Doom- from the demon's perspective.

Myself and Impse started talking about and idea, in which you would play as a demon instead as a human in Doom (which started from playing as the guys in Diemos base). I thought of an idea today, and I wonder if it is a "keeper" sort of design.

Basically, the main difficultly is based upon the monster chosen, not on a level. The level idea would try and take advantage of each different creature, thus most maps would be rather large-scale (in order to make chosing hard and rather intelligent). However, in order to make the game easier to play, one thing I want to incorporate into demons is a sort of "natural armor"- since they live in hell, I would think they would have some natural protection, and thus some have a higher ability to absorb damage then others.

From here, things like health would be replaced with body parts, ammo would be removed, and things like armor would be replaced with...powerups, maybe? Eh, too much.

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Imp: In playing as an Imp, players would have the same movement rates (faster run, tho) and health as humans. Their natural armor, since they are the grunts of hell, would be standard security armor but without a limit to use. From here, their weapon(s) would simply be their thrown fireballs (about shotgun damage with higher firing rates) and their claws (2x as powerful as the punch, quicker).

Demon: Demons of course, would be much faster than any other creature, probably being in a constant run. Their health would also be higher, around 120 or 140, to offset the lack of ranged weapons. From here, their only attack (bite) would be high damage with moderate speed, also in an attempt to offset their lack of ranged weapons. Natural armor would be 1/3.

Specter: Same as the demon, but (partially) invisible. Thus, would get hit less.

Cacodemon: Here is where it gets interesting. I do not know if this is possible, but an idea would be to incorporate 3D movement into it, trying to offset the lack of speed. From here, the attack (ball lightning) would be more like a rocket, also to offset the lack of speed. Natural armor woudl either be 1/3 or 1/2 degredation.

Lost Soul: Nothing but extreme speed and high damage here. Only placed for fun, it would have, like, 20 health but do some pretty extreme damage upon an attack. Natural armor would be around 1/3.

Baron of Hell: Big, slow, and terribly fun. Speed would be odd, as physical size would have to be taken into consideration from it's actual slowness. Natural armor would be combat-level, making it's huge size easy to hit.
Firepower would be high, with plasma-damging bolts thrown, and finally claws that would do much more damage than normal (they are big freakin' guys, after all) so it would be 4x as normal (or even higher).

Hell Knight: Basically the Baron with less health and more speed to offset.

Mancubus: Even more wonton destruction, the Mancubus would eptomize firepower and health over everything else. Can you imagine dual rocket launchers with over 200 health and combat armor? But with only 1/2 the speed of a walk...

Pain Elemental: Like the Reverant, would would only be able to indirectly attack- by spawning Lost Souls. Fun! Health would be normal, with the natural armor about 1/3rd.

Spiderdemon: Very large and armored (metal has benefits) with a plasma gun, but with lower-than-average health. Size would inhibit going into different areas (forcing full-on attacks).

Arch-Ville: What do you get when you can walk as fast as you can run, ressurect dead humans as Zombiemen, and set others on fire? An average health/armor reverant, of course. But, like the ain Elemental, it would have difficencies, mainly being that you could raise only a certian number of dudes.

Reverant: A fast rocket-toting with low health and higher-than average armor (steel body plate) wit higher-than average speed. Rockets would do normal damage, but punches would be about 2x the force.

I would add the zombies, but nobody cares about them :p
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What do you think? Useful? Or complete crap?

I like the idea of being able to choose the monster you want to be, would be especially fun for co-op.

Though I think you only have 1/2 of the equation, the other half is: what will you be fighting against? It would make most sense if you fought against humans, not just the pistol and shotgun guys (and chaingunners) but big dudes with rocket launchers and plasma guns.

Now THAT could be a brilliant mod, but also a huge amount of work!

tl;dr version:
I like the premise of this project, but it would be an incredible undertaking. Also, I think some things like increasing the enemy marine lineup, the player's options of attack and speed for each demon, as well as the appropriate number of maps for each monster also need to be considered. This project would be amazing, but it will take quite a team to produce it.

Long Version for those interested:
I'm liking where this is going, but it still has many kinks to work out. This would probably be the most work-intensive and difficult project ever if done correctly, compared against all the Zdoom WADs I've ever played.

