[Beta][Cool] \m/ ~={ DEMONSTEELE }=~ \m/ - 0.9 desu~

[Untitled]

Let's see...I know that the cyberdemon is supposed to be "more intimidating" than the spider-mastermind (rockets and all), but I can't help but feel as if the spider-replacement in this mod is a bit too easy to fight - I don't get slaughtered by this thing, unlike Devil-Drivers, Archviles, and frickin Blackened thingamajigers

[TerminusEst13]

Sure, I'd be happy to make the Emperor harder!

[Cryomundus]

Honestly, the only enemy I currently have any sort of trouble is the Devil Driver. I don't quite get how to really fight more than 1 of them without the Iron Maiden armor.

Why not have the drones charge up and do a chunk heal (spawn, wait, show them glowing green over time and then heal in one burst. The longer their out, the more time it takes for them to charge another heal or something), rather than rapidly regenerating health? That way, the player has time to take them out before the drones can do anything, and it doesn't get ridiculous when there's multiple of them, since a couple of exodus shots should be able to destroy them before they can undo the damage you did. Also, maybe make the drones give chase if you run away rather than healing the Devil Drivers back to full, cuz that is by far the cheapest move, since they've got 5000 HP, 2000 more than the emporer, and having a drone undo all of that is incredibly punishing AND expensive the player if they choose to run away to either heal or grab more ammo. Heck, you could have the drones essentially ping back and forth from Driver to player, chase and recall sorta deal.

Honestly, having the drones undo all your damage is waaay to punishing if you run away, especially given how they're also the tankiest enemies in the game. Ya gotta remember, the player has finite resources, which doesn't quite match up the Devil Drivers near infinite health. And ammo. But mostly it's about the health.

I mean, you could run out of ammo fighitng 3 DD's, almost kill 2 of them, run to get ammo, and have most of their health regened in the time you took to restock. (okay, maybe not THAT much, but a good deal.) I think it's fairly plausible for the player to run out of both ammo and souls long before they can finish all of them off.

[mumblemumble]

Actually, i would say they fill the role EXTREMELY well. Spidermastermind was supposed to be a slightly tanky short range death machine, and this is pretty much what the emporer is. Exibit A: e3 and 4 m8. In dis, hes super easy to cheese at long range, not helped by the fact his "fountain" attack is sometimes used at long range, takes forever, and is absolutely useless at long range. E4m8 he is surrounded by walls, very little room to run, and plenty of angles for stuff to bounce. Even without the extra monsters this fight is Harder because its close up with plenty of walls. Honestly term i would instead work on his range some instead of arbitrarily making him harder. Fighting him in a tight space hes a night mare, since its impossible to dodge. If anything, make his fountain attack close range only, quicker to finish, and possibly turn the fountain into a long range attack if players move out of range, because this is an easy way to cheese him. (that last bit is most preferred imo, especially since his attacks aren't as varied as devil driver. Or maybe even throwing down runes which explode if you step on them, but can be slashed)

As for devil driver, nade special / shotgun specials work well, as does omen at 70 charge to stunlock or 200 for 1 hit ko.

[Cryomundus]

Actually, i would say they fill the role EXTREMELY well. Spidermastermind was supposed to be a slightly tanky short range death machine, and this is pretty much what the emporer is. Exibit A: e3 and 4 m8. In dis, hes super easy to cheese at long range, not helped by the fact his "fountain" attack is sometimes used at long range, takes forever, and is absolutely useless at long range. E4m8 he is surrounded by walls, very little room to run, and plenty of angles for stuff to bounce. Even without the extra monsters this fight is Harder because its close up with plenty of walls. Honestly term i would instead work on his range some instead of arbitrarily making him harder. Fighting him in a tight space hes a night mare, since its impossible to dodge. If anything, make his fountain attack close range only, quicker to finish, and possibly turn the fountain into a long range attack if players move out of range, because this is an easy way to cheese him. (that last bit is most preferred imo, especially since his attacks aren't as varied as devil driver. Or maybe even throwing down runes which explode if you step on them, but can be slashed)

As for devil driver, nade special / shotgun specials work well, as does omen at 70 charge to stunlock or 200 for 1 hit ko.

200 omen is only really feasible with 1 Devil Driver and nothing else, otherwise you just eat damage trying to dodge while charging it, since it takes so long.

[Viscra Maelstrom]

weapon specials? are you guys talking about the weapons themselves, or do they have some kind of special attack you can perform that i am unaware of?

