This is a playerclass and weapon replacement mod, compatible with Doom 1, 2, Final Doom, Chex Quest, and Heretic. The basic concept is, instead of an assortment of weapons, the only weapon you'll ever need is a simple double-barreled shotgun (and your fists, if you're so inclined). Switching weapons instead changes out what type of shell is loaded into them, smoothly swapping between them with the same animation used in reloading.

To add a bit more depth to it, your basic shotgun fires off a single barrel instead of both like the vanilla super shotgun, with the altfire dealing out both barrels if available. Things start off about consistent with the vanilla super shotgun in terms of raw damage (10 pellets a shot), with later ammo types offering both more firepower and more options.

As this is a replacement for playerclass, weapons, and some item spawns, this means it will not be compatible with mods like Brutal Doom that also affect playerclass and weapons. As it does not replace monsters however, it can readily be used with the Brutal Doom Monsters Only mod, Ketchup, or other mods that alter monsters.

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Details on the weapon replacements:

As mentioned, you start off with just your bare fists and a shotgun (in code terms, technically 7 weapons in total), and that's all you'll need. Your fists have some basic fleshing out and rebalancing compared to vanilla, with primary being 10-30 damage, and altfire being a slightly faster right jab that deals the average damage comparable to vanilla (5-15 vs 2-20). They can be up to 5x as powerful with the right powerup as is normal.

However, the real meat of the mod is the shotgun. You start off with some buckshot and both barrels loaded, with your alternate ammo being used to track how many shells have been loaded currently. You can fire them off in fairly quick succession, reloading automatically when they're empty, and can reload a half-empty shotgun manually if you bind that key. Altfire will fire both barrels at once like you're used to, though this comes at the cost of increased spread and recoil. You also actually have to have both barrels loaded for this, if you use the altfire with only one shell loaded it will act just as if you hit fire. Firing two barrels at once also deals bonus damage at point-blank range. Hold states are also present, so you'll have to take advantage of that low refire delay manually.

In addition to reloading after each shot or on demand, switching weapons also entails a reload. After all, you only have one weapon but multiple ammo types, so rather than simply lowering and raising the weapon you'll actually, visibly reload the shotgun to swap out ammo type when you switch to a different load. Switching back and forth between your fists and any of the shotgun loads also plays a different animation implying holstering/drawing, as well.

Running out of what type of ammo will also autoswitch to whatever you have available as is normal, and will correctly show you reloading a different ammo type instead. And of course, if you only have one shell left, you'll only end up with one barrel loaded.

In addition to dedicated fisticuffs, the zoom function is used by the shotguns for a dedicated pistol-whipping (well, shotgun-whipping you could say) function. The key can be held down to leave the attack wound up if needed. Overall speed is slightly slower than a punch (not counting the time it'd take to switch) in exchange for a bit more damage, knockback, and range. If a certain setting is turned on (see below), it will also gain the benefit of blocking projectiles. This feature is off by default.

For even more fun, you can end up dual-wielding shotguns with the right powerup. These obviously give you 4 rounds at a time to work with. Altfire still only lets off 2 barrels at a time by default, but with twice the barrels that means you can do 2 in a row if the situation warrants it. Or you could just as easily fire off a single shot, then an altire, then follow up with another single shot. It's fairly flexible. If a certain setting is turned on (see below), you have the option of unleashing all four barrels at once (if fully-loaded) for complete overkill.

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Ammunition types:

Buckshot, occupies slot 2.

Fires 10 pellets, each of which deal 5-15 damage, making it match what you'd expect from a single barrel of the vanilla super shotgun. Spread from a single barrel is closer to the total area of the regular vanilla shotgun, though with narrower horizontal spread in exchange for a comparable vertical spread.

Every standard ammo pickup has a 1/3 chance to spawn buckshot. Shotgun spawns on the map will always spawn a pack of buckshot shells. Zombiemen have a 1/3 chance to drop a pair of buckshot shells, and shotgun zombies will always drop a pair of buckshot shells.

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Flechette shells, occupies slot 3.

Fires a spray of extremely fast ripper projectiles. They deal very little damage individually (1-3) but fire 20 per shell, plus being ripper projectiles actual damage is higher overall. Useful for cutting through a crowd of enemies at once. Spread is also a bit wider than buckshot.

Ammo spawns that would spawn vanilla shells will spawn flechette shells 2/3 of the time. Super shotgun spawns on the map will always spawn a pack of flechette shells.

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Shotgun slugs, occupies slot 4.

Fires a single large bullet with even more raw power than buckshot, 50-150 damage. This matches buckshot but in a single impact. Has some narrow spread built in, tighter than any other ammo type.

Ammo spawns that would spawn vanilla bullets will spawn slugs 2/3 of the time. Chaingun spawns on the map will always spawn a pack of slugs. Zombiemen have a 2/3 chance to drop a pair of shotgun slugs, and chaingun zombies will always drop a pair of slugs.

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Explosive slugs, occupies slot 5.

A hitscan explosive, firing a single impact that deals less impact damage than buckshot (40-120 damage), but makes up for it with an explosion nearly as powerful as a rocket (120 damage vs 128). Explosive radius is smaller than a rocket however (100 units), so make your shots count. Also has spread built in, between that of slugs and buckshot.

Ammo spawns that would spawn vanilla rockets will spawn explosive slugs 2/3 of the time, and rocket launcher spawns on the map will always spawn a pack of explosive slugs.

