https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/1 ... p-balance/
The original post for the 2018 version is in the spoiler below, if for some reason you want to play the old, outdated, inferior version.
Spoiler:
3 small-to-medium-sized maps, built for/with a custom gameplay mod. Tested in GZDoom 3.3.0 and above. You can update your copy of GZDoom here.
>>>> DOWNLOAD <<<<
(last updated: Dec 8 2018, final version)
Make sure you use the custom HUD that's included in the mod!
The maps run map01 through map03. All difficulty modes have been balanced, though the maps were balanced first on UV. Nightmare difficulty is replaced by Ultra-Randomized, which is identical to Ultra-Violence except that a handful of monsters are randomly replaced by some variants (eg Imp sometimes replaced by Dark Imp). I strongly discourage playing on UV on your first playthrough, as it'll probably take some time to adjust to the new monsters and balance changes. If you fancy a challenge beyond UV, try either Ultra-Randomized, or run the maps on coop (run "map map01 coop" in the console) to play them with about 50% extra monsters.
The maps also contain ogg soundtracks (converted from vgz to ogg because GZDoom crashed with the original vgz files). If you would prefer midi, I have included midi tracks on the map slot + 10. So to listen to map01's midi track, "idmus11", for map02, "idmus12", for map03, "idmus13". Map slots 11 - 14 also contain old, abandoned map scraps that were originally meant for this project, which you are free to use (as with all the other maps in this set).
For more info on all of the gameplay changes, see below:
Spoiler:
- Damage values are normalized (de-randomized) across the board (with a few exceptions that I haven't gotten to yet). A monster projectile that previously did somewhere between 4 and 12 damage, for example, will now do 8 damage every time. This change applies to both monsters and player weapons.
- Universal instant weapon switching
- Most monsters have alternate deaths, which are triggered either randomly, or based on what you attack them with and how far away from them you are. For example, if you kill a Demon up close with a shotgun, it will almost always play a more gibby death, but the chances are significantly lower if you kill it with a shotgun blast from further away.
- Pistol, Shotgun, Super Shotgun, and Scrap Gun have reload mechanics (see below); make sure your standard Reload key is bound. Ammo counts for reloading weapons are not displayed in the default Doom HUD, so I would recommend the custom HUD I've created that comes with the mod (press the minus key once from the default Doom HUD to get to it)
- Demons walk and bite faster
- Imp fireballs are a bit faster
- Zombiemen are replaced by Plasma Zombies, who fire two small plasma shots when they attack
- Caco projectiles are slower
- Cacodemons have a bit less health
- Pain Elementals have a bit less health (they will always die to 2 full SSG blasts now)
- Lost Souls have significantly less health
- Cyberdemon has a bit lower health, and can take rocket splash damage now (but still cannot self damage)
- Baron replaced by Cyber Baron, and can shoot rockets from one arm. Less health than a regular Baron. Hitting it with a non-bullet-based attack once it's at ~25% health can lop its rocket arm off, meaning it can't fire any more rockets. Attacking with a chainsaw and triggering the baron's pain state will guarantee a disarm, regardless of health.
- Enemy-fired rockets (from Cyberdemon and Cyber Baron) do a bit less damage and have a smaller blast radius. Still pretty potent though.
- Hell Knight and Cyber Baron projectiles are 33% faster
- Arachnotron (now called Fusionite) projectiles fire in volleys of 4 fireballs successively, with a small gap in between each volley, instead of a constant stream.
- New monster: Diabolist. Summons plumes of fire underneath you that explode in unison. Requires LOS to place a plume down.
- New monster: Tortured Soul. Really similar to a Cacodemon, but during its pain and death states, it lets out some toxic clouds that persist in the area for a few seconds.
- Pistol has reloading now, with clip size of 6. Bullets can fire much faster and are more powerful than they were before.
- Shotgun has reloading now, with a shell capacity of 8. Fires more rapidly in between shots, and shots are a wee bit more powerful. If the player is under 50 health, firing and reloading the shotgun is sped up slightly.
- Super Shotgun has tighter horizontal spread, and fires a few frames faster, but not by much.
- New weapon: Scrap Gun (slot 4). A projectile shotgun with huge horizontal and vertical spread. Can fire 4 shots before needing to reload.
- Chaingun is now a Burst Assault Rifle, firing bursts of 3 shots, and has reloading. In a burst, the 2nd bullet does more damage than the 1st, and the 3rd more than the 1st.
- Rocket launcher fires smaller, faster rockets (different from enemy rockets). More impact damage, less explosion damage and smaller radius.
- Plasma Rifle now has reloading, and fires in bursts of 3. Each plasma shot does a bit of explosive damage. Paradise doesn't make use of this gun at all though, which is why it's in the sorry state that it is now
I highly recommend playing Paradise with @Xaser's DamNums, as I think it can really help visualize all of the gameplay adjustments.
Any feedback and criticism is much appreciated! After I finalize the release of this mapset, I will probably start a development thread for the gameplay mod, so that any interested folks can stay up to date with it as it develops, as I intend to continue developing it and use it for my future map releases.
For detailed credits, see the CREDITS lumps in t-paradise.pk3.