[Release] The Trailblazer - Big Elvisin' Deal

[PillowBlaster]

Sups from the Trailblazer!

If you've read the previous topic, you know what the general idea of TB is already. If you haven't, you can check it out here. In a nutshell, it's about shooting-smoking-reloading-blazing fast with enough time to pick up milk from the grocer. And maybe some hot babes along the way. (Disclaimer: contains no milk or hot babes.)

You take the role of Malcolm Striker - a former member of Earth's special forces that main job was to obviously save the Earth on daily basis. A loner and a mercenary now, who's only purpose is to find and finish off his dreaded nemesis - Vladimir Vladimir, a one-man factory of lust for world domination. His shadowy presence is ever pervasive, and despite all of these ugly things getting in your way and giving you a reason to expend shotgun shells in some as ugly faces, such as invasion from outer dimension, caused by accident thanks to UAC, for which sure as 'Hell' V.V. is responsible for - perhaps one day you will finally face him upon the field of battle to avenge his lost love and the tragic refrigerator accident. Where that damned villain could be now, anyway?

To sum up - an epicly lame tale of an 80s action movie hero, with even more explosions and speed than your body has room for. Everything hand-crafted by DoomNukem and yours truly, with some extra help from KeksDose and Zhs2, for you all! Awesome, right?!



Aaaalright... It's all cool beans and such, but some of you surely wonder why it took so much bloody time, considering that at first glance, not much has change since last video depicting it, if you guys somehow remember it. Well, if not for tons of behind-the-doors bugfixes and changes, and adding plethora of missing stuff, that is! Lemme explain the story in this spoiler right below. If you are new to this, and couldn't care less - ignore it, and keep going.

Spoiler:

As you may wonder, the mod's basic gun set was done at whopping speed, like in three months or so. After that, we took a little victory break before DoomNukem would set off for more stuff. Unfortunately, little victory break turned into no progress afterwards. I was waiting for Doom to make a move, but after half a year, then another half a year - nothing happened. I wanted to finish it, but it was Doom's lovechild, so I didn't touch it afterwards for obvious reasons - I won't meddle with his vision of the mod!

I went on continuing work on my own thing instead - the Guncaster. Doom liked the concept so much that he poked me that he'd be interested in taking part in this thing. I thought "heck yeah, why not - this is gonna be turned into awesomesauce!"... too bad, it also suffered of same dismotivation on his side, but while I still dunno why they earlier thing died, this time the cause was obvious - three or so, not really major, at least in my opinion, but still - three fails made his motivation melt into complete nothingness, not to mention the process being a little tedious.

So yeah, I have, recently released a trailer, all happy and stuff, being almost done with the update, having so much content and spit'n'polish applied. I tried to motivate Doom by releasing that insight... and well, it didn't work. On top of that, the shop code is broken now due to making it more streamlined to work with the different iwads. It's not a major bug, but still - I just can't release it with such quips going. I'd hate myself for releasing something with an obvious bug, or missing content - thus that mod went dead as well. I appologize you all for that failure of mine of rising the hype for nothing. I'll try to shove my pride of not releasing thing when it's mostly done for that one as well - when the shop's gonna get fixed.

I was completely, absolutely bitter that the another work of ours, which is this mod, Trailblazer, died in similar manner, even way before any kind of release - I learned to love it while working on it, and it's a goddamn shame that it was left rotting for so long, just to most likely let it die. Doom suggested once reworking it from scratch, and I liked that idea, if that would make him work on it again... but then I was like "We didn't put so much effort into it just to scrape it altogether now, do we? It's still great thing, and it will be, we just need to finish it!"... but nothing happened, of course. While there was so much more planned, it still was pretty good to go - it's arsenal is complete, so all that was left were the things mentioned in first paragraph. I took opportunity to do whatever I could, add some other, extra gimmicks... and there it is, with 'small' exceptions in what it could actually contain. Yeah, I'm bitter. My apologizes.

I did my best to help him with regaining that spark, but I'm afraid one can't just enforce it like that, even with best of intentions. I can understand that motivation isn't something easy to muster - I still have huge problems with that. I am only a human being, and so is DoomNukem, so don't get rough on him or something - modding is only a hobby, no one pays him for that, and real life comes first, no matter what, and I bet he had his own dose of real life problems he didn't want to talk about... sadly. He did fantastic job nonetheless, and I'll admit it, and admire it wholeheartedly - he's my bud, after all. I hope you'll enjoy our little thing, a little late to the party, but made with all the love for destruction we could muster, with extra help from third parties of my own. It's here, and all ready to kick ass!

IMPORTANT NOTE!
Remember to use updated GZDoom (often even beta versions), and to bind yourself the keys accordingly to your taste, as this mod makes use of a bunch of extra buttons.


THE MOD'S GIMMICKS!
Aka what it has to offer.

