Proposed idea: Visual gimmicks

[Koko Ricky]

In the past, I've attempted to either offer my services as a pixel artist (with the DoomFu Project) or even orchestrate an elaborate TC with just only one teammate. I decided to try to be more realistic with my third attempt at "giving back to the community" by proposing an idea that someone who has never modded before may be capable of taking on, with a little programming help. I could demonstrate my work by trying to animate one of these said proposals using the standard doom palette and resolution.

The idea is more or less a resource pack, to spice up all the things familiar to the Doom universe. These would ideally effect all of the Doom 2 enemies and a number of other game sprites. It's not particularly useful, it's simply a visual gimmick, one that I hope will add a little extra 'oomph' to the game without making it "Undoom." I imagine these gimmicks would require a flexible source port like Zdoom (I know nothing of programming, so excuse my ignorance).

Unecessary Visual Gimmicks

1) Enemies dripping blood with an increasing number of particles as hit points decrease.

2) Individual "squish" sprites for each type of enemy crushed under a door or ceiling.

3) Gib animations for all enemies. I imagine the gibbing would dependent on whether its last hit points were from a rocket or BFG (or plasma rifle in some instances).

4) Full rotation death sprites. This is getting in the "unecessary detail" category, and depends on whether I'd be up to taking it on.

5) Extra decor. I like how Doom 64 had its own specific decor, like the cages full of intestines, the head on a stick, the twitching heaps of meat, etc. I propose creating decor consistent with Doom's themes that could serve as additional props.

6) Proposed alterations for a few existing actors, if I can think of something really original. The focus is really on the orbs (soulsphere, megasphere, invisibility, invincibility; changing their animation routines to something entirely different (but familiar). Other changes may include the teleportation animation, and John Romero's head on a stick exploding when defeated.

7. The ability to shoot but not gib actors such as the impaled marines or bodies hanging from the ceiling. The idea is to create a two to three second animated gif of the body reacting to any damage.

[Lüt]

I like most of those ideas. I think a few have been done to some extent already, such as full-rotation death sprites and extra gib animations, and of course there's plenty of mods and TCs with new obstacles and decorations.

To a similar extent, I begun my own "useless detail" project nearly 8 years ago; destructible obstacles and decorations for every object in Doom and Doom 2. I got about 80% of the object-death sprites complete before not being able to make it work with dehacked. Some were quite good, others could probably use a bit of tweaking. I should see if I still have those somewhere.

[myk]

Lüt said:
I got about 80% of the object-death sprites complete before not being able to make it work with dehacked.

I'm surprised you got that far without running out of frames, unless you took some from somewhere (such as making a DOOM mod and using DOOM II's frames for this purpose).

[printz]

JDoom might also help here, although not everyone may like its rendering.

A gimmick not mentioned by GoatLord would be to make monsters look meaner. Also what about remaking some Doom textures which look, as you see them, old?

[Trilinear]

Nice ideas, Goatlord. I think another worthwhile addition would be idle frames for the monsters.

[YMB]

This is great, I especially like the gib animation ideas. That, to me, was one place that Quake was better than Doom.

[Patrick]

this could be pretty easily accomplished in ZDoom...

[Lüt]

myk said:

I'm surprised you got that far without running out of frames, unless you took some from somewhere (such as making a DOOM mod and using DOOM II's frames for this purpose).

Heh, nah, more like I was designing sprites, then found out I couldn't get a single one to work at all, and just stopped. I managed to get the objects to "die" and disappear, but that's it.

Anyway, I just looked and couldn't find them. They may be on a backup CD, but I have a feeling they're lost.

I could probably redo them a lot better now anyway.

[deathbringer]

Immoral Conduct and Don's Challenge both have tons of destroyable scenery items

[NeoWorm]

Also many ZDooM/GZDooM mods have destructable scenery for example Kinsie´s DooM enchanced (together with dynamic Light definitions.
There are already mods that contain Gib animations for more monsters like Demons, Barons, Knights and Cacodemons. You can find those in Demon Eclipse. For dripping blood try Nashgore.
Full rotations death sprites isnt good idea, like the item rotation in KDiZD.
On the other hand Idle frames for monsters are very good idea.