Brawlers - gameplay mod made in 5 minutes

[scifista42]

I've made a vanilla-compatible DEHACKED gameplay mod within about 5 minutes, based on a momentary idea.

In Brawlers, the monsters don't use their ranged attacks as they chase you. They only repeat fire if you shoot them to a pain state. AND ALSO, THEY ATTACK YOU from a melee range. All monsters will do it. Even those without a melee attack - they'll use their ranged attack, but from close distance.

Purpose? I wanted to try a gameplay mod that doesn't encourage to kill the monsters, but instead to try to effectively maneuver around them and shoot only if necessary. You'll be punished for shooting them by an immediate counter-attack of the monster (if it survives), and you'll be punished for getting too close to each individual enemy.

Trust me that this makes for a different experience than your usual Doom. And not necessarily milder and easier - if you set yourself the goal, to rush to the exit quickly and without killing many monsters. You can check it out and tell me what you think, how much of a worthless abomination it is.


DOWNLOAD: http://www.filedropper.com/brawlers

(I wanted to use Filesmelt, but it stopped working for me, so please suffer through this captcha.)

[Phml]

Sendspace seems to work well for me.

I find the concept reasonably close to some slaughter fights, where getting cornered is the biggest risk.

Just melee and retaliation feels very easy. Whether on regular classic maps or horde levels, the monsters simply aren't fast enough to crowd the player (and even if monsters shoot back, once you grab the SSG or RL you get safe kills on lower tier foes). Perhaps on -fast or NM this might get trickier.

With advanced ports there'd be plenty of ways to go with that concept; i.e. more movement patterns for various monsters, charges, jumps, etc.. On a personal level I'm not sure sprite games can sell melee-centered gameplay without tremendous amount of art work, I feel you need detailed animations with telltales to make such systems satisfying. But that's just me.

Of course for 5 minutes work this is pretty cool. :)

[Inkie]

Barrels became a bit more central. You could boom a bunch of baddies without much retaliation as well as opening up a path.

Chaingunners will wreck your face.

More often than not areas would be too crowded to get past, meaning I'd have to gun them down anyway.

[scifista42]

Phml said:

Just melee and retaliation feels very easy. Whether on regular classic maps or horde levels, the monsters simply aren't fast enough to crowd the player (and even if monsters shoot back, once you grab the SSG or RL you get safe kills on lower tier foes). Perhaps on -fast or NM this might get trickier.

With advanced ports there'd be plenty of ways to go with that concept; i.e. more movement patterns for various monsters, charges, jumps, etc..

Of course for 5 minutes work this is pretty cool. :)

The idea wasn't to punish the player with challenge. It was rather to change the pace of the game and player's priorities. Even without any rushing or time limits, the game (for me) becomes interesting if you decide to not kill anything unless you necessarily have to ("semi-pacifist"), and this mod encourages this strategy by making it comfortable.

In fact, if monster's behaviour was changed, it wouldn't turn out well IMO. Somebody would complain about it, it wouldn't feel natural. The part of the fun is that monsters move and behave in the same patterns as normally. So that your standard Doom crowd-control experience will be useful for you, and you can even use the experience from playing this mod in a standard game.

Sorry for the shameless advertisement and idea-defense in this post, I only meant to share my thoughts and intentions.

Thanks. :)

Inkie said:

More often than not areas would be too crowded to get past, meaning I'd have to gun them down anyway.

Well, yes, it appears to be a consequence. But I think that the more skilled player is, the less often it would happen, which is a good motivation. I mean, a good player can better outmaneuver the monsters and not have to kill any, or kill less.

You know - I'm secretly a pacifist and I gladly take the chance to not kill.

Thanks for trying the mod out, too. :)

[scifista42]

I've uploaded this wad to /idgames some time ago (link). Doomkid pointed out in the comments that the mod somehow doesn't work, which I honestly don't understand. For me, the mod works everywhere. Has anyone else encountered problems with getting the mod into working?

Note that when testing in vanilla .exe, you need the Dehacked utility to actually hack the executable (instructions can be found in Dehacked's text file). Simple -file or -deh parameters don't work.

[Phml]

Worked for me in PrBoom+.