Scoot Hard DX: Daytime Drama Zero (Version 1.2)

[SanyaWaffles]

After several months in development, it's finally here!

Yippie Ki Yay, Mother Bucker!

WIS Main Site

Windows x64 WIGZDoom Version 1.2

WIGZDoom Version Dropbox Mirror

IPK3

IPK3 Mirror

Enclosed Instruction Book

Soundtrack on BandCamp by Metal Neon

Scoot Hard DX is a prequel set in the Daytime Drama universe and plays and looks a lot like Rise of the Triad and involves ponies.

Play as Scootaloo as she takes down the dreadful Cloudsdale Weather Corporation! Complete with voice acting, spicy humor at times, and more!

Loosely based on the Rainbow Factory story by Aurora Dawn, this satirical take on the grimdark tale offers another look into the Daytime Drama universe.

[spoiler=Screenshots][imgur]https://imgur.com/vBeaacF[/imgur]
[imgur]https://imgur.com/1UyLPFz[/imgur]
[imgur]https://imgur.com/7Ui1xnb[/imgur]
[imgur]https://imgur.com/msW5IjY[/imgur]
[imgur]https://imgur.com/JPZwnqT[/imgur][/spoiler]

[spoiler=Why Now And Why This?]Back in 2013, I was working on several projects, including what would become Daytime Drama 1... however, a little known project in the same crossover universe called Scoot Hard DX (a remake of my previous Wolf4SDL mod Scoot Hard SDL, hence Scoot Hard DX) was seemingly lost to time... the assets were lost and most of the game was thought to be gone for good, save for the voice acting files which I still had in my emails and in my audio stash. Was it fear of a Cease & Desist from Hasbro? Was it signs that I was losing interest in the fandom? What was the motivation? I can't say for sure.

As DD2 entered a certain stage in development, me and my team were wanting to bring the characters from this project back in DD64, which is meant to end the series overall... so we were wondering how to bring it back. Rebuilding it from scratch in such a short amount of time... doable, but I'd rather have as close to the original code as possible. I could port the Scoot Hard SDL code... but that was not as fun.

... so enter my friend Jinzo. He had a copy of the project all along, and alot of the high res sprites were still intact, and alot of the ACS/DECORATE code was easily portable to ZScript... big thanks to Jinzo for finding that, or else none of this would have happened.

The thing was? It was wholly incomplete! Most of the levels were incomplete, and the bosses were unfinished. Alot of the textures were bad too... and alot of placeholder voice acting from MicTheMicrophoneZero's dramatic reading of Rainbow Factory... and just generally it being not complete.

So... we changed up were the levels as I felt the original levels were very weak and could be improved upon. The levels were done in record time with me and my girlfriend Ellie working hard on the levels together, with us sending WAD files back and forth to each other, and her sending prefabs. One day in a bout of depression, she used that and made most of MAP08 - the Pegasus Device - with most of the titular device built based on the SlyphStorm video art... it's probably the most complex set piece in a Daytime Drama game thus far, despite me going for overall simple geometry a la ROTT.

The next thing we did was take time and get some friends and colleagues to voice the characters.

Then more people got involved. We kept improving the game in various ways. Metal Neon came on to help revitalize the project. He also decided to give a new soundtrack.

At this point SHDX is gaining a cult following for being a weird, but really neat FPS that stands out. I even met the original author of Rainbow Factory because of it! That was awesome.[/spoiler]

Creative Director and Design Lead: SanyaWaffles
Secondary Design, Music, Sound Design: Metal Neon
Weapon Design, Additional Level Design: Jona_Arts
Additional Level Design: Philnemba
Additional Level Design, Sound Design: Elliejojo

Voice of Scootaloo: Victoria Prater
Voice of Low Guard Female: Tabby
Voice of Surprise Pony: CakeofRage
Voice of Low Guard Male: DRPReskins
Voice of Engineer: MovieUnleashers
Voice of Dr. Atmosphere/High Guard Male: Redsoilder55
Voice of Maimbow Undash: Jenna Pepper Fox
Mysterious Voice: AndromedaHawking

Script Proofreading: The Average Joe

Special Thanks: AuroraDawn, WoodenToaster, Jinzo, Korzodin, Zan, and Accensus

Sounds: Quake HiRes Pack, Source Engine, Tomb Raider, Apeirogon, Wolfenstein 3D Mac

