Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [Working on the v0.4a]

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jdredalert
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Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [Working on the v0.4a]

Post by jdredalert »

Image

I think most people here knows the Endless123 project called "Predator Mod", based on the movie franchise of the same name where you assume the control of the most bad ass extraterrestrial hunter of the galaxy. If not, i recommend to check it out here. Some day i was on his thread and gave him the suggestion to add multiple classes in his mod. He was not interested in multiple classes, though he did liked the idea and then gave me permission to do that if i wanted. I liked that, and at first i was going to do a simple metamod, adding classes to his mod, but then i thought "why can't i create my very own Predator project?" and after taking a little break from the Colonial Marine Weapons Pack, i made this build for testing purposes. I give you Predators - Hellspawn Hunters.

Click HERE for the new version and let the hunt begin!!

Get the older versions here:
Spoiler:

Note that, since both projects are Predator-themed, they share some things in common. Endless123 liked the idea of a class based mod and gave me permission to use his Predator basic code functions, like cloaking and thermal visions - not only permission, but some tons of PM's about how every thing worked and how could i use and modify them. But as i stated before, this is not a metamod. Predators - Hellspawn Hunters have it's own gameplay assets and differs a lot from Endless123 Predator Mod, mainly in combat. Characters have their own weapons, strengths, weaknesses and even some "personality", and the idea was to give as much variety as possible to them. They have their own weapons (they still share some, and at this early point of development they share more than i think they should, but it's a start) and their own sound sets, so you'll know that they aren't the same thing.

MEET THE PREDATORS:
Spoiler:
The weapons are all brand new, coded by myself and have unique behavior, and they can be more (or less) effective depending on what enemy you are facing. They mostly have primary and alternate attacks, and i've been playing around with Damage Types and Damage Factors, so some weapons can be effective against some foes, but almost useless against others.

Speaking about enemies, you will be facing the good old Doom demons instead of the Xenomorphs - hence the "Hellspawn Hunters" title. One thing that was bugging me was the fact that the Doom's native horde could not stand as a challenge for a Predator with all those cloaking and plasma weaponry, and them they have been re-balanced. So you can expect new attack patterns, combat behavior and varied resistance/weakness against your arsenal. This is only a test phase, so they can - and will - have some improvement in the I.A. field, but the actual result was very aggressive monsters, that can take you down very quickly if you underestimate them. I carefully avoided bullet sponges or ultra-fast moving foes, since i don't think they are exactly fun, and gave new attacks for them instead. So every monster still have it's own native health and some got a slight speed boost.

There are some unique death animations, like ripping of the head of a Zombieman with your wristblades for example. I used a varied set of custom deaths for most enemies (and there's a credits list for all those assets, but if i forgot someone please let me know and it will be added). Some are still lacking, but as i said before, this is an early dev stage.

And here you can find some screenshots:

Early Pre-Alpha:
Spoiler:
Early alpha:
Spoiler:


Special thanks to Endless123, who created the first Predator Mod and allowed me to use his own Predator codes, even promising me a brand new HUD. Thanks buddy!
Last edited by jdredalert on Thu Jul 16, 2015 3:30 am, edited 9 times in total.
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Doctrine Gamer
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by Doctrine Gamer »

:thumb: My GOD, another predator mod for me to get high. :D
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jdredalert
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by jdredalert »

I hope you like it. As i said before, it is in early development stage, so you can see some funny things happening. The one i recall most is the SpearGun/Plasma Bomber pickup, with an enormous discrepancy in the weapons sprites size. This will be fixed in the next update.
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by Kontra Kommando »

Fantastic work dude! Looks like the beginnings of another great mod.
Endless123
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by Endless123 »

You're welcome my friend :)

@everyone else : you will like this mod ALOT :D You will enjoy all the weapons and many awesome xdeath of monsters. Not to mention the weapons animations are really good specially for an alpha version. You don't have to believe me, download this mod and see for yourself :D

NOTE : You will have a h*** of a fun to decapitate monsters and ripping them in two with ... :P
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jdredalert
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by jdredalert »

I would like to thank mr Endless123 one more time, for the new custom HUD! Things are getting better and better!
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Hornetzero
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by Hornetzero »

Awesome mod. Great job with the flawless coding and care for precision when using weapons. The only downside is... there is no fire created from the impact of the plasma balls :lol:

Oh and the pred needs his own display face on the Doom HUD.
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jdredalert
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by jdredalert »

Thank you Hornetzero!

