Zakos for (GZ)Doom (Release) (3 Viewers)

[MZZ]

I didn't believe it and then I went and looked, yeah... there's no movement animation. Huh.
You took the only suggestion I woulda really wanted outta this, so I can't really ask for more.
I'm curious what your plan is for the bizarre doom enemies, like the ones that spawn in things and resurrect. I guess the Lost Souls could just be drones, they don't have to be sexy. And that would... solve a lot of problems.
Are you planning on doing the weird sound profile thing so that each enemy has its own set of sounds, or are you gonna keep it vanilla? I think it could work out, but I also know it might not be easy. But maybe it is easy, I donno.

I've overhauled my initial post (some days ago) and put a roadmap and current "mental sketches" for the replacement monsters.
For e.g. the Archvile, which is basically hell's medic, would be a bizzaro Nurse/Doctor.
How does she remotely revives the fallen? A Wizard did it! erm I mean nanomachines
The lost souls as drones is my current "sketch" and the Pain Elemental would be a modified Cacodemon as a drone carrier.

I've did some file diving in the SR3 voices and quickly picked some for draft 3. And it really changes the immersion.
Besides the "rip-off" issue, it is a treasure trove! There should be enough voices to give every monster it's own set.
Buuut here comes the limitations of Doom again. Most monsters share their samples:

Especially the pain and "active" sound is shared among most monsters.
The fix would be again to override the monster AI and define own samples. (And own animations, while we're at it ;) )
A task I would push back until after release.

 

[Weoooo]

Oh, I shoulda looked! Alright, you already thought about the drone thing, makes me look dumb as hell.
I didn't know that's how doom handled things, that's interesting. I've seen other mods define sounds, I didn't realize what the were doing was that complicated.
SR3 has a LOT of voice, and a lot of it is sharp and short, which you want for an FPS. That's why it was the first thing I thought of, there's so much there and almost all of it is stuff that's exactly what you're lookin' for.

 

[MZZ]

Oh, I shoulda looked! Alright, you already thought about the drone thing, makes me look dumb as hell.
I didn't know that's how doom handled things, that's interesting. I've seen other mods define sounds, I didn't realize what the were doing was that complicated.
SR3 has a LOT of voice, and a lot of it is sharp and short, which you want for an FPS. That's why it was the first thing I thought of, there's so much there and almost all of it is stuff that's exactly what you're lookin' for.

Oh no, I think there is no update notification for edits, so it's easy to miss.
So don't feel bad, here, have a quick sketch for the Archvile :) The eyes are not a bug, they should bug you out instead :P

Obviously needs some design passes. And piercings, a whole lot of em :D

And I uploaded Draft 3 with two "new" enemies and a bunch of pilfered sounds from SR3.

Get it here when it is processed/approved

 

[Weoooo]

Dang, that archvile looks nasty in the way you'd expect. I like it.
I'm looking forward to see what sounds you picked. I picked out some to make sure I could convert them properly, only to find out I didn't have to.
cmooooon get approooovedddd

 

[MZZ]

Seems I messed up the upload while making the post. Sorry!
Here is the current Draft3b: https://www.undertow.club/downloads/zako-doom.4553/download?version=5342
Thanks Weoooo for checking the download :)

Everything from Draft 3 plus I've added a lightning effect to the models when they fire. (Not just the muzzle flash decal, now they are illuminated in yellow/orange or a appropriate color)

 

[MZZ]

Working on Draft 4, current model for the Cyberdemon:


And I'm not completly happy with the Baroness of Hell. While her look fits the original style, she breaks the look of the other girls.
What do you think about this alt-version? A tomboyish version of the zako template used so far.

 

[Weoooo]

Hmm. Now that you make explicit note of it, yeah it does break the thematic look doesn't it. I think the other version is interesting, it's got a bit of an exercise feel to it, but I think that's just my association with spats and sneakers. I think it's a good compromise, you want her to look hecka tough(she even flips you off, which is a nice touch), but your other characters don't wear tough girl outfits so it's gonna be a break.

 

[MZZ]

Hmm. Now that you make explicit note of it, yeah it does break the thematic look doesn't it. I think the other version is interesting, it's got a bit of an exercise feel to it, but I think that's just my association with spats and sneakers. I think it's a good compromise, you want her to look hecka tough(she even flips you off, which is a nice touch), but your other characters don't wear tough girl outfits so it's gonna be a break.

I'd hope the bird did not go unnoticed :D
I think I'll switch to the new model, I like it more and more. A slight break with the pattern is ok, I think. The Baron is an exceptional enemy
(It's sprite name is just BOSS ;) ), so some deviation should be allowed.
Maybe even some more fun

Ahem, I'll get me coat...

 

[MZZ]

short update:
Turns out the Spider Mastermind is a lot more work than thought, so it will take some time.
Instead of settling for a tank thingie, I went full tank ;)

Still lots to do with the models and animating it. The Mastermind has 6 walking frames instead of 4 and sprite mirroring won't do it here. (So 96 Frames just for "walking" around )

 

[Weoooo]

All right. That works. I wasn't quite expecting a full tank, but the spider mastermind IS big!

I can confirm, the spider mastermind is big

 

[MZZ]

Hi All,

I've uploaded Draft 4, now all vanilla Doom 1 Monsters are replaced.

