BorderDoom: Doom + Borderlands gameplay (update 1.2)

[Sunbeam]

Hello everyone!
This is BorderDoom, a mod for Doom which adds Borderlands gameplay elements to Doom.

The main ideas for this mod are:

• weapons with random properties including: damage, number of bullets fired, firing speed and accuracy
• shields that recharge when not being attacked
• players and monsters have levels which make them stronger

DOWNLOAD HERE:
https://twitter.com/SunbeamX11/status/1 ... 49797?s=20


1.0 release trailer:




Changelog:

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1.2
- new game mode: "preset" (enemies get stronger with each map)
- show ammo count in inventory screen
- reduced enemy health: -25% for Baron of Hell and Pain Elemental, -33% for Spider Mastermind and Cyberdemon
- only compare weapon pickup stats when having the same weapon type selected
- fixed player shield having wrong shield points when entering a map
- fixed shield recharge with higher level shields
- smaller bugfixes

1.1
- added the ability to go to any previously visited map
- added the option to completely disable weapon recoil
- items dropped by monsters now have the monster's level
- equipping a weapon automatically loads it with ammo
- some new item pickup and inventory sounds
- bugfixes

Additional information

Here is a video that shows some of the weapon types in the mod:




And in this video you can see an overview of the gameplay features of the mod:




BorderDoom Demon Staff vs Nuts2.wad:




Playthrough of map 1 to 5 from Doom 2:




Join the Sunbeam Discord for discussion and feedback!
Click here!

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Original post (also with old gameplay video):

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Hi guys!
In the last months I've been playing a lot of Borderlands. Although I never did any modding for Doom besides some shabby maps over a decade ago it inspired me to pick up coding for Doom and try to bring some of Borderland's gameplay to Doom.
Today I want to show my progress on this to you. As "tech demo" implies this is still unfinished.
The main ideas for this mod are:
- weapons with random properties including: damage, number of bullets fired, firing speed and accuracy
- shields that recharge when not being attacked. Also with random properties.
- player and monsters have levels which make them stronger
- shops where the player can buy and sell weapons/shields



As you can see in the video these things are already working. Please note that all zombiemen were replaced by imps for easier testing. This will not be the case in the final game.

I want to add that while I want to mix some of Borderland's and Doom's gameplay together, that doesn't mean I want it to be a total conversion. This is still Doom, there are no characters etc. from Borderlands. I still think the name fits

Additional ideas I have which are currently not implemented or not usable:
- support for multiplayer
- the ability to save/export the player data at the end of a Doom episode or WAD and be able to import it when starting another WAD (I'm not sure this will work)
- more diversity with item stats. Something like the different levels of rarity in Borderlands.
- skills the player can "learn" after leveling up

I would like to hear your opinions on this in general. I know it's not finished and it may not look as good as it could but I hope it's enough to convince some of you guys
Just as a sidenote: It took me three weeks of work to get this far. I'm not sure it would have been possible to do if it wasn't for the awesome ZDoom Wiki. So thanks for the work you guys did on this, it was really helpful
(I also hope that I don't need any additional screenshots since there is a video.)

[-Ghost-]

Pretty cool, I'm always happy to see more Doom RPG mods.

[Mav3rick]

OH O.o me love it!! when the demo!!? Alpha or Beta?? ^_^

[Ribo Zurai]

Oh boy I totally would love to play this. Specially if there was some kind of special weapon system like Borderlands, like a "derp Rocket Launcher", "Trickshot Handgun", ya know, those prefixes that modify the weapon's stats.

[amv2k9]

NICE! I was doing something like this months ago, but lost interest as I began to realize just how much ACS would be involved to do it properly.

WIll you be implementing classes or skill systems? It'd be a riot to see something like the Siren's Phasewalk or Phoenix attack in this.

[Xaser]

I'm most interested to know how you went about implementing varying weapon speeds, since weapon delay isn't an easily modifiable thing without zillions upon zillions of state jumps.

[DeXiaZ]

Nice realisation!

[Nash]

I'm most interested to know how you went about implementing varying weapon speeds, since weapon delay isn't an easily modifiable thing without zillions upon zillions of state jumps.

[wiki]A_SetTics[/wiki]?

EDIT: Just watched the video. Pretty impressive! I am curious in learning about how you've setup your data structures for the game's systems internally. I can tell a lot of work (code-wise) was put into this.

- the ability to save/export the player data at the end of a Doom episode or WAD and be able to import it when starting another WAD (I'm not sure this will work)

Interested in hearing how you are going about this too. With Zandronum, I guess you could use ConsoleCommand to write CVars into the INI for import/export but for stock ZDoom/GZDoom... I don't know of any way to work with persistent data. I started a discussion here but obviously it's not going to be a feature anytime soon... :D

[Nems]

- the ability to save/export the player data at the end of a Doom episode or WAD and be able to import it when starting another WAD (I'm not sure this will work)

This is something that I've been wanting to see in RPG mods for Doom for a long time. Hope you're able to find some way of implementing this.

This is very impressive, nonetheless, and I'll be following the progress of this mod.

[Valherran]

This is awesome! Although this would probably work best in Hexen with the hub system.

[Sunbeam]

I'm glad you like it!
Coding-wise many features already work sufficiently. This means that I mainly have to implement the level system for all monsters and also adapt all other weapons (or at least all that fit into this) to the new random property mechanics.
I'm not sure about prefixes and whether I'll implement them. However as I said I have the idea to implement a rarity system where more rare weapons gets better stats.
Skills are another future idea that might get implemented. I also thought about classes... I think it would work together quite well, however I'm not sure there are enough possible skills that make sense and suffice for 4 classes. If I add this in the future I'll probably add skills but without classes.
Yes there is quite some ACS involved Currently my ACS code is about 2300 lines with comments. It was more work than expected because some things in (Z)Doom don't work intuitively like when a weapon state gets executed within a player (when firing a weapon).
Weapon speeds are indeed realized by using state jumps, however for the shotgun I have five different speeds (very slow-...-very fast) and that makes five different states and five lines of jumping code in the fire state. As Nash wrote I also thought about A_SetTics but this will not work in all cases since frame durations can only be integer values as far as I know. The state jumps work fine and weren't as much work as you might think.
Savegames: As this is only an idea I don't want to talk about it too much, but from what I have seen this can not be done from within Doom alone. But as I have some experience in C++ this might not be a problem.
@Valherran: Why do you think this would work better in Hexen?
@Nash: About data structures: Let's just say I use a lot of world variables/arrays to hold my data. So this might cause some problems with maps that use those, too. Another thing I thought might cause trouble was the limited amount of world/global variables. However until now this hasn't been a problem. Using this system is a bit ugly but it works

[TheLightBad96]

Will there be additonal weapons/items/monsters for this mod?

[Blox]

Shotguns aren't close-range weapons in that video, they're practically melee weapons.

[NachtIntellect]

I sense this is going to be needing some open world enviroments to make it even better and more like borderlands.

[Valherran]

@Valherran: Why do you think this would work better in Hexen?

I sense this is going to be needing some open world enviroments to make it even better and more like borderlands.

That's why.

Especially with Hexen's hub system, you can immitate Borderlands' environment stlye going in and out of the same levels with the monsters respawning when you go through a portal.