Insanity Sphere

[INFO]
Name: Insanity Sphere
Type: Protection, Damage, Regeneration
Palette: Custom
Summon: InsanitySphere
Use Type: Instant
Duration: 60 seconds
Brightmaps: None
Added States: None 
Actor Modification: Morphs the player, but no changes to any settings needed.
ACS: None

[CREDITS]
Submitted: DBJ87
Code: DBJ87, Blue Shadow (Decorate Edit & ZScript)
GLDefs: DBJ87
Sounds: Id Software (Doom 3)
Sprites: Id Software (Doom 2), Midway (Doom64)
Sprite Edit: Blue Shadow, That_One_Doom_Mod (Fist Redux)
Idea Base: Own Idea, Doom 3


//Insanity Sphere
You’ve been succumbed to Demonic Torment, but embrace it & unleash Hell's fury! You take 50% less damage & gain a more powerful Punch based offence, using both arms for faster attacks. You'll heal yourself or increase your health (up to 200%) while damaging others & will pull yourself towards your target to ensure your rage is fully spread! While enraged, you can't swap weapons. However, you can pick up items as normal & other Sphere's powers will stack with this. If you have inventory items, such as Sentry Bots or Medical Supply Packs, they can also be used as normal.

[Note]
-Remember, you are restricted to punching.
-Being overrun by large groups is still a danger, especially if your armour gets destroyed, but if you can keep hitting targets you will at least recover health.
-Don't expect to kill bosses easily! You've got a strength improvement but big bosses such as the Cyberdemon won't die in 2-3 hits.
-Berserk packs will NOT increase your punching damage, you already get that from the Sphere, you'll just be healed as normal.
-Any other item/power up that can increase damage, speed or protection (example- Radiation Suits, Guard Spheres, Quad Damage) will be added onto the Player while under the Insanity Sphere. But even then, running head first into bosses will most likely get you killed from powerful attacks or once your armour is smashed!

[UPDATE HISTORY]


04/06/18
-Sprite update, overall changes finalised
-Edited Credits & Info lumps
-Download link to MediaFire removed & will now be downloaded from Dropbox

[PREVIEW]

[DOWNLOAD]
https://www.dropbox.com/s/umnx2wd8pkm0llq/InsanitySphere.zip?dl=0

Originally dubbed "Psycho Sphere" or "Manic Sphere". The idea is to Replicate Doom 3's Berserk (also originally based to replicate some of ROE's Fully Upgraded Artefact attributes, but it works better focusing on just the 1 factor, you didn't take Damage in Doom 3 under the Berserk Mode, so ROE was adding was the ability of freezing time).

Time-Freezing (like the Artifact) & Faster Firing speed (just to test it) have been tested, no intention on using them for submission.

Regeneration added as an extra bonus to make this more useful (will be removed if felt necessary at any time).

If possible, I think this would work better if the Fist (or what is used for the Fist) can't be switched out, until the timer runs out, keeping the whole process uninterrupted* seeing as you can't be damaged. (But not sure if or how you can "lock" the weapon in place)
*Fist is a "Wimpy Weapon" & gets swapped out when you pick up some ammo for anything else.

I don't feel I like this too much. There is irritating screen shaking and redness along side screaming, and in return you get an invulnerability-berserk powerup. Speed is negligible here, considering Doomguy is already fast.

The item appears too big in game. The sphere part of the sprite lacks shading to make it look like a sphere and not a circle.

Blue Shadow wrote: I don't feel I like this too much. There is irritating screen shaking and redness along side screaming, and in return you get an invulnerability-berserk powerup. Speed is negligible here, considering Doomguy is already fast.

The item appears too big in game. The sphere part of the sprite lacks shading to make it look like a sphere and not a circle.

Thank you, I had mixed opinions on the item myself, held it back a bit after I'd finished the original, but out of curiosity I submitted it, knowing there'd be issues that needed addressing (probably got too over keen, not the right thing to have done, sorry for any inconvenience).

I understand the frustration with the faults fully, especially the speed boost not really being needed & reading your opinion I can see that way too much is going against it. Shading & integrating different game sprite palettes (Doom & Doom64 in this case) is something I'm still on early stages with in terms of getting the basics going, so appearance changes will take a very long time to come around.

If at anytime you or anyone feels this should be rejected or placed into the workshop now, I won't have any problems with that. Because apart from the theatrical extras (screaming, shaking) I think this isn't going to be anything "exciting" apart from, an invulnerability-berserk-regeneration powerup, which (in hindsight, thinking things through a bit more & with over other user perspectives) is pretty redundant.

DBJ87 wrote:
If possible, I think this would work better if the Fist (or what is used for the Fist) can't be switched out, until the timer runs out, keeping the whole process uninterrupted* seeing as you can't be damaged. (But not sure if or how you can "lock" the weapon in place)

Maybe as a morph, like the Mutant Sphere? That is, morph the player into a class where the only weapon is a stronger Fist attack.

MagicWazard wrote:

DBJ87 wrote:
If possible, I think this would work better if the Fist (or what is used for the Fist) can't be switched out, until the timer runs out, keeping the whole process uninterrupted* seeing as you can't be damaged. (But not sure if or how you can "lock" the weapon in place)

Maybe as a morph, like the Mutant Sphere? That is, morph the player into a class where the only weapon is a stronger Fist attack.

Thank you, I never thought of that.

