As before with the Gunfighter, my brother "S" has made a new mod for Doom, but is once again releasing it under my name. This time he's created an update to the Samsara Monster Mixer, with better balancing and an expanded enemy roster. I'll leave it to him to explain what he's got in store for you.
Greetings once again to my fellow community members! S here once again to release my latest addition to the vast pool of mods available here on the ZDoom forums: an updated take on the Monster Mixer add-on for the wonderful gameplay mod Samsara!
The Samsara project has been one of my new favorite mods to play for the longest time. Its wide roster of characters and in-depth customization features make it one of the most creative gameplay mods available yet. So when I saw that it had an extra mod that added the monsters from each hero's respective universe as well, I thought it would be an extra bonus to an already exciting experience. However, while playing it, I thought that the mod should have the same customizable features that were available in the core mod. Hence, the idea for the New Monster Mixer Mod was born.
The New Monster Mixer takes all the things that made the first run of the Monster Mixer good and makes them great. Here are the main features:
1) In addition to all the monsters that were available in the original Monster Mixer, you can now play with monsters from Strife and Hacx.
2) Monster placement is completely customizable. You can choose which games the monsters spawn from, and leave out ones you did not like.
What does this mean for you? Now you can play Herian 2 with monsters from Doom, Heretic, and Hexen like it was truly meant to be! Play as B.J. and fight Nazis instead of demons as you play through Memento Mori 2! Fight off hordes of Hacx mutants in Chex Quest! The possibilities are endless.
The New Monster Mixer has fixed some balancing issues that were present in the original version. These include:
- Monsters from games not native to the IWAD that you are playing were prone to getting stuck in walls and ceilings (this was very common if you were playing Doom). The sizes of monsters have been corrected for them to be more compatible with other mods. Monsters may not look like they should fit in a certain area, but it's more fair than them being trapped like a fish in a barrel.
- The Fighter and Mage bosses have been weakened to make them more fair as sub-bosses. The Cleric boss has been removed entirely.
- Wolfenstein enemies now use A_WolfAttack, making them more authentic to their original game. This also makes them less of push-overs.
- And many more, smaller fixes as well.
There are some important notes you should take into consideration before playing the New Monster Mixer:
- The New Monster Mixer can only be played with ZDoom. It cannot be played in Zandronum. Unfortunately, the scripting and DECORATE features of Zandronum are severely lacking compared to ZDoom. There is no way I can rightly port the New Monster Mixer to Zandronum without eliminating the features that make it what it is. When Zandronum does update, however, I will gladly port it over.
- The New Monster Mixer should not be played with scripting-heavy ZDoom maps. It's possible some more advanced mods could break if played with the New Monster Mixer. It's safer to play with Vanilla and Boom maps.
- The only games the New Monster Mixer supports are Doom, Heretic, and Chex Quest. Hexen cannot be played because it relies too heavily on ACS scripts.
- Like Samsara, the New Monster Mixer should be played in GZDoom. This will correct any color palette inconsistencies between games, although you may experience some sprite clipping issues instead.
- The New Monster Mixer may not work correctly on massive monster-filled maps. By this, I mean maps similar to NUTS-style "ridiculous" gameplay (but even Deus Vault should be okay, should you be so inclined)
- There are several new enemies added for Hacx and Strife. While I have tried to maintain authenticity for every respective game, there simply were not enough enemies in Hacx and Strife to fill the wide enemy roster found in Doom II. These enemies, while in the style of the game, are not part of it's original vision. They may not even be close to what the creators had in mind (especially in the case of incomplete Hacx), but for the sake of completeness, I added what I thought would work best.
HOW TO PLAY: In order to play the New Monster Mixer, you must load it after the main Samsara file. If you are playing with an extra PWAD, be sure to load that before any Samsara files.
- To adjust the selective monster placement, go to "Options" in the game menu, then select "Monster Mixer Options." From here, you can select which monsters you want to use in the game.
- The changes take place after every level. This means you can change the monster types on every stage in a regular campaign if you wanted to!
- If, for some reason, you turn all monsters off, it will automatically default to monsters from Doom.
That's about it. And now, without further ado, the download link for the New Monster Mixer! Please feel free to leave comments, suggestions and bug reports down below.
The NEW Samsara Monster Mixer: http://www.mediafire.com/download/9x888 ... rMixer.pk3
Here is a list of credits of all people who were involved directly and indirectly with the creation of the New Monster Mixer:Spoiler:Happy hunting!
- S
but because they are not compatible with Hexen 