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

[Zombieguy]

Have you ever thought about compiling all the mods you need to play this with yours? Or at least slip 'em in a compressed zip archive.

[Captain Ventris]

I thought about it, and then realized that it would be better to direct people to the actual, original authors' work. Yes, it would be more convenient to package it all, but if I was going to do that, I would just modify the originals and send e'm out. As is, I don't think that would be prudent, and would rather force people to know who is responsible for all this silliness.

[Zombieguy]

Good thinking.

[HexaDoken]

Ventris, dude. Melee attacks do base damage*1d10, not base damage*1d3 like bullets do. So the average damage for necrosuit's fists are 40 for normal and 120 for wristbladed.

[Captain Ventris]

Ventris, dude. Melee attacks do base damage*1d10, not base damage*1d3 like bullets do. So the average damage for necrosuit's fists are 40 for normal and 120 for wristbladed.

This explains so much.

[Captain Ventris]

I am working on a few add-ons to Doomvengers. These are:

Doomvengers: Legions of Noobs - A 10x-type monster multiplier. The differences from 10x mean that it does not affect gameplay all that much (monsters can't shoot through each other and will still infight normally), it just provides extra challenge and bullet-fodder. Cyberdemons and Spider Masterminds are not multiplied, nor are Pain Elementals (because the Lost Souls are multiplied. It's terrifying).

Doomvengers: Villains of Great Villainy - Cyberdemons and Spider Masterminds will, on occasion, be replaced by a 'Villain', an enhanced boss of some sort. When the boss awakens, the music changes, and you get a victory fanfare when you beat him. The bosses have more health depending on the number of players.

and, lastly:

Doomvengers: Tools of the Trade - Items and universal weapons for our proud Doomvengers to use against their enemy. This one contains what is probably the best thing I have ever coded for Doom. Ever.

Only Legion of Noobs is ready for release, so I have a pressing question:

How do you people want me to package it? I think people might like to play with just base Doomvengers and not deal with custom items and monsters, and others might want the whole shebang. At this point, I think providing each as a seperate download (and then of course a 'Complete Package' download which is just everything all zipped up) would be best. Yes, you will have a zillion wad files and need an obnoxiously long batch file, but I think it would be better to be modular.

What say you?

[Ethril]

Modular mods are moderately cool.
I say do it that way.

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Is the "best thing ever" Truckosaurus-related?

[Captain Ventris]

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Is the "best thing ever" Truckosaurus-related?

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It really is just so beautiful.

Additionally, I just got Cyb's permission to make Mass Mouth cameos, and Cutman is letting me use Jitterskull, so expect that silliness in the future. I've asked Kinsie if I could use Dog Pope and The Jerk, but that request is pending.

This is going to end up being some sort of overall love-song to Doom modding, isn't it?

EDIT: A certain someone is in charge of presenting unique items to you in "Tools of the Trade". It looks better in motion, and plays the Dr. Light music from Megaman X while he is present.

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[Captain Ventris]

Version 0.4 is out, as well as version 0.1 of the Legions of Noobs add-on. Still, check the previous post for info on the future of this here mod. Finally introducing Zharkov, and just in time to battle more monsters than ever before. Original post reformatted, and Zharkov's bio was added.

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Special thanks this version to HexaDoken, for actually testing this with a friend, and enabling or suggesting most of the fixes and balance changes this version.

Bug Fixes:
-Other classes could pick up the Necrosuit's Chaingun ammo.
-Forgot to define Possesso's voice. It's just the default Doom voice, unless someone thinks of a better one.
-Forgot that Possess Me added Help, Credit, and Conback screens. They are all the Doomvengers-related now.
-Possesso's Demon form can no longer stealth itself to death.
-The doofuses didn't understand that they really couldn't use other folk's weapons, and just kept hoarding them for no reason. After a long, closed-doors meeting, this has been resolved.
-Super Chicken got his groove back.
-The Baron's health-cost for activating Supremacy was still the old value of 200. It is now 50, as intended.
-Other items sometimes used the Necrodoom pickup messages.
-The Runner did not properly receive the Doomvengers version of his shotgun.
-The Necrosuit did not have the correct stats when it respawned.
-The Ninja Monitor was still Solid.


