Metroid: Demon Hunter - 1.5d, Beta and Github (1/7/22)

[Gen5lock131]

That is one hell of an eye candy! Im soooo hyped!

[Wivicer]

Dude those models are awesome! Who made them?

[HauntLich]

Great looking overhaul so far. Right now though, it appears that the Varia Suit upgrade simply doesn't work for me. I'm on GZDoom 4.3.3, and when I try to pick up the Varia Suit upgrade I get dx0000FFFsF Error, and that's if the Varia Suit appears at all. I just spent 15 minutes restarting the Bounty Hunt level trying to get it to spawn. It just decided it wasn't gonna be a part of my game for a while there. No errors when it doesn't spawn, just that one error when attempting to pick it up.
Regarding the Bounty Hunt level in the Overhaul file, is there supposed to be no enemies or anything to do or am I just stupid? I'm fully willing to admit that I'm just stupid.

As it stands right now, this overhaul appears to be compatible with Heretical Doom and its associated Monster AI overhaul, but they don't appear to be compatible with games other than Heretic. EG, normally I can use Heretical Doom Monsters and boot Doom 2, and all of the enemies are replaced with Heretic monsters. However, when I add Metroid Dreadnought into the mix, the monsters are not changed. I don't know if this is an issue with Heretical Doom or if there's literally anything that can be done regarding compatibility, I just figured more information is better than less information.

[R4L]

Great looking overhaul so far. Right now though, it appears that the Varia Suit upgrade simply doesn't work for me. I'm on GZDoom 4.3.3, and when I try to pick up the Varia Suit upgrade I get dx0000FFFsF Error, and that's if the Varia Suit appears at all. I just spent 15 minutes restarting the Bounty Hunt level trying to get it to spawn. It just decided it wasn't gonna be a part of my game for a while there. No errors when it doesn't spawn, just that one error when attempting to pick it up.
Regarding the Bounty Hunt level in the Overhaul file, is there supposed to be no enemies or anything to do or am I just stupid? I'm fully willing to admit that I'm just stupid.

As it stands right now, this overhaul appears to be compatible with Heretical Doom and its associated Monster AI overhaul, but they don't appear to be compatible with games other than Heretic. EG, normally I can use Heretical Doom Monsters and boot Doom 2, and all of the enemies are replaced with Heretic monsters. However, when I add Metroid Dreadnought into the mix, the monsters are not changed. I don't know if this is an issue with Heretical Doom or if there's literally anything that can be done regarding compatibility, I just figured more information is better than less information.

The Bounty Hunt level is something that was included in the original Dreadnought. I've left it there, unedited, which means no monsters or anything like that. Varia Suit will never spawn there. You only receive that message if you pick up the Doom Cannon.

Just to test, can you open a console in any map and type 'summon variasuitpickup' without the quotes to see if it spawns correctly? It hasn't changed since it's implementation so it should still be working.

Also, compatibility is all over the place. Enemies especially will be janky. Someday I hope to add more compatibility.

[Darkbeetlebot]

So a few criticisms. I must preface that this is probably one of my favorite mods for doom II despite the flaws I'm about to list. I play it whenever I want to go through a progression-based megawad. These mostly pertain to balance.

One thing I keep thinking as I play this mod in its current version is: "Why is this here?" and that's mostly because to me, a lot of the tools and weapons available to me are just obsolete or otherwise useless. And sometimes the design decisions I find don't make any sense. I'll go on a per-item basis and give my thoughts.

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The charge beam is tricky, because at the same time that you're sacrificing your ability to spam with the ability to deal a lot of damage at once, you're also generally exacerbating the beam's innate qualities. Whether or not it fulfills both purposes (or if it can, or should) largely depends on the beam type. But all in all, this is an upgrade, and it should act as such. Personally, I think that spamming is the least interesting form of gameplay in this mod if the weapon isn't automatic. I think that generally, if you charge up your beam under the correct circumstances, it should be a risky/rewarding move given that you're making yourself vulnerable for so long.