"I'm a Trailblazer, baby!"
If you think that you may stop, or at least postpone your inevitable death by damaging him as much as you can, Malcolm is a horrible exception. The more hurt he gets, the faster he can put that punch in your sorry face!

"Give a man some bullets - I've already got guns!"
Vast variety of powerful and over-the-top weapons that will keep your enemies at their toes, ranging from revolvers, through sawed offs and automatic grenade launchers, to end on giant-ass rifles and a goddamn minigun. All in the name of unrestrained, blastalicious fun!

"Double your gun - double your fun!"
For being a person who doesn't have time to bleed or reload, Striker sports a special mechanism attached to his belt that helps him with all the tediousness of the single-handed weapon reloading. Magnetic clip holders, ahoy!

"My gun is accurate, and so am I."
Since I never actually liked immense spread, and wanted to hit some goddamn arsehole across the room, all of the Blazer's weapons are really accurate.

"Up, up and away!"
Not only being extremely agile, for being a typical action hero, Malcolm also bends the laws of real world. He has the ability to get an extra dash in midair! (Double-tap direction key to achieve that effect, also works like standard dash on ground.)

"Vladimir - I'll find you, wherever you hide your sorry, evil ass!"
This thing supports more than just Doom. Want to give those foul beasts in Heretic or Hexen a taste of lead? Go freaking head! (Forget about Strife, though - it's too much for me.)

"Explosions are your friend!"
For being a master exploder, this guy can be barely scratched by the carnage he causes, making barrels he explodes, and grenades he launches quite harmless, compared to what they should actually do with him.

In case of mediafire being a twerp, alternate link.

MOD STUFF!

Spoiler:

WEAPONS!


Raskovnik-Arms "Macheterang" Machete prototype
As the name suggests, Malcolm isn't too fussy about the nationality of the weapon, if it gets the job done - it's more than enough for him to be interested in it. For being a high-tech prototype weapon sold on some bazaar bargain, with a visible sign of rust on it, it was obvious that it didn't have many pickers, due to some quite fatal flaw. While the returning mechanism usually works perfectly fine (and with recently developed by UAC teleportation tech, somehow rigged into its handle in case of being unable to get back to it's owner - it simply warps back into his pockets), the problem was to catch the bloody thing without letting it to cut your arm off. Fortunately for the buyer, being extremely fast, he can get it back without much of a hassle. Like the thing was created just for him, eh?

Special, secret trait: While having the machete out, you move faster. By the power of counter-strike knife logic!


BoSAVSO standard-issue unit "Sidekick" Pistol
Left from his adventures within Bureau of Super Awesome Very Special Operations, it's Blazer's partner for years, so the nickname for this weapon isn't without a reason. Fast, reliable, and (almost) never jamming - Blazer's been using it for so long that if he'd have to today switch to another pistol - he'd be most likely missing the clip hole while reloading for at least next two months!


Shofield "Cradle & Grave" Custom-assembled Revolvers
Malcolm, in his pursue of Vladimir, had an occasion to visit more than just one or two dimensions, often getting in contact with the locals, just so he could either get some intel on his whereabouts... or a tool to put him out of his misery. He once stumbled upon a guy who 'seriously' wanted to challenge him who's actually a badass here. In the end, they ended up becoming good friends and sharing tokens of a broship, after a fiery fight of who's gonna drink one another under the table.


Bald-Ninja Industries "Leadspitter" Uzis
Those little gems come from the fact that he once landed right in the gun shipment department in some company. After being caught by local workers and security, admiring with all the love he could muster the light-weighted firearms he did found there - they couldn't just let the guy go without any token for telling them how grateful he was that there was still people that could do such wonderful pieces of murderous art, fitting right for his taste of putting enemies into eternal sleep - blazing-fast style!


The "F.M.G."
As this weapon's name and manufacturer proved to be to difficult to be read by Malcolm, he came up with a fitting nickname for it, anytime he aims down at some poor sucker, and leaves him a whole new collection of artificial orifices. And hey, what's more satisfying than slamming the clip into your gun after unloading it into yet another flying tomato?


"Fleshrend" Sawed-Off
As riding through the australian pathless tracts proved to be a little difficult at times due to local gangs (because Malcolm was to busy with his own business of tracking down V.V. Shooting them in the head instead of asking why they even bother with chasing him proved to be an faster option), having some backup weapon proved to be an excellent idea. While not the best at range, it still whoops troublemaker's asses at the acceptable by Blazer's standards speed... and style!


"Chrome Justice" Pump-Action
While the raging streets of enclosed cities, ran over by demons proved to be too difficult to pacify at first - mister Blazer yet again saved the day by providing an answer to local weapon manufacturers. The resonating flame shots, while not the most humanitarian way of dealing with the angry mob of demons, proved to be quite effective. As the guy in question had said - "fight fire... with fire!". And in case you need a concentrated package of lead, right into some mangoat's chest - there's such option as well!

