Shadow Hunter

Name: Shadow Hunter
Difficulty: Medium
Connections: None
Summon: ShadowHunter
Melee: No
Distance: Projectile
Type: Ghost
Brightmaps: No
Added States: No
ACS: No

Submitted: DoomedArchvileDemon
Decorate: DoomedArchvileDemon, TheMightyHeracross
Sounds: Freesounds, SeriousSam
Sprites: HorrorMovieGuy
Idea Base: HorrorMovieGuy's sprite sheet on this enemy

Description: In the dead of night this clocked figure emerges from the darkness to hunt down the living. Hard to see and hard to keep a beat on them, even in the light, these ghosts are excellent stealth hunters.


Shadow Hunter

He's awfully slippery, given that he does his teleport every time he's damaged, and his pain chance is high, which means he teleports a lot. I fought one in Grosse using the pistol, and it took a couple minutes just to kill one of him since every time I chipped 5-15 points off his health, he'd vanish for several seconds. Having him likewise disappear every time he shoots once is probably overkill. Maybe splinter the teleport off into a separate state and have a random chance of him jumping to it upon attack/pain?

Oh, and since his health value is 180, his XDeath state will almost never get called, since he'd have to be overkilled to -180 to gib him. Maybe you can give him a GibHealth value of something like 50? That way he'll only need to be overkilled to -50 (or whatever value you choose) in order to gib him.

Very solid overall, though. I'm fond of him.

Just a suggestion, though I'm sure MagicWazard is more of an expert than I, maybe instead of making him disappear after shooting and being hit, give him a slightly homing projectile that hits moderately hard, like a Hell Knight damage level, and give him a 100% pain chance. That way, he's a significantly damaging foe, and a priority of the player - but weapons like the shotgun might not cover it. You shoot him with anything, he teleports, and might get in a cheap shot. So you have to use higher damage weapons like your super shotgun or even a rocket launcher if you want to take him out quickly. Could be used to make "interesting" encounters. He never warps after a shot though - he stays where he is till YOU strike.

@MagicWazard I have adjusted how the Shadow Hunter vanishes and included a lower GibHealth. There is now a chance for the monster to enter either left dodge, right dodge, see, or its vanish state after firing. This should make it easier to keep track of and give more opportunity to deal out damage. Additionally, I have lowered its pain chance stat considerably so the player can deal more damage without having to constantly chase it. However, I left it so that whenever it does enter its pain state it will automatically vanish as a quick retreat.

@Skelepound Including a homing projectile would make this monster a bit unbalanced and wouldn't fit the theme of the monster since it only has a pistol for a weapon. I also feel that this monster is a decent priority monster with its behavior making up most of its difficulty and amount of damage dealt being a fair amount. It may not be as high of a priority as a chaingunner because it doesn't have hitscan, but with how hard it is to land a hit and keep track of this monster I'd say it's pretty close.

AH! I didn't know he had a pistol attack animation. I thought it would be a fireball or something. It sounds good! He seems like a really good character... it would be a real shame if someone... palette swapped it...

But tbh, it sounds like a good, mid-strength monster, would work well with a few Pinky's maybe.

[strike]My only gripe is its health. It's a tad too high. Lowering it to 150 would be good.[/strike]

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Edit: Actually, after some thought, you can keep the health as is.

I think this monster is pretty good on the whole.

Is the player supposed to be able to hit him when he is invisible? It's possible to run into or shoot him currently, but he didn't appear to take damage. If that's intentional, what about making it so he can still be hurt while in that mode?

Is the player supposed to be able to hit him when he is invisible?

No. When it goes invisible it is completely immune, as is intended. Not sure how to make it so that when an actor goes invisible it also has no hit box so I left it as is.

doomedarchviledemon wrote:

Is the player supposed to be able to hit him when he is invisible?

No. When it goes invisible it is completely immune, as is intended. Not sure how to make it so that when an actor goes invisible it also has no hit box so I left it as is.

I think you just want to use A_ChangeFlag("SOLID", False) along with the NOTAUTOAIMED flag. And then set it back to True when he's corporeal again.

NOTAUTOAIMED would not prevent the monster from being shot at and damaged. You'll want to use A_UnSetShootable and A_SetShootable.