Kyle873's Doom RPG Mod [0.10.0 Beta]

[DarkkOne]

They're separate mods maintained by separate people. Any balance talk about DRPG should be about DRPG without the monsters and DRLA weapons. Once that's dealt with, then the DRPG compatibility can come into play, and you can talk about balance changes that may need to be incorporated there.

But seriously, don't assume people are using any mods but the one the thread is for, *especially* when discussing balance issues. You can't balance a mod against another mod unless you maintain both of them, because you can't control what changes happen to it.

Yholl is actually part of the DRPG dev team, who does the DRLA work. It was stated a while back (about a year, I think) that many pieces/parts of the two mods are designed to work together, and are in fact maintained together. There's a reason why there's a dedicated "DRLA" and "DRL Monsters" folders within DRPG. Legendoom was basically left for legacy support, as far as I heard, as well for those select few who didn't enjoy Yholl's work (and seriously, who the hell are those people!? DRLA is an amazing addition to DRPG). Last I heard Legendoom was bugged and didn't work, hence my confusion.

There's a link to DRLA near the download for DRPG. I always thought that the two not being shipped together was strange. Check it out. Adds the extra little bit of depth that vanilla RPG feels is missing.

I've played DRLA with and without the monster pack, on its own, and with DRPG. Legendoom was added *far* more recently than DRPG support, and updated more recently as well. You can check the GIT changelog. As a personal preference, DRPG+Legendoom feels much closer to "an enhanced Doom experience" while DRPG+DRLA+DRLM feels more like a new game in the Doom engine. I prefer the former for playing classic levels, and the latter for playing randomized level sets, or certain Megawads.

I don't know what the actual *plans* are, but yes, DRPG + DRLA are designed to work together. Also DRPG+Legendoom are designed to work together, and they've clearly stated the next edition of Doom Roguelike Monsters are supposed to have better Legendoom support so you can play those two together better than you can now.

All the more reason this mod's base balancing should stand on its own, and not depend on a specific other mod - it's explicitly meant to be playable with at least two separate weapons mods. It also has a folder indicating compatibility for The Ultimate Torment 'n Torture (Torture 'n Torment? TUTNT anyway) though I haven't tried that yet, so I don't know if that works at all yet.



Edit to add: Apparently Legendoom does have one large compatibility issue with DRPG - the Legendoom guns don't show up in the store as sellable. Even basic guns.

[subenji]

Yeah the LegenDoom support is basic right now. No shop/locker support - and therefore no character save support for LegenDoom weapons either. There's many areas of DRPG that need attention - this is just another one.
I really enjoy LegenDoom and would love for more significant support to be in place, but I've picked doing the GUI first and I'm sticking to that.

As for plans, mine are short term. I know that Yholl is going to be releasing DRLA 1.1 in the near future, so that'll be a big task to keep compatibility. Some things are getting reshuffled in this - basically making sure each mod stays true to its own identity. I think the discussion above shows why this is necessary - DRPG and DRLA are not parts of a singular whole, but different mods with different goals, that just happen to make more than the sum of their parts when put together. Playing DRLA alone is a great experience in its' own right, and is an experience that should not be overlooked.
I'm essentially making sure I'll have the skill to undertake maintaining DRLA compatibility when it happens - poking at all areas of DRPG so I'll be familiar with all its workings by that time. I'm doing the GUI now because it's a feature I really want - and when I saw work had already started on it I knew that was what I wanted to do next. It also means I need to understand every area of the mod from a user interface front.
For example, did you know there's a "Team" page in the stats section of the Menu when in multiplayer? How about that you can use this menu to teleport to a teammate for the cost of some EP? I didn't until I found the code for it!

[DarkkOne]

That Team thing is really awesome. I've been trying to talk some friends into playing with me, but I haven't had much luck at lining up their times.

Just wanted to follow up with a few things:

1) Can confirm Assassinations work in Legendoom now. Or at least one worked, since that's all I've tried so far, but yeah.
2) Is there a reason it's not packaged as PK3 files? I mean, I know why your branch wouldn't be, since it'd be a manual step to do on top of just pushing to git, but I was wondering if there's an established reason why the release versions aren't? (I convert mine to PK3 files for easy management, and to make sure old files aren't left over when I move to a new version, but I was wondering if there's a reason I *shouldn't* be doing this).
3) For Legendoom support shop/locker support, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thinking about it, being able to store each type would be fun (I love collecting things) but it kinda feels... against the intent of the mod? Honestly the weird thing to me right now is that I can't sell "Vanilla" guns, I assume because they're actually a new item, the base for the Legendary ones. But yeah, just wanted to make sure the issue was known, no worries if you can't get to it. Being able to store the Legendary guns almost doesn't feel necessary, and I just assumed that was intentional and that it was just the store that was broken.