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This is the first weapon you start with, and the most perplexing to me. I get that it's the power beam, it's not supposed to be really powerful. It's never been a powerhouse. But at the same time, we aren't working with compounding upgrades like Prime 3 had. We also have way more weapons than Prime 1 had, and even in that game the power beam still had a purpose. That's what each tool should have: a purpose. Power beam has little purpose, especially if you have plenty of resources to go around. This is because it is by far the weakest beam of the bunch, with only 10 damage per shot. However, it also has a very powerful charge shot, so powerful that charging the beam is really the only thing you should be doing. That's one of my main gripes: the primary fire is useless in every way. Every single beam outclasses it in crowd control and DPS in every situation. The long beam outclasses it in single target damage. Every beam makes the power beam obsolete. Not only that, but the charged power beam is essentially the same as a missile. The combo is also basically a super missile. But I must ask: for what purpose? Missiles and super missiles are so abundant with monster drops turned on (which I prefer, as it is the traditional metroid way), that there is practically no reason to conserve them by using the power beam. Especially when most other beams just outclass it in damage anyways. This weapon only becomes useful when you are completely deprived of resources and have no other weapons. But by the time you have the power missiles and charge beam, you have better options unless those are literally the only options you have. Power missiles do have a place for when you haven't gotten super missiles yet, but once you do you might as well just use super missiles instead. My suggested changes? Boost the power beam's primary fire to be useable against monsters without breaking your mouse trying to spam it. Then, balance the other beams around the power beam so that they don't just make it obsolete. It may also pay to make missile upgrades rarer so that you don't have so many that the charge and power missiles are pointless.

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This has a more clearly defined purpose, but still has the flaw of making the power beam obsolete. Granted, that's really just a flaw with the power beam instead. In practice, this beam looks like it's supposed to be used against hordes of horizontally arranged monsters, especially fodder. It can reliably kill most imps and zombies with only a blast or two. It's also exceptionally good when firing at point-blank and when shooting monsters with large hitboxes. It's a shotgun, basically. therein lies the issue, however: It's almost TOO good. TOO versatile. Because those profiles match basically every single enemy in doom. Any monster that isn't fodder is either large or a pinky, which spazer is good against. Not only that, it's also good when you're terrible at aiming directly at things because of just how wide it is. The only monsters it isn't good against are the Revenant, Archvile, and debatably hell knights/barons. That still leaves it being more effective under these circumstances against every other demon than any other beam. However, it is one of the beams that's actually better spammed, because its charged shot is so wide as to miss most of its damage unless you're facing a literal wall of monters. This is mostly because of how many shots are vertically inclined, going either into the ground or over the heads of anything short of a spider mastermind/wall of cacodemons. Generally, the best use I find for it IS against those two monsters. It only becomes ridiculous when you point-blank fire it at a larger monster like mancubi. And the combo is just so strong as to be functionally pointless. It's overkill. You only need to use it when faced with that aforementioned crowd of bruisers that you can't dispatch with regular spam. You're essentially firing 5 missiles at once but even more powerful. Though, I suppose this may actually be a good thing. My suggestion? Make the total damage of the shots combined more than that of the power beam (perhaps greatly so), but make each individual pellet deal much less than a single power beam shot. Then give the charge shot more of a defined purpose. Perhaps tighten the spread? The combo could stand to be less wasteful, but it is the most fine out of everything.

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Whereas the spazer is better against horizontally arranged monsters, the plasma beam is a piercing weapon, which means it should naturally be better than the other weapons but only if hitting multiple monsters in a line. Which means I'm immensely confused as to why it is so much better than any other option in every situation. No, really. This weapon, due to its ticking damage mechanic, outclasses almost everything in damage as long as you're hitting 2 or more enemies. Even if you hit only one, the only weapon that really does more damage in a short span of time is a long beam shot. There aren't really very many mechanical flaws with this weapon, even, it's just too damn strong. The one issue I have with the weapon is its combo: It's completely different from the beam's main function. The Solar Flare shot is basically a lingering fire effect that never really hits anything due to not spreading and having a short lifetime. Additionally, it's an explosion where the beam is a piercer. The original flamethrower combo from prime had a much better idea that can expand upon that use. This does run into the issue where it overlaps with the hyper beam, but I will get to that. My changes, then? Nerf this disgustingly powerful monster. Reduce its range slightly to make the long beam the overall better choice for single targets at a long range. Then, just completely change the combo into a flamethrower type weapon that consumes missiles slower than the hyper beam and still pierces, but also deals significantly less damage. Either that or you could make the combo a sort of railgun that can pierce through walls.

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This weapon is honestly one of the few ones I'm mostly fine with. The only issue I find is that, again, it's just too strong in situations that it shouldn't be. The bouncing property of this weapon should make it primarly something you use in tight corridors and small rooms where it can bounce a lot But also, its primary fire is still stronger than the power beam, and they also just stop bouncing when they hit an enemy, which seems counterintuitive. The weapon in general has this issue where direct hits still do most of the damage instead of the bouncing projectiles. My suggestion? Allow the primary shots to bounce off of enemies. Make them generally just bounce more times before disappearing. Also, make each individual hit fairly weak, such that it can still outdamage the power beam per-shot, but only if the projectile bounces off of a few enemies. Also, the beam combo is just horrifyingly powerful in crowds. It does far more damage than it should with only 5 missiles. Like, it's often better than using a power bomb.

