Doomvengers: Earth's Weirdest Heroes (v1.4 10/23/2021)

[DoomRater]

Programming languages are supposed to be somewhat intuitive. In other words, the language shouldn't be getting in the way of things you wanna do. DECORATE is not a "proper" language even though it can do quite a lot of scripted tasks. So a lot of what you'll be doing to resolve conflicts between mods will literally be problem solving with things you may have to do in a way that doesn't make sense at first.

Some problems that can come up include using recently added DECORATE options, meaning you need to update the version of Zdoom/GZdoom you're using. Another problem can be where two mods use the same name for an item. They'll conflict. Have fun figuring out what to do about that when you have legal issues preventing you from redistributing modified versions. And that's just the DECORATE side of things. ACS can run into the same problems...

[Captain Ventris]

A recent schedule change means that I have some time to work on this. Also, I saw Age of Ultron and am therefore contractually obligated to somehow recognize that here in Doomvengers. I've got some changes I wanna make, especially some things which make Zharkov less of a pain to play given his current vulnerability to hordes early game. I'm also buffing up some of the Doomvengers' melee capabilities for those times when the map designer just didn't hand you enough ammo. I also intend on adding some extra eye candy to the Doomvengers who don't have so much.

I'd also like to ask everyone what they think about me replacing some of the sprites for Styleguy and Freerunner's weapons so their origins as TEXTUREs modifications isn't so jarring with the rest of the wad. Only certain weapons would be replaced, more than likely, but it could tie things together visually better. Same considerations are in the air for sound replacements.

Anyway, feedback! Go!

[skyrish10]

Problem, Posseso's alt-fire could causing a game crash trying to posses one of its monsters, why just remove him because of an bug.

[Captain Ventris]

Gonna need a few more nouns before I can look into that. Played the heck out of Possesso, and haven't had a crashing problem. Also, removing an entire player class is slightly dramatic as reactions to bugs go.

[DoomKrakken]

Whatever changes you feel you need to make, make them.

[Captain Ventris]

Well, just wanna see if people are attached to the original franken-sprites or not. I'll be making plenty of alterations, I just don't want to go about doing things that are frivolous or take something out of the experience.

[wildweasel]

Actually, would you mind terribly if I were to suggest specific sprites for Style Guy's weapons?

[HexaDoken]

I am kind of sort of attached to Style Guy's franken-sprites, yeah. Freerunner's not so much mostly because they're just basically Doom sprites with minor alterations.

[Captain Ventris]

Actually, would you mind terribly if I were to suggest specific sprites for Style Guy's weapons?

I would actually love that, given that it's your brainchild. Also, pain in the butt finding sprites that make me happy.

[Captain Ventris]

Still adding and making changes to things. I don't know how many of you play Zharkov, but until my recent changes on my development version of Doomvengers, I hadn't found him satisfactory to play. Now he plays like a true crazy person: he's a berserker who needs to be right where it's the worst all the time to benefit the most from his abilities, and it's a lot of fun. I'm also adding a number of new Zharkovision effects and modifications which will give him a continuously unique experience which lends more and more to his loony gameplay style.

Other than that, I'm balancing some of his weapons a good deal and adding a number of visual enhancements such as a firey radius effect for Freerunner's grenades and Cyberlauncher rockets. Also going to experiment with using offsets to smooth out Possesso's animations, because Weasel's work on Stylemod, Xutawoo's animations in Super Chicken, and Xaser's work on Parkourmod, Zharkov, and Necrodoom make for some really satisfying weaponry which I think would benefit the pretty underdressed Possesso.

All in all, this next version should see a nice sharpening up of a lot of things in Doomvengers and just make it a more consistent and well executed experience.

[Captain Ventris]

After much faffing around, a new version! I think it's a huge improvement in a slew of ways and an important step forwards. The changelog is massive and, and the manual is all updated and improved. Please check the bottom for items I need help with.

Also, for those unaware, I have started a Resource thread containing a slew of useful sprite work. As I make more and more unique material for Doomvengers that thread will grow. Check it out here.

