Brutal-Hellfest addon - Doom II

I haven't yet moved the Hellfest assets into v20. I plan on it, but at the moment it's built off v19.

I'm glad you enjoy it! :)

I thought it was eye-catching. It does look horrible, in the most wonderful way. Scary! Terrifying! Demonic!

Apologies if I screwed up the categorization here. I uploaded this here because my friends have been asking me to upload it to moddb for ages. I normally just upload to mediafire and post an update link in the description of a youtube video, but I guess this is more convenient. Needless to say, I'm new to ModDB and am thankful for your advice.

I've spoken with Quaker before. I definitely could not dedicate myself to an entire other project at this juncture. Sorry! But, hey, apparently someone else has taken it over.

That depends on your preference. :P

I've contributed a few things to Project Brutality. I'm not too big a fan, though, because to me - and I mean no offense to my colleagues by saying this - it feels like waaaay too much. Too many types of monsters, too many weapons to play with, too much new stuff that makes it feel less like Doom and more like... a mish-mash. Monsters that are overpowered, weapons that are overpowered, even 'difficulty' levels that pretty much force you to corner-peek to survive. And... if that's your sort of game, then by all means, indulge! Despite its particularly irking flaws, it did have a lot of hard work put into it and I can appreciate what it's trying to do, especially as a modder, myself. The guy at the top of PB is a friend of mine, and he's done some amazing things on his own, and even contributed to v20 in some ways.

My philosophy with Brutal-Hellfest is a little different. If you ask me what good game design is when it comes to Doom, I'd say that it's all about resource design to influence the player, and that philosophy has been on my mind with every new weapon or monster I add. Aside from the basics of being interactive and engaging - like being run and gun, as opposed to encouraging corner-peeking - health and armor are your resources. Monsters and environmental hazards tax those resources, and weapons and player skill can temper that tax. The goal with any map or mod is to give the player 'enough' health, and challenge them with monsters and traps proportionate in difficulty to the skill level, weapon presence, and health presence, while maintaining engaging, non-tedious gameplay, most likely through the encouragement of explorations by hiding some health or weapons in secrets, and capitalizing on that encouragement by laying traps where the player will most likely next explore.

In Hellfest, this translates to health and armor having been significantly buffed, albeit less-so when you have more of it with you already, or more-so when you have little. This is countered by infinite respawns, which present a time constraint and prevent the player from taking too much time and getting too comfortable, and also by smart monsters that will attempt to gain the upper hand on the player in ways fitting to their role in the game. The power of the legions of Hell is once again countered by Hellfest's versatile arsenal, which enables a player to save their health and armor in numerous ways while clearing monsters, such as leaving proximity mines in a hallway behind them, or chucking grenades through teleporters, or one-shotting cacos by quickscoping with a railgun. Perhaps the option to blow a lot of ammo to clear a room quickly, or the option to conserve that ammo but be more efficient. All of the above sums up in simple, but challenging gameplay that's easy to learn, but difficult to master, where not everyone can complete the hardest difficulty if they're careful enough, but the game isn't too hard for a lot of people. Where every weapon is scripted so carefully that there're no hiccups, and how every monster presents a threat, but never in a way that's impossible to work around.

*coughs* But that's just a little design philosophy there. 'Pologies if I got carried away. TL;DR is basically what I said at the top: It's a matter of preference. :)

It should be available now. I think it may be bad timing with hotfixes; I'd been posting them often, but I didn't realize they shut down the download entirely - not even letting you get a previous version - if you update. I'm new to moddb, so please pardon the misconception.

I'd give you a mediafire link, which I use on youtube and facebook, but I think that'd be bypassing the staff's duty to authorize these files by checking them for functionality and viruses and whatnot, so it'd probably be against the rules.

Err... and please don't hate me for this, but I just found a bug that I confirmed was in the latest hotfix uploaded here which can actually crash a source port. I just fixed it and I'm re-uploading, and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

There's an idiosyncrasy about Hellfest's monsters where, when they enter a teleporter, they take 20% of their total health in damage, a change made in order to lessen the threat of teleporting monsters, since they're already startling and inconvenient, and they're gonna come back to life anyway. This only occurs twice before it no longer happens anymore, and the bug had to do with an infinite loop that occurred after a monster teleported twice. I found it on MAP10 of Doom II, when the Cyberdemon near the exit room teleported back and forth a couple of times. I had fixed an issue where the teleportation damage would NEVER stop, and monsters that teleport around constantly - like the Archvile on MAP07 of Plutonia - would kill themselves extremely quickly... but then this glitch was spawned in the process due to an oversight in the code. I'm very proud to say that Hellfest is extremely bug-free, and even polished and smooth, but once in a blue moon I derp up with the code and make a mistake like this.