Fonts: Revue, Daidoh Remix, Crewniverse

Libraries: Apeirogon's Weather Effects Library
Additional Code by Accensus, Nash Muhandes, Marisa Kirisame, Chronos "phantombeta" Ouroboros and Mikk

[SanyaWaffles]

CHANGELOG

[spoiler=BETA 2.5 (10/31/2020) CHANGELOG]Updated to GZDoom 4.5
Fixed menus looking weird due to a new default setting
Updated titlemap to reinstate SHDX title badge[/spoiler]

[spoiler=BETA 2 (10/29/2020) CHANGELOG]Updated to latest GZDoom Git Build
Updated most graphics to support all resolutions.
Updated titlemap, creditmap, and custom menus to be readable at all resolutions. Help Screen are still not perfect with the graphics.
Weapons system revised - you can now pick up the same weapon for ammo, rather than swapping it out.
Enemy hitscan attacks replaces with FastProjectile equivalents
Pegapol and Bosses make wing flapping and charging noises now
Removed some unused resources
Reapplied some textures in all maps
Boss Tornadoes do more damage now
Gave trampolines a temporary texture that has a cross pattern.
Fix corpses of Female High Guards Not Gibbing
Various map fixes (MAP04 - guards falling out of the tower, MAP09 - klaxxons not playing through level)
Adjusted Scootaloo's size to be a bit smaller
Adjusted Scootaloo's friction to be slightly less slippery (not very noticeable perhaps)
Updated some strings[/spoiler]

[Jarewill]

This was one hell of a game. I enjoyed playing through it.

I think the balancing was slightly off, because there were far too many food items and missile weapons. I never really used the vending machines.
The weapons were great, but I think the tornado weapon and the freeze gun were kinda weak compared to the others, flame wall especially.
I know the tornado homes onto targets, but I only really found it useful in MAP09. The homing was kinda off.

I really liked the systems in this: vending machines (which I haven't used due to overabundance of healing items), the Blood-like armor system, the ROTT-like missile weapon system and of course, the chicken of death and destruction.
I didn't really like the hitscan enemies, but thankfully they didn't deal too much damage.
The bosses were great to fight, but the tornadoes were really off with damage. Sometimes they damaged me, sometimes they just messed with my aim.
But the boss fight music was really great.

I got stuck in MAP08: the something machine though. After disabling the machine with the triple keycard, I didn't know what to do.
After wandering around the room and map, I finally found the two switches that appeared by the bridge.

Don't know what to say about the story, as I am not that knowledgable about MLP, but I liked it.
I found the idea that red paint was made out of blood funny for whatever reason.

If there's something I didn't like, it was the movement. It felt really way more slippery than in regular Doom.
Like, I pressed forward and the character moved after a second, and then there was a problem with platforming.
The platforming with very slippery movement I always found not fun. Thankfully, strafe-running and gliding helped with most of it. Most.

Not sure what else to say, but I really liked it.
By the way, I played on normal, so if there are far less food items and weapons on harder skills, then my bad.

Edit: Oh yeah, how many endings are there?
I got 2: One for killing the final boss and the other for finding that one pony from the cutscenes and then killing the boss.

[SanyaWaffles]

Thanks for the feedback Jarewill.

I'm glad you enjoyed it overall!

I'm glad you found the bosses fun to fight! We're going to actually see about making the bosses in DD2 fun to fight like that, because internal playtesters really like the bosses compared to something like Daytime Drama 1 or 2. They're alot more involved and not just "circlestrafe and fire rockets straight at their face" and require some finess. Sure, rockets are still involved. The first boss, Surprise Pony, is still relatively unchanged from the prototype in terms of mechanics, but giving her a much bigger level to fight in really helped.

Her tornadoes (and the other bosses tornadoes) are meant more to be annoyances, but I do admit the damage they do is weak. It's due to them being a repurposed Iron Lich tornado. I can see about giving them more ripping and tearing abilities in a future beta.

Endings - Right now there's two endings. I might implement more. There's codepaths for a death ending if you die fighting the final boss (much like Strife had), but I haven't coded the actual cutscene itself as I have no idea what to write for it. There were three in Scoot Hard SDL - one for defeating the boss, one for escaping with Aurora, and another for dying.

The vending machines are much more useful on Hard... Discourse becomes not so useful as the coins become rarer for it. I'll see about tweaking the balance, it was actually worse in earlier betas.

As for the Pegasus Device... I'll see how to indicate where you're supposed to go. It is supposed to be indicative that Scootaloo has no idea what she's doing, but I also don't want to frustrate the players too much.

