Devil Worms Pack

Name: Devil Worms Pack
Difficulty: Easy - Hard
Summon: Wormegg, Babyworm, Teenworm, TeenwormH, Adultworm, AdultwormH, Elderworm, ElderwormH
Melee: Yes
Distance: Projectile
Type: Demon

Submitted: Doomedarchviledemon
Decorate: Captain Toenail, Doomedarchviledemon
Sprites: Exhumed / Powerslave
Sprite Edits: Doomedarchviledemon
Sounds: Serious Sam, Freesounds
Idea Base: Tremors

Description:

In the world of Doom this is one can of worms you most certainly do not want to open. This package comes with four worms, which is really just a normal worm but in its four stages of life. Each one stronger than the last and comes with at least one attack as it learns new ways to hunt its prey grows older.

Baby worm: At this stage in a Devil Worm's life they are very small and weak, not able to endure much more than a few bullets. Though they tend to stay in a pack of ten or more worms in this stage to better hunt and survive. While being very weak they make up for in their small size and speed. They are great ambush predators and can overwhelm their prey in a large enough hoard waiting for the right time to strike.

Teen worm: During this stage in a Devil Worm's life these worms grow slightly slower than when they were babies but they make up for it with a little more strength and two new hunting skills. Instead of only being able to bite they can now charge towards their prey and spit out chunks of earth to attack from a slight distance. They also tend to split away from the large pack of ten to smaller packs of four or five.

Adult worm: Nearing the end of a Devil Worm's life cycle these worms become larger but also slower. Though what they lack in speed they make up for in strength. Their hide toughened up by the years of digging through hard earth and their teeth and horns becoming harder and heavy they have become one of the best earth dwelling predators. They have learned another hunting skill where they use the element of surprise to blindside its prey. Their pack size has also reduced to only two worms who will later on actually become each other's mate during breeding season. The Devil Worm's will only mate with another who has been with them for years. This means that if one of the worms die during this part of its life cycle it is very unlikely that the other mate will be able to reproduce.

Eggs During mating season the Devil Worm's will dig closer to the surface to breed and lay their eggs in a nest of up to one hundred eggs. These eggs are small and can usually be seen in a large spread out area that can carpet a large cave nest. They are very fragile and can be easily broken with a single bullet or even a punch. However, they are also very sensitive to sound and will prematurely open if disturbed, letting out a baby Devil Worm who will attack any potential predators.

Elder worm: At this point in the Devil Worm's life cycle mating season has already passed and most of the worms have passes away shortly after breeding. However, in the event of a worm not being able to reproduce due to their mate dying before matting season, the worm will continue to live on. As it reaches this stage they have grown massively in size and have produced spikes in the rest of its body. These worms become highly aggressive and much more prone to attack using a new hunting skill that allows it to spit out their own spikes at their prey. They only appear by themselves due to being especially aggressive towards their own kind in a fight for dominates. Even though it is only one Devil Worm, at this stage not many other predators can even stand against it.

Note: There is also a function for the Adult Worm that can only run on a development version of Zdoom 4468365 or higher. This function has, for now, been commented out in the code. To use the function simply un-comment it and it should work.



Devil Worms
Download

The preview picture link doesn't appear to work...

Mechanically, this is a great monster. I like what it does.

Visually, I like it too, but I wish they had separate colors. Maybe make the Baby green, Teen base color, Adult dark brown, and "the other one" black if and when you get to it.

On the one hand, I do like the general behavior; especially the attack move where it leaps into the air and then lunges forward. However, I did find that it doesn't play well with rapid-fire weapons--if its pain gets triggered while it's in mid-air, it can then reattempt to jump while still in the middle of its last jump, which results in it Space Jumping until it hits the ceiling and/or leaves your field-of-view. Ideally, it should check to see if it's on the ground before it attempts to jump again.

I'm a little uncertain about the general appearance, too. Without the "segments", they don't really look like worms so much as...I dunno, maybe langoliers or something like that. I'd love to see the segments made to work. I also don't feel they should be scaled down as much as they are, especially considering how much health they have (and I do feel they have too much health). I feel like they could probably get away with 1/2 to 1/3 of the health they have currently, considering their size and appearance.

I really do like the pounce attack, though! Even if it doesn't get "fixed", it's a great gimmick!

The preview picture link doesn't appear to work...

I have no idea why it doesn't work. I linked it and placed a size but nothing appears sadly. Upsetting because I made a preview image that looks pretty cool but idk.

Visually, I like it too, but I wish they had separate colors. Maybe make the Baby green, Teen base color, Adult dark brown, and "the other one" black if and when you get to it.

I'll see what I can do for the colors of the worms. I think I'll make a chart or something of different variants and see which one works best, or maybe even put up a poll asking which one would look good.

I did find that it doesn't play well with rapid-fire weapons--if its pain gets triggered while it's in mid-air, it can then reattempt to jump while still in the middle of its last jump, which results in it Space Jumping until it hits the ceiling and/or leaves your field-of-view.