Gameplay Changes:
-Changed the pickup messages for a number of items.
-Zombiemen and Shotgunners will now not ALWAYS drop HVGun ammo.
-Nazis will now drop HVGun ammo.


Necrosuit:
-Gave the Napalm bomb a 50% chance of appearing instead of the Smokescreen, and a 25% chance of appearing alongside a Backpack. Not like you wanted a Blursphere that much anyway, right? Also, you get 3 bombs when you find it. Have fun, kids, Frank's got a new trick. Watch those demons try to get through the door NOW! The Necrosuit is not hurt by its own Napalm bombs.
-Buffed the Chaingun's damage, but reduced its fire rate by removing 1 of the bullets fired per cycle.
-Changed Rocketpod direct damage from 1*Doommath to 1D3, and increased the explosive radius from 64 to 84, and explosive damage from 2 to 3.
-Reduced the cannon's damage to a solid 100 every hit, and changed its explosive radius from 64 to 56, and explosive damage from 50 to 20. It should be more of a focused titan-killer now, but not be so ridiculous.
-Reduced the Scorcher Missile's direct hit damage to 8, and explosive damage to 72, but increased the radius to 224.
-Greatly decreased the max ammo and availability of most types of ammo.
-Increased the Suit explosion's damage to 250 from 200, and explosion radius to 300, up from 256.
-Reduced the Suit's punch from 8 to 6, the berserk punch from 24 to 16, the Wristblade from 12 to 8, and the Wristblade berserk attack from 42 to 18. Yes, 42.


Super Chicken:
-Sliiightly reduced Super Chicken's move speed. Strafe speed is now fractionally slower than forward and backward movement.
-Increased Super Chicken's radius from 14 to 18, and height from 20 to 25.
-Reduced the power of Super Chicken's beak to an eighth its normal value. Look, even at a quarter, his Berserk attack would have the power of 3 rockets-hits.
-Super Chicken's attacks now alerts monsters again. Also because I had totally made every other attack noalert. Yeah. This is now implemented in a not-stupid fashion.
-Bullet Punch, Missile, Laser, Needle primary fire, Rifle, Acid, Egg Bombs, Ice Breath, Wind, and Wave had their max ammo values reduced significantly, sometimes down to a third.
-Needle radial fire, Emo Fire, and Phoenix Charge use 5 ammo per shot and had their ammo max reduced.
-Just noticed that Super Chicken dive-beaking something is actually a separate melee attack based on velocity. DUUUUUUUDE. You know, just thought I'd share that. I toned it down from its default values and made it alert monsters, but be sure to tell me how much I suck when you 1-hit-kill a Cyberdemon or something.


Style Guy:
-Buffed the Disruptor's non-style fire from 1D3+2 to (2,3)+3.
-Increased the non-Style Tech Laser damage to 8.
-Increased the Triple shotgun's non-Style damage to 3 per pellet.
-Increased the damage of half the Overkill Cannon's non-Style bullets from (1) to (1,2).
-Increased non-style Rocket explosive damage from 6 to 8.
-Changed the Style Shades to give 30 Style, down from 50.
-Style pickups now give 2 style points, down from 3. That's a third of a dip in Style Point availability.
-Knocked 5 seconds off of the time that Style points sit around. That should make it about 45 seconds.


