ZDoom Community Map #2 Enemy/Weapon Resources v1.0 -- contains 6 new weapons (counting 'Nades) and a devilish cast of enemies, both old favorites and new stuffage. Note that it requires a bleeding-edge ZDoom SVN build to work, since it takes advantage of A_RadiusGive, named scripts, and the new railgun pointers.

Changelog thingamajig:

v1.0

• Soulrender's done! It's a massive variable-charge weapon whose shots will strike down foes with bolts of lightning. Hopefully an interesting dynamic, since its power often depends on the environment (more open space == more carnage).
• Grenade timer now transfers to the projectile directly, allowing you to throw them in increments smaller than one second. Hooray for quasi-realistic behavior.
• Rifle now has an alt-fire in which it shoots a single shell as a no-spread 'slug' (also hooray for unrealistic gamisms) with a longer reload time than the shotgun. Hopefully this will make it a bit more useful.
• Dark Claw alt-fire is now an actual constant beam. Same properties+damage as before.
• New Nailgun graphics, courtesy of Z86. Subject to further edits, though.

v0.9.5

• Hand grenades! Works with any weapon equipped -- bind a key to "Throw Grenade" in the menu. Press it once to drop the grenade at your feet (for traps n' things), or hold it down to throw. Grenades act like real grenades -- they bounce around, roll to a stop, and explode after a set time interval. It's also possible to "cook" grenades by holding down the key, but make sure you're not still holding it after the 3-second fuse is up.
• Flesh Wizard now has 400 HP instead of 500. Flesh spawn summon effects improved a bit.
• Xaser sucks with version numbers.

v0.9

• The Nailgun now has its own ammotype. Props to ravage for the sprite base, again.
• Nail projectiles are now a bit flashier. They stick to surfaces and turn bloody when ripping through an enemy.
• Flamethrower no longer sends enemies into their pain state, as a compromise for the high damage output. Was too easy to stunlock things forever before.
• Dark Claw primary projectiles now do a bit more damage (15 instead of 12) and now bounce up to 3 times as well as home, making their seeking ability actually useful.
• Status Bar now shows all ammo types (though it had to sacrifice the max. ammo display -- I'll do something about that at some point, perhaps show the maximums on the automap?)

v0.8

• Initial version. Still a bit incomplete.

The weapon descriptions, for those who haven't heard of 'em:


Current cast of enemy bad guy dudes:

• Zombie Scientists (Male & Female)
• Rapid-Fire Trooper (drops Rifle)
• Shadow
• Soul Harvester
• Flesh Spawn
• Grell (NMN's cool new enemy)
• Hell Warrior
• Cybruiser
• Flesh Wizard (now fires Flesh Spawn -- needs a better firing effect though)
• Bruiser Demon
• Angel of Death (Surprise "New" enemy -- think Hans Grosse in demon form)

I'm hoping to finish up the missing pieces within the week. Just figured I'd be doing the early mappers a disservice by hiding it during their time. Hope you all enjoy it.

That's from Doom X, isn't it? I thought he kept this guy for his own mod.

Can't wait to check the pack out! No pulse rifle but ya can't win 'em all hehe!

Pretty cool, here's my opinion on the weapons so far:

Rifle - It's alright I guess but it is a bit boring. It uses that alpha doom rifle we have seen a million times before. If you added a scope to this however it could become quite useful and interesting. Otherwise it's completely redundant when you grab the chaingun because of chaingun tap-sniping.

Nailgun - Nice, I like it, feels very Doomy and the ripping attack is a good idea. The hand on the side of the gun looks a bit awkward though, perhaps a hand-grip like Duke Nukem's ripper could work instead? Also, there is no doubt going to be quite a few underwater areas in this level, perhaps you could rig it up so that only the nailgun works underwater for an added dynamic? The nails could leave bubble trails as an added touch.

Flamethrower - Good good, nothing to complain about here.

Dark Claw - meh, not really a fan of this thing at all. Really dislike the imp-hand sprites, the purple Heretic projectiles don't look so great either and the Unmaker's pew pew sound effect is a bit lame. It feels show-horned in as a reference to the doom bible.


Also, might just be minor OCD but mixing weapons with a secondary fire option and those without is a bit annoying. Preferably they would all have a secondary fire mode of some sort to be consistent, but that means adding in pointless secondary modes to weapons that do not need them.


Also might I suggest giving the rapid-fire trooper a 3 shot burst instead to make it more interesting than a Wolfenstein SS reskin? Or how about including the infamous rocket zombie? It's always a laugh. Could edit it to shoot half-strength rockets though, to be fair on the player

Edit: oh, and the Angel of Death is a win. Perhaps you could tone it down a bit, all the nails flying out of its bombs is a bit hectic.

Since there were some things about the weapons, I've uploaded a proposition - check out both the RapidFireTrooper and the machinegun, they fire the same now and function more interestingly....

https://rapidshare.com/files/352398630/zdcmp2res.pk3

Tell me what you think about this version. I've also added the smooth weapon animations for the pistol and shotgun but haven't gotten around to doing anything with 'em yet, tho I feel all weapons should be enhanced....

Alright, just checked out the resource!

I have to agree with Icy about the Rifle, it looks and behaves boring currently... do we really need it?