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Incendiary shells, occupies slot 6.

Because "dragon's breath shells" breaks the naming convention a bit. Fires a spray of 5 flaming projectiles that ignite on impact, with a noticeably wider spread than buckshot. These will obey gravity so mind your aim, and they'll also have just enough bounce it they hit a wall to slash the floor nearby instead of sticking to the wall like they might otherwise do. Raw damage for a direct hit is low (4-12 damage per pellet), but each burning pellet provides continuous damage in a short radius (80) over a short period of a time, each one adding a total of 28 damage to make the overall power decently high.

Ammo spawns that would spawn vanilla plasma cells will spawn incendiary shells 2/3 of the time, and plasma rifle spawns on the map will always spawn a pack of incendiary shells.

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Plasma shells, occupies slot 7.

A little something special. This is your BFG-tier ammunition, firing a cone of green death with wide spread. The raw damage is about comparable to the BFG's tracer spray, 30 pellets each having a base damage of 20-60 damage, plus up to 20 damage set aside as a short-range AoE effect (vs. 15-120 for each BFG tracer). This AoE effect will not harm the user. While it lacks the maximum potential damage the BFG has and doesn't gain the benefit of the main projectile's 100-800 damage, it's far more consistent and usable on the spot, making it devastating (especially if you dole out both barrels of it).

These only spawn from backpacks (4 shells, same as all other ammo types) and in place of BFG-9000 spawns on the map (packs of 8, as with other weapon spawns).

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Adrenaline:

In addition to weapons and ammo, you start off with an inventory item that can be activated to toggle on or off an additional ability. Instead of a conventional consumable powerup, using the ability in your inventory hotbar drains available charges over time, shutting itself off automatically if you run out and requiring them to toggle on.

While Adrenaline is activated you'll gain doubled rate of fire, 50% greater movement speed, and your melee damage (including quick melee) will be 5 times greater.

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Powerups:

As mentioned, there are two powerups you can find as well. After all, the standard weapons are all replaced with ammo spawns, so you'll notice that leaves the chainsaw and berserk pack to be accounted for. The mod options menu allows you to set keybindings for quickly activating adrenaline or guns akimbo.

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Guns akimbo, replacing the berserk pack.

This functions much like the tome of power in Heretic, swapping you to powered-up weapons instead. Activating this powerup grants you 2 shotguns to work with, and thus 4 barrels to play around with.

As with the berserk pack, this lasts until the end of the level. No need to worry about wasting it, though if a level offers you more than one you would be better off carrying any spares you find into the next level.

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Adrenaline boost, replacing the chainsaw.

This grants you a total of 60 seconds of duration for the Adrenaline ability as detailed above.

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In addition to keybindings for quickly activating either powerup, the following options can be found in the mod options menu, allowing you to turn on or off certain extra features:

1. Quick Melee Can Block Projectiles? The zoom command can be used while the shotgun(s) is equipped for a quick melee attack. With this setting enabled, the resulting pistol-whip will also be able to strike projectiles out of the air. This requires a bit of good timing, and doesn't work on hitscan attacks, but can offer some added utility if turned on. Needless to say, using it against rockets is a Bad Idea.

2. Allow Quad-Fire With Guns Akimbo? By default, using the altfire with dual shotguns will still only fire two barrels at a time, assuming at least two barrels are loaded. With this setting enabled, using the altfire with all four chambers loaded will unleash all four at once. This comes at further penalty to spread and recoil.

3. Share Adrenaline and Akimbo Powerups in Co-op? A bonus for co-op players. If enabled, picking up these items will also grant it to all other players in the area as well, whether it's set to instant-use or carried for later activation.

4. Randomize Adrenaline and Akimbo Powerups Spawns? If enabled, this sets it so that chainsaw and berserk pack replacements will randomly select between guns akimbo and adrenaline boosts, instead of always spawning a specific replacement for each item. This is useful for scenarios such as episode one of Doom or with Chex Quest, where you can encounter one item but not the other.

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Issues and problems I am aware of, and other planned things to tinker with in the future:

1. Status bar and UI could use a bit more fiddling to fit better when used in Chex Quest and Heretic. Getting keys to align better, better matchup between the status bar and any divergent fonts, etc.

2. I was tempted to work on some custom muzzle flash effects for explosive, incendiary, and plasma shells instead of using shotgun and super shotgun muzzle flashes for all ammo types. Problem is that I have a grand total of 20 different flash sprites due to how complex the weapons themselves are, so that'd be 60 more sprites I'd need to edit together in GIMP, set offsets in SLADE, and test to make sure everything is aligned just right.

3. I'm tempted to look into some scripting stuff to streamline the fire and reload states a tiny bit, especially for the dual shotguns. Will have to see sometime.

4. I plan to implement a setting that, if enabled, will steadily earn charges of adrenaline from kills, based off watcher code Zhs2 provided. So far I've had little luck getting it working, but we'll see.

5. Also planned: updates to the reload animation for dual shotguns. Namely, only depict opening one of the two shotguns if you've only fired the first two shots, to add to the verisimilitude and make it so the player isn't punished with a time penalty for reloading early. Main thing complicating this is I'd also need to add a variation for if the player only has 1 or 2 shells left, meaning only the right shotgun needs shells to be inserted.

6. Any other suggestions for stuff I could improve, and potential additional options that could be added to the mod options menu, would be worth looking into as well.