Freerunner:
-Strengthened the minimum damage of Freerunner's fists to 10, from 2, but changed Berserk mode to do 2 times the damage, not 10.
-Strengthened the Heavy Punch to be useful comparatively with the normal punch.
-Increased Saw damage, and consequently pain-locking abilities, by a third.
-Increased pistol and chaingun damage from 4 to 5 per bullet.
-Added one more pellet to the shotgun attack, and significantly sped up the cocking animation.
-Added 1 pellet to each DoubleShotgun attack, but reduced the damage from 5 to 4 per pellet.
-Reduced Rocket and Grenade direct damage from 20 to 15.
-Reduced rocket explosive damage from 96 to 84. This actually means that the Chaingun's Grenades have a more powerful explosive radius, but are obviously of less varied utility and a slower fire rate.
-Reduced plasmaball damage from 5 to 4. It's okay, you shoot two of them at a time.
-Reduced Plasma Power shot direct damage from 15 to 19, and explosive damage from 65 to 55.
-Reduced the Ray Count of the Primary BFGBall from 8 to 6.
-Halved the Ray Count of the secondary BFG Orbiters (5, down from 10).


Possesso:
-Possesso is now immune to blast damage, and has the CANTSEEK flag, to aid survivability when trying to find the next corpse.
-Reduced Possesso's spirit hand damage from 7 to 5, so you can actually inhabit the Zombieman you just killed, instead of always gibbing him.
-Raised headbomb damage from 96 to 128.
-Boosted the speed of Shotgunner host bodies from .7 to .8.
-Raised Zombieman bullet damage from 6 to 7.
-Increased imp fireball speed from 30 to 35.
-Sped up the Demon and Spectre Berserk attack mode, and buffed their melee damage.
-Buffed the Cacodemon's melee attack from 2 to 8.
-Sped up the Cacodemon's lightning ball from 30 to 35, and its damage from 9 to 10.
-Reduced the self-damage of the Cacodemon's berserk attack to 1, down from 2, and the projectiles' speed from 30 to 35.
-Halved the self-damage of the Hell Nobles' berserk attack to 5, down from 10.
-Raised the Revenant's post-ability ammo count to 32.
-Increased the Revenant's rate of fire by a third, and halved the health-cost of its berserk attack, as well as increasing the berserk attack's radius to 72.
-Decreased the health cost of the Mancubus' fart attack from 25 to 15.
-Decreased the angle of the Manc's attack by 1.
-Decreased the health cost of the Manc's berserk slam to 50 from 75.
-Increased the manc's projectile speed to 35 from 25.
-Increased the radius of the Manc's berserk slam to 256 from 192.
-Halved the health cost of the Arachnotron's special ability from 50 to 25.
-Increased the Arachnotron's Rate of Fire.
-Increased the speed of the Archvile's attack.
-Significantly increased the Cyberdemon's rate of fire.


Zharkov:
-Exists now.


ADD-ON: Legions of Noobs:
-Exists now.


KNOWN BUGS WHICH DON'T REALLY MATTER:
-Possesso can't use switches and such when taking the form of a wide monster such as an Arachnotron or Mancubus. Not really a way around that.
-The thing in the console about defining BloodTrail twice? Can't do anything about that without modifying the source wads.


KNOWN BUGS WHICH I NEED HELP WITH:
-If Possesso could be given temporary invulnerability after being forced out of, or abandoning a body, that would be great. Just a second or two, just enough that the THIRD Cyberdemon rocket doesn't kill you. Can't think of how to do that, though, without it being icky and sloppy and stuff.

-There may or may not be something which totally hard crashes your computer sometimes maybe when playing as Possesso. I have no idea what it would be. Someone double check my DECORATE or something. Might have just been insanity.

-Necrosuit, Style Guy, Freerunner, and Possesso are not colorable.

-Everybody is making a jumping sound. Only Freerunner is supposed to make a jumping sound. Someone figure that out, cuz I'm confuzzled.

-Super Chicken's Normal HUD does not appear, despite being the exact same thing as the fullscreen HUD.

-One of Possesso's HUDs is not operating.

[HexaDoken]

Booyeah. Zharkov is on the move. Now everything will die a few times.
I promise to start intensive testing as soon as ACTUAL zandro compatbility patch(i.e. one that doesn't crash every 5 seconds or so) will be complete. Will take time, but I'll probably uncover the mystery of jumping sound along the way

-Forgot that Possess Me added Help, Credit, and Conback screens. They are all the Doomvengers-related now.

