell: Same speed, mancubus-sized red fireballs, causes 100 points of damage both with fireballs and scratches at same attack chance / projectile speed. [PLSMRIFL does not instagib] [Unharmed by chainsaw]
Revenant: Rockets don't home, move at running speeds, and only cause direct damage (no splash) 100 points because he's firing rockets at you. Just lower his attack chance or speed to balance this. [PLSMRIFL does not instagib][Unharmed by chainsaw]
Lost soul: their tough enough already. if you get hit by one, you didn't dodge / intercept it and deserve whatever damage it causes, end of story. [PLSMRIFLE intagibs]
mancubus: a higher attack chance would be nicer for them. Other than that their fine. [PLSMRIFL does not instagib]
The pain elementals: Upping their movement speed would help them out, their easy targets from how slow they move. [PLSMRIFL instagibs with caco rule]
Archvile: Another bad guy who pulverizes you enough already. Doesn't need any changes. [PLSMRIFL does not instagib]
Aracnotrons: giving them some kind of smart weapon would be interesting. Homing plasma bullets that move at walk speed. Sort of the normal Revenant's replacement, except Homing bullets aren't that accurate. 20 points damage. [PLSMRIFL instagibs with caco rule]
Spider Mastermind: The SM looks like it has a bigger version of your chain gun, so it fires 20 MM HEAT shells that move at running speed, with the same ROF as your chaingun. HEAT shells are good for killing infantry or lightly armored vehicles. The shells explode like rockets, and either:
A) cause huge area of splashdamage and minor damage
B) cause short area of splashdamage and tons of damage
CyberDemon: Shoots two guns. His more common attack is a triple-burst grenade launcher (Skulltag variety) and his other gun is an A or B type rocket launcher.

WHEW that was a lot of typing. Well, tell me what you think. Any changes you people think would make it better are welcome and are appreciated.

-MasterShazbot
-checked with word 2003 spellcheck

Holy crap...

Wow, interesting idea, but how would we be able to do it?

Why the hell would you want Doom to approximate "reality"

It would be good in a mod that is supposed to be very realistic. Sort of like Counterstrike.

Linguica said:

Why the hell would you want Doom to approximate "reality"

Your ideas all sound really cool. Combined with newer, better-looking, better-animating versions of Doom's graphics, and better sounds, this would be the ultimate EDGE mod. Some things would have to be tweaked though (like the Plasma Rifle's exception on the Caco - how would that be done? It can tunnel through everything but the Caco - but you can't change a projectile's flags on the fly).

And, last time I checked, Edge does let you change the sound quality - all the sounds in Operation Mjolnir, my latest weapon mod, are 22050 Hz Doom format sounds.

Post this on the Doom Armory forums if you feel like it - who knows, you might inspire someone to take action and make the mod.

Ravage said:

Linguica said:

Why the hell would you want Doom to approximate "reality"

yeah, this would work better if doom were capable of mapping different damages to different parts of the body. I'm sure that kind of functionability could be achieved by either zdoom or edge coders in the future anyways. Something like an alpha map of the sprite that has different damage percentages to each shade or something.

Edge does have the ability to reduce or even stop a certain damage for each monster.

Lutrov71 said:

It would be good in a mod that is supposed to be very realistic. Sort of like Counterstrike.

/me points his finger at counterdoom.

ALREADY DONE!!!!!11

Interesting idea. Maybe impossible, maybe just work intensive, but definitely interesting. Oh, and the Desert Eagle has versions chambered in .44 Smith & Wesson and .50 Action-Express, not just .357 cal magnum.

BlackFish said:

/me points his finger at counterdoom.

I refuse to call a mod that makes a 9mm Glock use the same ammo as a .45 USP Tactical and a Desert Eagle, makes grenades as big as rockets, and equates the damage of a Colt M4A1 with that of an AK-47 "realistic". Period.

one shot kill

One shot one kill is far too "arcade." If you want realism, go to an engine that'll let you have headshots, simulate armor, simulate blood loss, wounds affect accuracy and movement speed, and so on.

Shotgun shells arent that big, it isnt that hard to carry 100 on your person (go to any hunting store and look for the winchester target value packs, those are 100 2 3/4in 12 gauge shells and they are about 4 inches wide by 2 3/4 inches high by 12 inches long).

The Doom handgun definatly isn't a Desert Eagle, I believe its a Beretta 9mm semi auto. Even so, .357 magnum isn't that powerful, in fact in hunting it's considered marginal for deer. Pretty much all handgun cartriges have less power than rifle cartriges (except for the rimfires). Magnum is more of a marketing term than an actual rating of power.

There is no way in hell that the Doom chaingun (already terribly unrealistic) could be a .50 BMG type weapon. Have you ever seen a .50 BMG cartrige? Thier like 5 in long, and the bolt action rifles that shoot them weigh upwards of 20 pounds to keep the recoil semi-manageable. Add to that six barrels, a feeding mechanism, chains of ammo, and the mechanism to rotate the barrels, how would the Doom Marine be able to stand upright?

It seems like the "realism" here is taken from other video games. Sorry, but "realistic" video games aren't.

Pika132 said:

I refuse to call a mod that makes a 9mm Glock use the same ammo as a .45 USP Tactical and a Desert Eagle, makes grenades as big as rockets, and equates the damage of a Colt M4A1 with that of an AK-47 "realistic". Period.

Not to mention that Assault and sniper rifles use cells, the sniper rifles that couldn't hit a barn door with a banjo, bullets that could gib humans, makes a Glock 18 have a 6 round burst and has a makes an M3 shotgun reload in less than 3 seconds.

I refuse to call a mod that makes a 9mm Glock use the same ammo as a .45 USP Tactical and a Desert Eagle, makes grenades as big as rockets, and equates the damage of a Colt M4A1 with that of an AK-47 "realistic". Period.

And the sniper rifles aren't even accurate.

999cop said:

one shot kill

Insert unfunny timeline joke

Dr. Zin said:

how would the Doom Marine be able to stand upright?

MAN AND A HALF! BERZERKER-PACKIN' MAN AND A HALF!

.:DartmerC:. said:

yeah, this would work better if doom were capable of mapping different damages to different parts of the body. I'm sure that kind of functionability could be achieved by either zdoom or edge coders in the future anyways. Something like an alpha map of the sprite that has different damage percentages to each shade or something.

I have done some early testing of this.
I made a second skin within a skin.
I painted the head red, arms blue, chest orange and legs green.
Then I tried to map out the hit per pixel and determine which colour
I hit and then calculate the final locational damage.

Because the scope of this testproject, I didn't get so far before
I got so bored of it all and threw it in the "wait for inspiration box".

It all comes down to understanding and possibly rewriting DooMs
collition detection code and add the features directly.
A simple mod won't produce the speed required for the actions.

I may sound like all talk, but I haven't given up on it... Yet.
But I want more than just locational damage.
With locational damage the step isn't too big to a remake of
my all time favorite "Action Quake2". But if I am to make
a mod like that I absolutely insist on having voxel models.
That's why I'm still working on understanding Ken Silvermans voxel
code in the buildengine. But that's another story.