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This is another perplexing weapon. The freezing effect is very useful and already makes it interesting, but what confuses me is how the regular shot is appropriately strong and functions as I would expect, yet still somehow manages to be a worse choice than other weapons for a couple reasons. One: Against fodder, the enemies it can easily one-to-two shot, it's more of a hassle because of how it freezes the enemies instead of killing them. This makes them get in the way of your following shots. It makes it simultaneously good and terrible for crowd control, and kind of defeats the purpose of the splash radius. Even more confusing is how the charge shot appears to be WORSE than spamming? Each regular shot deals 50 damage, and in the same amount of time you can charge the beam, you could instead fire 3-4 of those regular shots. And yet, the charge shot only does 100 damage? In practice, anyways. And not only that, but it also doesn't appear to have a guranteed chance of paralyzing the monster. Increased for sure, but for how long a charge takes I expect to at least be able to keep a baron locked down while I deal with its backup. But it breaks out of that paralysis so quickly that I only have time to pull out a single missile before it's attacking again. The charge shot seems almost entirely useless, especially when 3 regular shots usually paralyzes the monster anyways. And then you have the disaster of a beam combo. I swear, this thing is bugged, because every time I've ever used it, it seems like it just doesn't do anything. Sure, the monster most likely gets frozen on hit, but then they break out of it shortly and don't get re-frozen by the ice spreader's mist. I haven't exactly measure teh damage for this combo in particular, but in practice I've rarely ever seen it kill any monster that wasn't directly struck with it. It's really a matter of "why would I ever use this?". Because in every case where I could use the ice spreader, it would be more efficient and effective to just spam the regular shot and fire a missile every time the monster gets frozen. The only real uses I've found for this weapon are to stunlock isolated bosses and archviles. And really, there are better weapons to deal with them. My suggestion is thus: The freezing mechanic is interesting, but gets in the way far too often. Either frozen-dead monster need to become a thruspecies and shatter automatically after a moment, or they need to get frozen sooner to justify the inconcenience. The paralysis state needs to last longer, preferably based on the strength of the monster, so that it's possible to actually take advantage of it. The charge shot needs to be much stronger than it currently is, and the regular shot may need to be ever-so-slightly weaker. Ice spreader needs to function properly and do enough to justify using 5 missiles. Because as useful as freezing things is, I'd rather just kill the monster in a single shot. Anything touching the affected area should get frozen. It should be a trap guranteed to be effective, especially if it isn't going to be a primarily damage-dealing tool. I mean, we're dealing with 5 missiles: That's 750 damage. If it isn't at least as good as instantly dealing 750 damage, why would I ever use it?

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This is another weapon I don't have many problems with. The only issue is that it doesn't have much of a use aside from sniping cacos and faraway monsters with the regular shot. The charge shot reveals its second use which I agree with: single-target damage. And its combo, I'll be honest, I have no idea what this is supposed to be. Besides dealing a lot of focused damage, anyways. It's fine if that's all it's supposed to be for, but it's awfully boring. The entire concept of the beam is just quite boring, and that's its flaw. My suggestion? None. I don't know what to do with this thing. It's brutally efficient but also useless outside of its niche. The only thing I could suggest is giving its beam combo more of a use besides just one-shotting anything as strong as a baron or less. It's honestly the most balanced weapon in this mod.

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No comment. Besides maybe give it a full charge? Also, I have no idea what this combo is trying to accomplish. As a gag weapon it's cool, but I just don't know what else it could possibly do.

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I want to like this weapon. I really, really want to like it. Unfortunately, it seems to be all over the place and is generally just a massive liability in combat. Against massive ongoing hordes? Its best matchup, honestly. As the BFG replacer, it ought to be. Unfortunately, it takes so goddamn long to cut through monsters thanks to the lower damage and long spin-up that you're going to tank a lot of projectiles before you win. And really, at that point it's better to just use a combo. Speaking of which, the hyper beam is absolutely insane. I really like it, but it's also borderline unusable. For one, it eats missiles like a black hole. If you don't have at least 120, it's wholly unusable. And for that cost, it really doesn't do much unless you're fighting slaughter-wad levels of monsters. The damage per tick isn't great, but it pierces. But also, most other beam combos will deal much more efficient damage while still being able to deal with all of those. It just consumes ammo so quickly that it's hard to even aim the thing at the hordes you're trying to kill before you run out of missiles. And with how long it takes to replenish those missiles? Forget ever using this thing unless the situation has surpassed the godzilla threshold. It is quite honestly the definition of an impractical superweapon. On the other hand, the regular "dakka" fire of the chroma storm has this glaring issue where the only real way to use it is to spin it up and then just never stop firing for as long as possible. Periodically spinning it up and down takes so long that it's better to just switch to spazer or wave and use those to deal with the same fodder than the chroma storm should be the best weapon at dealing with. Now, I would normally be fine with spinning up a weapon with infinite ammo and firing it for minutes on end without pause. Unfortunately, it has this absolultely godawful, grating firing sound that is so loud that it drowns out everything else in the game and in the room, and on my computer while firing. The only time I can even use this weapon without going insane from the noise is to mute the entire game and just listen to something else. Even then, you still have the issue that it's impossible to see anything while firing. So I have a few suggestions: One, give it a shorter spin-up time. Two, reduce the amount of particles it generates. Both for sanity and to reduce lag when playing with particles on. Third, fix that damn firing sound. Seriously, I do not care if you just replace it with the hyper beam sound, just get rid of it. Finally, make the hyper beam consume missiles at a slower rate. If needed to maintain balance, make it weaker. (But not weaker than the aforementioned flamethrower for plasma beam) A usable weaker weapon is better than a powerful unusable weapon any day.

