Satanic Redux V10.8 Released! 5/31/12

[EksFaktr]

I have missed this somewhere in the manual (admittedly I only glanced at it), but I wasn't sure of the purpose of the NecroVision. Is there some evil spirit later on the game that you can't see without it?

Otherwise, I think this mod will be great fun! Currently working through Plutonia 2 with it

[Ethril]

The NecroVision is basically just a portable light-amp powerup. Use it when it's too dark to see, to help make out targets when sniping, or to see stealth monsters running around. Similarly, the NecroBarrier is just the Radiation Suit... I think the Barrier should give some slight damage resistance too, though.

Also: Did you know that once you obtain the Kindred Genesis, you can use the Deadman Head's altfire to create minions?

[amv2k9]

I have missed this somewhere in the manual (admittedly I only glanced at it), but I wasn't sure of the purpose of the NecroVision.

What Ethril said.

Is there some evil spirit later on the game that you can't see without it?

I was actually thinking of doing this with the Death Whispers, but I dunno if anyone else would like the idea.

I think this mod will be great fun! Currently working through Plutonia 2 with it

Thank you! And that's actually one of the mods I've been playtesting this with.

...I think the Barrier should give some slight damage resistance too, though.

Hmmm... You can already get armor when you have a Book of Shadows, at the cost of some Mana, which I think would be too much like a NecroBarrier+damage resistance. I'll have to think about it.

Right now I'm working on mage-handing the shotgun. Thank heavens for RotSprite. The rotations were looking like ass in Fireworks thanks to AA.

[amv2k9]

Version 6 is now out! Check the first post for the download.
New screenshots! Added 8/8/11.

V6 Changelog:

Gameplay Changes/Fixes:
-In V5, the game could not randomly spawn Lost Souls; it would always spawn Death Whispers. This was because the randomspawner which replaces the Lost Soul and chooses whether to spawn a 'Soul or 'Whisper, was spawning the base Lost Soul and not an actor which inherited from it. Therefore the randomspawner continously spawned itself until it chose the Death Whisper. This has been fixed.
-EvilDemon melee damage slightly decreased.
-NecroBarrier now grants the player with 100 spiritual armor points. This armor stops 25% of damage (half the SavePercent rating of armor gained through the Book of Shadows), and will slowly deplete even when you're not getting hit. In addition, any residual armor will be removed if you manually deactivate the NecroBarrier power. NecroBarrier Mana cost increased from thirty points to fifty.
-Necrovision Mana cost decreased from thirty points to twenty.

Cosmetic Changes/Fixes:
-Shotgun now uses mage hands for improved visual consistency between weapons.
-Leather sleeves replace the robes seen on the arms when the Blood Magic or Shotgun are equipped, for improved visual consistency between player sprites and HUD sprites. Leather sleeve sprite is made by MidoriMan.
-Dynamic lights for Vengeful rocket explosion and totem explosion.
-Health & soul ammo icons now animated.

[amv2k9]

I'm working on V7 right now, but I'm pretty far from releasing it; adding one or two new enemies, balancing things, making the zoom graphics for the M. Eagle look less ugly, adding a blood/gore system (it's no Brutal Doom, but it should make xdeaths a bit more satisfying). I could really use some feedback on what I've done so far before I do too much more.

[TerminusEst13]

Uhm, hi. I've come in way, way, way too late for my feedback to be of major worth, but I decided to give this a shot and try it out, pressing my luck in compatibility and pairing it with Realms of Suffering. I'm sorry if this completely misses the point of things or goes over stuff already talked about earlier.

