Hideous Destructor 4.10.0b

[-Ghost-]

Fuck me, I wrote an entire essay and the forum just decided to shit on it and remove it.

Basically what I wrote is a request to add more physiological fuckery to the player's abilities when under duress, such as loss of hearing/tinnitus, shock, tunnel vision and visual desaturation, epinephrine, etc.

Possibly even so that the playerpawn gets less effected by gunfights later on in the campaign due to experience, and supernatural items also doing some fuckery with the player's consciousness.

But, eh, I ain't spending another 30 minutes backtracking my research.

Yeah, I agree that more supernatural stuff would be cool, even if some of it is just to make the maps more creepy and weird.

[Somagu]

I'd like to toss in my two cents that cacodemons are a little overkill right now. I'm all for adapting instead of complaining, but they're absolutely insane. They fire faster and seemingly more accurately, and I took 40 burn damage through a wall. Accuracy to a metaphysical concept is all well and good, but that's absolutely far beyond the point of tedium and frustration from a single enemy than what I'd consider HD's particular flavor of fun. I stood too close to a wall, so now I have to patiently wait for 4 Second Flesh uses to take effect and then heal over.

I previously liked that cacodemons were usually irritating but occasionally extremely frightening when they revved up the cannon, but at this point it seems like they never fire the slow lightning anymore and they serve only to instantly kill you at nearly any range, nevermind if there's more than one targeting you at once.

[edit]Had a look at their behavior/zscript and they are okay to fight in an open area by themselves, certainly, but I really don't like how much wounding they inflict, not least of all through walls. They are absolutely miserable to fight in a more enclosed area where you can't maneuver towards the side of them.

[Matt]

I gotta admit, there's a reason why the old cacodemon code has not yet been deleted.

If only I could think up a way to synthesize them... perhaps weaponized ball lightning may have different qualities...

[DavidWolfe]

Bruh.

Just open fire on the cacodemon and throw off his aim, more than likely he'll either blow himself up in an enclosed environment or end up getting infighting going if it hits another group.

The only problem I've had with cacodemons is when they hit the floor/wall near me and blow me off my feet, but that was just the same with the old code.

I can't help but feel like the past few versions have made HD significantly more forgiving and way easier.

[Somagu]

Bruh. Just open fire on the cacodemon

Ah, yes, thank you, the thought never would have crossed my mind!
You're really reading into the wrong part of my post, there. I didn't even mention that a single one of the homing balls can do over 95 damage to you and also inflict being on fire, because that's not the problem. The problem is that that much permanent wounding is a pain in the ass to deal with, particularly when it can travel through walls, from an enemy that rarely appears by itself.

[Matt]

The weird thing is that the new cacos are really, really shitty when they fight other monsters, even though they're so much more aggravating against the player. It's my least favourite combination of traits - it should be fairly good against everyone. I hope to address that at least.

[Fort of Hard Knox]

You could introduce a rare, ninja-pirate-esque Rare Caco with a palette change. Rare chance for spawn would make the new anti-material Siege Cacos a decent new enemy.

Please keep the old cacos in, is my vote. They were an enemy that I thought was well done and fit well into its place.

[Bigger C]

Seconding Hard Knox. Variety is the spice of life!

[DavidWolfe]

homing balls.

Have you tried dodging yet? It seems to work really well if you want to avoid incoming fire!

Rare Caco with a palette change; keep the old cacos in.

More variety can make things interesting. Adds some to replayability as well.

Then again, same can be said about the armour issue IMHO.

Maybe add a menu for enabling/disabling variety changes? I dunno, much more of a fan of 3 levels of armour, just make the green armour spawn blue every now and then and have black be far more prominent (Green is practically garbage anyway)

[Bigger C]

David, do you have to be so sarcastic towards Somagu?

[Somagu]

Have you tried dodging yet? It seems to work really well if you want to avoid incoming fire!

Wow! Great job homing in on wrong part of my post a second time so you can be snide about it. You're clearly not going to acknowledge the point I'm trying to make instead of just taking jabs at me, so I guess I'm about done trying to make my point there.

Thanks for toning it back, Matt.

[LadyErisXII]

Maybe add a menu for enabling/disabling variety changes? I dunno, much more of a fan of 3 levels of armour, just make the green armour spawn blue every now and then and have black be far more prominent (Green is practically garbage anyway)

I think that's more of a symptom of the damage system falling behind every other change in the game. I rarely notice the difference between armors (probably because I only really get green and black) besides the fact that one weighs significantly more than the other.

[Matt]

That is true, though now that I finally got around to it [EDIT: latest git, not release!] I'm really liking how it feels right now.

Green doesn't really mitigate hitpoint damage enough to be totally obvious, but it does give a slight statistical edge before the bleeding prevention makes it much, much better for the post-fight. Blue now extends the advantages to rifle rounds (though green occasionally stops those too), and also reduces damage noticeably.

[DavidWolfe]

done trying

Bruh, you haven't even started trying, the only reason you're getting hit through a wall is because the caco used your last known location to fire on the corner you hid behind, or one of those balls swerved around and hit you.

bleeding prevention

Does this mean it also decreases internal damage and aggravated damage?

---

David, do you have to be so sarcastic towards Somagu?

Yes.

User was warned for this post.

[LadyErisXII]

Green doesn't really mitigate hitpoint damage enough to be totally obvious, but it does give a slight statistical edge before the bleeding prevention makes it much, much better for the post-fight. Blue now extends the advantages to rifle rounds (though green occasionally stops those too), and also reduces damage noticeably.

Great, glad to see things are getting caught up. Though I'm curious exactly how armor works in the game, I've been playing for a couple years now and never really figured out the benefits of armor vs no armor besides "I get less killed by the bullet".