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Bestiary

Another convenient chart. This one contains all the enemies in the game!

I arranged all the enemies in 4 tiers depending on their combat capability. Of course each tier adds a more complex behavior or just bigger numbers to an enemy’s arsenal. This chart does not represent the order on which you will meet these enemies in the game, you can see barons of hell very early, but mini-arachnotrons very late in game.

Tier 4 enemies cannot be stunned by the chainsaw, also the Hell Knight. I’d say the hell knight is in a point between 3 and 4, it has a lot of damage, but not a lot of hitpoints.

Below the enemy name is their type.

Roamer: Walks around aimlessly and will attack if you get in range.

Chaser: Will move towards you and try to smash you with its body.

Hunter: Will keep a close distance to the player, attacking with ranged attacks when far, and melee attacks when up close.

Sniper: Will try to keep a far distance from the player, attacking with long-range fire or spawning other enemies.

Of course, any of the enemies can have the Chosen modifier, which increases its life and can change its behavior.

It makes me happy to see all these cheerful demons in one place.
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Other Enemies

With the last post about the summoner we have covered all of the enemies in the game, except for a few special cases. I’ll clump two of these extra enemies here.

Possessed/Unwilling

they don’t deal damage for a second when coming out

These enemies are kind of a level hazard, since they appear only on a single level of the game and only on very specific areas.

They are a very simple monster, just a slow melee attacker. But in certain areas of the level they spawn endlessly from the ground, every time you kill one, another will raise somewhere near. They are a pretty fun obstacle to overcome. Every level in the game has its own unique mechanic like these zombie-like guys.

Cyber Mancubus

don’t step on the puddle

These variation on the mancubus used to be just the same but with more hit points. After reding some comments in the blog, I decided to give a shot at making it a more unique enemy.

So I made an acid version of the shots with some simple particles, the shots are also a bit faster but smaller. And now that a cyber mancubus dies it creates a pool of acid for a few seconds. Also there is a new effect to distinguish when  the player is touching acid or lava.

About the D3 mancubus, hes probably gonna work like the cyber-mancubus but stronger. Anyway it just appears in a single stage.

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The Summoner

The summoner is a slippery flying enemy that can be really difficult to kill. As the name implies, he can summon other demons. The summoner floats around the room and prefers to keep away from the player, letting it’s summoned demons do the dirty work.

Killing the summoner can be tricky because it spawns with a shield that can take a few hits (a weaker version of the armored-pinky shield). If the shield is destroyed and the summoner starts taking damage, it will teleport away from the player and regenerate its shield. For this reason using splash damage is most effective against summoners.

Rockets are almost mandatory

Summoners can also attack by throwing a slow traveling energy wave at the player. This attack can go through walls and is very wide, but is kind of slow. Summoners have a really slow fire rate, so they aren’t very dangerous without their minions.

And of course the sommoner can summon lesser demons. There is a chance the it summons a hellraiser or a smaller chance it summons a new imp or a pinky. Right now those are the only 3 demons that can be summoned. I might add revenants or heavy weapons dudes to the list later, but I haven’t tested them with so much summoning variety yet. Don’t worry they have a limit to how many enemies can be summoned at a time (right now its 3).

You can actually bypass the shield with clever angling

Even without their shield summoners are very tough and hard to catch. These enemies should be your first priority on any battle! Kill them before they fill the room with enemies! (A couple of unmaker shots are the best option)

Nice mid-air weapon switch, brah
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Hell Knight

We are showing the hell knight just now because all of its sprites were redrawn and are sharper than ever.
The hell knight is a large tanky chaser enemy than can deal a lot of damage and disrupt your movement by pushing you around, jumping and blocking your way.


What makes hell knights dangerous is their large size. Their running speed is not too high, but they accelerate when jumping. They can also jump higher depending if the player is positioned much higher than they are.

Learn how they behave and you’ll easily dodge them

All this makes them hard to avoid if you cannot focus them 1 on 1.
There are many ways to avoid hell knights. You can even roll through them but your timing has to be good.

