Aaaah, finally, the Doom I used to play in the early 90s...the Doom I grew up with...
Nope, that is not what Familiar Doom is about. It is about Familiars. Your own monster companions, which you can level up, give them unique skills, kick them around, command them, name them, and throw into a pit full of demons.
Familiar Doom features [version Beta] :
- over 50 familiars (Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Skulltag, and some Realm monsters)
- 7 familiar attributes
- 39 familiar traits
- 8 damage resistance types
- 7 additional familiar items
- customizable monster replacement system
Familiars : Familiars esentially act like ordinary Doom monsters. You can only have ONE familiar at a time. You start either with one low level familiar, one completely random familiar, or no familiars (choose your prefered way in options). You will find new familiars in game, so you can get rid of your old one and get new, better ones. Once you start a game you will have an familiar spawner (orb) in your inventory (if you chosen to start with one). Use it to spawn familiar in front of you. Also, they are completely resistant to your weapons (unless some modified weapons can deal damage that don't have player as their "source"). Familiar will have a random name, but you can change it by clicking on it in familiar panel.
Familiar level up system : familiars have experience and levels, and they gain experience by dealing damage. After the required amount of EXP is gained, familiar is ready to level up. Every level, you can choose one of two (this can change) randomly chosen attributes out of 6 currently available. Every 5 levels, you can choose an additional familiar trait out of three (this maly also change) randomly picked traits. Familiars can have maximum of 10 traits, though I doubt it somebody will manage to get his fam so far. Also every level, familiar gains some additional health.
Familiar panel : the menu when you can see all information about your familiar and can level him up, add traits, change his name, and drop him into a spawner (orb). These orbs are safe to carry, they act like an item in an inventory, you can throw them away if you find another familiar spawner (orb). You can carry only ONE familiar orb at a time (this is to prevent serious bugs and monster stat mixing etc, I decided that would be safest and easiest way).
Full Control over familiars : and that means you can control them just like a player. They move with their standard speed, so they won't be as fast as Doomguy, but they can strafe, open doors, press switches, pickup keys and even end levels! Try to use Lost Souls for an advantage. Also some monsters can use their strengths - dodging like Afrits, or blocking like Centaurs.
Familiar attributes : these change your familiar behaviour
Strength - will add a constant damage to all your familiar attacks (hover over this to see how many)
Health - this will increase health even more than just by levelling up
Defense - this will reduce all damage received by familiars by some %
Toughness - this will reduce the chance to be stunned and increase weight (to reduce knockback)
Speed - this increases movement
Aggresiveness - this will increase the rate of attacks, and for melee only monsters, add a little knockback
Accuracy - this speeds up missiles, reduces hitscan spread, and for melee only monsters, increases melee range
Note that some monsters already start with high pain resistance, so it is not useful to dump many points into toughness.
Familiar traits : every 5 levels (starting from 5) you can give your familiar some skill. This ranges from poisoning enemies, terryfying them, creating healing items for player, entering rage when low on health, shooting chain lightning, make them tiny...I will not spoil these effects, you will see descriptions for every one while choosing. Of course you can still check the mod text files.
Familiar resistances : same like traits, every 5 levels you gain a resistance point, that you can use to give familiar some kind of damage resistance. Your familiar can have up to two types of resistances (so they can't be too powerful).
Familiar Items
From left to right:
Small, Medium and Large healing potions - you must throw them at familiar to heal them (uneless they know some trait...)
Revive - these will resurrect you familiar, if dead, putting to full health
Teleport to owner - this will teleport in front of you
Teleport to aim - this will teleport familiar whenever you are aiming at
Spawner - this is the spawner to carry your familiar around
These items will randomly fall of after killing monsters, healing potions being the most frequent, and new familiar spawners being the rarest.
You start with 5 small healing potions and weak revive.
Weak revive has unlimited uses, but after resurrecting your familiar, you need to wait 30 seconds for next use. Also, it puts your familair to half health.
Player Levels up too! - but this is just simple Level per Level - each new map, player gains an experience level too, but this only affects monster drops. The higher level, the more advanced familiars can be found.
Familiar drop progression : When killing monsters, there is a little chance to find new familiar spawners. But, the farther you ar in the game (or, the higher level you are), the better familiars you may find. The speed of this can be changed in options menu, so more powerful familiars can appear earlier. Right now there are 8 groups of familiars. Group I are weak starting fams, group VIII are bosses. With 'standard' progression (see options), you will roughly get new group drops every 4-5 levels.
Kicking - to quickly move familiars around or help them drop off / get over some obstacles, you can kick'em. Now this kick will not hurt them, but slam them pretty far. Also you can use this against monsters, but it won't deal much damage (but still throw them around Dark Messiah style)
Move / Attack key - you can command your familiar to attack target you are aiming at, or to move to a place you are aiming at. This will spawn a little yellow arrow. Pressing the key again will erase this arrow and "tell" the familiar to walk on his own.
Current issues [Beta]
- Needs balancing of traits and exp. gain
Compatibility
This mod will rely heavily on being compatibile with other mods, mainly weapon mods. Every weapon mod can easily be made to be fully compatibile with this.
To make a mod compatibile with Familiar Doom you need to:
Weapon adding mods : make the mod's player classes inherit from class "SQPlayer" (this class is already a DoomGuy type class, just stores some additional info and functions)
Hud adding mods : you'll need to make sure that my hud will load (unless you don't want it), you add StatusBarClass = "GStatusBar" to your GameInfo in MAPINFO
Familiar Doom will then need to be loaded first. BTW all that still may not make mods completely compatibile, but I will make patches and edits so most popular mods will be. If you want some mod to be compatibile, ask me.
Download
Require GZDoom 3.2.4 or newer
Familiar Doom [Beta13]
Unpack this to folder with GZDoom.
Current compatibility patches for:
- Weapons of Saturn
- Final Doomer 2.3
- Nun with a Gun V4
- Necrodoom 1.0.0
Compatibility Patches
Before playing
Make sure to bind the controls in the controls menu, and check additional options under "Familiar options" on the bottom of options menu. If you were using an older version of this mod and changed to newer versions, options may be set wrong and crash the game!
Plans
- More mod compatibility
- Adding new familiars
- Adding couple of new traits
- Probably : adding chase cam while controlling familiars
- Not sure : Adding themes so that particular familiars drop, eg. only Doom familiars, or only Hexen familiars.
- Not sure : Adding another attribute, that raises the stunning chance of enemies
Video
Beta1
Beta3 (30 minute video)
Changelog
Spoiler: