Spidermastermind magic upgrade

Since Romero revealed the scrapped magic attack sprite of the Spidermastermind, I wanted to do something with that idea, and recently I got some inspiration to get started. For this mod I took some sprites from SunMadcat's monster pack and created some more from those and the alpha sprites to have all rotations for a 2 frame animation.
For now, the new attack frames are used for two things: Firing a BFG ball at the target, and summoning drones that also attack the target. I have some ideas for other magic attacks, but please post your own ideas and other suggestions if you have some. Ideally I'd like to turn it into a whole new monster, which of course would require some additional sprite work to make it more different from the vanilla monster.

Info
Name: Spidermastermind magic upgrade
Difficulty: hard
Connections: SpiderMastermind, BFGBall, BFGExtra, ArachnotronPlasma, TeleportFog
Summon: smmm
Melee: No
Distance: Hitscan, Projectile
Type: Demon, Cybernetic
Brightmaps: no
Actor modification: no
ACS: no

Description:
Inspired by the scrapped magic attack of the Doom alpha, this upgrade gives the Spidermastermind the following abilities:
- Fires a BFG ball that sprays hitscan attacks on impact
- Summons 3 Sentinelminds that hover around the Spidermastermind and fire plasmaballs
- Summons more Sentinelminds everytime the current HP is halved
- Re-summons Sentinelminds when they are killed
- Chaingun fires in bursts at an increased rate

Other changes:
- Increased attack chance
- Added vertical bullet spread to the chaingun attack
- Increased speed from 12 to 16
- Increased health from 3000 to 6000
- Reduced painchance from 40 to 10
- Reduced radius from 128 to 100
- Fixed wrong offset of SPIDG2G8

Credits
Code: DeVloek
GLDefs: DeVloek
Sounds: id Software
Sprites: id Software, Sun Madcat
Sprite Edit: DeVloek
Idea Base: Romero's tweet about the Spidermastermind's unimplemented magic attack

Sprite Preview
   

Download
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eie-uAvJnLVyKQ2u97XxYsaGgnW2qFQM/view?usp=sharing

Thanks again for making this

Yo Devloek, you might want to check the newest Doom release

I saw the new chaingun babyspider, anything else I should look at?

edit: Just discovered the id vault in the main menu, I didn't notice at first because I jumped right into the game

I added all the alpha sprites, now the animation has 4 frames for all rotations. Just had to make a new sprite for the frontal view since that sprite is the same as the one Romero released years ago and on which all the custom sprites are based. A better spriter than me would probably try to touch up the arms so they match the alpha sprites a little bit better, but I'm happy with it for now.

One thing I'd add is a projectile similar to the Aracnorb Queen (a huge homing projectile dealing a lot of damage) over a BFG-9000 shot, I'd probably use the same sprites too but then, that wouldn't be true to the vanilla aesthetics or sounds that Doom uses. Just an idea that instantly sprung to mind as I've made a custom Spider Mastermind enemy a few years ago that shoots this kind of attack, just recoloured the projectile's sprites.

Funny that you mention the Aracnorb Queen, I actually downloaded that monster and few other Spidermastermind variants just the other day to get some inspiration.
A slow but deadly homing projectile isn't a bad idea, and I also kinda liked the Supreme Fiend's bomb spam ability (which is kinda similar to an attack the Doom 2016 SMM does).
I'll try to do something with those ideas without outright copying them. The recently released id vault has a bunch of great projectile sprites, I think some of them might fit well for these purposes.

Here's a concept sprite for a SMM variant I'm currently working on. It's gonna a crapton of work to make all the rotations including the different attack types so don't expect anything playable just yet, but I'm eager to finish this one day (SOONTM)
 

DeVloek wrote:

Here's a concept sprite for a SMM variant I'm currently working on. It's gonna a crapton of work to make all the rotations including the different attack types so don't expect anything playable just yet, but I'm eager to finish this one day (SOONTM)
 

 

Cool Mastermind! Reminds me of the remake Craneo and I did propose for Lil White Mouse's Scorpion Mastermind

...which used A.Gamma and Sebabdukeboss20 mechanic legs

Nice, that one looks bad-ass! Did you ever finish it or is it just a concept sketch like mine? I've been toying with those legs for quite a while, got a few other concepts based on them but they never went anywhere, the SMM I posted above is the most finish-worthy among them.