Making monsters smaller in radius with DehackEd - any possible problem ?

[Phml]

I've been toying with reducing monster radius in DehackEd ; well, so far, just the spider mastermind. Putting it at 96, 80, 64 radius rather than 128 makes it much easier to use in custom maps, and so far in the small test map I've done to see how it looks and plays, it seems just fine without resizing the sprite or anything. Even better, I think it's even more enjoyable this way as with the original radius you sometimes get blocked at parts where it really seems you shouldn't be, looking at the sprite ; and shooting at the mechanical legs doesn't always work, forcing the doomguy to aim at the brain rather than simply hide behind a pillar and snipe one leg.

Still, I was wondering if I might be missing something, any kind of issue that might arise with reducing monster radius. Any thoughts ?

[EarthQuake]

I've not found any, except that with a huge sprite like the Mastermind uses, you might occasionally see it on the other side of walls. The really cool thing about this technique is that it makes monsters like demons and cacodemons more threatening because they can fit into smaller areas, go through doors more easily, and climb stairs faster, upping the difficulty somewhat.

[Phml]

with a huge sprite like the Mastermind uses, you might occasionally see it on the other side of walls.

Good catch, thanks. I didn't think about that. It doesn't sound too difficult to avoid, but it's definitely something to keep in mind !

I agree with you, smaller radius makes some monsters much more mobile and interesting. At first it was really just the spiders I wanted to change (I find them rather hard to use in custom maps) and revenant height (no more of that "shoot skull, hit air" thing), but now I'm also thinking of changing stuff with, i.e., 64 height/radius to 60-62ish so they could fit in 64px wide/high stuff.