Here's some of my thoughts. I agree with Adjapted about the enemy lineup. One thing that makes Doom so fun is the diverse array of enemies to fight against. There would need to be several classes of marines and whatnot to invade against, which brings me back to the point that this will take loads of work (though actually their spritework could likely all be based on the same basic sprites.)

If you are allowed to choose which demon to play as, there should probably be separate maps to play (making every tunnel as big as a spiderdemon would be kind of silly.) From that perspective, it might be cool if the different maps had areas that were the same, so you can see where your fellow demons are invading (and previews of places you can go later as another demon.) Each demon would probably only get like 2-3 maps to keep the workload managable though. Also, I don't think the speeds of the demons should be kept so low. (Waddling around at manc speed would drag on and on.) While there should of course be variation amongst demons, they should all be at least somewhat speedy. I think the main reason Id made Doomguy so inhumanly fast was not because he is a Godlike being of some sort, but simply because players want to get from Point A to Point B in a reasonable time frame.

That said, here's some of my thoughts on the particular enemies:
Imp: I don't know how much fun this would be. As weak as an imp is, I doubt that the map could be very complex, but actually, the imps abilities could be mapped around.
Demon: this one would be tough to do well. A demon would always be vulnerable to fire with no ranged attack, so it would need tons of health and armor to work. It might be better to give it a berserk-like bite, but some weaker projectile, like the Blood Demons.
Pain Elemental: Spawing Souls might be fun, but this might lag the computer if few of them die. Think about it. A soul for every time you press fire.
Spiderdemon: This thing is huge. The map would have to be heavily worked around it, and I doubt the player would be able to dodge shit with a 256x256 body.

Why didn't you list the Cyb? That's the one demon I'd love to play as. 4000HP and infinite rockets. Hell yeah. Speaking of which, an interesting gameplay device might be to prevent the player from recovering health, so the challenge is to preserve as much of the 4000HP as possible. On a side note, being commander keen would be fun. I'd pwn those marines!! ;-)

Just another general idea, perhaps the demons might have at least some attack variation. Perhaps a demon could use a blood demons attack, A baron could use its fireballs as well as perhaps an afrit-like attack and the Cyber-baron weapon (a stretch, I know.) And maybe the Mastermind can use the Devestators BFG. I just think using the same attack for too long might get tedious without other options, and the maps would not have as much variation, as the player couldn't use any alternate attacks for specific circumstances.

Anyway, this type of project is the one I'd most like so see, but I doubt it will happen. Not to rain on the parade or anything, but I think it's just too much work. To be honest, I think that's why Doom's Rampage Edition went so poorly. Even if the authors mapping was not excessively impressive, I just think it was too big an undertaking and the final product was a major dissapointment. A project like this would need several members, all competant in Zdoom-style mapping, and all who have tons of free time, and I just don't see that happening. I'd be all for this if it didn't seem like such a daunting task.

There's already a lot of marine types in the Beastiary, which would save a bit of work.

The maps could work like a hub. You start in the Phobos Anomaly where you choose your monster class. This area is like a cross roads to four or five other maps in which different monsters will have different advantages. One map for example might require the fire power of a Baron but then the player would need to return to the central hub to change class to lost soul to get to a higher area. These tactics would eliminate the needs for key/switch hunts, which would be unrealistic.

After clearing all the maps in the hub you would teleport to the next hub - Deimos and new monster classes will be available.

Unusual monster classes like the Archvile and Pain Elemental could be found in secret areas.

If the player's to be presented with a choice of demon types to play then Shadowcaster-style shape shifting might be more appropriate rather than turning out maps to suit each type of demon.

I was talking about maps that suit more than one demon, the puzzle element of strategically switching monsters replacing hitting switches and hunting keys in regular mapsets.

Oh, and I don't agree with the Demon/Spectre being given ranged attacks. It would remove the tactical element of having to get up close. As long as the maps/areas it's intended to be used in are Tyson friendly it would be fine.

Perhaps the Demon and Spectre could be merged so that you can become partially invisible through collecting a power up or something. If the oppositions are marines it would be useful as you would mostly be facing hit-scan fire.

