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Author Topic: On demons and weapons  (Read 7567 times)

Anticheese

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On demons and weapons
« on: January 04, 2007, 15:38 »

Monsters at the moment have no sense of teamwork at the moment - You kick in the door, the monsters are in a straight line, the imp at the front fireballs you, the cacodemon at the back fireballs everything else.

Thats fine on the earlier levels and indeed the easier difficulty settings, but as you get deeper into hell, shouldn't hurt-me-plenty become more apparant?

I am talking about teamwork here. Is it possible to have the AI avoid shooting their team members unless they judge appropriate risk? (Hm..he's pinned against a wall. My fireball attack will fry the Former Captain..but it might just kill that damn marine...)

Then what about the deeper denizens moving intelligently to spread out instead of sticking in clumps? At the moment you see a group of enemies in a tightly packed space - Great shotgun/launcher fodder. But at later levels deeper to Hell, shouldn't they gain the powers of intelligence and spread out into say, a half circle that pins the marine against a wall so that they wont all be affected by blast/multishot weapons and can all fire on the marine as opposed to each other?

It would be GREAT for Nightmare mode too.

---

Minor suggestion: At the risk of adding a rock paper scissors attribute to the game, can it be made so that certain creatures have weaknesses to certain types of weapons?

Take Lost Souls for instance, they would make perfect shotgun fodder. So they take just one extra damage point of (guess what) damage and are easier to hit with them.

The idea is that its subtle and not major in any way. Just adds a subtle background element. 
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Adral

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2007, 15:46 »

Monsters at the moment have no sense of teamwork at the moment - You kick in the door, the monsters are in a straight line, the imp at the front fireballs you, the cacodemon at the back fireballs everything else.

Thats fine on the earlier levels and indeed the easier difficulty settings, but as you get deeper into hell, shouldn't hurt-me-plenty become more apparant?

I am talking about teamwork here. Is it possible to have the AI avoid shooting their team members unless they judge appropriate risk? (Hm..he's pinned against a wall. My fireball attack will fry the Former Captain..but it might just kill that damn marine...)

Then what about the deeper denizens moving intelligently to spread out instead of sticking in clumps? At the moment you see a group of enemies in a tightly packed space - Great shotgun/launcher fodder. But at later levels deeper to Hell, shouldn't they gain the powers of intelligence and spread out into say, a half circle that pins the marine against a wall so that they wont all be affected by blast/multishot weapons and can all fire on the marine as opposed to each other?

It would be GREAT for Nightmare mode too.

The problem with that is that you are effectively cancelling the good points of wielding Shotguns or Rocket Launchers. So I don't really like the idea.

What might work, though, is only make higher tier demons more intelligent. Zombiemen are fine being stupid, imps should be a little more clever, etc. In this case, Hell Knights and Hell Barons (from the higher feudal ranks of Hell) would be the most intelligent, trying to always attack you from where you are most vulnerable, but it would also keep the Lost Souls and Former -foo-s as shotgun/rocket launcher fodder - which is fun. But also you would have intelligent monsters to deal with.

What do you think?
Minor suggestion: At the risk of adding a rock paper scissors attribute to the game, can it be made so that certain creatures have weaknesses to certain types of weapons?

Take Lost Souls for instance, they would make perfect shotgun fodder. So they take just one extra damage point of (guess what) damage and are easier to hit with them.

The idea is that its subtle and not major in any way. Just adds a subtle background element. 

I don't like it much, it would be another argument for opening inventory spacing to have all the weapons available, or would make certain builds more difficult to play with, leading to an (even more) unbalanced situation.
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Kornel Kisielewicz

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2007, 15:50 »

I won't comment on the AI idea -- the old AI will be completely redesigned before 1.0.0 and I'll do modifications to the new AI then.

But I realy like the minor suggestion. But instead of affecting damage it would be easier to affect armor. We could then create 4 different damage types:

mechanical - melee weapons, pistol, chaingun
concussion - shotguns, rocket launcher, barrel
burn - plasma rifle, BFG, lava/acid

And adjust the armor ratings of the monsters ... any ideas for the adjustments (they should be logical -> like lost souls aren't well affected by mechanical attacks, but suspectible to concussion damage. Bear in mind the balance!
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Blade

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2007, 17:18 »

What about AI - at least make them not killing themselves. When you see BoH that kills himself by blast of his own ACID ball fired at you, you begin to disrespect them totally.

What about second - i don't like to see DooMRL transformed to tactic turn-based strategy. I love the way it is now - action with elements of RPG.

Blade is out.
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nokturnal

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2007, 17:29 »

in doom & doom2 i really liked how the monsters started fighting among each other if they accidentaly fired upon another
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Adral

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #5 on: January 04, 2007, 17:31 »

in doom & doom2 i really liked how the monsters started fighting among each other if they accidentaly fired upon another

Well, that's not AI, that's AS - Artificial Stupidity

Sorry, I had to say that :P
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Anticheese

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #6 on: January 05, 2007, 00:01 »

Yeah, that was a neat feature. But in DoomRL that's nearly impossible for the player to achieve as dodging is really hard!