First impressions were glorious. I love the sense of style that's over everything--the anti-hero looks absolutely wicked, the noir palette is beautiful, the inverted crucifix puff on the Deagle is awesome, and that "bong" sound effect is intimidating as hell.
Second impressions were "good god, this is hard as hell". Replacing all of the health pickups with something else...really, well, that just makes everything unnecessarily hard. It seems like the only thing that regenerates your health is the Blood Magic's primary fire, and I am NOT going to go into melee range with some of these new beasts. Looking at the readme suggests that there's also a Kindred Genesis, which replaces the Soulsphere/Chainsaw--but Soulspheres are mostly reserved for either A: Secrets, or B: Preparation for lengthy fights, and Chainsaws are usually only given once a level. Unless you plan on making the enemies all fire dodgeable projectiles, surviving is going to be mostly luck based on whether the hitscanners land or not. There's nothing more discouraging than dying to a swarm of zombiemen on the easiest difficulty level.
Third impressions. I do like the idea of Blood Magic, draining stuff from corpses in order to power yourself. But the utilization of it seems to be a little clunky--first I have to swap to the Blood Magic weapon, then hunt individual corpses, then lift them all up one by one. Considering how many of your weapons rely on it, it shouldn't be this much of a hassle to recharge on one of the core parts of gameplay. I do like that it just simply revives some types of enemies, though--presumably the ones that weren't in Satanic. Perhaps binding primary fire's functionality to a hotkey would help the fiddling-with-the-weapons part, but not the having-to-hunt-down-every-corpse-in-the-battlefield thing.

Other things of note:
1: It seems the Defiler only activates its secondary fire when you have a full mag.
2: The Book of Shadows only seemed to work once. When I picked it up again after my dude died, it did squat.
3: The Dark Chaos makes mincemeat of just about any boss. I only had to fire twice, and his 15000 HP went down to nothing.
4: There doesn't really seem to be any useful crowd-handling weapons. The head grenades are a great idea, but the bouncing makes them very unpredictable, and the Hellfire Device has a serious lack of range not to mention no real oomph.

[Ethril]

3: The Dark Chaos makes mincemeat of just about any boss. I only had to fire twice, and his 15000 HP went down to nothing.

Isn't the Dark Chaos a BFG replacement? Makes sense that it's powerful; The BFG kills even a Cyberdemon in like 3 shots. It uses up a huge chunk of your ammo, too.

4: There doesn't really seem to be any useful crowd-handling weapons. The head grenades are a great idea, but the bouncing makes them very unpredictable, and the Hellfire Device has a serious lack of range not to mention no real oomph.

The Staff of Suffering is probably the best overall weapon. Works good for crowd control too due to the railgun piercing.
Also, the Blood Magic's altfire rips on the way out but not on the return shot, so it's decent there too.

Of course, seeing as how stone enemies and blood demons are immune to both of those, a crowd of them would be pretty nasty to deal with...

I've found that gameplay tends to devolve into "Clear room with Staff of Suffering/Shotgun, Heal with Genesis, Burn corpses for mana, repeat". There's a lot of neat tricks available but most of them are too impractical due to awkward usage and/or high cost. For example, the Staff's "revive" altfire is mostly pointless because it costs a fair chunk of health and mana for little gain; The shadow monsters are easily slain, and they inflict fire damage so you can't even salvage the enemy corpses. You're usually better off using that mana to kill the enemies yourself.

[amv2k9]

Uhm, hi. I've come in way, way, way too late for my feedback to be of major worth, but I decided to give this a shot and try it out, pressing my luck in compatibility and pairing it with Realms of Suffering. I'm sorry if this completely misses the point of things or goes over stuff already talked about earlier.

First off, thanks for trying this mod and replying!

Unless you plan on making the enemies all fire dodgeable projectiles, surviving is going to be mostly luck based on whether the hitscanners land or not. There's nothing more discouraging than dying to a swarm of zombiemen on the easiest difficulty level.

I am considering making hitscanners into projectile-firers.

Third impressions. I do like the idea of Blood Magic, draining stuff from corpses in order to power yourself. But the utilization of it seems to be a little clunky--first I have to swap to the Blood Magic weapon, then hunt individual corpses, then lift them all up one by one.

Making a second Mana Ritual that works as an Area of Effect attack is a good idea. I've thought about doing this too.

Perhaps binding primary fire's functionality to a hotkey would help the fiddling-with-the-weapons part, but not the having-to-hunt-down-every-corpse-in-the-battlefield thing.

A couple of versions back, there was a hotkey for the Blood Magic, but then I came up with the Third Eye tertiary attack for the M.Eagle. This function also serves as a hotkey when you've got another weapon equipped, so a hotkey for the Blood Magic, which is right next to it, became kind of redundant. There are already quite a few hotkeys for SR, and I didn't wanna bloat things.

1: It seems the Defiler only activates its secondary fire when you have a full mag.

Yeah. That's intentional.

2: The Book of Shadows only seemed to work once. When I picked it up again after my dude died, it did squat.