There's something about this idea that I really like.

In Quake 3 there's a mod (Invasion), where you can choose between the human team, or the alien team. The human team has strong guns and armor, but if he dies he dies. The alien team has weaker attacks and less or null armor but have unlimited lives. If the human team manage to teal the egg of the alien base and return it to their ship they won. There's also a variant that has multiple eggs on the alien base that the human team must destroy in order to win.
Of course if the human team dies, aliens win.

I think something like this could work for DOOM, except there would be demons instead aliens. Perhaps demon attacks could be edited, so as they health, speed, size to make it playable.

For God's sake, don't make this another DRE.

I really like this idea. It would be pretty fun for DM too (imagine a bunch of monsters infighting each other). In fact there's already a monster wad called infight.wad, it's not too balanced though. :/ And there are no new weapon sprites except for the zombieman. Though it's still pretty fun, I don't want to make it sound like it's crap. :P

You can always resize the monsters so that they are a more manageable size. I don't think it would be *too* much of a problem if you had half-size spiderdemons running around, since they'd still be wider than anything else :P. On the other hand it would make it alot easier to make maps.

Anyways, there's nothing that says the cyberdemon has to have 4000 health and 200 damage rockets. We could always make it have attributes resembling the original without making it as powerful (such as a splash attack that doesn't hurt the cyberdemon). I actually think making it have 4000 health is still overpowered even if it can't pick up medkits and stuff.

The monster player sprites are pretty much done since we're using the DOOM sprites for the monsters, but we have to think about the weapon sprites for the monsters. For example I've seen some really nice mancubus arms somewhere, we could probably use those. I'm sure there are a bunch of weapon sprites for monsters out there, but we have to find them all and figure out which ones suck and which ones are good.

I know for a fact there is somebody who has been working on a similar project for the past year or two.

I am surprised I got so many favorable results (but I can understand the critisisim). So let me try to reply to everyone in order-

Ajapted- I was thinking (of course) your enemies would be the marines, with color changes and slight artistic changes to represent what weapon they carry. I am also thinking of other items (robots? Drones, maybe?) but I don't know if it would fit.

Death-Destiny- Yeah, I know :) One thing I thought I could do was to NOT have it be episodic, but rather have a few select missions that would be better for one type of monster (but not outlaw every use). Basically, if you decide on a Spiderdemon (NOT the mastermind :)!) you could move down main hallways and get to your position, but you would miss out on a lot of stuff. Thus, a lot of maps would be big, with smaller areas that the larger guys could not go. Here is where using the Imp would actually be a good idea- you could go where all the enemies could go (and consume their bodies for health afterwards). Demons would be the same, but the Pain elemental would probably just be added for the sake of completion, you know? But like you said, the lag would have to be worked around (if at all).
Having a double (or triple) variant of attack would be interesting, and probably would be used for those with low health/lack of attacks. Maybe the Demon could shoot flames out of some area (insert ass joke here).

purist- The idea of a hub-based game is interesting, but would allow for someone to beat the game too easily. But...if you have the demons like weapons that you just have to pick up (or unlock, you decision), it could allieviate that.

GreyGhost- I would not think so, sadly.

Vegeta- Perhaps, but then it would not be a Doom WAD, would it ;) ?

Fisk- I don't understand. Could you elaborate?

Spleen- Or even a PROTO-CYBERDEMON (Muhahahah!!!). But seriously, I would like to keep the weapons that the mosters already have exclusive to the monster. I mean, wouldn't it be a little odd to see a Demon with Mancubi arms ;) ? Still it's a good idea, but better for some other monster taht could use them.

TheMionicDonut- Really? How are they doing?

I didn't mean a demon with mancubi arms, I just meant that it would be nice to actually see your arms if you're a mancubus. I feel kind of awkward when I don't see any weapon selected, but I guess for monsters like Cacodemons there's not much you can do. But for mancubi you can :P

Honestly I'm against demons and lost souls having ranged attacks. They're the only monsters with melee-only attacks, and you can always make them stronger or weaker until some players enjoy playing them and others prefer to play other monsters. The whole point of having different monsters is that you have monsters with different strengths and weaknesses. Besides if you started changing the monster themes rather than just their strength it wouldn't be as much of a "DOOM monster's perspective" wad as it would just be a wad with some random classes.

