I do like the idea of gradual replacement, but then you'd have to buff the Chaingunner. I think that it would be rather difficult to implement a location-based spawning system without directly editing maps; even if you did manage to, say, spawn a trio of machinegunners without any clipping or bugs where every chaingunner was, they would pretty much always end up infighting each other to death- unless you removed hitscanner infighting for machinegunners, which I don't imagine would be preferable.DrPyspy wrote:What I had in mind was that the machinegunner would be closer to the former humans rather than the chaingunner, as the machine gun doesn't give off as much of a powerful vibe as the chaingun. As such, the machinegunner's health would be closer to the 20/25 range, and reflect the appearance of its brothers. The spawning plan goes like this: early on, there will only be machinegunners. As levels progress, pairs of machinegunners will be 'merged' into a single chaingunner if they meet certain qualifications (distance between them, etc.) This is still in the planning phase, as this has the potential for making late-game encounters way easier than they should be.Retraux Squid wrote: Personally I think that slapping a helmet onto the Skelegant machine gun guy would make the best former human machinegunner. A zombieman with an SMG would be difficult to discern at a glance (and impossible from the back) from a rifle-wielding zombie; additionally, given that chaingunners (and logically, machinegunners) have 70 HP, it would not make sense that one would randomly have nearly 4 times the HP of its rifle-wielding compatriots. The brown shirt of the Skelegant machinegunner is immediately identifiable from tan riflemen or slate gray shotgunners, and practically the only thing bad about its sprite is the rather strange-looking hair, which can be easily corrected by giving it a helmet (which also lets you immediately identify it- helmet + brown shirt = trouble).
Speaking of rifles, I know that this is a concern that id already fixed in the release versions of Doom, but the rifle is far too weak for its appearance. Giving it somewhat superior accuracy, a slightly-improved firing rate (perhaps 262.5 RPM, or an eight-tic refire instead of the stock 14-tic refire/150 RPM), and maybe a damage range of 8-24 instead of 5-15 would markedly improve the feel of the weapon- and avert the problem of it becoming literally pointless once you have absolutely any other weapon. Doing what was done in Doom64/PSX Doom and increasing the gunshot damage of former humans to a max of 24 would also make them slightly more dangerous as enemies instead of simply walking bullet clips.
All of these balance out to make a fun enough experience- I've applied them all to my personal install of Doom Delta and I think it's a good set of modifications.
As for altering the damage values of the former humans, I'm not sure if I'll go in that direction. Many maps are designed with the default damage values in mind. Former humans are usually placed as fodder, and I fear if I buff them too much, it will mess up the balance and make many maps unfair. This is the main reason almost all the enemies are unaltered in terms of damage/health values (with the exception being that the lost soul is weaker because lost soul bad they make me big furious)
I have been considering changing the rifle's role to stand out more from the other two clip-based weapons, so I'll take your suggestions into consideration.
If you have just one machinegunner for every (vanilla) chaingunner, with replacements occuring later, then it's rather pathetic; where 70-hp enemies once were, you get 30-hp ones. You could counterbalance this by, say, giving them 50 HP (not as much as the chaingunner, but still more than a former human), and the chaingunner 150 HP or something like that; given that chaingunners are huge and beefy, and look to be wearing heavy plate, that could work well (or, as an alternative, 100 HP and some sort of armor). I personally don't like chaingunner spam, so slightly reducing the health of most of them in exchange for the occasional elite enemy would work well.
If the rifle ends up becoming accurate and powerful, the former human could have a rather simple- yet not horribly broken- buff. Cut its cone of fire from 22.5 to 11.25 and it suddenly becomes a weak "sniper" type enemy that can deliver 9 damage on average every five or six seconds (factoring in misses and such) from a long range, while still remaining weak at close range. Given that former humans fire single shots, I'd wager that they would at least shoot slightly better than other types of zombies.