The Scarlet Hellion (1.2)

[Reckspants]

Download: Version 1.2

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Version 1.1
Version 1.0

WHAT IS THIS?
The Scarlet Hellion is a melee-oriented Gameplay Mod for The Ultimate Doom, Doom II, and Heretic (Hexen would delay this until 2025 at the rate I work) where you play as an undead wanderer who seeks vengeance. It differentiates itself from other melee-focused mods by focusing more on adaption and precision over speed.

IMPORTANT NOTICE
You need to make sure you have the following keys bound:
-Alt-Fire
-Reload
-Zoom
-Use Item
If you do not then you can't use most of your attacks and abilities.

FEATURES
-The Hellion's weapon, the Mage Crystal Greatsword, is the only weapon you get. However, when you pick up special runes it acquires alternate fire modes and improves the base attacks for it.
-These attacks are fueled by rune echoes and can also be charged by slaying foes with the sword slashes, punching, or deflecting attacks.
-To compensate for her relative lack of mobility, she has built in damage reduction and can regenerate up to 35 health if given the chance.
-Reads enemy data via flags and properties so it should not have to rely too much on compatability patches for monsters or maps.
-Cancel out attacks in to other attacks in a pinch.
-Slap projectiles and bullets out of the air for a burst of health and ammo.
-Slaying enough enemies while holding the Stygian Nexus allows you to upgrade your attacks to devastating degrees.
-Compatible with Zandronum 3.0.
-Mutators are available for those who want to shake the gameplay up a little.
-All attacks work with auto aim. Even the powered up plasma rifle replacement that acts as a rapid fire railgun. How I pulled that off is a long story.

TUTORIAL
There's a fairly extensive How to Play section in the main menu that should help you get started. The quit messages also provide gameplay tips.

HEY HOW COME THE SCREEN'S FLASHING VARIOUS COLORS?
It means you somehow tripped the Brutal Doom Weapons Detector. Please do not play this with Brutal Doom. Last I checked there is a standalone monsters mod you should use if you really want Brutal Doom monsters.
(there's also a secret code that lets you turn this on whenever you want. it can't be shut down once it starts though)

KNOWN ISSUES
-I didn't actually test this in multiplayer properly as a heads up. While it SHOULD work I can't 100% guarantee it.

[Reckspants]

Just updated this to version 1.1
Download link: Here.

1.1 Changes:
[*]Damage taken from Poison, Crushing, Fire, and Slime reduced slightly (83% of damage without armor, 90% with armor but before armor is factored in).
Originally these types of attacks did full damage.
[*]Carnage Crescent now does full damage across the entire blast area.
[*]Carnage Crescent damage bumped up from 70 + (8 or 16) to 84 + (8 or 16).
[*]Carnage Crescent's second hit bumped up from 48 + (8 or 16) to 56 + (8 or 16).
[*]Fixed edge cases where the Explosive Payload would go off despite being nowhere near the projectile that caused it.
[*]Fixed the Carnage Crescent doing full damage to whatever it hit after bouncing off of a wall.
[*]Carnage Crescent's powered up form now does the same damage as the normal version.
[*]All attacks with the damage variation of (+5, +10, +15) have been changed to (+8, +16).
[*]Base attacks (Sword slashes, punching, blaster) can now be cancelled into other attacks and charges.
[*]Fixed edge case where the Explosive Payload doesn't react to doors moving. It now just explodes on its own if it's not near any walls.
[*]Fixed the Explosive Payload not despawning if it was attached to something.
[*]The sword waves now leave a decal. Not sure how I managed to miss that.
[*]Deflection giving rune charges slight rework:
-Rather than giving you a set amount of rune charge, it now has diminishing returns if you deflected in the last few seconds.
-Past two deflects, the rune charge given is minimal.
-Hopefully this discourages sitting in front of a Mancubus to farm ammo.
-Note too that this does not apply to the brief bonus to attack speed or the health given.
[*]Stygian Nexus reworked:
-Rather than having up to 4 uses with a base duration, it now has one bar with a duration based off of how filled that bar is.
-Can be cancelled by pressing Use Item while the Nexus is selected.
-Must have enough kills for it to last at least 1 second to activate.

[Reckspants]

Version 1.2 of the Scarlet Hellion is out and with it comes yet even more balance changes, bug fixes, support for a total conversion, and a new mutator!

