Angelic Aviary v0.97.1: Life and Death (Updated 04/01/2022)

[KynikossDragonn]

The only way I could think of fixing this issue is if GZDoom allowed culling actors that are within sectors you can't possibly see into. (This would also be a tremendous performance boost I would imagine if it didn't bother drawing things contained in sectors that you can't see into)

[CherubCorps]

Happy (Late) 2022 everyone. Angelic Aviary v0.96 is out.

Major features
-Added over 50 new sound effects and voice clips. This including new voices for the Cardinal and Shotgun Duo.
-Health and armor drops have custom art and will fade away if not picked up quickly. Angelic health bonus can stack your maximum health to 250.
-Rebalanced all Heretic enemies to do less damage and have less HP. Cardinals and Jays will ALWAYS drop at least one timebomb of the ancients.
-Revamped the Virtue Virgin. At full health, she moves much slower and shoots out only one attack. In addition, her melee has been nerfed so that she won't insta-kill the player. As she takes damage, she gains the ability to spam more bullets and moves faster. Her melee attack becomes very powerful when nearing death.
-Added 3 more hidden Easter eggs.
-Created a "Lite" version which does not have any zscript to allow the mod to be playable with older versions of GZdoom. The only difference between Lite and standard is that lite does not have the SWWM easter egg.

Bugs/balances
-Sound pitches cannot be randomized via GZdoom menu.
-Items dropped by enemies no longer count towards the total level item count.
-Dollmaykr will always spawn dolls beneath her.
-Principality takes slightly longer to point umbrella at player.
-Many minor bug and animation fixes.

Main file Download here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/us6dbyeh ... 6.wad/file

Lite version: https://www.mediafire.com/file/93orp4sv ... e.wad/file

[KynikossDragonn]

Health and armor drops have custom art and will fade away if not picked up quickly. Angelic health bonus can stack your maximum health to 250.

Does this mean they wont get replaced by mods? Because, Doomreal replaces health bonuses with bandages and armour bonuses with tiny decorative shields that form into it's own separate 200 armour item. (It even becomes stronger the close you get to 200 total with it)

[CherubCorps]

Does this mean they wont get replaced by mods? Because, Doomreal replaces health bonuses with bandages and armour bonuses with tiny decorative shields that form into it's own separate 200 armour item. (It even becomes stronger the close you get to 200 total with it)

So angelic health and armor bonus are unique custom item that cannot be found in the wild. They can be only dropped by angels. This allows them to exist in mods that replace custom standard items. So in Doomreal, you'll find bandages in maps, but you'll also find angelic health bonuses from dead angels. The only way to get +200 health is to have 200 health and then pick up angelic health. Regular health bonus will not add life above +200 health, only the angelic health bonus will.

I changed the drops because at times, there were too many health bonuses dropping in slaughtery arenas; having bonuses expire encourages players to not wait and immediately pick them up. It also prevents excessive clutter in maps. They are also some modern maps/mods that change the base values of health bonuses to give ridiculous amounts of health (such as 5+ per bonus) which would break the mod. The only downside is if you're playing with La Tailor Girl as life bonuses don't go towards armor.

[barosans]

there is nothing to say, this update is really refreshing, the voices are less redundant

btw, in combination with the mod painslayer : viewtopic.php?style=12&f=43&t=72567 the mixture is perfect

[Xaivo]

I really like the charm of this mod ,
I think all the angels look pretty adorable and I really like all their gimmicks and stuff
10/10 would recommend

[CherubCorps]

Big update. Version 0.97 is out

This edition focuses on difficulty, compatibility, but most importantly... FANSERVICE!