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NOTE: I am always open to requests for compat patches. It will be a rare day when I do a full roster patch like I did for Beyond Reality, and I'm unlikely to do so for obscure or less high profile wads (especially ones with custom painstates like BR), but feel free to ask. The idea is if adjustments are needed to make Doomvengers work satisfactorily with a particular wad, not to adapt Doomvengers to a different gameplay style (i.e. Action Doom). My work with UAC Ultra is a fine example.

Bug Fixes:
-Freerunner had weapons which initiated a GunFlash on the 0th frame of the select states. I only know this because Xaser provided a fix. As a result, Freerunner once more works on the newest GZDoom versions.

-Zharkov's Demonsphere Raynor actually used less ammo than normal.
-Zharkov erroneously had the +DONTBLAST flag.

-There was an empty MENUDEF lump.

-The first frame of the Archvile host's hud attack animation was not showing.

-Archviles would occasionally explode inappropriately.


General Changes:
-Altered the startup console message.

-Altered and added some game start messages.

-Finally made the menu select sound not that goofy Zharkov noise.

-Altered text on Possesso and Zharkov's character select portraits.

-Used scaling to make Styleguy a normal height, and Zharkov a big fella.

-NecroDoom's missile graphics no longer override the default rocket graphics.

-The BossBrain no longer has increased base health.

-Small compatibility change for the sake of Age of Villainy.


Necrosuit:
-Raised the Necrosuit's mass from 100 to 300. Because look at him.
-Made footsteps slightly quieter.

-Raised the knockback capabilities of the cannon from 500 to 700 because drama and flare.

-Raised laser damage from 8*1d3 to 14-27.

-Added more fire and awesome to the suit detonation effect and Scorcher Missiles.
-Added +EXTREMEDEATH to Scorcher missiles and Cannon.


Super Chicken:
-Added +EXTREMEDEATH to Laser and Meteor.


Style Guy:
-Improved Style Guy's firing frames.

-Styleguy will now gain small amounts of Style Points when looking away from substantial explosions. Yep, I sure did figure out a way to make that happen.

-Added subtle 'tracer rounds' to the Overkill Cannon's Style Attack just to give the attack a little added visual punch when viewed by others.
-Overkill Cannon now has new sprites supplied by WildWeasel. Credits included in Manual.
-Added +EXTREMEDEATH to Swarmer Launcher Style Attack.

-Reduced pistol damage from (1-8)+4 to (1-6)+3.

-Increased the Disruptor's horizontal spread by one.

-Tech Laser damage changed from 1d3*9 to 9-20, and Style attack from 1d3*13 to 20-39.
-Tech Laser projectile speed raised from 40 to 50.
-Tech laser projectile size lowered from 8x8 to 6x6.
-Reduced the angle between the Tech Laser style attack shots by 1.
In short, the Tech Laser has been re-specced as an accurate, long range weapon useful for picking off chaingunners and such.

-Reduced the chance of extra Style point drops from Hellknights, Revenants, and Cacodemons.
-Reduced the Style Points dropped by a Manc from 6 to 5.
-Reduced the possible extra Style point drop from Arachnotrons from 4 to 3, and reduced the extra Style Point chance.
-Reduced the chance of extra Style points from Barons, and the base Style amount was dropped from 8 to 6.
-Reduced ArchVile Style point drop from 20 to 12.
-Reduced Cyberdemon Style point drop from 50 to 35 (matching the Mastermind).

-Monsters will now sometimes drop an extra Style Point or two when gibbed.


Freerunner:
-Freerunner now has a modified version of the Psyguy mug, courtesy of Xaser saying 'sure!'.

-Added fire and awesome to the Grenade and Cyberlauncher Megarocket, partly for flash, and partly to differentiate the actual radius of the explosions.
-Also, now always calling it the Cyberlauncher Megarocket.

-Halved the rev-time of the chainsaw.


