Be the Cyberdemon

I got this idea from the Gladiator series of doom movies:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=388DA09C4DA0166A

What if you could be the cyberdemon? Wouldn't it be fun to have that power? Have a mod that gives the player the dimensions and hitpoints of the cyberdemon and also raises the point of view to where his head is. You would have the same speed as the Cyb, too. The only difference would be that you are no longer restricted to shooting in volleys of 3 and would not be immune to your own splash damage and other rockets. I suppose you could give him another weapon in his other hand so that you wouldn't only have to shoot rockets. Or, even better, instead of having armor, give him a giant shield to hold in his other hand to block incoming attacks (like armor, but it only protects you when you aren't firing and when you aren't running.) Your sheild eventually becomes useless from too much damage and breaks, and then you have to find another shield (same principle as armor) You'd then have to make some levels specifically for him.. or modify existing levels. You'd also have to tone down the redness the screen gets when you lose health since a loss of 80 health would no longer be such a big deal now.

There was one called Cat and Mouse. I never got around to playing it though.

Krispavera said:

There was one called Cat and Mouse. I never got around to playing it though.

this is for DM?

wait... that's a pretty sweet DM concept. have like 5 marines all working in COOP to kill the cyb. Is that what this is?

I tried loading it in zdoom but it was a no go (something about decorate).

I played the cat and mouse one. Was kinda dodgey, the cyber wouldn't stop walking.

Anyway... what about my idea? Intriguing? The reason I think it's a good idea is because it would enable a lot of different map innovations to create interesting gameplay for a cyberdemon player.

1. one thing I was thinking would be you might want to change the AI of the other monsters (or marines?) so that they don't always go toward you, but use their diminutive size to their advantage. That is, they would seek out safe, small passageways you wouldn't be able to go down to fire back at you. The map designer could create maps with tons of passageways that the cyb is either too fat or too tall to fit down, and then have the monsters using that to their advantage (by programming them to be random in their movements, so they inadvertently use the environment to their advantage). It would give the mapper a whole new perspective on mapping.. a totally new way to approach gameplay.

A mod in which you can play as a monster, it's interesting. I'd love to play as a Baron of Hell.

[WH]-Wilou84 said:
A mod in which you can play as a monster, it's interesting. I'd love to play as a Baron of Hell.

I believe there is a mod in progress that involves the player as one escaping from some facility guarded by marines.

Mr. Chris said:

I believe there is a mod in progress that involves the player as one escaping from some facility guarded by marines.

haha! that's pretty cool... like Jurassic Park or King Kong

It would turn into another Doom: Rampage Edition. Doom just doesn't feel right without fast speed and multiple weapons.

Mr. Freeze said:

It would turn into another Doom: Rampage Edition. Doom just doesn't feel right without fast speed and multiple weapons.

Solution: the player is a lost soul that can both charge and use those hit scanners from the beta (alpha?).

Mr. Freeze said:

It would turn into another Doom: Rampage Edition. Doom just doesn't feel right without fast speed and multiple weapons.

Could give him diff weapons i suppose. I kinda like my armor idea. Cyb moves pretty fast. but I suppose you have a point. Could still be fun, though... like driving a big mac truck in need for speed high stakes. :p

Hellbent said:

Could give him diff weapons i suppose. I kinda like my armor idea. Cyb moves pretty fast. but I suppose you have a point. Could still be fun, though... like driving a big mac truck in need for speed high stakes. :p

This is a good idea, a Super Cyb is born.

If I were to think of how a Cyb has different weapons, it'd be a slight mixture of various enemy styles (but not EXACTLY like them.)

1. Right Arm (Think of secondary..?)
2. Fire Ball (Well... Gotta start somewhere. ^-^;)
3.
4. Flamethrower (Looks like it can handle if it fires freaking rockets)
5. Rockets (Duh...)
6. Blast Ball(s) (Like a Cacodemons Distance, small, acts like Plasma Rifle with some added power and a small radius explosion but slower)
7.

I couldn't think of Slot-3 and Slot-7.

Slot 3: Repeating shotgun type weapon. Possibly shoulder mounted.

Slot 7: Could be like a Rocket BFG. Say it could fire off a barrage of 20 rockets in a cluster, and when that cluster hits something, all those rockets fire out in different directions from the point of impact.

Just a thought anyway.

I think it would be fair to restrict Cybie with only launcher, make him to fire at least three rockets in one shot, and make him invincible to his own rocket splash damage.

Leo Sosnine said:

I think it would be fair to restrict Cybie with only launcher, make him to fire at least three rockets in one shot, and make him invincible to his own rocket splash damage.

But not invincible to other rockets? What about other rockets' splash damage? Prolly not possible to make others damaging while your own not.

Hellbent said:

But not invincible to other rockets? What about other rockets' splash damage? Prolly not possible to make others damaging while your own not.

"Other rockets" are rockets from other cybies. I think it would be fair to make cybie-player to be invincible to rockets from other cybies.

However for people, who prefer to play not exactly as a cybie, but to be able to switch weapons etc. it could be reasonable to preserve such a possibility. I don't know what vox populi would say about this finally...

Imagine, for example, yourself playing as cybie along with other several cybies cleaning the mess of spider masterminds, barons, etc. Other cybies are not enemies, they are fellows.

What about a mod with two modes to choose from the menu

On one mode you fight as the Marine, and with other soldiers you have to stop an invasion. As final boss you see a super cyberdemon.

On the other mode you fight as the super cyberdemon and together with some demon hordes you have to invade a UAC HQ filled with marines. As a final Boss you fight a fast marine using one of the Marine sprites Enjay made that have the doomguy head.

Hey, thats cool dude!

Nice thing **

How about a WAD where you play as multiple monsters? The maps could be set as a hub with the central map being a place you can change monster classes - or - you could morph between monsters like switching weapons.

Monsters would obviously have different strengths, weaknesses and restrictions. Maps would be built to take advantage of this and promote tactical use of monster classes.

Monsters:

Imp: Weak but fits into all ground level areas - default monster.
Spectre: Invisible and fast but weak and melee attack only.
Lost Soul: Can fly but weak and with charge attack only.
Cyberdemon: Powerful and tough but can only get into large areas.

I think adding any other monsters would either make themselves or the mosters above redundant and make the WAD unbalanced.

Mr. Freeze said:

It would turn into another Doom: Rampage Edition. Doom just doesn't feel right without fast speed and multiple weapons.

You know, you can make the cyberdemon even more cybernetic, allowing speeds and detachable cannons. It would look like those action cartoons and comics, but who cares if it plays good and you finally turn to the evil side...

Not a bad idea; definitely not the first one. I'd rather play as a cybruiser of sorts, not a cyberdemon, so as not to leap too quickly to having around 4000 health, from 100. I'd probably give the player the choice of several classes, such as "mage" for a barehanded baron (and an attack system quite different from Doom's), or "fighter" for an armed baron (uses Descent-style weapon-like cannons, but has access to objects too).

I'd need artistic talent and good utilities to pull this up, or a solid team of enthusiasts. And time and enough interest.

The Cyber could have a scratch attack - he has one in the SNES version after all.

purist said:

How about a WAD where you play as multiple monsters? The maps could be set as a hub with the central map being a place you can change monster classes - or - you could morph between monsters like switching weapons.

The technology is there now to just morph by pressing a button (which pukes a script). And the whole idea has loads of potential.

(btw the lost soul is smaller than the imp, so his main advantage of fitting into all ground level areas would fail)

alright, so how we going to decide on what wad we are going to make based on the ideas here? Why doesn't everyone who is interested write a proposal for the project idea they want and we'll work from there.

The Ultimate DooMer said:

(btw the lost soul is smaller than the imp, so his main advantage of fitting into all ground level areas would fail)

But the imp can attack from range so it would still have this advantage over the Spectre and Lost Soul and the height difference advantage over the Cyb.

