[WIP] Tranquility ("Authentic" Weapons) (Updated 2015-03-05)

[Caligari87]

I've been doing some work on a simple weapons mod, for sake of adding a little of what I perceive to be "realism" and satisfying weapon performance. This is very much a work-in-progress, but I wanted to get some opinions.

Spoiler: "screenshots for great justice!"

All three new weapons are from Realm667's armory (no credits file yet, will get on that). I've replaced the Pistol with a right-handed version, and tweaked the animation slightly, same with the Shotgun. The Chaingun has been replaced with an SMG, the Rocket Launcher with a powerful hunting rifle, and the plasma rifle with a three-round-burst carbine. The replaced weapons all have significant recoil, in addition to crosshair sway. If you're a skilled player, neither should get in your way very much, but make the weapons much more satisfying, at least to me. Bullets (mostly) go where you point them, so it's all about compensating for your shots. In all, it's probably similar to the Ballistics mod, but hopefully staying a little more true to Doom in regards to simplicity.

Bullets are modeled as FastProjectiles, and power has been redone. Each gun fires a different type of bullet. The damage is derived from the muzzle velocity and weight of each ammo type to get calculated muzzle energy, +/-15% random variance, multiplied by 1-3 random chance for "critical hits", and divided by an arbitrary number for balance with existing enemy HP (50, in this case. It will probably be adjusted later to fit a different enemy HP curve).

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Download Link (Updated 2015-03-05)

Most Recent Changelog

• WEAPON SWAY COMPLETELY REFACTORED AND CHANGED: Your view now no longer bobbles around wildly, although it does react to recoil the same as before. Now, your crosshair is accompanied by a "rear sight" which shows how offset your aim is from ideal. Shots only go straight when you have a perfect sight picture, although at Doom's close combat ranges it's still somewhat reasonable to "run and gun". As before, health, movement, and stance (crouching) influences weapon sway and accuracy. Your aim will get quite jittery when you're hurt.
• Increased falloff distance for gunshot noises, and added "distant" gunshots. Still sounds a little weird, may tweak some more.
• Tweaked some movement speeds again. Should be a little less frustrating now.

Spoiler: "old OP"

The main update here is the weapon sway and accuracy. The idle sway should be visually pleasing for most people, not too over-the-top, and makes landing longer shots (like across the courtyard windows in E1M1) more difficult. The other half is weapon accuracy while moving. Now, if you're walking or running, your shots will land off-target by some amount. Yes, it goes against my previously mentioned goal of "shots go where you put them", but it was honestly the best solution that doesn't cause motion sickness even to me (and I never get motion-sick). It's unobtrusive and mostly intuitive; you'll no longer be able to consistently single-shot enemies with the .300 Winchester rifle while circle-strafe-running unless you're right up in their faces.

On the subject of player height, I found that putting it up to 50 instead of 41 makes the player feel more comparable to the monsters, and lessens the speed-demon effect slightly. To that end, player speed was also lowered and tweaked until it felt "right" for a quick-moving trained soldier. Dodging projectiles is harder, but you'll just need to be more careful.

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All three new weapons are from Realm667's armory (no credits file yet, will get on that). I've replaced the Pistol with a right-handed version, and tweaked the animation slightly, same with the Shotgun. The Chaingun has been replaced with an SMG, the Rocket Launcher with a powerful hunting rifle, and the plasma rifle with a three-round-burst carbine. Still working on the balancing (zombiemen drop carbines, which is pretty OP, considering), but it's more about the feel. The replaced weapons all have significant recoil, in addition to crosshair sway. If you're a skilled player, neither should get in your way very much, but make the weapons much more satisfying, at least to me. Bullets go where you point them, so it's all about compensating for your shots. In all, it's probably similar to the Ballistics mod, but hopefully staying a little more true to Doom in regards to simplicity.

Bullets are modeled as FastProjectiles, and power has been redone. Each gun fires a different type of bullet (although right now they all share the basic clip for ammo, except the Carbine which uses its own ammo type). The damage is derived from the muzzle velocity and weight of each ammo type to get calculated muzzle energy, +/-15% random variance, multiplied by 1-3 random chance for "critical hits", and divided by an arbitrary number for balance with existing enemy HP (50, in this case. It will probably be adjusted later to fit a different enemy HP curve). Here's a couple of examples:

Code: Select all • Expand view

Actor 223_Bullet : Generic_Bullet // .223 Remmington, ~1296 ft.lbf, +/-15%
{ Damage (random(1100,1490)*random(1,3)/50) }

Actor 00Buck_Pellet : Generic_Bullet // 00 Buckshot, ~192 ft.lbf +/-15%
{ Damage (random(160,220)*random(1,3)/50)  }

So the .223 carbine round will do a minimum of 22 damage, and a max of 89.4 if it crits at max damage. A single shotgun pellet does Min 3.2/Max 13.2, so a nine-pellet load (what I use in this mod) does Min 28.8 / Max 118.8 if you get all your pellets on-target. The formulas are subject to change, but they seem solid for now.

Again, very WIP.

[SidDoyle]

I've recently been messing around with wildweasel's Terrorists! by adding authentic bullet speeds to the different ammunition types (makes the thing so difficult it's nearly unplayable). This kind of attention to detail is something I can definitely appreciate; I'll download this, give it a shot, and let you know anything that comes to mind.

EDIT: Just a minor issue here -- the filename is "Tranqulity.pk3," not "Tranquility.pk3." It took me a few confused tries before I realized why it wasn't loading (I use batch files like a stubborn fool, hehehe).

