[Submission] Ghost Revenant

[INFO]
Name: Ghost
Difficulty: Medium
Connection: Revenant, Spectre, Death Incarnate
Summon: GhostRevenant
Melee: Yes
Distance: Hitscan
Type: Spectre, Undead
Brightmaps: Yes
GLDefs: Yes

[CREDITS]
WAD Created by: DBJ87
Decorate: DBJ87
Palette: PNG Palette/PNG True Colour [Recoloured D64 Sprites]
Sprites: ID Software (Doom 2 & Doom 64), DBJ87
Brightmaps: DBJ87
GLDefs: DBJ87
SFX: ID Software (PS1 Revenant)
Idea Base: Own Idea

[DESCRIPTION]
Spectral Revenant that uses a weak Blinding Flash attack as it's ranged offence while it closes in to use it's more powerful Melee Attack. It moves a lot faster than standard Revenants & is almost completely invisible. Breaks it's invisibility briefly when attacking at a distance, before rapidly returning back to it's Ghostly status. When blinded by the flash attack, the player is more open to damage from the Ghost's attacks as well as Melee* damage & any attacks from other enemies for 12 seconds.

*Any attack that has its Damage Type defined as "Melee".
-Under it's current configuration all attacks (including punches) are the "SkeletonBurn" Damage Type, so I've defined it's Punch Attack as having a Melee Damage output.
- Submitted as a Stealth Monster. It's configured to coincide with the most stable version of GZDoom 2.4 onward.

[ADDITIONAL INFO]

I take credit for the Revenant Sprite edit & creating this monster's Brightmap, Decorate, Sound Info & GLDefs.

I don't take credit for the Doom 64 Sprites used, they were taken from a sprite sheet (which I now cannot find online, to credit who made it) for a Doom 64 Cacodemon based enemy.

[UPDATES]
19/04/17
-Ghost leaves a small "Trail" of Shadow copies of itself while walking, they are purely for decorative purposes.
-Hitscan Damage reduced & spread randomised.
-Puff & Ghost's Hitscan have been given the new damage type "SkeletonBurn" & any Pain causing flags removed to stop Ghosts fighting each other.
-The puff unleashes a "Power-Up" that is given to the player when blinded, your defence to damage from "SkeletonBurn", "Normal" & "Melee" drops. The player's HUD turns Yellow for 8 seconds. (Increases with each hit, for testing purposes, until a stable, safer duration can be decided).

23/04/17
-Blind Duration lasts 12 Seconds. Every time you are blinded the timer resets.
-+ADDITIVEDURATION Flag removed from Blinding Set-up with notes on the Attack added to INFO
-1 "Bullet" is fired by the Ghost to attempt to blind you, accuracy & Damage increased from last update

28/08/17
-Decorate spelling error corrected.

13/09/17
-Credits, Info, Decorate & GLDef update.
-Blinding Puff Sprites replaced.
-Passover sequence of the penalty given to the player by the Flash has been placed higher in it's Decorate so you can't "avoid" it when hit.
-Vertical Offset of Missile attack reduced.

21/10/17
-Summon renamed to "GhostRevenant", GLDef & Info changed accordingly.

[PREVIEW]

[DOWNLOAD]
[URL=http://www.m*diafire.com/file/98xhh0aueus09m0/GhostRevenant.zip]http://www.m*diafire.com/file/98xhh0aueus09m0/GhostRevenant.zip[/URL]

The ranged attack is a bit more dangerous than advertised...he's quite deadly even at a distance. Possibly to the point of upstaging his melee attack. Remember that he cycles through his states pretty quickly, so he can shoot often as a result. I'm not entirely sure what to think of the hitscan puff sprites...they're a little unusual, so I haven't made an opinion yet. Had you considered possibly implementing some sort of vision-impairing "status effect" on the player using them?

The overall sprite set is rad, though, and I'm happy to see something taking advantage of the minimum stealth alpha (I've been hoping for years they'd implement that).

MagicWazard wrote: The ranged attack is a bit more dangerous than advertised...he's quite deadly even at a distance. Possibly to the point of upstaging his melee attack. Remember that he cycles through his states pretty quickly, so he can shoot often as a result. I'm not entirely sure what to think of the hitscan puff sprites...they're a little unusual, so I haven't made an opinion yet. Had you considered possibly implementing some sort of vision-impairing "status effect" on the player using them?

