Monster tweaks/improvements

[Orion]

Everybody knows that some monsters in quake needs some improvements or tweaks.

So, what's your idea to improve/tweak or what you already did with them?

I, for example, have made the fiend to jump up high places, depending of the player's origin (e.g on e2m2 start bridge) and it can attack with both claws at same time using the last leap frames.

And I've made gibbable crucified zombies, and soon I'll make'em give punchs as a melee attack.

And I'm thinking of making the hell knight give headbutts with his horns like Zidane in world cup, just for fun.. And giving a momentum to the player.

[Dr. Shadowborg]

From HellSmash Design doc: (Extensive, so I'll make it brief, plus only cover original id monsters.)

Grunt:
Various lower class guns. Some can strafe, varying toughness signified by skin.

Enforcer:
Various higher class guns. Most can strafe, a few have force shields.

Ogre:
Various powerful guns. Can't strafe, but seeing as how they're tough as hell, and often pack missile launchers along with those chainsaws...

Scrag:
Teleports around. Some can cloak, and drain hp.

Knight:
Some can spawn shadow clones, others have built-in exploding bomb armor, and have a propensity for getting in your face.

Death Knight:
Uses his attacks more competently, along with a lightning attack. Some carry scythes and can do shadow clones. Also, the really nasty ones burst a DoE Wraith outta their torsos when they die, ala those dynamite monsters from Shadow Warrior.

Fiend:
Tougher skinned. Other variants have dark / zombified skins signifying either greater speed, acid barf, or regenerative + voreball tossing properties. All have improved AI for leaping right into your face irregardless of your altitude.

Zombie:
Some have very dead soldier skins, and toss hand grenades occasionally. Others toss venomus's flesh maggot / drop them when killed.

Vore:
Can cloak, toss igniting lavaballs, whip you good with their tentacles, the rotted ones can regenerate their HP, but can't cloak and toss fleshballs instead of lavaballs.

Shamber:
Mostly the same, though some can cause corpses in the area to gib into homing gibs that chase your ass and explode. Also said flavor can regenerate it's hp, and is faster than normal.

That's all that comes into my mind at the moment...

[scar3crow]

Heres from a post I made on my lj last year.
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This mod presupposes a few things:
Monster count for all skills will be equal to monster count found in stock Quake's Hard difficulty. This is to keep the levels populated rather than looking barren - I assume most of us can deal with this count by this point in the game's lifespan.

When awake but cannot see the player, a monster will use coffee_move() from Coffee's Tutor Bot. It is a simple and fast routine that involves tracing the walls to get out of a room. It looks kind of dumb, but youre rarely going to see it, and it will help get monsters out and roaming if you alert them rather than bouncing around in the same room.


ROTTWEILER
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - Moves slightly faster
Hard - "Chew" attack, during this attack the rottweiler will bite the player and snarl, for each think of this the player is dealt damage, the dog will hold onto the player and slows the players movement by half. The dog will not go into painframes during this time.

GRUNT
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - Close to stock, no longer aims behind player
Hard - Updates players position twice as fast
Nightmare - Updates players position every frame

ENFORCER
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - Updates player position twice as fast
Hard - Fires one direct shot, leads the second shot in 2 shot burst
Nightmare - 33% chance of doing one of the following. Fires 2 shots that lead the player, updating position between shots. Fires 2 shots directly at the player updating position between shots. Leads one and fires direct for second.

KNIGHT
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - 50% chance to guard streaming attacks, knight stops and goes into a frame with the sword in a blocking position, cannot be harmed from the front by shells and nails, will last 1 to 3 seconds.
Hard - Strafing charge. 25% chance of in battle the knight will charge with a slight boost in speed and at the last moment strafe to the left or right and swing for double damage.
Nightmare - Same as hard only cannot be pushed into a pain frame during charge.

DEATH KNIGHT
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - 50% chance to guard, just like the Knight only he takes half damage from explosives during this time.
Hard - His hellfire mildly homes
Nightmare - Hellfire homes more accurately, harder to evade.

SCRAG
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - Silent wake up if the player isnt directly facing it
Hard - Chance to do a short and very fast strafe left or right if it detects a stream of nails approaching, rocket, or grenade
Nightmare - If in melee range it will do a mass spray of 4x as much acid in a wide arc. Takes 3 seconds to reload on this attack, not susceptible to painframes while performing it.

OGRE
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - Lunges further with the chainsaw sometimes
Hard - Leads the player with his grenades
Nightmare - Leads more accurately with grenades. May do a combo attack where when running towards the player he fires a grenade without stopping and half a second after firing the grenade does a lunge with the chainsaw.

FIEND
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - If he comes within leaping attack range, 50% chance of doing 1.5x speed in a forward charge that does a single instance of 40 damage and knocks the player back. Fiend will be stunned for 2 seconds after this.
Hard - Much quicker recovery in time from leap attack
Nightmare - Movement while swinging limbs is twice as fast as normal.

