DOOM3 BFG Super Soldier mod

DOOM 3 and DOOM 3 BFG is well known for its amazing graphics at its time, survivor horror element, excellent but typical FPS action in the DOOM universe. With its source code open, I am able to develop DOOM3 BFG Super Soldier mod, almost like a different game.

As the mod name implies, the mod gives player new Super Soldier ability and equipments. For the core FPS action, it enhances or change weapons behavior, with ultra realistic weapon and ammo management. For survivor horror element, it added over the top special effects, gore, and make it persistent in the game world. Enemy behavior is tweaked and added new behavior. The mod ideas are inspired from other famous Sci Fi games and movies. The end result is almost like a Immersive Sim game with great game play depth and various ways to approach to a battle up to how player chooses.

Following is summarized game play features.

1. Sci Fi ability.

1.1 Nano suit, with fully working cloaking feature. Inspired by game Crysis.

1.2 Cybernetic implants. Slow down time. mode 1 HellTime (enemy slow but player normal), mode 2 Bullet Time (all slow), inspired by game May Payne and movie Matrix. Great tactical advantage. Hell time can also serve similar purpose of weapon wheel in DOOM 2016, so that player has time to choose weapons.

1.3 Ability powered by battery shared with flash light. Auto recharge after it drains. cloaking draining rate 2X, HellTime 4x, bullet time 2X, flashlight 1x. Cloaking, slow mo, flashlight can only be used one at a time.

2. Equipment.

2.1 Deploy AI sentry bot any time to be a helper hand.

2.4 Rear camera view overlay. Helpful to detect enemy on the six.

2.3 Night vision view. Note that this is achieved externally with reshade shaders, mod only adds sound effect and key bind.

2.4 ZOOM 2x view. It is useful for long range weapons that have little spread, namely pistol and plasma gun. Pseudo sniping capability.

3. Supernatural ability

3.1 Time freeze. With the possession of soul cube and artifact, the new supernatural abilities open up. This is experimental feature, not always work well.

When soul cube is in ready mode, or artifact has souls, player can freeze time while move freely around. However, player cannot trigger actions such as opening door because world is already frozen. The tactical advantage of this is that player can freeze battle in critical times and move to better position. The frozen world still gives player a tiny fractional time to act upon. For example, player can fire a shotgun at enemy, retreat to safe distance, unfroze time, and the shells reach to enemy instantly. The cost with enabling this ability is two souls for soul cube and one soul for artifact.

3.2 Supernatural encounter.

A brand new feature of “Anomaly Encounter” in the time space dimension, side effect of the Hell invasion. Basically randomly player will encounter supernatural anomaly lasting 5 seconds. User can adjust how frequent the encounter is from game settings. 0 is never, up to 10 more often.

3.2.1 Visually effects and random scary sound.
3.2.2 During the encounter, player is invulnerable. Gravity is reversed.
3.2.3 If player’s health is lower than 10, it will gain 20 points. Otherwise it lose points randomly.
3.2.4 Soul cube or Artifact gains one soul.
3.2.5 If game settings “Gib Gore Stay” is on, gibs fall from the dimension rift. Randomly a dead zombie body might fall too.

3.3 soulcube - sensing enemy nearby by a new vision mode. like a early warning system.

4. Visual effects and environmental immersion

4.1 Almost all the new mod features come with visual screen effect and sounds.

4.2 Ejected brass, dead body stays indefinitely.

4.3 Body can now gib including all zombies and lesser monsters. The gibs stay, and will not burn away. Since the effect is gore, you can turn on/off from game settings menu. Only chainsaw, (double) shotgun, chaingun, grenade, rocket, and bfg can gib. They are high damage or explosive weapons.

4.4 Increased particles, smokes, blood splats, decal duration.

4.5 The blood stain caused by enemy attack damage will stay on HUD until user press a key to wipe and clear it. This feature is inspired by the gas mask wipe in game Metro series.

