ZDoom project ideas you have

[tsukiyomaru0]

Small idea for a weapon and perhaps an arsenal modification inspired by Metroid:

Bio-Cannon Proto-1
A magi-organic arm cannon with a circular mouth full of sharp teeth for the muzzle. The top has one demonic eye constantly eyeing the user, while the place where you insert the arm has thin tendrils that drills themselves in the flesh to interact with the user. The muscle contraction caused when balling the hand into a fist causes it to trigger, while different finger signs causes it to change its functions. Seems to convert the user's sins (primarily Wrath) into powerful magical shots

UAC has been experimenting with weaponizing demons for a while, and this bizarre weapon is the result of one of such experiments by stitching together parts of different demons. Once fused with the user it is required surgical intervention to remove it, and some of the subjects reported a wide array of strange effects while having it in their possession (at times, IT possessing THEM), such as:

• All 10 subjects confirmed the eye kept looking at them all the time.
• 2 subjects mentioned seeing demons in full clarity even in complete darkness. While indeed there WERE demons in there, turn out that they were two possessed scientists.
• 5 subjects reported seeing a strange demonic seal around, which soon were identified by them as the Seal of Baphomet. Their anxiety diminished after making physical contact with said seal. No other scientist monitoring the experiment reported seeing any seal.
• 9 subjects reported hearing voices in their head speaking in a demonic tongue.
• 6 subjects reported that, through the corner of their eyes, they could see numbers, and the closer it was to 0 the more tired they felt, and it reduced with every shot.
• 2 subjects started yelling and displayed violent behavior. They had to be isolated, but during the escorting one of them stuck his forearm under the elevator, effectively destroying the BCP1 with it and apparently returning to normal. He did agree with isolation and being studied upon after urgent medical care.
• 1 ex-subject who has detached from the BCP1 has been confirmed to regain his sanity and explained he could feel something wriggling in his head before he destroyed the BCP1.
• 1 subject got possessed by BCP1 and we are currently researching how to undo the possession. He was also the weakest subject, a lowly night security.
• 1 subject died after being sprayed with Holy Water. Seems there is no cure after full possession happens.

Sins can be gained by killing the demon associated with such Sin, except for Ira/Wrath, and each Sin has an effect:

• Luxuria/Lust: Projectiles homes in on targets and may turn them into allies for a short while.
• Gula/Gluttony: Chews through space and time, tearing through anyone and anything until it hits a solid wall.
• Avaritia/Greed: Close-mid-ranged Sin, steals the vital energy from enemies until they are on their last legs, but takes at least a few seconds to drain an Imp.
• Acedia/Sloth: Sprays a gas that is known to make most demons slower and causes a few to fall asleep.
• Ira/Wrath: Shoots a dense dark energy that is quite hurtful, comparable in destruction to anything between a standard-issue UAC Pistol and a Shotgun.
• Invidia/Envy: Unleashes a strong ball of energy that bounces off walls and explodes on impact.
• Superbia/Pride: Devastating Sin, unleashes a concentration of "light" that causes massive damage to nearly anything that can be seen by the user. However the last few survivors of this will become MORE aggressive towards the user.

[DoomKrakken]

A separate engine like Doom's engine, but it allows actors to not be restricted to the tic-based system in the gameplay timer. Have fractional tic delays, or at least have actors run at speeds of up to 60 fps.

[Arctangent]

The best you'll get period is delta time, which ... isn't exactly anything feasible for the Doom engine to be ported to. Otherwise, you're asking for something like having actors operate faster than the game sim itself, which is completely ridiculous and falls apart the moment you think about it.

[DoomKrakken]

So I've heard...

[Matt]

But surely GZDoom can be modified to run at an arbitrary tics per second, right? Like, nothing inherently prevents that from being done? (esp. since most of our monitors are 60 rather than 70 fps)

[zrrion the insect]

IIRC the physics is a weird black box that wants 35.

[DoomKrakken]

From the new "What Did You Last Do?" thread:

You can have them sync at 60 frames per second in your own custom build.

However that comes with a huge cost - the more frequently the game tics per second, the more processing goes into the game sim, the slower it will be on lower end systems and the larger risk you run of "overloading" the sim - where the sim is processing so fast that it no longer even bothers to render, and every tic becomes a "catch-up" tic, essentially freezing GZDoom as your game gets progressively more and more behind with the actual time of your game sim.

Trust me - 35 tics/sec is plenty.

[RockstarRaccoon]

IIRC the physics is a weird black box that wants 35.

35 is a good timing to peg physics to because, as long as your camera and animations are running faster, the user won't notice, and running physics too fast takes up rendering time.

[Arctangent]

The main issue with 35 is the effect on controls; after all, if the gamesim only runs 35 times a second, it can only poll for inputs 35 times a second. In fact, that's usually the reason why 60fps is the standard, as it allows the player to send an input for every frame that's actually rendered on a standard monitor.

[Rachael]

That will work when you create a non-deterministic engine (such as Unreal or Quake) - because if you frameskip in those you do not lose much - but with Doom, all bets are off. By modern standards, yes 35 is way too slow, but even in its day it was plenty.

Also, ZDoom's interpolation code does poll for input. So while the game sim will not see the results of your actions immediately, the renderer will, and that's what makes ZDoom feel more snappy and responsive than other source ports, especially on say for example, a 120 Hz monitor.

[YukesVonFaust]

An alien (martian) monster (and if possible, weapons) replacement mod that is centered on Mars Attacks.
got that idea after watching that '96 movie called Mars Attacks.

[Bitterman]

I'm back from my (unplanned) break from Doom. I've been playing Strife so that I can start working on a project for it, which I actually started years ago but made little progress. Hopefully relearning how to use script and editing sprites will be more fun than this time.

[TensorMatrix]

I had an idea about converting all Doom's graphics into 3-bit (2^3 = 8-colors). But i already have an another project going on and i'm very bad at anything art-related stuff.

About 35 ticrate; how would doubling the ticrate work, From 35 to 70 and then modify all actor and double all frame durations?

[Rachael]

As I've said previously, that's just not a good idea, because of the deterministic nature of the game sim which requires it to calculate every frame and do catch-up if it misses one.

Do you really think a map with 20,000 actors is going to run well at 70 tics/sec?

[dentine]

because the english version is missing fixes from the main version, I was thinking there should be a project to create an improved, self contained version of grezzo due with better and more clear weapon balancing, bug fixes, and improvements to the hud and English translation.