[SUBMISSION] Familiar

Information:

Name: Familiar / Greater Familiar
Difficulty: Easy / Medium
Connections: Afrit on steroids
Summon: Familiar / GFamiliar
Melee: No
Distance: Projectile
Type: Demon/Magical
Brightmaps: No
Actor modification: No
ACS: No

Credits:

Code: Rifleman
Sounds: Hexen/Afrit, Heretic/Imp and alonsotm -- https://freesound.org/s/396499/
Sprites: Hexen/Afrit and Heretic/Imp
Sprite Edit: Rifleman
Idea Base: The Phoenix and its resurrection

Description: This monster is similar to Afrit, except it will sometimes 'blink' before firing and can sacrifice its body to possess a worthy corpse. When the host is killed, it'll spawn a new body for the Familiar. There is 5% chance a Familiar will become a Greater Familiar through resurrection. Greater Familiar can possess and buff living monsters.

Sprite: Download Link: Attached

Gotta say, I'm not a big fan of this one. The sprite editing isn't very good, the blue fire and purple projectiles could use more tones.
Also, I would suggest making them a little more distinct from the regular afrits, as they seem more magical inclined than just hostile critters. For example, not using the same awakening animation and just spawn them active, or maybe having a different attack or different sounds.

Ok, I'll see what I can do. Please keep this open for a bit.

New version uploaded - new attack, new defense mechanism when hurt, particle effects, new respawn effect, different sounds.

I like the idea and its execution, but I noticed some things that imho could be improved.

• The monster resurrects corpses even it's flying far above the corpse it is about to possess. Which looks kinda odd, maybe add a range check so it can only resurrect nearby monsters? This is only noticable in rooms with high ceilings so maybe not that much of a problem in most situations.
• When hit, it keeps floating backwards and never stops until bumping into something. Not that much of a biggie either as this happens with pretty much all flying monsters that don't have custom movement code including vanilla ones, and it's only really noticable in wide open maps but maybe you can do something about it.
• The "teleport" state frames aren't fullbright like the others, which looks kinda odd in dark rooms.
• The monster doesn't have any dynamic lights attached which looks really odd given the blue fire in the sprites and the particles it emits. A simple blue flickerlight for all frames (at least the visible ones) should do the trick.
• The projectile inherits from CStaffMissile which deals poison damage. This is kinda odd (I'm never gonna get tired of using that phrase lol) since it's basically a fireball, but when it hits you your screen turns green. I'd suggest either removing the poison damage or changing the color of the projectile to better match the damage type.

Most of these points are only nitpicks, the only ones that bother me a bit more are the lack of dynamic lights for the Dark Genie itself and the projectile looking like a fireball while dealing poison damage.

To add to the above, its Death animation seems incomplete, it should spawn gibs at the end of its XDeath state.

Added a new version.

- it uses the Archvile's resurrect code, so it already only resurrects nearby monsters. I added and effect to make it more 'magical'
- added +BRIGHT and GLDEFS flicker ight
- removed poison damage
- the missing chunks are intentional, to further differentiate them from Afrits. Should I add them?

Nice work on the update. One thing that I noticed though (and I wonder why I didn't mention this before) is the really choppy movement. This is because the frames that call A_Vilechase have a duration of 5 tics.

I'd suggest cutting it down to 2 tics so the movement looks much smoother. But then you'd have to add more frames to the wingflap animation so it doesn't play too fast, and reduce the monster speed a bit.

I think this looks good with a speed of 12 instead of 16:

New version uploaded.

I decided to rename this to Familiar, as I think it suits it better.
I used DeVloek suggestions above. Also added new sprite colour and light for Heal state, inspired by the Cacomancer. Also made some adjustments to the projectile.

This guy looks awesome. I'll try it.