In the original Doom, monsters were immune to their own fireballs. That would be a neat feature as well.

For things like AI teamwork and immunity to their own fireballs, would it not be best to activate them on Hurt me Plenty and improve on them as you up the difficulty settings?
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Valkeera

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2007, 13:19 »

I would definitely keep the monsters hurting themselves, as it is more realistic. And I think that if a monster is hit by another monster, it should retaliate - Hell is, after all, fiercely competitive, so why not let demons fight over who is going to bring the marine intruder's head to its masters :-). Of course, the retaliation to "friendly fire" should occur only if the perpetrator is closer than the marine.
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Angel of Death 007

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2007, 14:21 »

Last I heard, snakes are immune to the venom of a similar snake.
Taking that into consideration, and adding Kornel's idea, I'd say that a Baron, for instance, would cause burn damage, and have high burn armor (also fitting their acid immunity).
(But burn armor's a little tricky - I don't want AVs becoming BFG-resistant. So maybe there should also be a hellfire type?)

If that'll be done, then the AI suggestions'll be a little less needed, as logically Barons'll be used to not hurting each other much, nor themselves.

This could also open some doors to some interesting sets of armor :P
But that's getting too complicated for the style.

Adral

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #9 on: January 05, 2007, 15:08 »

But that's getting too complicated for the style.

This is the point. As I mentioned elsethread, DRLINA :P

I don't think we want an overcomplicated RL, there are lots of these already. Take a look at Dwarf Fortress, Pelleron's Brilliant Rebirth, Adom, etc. What makes DoomRL stand out before other RLs is its unique style and its simplicity. If things like different types of damage, ultracomplicated traits, 30 million weapons and so on, we'll just end up getting a 10 hours a game RL like the others.

I really wouldn't want DoomRL to become that way.

About the other subject, good AI is always cool. But I would go the F.E.A.R. approach, where enemies (even in lowest difficulty settings) are as smart as they can be, and the difficulty just changes how many are of them, how much damage they deal to you and how much damage you deal to them.

I don't think playing HNTR or ITYTD should make them be more stupid.
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TFoN

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #10 on: January 05, 2007, 16:00 »

I don't think we want an overcomplicated RL, there are lots of these already. Take a look at Dwarf Fortress, Pelleron's Brilliant Rebirth, Adom, etc. What makes DoomRL stand out before other RLs is its unique style and its simplicity. If things like different types of damage, ultracomplicated traits, 30 million weapons and so on, we'll just end up getting a 10 hours a game RL like the others.

I really wouldn't want DoomRL to become that way.

About the other subject, good AI is always cool. But I would go the F.E.A.R. approach, where enemies (even in lowest difficulty settings) are as smart as they can be, and the difficulty just changes how many are of them, how much damage they deal to you and how much damage you deal to them.

I don't think playing HNTR or ITYTD should make them be more stupid.

Aye, I agree.

I think damage types can ease the strain on AI complications, but my last comment earlier was mostly a joke :)
Maybe a DoomRL Over-Content Mod could be created later, but that's not the idea of DoomRL right now.

Supernaut

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #11 on: January 05, 2007, 17:11 »

I love the original Doom idea of monsters killing themselves when being hit by each other.
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twiddybum

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #12 on: January 05, 2007, 23:09 »

I don't think the very core DooM gameplay should be changed:  I'm playing partly because it's a fun game, and partly because it brings back a decade's old memories of a childhood well wasted playing DooM.  Adding all this complexity to the core game mechanics just undermines what I'm doing when I play the game.  If this is just me, feel free to ignore me because I tend to ramble a bit.
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Blade

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #13 on: January 06, 2007, 01:57 »

I really like original DooM way, where monsters can kill each other, but not the monsters of the same species(and themselves, of course). And when one monster hits another, monster that get hit must retaliate(unless player hit him). So the main target for every monster will be player, but attack they will monster or player that hit them last. I like moments when ressurected by Arch-Vile human sergeant hits his savior and after that becomes burnt by angry AV, but after a while ressurected again. What about AI - i agree with Adral that monsters must not be stupid on lesser difficulties.
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Valkeera

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Re: On demons and weapons
« Reply #14 on: January 06, 2007, 03:20 »

Okay, how's this on monster retaliation?
Situation one:

B............
....O.......
...............@

Hell baron fires his ACID ball at the marine, but hits the caco that is in the way. In this case, the caco gets angry at the baron and retaliates, because the perpetrating baron stands closer, and is thus perceived by the caco as "greater danger".


Situation two:

O.............@
.................c

Caco fires his PLASMA ball at the marine, which hurts the innocent bystanding demon. In this case, the demon probably won't stop chewing tasty marine meat just because he was singed a little bit.
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