Damn you! The help screen was actually useful!

-Just noticed that Super Chicken dive-beaking something is actually a separate melee attack based on velocity. DUUUUUUUDE. You know, just thought I'd share that. I toned it down from its default values and made it alert monsters, but be sure to tell me how much I suck when you 1-hit-kill a Cyberdemon or something.

It's even worse. It is an ultimate weapon that allows you to rip through several goddamn cyberdemons with a single well paced attack. The ultima of Chicken, once mastered, this attack will end everyone's lifes immediately.
It is somewhat balanced out by the fact that no matter how hard did I try I couldn't evoke it in REAL combat situation, tho.

-Knocked 5 seconds off of the time that Style points sit around. That should make it about 45 seconds.

Holy crap 45 seconds! That's a really godawful long time. Style guy must be sleeping to skip a point.

-Reduced Possesso's spirit hand damage from 7 to 5, so you can actually inhabit the Zombieman you just killed, instead of always gibbing him.

Or you could add +NOEXTREMEDEATH or something. Which horribly doesn't work with Zandro, but we have ways around that.(i.e. "HEY FRANK CAN YOU WIPE THAT ZOMBIEMAN OUT FOR ME? THANK YOU VERY MUCH!")

-If Possesso could be given temporary invulnerability after being forced out of, or abandoning a body, that would be great. Just a second or two, just enough that the THIRD Cyberdemon rocket doesn't kill you. Can't think of how to do that, though, without it being icky and sloppy and stuff.

When a player unmorphs, does his weapon enter Select state? If yes, then I have an idea.

Also, if someone other than me decides to try it it real multiplayer action, then beware! Evoking cuckoo rage totally hard-crashes the server. Secret russian scientists are investigating the problem.

EDIT: A bit of testing in singleplayer yields results.

Necrosuit's melee now feels terribly underpowered :O Maybe I just was in berserk stance all the time previously? lol. I will play with damage values myself when I'll get time.

Chainguns would benefit from a minor damage buff. 1 point per bullet would suffice.

Cannon is still ridiculous, blasting a baron in 4 shots. However, reducing amount of ammo in pickups to 1 per rocket and 4 per box(also corresponds to the sprites) would probably balance it out. Elitist anti-boss unit with high ammo costs.

There is no way to obtain Scorch Missiles unless you are running in BFGs or backpacks every five seconds. At least no other ways I am aware of. Why did you replace cellpacks with cannon shells?

Chaingun bullets that chaingunners are dropping do not give any actual chaingun ammo.

I don't think you have derandomized HV-gun ammo drops properly. Shotgunners sometimes don't drop it and zombiemans sometimes drop two.

Super chicken's beak is now terribly underpowered as well. Now that the Power of Space has been nerfed dramatically, super chicken's primary weapon is it's thrusty beak - which can kill an imp in 4 hits. Go apply quad damage to the beak

Style guy now feels mostly fine now. Still awaiting for that fist of the north or whatever.

Freerunner has some weird thing with his fists. Primary attacks feels exactly like the old, useless fists, while secondary wreaks havoc almost as good as chainsaw does. And no, this time I am sure I didn't grab a berserk somewhere along the way.

Zharkov's melee feels... terribly underpowered. It is the most wacky weapon in the mod, and I can't use it simply because even Ze Tractor Beam outpowers it in raw damage output. Doubling damage values wouldn't hurt.
I actually think that Zharkov should have less ammunition that other classes, forcing him to go with his melee once in a while. But that is just an idea.

Also, increase the health cost of Fate Cannon(is that the name?) secondary fire. Now that Zharkov can easily go up to 250 hp, the 5 hp per shot penalty simply feels... miser. And, you know, the shot can OHKO a baron when shot right.

[Captain Ventris]

Every once in a while, when working on a wad, you make a release where all the bugs and complaints are things that you were PRETTY SURE you did. This... this is that release.