It's the last hotfix until the next major update. Promise!

If you still want the file immediately, however, you can find my Youtube, Brutal Doomguy, by doing a search for 'Brutal Hellfest,' and there are links to an up-to-date mediafire download of the same file in the descriptions of my latest videos. Thank you for your understanding.

Good luck, and have fun! And thanks! :)

Not yet, but I totally plan on making a version without respawns at some point. For now, though, there are eight different difficulties to choose from, so surely one of them will compensate for your dislike of respawns in the meantime, at least to a degree. In the end, it really only translates to more monsters, so if there are less monsters to start on the map, you'll come up against less respawns.

Understood. It may be a while, though.

If you wanna give it a try with, say, default Ultimate Doom or Doom II, I'm sure you'd have a blast, though :D Thank you either way for stopping by.

No, thank you. :)

Not yet. It'll happen in the future, but first I need to get some more features designed and implemented.

Thank you! Some of them I found complete already, but I did quite a bit of spritework, particularly on the prox mines and rainbow rifle. :)

The rainbow rifle has a "flak cannon module" that'll enable you to spray plasma in a cone in front of you, but it's not implemented yet. If you scare an arachnotron into overcharging its weapon, it has a 100% chance to drop that thing. Because it's not in the game yet, running over one will give you 40 cell ammo instead, to compensate. Even if you have maximum ammo, the message will still appear. The reason the module's in-game when its function isn't permitted yet is because I want players to be able to discover that it drops, and maybe figure out how to get it, so that when the next update comes around, they can grab it.

The only time the Chainsaw displays a message and swaps to fists is when you attempt to use it while you have invulnerability, which isn't implemented for the chainsaw yet due to conflicts with monster AI. Sorry!

I'm open to feedback or suggestions on monster AI, but I'd appreciate it if you were specific so I could know exactly what changes you're interested in happening. Changes have in fact been made to the revenant, archvile, mancubus and Cyberdemon, and they currently are as follows:

The Archvile:
- Modified vulnerabilities. The Archvile is vulnerable to:
- - Bullets
- - Shells
- - Explosives
- The Archvile will not resurrect monsters right now due to conflicts with monster AI and respawns.
- The Archvile will continue to attack despite the fact that you're invulnerable, for the sake of harassment.

The Mancubus:
- Modified vulnerabilities. The Mancubus is vulnerable to:
- - Bullets
- - Shells
- - Explosives
- The Mancubus will continue to attack despite the fact that you're invulnerable, for the sake of harassment.

The Revenant:
- Modified vulnerabilities. The Revenant is vulnerable to:
- - Bullets
- - Shells
- - Explosives
- The Revenant may become spectral upon first sighting you, being put in pain, or if greatly wounded, and will become spectral upon spawning. The Revenant may become un-spectral at random, and will become un-spectral when dying.
- - Certain projectiles, especially self-endangering ones, like rockets, will pass harmlessly through spectral monsters.
- - - They may still take damage from the eplosion.
- - You can walk through spectral monsters.
- - All enemy projectiles will pass through spectral monsters unless a spectral monster is targeted by another monster.
- Revenants will change their strategy depending on factors like health, spectral state, or player advantages.
- - If low on health, a Revenant may attempt to retreat, and potentially become a spectral monster, while recuperating over time.
- - - This has a higher chance to occur if the revenant is especially low on health.
- - The Revenant, if spectral, will attempt to keep its distance from you without engaging, while keeping within your sight, in order to set up an ambush or hit-and-run.
- - Should the player pull out a powerful weapon, hurl a grenade in a revenant's direction, pick up a partial invisibility, or take a teleport, the Revenant may hide and/or flee.
- While the player is invulnerable, the Revenant will remain spectral and avoid all confrontation as effectively as possible until it can once again harm you.