"Patriarch" Automatic Grenade Launcher
What kind of mod that would be, maintained by Pillowblaster, if it didn't contain any high-yield explosive weapon?! This metal tube with a grenade clip attached to it will rock any crowd's socks off. While it's reload times prove a bit to desire, it can unload it's contents at unsuspecting victims faster than you'd expect to. Show 'em who's your daddy!


"Bitchmaker" Hellraiser Magnum
Blazer is all about revolvers and firing it up, and this weapon proves both. Stylish gift from the past, it fires literally fireballs around hefty bullets at one's face, causing more than just 3rd degree burns - it also destroys craniums of dumb monsters!... if they still possess such, that is.


Ironworks-T800 ''Skullthrottle'' Minigun
For being a weapon, made by Malcolm himself, with a little assistance of the industrial smeltery company, and also thanks to a hunch of scrapped Harley Davidson motorcycle parts (and melted cyborgs from the future, but that's unconfirmed info) - this weapon is as sturdy and stylish as one would expect it to be. It possesses uncanny rate of fire, powered by a miniature fusion reactor, connected to a spark generator for extra stylishness during unleashing a hail of death - perfect for a fan of spreading the freedom all along his way to victory!


Van Masterson's "Nutcracker" Rifle
If a 33.7mm (1.32 inch) modified black powder-powered rifle doesn't speak "Whoa" to you, then you're doing it wrong. Sporting absolutely immense power, this ornamented beauty of an unified craftsmanship of making wood and metal come together in deadly display of exploding limbs can literally send you flying across pretty much any gap you can find! (And your arms flying off, still connected to the weapon, if you aren't in luck of possessing some inhumane resistance.)

ITEMS!


Nightvision Goggles
Space monkeys sitting in dark-ass room don't want to let you get a clear shot due to ever present darkness? Those spectacles will fix that problem!


Jetpack
Heretic and Hexen-exclusive that lets you fly in a rather fancy way. Hold jump while the item is present in your inventory to fly!


Hazmat Suit
The ever-lasting protection from hazards that you can use at any given moment! Also gives a nominal, extra protection from the generic damage.


"Piss" Brand Whiskey (Aka Pisskey)
Not the best of the Whiskeys out there, as the name suggests, but it surely gets the job done! Portable healing item.


Blazingsphere
Applies the full effect of your special ability without losing your health. Ergo, you shoot and run insanely fast during it's activity time.

Q&A SECTION
It will most likely grow over time.

Why the explosions look so freaking ugly/broken while I play it?
It's a mod dedicated for gzdoom. Use gzdoom instead of zdoom.

Why it doesn't want to launch?!
Update your gzdoom, most likely with a beta version that you can get here.

Will you make it work with brutal doo~
No, I won't make it work with brutal doom.

Can I use X/Y/Z thing from the mod?
Since there was a little change in usage policy - feel free to use anything you want, as long as you'll provide the credit.

[TheMightyHeracross]

Holy piss I almost forgot this existed. Excellent work, totally worth the wait. Wait's wrong with using it in ZDoom? Works for me.

Also, non Shadow Warrior Uzis yay!

EDIT: I can't see the ammo pool for the double revolvers.

[Gifty]

IT'S HAPPENING!

[Zanieon]

Dat chaingun in the ending...

Spoiler:

[Somagu]

To everyone that worked on this... I love all of you so much.

[Silentdarkness12]

You've done it again, PillowBlaster. All my days are now spent on this mod.

[Carbine Dioxide]

YES.

[Mav3rick]

[Somagu]

EDIT: I can't see the ammo pool for the double revolvers.

They're a Seriously badass pair of revolvers. There is no ammo pool. (infinite ammo)

[Yholl]

Ah, this is glorious, I'm loving it so far, especially the Uzis, dat firing sound. All the weapons feel and sound great.
I have noticed though, that loading shells into the Chrome Justice shotgun takes 3 shells to add one shot to it. Not sure if it's secretly a triple shot death shotgun or a bug.

[Gothic]

Hell yes!! And I'm posting this before even play the game, but I know it's gonna be awesome!

[RastaManGames]

Dear PillowBlaster, can you make, pleeease compatibility patch for Brutal Doom V.19?
I hope you can. :3

[Carbine Dioxide]

The game play is good enough to be a TC!

[wildweasel]

Dear PillowBlaster, can you make, pleeease compatibility patch for Brutal Doom V.19?
I hope you can. :3

Really hope you're joking here. It's in the FAQ.

[Carbine Dioxide]

Just use Brutal Doom Lite if you want to play this with Brutal Doom so much.

I found some anti aliasing issues on the weapons that could use some fixin.