minor doom tweaks

[Matt]

https://mc776.neocities.org/dl/mdt.pk7

I've mentioned this patch elsewhere and figured I'd put it up here in case anyone else wanted some ideas or to just change up their game a bit.

It smooths out a few Doom quirks that I've never really liked or found justifiable (at least not in a freelooking modern port) while trying to keep the original degree of difficulty (zombiemen notwithstanding), while adding some new behaviour to make a few guns a bit less "click and drag the monster into the dead bin".

It should be compatible with autoaim though I've never tested it to any significant extent.

Full (more or less) list of changes in the readme.
(open the pk7 as a 7z)

[m8f]

Matt's Minor Doom Tweaks
Last updated 2020-08-08

This GZDoom mod slightly adjusts gameplay to deal with my most major peeves about vanilla. It makes weapons more powerful and some enemies less competent but more devastating in their attacks, while others are either more aggressive or harder to hit in exchange for fewer hitpoints.


Weapon changes:

Fist punches a bit faster and doesn't alert monsters.
Chainsaw alerts monsters on raise.
All bullet weapons are now inaccurate in a narrow cone rather than a wide fan.
Pistol a bit faster but less accurate on continuous fire. A bit more damage and much less lag on each shot.
Faster raise and lower on nearly all weapons. Pistol and fist much faster.
Shotgun fires in a much smaller cone and fires faster.
Super shotgun fires faster in a smaller cone, but its super damage only goes out to a few feet.
Chaingun can now fire a single shot, and fires faster in a smaller cone, but is never pinpoint accurate. It is much faster but has wind-up and wind-down delays.
Rockets start off slower but accelerate in the air.
Plasma gun fires faster but can overheat, causing inaccuracy and delays in shooting.
BFG has tweaked aesthetic effects and always fires at the same rate.
All projectile weapons inherit player momentum, but the rocket loses this as it accelerates forward.
Projectiles can teleport, and are generally smaller letting them reach more potential targets.
Player view and attack height corrected to sprite eye level.
Ammo no longer gets wasted if you pick up a unit larger than you can carry.
Player will start to regenerate health after neither shooting nor getting hurt for more than ~16 seconds, to a maximum of 50.


Monster changes:

Zombies move faster, shoot semi-rapid-fire, and have 30 health.
Shotgun guys move faster and fire a single blast of seven weak pellets in a tight cone - it's the cone that's placed off target, as though a player were firing inaccurately.
Chaingun guys fire faster but don't hit quite as hard on each shot, and use the pistol sound.
Imps move faster.
Demons move faster and have better reach, but fewer hitpoints.
Barons and cacos have less health but attack more aggressively.
Baron/knight shots move faster.
Revenants have smoother missile animation, slightly shorter but the delay before the missile is longer. They have much less mass and distinctly fewer hitpoints, but move slightly faster.
Archviles easier to pain but tougher and more aggressive.
Arachnotrons and spider masterminds stop shooting to readjust if you stray too far from their standing angle.
Cyberdemons are now vulnerable to the player's rocket explosions, removing the disincentive to use rockets against them.
All machine gun monsters fire in long, extremely rapid bursts that are somewhat easier to avoid, but woe to whoever does not avoid them.
Many monster hitboxes are slimmed down a bit to somewhat better match their sprites.
All hitscanners lag a little in following the target before shooting, making lateral movement no longer useless.

[Caligari87]

This is really fun. Everything feels just slightly tuned up, slightly punchier, slightly more satisfying. This might put me back on playing vanilla again.

I think the bullet puff sound is a little too loud though. At first I thought it was a "hitmarker" sound but when I realized it wasn't I was a bit disappointed. Extra feedback for hitting walls but not monsters feels a little off.

Minor gripe though, I really enjoy this overall. Thanks for posting!

[Matt]

Yes, about time I fixed that.

Blood splats now have sounds, and both impacts are different in pitch.

[madsnark]

armor bonuses give more than 200 armor

[Matt]

Intentional - I really miss old Doom versions where that would just keep on stacking. I never managed to find the upper limit as a kid - this was vanilla with no ability to summon or give - so it's arbitrarily set to 666.

[InsanityBringer]

just as a side note, there was not actually a cap in the old vanilla versions, you could go up to 2147483647 - and then if you get any more you'll roll over into negative armor which makes any attack whatsoever immediately kill you with insane force. It was impossible to make an episode that had that many bonuses though, due to memory limits, but it was discovered there was a way to use the secret level to create a level loop where you could make it possible.

Probably not worth emulating in this mod, but that's how it was

[Matt]

Probably not worth emulating.

Probably.

(also more adjustments to the impact sounds, including some for the chain grinder)

[ronsmith]

https://mc776.neocities.org/dl/mdt-2020-08-26.pk7

I've mentioned this patch elsewhere and figured I'd put it up here in case anyone else wanted some ideas or to just change up their game a bit.

It smooths out a few Doom quirks that I've never really liked or found justifiable (at least not in a freelooking modern port) while trying to keep the original degree of difficulty (zombiemen notwithstanding), while adding some new behaviour to make a few guns a bit less "click and drag the monster into the dead bin".

It should be compatible with autoaim though I've never tested it to any significant extent.

Full (more or less) list of changes in the readme.

It's a pretty big patch. I love it

[Matt]

Wondering if anyone finds the rockets, plasma or BFG too weak now that it's harder to aim. Been thinking about making the projectiles faster but not without making the arachnotrons much stronger or everything else easier than vanilla.

[MentzWolf]

I absolutely love this mod, however I feel like the SSG is pretty ineffective against crowds of weaker enemies due to the tighter cone of fire. I feel like the cone should be ever so slightly wider to really make it stand out from the standard shotgun. Otherwise keep up the good work!

[Matt]

however I feel like the SSG is pretty ineffective against crowds of weaker enemies due to the tighter cone of fire. I feel like the cone should be ever so slightly wider to really make it stand out from the standard shotgun.

I've increased the spread again, but also increased the rate of fire since it's still gonna be a lot worse at stunning multiple targets with fewer pellets.

I've sped up some of the projectiles, but the arachnotrons will still use speed 25.

[Matt]

Most monster projectiles can now randomly adjust for player momentum. Have fun!

EDIT: fixed up that code and made it only applicable to a few things instead of to everything.

[Matt]

WolfensteinSS has now been modified.

[Matt]

I've added a thing that checks for duplicate ExMy/MAPxx lumps and lets the player know what custom maps might have been added, because a lot of single custom maps aren't E1M1/MAP01 for whatever reason and no one ever reads anything.