If that's not enough the Lost Soul could be substituted for the Cacodemon but that would mean making lots of areas too small for Cacos to avoid making the imp redundant.

Or the imp could be substituted for a Hell Knight, which would make it tougher than the Spectre and Lost Soul but still smaller than the Cyb.

Hellbent said:

Why doesn't everyone who is interested write a proposal for the project idea they want and we'll work from there.

My project proposal is the idea I posted involving controlling several classes of Monster. I don't have scripting or graphic experience but I'd map for it.

Plot: Off the top of my head maybe something like the plot for Avatar. A human marine is masquerading as Demons to infiltrate a Demon infested planet/starport/techbase/whatever suits.

Gameplay: Tactically use different monster classes to progress through maps designed specifically with the (dis)advantages of the monsters in mind.

Scope: I think people might be interested in contributing to this if a fuss-free proof of concept map can be built. I can't code but I'll make a map. Graphics/sounds etc can be considered once we know whether it actually works.

There are other things to consider but I'll let other people post their ideas and if this one garners interest they can be worked out later.

If this is going to be a real project I'll agree with purist on making most of the monster classes available (who wants to be any of the zombies? just play regular doom). The most interesting ones to be would be the cyberdemon, baron, pain elemental, revenant, mancubus, cacodemon, and imp kind of as a novelty or early/extremely hard map oddity. Since this basically has to be a zdoom or similar ported wad, using monsters from the beastiary could work, although focusing on the originals will get the thing out at some point versus finding new monsters every month.

Now for weapon sets ... unfortunately most of those monsters are going to have vanilla attacks with maybe a few extras, like a stat-boosting ritual for the baron and maybe a corpse-eating hp regen for the cacodemon. Everything will likely have a melee that doesn't have one just so we can see something like a manc swiping at a marine with its arm-cannon. Getting some more ideas on attacks would be really good, as we don't want players to get bored with simple attack power differences.

With the player with 4000 health, something tells me you will need to have overwhelming odds of monsters/marines.

I am guessing about weapons, single rocket, slight spread of 3 rockets, classic 3-shots-in-a-row, melee with fist or rocket arm.

Mr. Chris said:

With the player with 4000 health, something tells me you will need to have overwhelming odds of monsters/marines.

I am guessing about weapons, single rocket, slight spread of 3 rockets, classic 3-shots-in-a-row, melee with fist or rocket arm.

could give left arm similar fisticuffs as player. 100hp kungpow.

Mr. Chris said:

With the player with 4000 health, something tells me you will need to have overwhelming odds of monsters/marines.

Overwhelming Odds is a good name.

Once the monsters have been coded and a proof of concept map has been built, gameplay considerations can be worked on. The higher ranked monsters like the Cyberdemon could be available only for short periods like a power up or areas where there the Cyb can be effective could be used sparingly.

I like the basic premise but I'm not precious about how it's executed, as long as the decisions are for the sake of gameplay.

I do think if this is to go ahead it should be started with just three or four vanilla monsters with just their normal attacks. Start small, get the basics right and build on them.

Is there anyone wanting to progress this? Someone capable of making the scripts to get the thing started I mean. Elaborate graphics and sounds are not needed as yet.

"I played the cat and mouse one. Was kinda dodgey, the cyber wouldn't stop walking."

Yah, this is because Cybers don't stand still in single player unless they have no target, plus, you want camping cybers? You can use Cat and Mouse as a base for your project if you want, I kind of rushed the mod though to play it online, hence the basic maps. It's a Skulltag mod btw, not ZDoom.

It's actually quite balanced to have two players to one cyber, although the cyber has immense health and unlimited rockets, he is one massive target and can be outmanouvred due to pausing int he pain state and firing in 3 shot vollies.

It sounds cool. It could be just mentioned before: you are one escaping from a Marine base.


But I would suggest no just Cyberdemons, but other monsters too like Mancubus, Mastermind, Cacodemon, etc. Every one with his strong and weak points. Players should able to choose the class.