[WIP] Sneaky Doom - New A.I.!

[Josh771]

Needs latest SVN GZDoom (ZDoom compatibility untested) to run.

Inspired by titles such as Splinter Cell and Thief, I present...

Sneaky Doom
Take to the shadows and deliver silent death in the stealth mod for Doom / Doom 2.

This mod adds light-, movement-, and sound-based stealth components, a silenced arsenal, critical damage on unaware opponents, and monsters with varying sensory acuity. Distract opponents by shooting walls or quietly taunting them from around corners. Monsters actually search for you when they detect you -- they even search around when their friends attack you or die.

Changes: 10/5/2014

• New A.I. that uses ACS scripting and (mostly) common ancestry for all Sneaky Doom monsters -- most stealth Decorate is inherited!
• Greatly increased the damage of knife and sniper attacks on unaware victims.
• Halved the damage of the fist on unaware victims.

This latest version features a fluid detection system written in ACS that accounts for your distance and stealth level with a formula; no more chunky state-based detection levels. This makes for much more satisfying sneaking and allows new monster definitions to be created with relative ease as compared to the original implementation.

Download:
SneakyDoom.pk3

Add-ons / Mini-mods:
Dark Doom - changes basically any map into a den of shadows. The included flashlights are not meant for Sneaky Doom, and a warning: the normal flashlight is very GPU/CPU intensive on old machines. If you find your FPS is crippled with it toggled on, use dd_flashlight_low.pk3 instead. It's not quite as nice, but you'll be able to actually play.

Realistic Aiming - adds inertia to your mouselook and applies a bobbing effect to your aim that grows with your velocity. At a stand still, it's hardly noticeable, but start running full speed down a hallway and you're going to have a hard time aiming at anything. Quick turns are also slightly less precise, since your aim will overshoot for a moment.

Here's a test map for you to feel out the features of Sneaky Doom and Dark Doom: sneakTest.wad

---

Knife assets from Realm667 and edited by myself; credits to ScubaSteve for the original sprite work.
Silenced Glock: JoeyTD, Minigunner, silentzora (sprite edit), SidDoyle (sprite edit again)
Silenced Machine Gun: iD Software, silentzora (sprite edit), SidDoyle (minor sprite edit)
SMG Pickup Sprite: From Realm 667 MP5 sprites by JoeyTD and NeuralStunner; SidDoyle (minor sprite edit)
Silenced Sniper Rifle: JoeyTD, silentzora (sprite edit), SidDoyle (minor sprite edit)
Sniper Pickup Sprite: SidDoyle (edit of SMG pickup)

Screenshots!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cxm56ojf91b7muy/SneakyDoom_Screenshot.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qmdxbyjjo0yrxxq/SneakyDoom_Screenshot%20%281%29.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jgi6cwh242oafue/SneakyDoom_Screenshot%20%282%29.png

[Josh771]

I've updated this so that all weapons now have an effect on your stealth level, the fist is more powerful, and all monsters except the bosses, spectre, and lost soul have stealth AI. It felt rather unbalanced when I fired up Plutonia and couldn't sneak past the Mancubi.

I've also made your stealth level slightly more sensitive to your velocity, so creeping along (bind a "Run/Walk" key) is more important/useful now.

[-Ghost-]

Great idea, just played through a few Doom 1 maps and it's a pretty cool concepts. It feels like it could use toggle-able night vision or something, maybe with battery pickups so you can see through the darkness effectively. It could also use a few more silenced guns too, maybe for different roles like long range, mid range SMG, etc.

[Josh771]

I'd love to have more silenced weapons in the mix! And a toggle-able night vision seems like something in my range of capabilities; might make it run on cells. I'm not a proficient spriter, so if I'm going to add new weapons I'll need to look around and fetch some resources -- if you can point me to someone who's waving around a free silenced SMG, I'll be glad to take it and credit them for it.

EDIT: Made the silenced pistol have much less impact on your stealth level; monsters should not be able to spot you from down a hallway because you discharged a near-silent pistol with no muzzle flash

[Josh771]

Update! Improved monster AI (could still use some work) and added dark_doom_lite.pk3 to the dark doom addon. Made dark doom work correctly with multiplayer (heh, oops).