The Cyberdemon:
- The Cyberdemon is receiving a revamp.
- - The current changes are:
- - - Properly tracked missiles
- - - Fiery hoofsteps
- - - Fiery stomp
- - - Automatic enrage, which can occur:
- - - - At low health
- - - - When taunted
- - - - If fighting a Spider Mastermind
- - The planned additional changes are:
- - - Flame cannon on other arm
- - - Situational teleportation, which can occur:
- - - - When the player is close, in order to get away and fire rockets from a distance
- - - - When the player is far, in order to get close and sweep the area with its flame cannon
- - - - A fiery explosion will occur after the Cyberdemon has teleported.
- A Cyberdemon will never fear an invulnerable player.
- - After they get their new teleportation, I will program them to teleport away if the player has a BFG and is attempting to get close... and only if they spot the player, and aren't distracted with another monster.

Monster AI is my answer to balancing issues that would arise from making monsters simply stronger while respawns is a main mechanic of the game (currently), since you'd be more likely to die from those monsters with nothing to take advantage of. Instead, monsters in Hellfest are smarter so that, despite not being stronger or faster, their intelligence can enable them to survive and potentially kill you more easily, so you can outsmart them, or rather outplay them, rather than just overpower them. Not only does it make for a more interesting experience, I feel, but it synergizes well with Hellfest's core gameplay. That being said, if the ideas you have hold true to that design philosophy, or are at the very least reasonable and make sense, I would love to hear them.

Oh, you mean, like, adding more monsters for them to respawn as, or causing them to, when resurrected by an Archvile, be different somehow?

Interesting thoughts, if I understand you correctly, but there's a pretty specific reason behind the three rare monsters currently in place and their functions. They are as follows:

The kamikaze zombie was my answer to hitscanners disencouraging movement. I try to encourage a run-and-gun style of gameplay with Hellfest, and hitscanners by nature effectively slowed the action down by pretty much forcing the player to take their time and be cautious. The kamikaze zombie acts as a one-touch consequence mechanic, still requiring the player to be cautious, but very often forcing them out of position so they must improvise on the run. This makes the action more consistent, as well as giving you an easier way to deal with hitscanners (by blowing up the walking barrel running between them) and giving you some relief from their ranged attacks (provided you don't let it get into melee range, where the consequence is even greater). They also conveniently serve as a staple of Hellfest: Smart, aggressive, and intimidating, but that's pretty much irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make, which is the purpose for which they were implemented.

The red-eyed arachnotron and quad shotgun zombie were pretty much implemented purely to drop those weapons. If I add something that helps the player, I like to balance it out somehow, and vice versa, so with those nice new weapons, I figured that the ideal thing to do would be to have those weapons drop off monsters. Specifically, monsters that would only appear in Doom II, because if you had a quad shotgun in Ultimate Doom, you would be able to clear Thy Flesh Consumed on Black Metal with barely any competition. Seriously. And, a railgun can one-shot cacodemons, which are one of the strongest enemies in Ultimate Doom, so that would also be completely overpowered.

Aside from that, I do like to keep a familiar experience, so while I did add a few new weapons, their functions are simple or similar to weapons already found in Doom somehow. While I did add a few new monsters, there aren't too many that the player can't adjust to their presence. No old weapons become obsolete, and no old monsters become obsolete. In fact, my focus was on the old monsters, what with the AI and whatnot. I try to keep the gameplay simple, but challenging... easy to understand, but difficult to master. That's been reflected in the direction I've been taking design of the mod.

If you have a statement to make which explains what sort of problem you have, or you believe players in general may have, with a given monster or mechanic, and you have a specific suggestion to better balance the game without making things overly complex, perhaps a way to reduce complexity, or something sticking to or expanding upon the main design philosophy I've expressed, I would love for you to go into more detail. As it stands, I'm not exactly sure what you're suggesting, so could you possibly rephrase what you said?

Thanks again for the suggestion. I greatly appreciate feedback. :)

No worries, no one attempting to express a creative or otherwise interesting suggestion in the interest of bettering the game for all players is quite welcome. I thank you earnestly for your contribution.

Be aware though that there is a "reply to comment" button, which sorts comments more neatly than simply piling them on the bottom, and I may be able to better reply to you if you take advantage of that function.