EDIT 2: Alright, so I gave this a quick run-around, and I love how bullets go exactly where you point. That being said (and I know this is WIP), it's currently too easy to land impossible shots -- e.g. sprinting a semicircle through a room and picking off 4 or 5 targets one after another. I think the crosshair sway severity should be affected by the player's velocity, perhaps.

Of course, the player still moves like a race car and the guns don't reload, so... heh, I know, I know, it's WIP. Still, I like the way you're calculating damages based on muzzle velocity. I assume you're also calculating accurate speeds for the FastProjectiles?

[Freaklore1]

i get an error when starting the mod.

script error, ''tranquility.pk3:weapons/15000.txt'' line 29: unknown identifier 'SPF_INTERPOLATE'.

script error, ''tranquility.pk3:weapons/15000.txt'' line 30:expected ')', got ','.

[Hellser]

I can see into your folders, Doctor! I see GZDoom, I see this mod.. I see.. OUTDATEDNESS!

[Vaecrius]

I've replaced the Pistol with a right-handed version

boo hiss rating 0/0
(that in mind, if you're already willing to increase file size to replace those sprites you might as well add pistol zombie sprites for balance purposes.)

I see what you're trying to do with the wobbling aim but it seems terribly excessive (and nauseating), especially with no way to control it. Maybe reduce it when the player hasn't turned in a few tics?

Just a thought: maybe use uservars to tie bullet speed to damage somehow? (Or would the ranges at which that would make a difference not be worth the bother and increased performance demands (there being basically no range in TUD in which a pistol bullet would fail to hit a target where a rifle bullet would have)?)

[Freaklore1]

I can see into your folders, Doctor! I see GZDoom, I see this mod.. I see.. OUTDATEDNESS!

Thank you for your help,i can sometime be so distracted i forget certain things,would you like some jelly babies ?

[Caligari87]

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I know it's a little too easy to land shots, but I will be scaling the sway by the player's velocity for sure. As-is, I'm not satisfied with it, because it just traces randomly everywhere, even turning you completely around. I'd rather some way to have it smoothly stay within a certain average area of the player's general direction, but I'm unsure of the math involved. There's not a lot of formulas out there for weapon sway.

I actually have not converted the projectile velocity to match the muzzle velocity though. Really as far as the ranges in Doom, bullets are instantaneous. That said, it's not completely off the table, just not high priority. Same with pistol zombies, which I was actually considering as well, just after everything else is done.

I'll try to keep working on it and maybe get another version updated this week (busy with school and all). If there's any other feedback or suggestions, feel free to leave them!

[JimmyJ]

Curious question, are you planning to implement reloading or keep it classic Doom style? Obviously it's not in now, but IDK if that's because it's early or you don't plan to.

[Caligari87]

I'm considering it, not quite sure yet. My spriting skill is just about nil, so I wouldn't be able to come up with much.

[SidDoyle]

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I know it's a little too easy to land shots, but I will be scaling the sway by the player's velocity for sure. As-is, I'm not satisfied with it, because it just traces randomly everywhere, even turning you completely around. I'd rather some way to have it smoothly stay within a certain average area of the player's general direction, but I'm unsure of the math involved. There's not a lot of formulas out there for weapon sway.

Check out my Drunk Doom jokewad. I used trig to make the player camera sway in a perfect circle, which means you keep your facing -- you just get really disoriented and can't hit the side of a barn. Perhaps you can find a way to use trigonometry to give your random sway bounds?

I actually have not converted the projectile velocity to match the muzzle velocity though. Really as far as the ranges in Doom, bullets are instantaneous. That said, it's not completely off the table, just not high priority. Same with pistol zombies, which I was actually considering as well, just after everything else is done.

Actually, you'd be surprised. Converting actual bullet speeds to Doom map units can fall anywhere between 250-500, in my experience. That's enough to create some small delays on larger maps -- fun, fun for a sniper, hehehe. It would be neat if we could somehow simulate gravity on the bullet as well, since FastProjectiles do not receive gravity IIRC.

[Se7eNytes]

It would be neat if we could somehow simulate gravity on the bullet as well, since FastProjectiles do not receive gravity IIRC.

ThrustThingZ in the spawn state does the trick:

Code: Select all • Expand view

Spawn:
   PUFF Z 1 NoDelay ThrustThingZ(0, 2, 1, 1)
   Loop

Changing the duration or reducing ThrustThingZ's force will make it fall slower.

[Slax]

HURK COFF .308 COFFA HUFF HUFF COFF

[Vaecrius]

ThrustThingZ works, though you can also add bullet tumbling with a single A_ChangeVelocity call:

Code: Select all • Expand view

A_ChangeVelocity(frandom(-0.9,0.9),frandom(-0.9,0.9),-1)

Based on my calculations in HD, a pistol bullet should have a speed of around 350-400 while a rifle bullet should be over 1000.

For a pistol bullet at muzzle speed 350 and 100% gravity (z-velocity -1 every tic), if you shoot from the northeastmost corner of Map15 southwards into the southernmost wall at zombie chest height (or possibly a bit lower - in HD you basically shoot out of your eyes so I was aiming down slightly), your shot may end up falling low enough to end up impacting somewhere inside the crack in the ground. Rifle, you'd scarcely notice a thing.

It helps to set up a dummy trail actor and call it with MissileType for testing purposes only - at the distances where there's any noticeable difference looking for bullet holes can be a real chore and it's hard to know what's really going on without seeing the entire arc.

[Caligari87]

Excellent information, thanks! Bullet drop and speed will definitely be addressed next time I work on an update, since they're probably pretty easy fixes.

[Hellser]

I enjoyed what you got going on, Cali. I might use a similar system in the future for my mods. In the mean time - the swaying did get annoying for those precise shots - and the shotgun felt oh so enjoyable being that accurate.