I'll see about the movement code being tweaked a bit, but player code's probably the most volatile part of the entire stack it seems. all I did to change the code so far was make Scootaloo go twice as fast as the normal player and not be able to "run" and have a gliding mechanism... I guess GZDoom's default player code is not meant to go that fast?

As for the hitscanners... I'll probably end up making them fast projectiles for a future beta release. As much as I like Build games, that seems to be the one thing we can all agree on - hitscanners are evil.

[Captain J]

Very interesting and promising work. The Rise of the Triad vibes are really lively with this one! I had fun time blasting through my way.

And here's some feedback:

---

[imgur]https://imgur.com/wGGjqje[/imgur]
- Man. This TC sure loves some hitscanners. Of course, RoTT had tons of them but the major problem is that they have a good eyesight. Each shot will hit me no matter how further away from them. It gets just worse in later levels because of that. And some tougher enemies don't get stunlocked with the automatic weaponry, so that's kinda unfair.

- Vending Machines that i can buy some food is a neat design choice. Except i can heal myself for free via food items. So i do get a pile of coins i don't need most of the times. I'm thinking about adding more vending machine that dispenses weapons, with high prices.

[imgur]https://imgur.com/tCodyxl[/imgur]
- I actually mistook the trampoline as a manhole. Can you make it a bit more elaborating?

[imgur]https://imgur.com/DCXnme5[/imgur]
- So they jumped out the towers. I don't see the purpose of those towers.

[imgur]https://imgur.com/C4yzwgB[/imgur]
- Also they don't get gibbed by the explosion at all.

[imgur]https://imgur.com/0g3qMee[/imgur]
- Some weapon items do get stuck and not able to be obtained, like this one.

- So let's talk about zombies. Their fleshy projectiles are so small, well hidden, they always get me unannounced. Make it bigger, i guess!

- It's rather interesting that i don't see the weapon equivalent of firebomb. Instead we have the tornado weapon. Sadly it's not really powerful if the door closes on them, preventing their movement until they disappear.

- The enemies' behavior on water is quite strange. I understand that they want to get out of there, but boy they sure do love to jump and making pain noises.

And lastly, i'm not a big fan of weapon collecting system. Despite you picked up the exact same weapon, i still drop one of them anyways. I expected to obtain the ammo instead, but nah. You have to backtrack and get a new one each time you deplete your current weapon's ammo.

Granted, it's a classic RoTT stuff, but the TC seems following the principal rather too hard. Good or bad.

And that's about it. I really love this TC! Good job.

[SanyaWaffles]

Some stuff I'm working on for a Beta 2 of the game:

Adjusting Scootaloo's Speed and Friction - this is temporary though, I might need to edit the movement code a bit (and that's not fun, there's not many BSD/MIT examples of editing the player code), but for now she's slightly less slippery... at the expense of being slightly less speedy. I did test the platforming sections, they're still doable despite the slight speed differences, but might be difficult if you've got muscle memory.
Adjusting Scootaloo's Size so she can get into tighter nooks and crannies - Her hitbox was way too big to get into places a small filly like her should be able to. I've tested and she can fit in tighter spots now.
Hitscanner Enemies No More! For better or worse, they're now replaced with Fast Projectile firing mechanisms. They seem to deal slightly more damage up close, but they no longer hit you instantly from a far distance, so it's a fair trade off I presume.
Modify weapon system so you can pick up current weapon for ammo! So it works a bit like ROTT 2013 did, which I honestly like how they did it better than the original.[1]
Adding some new textures from my friend Epic Acrylic (and one by me). We're slowly replacing the OTEX/Ancient aliens textures with more fitting textures. Bless the mess!
Removing unused textures to lighten the bloat while 7z offers great compression (at the expense of taking a while to start), I'd prefer to make this as slim as possible.
Localizing a few strings that I missed the first time - namely a string in MAP01.
Fixing some oddities in level design in MAP04 - I want to see if I can restrict the movement of the enemies to within the towers there.

Some stuff I'm working on for a future Beta of the game:

Reworking the trampolines This is going to be a bit more difficult. I can't decide to make them some sort of sprite or not.
Reworking the balance of the health items on lower difficulties. For me, Hard and Discourse feels just right now, but I've not done much testing on the lower difficulties.