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I really just don't see the use in these aside from the power bomb. normally, morph ball and bombs are used to traverse the world. However, most wads don't have anything to traverse besides terrain. The morph ball purely exists to break level progression in those cases. That's fine. The bombs are still useless, however. Both because of the lack of terrain to break with them, and because they are a terrible option to kill literally anything. Thanks to knockback and how slow the ball is, plus how effective your other weapons are, there's no real reason to ever use bombs. The power bombs, on the other hand, are a very good panic button. The only real issue with them is the fact that they require line of sight, and that they take so long to lay down and detonate. They're great when you know you're going to get surrounded, especially by pinkies, but also rarely ever kills the whole room. In the metroid games, the power bomb can usually pass through walls. So my suggestions are: The bombs are tricky. Their uselessness stems from how hard they are to use and the fact that they're mostly a utility anyways. Perhaps make them significantly stronger to compensate for the fact that you're practically guranteed to take damage while attempting to use them? Also, the morph ball is almost too fast when moving forward, but unbearably slow when strafing. The controls are just a bit whack. I'd personally allow fast strafing with it, and maybe make the player able to pass through monsters while morphed. That way you can use it as a getaway tool. I'd make the power bomb detonation time a bit longer, then reduce their blast radius and remove the line of sight requirement by letting the blast pass through walls. Power bombs are rare enough that they should be appropriately nuclear, but not some russian overkill-tier map clearing tool. It may also be advisable to make it only deal such limited damage as to mostly be for clearing weaker monsters while not being that effective against stronger ones. Perhaps 300 damage, allowing it to kill up to Revenants? Also, it could use a better explosion effect than that pitiful fart that it currently has.

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I have no complaints. This is practically perfect as-is. Maybe a tad strong, but it traditionally has been. I appreciate the option to toggle self-damage off.

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The last weapon that I have no real issues with. Just like the power beam, I feel like the mod's weapons in general should be balanced around these since they are the two most important ammo-consuming weapons available. My only gripe is that I can't fire these things faster, which is probably a good thing.

That's pretty much the extent of what I think. Obviously I'll go into SLADE and make the changes I want to see, myself, but I hope you'll at least experiment with these ideas for a stable version. Again, they're pretty much all just balance suggestions.

[R4L]

The charge beam is tricky, because at the same time that you're sacrificing your ability to spam with the ability to deal a lot of damage at once, you're also generally exacerbating the beam's innate qualities. Whether or not it fulfills both purposes (or if it can, or should) largely depends on the beam type. But all in all, this is an upgrade, and it should act as such. Personally, I think that spamming is the least interesting form of gameplay in this mod if the weapon isn't automatic. I think that generally, if you charge up your beam under the correct circumstances, it should be a risky/rewarding move given that you're making yourself vulnerable for so long.

So a few things to this... I don't know if you saw in later posts, but I'm working on a campaign for this. In my discord we have been discussing other options for the charge combos (including additional modes) because its generally agreed that the charge combos are all over the place. For the charge beam especially, It was hard finding a real balance because if they're too powerful, then why use primary fire at all? Plasma Beam charge was incredibly powerful, because not only does the actual blast do damage, the particles use A_Explode. Before my last nerf, a fully charged plasma beam could deal abut 800 damage. For a normal Doom wad, that's absolutely broken. With upgrades like Varia and Gravity suit, enemy damage is cut down significantly, so there isn't really much risk to using a slow charge. I may have to refine the protection values for those, because in the normal power suit you are weak, but the Gravity Suit on the other hand... Other ideas I had with this was to incorporate accel charges from Other M so the player can upgrade their charging speed. If that happens, then I'm definitely going to change the suit defense values to be weaker.

Did you also have anything to say with the half charge shots?