Possesso:
-Used offsets to improve the Hud animations of Possesso's attacks and abilities. If I can ever get a hold of Aluqah, maybe one day I could replace or improve some sprites or something entirely, but hey.
-Used Possesso's swirly death animation as frames for the morph and unmorph telefogs, so it looks like he's swirling into or out of his host.
-Added a ghost effect which shows an overlay of Possesso on his host as he moves, attacks, and is hit. The effect is invisible to Possesso himself because it would get in his grill all the time. This makes it more evident to allies where and what Possesso is at any given time.
-Added gratuitous shell and casing effects to all Hosts' bullet and shell attacks, and let me tell you, Masterminds are NOT environmentally friendly.

-Gave 25% melee damage resistance to Hell Noble hosts.

-Slowed the Mastermind host by 1/7th.
-Raised the height of the Spider Mastermind host's bullets so they make more sense relative to the view height.

-Raised the height of the Cyberdemon host's rockets so they make more sense relative to the view height.


Zharkov:
-Added a few new Zharkovision effects. At this point you should experience a healthy does of weird and uncanny as the norm.
-Altered and weakened one of the bad Zharkovision effects.
-Increased the likelihood of one of the other Zharkovision effects.
-Slightly tweaked the visuals on a bad Zharkovision effect.
-Weakened a couple other bad Zharkovision effects.
-Altered a couple Zharkovision effects so some frames in the file were not needed. Yay reduced file size!
-Madness monsters now do not effect your kill count. Especially handy in multiplayer where not everybody could interact with or see them!

-Altered and improved the alignment of Zharkov's sprites.

-Zharkov now ignores a quarter of all normal melee and radius damage. Yep.
-Zharkov now gains health from all his melee attacks.

-Handsplosion radius reduced from 100 to 80.

-The Demonsphere Icy Plasma now only uses 1 ammo per 2 plasmaballs when held, and 2 cell ammo per 3 plasmaballs when tapped.

-The Demonsphere Ricochot Gun no longer uses double ammo.

-Ricegun's primary fire now randomly intersperses extra large, more damaging grains.
-One of every 6 rice grains in the Ricegun's altfire is now an extra large, more damaging grain.
-The central column of the Demonsphere Ricegun's primary fire is now extra large, more damaging grains.
-One out of every 3 rice grains in the Demonsphere Ricegun's altfire is now an extra large, more damaging grain.
These changes maintain the chaotic nature of the weapon while ensuring it's minimum level of effect will still equate to its ammo consumption.

-Added +EXTREMEDEATH to Fate Device, for only time knows where the fate goes.


Module: Legion of Noobs 1.1: (no new version)



Doomvengers Compatibility Patches:
Beyond Reality, version 0.8

Bug Fixes:

-Updated roster to respect a couple Zharkovision effects.

-Updated to support Style Guy's increased coolness.


UAC Ultra, Version 0.4 (no new version)



Module: Age of Villainy:
-Renamed to Age of Villainy.
Nearing a state of test-readiness. I'll gather testers when that's done to play it to death.
Age of Villainy has 10 Villains for each slot, for a total of 20 of these dudes. It's 20 megs as is. I swear it's worth it. Current rate of Cyber/Mastermind replacement is 15%.


Module: Tools of the Trade:

-BUG: Only exists on my hard drive, and is WOEFULLY incomplete. It's slated for work after Villains anyway, so you'll live. Shouldn't clutter things up. My goal is to make it a streamlined experience which adds rather than detracts, without distracting the player with too much new stuff to worry about. It's really just some items which can alleviate the difficulties of Villains and Legions and/or is highly amusing. Will also add other, super cool functionality.
-Strangely, I will need at least one mapper for this. Contact me if interested and if you always wanted to make a not-too-functional, detailed interior setting.

Module: Dimensions:

-BUG: Only exists as notes on my phone. Comes after Tools. Will be larger than Tools. Will require mapping, so I'll need help! Aims to provide supplemental gameplay with some optional nonsense to shake up a Wad run-through without screwing the original wad itself. Should satisfy any good player's need for loot, and implements past modules in doing so.
-I repeat, I will need mappers, guys. Go ahead and volunteer your services. It'll be maps which are modular and have to work and look a certain way, with different paths being open each time you enter. They won't need to be big at all, though. They'll be reasonably brief as I envision it.

Module: ITS SECRET:

-BUG: Only exists as a series of furtive notes on my phone. Basically my Doom-modding ultimate wet dream which would require other people and sundry madness. Mapping, mapping consultation, reality-bending ACS Sorcery. Will wrap around a megawad play-through, and add to the overall experience. Will be amazing for playing with a group of friends. The ultimate end to a Doomvengers experience, if you're hardcore enough.


OTHER: MANUAL
-Edited the fluff and weapon entries for Style Guy.
-Edited the fluff for Possesso.
-Various minor edits and corrections. This particularly includes that the Chimney Sweeper was erroneously said to be unaffected by a Demonsphere.
-I had forgotten to remove the spawn-ranges from the Legion pages in the manual.
-Rewrote Zharkov's intro page to be more accurate to the direction the character has gone (fluff-wise and otherwise) and to keep in mind future alterations.

---

KNOWN BUGS WHICH PROBABLY CAN'T BE HELPED:
-Possesso can't use switches and such when taking the form of a large monster. Not really a way around that that I know of. That's some harcoded nonsense.

-The thing in the console about defining BloodTrail twice? Can't do anything about that without modifying the source wads. I'd need to talk to Aluqah about integrating Possess Me to fix it, and I can't figure out how to contact him.

-With Legions of Noobs, monsters who should be Dormant will, uh... not be Dormant. I'm told there's no way to check for that in ACS, so that sucks. Unless something has changed since I last checked.


KNOWN BUGS WHICH I NEED HELP WITH:
-The trail particles on Freerunner's BFG primary fire are incorrect since Necrodoom v4. I can't find the reason why.

-One of Possesso's HUDs is not operating.

-The muzzle flashes for Freerunner's Super Chaingun is misaligned and I don't know why or how.

-Super Chicken's Normal HUD does not appear correctly AT ALL.

TASKS I NEED HELP WITH:
-The Possesso 'easter egg' has a weird thing issue. You'll know it when it happens. Yeah.

-Someone to re-write Zharkov's Rockslinger, or tell me how to do it so that it does not use A_SpawnDebris, but works riiight about exactly the same. This will keep it from harming allies.

-A simple script to make Possesso have 3 seconds of invulnerability when unmorphed, a grace period, if you will. Previous attempts have run into a problem: It seems that if invincible while morphing (during this 3 second period), the character does not morph. Instead, Possesso gains the morph actor's weapon, and will die as normal while unmorphed if killed. idk mang

[Somagu]

Neat. I might actually have to give this a try in co-op at some point with these balance changes.

[DoomRater]

Aw hell yeah, time to replay the shit out of this mod! Only I'm not at home at the moment. Eh I'll have my phone remind me to download it.

[Captain Ventris]

Definitely let me know what you guys think! Feedback is always welcome.

As stated previously I already knew some things I wanted to accomplish for the next version. As-is I've done some file optimization and reduced the file size by 2 megs, so that's a nice start. Seriously though, the rest is pretty well off as far as file bloat. There just really is a LOT of content to make all this wackiness work. In the future, of course, I hope to be allowed to fully implement Parkour Mod and Necrodoom so you folks don't have to download them on top. Also I'd like to do the same with Possess Me, but all attempts to contact Aluqah have failed.

The future plan short list is more new sprites for Style Guy's weapons (Weasel has provided another weapons' sprites as-is), more customized mugshot elements, and putting in effects for the rest of Possesso's attacks. Also a compat patch for the PSX Doom TC, which is really pretty simple but would be fun regardless. Also considering doing Strain (based off that guy's ZDoom version) and Valiant (based off some other guy's ZDoom version), just because.

Once I can get everything into one Wad I'll be more confident about opening a thread on Doomworld or what-not. You guys are more understanding of a wad that's a pain in the butt to run.

[Vostyok]

I had an idea similar to this a while back, but obviously before all the new talent was invented. Sort of a collection of heroes from different mods, but with a level set based on each character, with a selection of signature weapons but usable for everyone. So like, 4 maps per character, 3 weapons appropriate each "world", with each character starting with their unique pistol/melee equivalents. Like timesplitters, but more awesome.

Be really fun to see how each character interacts in this mod, especially co-op. Watching this