Hideous Destructor 4.10.0b

[VincentSinclair]

Keep it churning out Vae. I knew stims helped with bleeding but not to the extent that they literally allow you to keep lead flying effectively if inaccurately, due to the tremors imposed by a high heart rate.

[Matt]

Thanks! It's been a long five months trying to overhaul this ginormous snarl while trying to throw in all the stuff I wasn't able to do before...

On an unrelated note, I feel vaguely vindicated by a comment on an FB group I'm on:

I think they also use the term tyrant in some patristic texts to refer to the devil.

In old Byzantine parlance as I understand it the term means a pretender or false ruler.

[mumblemumble]

Thanks for clarifying your intention.

But this brings up a few new issues.

First, the separation between homely and ugly is even harsher, since bleeding is much more of an issue. This could be helped with buffing bandages and stimpacks, as well as making stims more common (and a starting item) but its still a change in balance. Feels like you are going to make medkits subpar, since the surgery kit is cumbersome, and second flesh is extremely situational, where as you sound like you are going to make stims an all purpose item. Ask yourself : if stims allow stopping bleeding with armor on, and so does bandaging, in what possible situation would the medkit be the preferred way to treat bleeding? Yes it works fast, but im worried it will be little more than a crappier stimpack that forces you to remove armor....

You also say that the player should be able to stay up as long as they aren't bleeding, but how common is getting hit without bleeding? 4.26, 9mm, shotgun blasts, baubin teeth, baron blasts all cause bleeding very regularly, so the change where you are supposedly "heartier" in practice, is actually seemingly less true, considering you start with 4 med packs and no stims. Sure, player regens easy, can max out to 100 easy, but preventing bleed out (more common factor in death than lowered max hp, combined with normal damage) seems rougher.

There's no point being able to recover from wounds to easier in the first place if you are more at risk from dying in the first encounter, due to being unable to safely address urgent bleeding.

.... Just something to consider.

[VincentSinclair]

Feels like you are going to make medkits subpar, since the surgery kit is cumbersome, and second flesh is extremely situational, where as you sound like you are going to make stims an all purpose item. Ask yourself : if stims allow stopping bleeding with armor on, and so does bandaging, in what possible situation would the medkit be the preferred way to treat bleeding?

In my experience, bandaging, and stims are only temporary solutions to bleeding. Without suturing, and surgically sealing the wounds, they will eventually open up and begin to bleed again. I however believe that bandaging should be "semi-permanent" that is as long as you don't sprint, fall, or get hit again within say 1 minute RT, your wound will heal.

[Fort of Hard Knox]

Looks like I have an incredible amount to catch up on after finals.

Because I'm a bit confused, this Second Flesh is now part of the medkit, yes?

[mumblemumble]

Problem is vincint, i feel like longer engagements are now much more deadly without a stimpack, as you are forced to endure bleeding till its over, OR, take off armor, which risks an instant death, and then staple yourself shut which maxes fatigue. In this situation, increased regen is not useful, or even a factor, and stimpack are the very obvious choice. Outside combat you heal up normally due to buffed regen, and have time to bandage, as presumably it wasn't bad enough for staples... Like i said, I a situation where staples are better seems almost non existing.

As said before, i can't think of a situation i would prefer a medkit over stimpack now, unless to use second flesh, thus, i think medkits are inferior now to stimpacks, where as before stims and meds both had roles, were interchangeable, but neither was inferior persay.

Slydir, medkits are now radically different : i guess id say just get a free hour to test it.

[Matt]

Slydir: Yes, it's the medikit's altfire.

Latest version has some major damage tweaks. (but not yet a numerical health counter or extra stimpacks)
Also the new pickup system works for ordinary pickups!

EDIT: Apropros of nothing in particular:


EDIT: also this

EDIT: Grenades can be sent through teleporters again. (also has numerical health counter because srsly I've been testing everything with the althud)

EDIT: Buncha tweaks to meds, stims and berserk. Possibly more importantly, you can pick up items "inside" corpses again.

[mumblemumble]

I appreciate the numerical health system, it helps a lot.

The medkit does not have a proper error for "out of staples / biofoam" as it should. Instead it says "you are not bleeding", painfully ironic right before you drop dead bleeding (yes, a single medpack has TONS, but you can keep using the medkit weapon until it runs out)

TBH, not sure why the change on berserk : I personally would have made them more rare, and kept the power level the same, OR, give a gradual falloff of the benefits, before a crash.

Game has no storage for opened medical stuff : for instance, second flesh you can only hold 1 of outside the medkit, so lets say I use 2 medkits : one of those second fleshes vanishes. Not saying we need tons of storage, but storing 2 or 3 might be a nice thing.

[Matt]

It should have the correct error message. Right now it's only on fire and not hold, but I think I can fix that.

I will look into preventing the player from using a medikit if they've already got an unused one out.

Next update may be a bit delayed as I tried - again - to make a cleaner, simplified version of the turning/weapon inertia/weapon collision code and am failing - again.

Looking back at the old ACS code I see why... complexity aside it's very, very different from what I've been trying to do and how I thought I remembered it working.

That this came up on my FB memories is probably poignant:

It is difficult to believe that a poet in prose who has so powerfully exhibited the earth-born air of man, the essential kinship of a human being, with the landscape in which he lives, can deny so elemental a virtue as that which attaches a man to his own ancestors and his own land. It is difficult to believe that the man who feels so poignantly the detestable insolence of oppression would not actually, if he had the chance, lay the oppressor flat with his fist. All, however, arises from the search after a false simplicity, the aim of being, if I may so express it, more natural than it is natural to be. It would not only be more human, it would be more humble of us to be content to be complex. The truest kinship with humanity would lie in doing as humanity has always done, accepting with a sportsmanlike relish the estate to which we are called, the star of our happiness, and the fortunes of the land of our birth.

[mumblemumble]

I do think update to a "stable" build should wait till more of the regulars provide opinions on the new health : with some changes it might be tolerable, but I worry about the dynamic radically changing, of stimpacks from recovery / boosts and medkits being treatment / emergency use, to medkits being long term health maintenance (I honestly see no reason to use the staple gun over stims in combat, and if I survive, why not use bandages?) and stimpacks being the gold standard for medical treatment.

Its also a very radical change : the health readout helps to let me know minor bleeding is over-ridden by regeneration, but this is a VERY weird habit to break, considering the old method : its honestly not an awful idea, but it changes the dynamic so radically its rough to accept : that HP can be generated so easy, but lethal damage hampers so fast. That bleeding is much harder to address, but much less of a problem. That medkits can now address lethal damage, but you WILL need it.

Its such a radical change in dynamic it will take me, and others time to wrap their heads around : and I still think the staple gun kinda isn't worth it.

Its very weird as it takes unlearning how medkits used to work entirely, and this is a bit painful to be honest.

[Caligari87]

On a different note, babuins seem like their hitbox is way too short. I keep having to aim at their legs/feet in order to score hits and it's virtually impossible to headcap them over a low wall.

[Fort of Hard Knox]

I agree with this Babuin statement.

DERPs don't seem to target anything, stims are still occasionally causing folks to hemorrhage internally and die quickly, and I can't tell what is 'height that causes gun drop' and what is 'height that causes death'. I have video footage of all of these.

[Caligari87]

Good point on the DERPs, I can confirm they seem to be extremely picky lately. Several times I've put them in doorways and hallways to keep an area secure, only to get shot from behind because two zombies and an imp walked right past the thing. For stims it seems that two is always guaranteed to kill me, although I haven't tested any for timeframe/cooldown between for this.

And maybe I'm using them wrong, but second flesh always seems to put my mugshot at "raw hamburger" and leaves me there, no regen to speak of over at least 20 minutes of struggling around an empty level.

[Matt]

20 minutes? It should be back to normal after less than a minute or so.

I personally like the "stims are very likely to save your life but overdosing will kill you" dynamic. The specific details I'll tweak, but the principle will remain.

I am aware that *ERP AI is extremely problematic right now. All my attention is on getting the player stuff acceptably right-ish before even touching those. I'm also a bit hesitant to do anything but patch them to basic functionality... there's just so much that ZScript has opened up wrt controllable friendly robots that I can't even right now without dedicating a few weeks to working on nothing but them.

(That said, a thought that's occurred to me a few times this past week: should I just make the HERP an attachment to the Vulcanette? Heck, maybe just make it a special function of the Vulc... but I'm out of buttons seeing as I still want user3 to be for a possible future ammo management function common to all weapons.)

[Fort of Hard Knox]

I personally like the "stims are very likely to save your life but overdosing will kill you" dynamic. The specific details I'll tweak, but the principle will remain.

I didn't know you could overdose on stims. I would have expected that feature to come to berserk packs FAR before coming to quick application medicine. I also don't know what the cool down is for stims to prevent OD issues

Also the robots can wait if you really can take that deep a peek. Same for new ammo management.