FluxGlutton

INFORMATION:

Name: FluxGlutton
Difficulty: Medium
Connections: None
Summon: fluxglutton, fluxgluttonwhite
Melee: No
Distance: Yes
Type: Demon, Cybernetic
Brightmaps: No
Added States: No
ACS: No


A frog-like demon, grafted with an UnMaker and other equipment. Demonic capacitors store the energy of unmade souls. Gorging itself on souls has bloated and warped its body. It fires a single stream of laser bolts, at a rate that allows skillful players to narrowly dodge through the stream without taking damage. Future edits will include the following behaviors and mechanics: melee attack, UnMaker charge states, cannibalism, and dropping an UnMaker upon dying. This pack includes a white-belly recolor. (2017 cantstoptherobot@gmail.com)

CREDITS:

Submitted: RoboticRocketeer
Decorate: RoboticRocketeer
Sounds: FreeSound.org, YouTube videos of elephant seals and sea lions, Audacity audio filters, UnMaker sounds
Sprites: RoboticRocketeer
Idea Base: RoboticRocketeer asked a bunch of Doom livestreamers what kind of original monster they'd like to see. A streamer named HyperChrisTV reflected that he'd always wanted to see the Doom64 UnMaker on an enemy; RoboticRocketeer thought up the rest.

PREVIEW SPRITE:



DOWNLOAD LINK:

http://trickyrobot.com/FLUXGLUTTON.zip

Bonus High-Resolution Animated .gif Rotation:

[img][/img]

Is there much difference between the two Flux Gluttons that you posted? The white bellied one could be combined with the one in the other thread .

I was worried I should have done that!

Yeah, it's just a recolor.

Well, considering that, I think I'll edit this post with a version containing both colors. And then I'll delete the other thread.

DONE!

Honestly seems more visually like something that would be out of Marathon, all things considered.

SArais wrote: Honestly seems more visually like something that would be out of Marathon, all things considered.

I don't see the resemblance, but it's interesting that you made that connection.

For what it's worth, when I showed this creature to three non-Doomers, they all asked, "Is this a Doom monster?" unprompted.

My concern was that it would look too Duke Nukemy! When I reflect on it, there's a fine line between what makes a monster look like it's from Doom, Duke Nukem, or now Marathon, too.

This looks very interesting. I'm not prepared yet to give it a detailed critique, but I at least wanted you to know that it hasn't gone unacknowledged this past week.

Judging from the preview, though, yeah, I see a bit of Marathon, but I think I get more of a mix of 3D Realms/Apogee, Corridor 18, and maybe a bit of Blake Stone. Hard to say if it's "Doom" or not until I can take it for a thorough test, but definitely pro quality. The name kind of sounds like something from Commander Keen collided with something from Hitchhiker's Guide.

RoboticRocketeer wrote:

SArais wrote: Honestly seems more visually like something that would be out of Marathon, all things considered.

I don't see the resemblance, but it's interesting that you made that connection.

For what it's worth, when I showed this creature to three non-Doomers, they all asked, "Is this a Doom monster?" unprompted.

My concern was that it would look too Duke Nukemy! When I reflect on it, there's a fine line between what makes a monster look like it's from Doom, Duke Nukem, or now Marathon, too.

seems the forums eats posts sometimes.

It's something to do with the lack of discernable pixels or something I think.

I went to try this, but the zip file appears to have all the individual lumps inside it rather than inside a wad file. When i summoned it in ZDoom, it was invisible.

Based on the preview images, I'm personally not so sure about the art style. It's not bad mind you, but it does seem to be quite a bit different than what's present already (even compared to the Duke enemies).

MagicWazard wrote: This looks very interesting. I'm not prepared yet to give it a detailed critique, but I at least wanted you to know that it hasn't gone unacknowledged this past week.

Judging from the preview, though, yeah, I see a bit of Marathon, but I think I get more of a mix of 3D Realms/Apogee, Corridor 18, and maybe a bit of Blake Stone. Hard to say if it's "Doom" or not until I can take it for a thorough test, but definitely pro quality. The name kind of sounds like something from Commander Keen collided with something from Hitchhiker's Guide.

I realize now that I went too hard on the outline-shading. At some point, I'll have to go back in and lighten up the edges, to make them more abrupt.

SArais wrote: It's something to do with the lack of discernable pixels or something I think.

That's what the high-resolution originals look like. It's not the low-resolution final sprites. I'll make sure to also include a low-res sprite version of the rotation too, so that nobody gets confused about what the monster looks like in-game.

Dreadopp wrote: I went to try this, but the zip file appears to have all the individual lumps inside it rather than inside a wad file. When i summoned it in ZDoom, it was invisible.

Weird. Well, at some point I'll try playing around with giving it extra layers of packaging. Maybe it needs that one more layer.

When is "at some point?" No idea.

Try this version. It's just the contents repacked into a WAD, then zipped:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bevmo3kzooshu85/FLUXGLUTTON.zip?dl=0
Maybe you just copied the contents of the WAD into the zip in SLADE, rather than importing the WAD. (I'm guessing the monster was invisible when loading the .zip because although the DECORATE would be read from the root directory of the archive, the sprites would not be loaded unless they were in a subfolder--same rules as apply to .PK3.)

I took it for a spin in-game, and there's no real surprises--it's a durable turret enemy. Balance is fine, from my perspective. I notice his offset projectile doesn't focus on the player's midpoint, but on a point that appears to be offset relative to its firing point.

Back to the sprites...here's some notes I wrote a few days ago on art style, but hadn't posted. Probably some things you've heard before, but might be for the benefit of other readers.


Still, before you do anything about the sprites, do consider whether or not you're happy with the result as it is now, and whether or not you want to change it to fit into a particular game environment. I think that the sprite work is very solid as-is, and I don't want to assert that "fitting a style" is automatically "better", even if it may be less useful to us in particular. Definitely at least back up a copy before you start altering it.

Oh, and on a technical level, the sprites are all in truecolor format (32 bits with full transparency). We generally ask for sprites in paletted/indexed format (256 colors with single-color transparency). They can be saved in a custom palette/index in order to preserve as much color depth as possible. This will also sharpen up the edges as well.