[BETA] MMDoom: Might & Magic monster replacer v.0.8

[rayburn]

I could really use everyone's feedback/criticism/ideas.

How well do the new monsters fill in the slots of doom monsters? Have you stumbled into any softlocks because of their abilities (like Medusa gaze, I think I'll nerf it later). Do the projectiles look OK? I believe they can use some variety, and I still have some attacks in mind (meteor shower, thunder clap, ice blast, etc), could use your ideas.

Same goes for spells. Currently there are only few - Heal, Haste, Heroism/Bloodlust. There will be more: Shield, Stone Skin, Protection from [element], Mass Camouflage, maybe some "aura" abilities, etc, etc. Also will try to make more obvious when unit is casting or is being buffed. Could use some ideas here as well.

What about elements system? Is it possible for you to learn which elements work better agains certain monsters? Did the resistances ever cause much problem, maybe on specific maps of some megawads? I want to also make it more obvious which element the enemy is, either via some kind of crit VFX/SFX or maybe some kind of UI.

I am also thinking about bringing the "Morale" and "Luck" systems from HoMM3 to MMDoom as well. And while "Luck" would technically be just a "crit attack" (will probably go beyond just increasing damage, since it's boring, maybe stuff like "Magog normally throws Firebolt, but if Luck happens, he throws Fireball", etc), "Morale" seems to be a design challenge, not really sure what kind of effect should it have. Again, would appreciate your ideas.

I will continue working on the mod in August.

[NIGHTKILLER05]

I don't konw what to say, apart of thank you man, great really great job !!!!!

[rayburn]

Personal update.

I have escaped Russia and not planning to go back to that stinking pit ever again if I can help it. There is a lot of work to be done to solidify my position where I've arrived, everything is new, my budget is tight and I don't know the language. This will take months. Once I'm back on my feet, I hope to continue working on this mod, hopefully expanding it's scope beyond just monsters. I haven't touched it in months already, but well, long breaks sometimes provide better perspective. I am really sorry if any of you expected rapid development out of me. But oh well, I've left all the good equipment behind and what else there is to do on this ancient laptop besides working on a mod for a 27 year old game haha.

Thanks for 550 downloads!

[Rowsol]

I'm a big fan of the HOMM series. It's neat seeing the sprites in this game. The sprites are surprisingly high res. I guess that's why the mod is 180MB.
With that said, none of the enemies are dropping any ammo for me. I'm not sure how you're supposed to play this.

[rayburn]

Yes, this is one of the problems I am aware of. It depends a lot on the mod/wad combination you are playing the monsters with. I mostly play with Walpurgis and there is usually way more than enough mana because of Kraters and the fact every class has some kind of weapon (or specific weapon attacks) that costs no mana and is decently effective. Also Schism's Sorcerer has all of his mana bars regenerate quickly. With Wrath of Cronos, only the yellow mana bar regenerates, but some classes can deal damage with it or convert it into other forms of mana. Finally, some wads seem to straight up have way more ammo pickups than others.

Monster sprites are 256x256 truecolor PNG btw, plus the sounds, the spell animations, the projectiles, etc.

[Craneo]

downscaling from 256 to 80 seems to get a size closer to that of the Heretic/Hexen characters, atleast for the humanoids, they may also need some manual tweaks too... idk about bigger monsters thought...
Edit: nvm, seems some human sprites are different heights despite the canvas being the same size as other ones, so just changing it from 256 to 80 may not work for all...

[rayburn]

Well, ok, MOST of the sprites are 256x256, those from MM7 and MM8 are. And MM6 ones are all wild and different and were actually a pain in the butt (that and the fact they don't have sideways attack frames forcing me to +NOINFIGTHING each of the monsters using MM6 sprites... something that still doesn't fix the situation where player has an AI companion or smth else drawing their fire anyway). Each sprite is also individually scaled by XScale and YScale separately in 1.2 to 1.0 fashion because Doom engine seems to render the sprites in a way they get stretched by Y axis, something that most other creators who tried working with MM sprites seem to have missed. The scaling is also applied to each sprite manually because both Dragon and Swordsman are 256x256 sprites, yet Dragon is obviously way larger than a Swordsman, and even Black Dragon / Green Dragon sprites actually have slightly different sizes on that 256x256 canvas. Sooo I had to basically place every monster on the test map manually and tweak sizes for each of the 60 monsters until I was satisfied. That task alone took quite some time.