The overall sprite set is rad, though, and I'm happy to see something taking advantage of the minimum stealth alpha (I've been hoping for years they'd implement that).

I'd been rattling my brain over the same issues for a while. And before reading this, had just set up something today, that might be along the right lines for the missile, although it is still a bit more dangerous.

The puff unleashes a "Power-Up" that is given to the player when blinded, your defence to damage from "SkeletonBurn", "Normal" & "Melee" drops. The player's HUD turns Yellow for 8 seconds. (Increases with each hit, for testing purposes, until a stable, safer duration can be decided).

I'm saying this as I've experimented with durations from 5, 8, 12, 24 & 30 seconds with & without Additive Timing (I will remove the Additive Timing when a final duration has been decided). 8 seconds is most likely still way too short, but anything higher than 20 seconds is unrealistic. I'm also wondering if there's a way to just set the HUD to either just go back to normal or fade back to normal instead of flashing when the power-up/penalty is wearing off.

The Puff's sprites, were inspired by the Death Incarnate's blinding hitscan & the BFG-9000's explosion sprites covered a large portion of your vision if hit directly or fired against the wall, although they might not be needed now the hud colour change is in place.

I might increase the time delays on some of the cycles. I think the missile might still be firing too quickly. (Update 19/04/17 Decorate)
In groups of 2 or more, the ranged attack can be a bit too much as well. So the "bullet" count might be reduced to 1, at the moment it's still 8 with the damage lowered to 1 from 3.
The New Missile Puff changes & the "Blind" effect.
With +INVENTORY.ADDITIVETIME off it will just stay at 8 seconds. At the moment it adds up to 16 seconds because it's used twice. The Powerup failed to activate at any point, except where it is now onwards, even when the Radius was increased to depths of 64-72 (just to get it working, higher than 24 or 32 was never my intention).

The actual damage penalties added, are just for experimentation, It makes a bit of sense to me, that your defence drops, when you can't see where you're going. But it's not an issue if it gets removed.

[23/04/17]
Removed +INVENTORY.ADDITIVETIME. Experimented with it & it's way too dangerous (left some notes and a warning about it on the file).
Lowered Shots fired to 1, but increased shot damage slightly & duration to 12 seconds (seems to be a bit fairer), it has had it's spread lowered, but the player can now easily dodge it more as it's accuracy & chance to directly hit you is still pretty low, especially if you have room to run around or get behind it.

Sorry, just noticed this hadn't been bumped in a while. Were there any pending changes, or are you just waiting for feedback?

MagicWazard wrote: Sorry, just noticed this hadn't been bumped in a while. Were there any pending changes, or are you just waiting for feedback?

Thank you. Mostly awaiting feedback, after adding the "ghostly trail" effect with it's movements & Stealth Alpha, I've been occupied with other enemies & a major project for some time, so I've been distracted from this upload.

Played against this enemy in a few levels from confined spaces to open areas (where it's less likely to hit you) in groups of about 2 or 3 with several standard demons & former humans/sergeants or a normal revenant as their back up & it adds that needed bit of panic to the player when your health starts dropping faster, so it does what it's meant to do, "blind" & weaken you for a short period of time while heading in to club the player, shoot again, dealing a bit more damage with each successful shot or in most cases, have weaker enemies like humans & sergeants dish out some decent damage.

[Edit]
Re-reading some earlier feedback about the, vision-impairing "status effect". I'm hoping that it's doing something along the line now, although now I'm wondering if you meant if there was a way to possibly lower the brightness level every time you were hit, which would mean, I'd have to change the attack pattern as things getting darker might not play into everyone's favor, although (to me) it would work just as well as the "Flashbang blinded by light" you get now, seeing as no duration is increased, it's just restarted every time you get hit from the missile state...

I had considered slowing the player down and/or shaking the screen* when blinded to add the effect of disorientation.
*Vertical & Horizontal Quaking

The puff is still the same as it was, I'm still looking for any alternative, as it might make this monster seem too similar to the Death Incarnate's attack puff, which was where I had gotten the idea to use a hitscan attack, instead of projectiles.

How exactly does the flash work? Does it just negate armor, and if you don't have any armor, will ghost flash affect you at all? You said lowers defense - i kinda wonder how that applies to someone with no defensive items.

skelepound wrote: How exactly does the flash work? Does it just negate armor, and if you don't have any armor, will ghost flash affect you at all? You said lowers defense - i kinda wonder how that applies to someone with no defensive items.