Link: Download

HEADLINE FEATURES:
-Harmony compatability! Using nothing but ACS to detect if harmony is loaded. Probably not the best fit gameplay wise but oh well.
-NEW MUTATOR: Borrowed Time. The Reaper is out to hunt. Your only option is to run.

PATCH NOTES:

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-Harmony compatability! Using nothing but ACS to detect if harmony is loaded. Probably not the best fit gameplay wise but oh well.
-NEW MUTATOR: Borrowed Time. The Reaper is out to hunt. Your only option is to run.

-Damage reduction from normal attacks increased to 60% (you take 40% damage). Damage reduction with shield changed to 40% (you take 60% damage).
-Damage reduction from Poison, Fire, Slime, and Crushing reduced to 40% / 20% (you take 60% / 80%).
-Splash damage reduction modified to account for the new damage reduction values.
-While using the Stygian Nexus, kills no longer give full credit for the duration timer.
-You must also kill them directly for their deaths to add to your timer.
-Stygian Infusion now has an entry cost of 2 seconds worth of time.
-Stygian Infusion now shows an aura arround the player affected by it. Note that this spawns a bit behind the player so it doesn't get in the way.
-Maximum duration of the Stygian Infusion reduced from 60 seconds to 20 seconds.
-Picking up a Stygian Nexus now gives half of the maximum duration rather than 1/4 of the max.
-Stygian Motes now give a consistent amount of charge for the Stygian Nexus.
-Ratio of Stygian Nexus charge to duration changed to 2 kills per 1 tick.
-This means you need more kills to sustain charges on the Stygian Nexus. Bosses still give one third of the total time.
-Infused Hellfire Blast's damage range went from (15 to 30 random inclusive) * 1.5 to (15 to 20 random inclusive) * 1.333
-Infused Hellfire Blast spawns fewer fireballs.
-Hellfire Blast and Red Lightning Hose's endings can be cancelled into attacks without changing attack modes.
-Deflection's rune charge diminishing timer is now based off of how much damage the attack would have done rather than being a flat value.
-Carnage Crescent now gives the victim a brief (8 tics) immunity to its second hit.
-This means enemies in alcoves or enclosed spaces only take one hit from the Carnage Crescent rather than two.
-Infused Carnage Crescent now does 1.5x the damage a normal Carnage Crescent would.
-Infused Red Lightning Hose's base damage bumped up from 64 + (4, 8, 12) to 96 + (4, 8, 12).
-Edited the help screens to account for powerups available in Harmony.
-Fixed the help screen still mentioning having four uses of the Stygian Nexus. Oops.
-Damage variation on most attacks changed from (+8, +16) to (+6, +12).
-Fixed a bug where both the Red Lightning Hose and Hellfire Blast attacks come out instantly after interrupting the attack with the Stygian Infusion.
-If you deactivate Stygian Infusion while any Winds of Strife are out, their duration is reduced to 30 seconds. The damage and range stay the same however.
-Instead of a single miniscule health potion dropped from runes on Language erasure, the number of potions dropped is scaled by how valuable the rune is.
-Explosive Payload duration before exploding increased from 10 seconds to 30 seconds.
-Behind-the-scenes Texture organizing that has no impact on gameplay.

[Spaceman333]

I like the mod, ran a full playthrough with it and had a blast.

Swinging the blade and chopping down hordes of smaller foes was plenty enjoyable. I enhanced my experience with a universal grappling hook addon, allowing me to yank monsters to me and slash the hell out of them with my sword. Full on mortal kombat scorpion esque brutalities.

The UI, runes and names of things felt confusing and for the entire first half of the playthrough I was totally confused what any of the icons and numbers meant, but eventually I got the hang of it once my full arsenal was collected. I felt the ability/weapon pickups were so strongly similar to the ammo pickups that for the most part I didn't realize I was about to pickup a new weapon until after touching the thing.

The complete selection of attacks/weapons is fairly small and conservative in their balance/implementation, so fights against larger foes, especially larger hordes of knights, cacodemons and higher monsters became somewhat of a slog. The total ammo capacity is quite low, while even the special abilities are relatively low powered to make much damage to hordes to effectively dispatch them.

The block/parry was so strict that I ended up just tanking hits than trying to block them - which was further made worse since I couldn't quickly switch to a block if I was already committed to a sword swing.

Its a neat mod though and definitely worth playing for that excellent yet simple melee fun. Would love to see an easier block/deflect, more ammo for the blaster and other rune abilites, more power to all abilities (and even more power to the stygian heart boosted things), a melee swing for the blue and red swords too. As well as new weapons and even more sword modes.