This is the first weapon you start with, and the most perplexing to me. I get that it's the power beam, it's not supposed to be really powerful. It's never been a powerhouse. But at the same time, we aren't working with compounding upgrades like Prime 3 had. We also have way more weapons than Prime 1 had, and even in that game the power beam still had a purpose. That's what each tool should have: a purpose. Power beam has little purpose, especially if you have plenty of resources to go around. This is because it is by far the weakest beam of the bunch, with only 10 damage per shot. However, it also has a very powerful charge shot, so powerful that charging the beam is really the only thing you should be doing. That's one of my main gripes: the primary fire is useless in every way. Every single beam outclasses it in crowd control and DPS in every situation. The long beam outclasses it in single target damage. Every beam makes the power beam obsolete. Not only that, but the charged power beam is essentially the same as a missile. The combo is also basically a super missile. But I must ask: for what purpose? Missiles and super missiles are so abundant with monster drops turned on (which I prefer, as it is the traditional metroid way), that there is practically no reason to conserve them by using the power beam. Especially when most other beams just outclass it in damage anyways. This weapon only becomes useful when you are completely deprived of resources and have no other weapons. But by the time you have the power missiles and charge beam, you have better options unless those are literally the only options you have. Power missiles do have a place for when you haven't gotten super missiles yet, but once you do you might as well just use super missiles instead. My suggested changes? Boost the power beam's primary fire to be useable against monsters without breaking your mouse trying to spam it. Then, balance the other beams around the power beam so that they don't just make it obsolete. It may also pay to make missile upgrades rarer so that you don't have so many that the charge and power missiles are pointless.

My plan was to make enemies more or less weak/strong to certain beams like Prime did. I think Prime would have had similar issues if it didn't incorporate a system like that. This mod has always been stuck between Russian Overkill levels of overpowered-ness and what feels like a pistol start. Between balancing the beams for general WAD play, they will have purpose. Besides opening doors, certain enemies will be vulnerable to them specifically and I had some puzzle ideas in mind. Again, the missile combos are lackluster and we have multiple plans to re-do them. I agree on making missile upgrades more rare.

This has a more clearly defined purpose, but still has the flaw of making the power beam obsolete. Granted, that's really just a flaw with the power beam instead. In practice, this beam looks like it's supposed to be used against hordes of horizontally arranged monsters, especially fodder. It can reliably kill most imps and zombies with only a blast or two. It's also exceptionally good when firing at point-blank and when shooting monsters with large hitboxes. It's a shotgun, basically. therein lies the issue, however: It's almost TOO good. TOO versatile. Because those profiles match basically every single enemy in doom. Any monster that isn't fodder is either large or a pinky, which spazer is good against. Not only that, it's also good when you're terrible at aiming directly at things because of just how wide it is. The only monsters it isn't good against are the Revenant, Archvile, and debatably hell knights/barons. That still leaves it being more effective under these circumstances against every other demon than any other beam. However, it is one of the beams that's actually better spammed, because its charged shot is so wide as to miss most of its damage unless you're facing a literal wall of monters.

The charge for the spazer is definitely meant for clearing large numbers of fodder enemies and doing damage to higher tier enemies. The lack of focused shots meaning you have to get up close because as you said, it is powerful and versatile. I may reduce the spread though so it can reliably work at further ranges.

This is mostly because of how many shots are vertically inclined, going either into the ground or over the heads of anything short of a spider mastermind/wall of cacodemons. Generally, the best use I find for it IS against those two monsters. It only becomes ridiculous when you point-blank fire it at a larger monster like mancubi. And the combo is just so strong as to be functionally pointless. It's overkill. You only need to use it when faced with that aforementioned crowd of bruisers that you can't dispatch with regular spam. You're essentially firing 5 missiles at once but even more powerful. Though, I suppose this may actually be a good thing.

I will up to missile count for the combo. I could make the spread a little tighter too so that more shots can potentially hit enemies.

My suggestion? Make the total damage of the shots combined more than that of the power beam (perhaps greatly so), but make each individual pellet deal much less than a single power beam shot.

A regular spazer shot already deals 30 damage, with each pellet doing 10 separately. Maybe I could have each pellet do 5-6 damage for a total of 15-18 damage? That basically halves the damage.

Whereas the spazer is better against horizontally arranged monsters, the plasma beam is a piercing weapon, which means it should naturally be better than the other weapons but only if hitting multiple monsters in a line. Which means I'm immensely confused as to why it is so much better than any other option in every situation. No, really. This weapon, due to its ticking damage mechanic, outclasses almost everything in damage as long as you're hitting 2 or more enemies. Even if you hit only one, the only weapon that really does more damage in a short span of time is a long beam shot. There aren't really very many mechanical flaws with this weapon, even, it's just too damn strong.