[Infirnex]

weapon specials? are you guys talking about the weapons themselves, or do they have some kind of special attack you can perform that i am unaware of?

Attack. Just like performing a special attack, but instead of double tapping a direction, you press (and hold for Omen) alt-fire.

[Carbine Dioxide]

Another cool name for Devil Driver could've been Death Rider, a song by Anthrax.

[mumblemumble]

Actually omen 200 is still one if the safest ways, just use the dash to close in, swing mid dash, then run away as literally everything is being stunlocked / evaporated. I killed 2 devil drivers right by each other in alien vendetta with 1 hit, first obviously died instantly, the other died 2 seconds later from the ubsurd amount of splash damage. Omen 200 charge doesn't clear a map exactly, but its enough to clear any small / medium room. Its initial hit does 1 million damage iirc, the splash has an impressive damage (enough to kill other devil drivers) large range, AND does a continuous stunlock just like 70+ charge omen. Granted it takes a while to charge up, but if you can't kill 2 or 3 tightly packed devil drivers with one 200 swing, and do a quick dash to avoid getting hit in the process, you need a bit more practice. Even dodging while waiting for 200 is doable if you utilize double jumps and dashing. Remember, adding verticality to dodging makes it more effective

Also really viscera? As infirnex said, its just like sword specials but you hit the fire button. Every weapon even the sheath has one. This is probably why you are having trouble, the new weapon specials are a HUGE help, doing everything from area denial damage, large burst damage, instant all direction damage, hookshots to pull enemies like scorpion from mortal combat, and more. Seriously, you have missed out if you haven't tried them yet. Go turn on infinite souls and give them a try. They were a huge edition to the v8 update, if not the biggest. Not only do they give you an extensive selection of attacks, but they are a nice hybrid to sword specials, consuming only 1 bar and 1/10th of your ammo roughly for a unique, powerful attack. And while slayer level sword specials are still much better, the gun specials remain most efficient till roughly destruction rank... So no more shitty situations where you have no sword rank, and not enough souls for iron maiden, but still REALLY need attack power...

Oh, also you can convert shots into soul with sheath now. Its very little per shot, but you can easily grind up a few bars with patience and mancubi assisting, and this also keeps you from falling into that no souls no ammo trap that you could fall in before, where you have no resources, but desperately need attack power.

[Viscra Maelstrom]

yeah, i completely missed the fact that there was gun specials added recently, heh. they do help a lot, especially with things like range when you can't afford to jump around like a bunny. i'm gonna assume that "convert shots into soul with sheath now" means that the sheath turns enemy fire into souls? i haven't tried doing that.

BTW, it's "viscra", not "viscera." the name has nothing to do with body organs at all.

[mumblemumble]

Yep, blocking with sheath swings converts the energy into soul energy, very handy, and encourages defense more. Its most noticeable if you block a mancubus point blank.

And sorry for screwing your name up. As they say, d is for lysdexia

[Viscra Maelstrom]

i see. don't worry about my name, i can guarantee you're not the first one to spell my name wrong.

i should also mention that i managed to beat all of E1 with DemonSteele on Killing Machine difficulty yesterday, Kharon only. it was pretty hard, but not impossible due to the abundance of health and, later on, power-ups. Sentinel can cover your ass a lot of times honestly.

[Viscra Maelstrom]

sorry for bumping the thread, but i ran into some unusual bugs with the mod lately.

in one level, there were a couple of torches i hit, and it showed the parts breaking off, but the torches themselves were still burning with their sound being active.

and on a later level of the same mapset, the Blind Guardian was bugged when i picked it up. it exploded the next level and i was able to pick up a working one again. the torch bug never triggered again either.

i'm not sure if these bugs could be re-produced or not, or if it was the mapset's fault (bloodpak, not zbloodpak though), but i thought it was worth mentioning.

[TerminusEst13]

No worries, I don't mind thread bumps.
I alternate work on projects with each release, and now that DemonSteele got a release I'm letting the bug reports and feedback sink in while I handle a Push update. It's both a nice way to gather opinions and minimize burn-out.

And thank you very much! Initial checking looks like the issue only pops up when I load it with bloodpak, which is worrying. I'm not sure if there's a script or decorate conflict or if something is mis-firing, but either way I'm gonna need to figure out if something will go wonky with ZDoom-specific mapsets like it or if it's a super-specialized singular case.

[Viscra Maelstrom]

while we're at possible mapset-specific oddities, i found it really hard to destroy decorations in CC4, for some reason. i have to constantly swat it until i hit "that" spot to make it break, which is to say, at complete random almost.