Major Features:
*New difficulty: Life and Death. Replaces Taxing+ difficulty. A twist on Nightmare difficulty. In this mode, you are forever pursued by the beautiful Arch-angels of life and death. Unlike standard angels, Arch-angels are indestructible, pass through walls and pressure the player to not linger in one place for too long. To make up for this, Arch-Angels take 60 seconds to spawn and move extremely slow. This difficulty is the ultimate challenge of Angelic Aviary and should be played with a weapon mod.
-New enemy: The destroying angel, arch-angel of death. She focuses on pure physical aggression and can kill you in seconds.
-New enemy: Willendorf, arch-angel of life. An ethereal being of pure light. She will resurrect any dead angel she crosses paths with and will deflect any projectiles shot at her.
-New hidden boss: Eve, daughter of fire: (Note, Eve needs to be turned on via option menu)
-Forgotten maiden has been complete reworked. She is a very powerful, but optional enemy the player can choose to fight. If you manage to defeat her, she will drop a special item that disables tracking missiles for 3 minutes. A risk Vs reward.
-Forgotten maidens have custom art to make them look different from Aphrodite’s Kisses.
-Added an option menu:
-Rare birds can be toggled on and off depending on your preference or to prevent certain maps from breaking. Rare birds with elements of fanservice are marked and can be toggled off.
-Added an option to turn angelic health drops into vanilla health drop. This is important when playing with weapon mods such as La Tailor Girl where angelic health drops don’t
-Fanservice: Some angels can be stripped using certain elemental damage. One can only be exclusively accessed as a La Tailor girl easter egg.
-Lithium compatibility: Angels give experience and go up in levels. (Note, you need to download the PK7 file to play this until Marrub released the next official edition. It can be found fere: https://github.com/marrub--/Lithium )
-Added over 60 new sound effects including custom voices to the Putto, Turbo Dolls, Puckish Pranksters, and a new voice to the Dollmaykr

Smol changes
-Angelic health and armor bonuses have a greater radius, making them easier to pick up.
-Principality’s alt attack shoots 15 small bolts of lightning in a row rather than 7 small bolts and one big bolt. Small bolts of lightning do less damage than before.
-Increased the Red Egg’s health from 1000 to 1250.
-Aphrodite’s Kiss arrows have a 20% chance of being a timebomb than the 3rd arrow always being a timebomb.
-Added Combined Arms V2.0 easter egg.
-Super rare statues and rare drops are much more… well, rare.

Download here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/t6vmymwx ... h.wad/file

Please enjoy!

[barosans]

sweet ! a update

[CherubCorps]

Smol update. Version 0.97.1. This version is focused on polishing features added in 0.97, especially the Arch-Angels.

New features
-Changed behavior of Willendorf. In addition to resurrecting dead angels, she can summon in two cherubs. These cherubs are slightly less hits than vanilla cherubs, but can travel through walls and don't leave a corpse when killed.
-Changed central attack of the destroying angel. Gave the main fireball a rad new sprite (Original sprite by Amuscaria, slightly modified.)
-Crown of the moon powerup no longer makes player invisible. It now disables tracking missiles for 5 minutes.
-Additional sexy death animation added to an angel.
-Added an option to alter the cherub's voice. When this option is turned on, the standard cherub will have the voice of the Puckish Prankster. This is one of the most requested features people have asked for.
-Added an additional 10 voice effects.
-(???) All Barrels go to heaven

So unless something seriously breaks in this version, this will be the last update until the official v1.0. The next version will have the Crusader Queen

Download: https://www.mediafire.com/file/flus1cvc ... 1.wad/file

[RKD]

It's funny how my first impression of this mod was "ew, what is this webbery" but so far is one of the most interesting monster replacement mod I've played. With half of the enemies being able to fly makes a twist in many maps that it's really interesting. Nice mod, cherub!

Well, sometimes is interesting. Others... not so much.

This was the only start of a map I did in God mode and I'm not ashamed for that

In any case, I decided to take a look at how does this play in Heretic. Ironically, I think it goes way better there than in Doom. The colorful nature of the enemies kinda fits more, imo.
I was about to write some (presumably) long paragraphs giving feedback and suggesting changes for balance in Heretic but I'm not sure how much you intend to polish the gameplay for that. If you only want to focus in Doom, that's fine for me.
Oh, but something that I do want to point out at least, is that Forgotten Maidens that appear as replacements for Disciples of D'Sparil drop shotgun shells. Or maybe is just the pickup message that is messed up, I couldn't confirm if I was picking up something for real or not. I leave you an screenshot so you can see the pickup messages:

[CherubCorps]

In any case, I decided to take a look at how does this play in Heretic. Ironically, I think it goes way better there than in Doom. The colorful nature of the enemies kinda fits more, imo.
I was about to write some (presumably) long paragraphs giving feedback and suggesting changes for balance in Heretic but I'm not sure how much you intend to polish the gameplay for that. If you only want to focus in Doom, that's fine for me.
Oh, but something that I do want to point out at least, is that Forgotten Maidens that appear as replacements for Disciples of D'Sparil drop shotgun shells. Or maybe is just the pickup message that is messed up, I couldn't confirm if I was picking up something for real or not. I leave you an screenshot so you can see the pickup messages:

Glad you're enjoying the mod so far. By all means, post feedback for the Heretic version. Angelic Aviary: Heretic edition still needs a ton of rebalancing. The idea behind the Heretic edition is that it's a semi-randomizer built around usage of the timebombs of the ancients. The other idea is adding a custom angelic tome of power that only powers up the elven wand, but having it be a very common drop. Also trying to add features so that it will replace custom enemies from Heretic map packs such as Faithless and Sold Soul.