ROTFISH
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - Chance of darting at the player when close with a bite at the finish
Hard - Can latch on like the rottweiler
Nightmare - Further dart distance

ZOMBIE
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - Harder to knock over
Hard - Gib trajectory is a bit more random
Nightmare - Throws more gibs in a single throw, if he survives for more than 30 seconds than all zombies on the level wake up

SPAWN
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - Quicker response time
Hard - Immediate response time
Nightmare - Ignores splash damage

VORE
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - Telepathic blow that thrusts player up and away if player gets in melee range
Hard - Voreballs will attempt to not hit other monsters if targetting player
Nightmare - Fires 2 voreballs at once which split in direction briefly then focus in on the target

SHAMBLER
-------------------------
Easy - Same as stock
Normal - Rage, if the shambler receives sustained damage from a single type (shell, nail, explosive, cell) for more than 3 seconds than he will only take 1/2 damage from it from that point on
Hard - Melee attack will bat player around; less susceptible to the strafe in and out player by staying in lightning charge mode rather than being lulled into a melee attack if charged.
Nightmare - Rage mode makes the shambler only take 1/4 damage from sustained attack types

[Sajt]

Those spawns on hard or nightmare would completely own me

[Urre]

I didn't understand some of the ideas, like "quicker response time" for the spawn, or "updates player position faster" for grunts/enforcers, among other things...

[scar3crow]

Sajt - aside from Spawn, which ones?

Urre - The Spawn upon sight tend to go "regh!" and then lurch a tiny bit for a moment, and then begin bouncing, so they waste less time in doing this. The quicker update speed means they adjust their targetting of you more often - they track you more effectively. Im not a coder so I used general terms.

[Urre]

The tracking doesn't have to happen "more often" or anything, Quakes monsters simply align themselves to be able to shoot you dead on. What you'd want is faster turning.

[scar3crow]

Well the intended effect is theyre snapping to your location more quickly, like a player - its all semantics.

[Sajt]

I think the grunt stuff means that they will shoot less and less behind you as the difficulty level increases. So in nightmare they have perfect aim.. yeah, dang.

The death knight homing is a good idea, it's great in dpmod dm7 on the open spaces of dpdm2, how you have to dodge them at the last minute and try to guide them into a wall.

I can't remember which mod had scrags doing that dodge thing but it was really annoying. It looked like the bullets were magnetically pushing them away. I think the scrags would do better with just faster movement overall, but with smooth turns instead of stop-start movement (now somebody code that, hehe).

The fiend could be so much freakier and more intimidating if he had faster recovery from landing, as well as a shorter-range non-jumping lunge. So he leaps at you, you strafe left. But as soon as he hits the ground he pivots (with good animations with believable inertia, now somebody animate that, hehe), and lunges at you swinging his arms.

The archvile attack on the vore is of course neat and fun to take advantage of (as long as you get a good XY direction boost as well as vertical, so you can curve the jump), melee range means that multiple vores + open area doesn't spell instant doom. Should be neat...

The nightmare voreball attack will need some recoding, because I'm sure that with the current homing code it would split up but they would soon converge again. They would need to arc out or something... and if they repel each other like magnets (a possible solution that came to mind) then I could see them flying by the player on either side!

The shambler blocking stuff seems odd, it might not be too noticeable to the player and just frustrating. I think it would be interesting if the lightning attack sucked the player towards him or something so that if you do get hit you get moved away from your cover.

[Urre]

That last idea was awesome, about the shambler tractorlightningbeam!

[Dr. Shadowborg]

...

...

[Orion]

Here's my ideas.

Grunt:
Easy - Stock.
Normal - Have a bit more health, and sometimes can strafe.
Hard - Have much more health, can strafe, and have perfect aim.
Nightmare - 100 health, srafe, perfect aim, and never stop firing the shotgun every half second if the enemy is visible and living, but can go into pain frames during fire.

Rottweiler:
Easy - Stock.
Normal - Jumping does a little more damage, and goes forward faster.
Hard - 3 or 4 bites can paralyze you.
Nightmare - Can squish your head like Half-Life's barnacle.

Enforcer:
Easy - Stock.
Normal - 25% chance of having a grenade launcher and 75% chance of having the blaster, but shooting 3 lasers instead of 2.
Hard - Carries a rocket launcher often, or a hyperblaster.
Nightmare - His rockets does more damage, and his hyperblaster too.

Ogre:
Easy - Stock.
Normal - Will fire rockets at long distances.
Hard - Can jump like a Fiend, do damage, but slower.
Nightmare - His rockets and grenades does 120 damage like the player's ones.

Fiend:
Easy - Stock.
Normal - Can attack with both claws at same time.
Hard - Can jump at your altitude.
Nightmare - Never stop jumping like the Spawn, unless you shoot'em and it'll go to pain frames.

Shambler:
Easy - Stock.
Normal - His lightning have a little longer range.
Hard - Can climb up walls using his claws.
Nightmare - Can squish you with one hit using both claws.

Vore:
Easy - Stock.
Normal - It'll have a melee attack using a claw.
Hard - Throws tossing lavaballs.
Nightmare - Throws flying lavaballs like Chton.

Knight:
Easy - Stock.
Normal - Can strafe while charging.
Hard - Sometimes he can cloak and shoot hell fire like the Death Knight.
Nightmare - 50% chance of exploding when dying.

Death Knight:
Easy - Stock.
Normal - Can strafe while charging and have a bit more health.
Hard - Fires lightning.
Nightmare - Can throw his sword, and pick it up again.

Well that's it...