Hmm. I need to look into this... It may have something to do with the gem that's placed into your inventory that allows you to call the Shadow...

3: The Dark Chaos makes mincemeat of just about any boss. I only had to fire twice, and his 15000 HP went down to nothing.

It is a BFG replacer, after all

4: There doesn't really seem to be any useful crowd-handling weapons. The head grenades are a great idea, but the bouncing makes them very unpredictable, and the Hellfire Device has a serious lack of range not to mention no real oomph.

I may make the Hellfire Device's flames un-guardable by the Imp Warlord. That does get annoying, and could help a ways towards making it better at crowd-control. Plus it seems kinda odd to me that he can guard with his shield from the front... damage that is coming from underneath him

[amv2k9]

Version 7 is now out! Check the first post for the download.

New screenshots added 8/21/11

V7 Changelog:

Gameplay Changes/Fixes:
-Number of stocks for charged shotgun altfire reduced from three to two. Three was redundant, in my opinion, and this is the first step to making this a better altfire. The first stock takes four shells and forty Mana, the second three shells and thirty Mana. So Mana cost overall has also been reduced, from ninety to seventy.
-Imp Warlords now cannot guard against a charged shotgun attack.
-New enemy: Akimbo Chaingunner. Holding two miniguns makes shooting a little unwieldy at long distances, but he's an absolute terror up close.
-New barrel type added: Radioactive Barrel. Better protected from damage, but wider explosion radius when it explodes.
-You can now carry two Clocks of Doom at a time. Powerup duration extended from twenty to thirty seconds.
-Shotgun code streamlined. Reloading is now done on a per-shell basis; tap the button to reload one shell, or press & hold it to do a Speed Reload. Speed Reloads are faster as their name implies, but they cost 2 Mana for each shell reloaded.
-New altfire for the Mind Control Gauntlets: Turn. This is a non-silent melee attack which will ally any enemy with you, save Lost Souls, Death Whispers, Stone Imps, Afrits, Flesh Wizards, Arch-Viles, and boss monsters (Cyberdemons, Dark Cardinals, Spider Masterminds and Demolishers). It costs forty Mana, which will be depleted whether the attack connects with an enemy or not.

Cosmetic Changes/Fixes:
-New death sequence for Cyberdemons.
-Blood & gore system added.
-Added sparks to bullet puff.
-Graphics for M.Eagle zoom function changed.
-New glow effects for standard explosive barrels.
-New decorations that randomly replace existing ones (new tree type, new evil eyes)

[Wargasm92]

Well, DL-ed and tried, and have to say it's good! However, didn't like that no matter what I pressed, I couldn't get the shotgun (Defiler?) to reload at all. I could fire one shot, then reload one (!) shot, and rinse and repeat, but I couldn't get it to reload the full seven/whatever at all. You might want to look into that.

Also, I read one post stating that needed to splice mage hands on the shotgun. I actually did something like that, I'm using it in an as-of-now unreleased project. (They're the Hexen mage hands, copy and pasted (with quite a bit of freehand, by me) onto the doom shotgun) If you want, I could post an image of them for you to look at.

[KILLER2]

Now...if you also made some maps for it.Don't get me wrong,gameplay mods are interesting,but they get boring quick.
EDIT:You say the Kindred Jenesis is a replacement for the Chainsaw in the text file.Later in the text file you say it replaces the soulsphere...what?Anyway,it clearly doesn't replace the chainsaw,which is actually a big mana pickup.
Also,the Dark Chaos Magic is not a starting item as stated in the textfile.

[TerminusEst13]

Now...if you also made some maps for it.Don't get me wrong,gameplay mods are interesting,but they get boring quick.

I disagree. When someone tries to do both in a single mod, usually you end up with a half-done work on each side.
When you have mods that just focus on gameplay, you can load them up with different maps to combine them. Sometimes there's even a good enemy mod out there that can help things.
For example, one of my favorite combinations now is a modified version of WW's Nazis to be compatible with Skulltag, one of my own weapon sets, and ancient/temple/forest maps.

[Viscra Maelstrom]

Speaking of mappacks, does anyone have any good recommendations for this mod? I find it quite hard to find mappacks fitting the dark, twisted, satanic feeling of this mod.

[TerminusEst13]

Demons of Problematique and Unloved aren't too bad.

[Cyanosis]

Don't forget Memento Mori II.