Also please make the pain elemental-summoned lost soul weaker than the player-controlled one :P

Prince of Darkness said:

Fisk- I don't understand. Could you elaborate?

No elaboration is needed. Check this WAD out (Doom: Rampage Edition is the second entry). It followed a similar premise, but was unfortunately graced with this award.

Heh, this reminds me of Deim - though I doubt it will ever see the light of day.

It would be all the hell better if the Cyber player could shape up the environment in order to fit in. Even more so the Spider player. Otherwise it's dumb.

And the Arch player is the most boring choice.

Imp player sounds awfully better in Doom 3 than else, due to acrobatics.

Demon player is cool. Force the player to move, no stay (as in doom2.net )

LS player would resemble Demon player

Caco player's a bit generic, though.

Prince of Darkness said:

But...if you have the demons like weapons that you just have to pick up (or unlock, you decision), it could allieviate that.

Yeah, that's kind of what I had in mind. There would be designated areas in each map or hub, which the player must get or return to in order to change class. Not all the monsters would be available at once of course, just the ones the author deems suitable for the map. There could be more than one in each map and ones in secret areas.

Imagine starting as an imp and having to find a particular teleporter where you can change to a lost soul to explore higher areas or a baron to clear out a difficult room.

I don't think the Cyberdemon's health or any of the other demon's properties are much of an issue and they should be kept as close the originals as possible. It's all about how the maps are setup. Running through KDitD with 4000 HP and rocket launcher that doesn't splash damage you might sound unappealing, but put it in the context of a map that's designed with these advantages in mind, such a hit-scan Nuts spamfest or a boss battle against several powerful custom enemies and it could make for an epic battle.

I always had a similar idea. In fact, it isn't SO similar, but the concept is the same. Differences:

--> You would start as a Trooper, with all other classes locked. You would unlock a class when you kill the corresponding enemy in the game, once or maybe twice.

--> All original monster attributes (health, attack, damage and speed) would be kept unchanged.

--> The only items kept would be health.


It would be really fun to play as a monster, against other monsters!

purist said:

Yeah, that's kind of what I had in mind. There would be designated areas in each map or hub, which the player must get or return to in order to change class. Not all the monsters would be available at once of course, just the ones the author deems suitable for the map. There could be more than one in each map and ones in secret areas.

Imagine starting as an imp and having to find a particular teleporter where you can change to a lost soul to explore higher areas or a baron to clear out a difficult room.

I don't think the Cyberdemon's health or any of the other demon's properties are much of an issue and they should be kept as close the originals as possible. It's all about how the maps are setup. Running through KDitD with 4000 HP and rocket launcher that doesn't splash damage you might sound unappealing, but put it in the context of a map that's designed with these advantages in mind, such a hit-scan Nuts spamfest or a boss battle against several powerful custom enemies and it could make for an epic battle.

Don't know how major this is but the multiplayer "survival" mode of Skulltag does not work with hubs, and in general hubs don't lend themselves too well to a multiplayer setting. Neither does a system where players would have significantly different abilities on the same map (most WADs are played with "weapon stay" these days, meaning that weapons stay when picked up and if one person got a weapon on a level then everyone else will probably have it too). In my opinion. So if this project is going to be played online at all I would prefer if hubs were not used. Of course this point isn't too important for single player folks, but still..

Just an idea: why can't you begin as a lower monster and then increasing your powers becoming another monster?

For example, you may start as an Imp, then become a Hell Knight, a Baron and then a Cyberdemon. You can upgrade yourself by acquiring some special thing in the game. Doing so, you can have a wide range of weapons, from Imp's balls to Cyberdemon's rockets.

L.

I do agree that the more powerful monster should not be accessible from the start but I think it would be a bit weird having all those attacks at the same time. Plus, most attacks would become redundant as soon as you upgraded to a better monster class - unless ammo was incorporated somehow.

I've actually started a wad where you play as an imp once...


Anyway, it's a great idea, would require a lot of work, but is definitely possible.