This has been further nerfed in the latest beta (which is available on my discord). The Plasma Beam's particles called A_Explode before, and if a straight shot hit directly, you could easily do 800 damage with one charge shot. I've reduced this damage significantly and slightly increased the rate of fire to compensate for it.

The one issue I have with the weapon is its combo: It's completely different from the beam's main function. The Solar Flare shot is basically a lingering fire effect that never really hits anything due to not spreading and having a short lifetime. Additionally, it's an explosion where the beam is a piercer. The original flamethrower combo from prime had a much better idea that can expand upon that use. This does run into the issue where it overlaps with the hyper beam, but I will get to that. My changes, then? Nerf this disgustingly powerful monster. Reduce its range slightly to make the long beam the overall better choice for single targets at a long range. Then, just completely change the combo into a flamethrower type weapon that consumes missiles slower than the hyper beam and still pierces, but also deals significantly less damage. Either that or you could make the combo a sort of railgun that can pierce through walls.

I can increase the lifetime of the spread and actually make the spread work further. I didn't want to replicate Prime's flamethrower because like you said, hyper beam, but I definitely want a different combo for it. The range has been decreased in the latest beta.

This weapon is honestly one of the few ones I'm mostly fine with. The only issue I find is that, again, it's just too strong in situations that it shouldn't be. The bouncing property of this weapon should make it primarly something you use in tight corridors and small rooms where it can bounce a lot But also, its primary fire is still stronger than the power beam, and they also just stop bouncing when they hit an enemy, which seems counterintuitive. The weapon in general has this issue where direct hits still do most of the damage instead of the bouncing projectiles. My suggestion? Allow the primary shots to bounce off of enemies. Make them generally just bounce more times before disappearing. Also, make each individual hit fairly weak, such that it can still outdamage the power beam per-shot, but only if the projectile bounces off of a few enemies. Also, the beam combo is just horrifyingly powerful in crowds. It does far more damage than it should with only 5 missiles. Like, it's often better than using a power bomb.

Agreed, I've been meaning to nerf the damage on primary fire shots. I already nerfed the charge combo further (which takes 10 missiles to shoot btw, not 5). It doesn't shoot as many mini missiles out, so you can't clear a whole room (literally) with it. The point of the shots not bouncing on enemies was to be expanded on with a shocking type damage indicator with some damage over time. This could probably be further enhanced with bounced shots doing more damage.

One: Against fodder, the enemies it can easily one-to-two shot, it's more of a hassle because of how it freezes the enemies instead of killing them. This makes them get in the way of your following shots.

Without beam stacking, I don't see how else to go around this.

Even more confusing is how the charge shot appears to be WORSE than spamming? Each regular shot deals 50 damage, and in the same amount of time you can charge the beam, you could instead fire 3-4 of those regular shots. And yet, the charge shot only does 100 damage? In practice, anyways. And not only that, but it also doesn't appear to have a guranteed chance of paralyzing the monster. Increased for sure, but for how long a charge takes I expect to at least be able to keep a baron locked down while I deal with its backup. But it breaks out of that paralysis so quickly that I only have time to pull out a single missile before it's attacking again. The charge shot seems almost entirely useless, especially when 3 regular shots usually paralyzes the monster anyways.

I'll admit I've been a little shy with the Ice Beam. That's probably an oversight on my part having the regular shots do 50 damage. It might be better to increase charge shot damage and the splash of it as well. If it paralyzes 100% of the time, then I'm not going to extend the length of freeze because this would absolutely be broken. Imagine playing a slaughterwad with that... Also, the paralysis lasts about 3 seconds IIRC. That's plenty of time to fire a super missile, or to move and re-group, or to use the morph ball and leave, or to space jump out, or use a power bomb, or spam bombs.... shall I go on?

And then you have the disaster of a beam combo. I swear, this thing is bugged, because every time I've ever used it, it seems like it just doesn't do anything. Sure, the monster most likely gets frozen on hit, but then they break out of it shortly and don't get re-frozen by the ice spreader's mist. I haven't exactly measure teh damage for this combo in particular, but in practice I've rarely ever seen it kill any monster that wasn't directly struck with it. It's really a matter of "why would I ever use this?". Because in every case where I could use the ice spreader, it would be more efficient and effective to just spam the regular shot and fire a missile every time the monster gets frozen. The only real uses I've found for this weapon are to stunlock isolated bosses and archviles. And really, there are better weapons to deal with them.

Agreed, it needs work. Currently it only does 1 damage every second, which needs a buff and needs to keep enemies frozen.

My suggestion is thus: The freezing mechanic is interesting, but gets in the way far too often. Either frozen-dead monster need to become a thruspecies and shatter automatically after a moment, or they need to get frozen sooner to justify the inconcenience.

