This is a small addon that replaces the blur sphere / brutal marines with the MiniSphere.
Don't you hate that invisibility that makes all those fireballs impossible to dodge?
Don't you hate those overly-talkative marines that blow you to pieces with friendly grenades?
Well, no more! Now you have the MiniSphere to replace the invisibility / marines!
The MiniSphere gives the player 40 health + 40 armor up to 220 (keeps the previous armor type)
Compatible with most recent mods - tested with vanilla doom, smooth doom, brutal doom v19, brutal doom SE, and GORE. Load MiniSphere.pk3 AFTER the mod you want to use it with.
Works with (G)ZDoom.
(For bugs, suggestions, or supporting other mods: post here or contact me, and I'll see what I can do)
v1.1.1 (10 Mar 2015)
Added an old-school spawn that has the same low framerate as other doom powerups
Simplified gldefs, sprites, fixed the xy-offsets and the shaking problem
Minor changes and code cleanup regarding the spawn and pickup states
v1.1.0 (11 Feb 2015)
New Sprites by Ozymandias81: a blue & green rotating sphere steroids-style powerup
Supported dropping a MiniSphere (half the health+armor, and does not countitem)
Added support for GORE mod.
v1.0.0 (07 Feb 2015)
First release
Spoiler: Detailed design choices
This is my first mod/addon ever
It started as an addon just for myself, when playing on the highest difficulties of vanilla and BDSE.
The invisibility didn't help me - instead it got me killed faster.
Also, in brutal doom I felt that the marines were really out of place and imbalanced.
So, I wanted a simple and balanced alternative to reach the intended goal of the invisibility sphere: help survive an upcoming battle.
The MiniSphere is a miniature version of the megasphere.
I chose to give 40+40 health+armor instead of 50+50 to not give it too much power.
In my opinion, as a powerup, it should be weaker than a soulsphere.
Also, 30+30 felt too weak after play testing.
There is a reason to give a max of 220/220 health/armor.
Some maps had an invisibility sphere right next to a megasphere, or blue armor + soulsphere (like in E1M3).
So, even in that case, the MiniSphere is not useless; it still gives you 20+20 - pick it up AFTER the megasphere.
Spoiler: Credits
Coincident - ACS scripting, DECORATE specification, addon conception and design.
Ozymandias81 - Powerup sprite graphics, gldefs and help with DECORATE
The ZDoom team and community - ZDoom
id Software - Doom
I'm working now for some sprite replacements + GLDefs additions... also if you want more stylish title, I can do it for the sake. BTW, this is surely one of the most FAST DOWNLOAD of all times, inside these forums
[EDIT]: Maybe this could be best to move inside resources thread, I think here seems to be a bit misplaced...
Ozymandias81 wrote:I'm working now for some sprite replacements + GLDefs additions... also if you want more stylish title, I can do it for the sake.
Any help with graphics is greatly appreciated!
Admittedly, that's my Achilles Heel.
Ozymandias81 wrote:BTW, this is surely one of the most FAST DOWNLOAD of all times, inside these forums
I hosted the file download on my personal google drive as an experiment, I'm glad it's working right (the images had to go on imgur though...)
Ozymandias81 wrote:Maybe this could be best to move inside resources thread, I think here seems to be a bit misplaced...
I thought of that, since it's a really small addon. But I ended up putting this here because it's a fully functional, out-of-the-box pk3 file.
So, it's not exactly and "incomplete resource".
But I can still move this to resources if the majority of people find that it's more appropriate.
My only criticism is that it looks too much like a megasphere. Maybe change the color to the invisibility colors to let people know what it is. I often forget the placements of invisibilities on the original maps (bad I know).
Ozymandias81 wrote:I'm working now for some sprite replacements + GLDefs additions... also if you want more stylish title, I can do it for the sake.
Any help with graphics is greatly appreciated!
Admittedly, that's my Achilles Heel.
Ozymandias81 wrote:BTW, this is surely one of the most FAST DOWNLOAD of all times, inside these forums
I hosted the file download on my personal google drive as an experiment, I'm glad it's working right (the images had to go on imgur though...)
Ozymandias81 wrote:Maybe this could be best to move inside resources thread, I think here seems to be a bit misplaced...