Not worked with morphing, always thought the idea would be a bit too complicated for me to handle (but then, this is mostly seeing it work on advanced & more experienced Game changes like D4D). But this might be the right & most logical way to go. This will take some time & I hope, will work out in the end. Will also shrink the Marine's head down & try to get the horrid lack of background detail fixed.

You can try using the Mutant Sphere as a how-to reference. The effect is not dissimilar to what you have in mind.

MagicWazard wrote: You can try using the Mutant Sphere as a how-to reference. The effect is not dissimilar to what you have in mind.

The Mutant Sphere has been a great help, have it's managed to get the auto-switch "problem" solved, the only drawback being resetting the Player's Health & removing Armor, while personally, I really don't have a problem with the Stats getting reset, (you're unable to be damaged & can punch anything to death to your heart's content for 30 seconds) but because you lose your Armour, I've set the health to reset to 125% (so you've a bit more of a chance to survive when you calm down & snap back to reality).

I have made the attack's damage pretty high & the player will swing with both hands (working off the Fist Redux, without adding the Kick Attack), while taking away the dramatic Speed increase & reducing the shaking of the screen a lot more. While you won't be killing everything in 1 punch (like in Doom 3) bigger enemies will die after quicker. Depending how close you are & how fast you can get around to make the most of this. (had to be some trade off for coming around, unarmoured).

Regeneration or Life Stealing Melee attacks became redundant & haven't worked with testing while morphed (I removed invulnerability, unless there was any damage reduction, you'd be dead in seconds, but health never regenerated regardless) , so at the moment it's looking like an Invulnerability, beefed up Berserk Power that needs careful or logical consideration when placing it. Because you can wipe out a moderate group of Barons, or kill a Cyberdemon within that limit with about 5 seconds to find somewhere to hide before you get surrounded or are left completely exposed.

I'll upload what's been done so far (probably make more sense), but at the moment the Sphere's appearance is still as it originally was so it won't look fancy on the outside

[EDIT]
Uploaded updated version, with original & Morph for comparison. Damage has been reduced to give 8x Damage like the Mutant Sphere. I had tested with 10x but killing Cyberdemons or if you have anything tougher isn't fun if it's over in 5 or 6 punches.

-Turbo Speed removed, you'll move at default speed.
-At the moment the sprites are still the ugly originals but they will be next on the list.
-Shaking screen reduced a bit more, but still has the screaming to add some effect that the player is going completely insane.

I think the morphing idea, might be the best way forward, even though the auto-switch complaint (because you're punching) Is just a petty problem, another thing that damaged the original, was that you're just not getting the expected power behind your attacks as it's matching the Berserk's, which really makes this pretty useless.

There is a glitch when morphing, the player freezes when the expected Morph Flash starts or ends. So I'll need to create some sort of animation for the start & end flashes so it looks a bit more smoother

Finally got back to this a few months ago. Revamped everything, apart from the sloppy sprites I'm afraid , but I thought I'd update it with what I've got (have had to reconvert it back to using the Redux Fist Sprites for the Realm, used a sprite set with gloves on, when I made these changes & had considered asking this to be dismissed & discarded, but that was mostly due to the Sphere Sprite issues).

Biggest change is how the Morph works, you will actually take damage & killing things will heal you. The preset health from morphing has increased, damage reduction (originally 75%) has decreased, damage multiplier (if it's still needed, it still takes a few punches to kill Hard demons, but I do intend to at least reduce it, hopefully without weakening this power up too much) & custom punch's life stolen per hit & kill, this still needs drastic balancing .

The Punch attacks deal 6 x random (1,10) x 8 (Before adding the Damage increase bonus from the multiplier), which is less than the Berserk's Punches & having "PowerStrength" Does not increase the Morphed Player's damage, below is what pattern I followed for the attack's damage.

Berserk & Custom Punching (Example of configuration taken from zdoom.org)
And at the moment this is the Morph's Punch Attack layout on it's own.

Then on top of that is the set Damage Multiplier, currently 8x like the Mutant Sphere. So well aware that a massive (stupidly high) amount of damage is being dished out & a lot of (or too much) health is recovered in one hit, one the reasons lowering the health regained & the damage Multiplier are things I'm going to look into.

Although I suppose a simpler alternative would be to set the Punch damage to match Doom's Berserk & take out or reduce the multiplier (to x2, x3), then increase/decrease the damage reduction accordingly. Guess I've answered my own question :roll:, but any feedback on how the attack in general is looking let me know.

The Sphere's Sprites are going to reduced down to 4 (eventually) probably with the Player's head (shrunken down) in it's pain state :ouch: with some sparks or something flying around & the actual head sprites having the player's pain look left to right then the "wow big hit" (loop)... still not entirely sure what would look good, but it does need shrinking & a decent colour change. Right now, I'll be focusing on the damage output when morphed.

I think I like this better than the initial version. Here are a few notes:

• This is from the INFO lump:
  
  

  Health Regenerates only when damaging/killing enemies up to 300%. +5% per hit.

  You don't restore 5 percent/points of health per hit. What you restore is the damage you dealt multiplied by 5.
• If you die while the powerup is active, the screen shaking and screaming continue.
• I noticed that you're setting the volume of the powerup's use sound to 200. The sound volume in A_PlaySound is a multiplier which goes from 0 to 1.0. Setting it to higher values makes no sense, and all it does is confuse people who might look at your code.
• I'd suggest making the use sound have normal attenuation as opposed to none. It doesn't make much sense and is rather annoying to hear another player's screams in my ears while I'm on the other side of the map.
• Why does the morph flash play the screaming sound, too?