I believe this should be fixed now.

I'm a little uncertain about the general appearance, too. Without the "segments", they don't really look like worms so much as...I dunno, maybe langoliers or something like that. I'd love to see the segments made to work.

This is very true and I have the same feelings about it. But I started creating this monster as a worm so I decided to keep it as such. Not to mention I am not sure what to call it other than... Flesh Ball of Teeth or something.
To show you what I basically had before I have now included a version of the worms with the tails on. It is a quick and dirty way of how I did it before but it's basically what I had exactly before I removed them. The summons are Babyworm and Babyworm2. They are both scaled up and shows two version of the tails. Babyworm shows the segments as plain segments without shrinking and Babyworm2 has the segments shrinking as if the body has a large and small part to it. I could make the transition more smooth but for now this is just a rough sketch, if you will.

I feel like they could probably get away with 1/2 to 1/3 of the health they have currently, considering their size and appearance.

Their health has now been adjusted. Hopefully that is a little better.

Well firstly when I go to the link it tells me "I'm not supposed to be there". Second, you should link to the image itself and use the img tags.

for example :

doomedarchviledemon wrote:

I did find that it doesn't play well with rapid-fire weapons--if its pain gets triggered while it's in mid-air, it can then reattempt to jump while still in the middle of its last jump, which results in it Space Jumping until it hits the ceiling and/or leaves your field-of-view.

I believe this should be fixed now.

At the moment they still do it. I think at the beginning of his "see" state he needs to check if he's on the floor or not; if he isn't on the floor, then he should go to some state that prevents him from attacking, and loops until he's on the floor, at which point he can go back to his "see" state and be allowed to attack again.

BTW, I just noticed the burrowing attack for the large one. That's a really cool move! However, the player does try to autoaim for it while it's submerged. It probably needs a couple flags toggled to disable shootability and/or autoaim.

Well firstly when I go to the link it tells me "I'm not supposed to be there". Second, you should link to the image itself and use the img tags.

I was doing that but for some reason it was not accepting it from Dropbox. I found an alternative though so... Yay!

At the moment they still do it. I think at the beginning of his "see" state he needs to check if he's on the floor or not; if he isn't on the floor, then he should go to some state that prevents him from attacking, and loops until he's on the floor, at which point he can go back to his "see" state and be allowed to attack again.

I believe this should be fixed for good this time. I made a new state for the worms to go in after their "pain" state to where it will continually loop until it landed, then go back to the "see" state.

BTW, I just noticed the burrowing attack for the large one. That's a really cool move! However, the player does try to autoaim for it while it's submerged. It probably needs a couple flags toggled to disable shootability and/or autoaim.

Keeeee! I love the burrowing attack too! I was so happy when I figured out how to make it look like it was burrowing and made it work just the way I wanted it. Can't have a worm without it burrowing into the ground now can we?

I wasn't able to find a way to switch the monster from an aimable and nonaimable state, unfortunately. The only thing I could find was a "notautoaimed" flag and this "cl_doautoaim" state that only appears to work in player settings. I tried to give this to the worm but I got an error. So I decided to just give the worm the "notautoaimed" flag instead. A semi-fix I suppose but, I don't know.

Also, one thing that is a bit upsetting about the Burrowing attack that I can't implement is that I was wanting to make the worm travel faster while in that state. It is able to do it but only for a development version at the moment. Set Speed Maybe after this is fully supported I will update this monster with this implemented, but for now, oh well.

doomedarchviledemon wrote: I wasn't able to find a way to switch the monster from an aimable and nonaimable state, unfortunately. The only thing I could find was a "notautoaimed" flag and this "cl_doautoaim" state that only appears to work in player settings. I tried to give this to the worm but I got an error.

Couldn't you just use A_ChangeFlag("NOTAUTOAIMED", TRUE) as he starts burrowing, and then set it back to "FALSE" once he's done? Or did that not work properly?

doomedarchviledemon wrote: Also, one thing that is a bit upsetting about the Burrowing attack that I can't implement is that I was wanting to make the worm travel faster while in that state. It is able to do it but only for a development version at the moment. Set Speed Maybe after this is fully supported I will update this monster with this implemented, but for now, oh well.

I was going to suggest just changing the number of tics that each of its movement frames are called for, but it's already calling A_Wander for 1 tic each time, and you can't (really) go below that. Either way, I don't think it's a huge loss; the core behavior is still there without it. Maybe you could go ahead and include it anyways, but comment it out and indicate that it's a new feature so it won't "break" if people don't have the right build yet.

You can, if you want, use development-build-exclusive features in your submissions. Just make sure to mention that your submission requires a dev build to run .

ZDoom doesn't receive as many official releases as one would hope (it's been a year and 3-4 months since the last one), so you're going to wait a lot if you decided to do just that.