As far as the Possess Me help screen, I will eventually put together a full Doomvengers Manual (I love manuals for some reason. See: ZDoom Wars) that will explain everything.

The fact that the beak is hard to land should mean it's okay at the moment, and will be a spectacular victory when you CAN do it. I won't touch it for now. Occasional moments of utter glory are alright.

45 seconds isn't all that long . In a large fight, you're bound to miss some, but the gathering rate is still about right, I think. With Legions of Noobs, he'll NEED those points

I meant to add +NoExtremeDeath to SpiritWeap, but then forgot to.

I DO think a player's weapon enters a select state upon unmorph. I'll test it. Hadn't thought of that!

As for Cuckoo crashing the server... I don't know, that's weird. I'll consult (bother) folks on IRC about it.

Ha, I'll compare Necrosuit's melee damage values with the others.

Remember, when you say "1 per bullet", that thing works in Doom math. I can raise the damage on ONE of the bullets, that would work.

Yeah, I think the Cannon SHOULD be anti-boss material. I'll look at the ammo maximums. They are significantly restricted from before, but still relatively available, I do believe.

The Scorcher Missiles... that's a mistake I must literally have made in the FIRST version of this mod.

Frikkin chaingunners, frikkin...

I'm starting to think I didn't either. The zombies are not cooperating.

Gaaaaah fine I'll bump up the beak a bit.

Weasel says he'll get to it eventually. Don't hold your breath or anything. At any rate, like you said, Style Guy is doin' alright.

I now realize that I actually did make Freerunner have the default fist damage values. I'll bump up the basic attack.

Zharhkov wiped Hellknights before in melee, so I flipped out and dropped the numbers significantly. I'll bump e'm up. As for giving him less ammo... do you REALLY want ANOTHER set of item drops? Half of his weapons will blow his face off, and the other half HATEFULLY expends ammo, so I think we're good.

The Fate Device's health cost WAS supposed to be raised to 10. Swore I did that. And the primary fire costs 4 rockets per shot, and you can only get the weapon once you've beat a Cyberdemon, so honestly a Baron 1-shot isn't far off. I might have it use 5 or 6 rockets to bring it to parity with its strength and the ammo availability.

In other news, I have finished several Villains for the Villains of Great Villainy add-on: The Parkour Cyberdemon (When the add-on is loaded, this is the guy Freerunner will need to kill to get his Cyber Launcher. NOTE: Does not actually do Parkour), the Cyber Mastermind, the Spider Derpmolisher (Fires Zharkov hands and clusters of Stimpacks, half of which TAKE 10 health), the Gardener Cacodemon (not nearly as terrible as the original), and, as of last night, Jitterskull:

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I can offer no explanation as to his choice of news items. Yes, his pipe bobs up and down randomly while he sits there. He goes back to his papers once all the players are dead.

EDIT: Hexa, are you using Super Chicken's beak at a longer range? Because it deals more damage closer in.

[HexaDoken]

45 seconds isn't all that long . In a large fight, you're bound to miss some, but the gathering rate is still about right, I think. With Legions of Noobs, he'll NEED those points

It is. Maybe he might skip some when working alone, but when you have full crew working no battle will last long Thus, I've thought they were intended to make him risk more, much like mana bottles in zdwars?

As for Cuckoo crashing the server... I don't know, that's weird. I'll consult (bother) folks on IRC about it.

I do not posess enough knowlege about netcode to be for sure, but due to the nature of the crash I can tell that it's probably caused by a false infinite loop(i.e. a loop that isn't really infinite but clients detect it as one and go nuts.)

Remember, when you say "1 per bullet", that thing works in Doom math. I can raise the damage on ONE of the bullets, that would work.

Remember, I am a modder, and I always speak in base damage values I've raised base damages of ALL bullets by one point and it works fine.

I'm starting to think I didn't either. The zombies are not cooperating.