Easiest way is to wait till they jump and slam the ground and jump over them at that point. Trying to jump over a running hell knight can cause them to jump to intercept you, and you don’t want to get hit by that (while jumping they have increased damage and knock-back power).


When a hell knight slams the ground it launches a small fire wave that travels over the ground. Don’t get distracted by this, it doesn’t deal as much damage as the knight and it doesn’t push. A chosen hell knight can launch a fire wave that travels way longer.


Hell knights can be hard to ignore with their size and mobility, get used to their way of movement so you can better engage them in a group fight.

Hes big but ignore that bastard, focus on archviles
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The smaller things

Let’s not forget about the lesser enemies. They might be small but they received big changes.

Lost Soul

Let’s face it; lost souls in miniDoom1 were overpowered as fuck. They could charge into you then just continue to damage until you moved or somehow killed them while they were inside your hitbox. It was pretty bad (also in version 1.0 they used to do double damage).

Now with bouncy action

So now the super needed change: Lost souls now bounce off you. Once they charge you or you run into them, lost souls will be pushed back. A small change but it makes a huge difference!

Lost souls 2016

It’s a new brand of lost soul from D2016. The main difference is that contact with them will make the lost soul explode. The explosion is not too damaging but the pushback effect can be really dangerous, especially since they tend to hang around cliffs. Killing the lost soul will not produce an explosion, just some harmless sparks.

Mini Arachnotron

Well this is one enemy that we changed completely. I posted some sketches of this enemy last year and ever since I really liked the concept. I went for it because the alternative was just not different enough from the heavy-weapons-dude or mancubus. I thought this would be better for gameplay diversity. It crawls around walls and ceilings (like the Metroid guys) but it also shoots plasma at you if you cross its line of sight.

This is the only incarnation of the arachnotron in the game, but if we ever release more content for the game, I would like to do a proper sized one based on the Doom64 arachnotron.

Got a soft spot for this fellas, still gotta murder them
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Armory 01

Complete table below

Since we are finished with the weapons I wanted to make a chart with the weapon information.

Of course it’s not a complete chart, it doesn’t have values like range or ammo consumption. But those numbers might change in development… well all numbers might change haha.

DPS (Damage per second) is not a determinant factor on which weapon is better. All weapons are better in a situation. The minigun has the highest DPS and it’s definitely not always the best weapon. Most of the times up front damage like the shotgun’s is more useful. Or the Gauss wich might have a low DPS, but its range, auto aim and piercing bullets make it very useful.

Right now I think weapons are mostly well balanced.

A weapons’ SPEED is determined in shots per second. Some of these and DPS values are rounded.

To get an idea of damage values a zombie man has 30HP, imp has 45HP, a pinky 80HP, caco 115HP, baron has 280HP.

I might do a more complete chart later in development.

You might want to open the picture in a separate tab to get full view

Some clarifications: Staggering enemies like in the original Doom is just stoping their movement for a while when they get hit, it’s a new mechanic we are working on. Enemies killed with the chainsaw will always yield a random ammo drop. Soul cube doesn’t have attack speed or DPS because you can not fire it repeatedly even if you have many souls, you have to wait till it returns to you before firing again.

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Weapon Upgrades

Some of the starting weapons in MiniDoom2 can be upgraded to a new weapon if you find the corresponding powerup. It’s not just cool, it was necessary.

I was halfway through designing the levels, and there is a difficulty spike when entering the hell levels. There are new enemies and they are tougher, so I planned to introduce the super shot-gun there and increase the player’s damage output as well.

The design philosophy here is that no single enemy is supposed to be too hard to kill (except for bosses of course). Enemies are meant to be killed in large quantities, with the challenge not being in taking them down but in not receiving too much damage in the process. I think I will do another post detailing more about where we want to focus the challenge in MiniDoom2 and why I opted for including small ammo and stat collectible upgrades.

Anyway I noticed that I didn’t use grenades, the shotgun or the pistol after a while. Because these weapons were the first in the game I realized that they did have a lower power level, and I couldn’t change that without making the game easier. BUT I WANTED ALL WEAPONS TO BE EQUAL. So a solution was to include an upgrade for the weapon later in the game to raise their power to that of the other guns.

