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[Sambojin]

In the new enemy thread, I got a little side tracked at one point and began ruminating about the old friendly fire battles you could set up between baddies in the original doom. I know this is somewhat accounted for in the dodge mechanics, but it would be nice if your enemies would actively TRY and kill each other, not just miss you. This is assuming the code is in place for working out who hit who if it's not Doomguy doing the hitting.

I'd like to know people's ideas on how they'd implement such a system?

Heres my slightly expanded thoughts:

There could be four different team types, each with a hate counter (four counters each team). I'll list who is on who's team below, but the crux of the matter is that each teams counter goes up as it hits any other team(even their own). It goes down as time passes(1 point a second for all hate counters). Whichever team's counter is highest for any particular creatures "turn" (shooting, movment) , they will then attack or move towards the closest member of that type of team's creature, otherwise they'll just stick to normal AI.

There's a few things to consider. Doomguy's counter never goes below 2 for all teams(so is usually the main target). A same-team attack only counts for 1/2 a hate point(to stop regular mobs imploding quite as often, and to show animosity of daemon groups to each other). It's hits not damage that counts for hate points(so the little guys still pull aggro).

Team 1: Doomguy, aka you, aka bullet magnet. Never goes below 2 hate points on all other teams counters.

Team 2: Former marines. That is, former humans, seargents, captains and commandos plus any boss types that get added. One bad shotgun blast and the daemons may chastise their new servants.

Team 3: lesser daemons. Daemons, imps, knights, barons, bruiser brothers. A little more caution with the acid balls, please sir?

Team 4: tech daemons. Arachnotrons, revenants, mancubi, archviles, all bosses. Hated by all below them, but hard enough to keep them in line.

You'll note that skulls and pain elementals aren't on the list. This is so they retain their niche somewhat. They always hate doomguy.

The numbers may have to be tweaked, on both doomguy's basic hated level and on the cool-down speed of the hate counters, but it would give many little nuances to the game. You could set up battles. You could have stealthy weapons (high damage, single hit, sniper-stealth. Pistols, assault rifles and hyperblasters really start looking good). You could also have more little challenges/items/level types (how hated are you?). You could also have a few more enemies a level to compensate.

So, do you like the idea, even if it's not implemented as above? And how would you do it if you were coding/designing the system?

[Creepy]

I do like the idea of bringing back enemy infighting. But the team thing sounds like there would be issues with enemies getting into firefights when you're not even anywhere near them, because a "teammate" across the level wandered into your crossfire. And your teams are set up to ignore some of the most common Doom firefights; Formers of all colors were EASY to rile up against each other, and Imps nailing a charging demon in the back and getting it's attention was pretty common.

I think it'd be easier to just deal with it as Doom did. If some asshole hits another beastie with crossfire, they note his identifier in whatever array holds the active enemies on the level. Until that guy's dead or the victimized monster get distracted by someone ELSE blasting them, the shooter gets all the attention. Monsters ignore attacks from their own species/subgroups; Imps like other imps, knights don't care about splash from barons, and so on. In Doom monsters without actual bullets couldn't hurt their own species anyway. And nobody ever attacks an Archvile.

I think Doom had something like a hate-counter to decide how long their target is unchangable so that the monsters don't get schizo about targets during a crossfire, but actual teams sounds like a good way to have half the level dead before you reach it. Funny, but not really good for gameplay.

[Bloax]

Well, here's some stupid system stuff coming in.

Code: [Select]

Monsters all start at Hate 0, when alerted by player (came into vision), Hate rises to 100, and depletes with (5/(1+(DmgCurrentlyTaken/MaxHealth)*(DmgTaken/MaxHealth))) per second.
Hate would be increased by DamageTaken*(MaxHealth/CurrentHealth)*(Hate/25)
Thus a Baron, that has taken 0 damage from the player, after 10 seconds, would end up having 50 hate.
While a Hell knight who has taken 33 damage from the player in one hit would have about 488(.23) hate (wow), and said hate would deplete with a speed of 3(.4) per second.

Hate increments should be rounded up, depletions down. :-)
Monsters should stop looking for you after hate falls below 30. If some monster has scored more hate than you, it starts attacking THAT instead of you.
Perhaps amplify the MonsterVsMonster hate gain. (Old stuff, probably unnecessary because of the ENORMOUS hate gains. :O)

Also as said, hate against Archviles should automatically reset to 0, also the Archviles behave in another way.
Instead of retaliating if it's hate towards you is lower than against something else, it automatically starts attacking the latest thing that has scored about 40-60 hate against it.

Thus archie groups wouldn't be THAT bad, since they'd most likely end up with the archie attacking whatever hit it a couple of times. ;)

(I don't have time now, so my little math here might be EXTREMELY off, though the hate fall-off should probably be amplified a bit.)

[AlterAsc]

I'm not sure it's a good idea.
I mean there are lots of fights where monsters hit each other, since almost all late-game enemies have splash-attack and implementing FF for them could  to absurd situations where you stand and watch and monsters hit each other and do more random hits on more of their kind creating chainreaction and ultimately killing themselves without you.

[Sambojin]

Yeah, the team idea is probably a bit too much. I went to sleep thinking of the insta-death of half the level, as well as strange thoughts of an arachnotron being persecuted by every other daemon for its bad aim. No one ever thinks of the poor arachnotrons. I'm blaming that fact that it was very late and I'd eaten some rich food myself.........

Could having a fair bit of crossfire be tested in the Archangel of Pacifism challenge? Adds to the game mode, while not destroying the rest of the game until it's been balanced thoroughly. You can't hit them, but they could hit them?

[Bloax]

That would certainly make everything much more tolerable.
As for chain reactions, ever seen what happens to a cyberdemon behind a big group of monsters?
They quickly change their attention to attacking it instead of you.

It's just that most monsters in the real DOOM die really fast from the cyberdemon rockets.
Let's just say that the infighting should happen if (random(0,3) > 2), which only happens every second or third second. And only if (PlayerHate > Monster*Hate)

[Dorten]

That would certainly make everything much more tolerable.
As for chain reactions, ever seen what happens to a cyberdemon behind a big group of monsters?
They quickly change their attention to attacking it instead of you.

It's just that most monsters in the real DOOM die really fast from the cyberdemon rockets.
Let's just say that the infighting should happen if (random(0,3) > 2), which only happens every second or third second. And only if (PlayerHate > Monster*Hate)

Yeah...
Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoPzTDikeSo
starts on 3:18
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