Could a BFG Ball-Shooting Monster Work in Doom at All?

[Firebert]

I've happened to think back to playing Complex Doom on Zandronum a few years ago and remember being absolutely destroyed by some random chaingunner with a BFG. Of course, the mapper had no intention of some lowly hitscanner to have one of the most powerful attacks in the game. Which made me think: what would a fully fleshed out BFG ball spewing monster behave like? How could maps be designed around them? Would anyone actually use this monster? I'm curious to hear if anyone else has any thoughts on this subject.

 

One of the ideas I had thinking about this was to have the monster's attack be really drawn out and obvious like the archvile. I also think deciding whether or not it infights with other monsters at all is important too. But other than that I'm not really sure what I would do with it.

 

If you've got any ideas, I'd love to hear them

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Enemies with BFG's are fucking irritating. I hate getting slapped with big green balls!

[plums]

There have definitely been some maps that have custom monsters that use the BFG, often bosses. It's been okay enough if they're telegraphed enough. Actually dodging the ball is usually easy, just like any single monster fireball, you just need to hide somewhere.

 

For some examples, the flying boss in Avactor has one, and a recent mod called Doom Classic Complete has the spiderdemon retaliate with a BFG, which is a bit annoying but not horrible and definitely makes them a more difficult monster. (The mod itself is not my thing, but it seemed done well enough for those that like such things.)

[Sena]

I'm sure it's been done before, but I would generally suggest that compared to a cyberdemon, it'd be a lot more frustrating to deal with, as you're having to account for 20-40 tracers with some pretty significant dispersion in individual damage, meaning that surviving a hit is going to have a much higher degree of luck involved compared to other projectiles in the game. 

[banjiepixel]

I have been playing around with BFG Ball that deals also blast damage for the player's BFG. Doing this for the enemy BFG Ball would mean that the enemy would be more likely kill other enemies and themselves which would help balancing. Also on top of that, we could remove the regular projectile damage from the BFG Ball and make combination of just the hitscan tracers and blast damage.

 

Also we could just replace tracers with blast damage and make the enemy BFG function like more powerful rocket launcher. This change would make the enemy basically a upgraded version of a rocket launcher zombie, another enemy from Complex Doom.

 

In general it would help that these enemies would be actual mapper placed enemies instead of being randomly spawned in place of actual low tier hitscanners. Complex Doom's versions of the enemies are generally fine, the just need to be designed to be actually a part of the enemy encounter.

[Pechudin]

If the enemy is used sparingly enough, then I don't see why not. I mean, the Archvile has a similar kind of attack and we know how to evade that. Also, one way to evade the BFG tracers from a monster would be to rotate around the monster into a direction opposite to where the BFG was shot into.

 

I guess one would aim to be close enough to the monster so you can evade the tracers, but far away enough to evade the ball itself.

[Celestin]

I remember there was an enemy like this in Avactor and it was an absolute bastard to dodge.

[roadworx]

strain had an enemy like this. it looked identical to the zombieman and you could only tell it apart by the noise it made when it fired the bfg. whoever decided an enemy like that was a good idea was pure evil

[thiccyosh]

An enemy with a BFG to me would be like a Cyberdemon. A very high tier demon that needs constant attention like an Arch-Vile and is also very good at clearing out rooms, but has very low health. So that would make it a Glass Cannon Cyberdemon, a very evil one as well. It doesn't matter how you use or place that thing, it will always spark an "oh shit" moment in every player.

 

Imagine being in a fight with lots and lots of fodder, just for a BFG zombie to just jump in on the opposite end. Now we went from a auto-pilotable fight to a fight with a goal: getting rid of the BFG guy.

 

And now imagine that guy on -fast and it being a sniper... Evil!

[riktoi]

Giving the enemy the ability to fire off tracers like the player's BFG wouldn't make for very fun gameplay. You would have to tweak it in some ways, like making it just be the ball, making it a super strong imp fireball or a slow rocket with a higher blast radius.

[Kwisior]

UAC Military Nightmare has some. Give it a try.

[SPG]

It'd require playtesting and consideration of enemy placement and level design, but I think something like the spiderdemon with a weaker BFG (as nearly every enemy has a weaker version of your own attacks) and some graphic to indicate its tracers would be good. Have the appropriate cover, and ideally if the spiderdemon had such a BFG attack, arachnatrons would not only be included, but drop plasma ammo as well. That way, the boss fight would be about using the spiderdemon to help take out other enemies attacking you while giving you fuel to attack it back.

If there's concern about needing to make an enemy you can fight out in the open (which half the enemy roster would fail at), it could be just the BFG ball without the tracers, perhaps giving it a blast radius instead.

[DoomGuy999]

There is a way in UDB to get a bfg marine, don't give it any friendly tags and it is a menace.

NotWowWadJustPureHell.zip

a painful map i made, get ready to die. sorry.

[gibfrag]

They could work, but should be quick moving and not much stronger than the player. I would imagine more like a multiplayer bot as an enemy, for specific encounters and not so much as a common enemy. 

[DoomGuy999]

3 minutes ago, gibfrag said:

They could work, but should be quick moving and not much stronger than the player. I would imagine more like a multiplayer bot as an enemy, for specific encounters and not so much as a common enemy. 

in the wad it's as much health as player

[Andromeda]

11 hours ago, roadworx said:

strain had an enemy like this. it looked identical to the zombieman and you could only tell it apart by the noise it made when it fired the bfg. whoever decided an enemy like that was a good idea was pure evil

STRAIN's implementation of it is actually quite lenient, considering he's very slow to attack and has very little health.

[Metal_Slayer]

This only works with the Quake 2 style BFG, like in Doom 3 with the Sabbaoth. Doom 3 also shows the player how the BFG works before putting you against it.

[LadyMistDragon]

It could be....but could most mappers find an appropriate use for them? IMO, that's the real question to be asked. 

[bofu]

A good mapper can make any monster work. (Yes, even Afrits.)

 

But I feel like a BFG monster would need to use a heavily modified version of the BFG. The projectile should be the source of the tracers, not the monster. Otherwise, the player is going to get killed just because a BFG shot that wildly missed collided with something while they were in an arbitrary position relative to the monster. It's fine when the player has that kind of cheese, but not a monster.

[WH-Wilou84]

Judgment by Rayziik features a Spiderdemon variant that may shoot BFG projectiles. It's interesting to note that the BFG charging sound is emitted at full volume whenever she uses this kind of attack, obviously to tell players when to hide.