But yeah, with new DRLA and DRLM around the corner, there's probably going to be plenty to deal with as it is.

[subenji]

I asked Kyle about it and word from on high is just the simple fact that the mod changed so frequently that waiting for it to compress, then reuploading 200MB+ every time it did rather than some changed text files and an 8MB .lib file was just not in anyone's best interest. (Lets pretend the launcher's sha1 check actually works and it doesn't download the whole repo every time you check for updates - I'll need to look at that sometime...)
I used to zip up the folders too, because I used ZDL and then ZDE to load my mods. I did find one thing that didn't work properly when I did this though - the DoomRPG-RLArsenal folder contains a new M_DOOM sprite - the main menu sprite. This shows that both DRPG and RLA are loaded. Note, not the one that displays when the intro map loads, the ESC menu one. When using zip files, this replacement didn't work - but as soon as I switched to loading folders, it did.
I don't know what other assets don't load correctly when packaged into zips, maybe none at all, but because I'm aware of this possibility I recommend using the folders.

Making the base weapons sellable when playing LegenDoom should be simple enough, I'll look at that when I wake up.

[DarkkOne]

Ah. Yeah, I zip them up for management and because I've found WMD to be the best way to manage my mods. It's odd that there's actually a difference (even if it's minor) between zipped and folders, but the reasoning makes sense.

I come from an open source project background where a lot of value was put on having an easy to install "release version" that was nicely packaged, and then the dev version which was a little trickier to get.

But I'll be honest, I forgot the Launcher. Given that the Launcher makes it easy to download the folders, that seems good. Though I have a question: Is there an index somewhere that tells the launcher which Git revision to get, or does it always pull the most recent? It seems like it'd be a real pain to work on it when the users could be using random development versions.

[subenji]

The launcher always pulls the most recent ZIP copy of the repo from https://github.com/Kyle873/DoomRPG
It's supposed to do a sha1 crc check on the version it has first so it wouldn't have to redownload if nothing's changed, but I've found the launcher always crashes in trying to create the checksum and so the sha1 file never exists.

[Tanksy]

Do we still have to manually download from Subenji's Github for the very latest changes, though? Or are they going through Kyle's now as proper updates?

[BoneofMalkav]

Do we still have to manually download from Subenji's Github for the very latest changes, though? Or are they going through Kyle's now as proper updates?

Kyle has recently pushed some of the updates to his Github. But not as often as Subenji updates the mod on his end.

[DarkkOne]

Alright. Assassination missions are *mostly* working, but I'm running into an issue with Mancubus still. For whatever reason they're the only enemy I've run into (so far) that doesn't get the auras and become shadow, so killing it doesn't complete the assassination.
(Note: I'm playing this with Doom 1. This may factor in? Revenants and other Doom 2 exclusive enemies seem to show up just fine as assassination targets, though. Dunno.)

[Soul Sucka]

I don't remember how many pages ago this was discussed, but I agree with the notion that certain rare items, especially legendary ones, should not be as overly rewarding in the shop as they should be. No matter how godly of an RNG you have, it should reward you with one of the greatest weapons/armor/boots in the game, but definitely should not reward you with something you could sell for so much and buy the best of literally everything else in the mod (shield parts and augmentations come to mind) and essentially give you a huge, unbalanced jump in power.

---

I found a Reality Distortion Array in the last version before Subenji's fork got merged, and even though it didn't take me too much effort to find one since the rarity code was all bugged up, it's not hard to come to the realisation that, no matter how rare, having an item that can net you millions of credits is very unbalanced. There should be a lower limit to how much rare items can net you in cash, in my opinion.