Currently, the Aphrodite's Kiss is dropping shotgun shells in Heretic. I need to change that.

Progress wise, I have a beta version of the Crusader Queen (Mastermind replacement) up and running. Hoping to get V1.0 out sometime in June.

[RKD]

All right, here I go in no particular order. Some are suggestions, others are inquiries and others may be just observations:

• Tomed Hellstaff rain was never really useful, because each drop knocks enemies back. While I was glad to find the slow movement of the Seraph makes her a perfect target for that (which is not something bad, I like it), the issue is that she is too vulnerable to the rain. She gets shredded in 5 seconds. Funnily, the egg resists more...
• Eve needs a BOSS/BOSSDEATH property, I'd said. I went looking for a little extra challenge in E5M8 and turned all Seraphs in Eves (and let the last one became a Great Seraph too) but the tagged sectors didn't lower at the end. Seraphs work well in E2M8 and also Great Seraph in E3M8, so Eve is the issue here. Or is it the egg?
• On a note about the Great Seraph, does she really need to have those absurdly OP projectiles that chase you clipping through walls? In my first attempt I retreated with a Chaos Device to "catch my breath" and those things deleted me anyways... Also, do they die eventually or do they keep going forever? I saw them dropping ammo after a while but not sure how much time they last. Waited like half a minute after beating the boss but had to run to the portal when I saw those things going on and on and on...
• For the most part, the randomization works well in providing variety but I saw a underwhelming ammount of Aspect of Iris. Seems like there aren't as much Knight Ghosts in vanilla Heretic as one may remember. Maybe making her replace Nitrogolem instead of having a spawner there and instead of having her replacing Knight Ghosts as it currently is? Just a thought.
• Also in the randomization subject, Aphrodite's Kisses are too recurrent, imo. I did find a lot of them in The Dome of D'Sparil and in that episode there are Disciples ambushes in tight spaces quite commonly. The problem with Aphros is that they become stone and when you have more than one dying in a corridor or a corner, it isn't possible to push them out of the way anymore, making them quite annoying. Granted, it's possible to break them free again and lure them out of the way but I would suggest just reducing their chances to appear. Maybe even also ramp up a bit the chances for Joy Elemental instead, to compensate, and avoid having overpopulation of Kisses.
• I was a little sad when I noticed the ShadowSphere is utterly pointless with your mod. That artifact has a nice gimmick that (imo) makes it better than Doom partial invisibility: turns the player in ghost so it makes his/her impervious to projectiles with the THRUGHOSTS flag. Since there aren't any of that in here, it becomes irrelevant, and many vanilla maps put that artifact when certain tricky parts with Undead Knights are ahead. I'd like to see either projectiles with that flag or something equally useful like the effect of crowns (disable tracking of homing attacks). I know the last one would make Forgotten Maidens sort of redundants but maybe they could give something else instead? Whatever option, the point should be to make the ShadowSphere useful again.
• Also in the artifacts subject, I didn't find the Timebombs making an actual compensation in early levels. I did my tests with no quicksave/quickload. E3M1 was really hard and took me like 5 tries to make the ammo in the map last long enough (I can do that just fine in vanilla gameplay, btw). I had to resort to staff-poking Ophanims (in the eyes(?)) to save as much as I could. E4M1 was impossible, even when in my 10th attempt I got an extra Tome of Power from a Principality. I just didn't have enough ammo to beat the last room with four Virtue Virgins and Timebombing those is not an option. I really tried but there's no way. I can pretty much confirm that is not a matter of ammount of Timebombs, they just don't give as much of a hand as you may suppose against your angelic chicks. So... on the other hand, changing that for an only-wand ToP may work. Kinda weird but I'd be up to test something like that. Maybe even have it as an item that activates on pickup like the Sigils of Power dropped by Disciples in the Wayfarer? Another option could be having some of them dropping weapons instead. Just a crossbow or claw would probably be way more helpful than Timebombs.
• Some Forgotten Maidens that spawn instead of barrels can block certain paths sometimes. Here are two specific examples of what I mean:
  

  ---

  
  This one is blocking the path to the very first secret in the starting area of E1M1.
  