If I were to design it, I'd say make only one set of levels...silly to have to play class X in order to play map Y. Huge monsters not being able to get into small areas is an OK idea, but I wouldn't mind leaving out the cyber and the mastermind. Everyone has used rockets and machineguns here! What's exciting about using the same old weapons at 4x your normal size (and slower)?

Combining the demon and spectre seems like a great idea to me. A powerup is...no offence...the worst way to implement a partial-invisibility ability (invisibilibility?). I'd like to see the player able to use it whenever, of course with some kind of charge time incorporated. This would also eliminate the awkwardness of a powerup that only the demon can use.

Perhaps if you were a pain elemental, your lost souls would die very shortly after spawning. Still, they might be able to get in three or four bites before fizzling out. This could also add an element of range to their attack; if the LS were shot over a far distance it wouldn't have the time to bite something 3 times.

Being an archvile would rule. I don't understand printz's criticizms. Lost souls are FLYING unlike the demon...cacodemons as well. What's generic about some of the only flying creatures? How the funk would we make maps that can be 'shaped up'?!

EDIT: Also, I think it would be cool to have only beginning monster classes available at first. Maybe, imp and demon. Unlocking the others could be done in "side-quests." This would definitely require the levelset to have high replayability, although stuff like not being able to fly at first would help a lot.

Spice Zdoom did something like this many years ago, but it didnt get far.

I've actually started a wad where you play as an imp once...

Somebody was doing this too, it was called DEIM and looked quite good, but seems to have vanished.

I barely got anything done - you had doom fists that fire imp balls, and I wrote a little script to give you 66 health everytime you killed something :)

That concept was taken from an excellent Half-Life singleplayer mod, Point of View, where you play as a Xen Alien who can heal himself with his lightning attack.

magicsofa said:

Being an archvile would rule. I don't understand printz's criticizms. Lost souls are FLYING unlike the demon...cacodemons as well. What's generic about some of the only flying creatures? How the funk would we make maps that can be 'shaped up'?!

1) Many games allow to play as a spellcaster. The archvile is very similar to a spellcaster. He can cast fire on the enemy, and can resurrect the dead. And an Archvile player in a Doom port mod wouldn't really be new: a flame attack similar to Archvile's is already in Hexen, belonging to the Cleric class. Resurrection is a bit better, though. And not least, the Archvile is far too popular as a monster, though okay, this is subjective.

2) Sure Lost Souls are flying, but just as with Demons, their attack requires contact, something which would require the player to apply typical moves, common to all melee attacks in first person shooting games.

3) Cacodemons seem generic, because they're almost like a typical player with Fly mode on. I mean, they're only medium-fast and their projectiles are simple. They have no charging or spawning possibilities.

4) "Shaping up" of a map is merely a hypotethical subject, not really done in Doom. I meant something like being able to destroy walls, that is every wall in the game, not just specific sectors. This would prove useful for "siege" classes like mancubi, arachnotrons, cyberdemons or spiderdemons, who normally can't fit one-person doors, like DOOR1 or DOOR3. But it would probably require an engine superior to the ones these days.

1. All of the demons who don't just melee are "spellcasters." Still, being able to resurrect different kinds of monsters is very unique in Doom. I think if the fire attack wasn't like Hexen, and actually required you to be in sight of the monster for a few seconds like the regular monster, it would be a good balance. You'd really have to use your un-un-dead minions strategically.

2. Lost souls can charge. And if I'm not mistaken, almost every attack that Doomguy OR the monsters can perform are "common to all FPS games." Perhaps you should be complaining about indie music instead of possible doom mods :D

3. Players don't typically play with fly mode on, and they aren't typically cacodemons either.

4. You said before that its dumb if the cybie can't blow up the map. So write the engine, and we'll all enjoy blowing up the maps! Just kidding...but its not gonna happen. It might make sense to have certain walls that can be destroyed by large monsters, but it would be hard to have the game discriminate between who is attacking the wall.

4. If the destructable wall sections are treated as immobile monsters that have the Spectral flag set and the player has the only suitable missiles - problem solved.

What is this spectral flag?

It's a ZDoom Actor Flag ability. Renders the monster immune to weapons that aren't intended to harm it.

Ah, now I remember seeing it in doombuilder and wondering why it was there along with "partially invisible" :D