[subenji]

Alright. Assassination missions are *mostly* working, but I'm running into an issue with Mancubus still. For whatever reason they're the only enemy I've run into (so far) that doesn't get the auras and become shadow, so killing it doesn't complete the assassination.
(Note: I'm playing this with Doom 1. This may factor in? Revenants and other Doom 2 exclusive enemies seem to show up just fine as assassination targets, though. Dunno.)

aah of course

---

Code: Select all

ACTOR LDArachnotron : Arachnotron replaces Arachnotron
{
  DamageFactor "Scrapper", 3.0
}

ACTOR LDPainElemental : PainElemental replaces PainElemental
{
  DamageFactor "Antiair", 3.0
}

ACTOR LDRevenant : Revenant replaces Revenant
{
  DamageFactor "Scrapper", 3.0
}

ACTOR LDMancubus : Fatso replaces Fatso
{
  DamageFactor "Scrapper", 3.0
}

ACTOR LDArchvile : Archvile replaces Archvile
{
  DamageFactor "Extinguishing", 3.0
}

So the pattern is that LegenDoom Monsters are "LD"<name> - but the Mancubus' internal name is "Fatso". Yholl's corrected this to LDMancubus, but that's made my code fail for them.
I'll push a fix for this now.

Do we still have to manually download from Subenji's Github for the very latest changes, though? Or are they going through Kyle's now as proper updates?

If you want the latest changes, yes use my Fork. As I complete features and get the mod to milestones I've tested extensively, I ask Kyle to merge my work in - so they should always be stable.

Edit: Here's a trick if you don't want to be downloading all 200MB every time.
If I only change data in the DoomRPG/scripts folder (and usually this is true), the only file you need to download to get up to date is DoomRPG/acs/DoomRPG.lib - replacing your old one. GZDoom doesn't read the .c files so they don't need to be kept up to date if you're just playing.
Sometimes though I'll need to change a .txt file, e.g. CVARINFO.txt - you DO need to keep these up to date.
Just refer to the commits to see what files have been modified.

Or, if you know how, you can use Git or Subversion - these only download changed files to keep your install in sync:
git clone https://github.com/subenji/DoomRPG.git
to update:
git pull

svn checkout https://github.com/subenji/DoomRPG.git
to update:
svn update

[Yholl]

I don't remember how many pages ago this was discussed, but I agree with the notion that certain rare items, especially legendary ones, should not be as overly rewarding in the shop as they should be. No matter how godly of an RNG you have, it should reward you with one of the greatest weapons/armor/boots in the game, but definitely should not reward you with something you could sell for so much and buy the best of literally everything else in the mod (shield parts and augmentations come to mind) and essentially give you a huge, unbalanced jump in power.

---

I found a Reality Distortion Array in the last version before Subenji's fork got merged, and even though it didn't take me too much effort to find one since the rarity code was all bugged up, it's not hard to come to the realisation that, no matter how rare, having an item that can net you millions of credits is very unbalanced. There should be a lower limit to how much rare items can net you in cash, in my opinion.

No.
You're basing it off of selling the rarest goddamn item in the game. A gun so rare, pretty much the only way to find it is pumping your luck into the stratosphere. An argument based off what the broken-ass crates did is already irrelevant.

There's also the fact that with the Diamond card, you can buy anything in the shop. The prices are so high to stop you buying them even then, and to reward you if you actually came across one. It's the RDA.

I mean, the only reason you can even get the RDA is because as part of the shop system, it naturally will appear in Supreme crates rarely. I was heavily opposed to having it obtainable normally, but I didn't have a choice.

[DarkkOne]

Yeah, shop/price balance is a pretty impossible issue to address with DRLA involved right now given the crate issue.

I'll be honest though, playing DRPG+Legendoom right now, where guns can't be sold at all, the money balance feels really good. You end up using money for the occasional powerup, or saving up for augments or a specific shield piece you're missing, but largely get DRPG items from checking the missions list and picking one up for items you want, or an assassination every level just for additional cash and rank as you go.

It might be interesting if Legendary/Demonic guns couldn't be sold at all ("I can't afford that" and "That's too dangerous for me to keep" or something) and constructed weapons couldn't be bought (to create more 'value' in being the Technician and discovering recipes, as well as making filling your entire locker a larger goal than just opening a million chests). I don't know how this would affect balance or anything, just thinking out loud with this one.

[subenji]

I decided to tackle the item balance now. I needed a distraction from GUI stuff for the moment anyway.

This is getting quite involved:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6-Tp ... -06-04.png

[DarkkOne]

Unrelated to anything else: Is there a way to tell what your current mission is? Is it on one of the subscreens somewhere that I haven't stumbled across?