Again, if there were beam stacking it wouldn't be an issue. I don't really agree with giving frozen mobs +THRUSPECIES. It doesn't make sense when the ice beam isn't a piercing weapon. A better solution may be to make the enemy explode and do ice damage (maybe even having a chance to freeze enemies it hits) when shot and/or after they've been frozen for a certain period of time.

The paralysis state needs to last longer, preferably based on the strength of the monster, so that it's possible to actually take advantage of it. The charge shot needs to be much stronger than it currently is, and the regular shot may need to be ever-so-slightly weaker. Ice spreader needs to function properly and do enough to justify using 5 missiles. Because as useful as freezing things is, I'd rather just kill the monster in a single shot. Anything touching the affected area should get frozen. It should be a trap guranteed to be effective, especially if it isn't going to be a primarily damage-dealing tool.

Now that makes a little more sense. Having stronger monsters affected longer would be a better idea. Agreed on the charge and primary shots as said earlier, and agreed on the Ice Spreader.

I mean, we're dealing with 5 missiles: That's 750 damage. If it isn't at least as good as instantly dealing 750 damage, why would I ever use it?

Because this isn't the same thing... 5 missiles will take about 3 seconds to fire and don't splash very far. They're meant to focus on a single target or a small group of mobs. If the Ice Spreader does 750 damage and freezes mobs, then it certainly won't use a measly 5 missiles.

This is another weapon I don't have many problems with. The only issue is that it doesn't have much of a use aside from sniping cacos and faraway monsters with the regular shot. The charge shot reveals its second use which I agree with: single-target damage. And its combo, I'll be honest, I have no idea what this is supposed to be. Besides dealing a lot of focused damage, anyways. It's fine if that's all it's supposed to be for, but it's awfully boring. The entire concept of the beam is just quite boring, and that's its flaw. My suggestion? None. I don't know what to do with this thing. It's brutally efficient but also useless outside of its niche. The only thing I could suggest is giving its beam combo more of a use besides just one-shotting anything as strong as a baron or less. It's honestly the most balanced weapon in this mod.

Now this is funny! Long Beam has always been the least favorite haha. What I've done in the latest beta is decreased the fire rate and added a zoom functionality to it. My plan was to replace it entirely but creating a new beam that's useful has proven to be quite challenging without ripping one of Prime's other beams. The beam combo is... something. It's just an overly powerful missile with a gigantic AoE. I don't think we have an idea yet for its replacement.

No comment. Besides maybe give it a full charge? Also, I have no idea what this combo is trying to accomplish. As a gag weapon it's cool, but I just don't know what else it could possibly do.

The Doom Cannon has a full charge, it's just represented incorrectly on the HUD. It's totally a gag weapon though. We may re-use it and modify it for the campaign.

I want to like this weapon. I really, really want to like it. Unfortunately, it seems to be all over the place and is generally just a massive liability in combat. Against massive ongoing hordes? Its best matchup, honestly. As the BFG replacer, it ought to be. Unfortunately, it takes so goddamn long to cut through monsters thanks to the lower damage and long spin-up that you're going to tank a lot of projectiles before you win. And really, at that point it's better to just use a combo. Speaking of which, the hyper beam is absolutely insane. I really like it, but it's also borderline unusable. For one, it eats missiles like a black hole. If you don't have at least 120, it's wholly unusable. And for that cost, it really doesn't do much unless you're fighting slaughter-wad levels of monsters. The damage per tick isn't great, but it pierces.

Agreed to a degree. I want to replace the main fire with a piercing beam like in Super Metroid. The hyper beam I want to scale better so that it consumes more missiles the longer you fire it, or maybe have it consume energy instead. I may have got the damage wrong when I nerfed it. It was absurdly powerful before. I may increase the damage a lot more as long as it is backed by something (energy, missiles, something...). We had the idea of maybe using the raw energy charges as the ammo pool, so that armor has a secondary purpose and isn't broken.

And with how long it takes to replenish those missiles? Forget ever using this thing unless the situation has surpassed the godzilla threshold. It is quite honestly the definition of an impractical superweapon.

I mean, missiles have always been a problem to replenish in Metroid games. You either need a refill station or you grind on fodder enemies for a while. I may create another pickup drop that gives 5 missiles to help with this.

On the other hand, the regular "dakka" fire of the chroma storm has this glaring issue where the only real way to use it is to spin it up and then just never stop firing for as long as possible. Periodically spinning it up and down takes so long that it's better to just switch to spazer or wave and use those to deal with the same fodder than the chroma storm should be the best weapon at dealing with. Now, I would normally be fine with spinning up a weapon with infinite ammo and firing it for minutes on end without pause. Unfortunately, it has this absolultely godawful, grating firing sound that is so loud that it drowns out everything else in the game and in the room, and on my computer while firing. The only time I can even use this weapon without going insane from the noise is to mute the entire game and just listen to something else. Even then, you still have the issue that it's impossible to see anything while firing.