Things I'm considering doing but am not 100% on yet:

Possibly adding vending machines for weapons That's a neat idea. In Scoot Hard SDL you could buy ammo... so maybe you could reload your current weapon or something? I'll think about it.
Adding an equivilant to the firebomb. Because the firebomb is badass. I just dunno if I can do it justice.
Maybe making it so you can carry a missile weapon and a weather weapon, like ROTT 2013 did. Might be OP to do this though, depends on if I can balance the game in other ways.

[1]Don't hurt me I'm allowed to like things.

[Redneckerz]

This is some impressive stuff. Its clearly indie, but also clearly laid down in a professional manner.

[SanyaWaffles]

BETA 2 IS OUT.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dnc4xfstmypxn ... .ipk7?dl=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e00etx8co1irb ... 2.zip?dl=1

Here's a list of major fixes:

WEIRD RESOLUTION SUPPORT - Scoot Hard DX's cutscenes have all been remastered to render from 640x400 all the way to 2560x1080 (the largest I could test given my monitor's size). There's not a lot to the cutscenes, but I wanted to be sure I wasn't leaving any oddball resolutions out. I also updated most of the custom Titlemap, Creditmap and custom menus I wrote to be able to handle odd resolutions. The Help Screen isn't 100% with the graphics and I will be working that out as time goes on.

NO MORE HITSCANNERS - The hitscanners are gone. Kaput. Instead they fire projectiles that can be dodged at the proper distance. This means them instantly hitting you from ten kilometers away is no longer going to happen, you have a chance to avoid their shots.

WEAPON SYSTEM REVISED - Let's say you have a Missile Launcher. You want the ammo from another Missile Launcher. You can now pick it up for ammo rather than swapping it out! So it works like ROTT 2013 did. You still press +use though, I didn't change that. However, if you don't have a need to swap it out (full Ammo for the same weapon, for example) you won't pick it up at all. Other than that, the weapon system remains the same for now - but that should make things slightly less aggravating when you simply want more ammo and are willing to trade a few shots to refill your missile weapon. Isn't ZScript marvelous?!

SCOOTALOO GOT ON THE SLIM FAST PLAN - Is Slim Fast even around anymore? Eh, point being - she's lost some weight. I dunno why her hitbox was so huge to begin with, probably ported Navy's player code from DD2 a bit and she is slightly bigger than Scootaloo (how does that work, they should be about the same according to my estimates?). Eh, she's tinier now, so she can get into nooks and crannies a filly like her should be able to. Oh, and she's slightly less slippery, but she still needs work.

PEGAPOL AND BOSSES THAT FLY NOW HAVE AUDIO CUES - No one reported this as a bug or a problem, but I personally felt like it was better design in the end to have some sort of audible wing flapping for them flying - and when they charge some sound for that too. Now the Pegapol are slightly less bastards. (I still hate them though, even though I coded them)

BOSS TORNADOES DO MORE DAMAGE NOW - I can't tell if people were complaining or thanking me, but I felt they were too weak... so they're stronger now. They'll chew through your weather armor quickly, then after that it's all blue Mondays I'm afraid.

TEXTURE WORK HAS BEGUN - Bless the mess as we rework some of the textures for SHDX. They do look nicer, but there's still work to be done... but here is a sample of what we're working on.

TRAMPOLINE - has gotten a slight overhaul with some textures that indicate that it's not a pit (has a bit of a cross line pattern to it). Gonna still look into a better texture for it, but at least now it's not a deep dark void of nothingness yet somehow still hatred, like my feelings for Randy Pitchford. Laugh at the joke.[1]

SOME MAPPING AND SOUND ERRORS - Specifically some sounds on MAP09 weren't playing. Oops.

MISC BUGFIXES - Including the female high guard corpses not gibbing due to a coding oversight.

GZDOOM UPDATED TO LATEST GIT BUILD - Oh yeah!

[spoiler=BETA 2 (10/29/2020) CHANGELOG]Updated to latest GZDoom Git Build
Updated most graphics to support all resolutions.
Updated titlemap, creditmap, and custom menus to be readable at all resolutions. Help Screen are still not perfect with the graphics.
Weapons system revised - you can now pick up the same weapon for ammo, rather than swapping it out.
Enemy hitscan attacks replaces with FastProjectile equivalents
Pegapol and Bosses make wing flapping and charging noises now
Removed some unused resources
Reapplied some textures in all maps
Boss Tornadoes do more damage now
Gave trampolines a temporary texture that has a cross pattern.
Fix corpses of Female High Guards Not Gibbing
Various map fixes (MAP04 - guards falling out of the tower, MAP09 - klaxxons not playing through level)
Adjusted Scootaloo's size to be a bit smaller
Adjusted Scootaloo's friction to be slightly less slippery (not very noticeable perhaps)
Updated some strings[/spoiler]

Note: The current GZDoom Git Build has some missing LANGUAGE.csv strings. Those are not on my end, but on the engine's end. I've reported them upstream.

[1]I'm on so many layers of irony right now.

[dard98]

So, uh, i've decided to replay final boss so i've switched map to final one and beat boss with second ending. Then after cutscene this happend

---

[imgur]https://imgur.com/bD3RJfQ[/imgur]

[SanyaWaffles]

That's weird. The CREDITS is present in public beta 2... and it doesn't crash for me. I'll try to see about figuring out what happened here.

[SanyaWaffles]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/awukpeyz3yhzi ... 5.zip?dl=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i6czih4na19cm ... .ipk7?dl=1

Beta 2.5 is here. Not a full beta release, but it fixes some menu issues (I was waiting on sufficient documentation on how to make the menus look like they used to) as well as updating the standalone build to GZDoom 4.5.

Some upcoming changes: I finally found a VA for Maimbow and Aurora, the lovely Jenna Pepper wants to take a whack at voicing both of them towards the end of the week the new lines should be added. I also am planning on showing this off to certain parties and see what they think once the voice acting is done... he'll be glad to know Dolphins are nowhere to be found and this is a lot more coherent.

I do plan on working more on this, but I've been struggling with a bout of depression (combined with insomnia and just general loathing about being reminded to vote for Old Fart[1] for the fiftieth time in a row by either text or Discord itself. Seriously where is my medicine...)

I'm fine. I'm fine.

I'm still investigating that issue btw dard98, but I can't seem to recreate it at all. The screenshot indicates it happened when you died at the hands of Maimbow, but that doesn't happen as I've temporarily disabled the code that triggers when you die to play that cutscene... so I don't know what to tell you.

We're still working on some of the levels too. No one has reported issues with crashes trying to access SECRET02, so I suppose the behavior of it defaulting to moving to the next non-secret level as a failsafe is standard behavior and not just some lucky thing that happened to me.

---

[1]please somebody help me this is a serious cry for help

[SanyaWaffles]

People may be wondering where Beta 3 is.

Honestly, some beta testers became contributors to the project and have been helping in various ways and we're working to make this project much better.

This project was supposed to be a niche prequel to Daytime Drama, but it's growing into something more, with a bunch of people coming onto the project.

Here's a screenshot showing our efforts.

[imgur]https://imgur.com/NMMBg6D[/imgur]

My friend Metal has been helping to revamp the level design. He also inroduced me to another friend, Philnemba, who is interested in working on adding more levels to the project.

We've also been working on revitalizing Boss 1 a bit to be a bit more challenging. The floor actually collapses away after a certain point in the battle.

The most noticeable change is the weapon designs have been finally overhauled. The 2014 prototype weapons - grey and boring - have been given a new coat of paint thanks to my friend Jona_arts. Present in this screenshot is the Hailer weapon.

This is on top of the other changes we've been working on - Maimbow and Aurora have been voiced by Jenna Pepper.

[Captain J]

Nice to see the changes for the different weapons! Now they're distinguished for good.

[SanyaWaffles]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ytpvgsmj0n3js ... a.zip?dl=1

SHDX Beta 2.8.1a is now up.

We also have a mockup of what the boxart would look like. We decided to go for a Quake asthetic.

[imgur]https://imgur.com/RhmPmkx[/imgur]

There's so many changes I can't list them all.

The biggest changes however are more enemies, all enemies now have full rotations, a new level in Episode 1, new weapon+all weapons now have a secondary firing mode, lots of levels got overhauled, new soundtrack, and Maimbow has been voiced by Jenna Pepper.

We're going to be working on some level fixes here later today, mainly some serious balancing issues with E3M3, which we have yet to update to account for all the enemy changes and weapon changes. So pardon that mess as we sort that out.

I've updated the first post with a lot of new content that's present in this build.

More is coming, stay tuned.

EDIT: Fixed a bug where the management pass didn't appear in E1M3 on lower skills.

[SanyaWaffles]

Update:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vkkpucneqd3dq ... 2.zip?dl=1

Fixed some balancing issues on later maps, temporary until we overhaul the maps a bit further. Also fixed the music not playing in one of the cutscenes.