[Blade of Agony] Beta testing & user mods | p1 updated

[Tormentor667]

How can something like that be done for more than just the shader settings? I thought about releasing BoA Chapter 3 with no "standard settings" but with the option to load an ini but your solution sounds even better.

[Rachael]

Let's say your fictional shader CVARs are called oneshader, twoshader, and threeshader, and "1" is all you need to turn them on. You can use console aliases to accomplish multiple in one hit, and those can be defined on a per-mod basis via keyconf. You can chain multiple commands together in a single alias with the ";" semicolon inside the alias, but the entire thing must be encased in quotes for it to work correctly. Recent versions of GZDoom also allow you to use the "prevmenu" in an alias to drop to the previous menu - this allows you to create custom confirmation prompts easily.

keyconf:

Code: Select all • Expand view

alias setshadersettings "oneshader 1;twoshader 1;threeshader 1;prevmenu"
alias removeshadersettings "oneshader 0;twoshader 0;threeshader 0;prevmenu"

menudef:

Code: Select all • Expand view

OptionMenu "Shaderstuff"
{
   Title "Shader Stuff"
   Submenu "Turn shaders on", "confirmsetshadersettings"
   Submenu "Remove shaders", "confirmremoveshadersettings"
}

OptionMenu "confirmsetshadersettings"
{
   Title "Turn Shaders On"
   StaticText "This will set your settings to the way the game was meant to be played. However, system instability can result if this is attempted on weaker systems. Do you wish to do this?"
   Command "Yes", "setshadersettings"
   Command "No", "prevmenu"
}

OptionMenu "confirmremoveshadersettings"
{
   Title "Turn Shaders Off"
   StaticText "This will set your settings to the way the game was shipped. However, most of the eye candy will be turned off. Do you wish to do this?"
   Command "Yes", "removeshadersettings"
   Command "No", "prevmenu"
}


This is just an example. It will require a bit of fixing up, but you should be able to work with this and adapt it into something a little more fleshed out.

[Tormentor667]

@Rachael - Thanks kindly, I will forward this to our programmer, he is more used to things like that than I am

Webseite News!
In the past few days I took the opportunity to rejuvinate the webpage -
new menu items, new content, new screenshots, new videos, new news, and and and... Check it out!

[Tormentor667]

[Road to Wolfenstein] Devblog 03 | Compass 2.0

In the past releases of Blade of Agony, the compass seemed to be a bit rudimentary - a feature we added for the sake of being added, but not really worth using. We always thought that we should either remove it, or re-work it as to make it worthwhile, and that's what AFADoomer took care of.

The new compass item

The completely reworked compass is now available as an item that can be bought during Chapter 1, and is part of your inventory from the beginning of Chapter 2. It now works very intuitively, and not only shows the locations of the mission objectives (both primary and secondary), but also shows you the location of important objects, such as mission elements that must be collected, as well as the locations of treasure chests and the keys to open them, and even optional stuff that can be gathered.

Objects that are far away will be barely visible on the compass, but as you get closer to such objects, they will fade in and move closer to the center. Now it really makes sense to get a compass and use it, as it will be helpful for finding your way through larger maps. You won't ever get lost again... as long as you have hoarded enough gold to buy the item.

[Hgluzowski]

Everything's great and additions that are introduced are great, Torment, but you see... where's FG42 and STG in this ? Maybe in third chapter, because, you know, homage to RTCW (because Fallschrimjagers had FGs... hey, I guess that idea would be nice, a freakin' paratroopers in Wolfendoom ? Bloody hell).

[XLightningStormL]

I'd say Tormentor's team would say no on the basis of balance, or to fight feature creep.

[Tormentor667]

Everything's great and additions that are introduced are great, Torment, but you see... where's FG42 and STG in this ? Maybe in third chapter, because, you know, homage to RTCW (because Fallschrimjagers had FGs... hey, I guess that idea would be nice, a freakin' paratroopers in Wolfendoom ? Bloody hell).

There will be a new weapon introduced in Chapter 3 but it won't be these weapons. But... expect something else...

[SamVision]

Why does one of the weapons have a weird blurry muzzle?

[Ozymandias81]

Why does one of the weapons have a weird blurry muzzle?

Can you be specific?

[Hgluzowski]

Everything's great and additions that are introduced are great, Torment, but you see... where's FG42 and STG in this ? Maybe in third chapter, because, you know, homage to RTCW (because Fallschrimjagers had FGs... hey, I guess that idea would be nice, a freakin' paratroopers in Wolfendoom ? Bloody hell).

There will be a new weapon introduced in Chapter 3 but it won't be these weapons. But... expect something else...

Wolfendoom without StG ? Nah... but FG-42 is still a pretty neat gun for this mod, a end-game mix of sniper rifle and (semi)auto rifle (yeah, depiction from RTCW)

I guess that somethin' beside that nice FG-42 (which is in files of mod, but not implemented) would be Tesla Gun or something else

[Jeimuzu73]

I checked the github repo, and the weird thing about the lack of StGs is that the sprites for several enemies (e.g. Waffen-SS and Arctic troops) are depicted as carrying them even though they drop MP40s in-game. Their gunshots also sound different from the regular MP40 soldiers.

[Ozymandias81]

Sounds are there to have enemies being recognizable to players even from distance or while we can't see them.
They drop MP40 for gameplay reasons, and sprites won't change since it would mean to rework over 300+ frames and 50+ brightmaps.
We worked with what we had during Chapter 2 development, made it better and improved scale-wise thanks to DoomJedi arts, and everything you see on BoA is fictional so you are not going to play a Return to Castle Wolfenstein wargame simulator, neither happens on Wolfenstein 3d and Laz projects though.
There is no reason to kill ourselves following continuosly community feedback for very minor details, and in the end we always have a reason why we do some choices:
1) StG44 or Sturmgewher 44 uses 7.92 x 33mm ammo, instead on BoA we have Mauser / 7.92 x 57mm ammo and it would be double redundant as we have 3 different rifles
2) FG-42 uses 7.92 x 57mm ammo okay, but it's way too similar to weapons we already have so still the redundant thing
3) So we made the choice to not consider above weapons due to HUD slots, to not have redundant weapons and also because people got used by the weapon set we have since Chapter 1 release

[Jeimuzu73]

I understand the design decision from a gameplay perspective. Still, I could introduce some new content in a future add-on if the BoA team is okay with that kind of thing.

[Ozymandias81]

I am okay with it, but mind that Inventory is pretty zscript sensible, so you'll have to dig out some stuff which isn't common in other mods

[Tormentor667]

[Road to Wolfenstein] Devblog 04 | NPCs with a brain

How terribly insulting it was for us to hear that most of the people playing the second chapter of Blade of Agony hated our friendly NPCs: Douglas and Ryan (well, the latter still for a reason) were a pain for the players. Instead of helping you, giving you cover, and being a new and interesting gameplay feature, they just - well - sucked. It was about time to change something here.

Improvements for friendly NPC followers

AFADoomer took the community's feedback very seriously, and started re-writing most of the code in order to improve sidekicks like Douglas, Ryan and Ascher, so that they were actually useful companions, rather than annoying obstacles that get in your way instead of covering you. They will now try to avoid being in your line of sight, they will try to move away from you if they are in your way, and most importantly, you can interact with them. Just like in Half-Life 2, you can "use" them once to make them hold their position, and then "use" them again to make them follow you. So if you want a sidekick following you, just leave everything as it is, and if you are more of a "James Bond" special agent who doesn't need or want support, simply leave them behind; it's up to you.