Yes this spooky skeleton back in game. And it is the smartest enemy yet. He can walk, jump obstacles, jump cliffs, shoot or punch you in the face!
Usually he will chase you around and shoot its standard homing missiles at you.
But don’t worry, you can shoot them off the sky and they are slow enough to dodge.
The Revenant will try to stay near to you, but doesn’t like to get too close. If you get too close he will try to run away or punch to make you back off.
Revenants don’t have much health or deal a lot of damage. But don’t underestimate these crafty bony bastards. If they surround you, they will pummel you mercilessly.
How is the level design in minidoom1? In short: not very good.
All levels where made in just a couple of days (had some additional days for the boss fight though). I didn’t have time to properly plan the maps and it shows.
During the crunch time I focused on making each level feel unique. So I tried to focus on a different mechanic in each level. And in making sure the key-cards worked as Check Points.
1st – Make it like original Doom, going right
2nd – Pass through platforms, going left and returning
3rd – Barrels, acid, exploration.
4th – Vertical movement, flying enemies.
5th – Short and difficult, plus the boss fight.
Let’s check out the first level and see how faithful it is to the original Doom.
In this first area I just tried to reproduce the look in 2D.
Next there is a staircase that leads to the first armor, some windows and pillars.
Then there was this short tech section.
Then there were the first acid pools with two imps shooting you from above. Very much alike.
Then this final section, I remember that in the higher difficulties you could find a pink demon here and of course; the candles leading to the exit.
It was a good translation to 2D but it was not so intuitive to play. It didnt teach the mechanics well.
So in Minidoom2 we will not focus on making a faithful reconstruction.
Well just make it better to play.
See you next time.
Sneak peek: The effect of one of the new weapons. What could it be???
Lately I’ve been busy trying to improve MiniDoom to release a new improved version, but after so many changes it is becoming more of a sequel than a new version.
One of the challenges of MiniDoom’s gameplay is simply to hit enemies that are not directly in front of you. You can only shoot in four directions and you have to find ways to position yourself so that you can hit the enemies. This is most easily done by jumping to hit enemies above but becomes really tricky for enemies bellow you.
This obvious problem is a staple of the platform game, Mega Man NES games were all about this. But even in these games, you were usually given some options to deal with tough situations. In Mega Man you had special weapons; other games like Contra just gave you the ability to shoot in eight directions.
I identified this as a problem early on, and decided to adapt one of the game’s weapons to fill this gap. I really liked Mega Man 3 Magnet Rocket’s design. It moves horizontally then vertically, but it just wasn’t useful enough to make it a core weapon.
Since the plasma rifle and chaingun were so similar I made the plasma a homing weapon. The bullets would be able to go up or down depending if there was an enemy near. This made the weapon kind of homing but not too much as to not make it too easy. It was a good gun, I like it a lot. But it has a flaw: you get it too late in the game.
I realized a new option is needed earlier in the game. And Doom 3 gave me the answer: GRENADES. Another classic game that has almost the same mechanics and uses grenades really well to allow you to hit enemies above and bellow you is obviously Metal Slug.
So then grenades will be coming to MiniDoom in the shape of Doom3’s ugly yellow grenades. They will deal medium damage and the blast will deal low damage, and they will consume your rocket ammo. Due to this change, the rocket launcher will get a buff!
In this first area I just tried to reproduce the look in 2D.