A new HUD was made by Endless123 and, although there's no interactive face like Doomguy's, it features a masked Predator face. Hope you don't mind that i used your chain whip frames (i did added your name to the credits file inside the pk3) :D
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by Hornetzero »

Not at all, you did a great job with those. The whip feels nice and crisp. I might even make you a new one if I find a close up sprite of an xenomorph tail (That is If its Wolf's whip that you intended to use, although I do hope you intend to mimic the way that whip tore the limbs of those xenos).
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jdredalert
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by jdredalert »

Well, maybe i could try that and make the whip a mauling, limp-ripper weapon. I'm still learning how to make dismemberment animations and spawning corpses pieces in a convincing manner. I think i'll update those gib death animations in future releases .
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by jdredalert »

A preview of things yet to come:
Spoiler:
The new double wristblade for the new upcoming Predator class.
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by jdredalert »

Some news:

Endless123 made a custom HUD with enemy health bars integrated for me to use in the mod and the result was great. It's a nice and clean HUD, with soft colors I've also started with the new Predator Class, called "Heavy Predator". This class will focus on melee combat more than ranged and energy based weapons. The first weapon of this Predator arsenal are a double, extended version of the other Predators Wirstblades. With those, the Heavy Predator can unleash a lot of damage in close quarters combat, and i'm creating a simple but intuitive combo system for the Double Blades mixing both light and strong attacks. Here's some preview images:
Spoiler:
Endless123
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by Endless123 »

I love dual-blades Predators :D

I can't wait to play it and hunt some demons :D

Keep up the good work :)
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Valherran
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by Valherran »

This was pretty neat, the weapons are more fluent compared to the standard MOD. Weapons could use some more functions to be more versatile, I have some ideas below for various things if you are interested:

Weapons:

1. Wrist Blades - The primary fire could use a small damage increase, and the alt-fire would be better if you could charge it up and hold it like in AvP so you can time your attacks better. Also, these would be really great if they had a combo system. A special attack at the end of some kind that would be useful:

Combo A: Deals a knock-back on the target.
Combo B: Deals an uppercut that will knock up an enemy slightly and stun the target for 3 seconds on flight.
Combo C: Deals extra damage on the final hit (maybe an impale attack with the claws?)

Adding something like this will make starting out in some levels much more tolerable.

2. Wrist Rocket - This weapon is not that great. It only gets 2 ammo, which doesn't do that much for you, at all. I would suggest that you be able to hold 20 rockets, but have to reload after every 2 shots, that would make it more viable. An alt-fire would be great too, maybe a homing missile? It would move slower but would have a higher blast radius? It would need time to lock-on to fire though.

3. Chain Whip - A decent weapon, but could use a faster RoF of say 25%? Really could use an alt-fire too, maybe a grapple move? You could make the whip quadruple in range and bring an enemy towards you. Once the enemy is grappled they are stunned for 3 seconds. An alternative attack would be to wrap the whip all around the target and stun lock it to death as the whip squeezes or electrifies them to death. Combos would be a good addition too.

4. Combistick - This could also use a RoF increase of about 25%. This also needs an alt-fire, maybe an overhead smash for more damage? Alternative could be an impale move that can cause an enemy to bleed to death over time? Combos would also be a good addition too.

5. Plasma Cannon - This weapon is pretty destructive, not really much else to do with it other than maybe allow the alt fire to splash damage targets that are not in your line of sight? Currently acts like the BFG9000, which isn't good for it's grenade launcher alt-fire.

6. Plasma Pistol - A decent weapon, however I remember being able to fire this weapon as fast as I could pull the trigger. This would be useful to have back considering the amount of enemies that can swarm you at any given time. The stun bolts only help so much.

7. Spear Gun - A good weapon, but needs a RoF increase as well. Also it needs a damage increase, there is no way a zombie should be taking more than 1 spear to take down. Anything smaller than a Pinky should be getting 1-shotted by this gun. And it kind of sucks that you can't get the spears back, but hopefully that comes later.

8. Plasma Caster - Also a good weapon. The way the weapon is equipped is kind of odd. It would look much better the way the Revenant Launcher was set on Brutal Doom. Currently it looks like you are holding it up in front of you on a large tray, which looks silly.

9. Dual Plasma Casters - These are pretty good, but damn do they eat energy! I would recommend you tone down the energy consumption by at least 10 when using the alt-fire. Currently it is at 50 per shot and it can clean you out too fast if you aren't careful. I rarely used them due to the sheer energy drain, and only used it as an "Oh shit button".

10. Smart Disc - Apparently this weapon is very hard to get right on the Doom engine. However, I have an idea to make it better. Instead of using a quick slash as an alt-fire, make it lock onto multiple targets before throwing it instead. Each target would cost 10 energy each up to 5 targets, if you don't have the energy, it will only go up to the target amount you can afford. Energy would not be spent until the disc is thrown. After the disc has hit/killed it's target it will move to the next one if more than 1 is targeted. The disc will hunt it's locked-on enemies until the disc's time limit expires or until the enemies are dead and return to your hand. This would make the disc much more viable.