Also I've experimented with corpse graphics (well, that sounded weird ). Normally the death animation and corpse sprite are always rendered from the front view angle. Reason being to cut down massively on sprites and usually monsters die from the front anyway (due to player induced lead poisoning). Rendering the death animation for all 16 view angles would be nuts and rarely seen.
But sprites for the corpses on the ground would be feasible and you run around them well enough.
As a test I added sprites for the ZombieMan and ShotgunGuy without any tweaks, so some angles look weird.
What do you think? Are the "moving" corpses worth investing time for or are they irritating?

 

[MZZ]

Here is a compare between the draft rendering (bottom row) and the settings I'd like to use for final rendering (top row).

The change is pretty much that the top row has subtle shadows and the bottom row does not. (But Render time is anything but subtle ;) )
The other quality settings don't affect the result, due to the small scale the sprites have.
I wanted to keep the shadows "light" as the game adds it's own "darkness" to the sprites and details would be drown out in shadows.

What do you think?

Sounds are making good progress, I've found a way to override the samples without tampering with the AI.
Thankfully GZDoom added an abstraction layer between calling a sound in the AI states and the actual sound file.
Double Thankfully it supports multiple samples for the same sound call. So I can have several samples for the PAIN, DEATH, etc state that are choosen at random to keeps things varied.
Sounds for the robotic enemies (Lost Souls, CyberDemon, Spider Mastermind) will still be tricky.
May need to mashup/modify some samples.

 

[Weoooo]

You're gonna hate to hear this, but I needed it pointed out that there were subtle shadows. I do suppose that's fine, subtle is right in the name. I'm not gonna say they look BAD, but at least at the rez and jpg quality I'm looking at, it's hard to tell the difference. It's most notable on pistol elf, cause her sleeve is shadowed.

I absolutely love the bodies being able to be seen from different angles. I think the aftermath is one of the most important things to this fetish, and it makes sense to be able to see from more angles. I suppose they may kinda look like they're moving, but the bodies look like they're rotating anyway by default.

Excellent news on the sound front! I was hoping that was the case, especially since you don't need to have sounds in a 8bit mono wav file at a certain sample rate. This also bodes well for tinkering on the user end too, since we have more points to edit.

 

[MZZ]

You're gonna hate to hear this, but I needed it pointed out that there were subtle shadows. I do suppose that's fine, subtle is right in the name. I'm not gonna say they look BAD, but at least at the rez and jpg quality I'm looking at, it's hard to tell the difference. It's most notable on pistol elf, cause her sleeve is shadowed.

Not at all, external input is what I'm looking for :)

Here are some more settings, starting top left without shadows (like now in the drafts) and ending bottom right with the most shadows.

As you can see, the parts that are in the shadow, are hard to make out. Adding that most Doom levels are dark themself, I fear that the sprites
are too hard to see. But I may be too cautious there.

I absolutely love the bodies being able to be seen from different angles. I think the aftermath is one of the most important things to this fetish, and it makes sense to be able to see from more angles. I suppose they may kinda look like they're moving, but the bodies look like they're rotating anyway by default.

I've added the shotgunguy on my current workdraft with all rotations and the effects starts to grow on me :)
I'm just not used to it. Usually in Doom, everything that "moves" that kind of way is a threat that needs killing.
But that is just my conditioning playing Doom for countless hours in my youth :D

Excellent news on the sound front! I was hoping that was the case, especially since you don't need to have sounds in a 8bit mono wav file at a certain sample rate. This also bodes well for tinkering on the user end too, since we have more points to edit.

It is certainly nice that I can just plugin the samples without much ado :)

 

[Weoooo]

Huh, it must be that most of my doomish time was spent on Hexen or something, cause Doom doesn't bring out that kind of twitchy response.
Comparing upper left to lower right, I can definitely see a difference. It is subtle, but it makes sense to be.

 

[splashman]

I think the extra death sprites are pretty great, and I can't see a big difference with the shadows in the drafts you've posted. That said, Doom does weird things to sprites to get them to look right, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a noticable difference while in-game.

I've been trying to decide what weapon wad is best to use with these monsters. Demonsteele is pretty good, as is La Tailor Girl, as you may expect. Next up to try: Shooting Monsters with Guns.
Thanks for the wad!

 

[MZZ]

I think the extra death sprites are pretty great, and I can't see a big difference with the shadows in the drafts you've posted. That said, Doom does weird things to sprites to get them to look right, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a noticable difference while in-game.

Ingame the sprites are considerably darker because of the lightning settings of the map. There are small details between the low and high renderings but in the frantic gameplay of Doom you have a hard time seeing them. (e.g. Reflections and highlights are much cleaner in high)

I've been trying to decide what weapon wad is best to use with these monsters. Demonsteele is pretty good, as is La Tailor Girl, as you may expect. Next up to try: Shooting Monsters with Guns.
Thanks for the wad!

I've heard good things about both mods. Currently I'm playing a map pack for nostalgia: Doom the way Id did it.
I think I am done with all renderings and most sound work starting next week :)

 

[Weoooo]

should i and literally only i look forward to a surprise

I didn't think about mixing mods with mods. You could probably play different maps, too. 100,000 space elf revenants coming soon!

 

[MZZ]

I didn't think about mixing mods with mods. You could probably play different maps, too. 100,000 space elf revenants coming soon!

Oh yes, you can stack mods on each other. You only run into problems when mods change the same things
(e.g. weapons or monster behaviour/scripting).
That's why I want to change next to nothing besides the graphics and sounds, to stay compatible with other mods.

 

[MZZ]

Change of plans:
Since all renderings are done now (for Doom1) and you don't need to wait until I finish to bumble about in Audacity, I've uploaded Draft 5.

The Lost Souls, Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind are still missing new sounds, but see point above about bumbling about in Audacity