  
  In E5M3 there's this room after the green key door where you can drop from a platform (it is to the left, outside of the screenshot) and walk above the barrels to get to the urn. In the opposite side is the same deal, more barrels that you need to walk across to get to another small little room and reach a secret.

  
  My easy fix would be to give them the same radius of barrels, as to not block the path horizontally, and no more than 24 map units higher than a barrel, so the player is able to step above. Currently, your statues have a height of 64 and Heretic barrels have 32.
• And so far, all the rest works quite nicely. Thanks for having the authorities less spongy than actual Knights. Makes them less of a chore and fun to fight a group of them. Ophanims fit so freaking well with their colored wand puffs, I love them. There are a lot of Cardinals and Jays but I think that's somewhat expected. I like to see Jays and Puckish Pranksters more regularly in Heretic. It gives variety.
• On that note, one enemy I particularly miss from the Doom counterpart is the Dollmaykr. I'm not sure how your incoming Crusader Queen would feel in play when released, so feel free to disregard what I'm gonna say next if you have plans already for her in Heretic: I think the Dollmaykr would be the actual perfect substitute for D'Sparil. She doesn't teleport but has high mobility. Both summon reinforcements. That's the perfect replacement right there. Now, it would kinda need an overhaul on her to make her more BOSS-like, but it'd probably a lot of work just for Heretic. So, taking that into consideration and going with the less ammount of changes possible, my ideas would be: more HP (of course), having her spawn Kisses instead of Dolls (extra points if it's the spawner and a few Aphros and JoyEles also join, lol) and change the Arch-vile attack for a powerful projectil (because D'Sparil arena has cover but there's also a lot of room to fight against him).

And done, I think those are all the things I wanted to say regarding my experience testing this in Heretic. The second episode was particularly awesome.
As a more general last commentary and something that I also felt in my Doom playthroughs is: I love all of your enemy replacements, specially the Ophanim since she changes some maps so much, that feels refreshing and interesting. But there's one that I think is the embodiment of the "No fun allowed" meme: Aspect of Iris. Those fairies she shoot are sooooooooooo unfun. I can stand a projectile that rips and does quite a lot of damage, but having that same projectile going through you over and over because the momentum isn't enough to make the thing clash with the wall you're desperately hugging (more evident with the slow ones) is... well, not too fun, imo.
Not sure if I'm the only one who thinks this way but, yeah, that would be my only complaint. All the rest has been quite enjoyable, so kudos to you. Looking forward to next updates and the ability to play this with certain map packs, as you said! That would be neat!

[[]Dot]

I tried this mod out in GZDoom v4.7.0 and GZDoom v4.7.1g and with version v0.97.1 I have massive performance degradation (heavy lag), I tried your mod with the lambda weapon set, universal gib mod and for maps I tried out anta_regcd.wad and zpack.wad, after around 10-15 minutes of playing the game became almost impossible to play. When I use angelic aviary 0.91 version I do not have this performance issue.

Though for some reason when I was playing GZDoom v4.7.0 with Obsidian random generated maps, lambda, bolognese mod and your 0.97.1mod I rarely had performance issues, so its weird that it seems to mostly happen on user made maps. I set the Obsidian map generator to episode (11 maps) and I played a few times to completion and it worked normal.

having bonuses expire encourages players to not wait and immediately pick them up. I

Any chance to have it as a cvar option instead? Or maybe longer expiration time option at least.

Also is there a reason why the majority of the monster have "+NOBLOOD" flag? I had to edit this mod manually to make the monsters spawn blood effect when getting hit by projectiles/hitscan attacks. The other changes I did to your mod was also turning the Butterfly projectiles into regular seeking projectiles as I find it ridiculous that a single monster is capable of almost killing the player, there was a instance when I was playing the ar.wad and I found myself stuck on a area then the Iris monster comes along and almost reduced my health from 150(I think) down to about 30-50 hitpoints.

[CherubCorps]

Tomed Hellstaff rain was never really useful, because each drop knocks enemies back. While I was glad to find the slow movement of the Seraph makes her a perfect target for that (which is not something bad, I like it), the issue is that she is too vulnerable to the rain. She gets shredded in 5 seconds. Funnily, the egg resists more..

Would have never guessed it'd be so effective. May have to edit the amount of damage it does.

Eve needs a BOSS/BOSSDEATH property, I'd said. I went looking for a little extra challenge in E5M8 and turned all Seraphs in Eves (and let the last one became a Great Seraph too) but the tagged sectors didn't lower at the end. Seraphs work well in E2M8 and also Great Seraph in E3M8, so Eve is the issue here. Or is it the egg?