I thought of that, since it's a really small addon. But I ended up putting this here because it's a fully functional, out-of-the-box pk3 file.
So, it's not exactly and "incomplete resource".
But I can still move this to resources if the majority of people find that it's more appropriate.
Take a look to your messages, I've just PM you my brand new MiniSphere... Maybe needs some more decorate scaling + some blueish colors.
Concerning the "FAST DOWNLOAD" recently mentioned, it was some sort of sarcasm: the file is really small and it's unusual to see a file that small inside projects...
Hope you enjoy it, and credit me too
Also here you are my idea for a good banner... (just right-click on it and save)
Thanks Ozy, I just replied to your message.
Indeed, maybe with some blueish colors + greenish colors the sphere would look like a bundle of armor + health bonuses.
It no longer looks like a miniature version of the megasphere, but (looking at Nevander's reply) maybe that's a good thing.
That title looks kickass. Maybe it would be better themed with green + blueish colors, to match your new powerup sprites?
PS - Non parlo, ma capisco un po l'Italiano.
I'll stop now, before I embarrass myself
Anyway I wanted the MiniSphere.pk3 to have translations for all languages that are supported in gzdoom.pk3, and that includes Italian
I actually like the fact that it looks a bit like the megasphere. I thought that felt right given that it gives the same stuff as the megasphere, just not as much of it.
By the way, if you're searching for alternative sprites, I made recently some graphic tests, perhaps you could be interested... I'll leave you a sample and you can use it freely if you want:
Thank you all for the feedback.
Hexereticdoom: I appreciate your suggestion. However, that looks a little too simple for a powerup, and gives a feeling that it's just for armor. I prefer powerups with an abstract kinda look.
I'm wrapping things up to release version 1.1.0 in a few days, here's a little preview of what's coming:
I've undone all the crap graphical rework I did to the original doom 64 powerup, and just scaled it down in decorate. The result is much higher in quality. I should have never touched anything The old one, that looks a bit like the megasphere, now in "high-quality":
Also, Ozymandias81 is putting some quality work on a newer version of a rotating-globe minisphere that is blue (health) and green (armor).
It looks even cooler in-game, animated. It still needs a little polishing (Ozy mentioned maybe a bit of anti-aliasing), but you can see where this is going.
I think that looks really nice, but it looks like it is just an armour powerup to me, not a health+armour one.
Coincident wrote:Also, Ozymandias81 is putting some quality work on a newer version of a rotating-globe minisphere that is blue (health) and green (armor).
What do you think?
It seems like it might be quite cool looking but, IMO, it looks quite different to the Doom powerups and so it looks a bit out of place/inconsistent. I also think it looks more powerful than just +40 health, +40 armour.
Hi Coincident, here you are some more appropriate banner... BTW using antialiasing on such sprites seems to erode everything a bit much all stuff, so I look forward for some more sprites, if you want them.
I was thinking about an health/armor bonuses stick together inside a white semi-transparent orb. Also if you hate so much invisibility powerup, why don't you try to add some DECORATE or ACS in order to apply -SEEINVISIBLE to all Doom monsters? In this way invisibility powerups will be coherent and restored as they're meant to work.
Enjay wrote:I also think it looks more powerful than just +40 health, +40 armour.
I understand what you mean. But the powerup is actually really small, maybe half the diameter of a soulsphere.
The screenshots can be a bit misleading, I had to take them from very close.
I like the fact that it looks like a small adrenaline / steroids powerup of some sort.
Ozymandias81 wrote:Hi Coincident, here you are some more appropriate banner...
BTW using antialiasing on such sprites seems to erode everything a bit much all stuff
Thanks!
If you think that anti-aliasing won't help much, then I'll use your current sprites (they look pretty good already) and release version 1.1.0
Ozymandias81 wrote:Also if you hate so much invisibility powerup, why don't you try to add some DECORATE or ACS in order to apply -SEEINVISIBLE to all Doom monsters?
Well, that would make the invisibility useless altogether. As I explained under Detailed design choices:
Coincident wrote:I wanted a simple and balanced alternative to reach the intended goal of the invisibility sphere: help survive an upcoming battle.
Health + Armor is the simplest way I found for that purpose.