Super-Shotgun

The necessary double-barreled partner you need to go into hell. When you get this upgrade, the shotgun has become a lot mostly outclassed by the gauss canon and minigun. But then it gets elevated to god-tier. At the cost of a higher ammo consumption and reload time, a well-placed super-shotgun blast should dispose of most of hell’s minions in one shot. You’ll fall in love with the shotgun all over again.

Double the barrels, double the fun

Fragmentation Grenades

Grenades are very useful in the start of the game, but slowly become irrelevant. With plasma and gauss as better alternatives to aiming and rockets as a more devastating use of your ammo, halfway into the game grenades seemed to have been forgotten.

The fragmentation upgrade increased the damage area and makes each grenade fire a blast of 16 shrapnel fragments in a short radius. This weapon is very powerful against big enemies since they tend to catch much more of the shrapnel. The grenades become really useful against single powerful enemies rather than area weapons since there are better options for that (like the BFG), it’s a really nice switch in utility. And the shrapnel can bounce of walls too!

Those fat cacos are a good target

EMG Pistol

Its Doom2016’s Energy-Matter-Gel Pistol. This upgrade increases the size of the pistol projectiles a lot, making it easier to hit small enemies like lost souls. The damage is also increased enough to one-shot them. However you CAN NOT charge up the damage of the shot like in Doom2016, this mechanic would promote passive playing and reward waiting. I don’t think this would be a good addition to MiniDoom. It may have worked in Doom because they have other mechanics that encourage engaging enemies (like glory kills).

So right now the EMG is just a damage upgrade, I’m still thinking if it should add some extra utility to the pistol. Tell me what you guys think.

Feedback is welcome
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Weapon spotlight: Unmaker

You saw it coming. The last weapon is Doom64’s Unmaker! The Unmaker is a devastating precision-weapon that can deals massive damage in straight lines. It is perfect for taking out priority targets, even when they are in a crowd.

       

This weapon also has a long history in its development. As soon as we started planning the new weapons, we knew we wanted to implement the unmaker somehow.

If you played Doom64 you know the Unmaker is a rapid fire laser that pierces through enemies and can have a small spread.

Thinking about translating this into 2D I immediately thought about a hitscan(instant hit) laser gun, much like the metal slug laser, except it would go through enemies.

The apparently bright idea

Problem is, It was too good. The weapon was just too convenient, it was a super powered version of the minigun or plasma. It didn’t really do anything different, it just did it better.

So then I tried to balance that prototype, low damage didn’t feel like an ultimate weapon at all. High ammo consumption seemed like the best way, so you could only sustain the beam for a few precious seconds. But that also felt wrong somehow… It made the minigun obsolete and it also didn’t feel ULTIMATE enough…

Then I went for a more BFG approach: rare ammo, small charge time and a high payoff. And after balancing the weapon it felt right, one of my favorites.

It felt like an ultimate weapon. Rather than shooting it for a few seconds, it builds up for a second and then it shoots a massive blast in the direction you are aiming. It’s harder to master, but the payoff is also more satisfying.

Getting the timing right is key

The Unmaker fires a huge laser (as tall as you are) that deals massive damage to everything in front of you instantly. Afterwards if anything survives the initial blast it will also deal additional heavy damage to the first enemy in front of you. This means the Unmaker is great for killing tough priority targets like archviles, summoners or chosen hellspawn even when they are surrounded by lesser demons.

If the additional damage is triggered, a visual effect is displayed over the enemy

The Unmaker doesn’t have the massive radius of effect from the BFG but it shoots faster and it also consumes HALF THE AMMO. So you can be a lot more liberal with your Unmaker shots.

Crowds of enemies or a big fat one reduced to chunks in seconds

Annihilate everything in front of you or deal massive damage to one target. The Unmaker is the perfect weapon for a platform game, delivering instant death in straight lines.

See you soon space marines.