Yep, sounds have yet to be refined. A lot of them are low quality and way too loud. The primary fire again, I want to change it to something else entirely. Also, what do you mean about impossible to see? There isn't anything going on while firing that would make it impossible to see. If that's the case, then this should also be a complaint about the plasma beam which takes up more screen space.

If needed to maintain balance, make it weaker. (But not weaker than the aforementioned flamethrower for plasma beam) A usable weaker weapon is better than a powerful unusable weapon any day.

Agreed.

I really just don't see the use in these aside from the power bomb. normally, morph ball and bombs are used to traverse the world. However, most wads don't have anything to traverse besides terrain. The morph ball purely exists to break level progression in those cases. That's fine. The bombs are still useless, however. Both because of the lack of terrain to break with them, and because they are a terrible option to kill literally anything. Thanks to knockback and how slow the ball is, plus how effective your other weapons are, there's no real reason to ever use bombs.

This could be said for all Metroid games. They're primarily an exploration tool, which, in this engine, 100% needs a mapset tailored to it. Otherwise, it's to get Metroids off of you, explore and solve puzzles, and sometimes deal with mobs in morph ball tunnels. They've had a damage boost in the latest beta and a wider spread.

The power bombs, on the other hand, are a very good panic button. The only real issue with them is the fact that they require line of sight, and that they take so long to lay down and detonate.

What do you mean by line of sight? You can pop one of those suckers in a room, run away, and it will clear the majority of that room whether its in the middle of the room, on the ceiling, or next to the wall.

They're great when you know you're going to get surrounded, especially by pinkies, but also rarely ever kills the whole room. In the metroid games, the power bomb can usually pass through walls.

That's because they received a nerf. A power bomb shouldn't do over 15k damage. Hell, they aren't even that strong in the Metroid games. As far as passing though walls, sectors do block power bombs, but I don't know how else to make it work like Super without breaking it. The fact they take longer should offset the fact that they are one of the best ways to deal with mobs, so I don't see how taking longer to plant one off is an issue.

So my suggestions are: The bombs are tricky. Their uselessness stems from how hard they are to use and the fact that they're mostly a utility anyways. Perhaps make them significantly stronger to compensate for the fact that you're practically guranteed to take damage while attempting to use them?

They have gotten a buff. Also, you can escape quite easily with them. One bomb is enough to jump over most mobs. If you're letting mobs corner you, then may I suggest another tactic?

Also, the morph ball is almost too fast when moving forward, but unbearably slow when strafing. The controls are just a bit whack. I'd personally allow fast strafing with it, and maybe make the player able to pass through monsters while morphed. That way you can use it as a getaway tool.

This was done to give Boost Ball a purpose as being a good escape tool while being damaging. However, I definitely don't agree with allowing to pass through monsters while morphed. Why should you ever leave morph ball when you have Boost Ball and Power Bombs, plus a smaller hitbox?

I'd make the power bomb detonation time a bit longer, then reduce their blast radius and remove the line of sight requirement by letting the blast pass through walls.

I don't know how that last part could be done honestly. Also, you said they took too long to use and you want me to extend this time?

Power bombs are rare enough that they should be appropriately nuclear, but not some russian overkill-tier map clearing tool. It may also be advisable to make it only deal such limited damage as to mostly be for clearing weaker monsters while not being that effective against stronger ones. Perhaps 300 damage, allowing it to kill up to Revenants? Also, it could use a better explosion effect than that pitiful fart that it currently has.

If I can get its damage type working, then this should be relatively easy.

[Logan MTM]

That music... I don't get it!

[R4L]

That music... I don't get it!

I don't get this post... what are you talking about?

[thedeathrunner123]

Is this still being actively developed/slowly worked on or is this mod dead?

[Captain J]

Perhaps we should wait more instead of bumping. I get the frustration of waiting for more things to happen but waiting does help.

[R4L]

Long time no see!

Since my son was born in September, I haven't had a lot of time to dedicate to this mod. However, I'm still working on things:


Yep, monster mod compatibility! Also, new beam effects! Thanks ZScript!

Lots more planned, stay tuned.

[Wivicer]

Dang, that ice effect is really cool.

[Valherran]

Grats on your son being born!

Ice Beam is looking great, hope to see an update soon!

[R4L]

Grats on your son being born!

Ice Beam is looking great, hope to see an update soon!

Thank you!

As for updates, I am pushing commits to GitHub all the time. There is a link on page 1. Since I'm only one person, I wouldn't mind others giving things a try for weeding out potential bugs!

[R4L]

Power Bomb has been redone! No more spamming A_CustomMissile, BlockThingsIterator ftw!