While I sure CAN scale the actual images down in batches using GIMP plugin or smth and change the scales in code by the same amount I scale the images afterwards, I honestly see no reason apart from intentionally giving them pixelated look and maybe saving some memory? Let me know if I am missing something. Even on my 2014 laptop, the only FPS drops I get seem to be related to map geometry (I passionatelly hate how ZDoom can't handle open spaces) and also the weird Wrath of Cronos floating healthbars, which I recommed to just turn the f off. So I guess the only PCs that will be challenged by the sprites are very old ones with very little memory.

Speaking of Wrath of Cronos, the only bug I've encountered because of the scales was also because of said mod, which has an integrated version of DamNums spawning the damage numbers at a height based off the sprite image size... for some reason. That I fixed by including a separate pk3 patch for Wrath of Cronos specifically.

Important note is that this monster pack was never intended to be used with older Doom maps using vanilla textures. The notion of shooting Archangels at techbases is pretty silly. However, there is an absolute ton of maps that use mostly custom textures and work extremely well with medieval monsters and weapon mods - like Avactor, Elementalism, MorbidAutumn, most of Eviternity, most of LostCivilization, etc, etc. MM monsters seem to fit those maps well as is, I don't get the feeling they are out of place when I look at them. Do you?

Of course I'd love to do my own maps one day and in fact AlpacaNox has already showcased how good-looking can Doom maps using MM textures be. The only thing stopping me is, well, IRL and the fact I'm extremely lazy. I'd be happy if smb offered assistance with maps, I am sure it would've given me a serious motivation boost haha.

[Dan_The_Noob]

this seems cool, maybe add an option to change enemy race by episode (or every 10 maps) then mix them on secret levels.

[Blake00]

Already posted this over at Celestial Heavens HoMM site but since I'm a fellow ZDoomer I figured I'd show my support here too.

oh my god.. this is crazy.. I'm the creator of Star Trek Doom and Quest for Glory 4 3D Hexen for GZDoom that made it to some of the major news sites a few years back. While I haven't done any Doom editing in years I literally kid you not started thinking about how if I ever do return to GZDoom modding one day then it would be a cool idea to do a mod with imported M&M7 units (as that arguably had the most HoMM3 like lineup).. and now only a couple of weeks later I accidentally stumble on this thread and see that another guy probably on the other side of the world just happened to have the same idea and made it a reality. Amazing!!! Well done sir! At least now I don't have to bloody do all that work hahahahaha!

Although I also had the idea of making a map where each of the 8 or I guess 9 HoMM3 factions castle screens have been rebuilt in 3D in the GZDoom engine. You pick a hero class starting character thats affiliated with one of the factions and you start in their castle and it's units are all allied with you (eg you start as a knight and you in a human castle with archers on the battlements with crusaders around you and archangles in the sky etc) and you venture out of the castle to find all sorts of nasty things out there as the other factions spew their units out of their castles.. if you get overloaded then you retreat to yours and your armies will back you up. You win when only your faction remains heh. Would be cool to see and play but.. oh man.. the work.. and god knows if I ever would have got to it as I've probably still got years of Civ modding ahead of me!

[Facínora]

I love the Might and Magic franchise and then I loved to record this video with MMDoom, Final Raider and Gun Bonsai. These mods/themes mixed so well.

[rayburn]

After a long hiatus and even longer consideration, I've decided I will not be putting any effort in any patches for the mod. It has some issues, but it mostly works, I personally play it just fine. Bugs are mostly minor, but not all of the features were implemented. Having some serious attention issues, I already have to condition myself hard to work on anything at all, and having to recently abandon the entirety of my life to move to another country (out of RU) certainly doesnt help. Besides, I want to use MM assets for something greater, and the more I realize what exactly that is, the more I understand GZDoom is just not cut for it.

You have my blessing to use the mod however you want. And I encourage you to hit me up if you need project documentation (there is plenty). Best way to contact me is via the YouTube channel or Discord, I can usually be found on Hedon or Might & Magic servers (Mercs / .rayburn).