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Weapon spotlight: BFG 9000

The BFG returns and is now as powerful as it should have been the first time. It is a massive area of effect projectile weapon that can deal critical damage at close range from the blast and low damage at long range from the blast. Its usage is very limited, but it can clear the screen of enemies.

How it used to work in MiniDOOM1

The BFG used energy as ammo, also in that game you could accumulate a lot energy cells. So either I made the BFG really powerful and eat up a huge chunk of you energy, or made it less strong and allow the player to use it more. I went for the latter approach, because I wanted the player to have plasma ammo if needed.

Ammo modeled after Doom3 ammo

I guess it was the right decision because the BFG wasn’t precise at all, often bullets would just miss theyr target and if they were too expensive it would be frustrating. The downside was that when you hit, the enemies wouldn’t die, and the weapon felt weak.

The damage was also kind of random. The damage was proportional to the distance but was not regulated to be useful with enemy health amounts. That meant that most times the damage would be just a bit short to kill an enemy. Like a pinky having 90 life and BFG deals 87 because pinky was just a bit far. This kind of damage is not useful, it just left all enemies weakened and made the weapon feel wrong.

What can you kill with one shot? A lot

How it works in MiniDOOM2

Main difference is that BFG now has its own ammo, this is how the ammo works:

Whenever you spawn (enter a level or respawn) you have enough BFG ammo for one shot. You can also accumulate enough BFG ammo for two shots, but BFG ammo is very hard to come by, it is usually hidden. So the BFG is your trump card, you always spawn with one, and decide when its best to use it.

You can also increase your BFG ammo (starting and max) later in the game. To increase fun all enemies have a REALLY SMALL chance of dropping BFG ammo when killed!!

The AoE is most of the screen

In the accuracy department BFG projectile now travels a distance, and then it homes into the nearest enemy, much like the plasma but slower and more accurate. The projectile also has a huge hit box for enemies, and a small one for terrain. If the BFG doesn’t hit anything in its short life, it’ll explode blasting anything nearby. Much more reliable than the older version.

In the damage department BFG is devastating. The projectile itself deals damage and a direct hit with it will kill almost anything except for the toughest enemies (Hellknight will die but Archville can survive). Then it has 5 area damage zones according to distance to the blast. 1st distance has enough damage to kill mancubi or cacodemons, 2d has enough to kill armored pinkys, 3rd can kill hellrazers or heavy weapons-dudes, 4th imps, and 5th zombiemen.

They were asking for it… clumping up like that

Use your BFG wisely, but don’t overthink it. You always have one available. So don’t forget that when things get tough you always have the nuclear option.

 

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Baron of Hell

The barons are back! And this time they are not a boss, but they aren’t just any regular enemy either. Barons are really strong; they have a large health pool and a lot of damage. They also have a new kit of abilities, with a powerful melee slash, a large homing fireball and of course TELEPORTING!

First of all the barons received a visual overhaul too! They have new sprites and animation frames, new effects for their fireballs and melee attack.

The baron of hell is all about keeping the player moving. Previously barons would just try to teleport on top of you which created fireballs, then they would shoot MORE fireballs at you. It was ok-ish to keep you running, but the player could just stay there and tank the projectiles.

Baron-punch! Now in glorious slo-mo

This time we are taking a different approach. The baron’s fireballs are significantly slower and will only chase you for a short while, they deal good damage though. The barons strength now lies in its melee attacks, because of that its movement speed is also slightly increased.

When the baron teleports near you he won’t spawn fireballs, but if you stay near he will strike at you with a fiery slash that deals heavy damage and has quite a knockback.

They are less dangerous at a distance

To deal with a baron of hell keep moving and attack when the baron teleports and is vulnerable. Just keep moving but be careful where you run because they will never stop trying to teleport and get you cornered.

I said don’t get cornered!

If you played minidoom1 and see a baron of hell with the chosen fire crown, you’ll probably get some flashbacks with the amount of health they can have.

Barons can’t jump, so luring them to a fall is also a good strat

Barons of hell will be teleporting on your face pretty soon. See you then space marines.