EDIT: Some very basic testing with bots has me convinced that this isn't completely broken in coop either. Monsters seem to properly have a hard time seeing me even if my buddies are running around with shotguns attracting unwanted attention.

[-Ghost-]

I know that SIlentZorah has a few silenced weapons in his Doomzone/Quakestyle EX mods (http://zorasoft.net/doom.html). Specifically I think there was a silenced carbine, assault rifle, SMG, and sniper rifle.

[tsukiyomaru0]

I so want to see this happening...

[_sink]

I think it would be cool if enemies had glowing eyes for people who don't want to use the lag inducing flashlight
also, would it be possible to have enemies like imps and hell nobles to be able to hold their fireballs and use them like torches to try and find you? And what about archviles with their fire magic? what could they do?

[Josh771]

@ Desnect Hmm, I hadn't considered special search states with light sources; sounds cool. Also I forgot the flashlights were included with that package; I'll likely replace that with a toggle-able night vision that runs on cells. The flashlight really only functions on a beefy system and I've heard similar complaints about lag in the past. Sorry 'bout that.

Anyway, I've updated the monsters to have slightly better FOV in the darkness and they should no longer have permanent tracking on you after they've attacked you or been shot by you. They should also search much longer. Planning on adding the ability to whistle/whisper soon and maybe, much later, throw rocks and such.

@ -Ghost-, I'll look into that. Maybe he'll let me use some of those and we can get a whole Splinter-Cell-style armory here (needs flashbangs and remote cameras!!).

[_sink]

@SidDoyle Sound cool man, I cant wait untill we get something like dragging bodies around or knocking on walls

[Ral22]

I think that this is absolutely wonderful. A genius idea, really. I do hope a test map could be made to truly show off the mod's capabilities. It doesn't have to be pretty, but if it effectively showed off the features, that's all that counts. I look forward to updates and anything else concerning this project. Is it possible that this could be used as a resource in other projects, with due credit, of course.

[Josh771]

I've actually already given permission in wildweasel's thread for that gun skill mod to use it. I'm pretty much okay with people taking this and using it as a resource if I'm given credit. And, meanwhile, I'll maintain this original mod and keep improving it. I'm glad it's delivering; I don't know if this kind of thing has been attempted in the past.

Also I think I'll go ahead and add a test map. It could be an optional WAD or something when I'm done making one.

EDIT: I should add that it wasn't wildweasel himself asking to use it, so don't necessarily expect it in his mod. But I've made it clear he's free to do so on his own initiative because of suggestions made in the thread.

[Josh771]

Updated again! Now monsters will alert each other to your presence when they attack you or die. Picking off entire groups should be slightly more problematic now, as any death in the group will cause them to at least search around a bit, if they don't just attack you outright.

[-Ghost-]

Tried it out again, this time messing around on Hellbound's first level. Sneaking is pretty fun, and you do actually have a chance to hide if you duck into the shadows again and wait. Do all the monsters share the same search AI, or do more advanced monsters search "smarter" than the basic ones? It'd be cool if something dumb like a zombie or pinkie would search and give up easily, but a Baron or something would look faster and longer for you. I also noticed that if I was far enough away I was able to fire my shotgun to kill some monsters without searching ones noticing. The imp looking for me had its back to me, not sure if that affected it. Will you be adding light for things like lamps, torches, toxic barrels, etc? Might add some difficulty to the sneaking.

And lastly, for when you do NV goggles, I suggest just doing a low black and white or greyscale view instead of the standard green NV look. That way it might be easier on the eyes since you'd be using it a lot with how dark Dark Doom makes it.

[Josh771]

Monsters will have a harder time noticing you with their backs turned, especially if you're in enough darkness. Breaking LOS helps a lot, too, but not if you're still in open lighting. Currently all monsters share the same AI; I'm saving per-monster tweaks until I'm confident in the base code of it all. And, yes, you can use noisy weapons with some success; the first map in Hellbound has lots of open space for you to ambush from the darkness -- even with something as alarming as a chaingun, perhaps.

Anyway, updated once again! I had broken chaingun guys' and arachnotrons' missile states; those are back in proper working order. I've uploaded some screenshots and a test map to play around in. I've made the alert radius for attacking/dying monsters twice as large. Plays much better with those radii increased.