It behaves like power ups like the Guard Sphere do. Except instead of blocking damage, it increases it so you take double damage. Your Damage Factor is increased instead of decreased from enemy attacks.

When the puff hits a surface (wall, floor, you, others and actually shows the flash), it passes on the penalty when it appears, another way to compare, effects like damage increase or changes to player's status, would be to look at poison damaging enemies or guys on this site like Grell or the Weakener, except they use projectiles, this is meant to be a sudden "Flash out of the blue" like the Death Incarnate has, making them very tricky & intimidating to be around.

"Normal" is Doom/GZDoom's standard damage (everything from, gunshots, crushers, slime, demons scratching/biting & most dangerously explosive damage.

"Melee" Damage from any other Monster's melee attack is defined as dealing a Melee damage-type. The only other reason I've specified it be a "Melee" damage type is to differentiate the damage types from it's Missile & Melee attacks.

"SkeletonBurn" This defines, this monster's attacks (one other reason why "the Melee damage type" is defined in it's punch attack. It also stops Ghosts from fighting each other if one shoots another because their damage factor from this type (to itself) is 0.

Onto your questions about armour. Yes, if you haven't got any armour you will still be affected by the attack's increased damage output. Armour or any power ups lowering damage, will help lower damage (as it does with everything), you just take a lot more damage when blinded, for it to absorb as long as your screen is yellow. So Armor will deteriorate quickly, especially if you are attacked by a group of enemies, with a Ghost hidden or alongside them, shooting you or if the Ghost runs up & punches you when blinded.

You won't take damage if invulnerable, being a hitscan attack puff, it doesn't reflect or bounce back, you'll get the penalty passed on for 12 seconds, long enough to be a threat without being too long or too short*... anything longer than 10-12 seconds seemed too unrealistic, again another reason why I'm thinking about rocking the screen while blinded (for about 6 seconds) with a light Quake to add the effect of disorientation.

*Well aware of the dangers from seizures & having the screen flashing when the duration was set to 3 or 5 seconds as it wears off, is not easy on the eyes & brain...

Another look at the configuration for the Ghost's missile attack Puff...

I'd be inclined to shy away from "quake" effects. It would probably get a bit too disorienting for a status effect indicator, even if you don't crank it up as high as Hexen tends to do.

I like the debuff effect idea, though. It's not an unprecedented ability, but there's not much of a variety of creatures that utilize it.

MagicWazard wrote: I'd be inclined to shy away from "quake" effects. It would probably get a bit too disorienting for a status effect indicator, even if you don't crank it up as high as Hexen tends to do.

I like the debuff effect idea, though. It's not an unprecedented ability, but there's not much of a variety of creatures that utilize it.

Sorry, if you got an empty message/reply, I'd accidentally clicked quick reply... the quake idea was something that I just thought I'd get some feedback on first, sprang to mind writing the last few replies, but seeing how it works with something else I've done, I'll leave it out.

I'm glad the debuff is getting some positive feedback, if the duration was Additive (early testing, just to see if was worth it, damage penalty & duration stacking instead of resetting), these guys would wipe you out quickly, so I think the missile attack itself is good enough as it is.

It tries to run up for a Punch like Revenants do after shooting, so it follows their attack pattern but they make great "back up" for weaker monsters & even now, I've still caught out a few times by these guys, because of the distraction of desperately needing to get out of their sight or attention is focused on killing the moderate (in terms of numbers about 4-7) groups of enemies I'd bring with them. 2-3 of these with a group of Shotgun guys, Revenants or Chaingunners & you'll be running scared if you can't get a rocket launcher ready.

Apart from the BFG Splash puff (too similar to Death Incarnate and this has been raised already), is there anything you think needs changing or looking into? The puff sprites don't to be anything too fancy, but hoping I can find something better, as long as it looks like something is flashing in front of you (assuming you're facing one when shot at), if nothing else needs changing, I'll get straight onto looking into it.

Updated the Flash Sprites with something I think & hope the rest of will agree looks a lot better than a Yellow BFG Splash & generally suits the attack better.

Additional notes on other changes are on File or Page 1. If there's no issues with anything, this is finished-- but I will keep an eye open for any other sprites that might also be used. As these new sprites are based off of Doom64. There is no issues with the colouring when used in game, they are added as True Colour instead of PNG Palette, they'll also be a lot more transparent so they don't stand out the wrong way & look out of place.