Fixed. Will be in the next update. Thanks for pointing it out.

On a note about the Great Seraph, does she really need to have those absurdly OP projectiles

So you were actually fighting the Queen of Queens rather than the Great Seraph (They have the same sprite at the moment). The Queen of Queens is an uber boss designed to be insanely powerful and who you must go out of your way to fight (Either by killing two Great Seraphs in a row or by killing eve and letting the egg she drops hatch). Her slow loon bomb is designed to prevent players from using duck and cover tactics. Her bombs will extinguish themselves over time and drop ammo

I was a little sad when I noticed the ShadowSphere is utterly pointless with your mod.

I might make it so the shadowsphere makes Iris butterflies go through the player.

I didn't find the Timebombs making an actual compensation in early levels.

Part of it has to do with the angel's health and ammo drops and balancing it more correctly. I might increase ammo drops or have more enemies drop more timebombs.

Some Forgotten Maidens that spawn instead of barrels

Will change for the next version. Will also decrease the spawn rate as too many Forgotten maidens are showing up.

On that note, one enemy I particularly miss from the Doom counterpart is the Dollmaykr.

So the Heretic version does not include any of the doll enemies, Dollmaykr or the Crusader Queen. This is because Heretic takes place in the past, long before the angels invented doll tech or cybernetics (This is part of the lore). I might be able to work her into a future edition of the Heretic mod though.

I tried this mod out in GZDoom v4.7.0 and GZDoom v4.7.1g and with version v0.97.1 I have massive performance degradation (heavy lag), I tried your mod with the lambda weapon set, universal gib mod and for maps I tried out anta_regcd.wad and zpack.wad, after around 10-15 minutes of playing the game became almost impossible to play. When I use angelic aviary 0.91 version, I do not have this performance issue.

Hmm... I have no idea what could be causing this. I think it might have to do with the Universal gib mod and Angelic Aviary. Still, I have to look into this.

Any chance to have it as a cvar option instead? Or maybe longer expiration time option at least.

It's already in the mod (In v97.1). Go into the option menu, choose "Angelic Aviary options", it's the 1st option that shows up.

Also is there a reason why the majority of the monster have "+NOBLOOD" flag? I had to edit this mod manually to make the monsters spawn blood effect when getting hit by projectiles/hitscan attacks. The other changes I did to your mod was also turning the Butterfly projectiles into regular seeking projectiles as I find it ridiculous that a single monster is capable of almost killing the player, there was a instance when I was playing the ar.wad and I found myself stuck on a area then the Iris monster comes along and almost reduced my health from 150(I think) down to about 30-50 hitpoints.

Most angels spew blood, the only enemies that have the +NOBLOOD flag are the dolls and putto. The dolls are called that because they are actual dolls made of wood and porcelain. For this reason, they do not have blood, guts and all that jazz.
Like revenant missiles, Iris butterflies do tremendous amounts of damage, especially without armor. I do plan to weaken them, possibly having the butterflies expire if they're on the battlefield for longer than 10-20 seconds. Rippers do an insane amount of damage just due to how they're programmed.

Thank you for the feedback.

[RKD]

This is part of the lore

Well, I missed the lore thing then. Makes sense the Dollmaykr isn't included, although I assumed the dolls weren't being included just because of the weapons they carry, haha.

The Queen of Queens is an uber boss designed to be insanely powerful and who you must go out of your way to fight

I didn't do any of those specific requierements but now I get what happened. D'Sparil replacement is the red egg that Eve drops (maybe you meant to use the "regular" egg?). So when entering the map, the egg starts hatching. By the minute you get to the final arena, this QoQ is already spawned. She isn't unbeatable, but yeah, I thought it maybe was a little too much (probably a different sprite would be preferable to differentiate her from the Great Seraph, at least a recolor of her tabard to not have the need to go out of your way to make an entirely new sprite).

have more enemies drop more timebombs

As I said previously, I don't think it'll make a substantial difference. It isn't a matter of ammount. Timebombs are not very useful because most of your chicks fly. The only enemy that is an effective usage of TB is the cardinal. Everyone else either avoids the splash damage by flying or hits you nonchalantly when you attempt to get close enough to leave a bomb and there is no way to dodge that 9 outta 10, making you getting hit pointlessly.

Hope to not sound too exigent or something. Glad if my feedback is of use to you