The thing is that zombies drop both a clip(Doom's clip, which get replaced by HV-Gun ammo and Freerunner/Zharkov clip on the fly) AND a HV-Gun ammo on the fly. Randomly. You'd better ditch that doom's clip out and drop ammo manually. Same goes for shotgunners.

Ha, I'll compare Necrosuit's melee damage values with the others.

I think 16 for wristbladed is fine. Still dangerous to try to outtank Baron but you can at least pull it off if you're lucky, and it approximitely pars Chainsaw's damage rate. Think of unwristbladed and berserk values yourself depending on how much difference you want them to make.

The Fate Device's health cost WAS supposed to be raised to 10. Swore I did that. And the primary fire costs 4 rockets per shot, and you can only get the weapon once you've beat a Cyberdemon, so honestly a Baron 1-shot isn't far off. I might have it use 5 or 6 rockets to bring it to parity with its strength and the ammo availability.

I'ma talking about altfire here, which doesn't consume any rocket ammo. 10 health doesn't strike me as an approtiate value for such powerful attack - without picking up medkits, you can shoot thing thing 25 times in your single life. That's 25 free baron kills. I would set health cost to a whoping 50 so Zharkov will have to think twice before shooting it.

Hexa, are you using Super Chicken's beak at a longer range? Because it deals more damage closer in.

I have just tried using beak at long range. Oh god I fell asleep while trying to kill an imp.
I've used 4 and 10 base damage for each unberserked and berserked call of A_CustomPunch, respectively. It now feels alright. The beak usually wipes out humanoids in a single hit, so chicken isn't as useless against crowds if he happens to be unarmed, it isn't powerful enough to be able to outtank a revenant, but at least playing beakdances around it won't take years to kill it, berserk attack makes a considerable difference, but still isn't as powerful as 3 rocket hits are. More like just one.

[Ethril]

without picking up medkits, you can shoot thing thing 25 times in your single life. That's 25 free baron kills. I would set health cost to a whoping 50 so Zharkov will have to think twice before shooting it.

Yeah, assuming the following are true:
-You have full health to begin with (Not that hard)
-You don't get shot (Zharkov is slow...ish, and even if he wasn't there's still hitscan monsters.)
-You don't step on any damage floors (Made worse by the fact that Zharkov is slow)
-You don't nuke yourself with splash damage (Standing too close to barrels and/or using half of Zharkov's weapons)

50 health per shot would be ridiculous. You're spending WAY more health than you would've lost to kill anything with any other weapons. 25 per shot would probably work; That's 10 shots from full health. For comparison, your standard Doomguy can fire the BFG 15 times from full ammo.

[Captain Ventris]

Well, Style Points disappearing was more to forestall terrible, terrible online lag. He hardly needs risk, per se, he's fine as is. I've got everything else you listed done in some fashion, but agree with Essel about the Fate Device's altfire, and still need to broach the topic of the Cuckoo script to mah IRC peeps.

[HexaDoken]

Ethril, the interesting thing that grabbing blue armor quite halves the cost of Fate Cannon's shots, as damage applies to both health and armor. So even with 50 health cost you can shoot altfire 9 times in a life, providing you grab a blue armor somewhere along the way.

Also, Zharkov is REALTIVELY slow. He is actually just 20% slower than Doomguy - I've had to dodge barrages of OHKO homing projectiles and cross lava with MUCH slower things.
Am I as well the only one who is smart enough to apply GENERAL CAUTION when dealing with Zharkov's dangerous weaponry? Like, um, at least not use it in close quarters?

Although after some field testing I agree that 25 is, after all, a more reasonable value.

Also, Xaser, you're a goddamn derp. Your RaynorRainShooter can potentially cause an infinite loop if all of A_Jumps fail. This does not affect singleplayer, but in multiplayer shooting Raynor will hard crash everything because clients will detect it as infinite loop. Add a line with non-zero length in the end of Spawn state or something.

I also like that grabbing a megasphere lets Zharkov to survive a chimneysweeper overheating to the face.