11. Net Launcher - A decent gun, but it has some problems. Enemies caught in the net are instantly freed if another enemy hits them, which is bogus as there is no way you are supposed to get that net off unless you are equipped to do so. The weapon also only seems to work on Zombies and Imps only, this makes the weapon nearly useless. Anything smaller than a Revenant should be stun-locked and killed over time by this net. Revenants and above should just take damage over time while the net is still on them, and Cyber Demons and Masterminds should be immune. The damage dealt over time should be sped up a bit, they take a while to die. And it will need to be sped up once this gun is fixed to work on other targets.

Miscellaneous:

1. Energy Charge - This needs to be sped up by at least 2x the speed. I am often left energy hungry when I cannot find ammo lying around, and that's even when I am trying to conserve it.

2. Start With Full Energy - Some level starts are ridiculous due to the lack of ammo in the beginning. I recommend that the Predators start with full energy to balance this out, and it would make sense considering the Predators have always done this in every AvP game.
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Re: jdredalert presents: Predators - Hellspawn Hunters [v0.1

Post by jdredalert »

Valherran wrote:
Spoiler:
That was a real long feedback, thank you! That kind of analysis is always welcome. So let me answer all those topics:

Pretty much everything you see there is going to change - some things have been changed already - in the next release. It's all in an experimental level, but i got a fairly decent idea on how weapons are going to behave for now on. You even scored a few correct guesses, like the exact amount of missiles in the Wrist Missile Launcher (in this 0.1a version you actually can load it up to 20 missiles, but thanks to a coding mistake of mine you get only two rockets after an IDFA) or some of my future intentions with other weapons. So here goes:

1 - I'm planing to increase the primary damage a little, yes. But there's also a new Predator class coming that's melee oriented and a dual wristblade expert. At first, the combo system will be exclusive of this class. If all goes well, i may add combos to the other Predators too. There's also another Predator on the vicinity, inspired on most rpg's thieves classes, with relative high chances to score critical hits during the attacks. As i said, i'm still testing things, so maybe they feel kinda embryonic in the next release, but the idea is always improve;

2 - Like i said before, the Rocket Ammo count issue is now fixed. May add that reload after a few shots, yes, but unfortunately it must be the old Goldeneye style reload thanks to the lack of graphic resources available. I don't know about the homing missiles yet, because the plasma caster is already a homing exploding projectile. But i'll see what i can do;

3 - All the whip's attack frames are running at the fastest speed possible of 1 tic. The thing is there's a lot of frames. To increase the attack speed i'm gonna have to rely on some tricks (like adding A_WeaponReady functions in some frames to allow consecutive attacks). The grapple is on the plans, but i would need some help on spriting (maybe i can get some help from HornetZero);

4 - I'm planning a spear-throw alt attack for it in the future. The overhead was in the initial plans, until i had to capture the frames for it... better not :P ;

5 - The splash damage alteration is very possible, i just didn't had time to play with the A_BFGSpray some more yet. Too many things to watch at the same time;

6 - I don't know what version of AvP 2 you played. It's possible that the pistol had that behavior in early versions of the game, but i made the pistol work exactly like it does on my AvP 2 copy. I'll keep the RoF as it is for balance purposes: the pistol may be weak against pure living (or undead) things, but causes extra damage against bio-mechanical enemies. That includes fatsos, baby spiders and even the bosses, the Cyberdemon and the Spider Mastermind. A click-fast pistol would turn 'em into dust too easily;

7 - The speargun damage is already fixed, but you may still find one or two humanoids that refuses to die in a single shot. I can't raise the damage too much, or the altfire function - the 5 spear shot - will be too OP;

8 - There was no Plasma Caster sprite on internet when i came up with the mod idea, so i had to improvise: i found a picture of some random guy using one of those Predator Armor toy sets and used it as a base. I can surely delete that tray, but at first i kept it because that's how the weapon holds in the back of the Predator;

9 - Each single shot costs 25 energy, so i made the dual shot cost 50 :P The cost was high because each shot causes the same damage as the slower counterpart. I'll reduce the energy cost, but maybe nerf it a little. But just a little;

10 - The issues with the Disc are already fixed: you can throw it up, down and it will always where you pointed (thanks to Mr. Endless123 who pointed me the solution). The other suggestions are a little above my coding skills :P

11 - That's because how Zdoom deals with custom pain animations. The caught enemies are nothing but the custom pain for the NetDamage custom damage type. When other monster hits the trapped monster, it cancels the pain.netdamage and starts the regular pain state. I don't know how to avoid that. The net only works on the smaller humanoids for now, because i only had patience to sprite those guys trapped pain animations. The goal is to be able to trap all humanoind monsters. Of course, the bigger ones like the Revenants, Hell knights or Barons will suffer some damage for a while and than be able to free themselves;

Misc:

1 - There will be single-use energy generators on future releases. They will act like the Energy counterpart of the Health Shards (to be implemented as well), you will regenerate all energy (or most of it) after using. Player will be able to carry more than one of those;


2 - Yeah, i'll give an energy boost on start. Start with no energy works Doom 2 campaign and some megawads like Alien Vendetta, but can be a pain in some other maps.
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