Demonic Leech

Name: Demonic Leech
Class: 2
Type: Melee/Projectile
Palette: Doom
Summon: DemonicleechLive
Ammo Type: None(Alt drains health)
Altfire: Yes
Powered Mode: No
Added States: No

Submitted: TheDoomedArchvile
Code: TheDoomedArchvile, Blue Shadow
Sounds: TheDoomedArchvile, FreeSounds
Sprites: HorrorMovieGuy
Sprite Edits: TheDoomedArchvile
Idea Base: Weak melee health drainer with damaging alternate attack

Description: Oh god, what in the hell is that thing!? It's dug into your arm and won't come off now. This is so gross, but at least it appears to be useful. Raise it up to an enemy and have it suck the blood of your victims to heal yourself for a small amount at a time. Or, you could have it drain your body parts and spit them out as projectiles... Eww.




Demonic Leech

Oh awesome. More demonic/hell themed weapons. I like the ones in the old version of Demon Eclipse, but they're a bit broken. I know it seems odd for a weapon, but maybe give it a slight wander since it's a living thing? a secondary frame for the pickup where it's tentacles writhe and it bites idly would be good for this. The sounds and the altfire are a little underwhelming though. Possibly give it an idle noise when held. Otherwise, probably a great pistol+fist type replacement combo for any hellish "wilderness" or infested maps. I'd say the poison headcrab "Squeaking" would make a good idle noise for this one.

I know it seems odd for a weapon, but maybe give it a slight wander since it's a living thing?

That's bloody brilliant. Implemented!

The sounds and the altfire are a little underwhelming though.

I have adjusted the damage for the gore projectiles. Not too much but enough to easily take out zombies and imps now without draining too much health too fast. I wanted to keep the sounds as they were since it's such a small creature and one that I feel would have a softer tone to match it's soft and more squishy form. The headcrab sounds are a bit too extreme I feel for this creature. If more people request for new sounds then I'll consider changing them. The idle noise has been part of the weapon already, but it doesn't play every time it... pulses. It's random, so it may take a few moments for the sound to play while having it out. Having it play all the time I think would be a bit annoying... looking at you Chainsaw.

Other than those updates I have removed the Spawn state from the weapon itself. This is due to the addition of the new actor DemonicLeechLive where the leech is actually crawling around, thus is serves pretty much the same function. It's pretty much like The Magic Squirrel item. But instead of an item it's a weapon.

Seems alright. It "makes sense" for some of the demonic weapons to be alive in some form, so literally picking up new hell wildlife and using it to one's advantage is a very "human" thing to do, as would be the same for Demon Eclipse's Gorewyrm.

Interesting weapon. It makes pinky demons more useful. :p

Some notes:

• Armor reduces the damage taken from using the altfire attack, which is odd.
• I don't know why, but when viewed in SLADE, both DLEIA0 and DLEIB0 sprites appear with a white background. They do work fine in-game though. Still, you might want to look into it and see if it can be corrected.
• Weapons don't make use of HitObituary. They only use Obituary. So you want to change that.
• A_Saw 's lifesteal parameter is a double/float, not a bool (i.e. true/false) like what you passed to the function.
• When doing random state jumps, it's better to use state labels, not state offsets, e.g:
  Code:

  BLAH A 0 A_Jump(256, "State1", "State2", "State3")
  Alternatively, for this case, you can utilize a random spawner to randomize the gore projectiles, and set up the weapon to fire a the random spawner itself (of course, without any of the random state jumping in the weapon's code).
• Why does the weapon have a Death state?
• Make sure the gore projectile's death state sequence last at least for one tic before the projectile itself is removed from the game (this is something one should do, generally).
• Considering the gore projectiles pretty much have the same code as each other, you might want to make use of inheritance to consolidate their code.

Armor reduces the damage taken from using the altfire attack, which is odd.

Um... is there a way to bypass armor using DamageThing? Is this a big enough issue to search for a fix, or just an oddity that leave little impact?

I don't know why, but when viewed in SLADE, both DLEIA0 and DLEIB0 sprites appear with a white background. They do work fine in-game though. Still, you might want to look into it and see if it can be corrected.

Very strange indeed. I tried to mess around with it a bit but I think I figured out the issue. For some reason those two sprites have those white boxes appear after they are Optimized in Slade3, but the other sprites don't have that issue. Not sure why that is, but I put a note in the Info section to let modders know. Nothing serious in-game wise so the impact is low from what I see.

Everything else has been addressed and updated. Thanks for telling me about the random spawner and the inheritance stuff! Super useful and I'll be sure to use them from now on. Oh, I also added a bounce sound for the gore.

doomedarchviledemon wrote: Um... is there a way to bypass armor using DamageThing?

No, but you can by using A_DamageSelf , instead. By default, it ignores armor.

Going through the new version's code, I've noticed you assigned the gore spawner an editor number. You only need to do that if you're going to place the spawner in a map through a map editor. However, you're not, so better remove it.

Updated with feedback addressed.

Do you think it would be a good idea to implement a safeguard to the altfire attack so the player doesn't end up killing themselves by accident if they happen to be on too low health?

Since the weapon is a parasite of sorts and depends on its host to remain alive adding a safeguard would make sense. Though I do not see any flags that would allow said safeguard for A_DamageSelf. Is there another function that would check to see if a player's health is below a certain amount?