The Flamethrower could use some work, as the Archvile flames look really lame IMO. How about making it act and look a bit more like the one from Stronghold? It also doesn't do enough damage I think.
The secondary fire mode however must be one of the greatest things I've ever seen in Doom and totally deserves to be kept

I'm not sure about the Darkclaw... The Imp hand looks really out of place compared to the other weapons and it generally feels a little weak. The homing attack is quite cool, but considering the damage output, I'd rather use the Plasmarifle and try to aim properly
Same could be said about the 2nd fire mode.

I like the Nailgun, but I think it could use it's own ammo type. Maybe make it have low max ammo, like 200 (with backpack).

The monsters are well chosen and there's nothing to compain here I guess. I really like the Angle of death and the flesh wizard, but I agree that the latter could use some better looking method of spawning the fleshspawns (heh). No idea what that could be though ATM...
The Angle of death also has a slight offset problem, as it keeps bobbing up and down while firing the chainguns (just 1 or 2 pixels though)!

One last thing, you credited me for the Rifletrooper, however the sprites have been done by NMN

First of all great work so far Xaser, you are going a damn fine job. Though after trying that, I have to agree with Vader on some points he made, especially the flamethrower and the darkclaw.

I think the Rifle is fine, if it is used as new light-class weapon, something between the chaingun, the shotgun and the pistol. But if we use all of them, it becomes obsolete.

Okay, here is my take on these resources:

Weapons:

• Rifle - fires slower than the pistol which makes it a little boring for me to use, dispite the fact that it's dead accurate. Also, what happened to the 3-round burst mode?
• Nailgun - not what I was expecting sprite-wise. I agree that it needs its own ammo as not to make the chaingun obsolete.
• Flamethower - the best weapon so far and best alt fire mode I've seen in a while (I wonder where you got that idea from). Again, new sprites for the flames are much preferable over the archvile fire ones.
• Dark Claw - as mentioned above, the sprite is off-putting. Also, I'd suggest cutting out the alt fire mode.

Monsters:

• Angel of Death - behaviour-wise, I hope I never have to face more than one at a time. Not that I'm saying that it desperately needs to be toned down. After all, it's supposed to be a high-level enemy. Sprite-wise, I've two nitpicks:
  
  
  • The robe/cape it's wearing makes it somewhat "unfitting" with the rest of the demons (not really sure if it's a good or bad thing, though)
  • The chainguns "scream" Wolfenstein.
  
  
• Flesh Wizard - I see a balance issue here; it has a higher HP than the pain elemantal. It's stealth. It moves in an unpredictable patttern, which makes it hard to shoot at. It's practically undamagable except when it performs its attack, and on top of that it shoots enemies at you a la the pain elemental, which practically makes it a pain in arse.

Note: In the credits.txt, you've credited the make of the zombie scientists to Snarboo while it was in fact made by Scalliano. Though in the monster decorate lump the credits are correct.

Oh cool, good to see you've all given it a shot.


He's also using it for Doom X, yes, but he posted it up online a while back as a free-to-use resource.


That's exactly why I haven't done it. Adding altfires to all of Doom's original weapons is overkill, so this is unfortunately unavoidable without removing the altfires altogether, which would suck because the flamethrower would become less cool.


Awww, I like the vile flames. They're perfectly Doomy. But yeah, I guess they're a bit cliche at this point. I'm not familiar with Stronghold's flamethrower, so I can't exactly say I know what you mean, but have you tried hosing down a group of enemies with it yet? It rips through enemies, and the intend is to be able to massacre groups at close range. I'm considering sneaking in some fire deaths for the basic enemies, too, for fun n' profit.

Thanks re: the secondary fire. That was loads of fun to put in.


Whoops!


Double-whoops. Had the right name in my head, wrote the wrong one. Fixed.

Regarding "smooth weapons" enhancements: There doesn't seem to be any point to doing this, IMO. Perkristian's animations are neat, but if someone wants to use them, nothing's stopping someone from loading said wad along with this one if original guns aren't modified.

Regarding the rifle: Yes, the chaingun will obsolete it. It's included specifically as an early-game weapon like the original Shotty (which, in turn, becomes mostly obsolete when the SSG comes 'round), and I think it'd work well in the weapon ramp if used as such. Adding a zoom function sounds tempting, though -- didn't someone do iron sights for it somewhere? Alternatively, I was considering adding an alt-fire that fires shotgun shells as more-powerful "slugs" (realism be damned!) but at a grealy reduced speed. Dunno if that'd be too weird, though.

Regarding Nailgun ammo: Should I? I was thinking three new ammo types might be too much, but considering there's also grenades... I might do this, if the consensus tends to agree.

I'm also not super-attached to the nailgun sprites I'm using, but I can't recall any others that fit off the top of my head. Any suggestions?

Regarding the Claw: I like it. -- I suppose the style's a bit different from Doom's (and I did get one comment on how the idle frame looks weird in a centered position), but it seems to work well enough (and likely won't be change-able unless someone does new sprites). Did you notice the alt-fire attack sucks health? I did just bump up the primary damage a bit (from 12 to 15 per projectile) to make it more desirable to use in light of the plasmagun, so maybe that will help a bit.

Anyhow, thanks for the feedback, and it's good to see the enemy selection seems to be pretty kosher.

...we might also consider adding the Vore as soon as it is done