Wads with unusual weapon placement

[invictius]

Was just playing a megawad where I got the rocket launcher in the first map (not as a secret or anything) and was thinking "gee, this is a bit early on" - and it wasn't a slaughter map or anything. This got me thinking about other wads where you either think what I was thinking back there, or go "Map 12 or this 32-level wad and I haven't even gotten a rocket launcher yet?" - what are some of examples of multi-level, acclaimed/decent wads where you expected weapons to be placed way sooner/later than what they "should" have been?

[scifista42]

SSG in Scythe 1 is introduced on MAP15, I think.

Nex Credo doesn't give away the chaingun until MAP06, maybe 05.

[Csonicgo]

So many DWANGO deathmatch maps in the day exploited this to force the players into using weapons they otherwise wouldn't use - such as the chainsaw. The time it took to switch weapons was more than the time it took to get your ass blasted by another player with a rocket, so the only solution was to chainsaw him and dare him to fire the rocket.

[Hambourgeois]

Scythe 1 is probably the best example of an acclaimed megawad. No shotgun until like, the 3rd level. But I think the SSG first showed up in Map11. I can respect the SSG restriction because I think it is a little unbalancing and Doom 2 definitely blew its load too early on it. It is necessary for a lot of the meat-wall enemies Doom 2 introduces though.

[wildweasel]

I challenge the Doom community to make an entire megawad without ever placing the shotguns.

[scifista42]

WildWeasel said:

I challenge the Doom community to make an entire megawad without ever placing the shotguns.

Good idea. =D Surely and seriously, once this will happen.

[Da Werecat]

WildWeasel said:

I challenge the Doom community to make an entire megawad without ever placing the shotguns.

What about shotgun guys? :)

[scifista42]

Da Werecat said:

What about shotgun guys? :)

Those need to be changed into SSNazis via DEHACKED, so that they look like shotgunguys but drop clips.

[Da Werecat]

Funny, that's exactly what I thought. Although the first idea was to use a decoration so they drop nothing at all.

[esselfortium]

Da Werecat said:

Funny, that's exactly what I thought. Although the first idea was to use a decoration so they drop nothing at all.

You could have them drop candelabras.

[scifista42]

That's true, you can change the shotgun pickup itself to be anything, including another monster. You can make shotgunguys to drop themselves! (But shamely, these dropped shotgunguys won't drop anything anymore.) Better, shotguns can be changed to just not display at all and disappear.

[Zed]

Maybe this one, by Espi. Fight Pain Elementals with a rocket launcher. That's the only wad I remember that does this (I wonder why...).

[Clonehunter]

scifista42 said:

That's true, you can change the shotgun pickup itself to be anything, including another monster. You can make shotgunguys to drop themselves! (But shamely, these dropped shotgunguys won't drop anything anymore.) Better, shotguns can be changed to just not display at all and disappear.

Or shotgunners that when killed, spawn two more shotgunners. And they drop two shotgunners each when you kill them. And so on and so forth. I think only a crusher could defeat them permanently, but I'm not 100% sure. It's be a vicious mechanic.

[Doomkid]

Just change the SG and SSG sprite duration from -1 to 0.

Is it possible to make shells/shell boxes pickup as clips/ammo boxes instead? It's been a long time but I seem to have this memory of trying this, and the shellbox looked like an ammo box, but still gave me shells..

Either way, this would probably make playing the classic iwad maps hard as hell.. Good idea!

[scifista42]

Clonehunter said:

Or shotgunners that when killed, spawn two more shotgunners. And they drop two shotgunners each when you kill them. And so on and so forth. I think only a crusher could defeat them permanently, but I'm not 100% sure. It's be a vicious mechanic.

Not possible in DEHACKED, but I know, it wasn't your point.

Doomkid said:

Is it possible to make shells/shell boxes pickup as clips/ammo boxes instead? It's been a long time but I seem to have this memory of trying this, and the shellbox looked like an ammo box, but still gave me shells..

It is possible, but it will never work in certain ports with bad DEHACKED support - for example ZDaemon.

[wildweasel]

Here is a quick Decorate patch I threw together. Should work in any ZDoom-derivative that supports Decorate; only tested it in GZDoom.

- Shotguns are now chainguns.
- Shotgunners now drop clips.
- Super shotguns are now rocket launchers.
- Shells are now clips.
- Shell boxes are now bullet boxes.

I could go bigger and start using RandomSpawner to randomly make the shell boxes become rockets, but I feel like that'd be going too far. I also considered replacing the pistol with one that shoots a little bit faster (like STRAIN's pistol), but again felt like it'd be overstepping the bounds of a simple patch.

[Doomkid]

That's a great little patch!