4.6 Screen effect when health is < 10.

4.7 Weapon view can be toggled to raise in height. Therefore it appears bigger and badass.


5. New weapon management behavior.

5.1 New feature to skip and add back in weapon list used by mouse wheel up/down. Mouse wheel is a superior mechanism for fast switching weapons, but it takes time to reach the one desired as it is long list. By customizing to a small list, such as 3 or 4, it allows very efficient switching. This feature is inspired by movie John Wick's famous 3-gun play. Switching take much less time than reloading. Weapon selection and switching can greatly benefit from HellTime feature that gives player time to decide.

5.2 No crosshair, but laser beam. Laser beam wobbles, need to train on target first. Only when in zoomed 2x view, crosshair is used for pinpoint accuracy.

6. Enemy behavior

6.1 New zombie (and lesser monsters) undead feature. Basically after they are killed, there is randomly half chance that they will come to back to life 2nd time. This added suspense and surprise. This is inspired by many zombie related movies, such as Residential Evil.

6.2. For zombie undead feature, to be realistic, when the body is gibbed, it will not come back to life. Even if the enemy is not killed by a gibable weapon directly, player can still gib the dead body using a gibable weapon. For example, if a zombie is killed by machine gun, that means it will not be gibbed. However, player can use chainsaw to gib the dead body so that it ensures it will not come back to life. Note the waiting time before zombie come backs to life is randomly between 5 and 25 seconds. So if you want to gib the body, do it quickly. This adds suspense further that you have to decide to gib or not for every zombie and lesser demon. On purposely, strong enemy does not undead, otherwise it will be too difficult for player to handle.

6.3 Enemy AI enhancement, borrowed from Streloks Advanced AI mod. Moddb.com

6.4 Adjusted headshot around 2x damage to all enemies if applicable. Encourage headshot. More useful in zoom mode and time freeze mode.

7. Sound effects:

7.1 Player heartbeat sound is louder when under stress.

7.2 Add sounds to actions. Flashlight, zoom camera, night vision, unique per weapon dryfire sound is fully supported.

7.3 Pistol silencer sound. Chaingun empty will spin continuously.

7.4 Low ammo alarm sound goes off every shot after threshold, instead in vanilla game the sound only goes off once. During the heat of battle it can hardly be heard. Now the alarm sound is more noticeable. Note the alarm is only available to weapons that have digital display, namely machine gun, chain gun, plasma gun and rocket launcher.

8. Photo Mode (experimental, not always working well)

A great game should have photo mode to take screenshots. Here you have it a quite advanced photo mode.

8.1 Enter photo mode. World is frozen. Player is invisible and camera can freely fly around to spectate. Note collision is still on, so player cannot open door nor fly outside of map.

8.2 World slow motion. During photo mode, player can hold key to let the world progress in slow motion. When the key is released, the world is back to be stopped.

9. Realistic ammo management behavior

9.1 Auto reload is disabled by default in games settings. Reloading discard the clip and lost current ammo in clip. The exception is shotgun that does not have clip.

9.2 Ammo HUD display is turned off by default. You can view it only when holding a button. Note that only weapons that do not have digital display needs it, namely pistol, shotgun, grenade, rocket.

9.3 Ammo pickup amount is lowered by half to make ammo scarce. Reduce max ammo carried per weapon more than 2 times. Low ammo increases survivor horror element. Vanilla game has too much ammo available that almost never runs out.

10. Weapons tweaked, re-balanced and every weapon is useful.

10.1 fists - super strength to cause huge damage, do not turn off cloaking,

10.2 grabber - increase holding time 5 times, while holding will generate a gravity shield that player is invulnerable to attack.

10.3 pistol - with silencer, will not alert enemy, works with cloaking, damage increased

10.4 shotgun - spread reduced by half. no ammo reload lose. great in time freeze mode and to gib.

10.5 double shotgun - damage now really double of shotgun. great in time freeze mode and to gib.

10.6 machine gun - decrease spread.

10.7 chaingun - increase fire rate. increase clip size. changed weapon view. good gib weapon.

10.8 hand grenade - do not turn off cloaking

10.9 plasma - bounce on surface.

10.10 rocket - now seeking missile with fly speed reduced to 1/3, sophisticated seeking behavior without locking first. Point, fire, and forget.

10.11 BFG - no overcharge self destruct (auto release), beam more obvious and more damage

10.12 chainsaw - good gib weapon.

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