Hideous Destructor 4.7.1a

[Phucket]

So the archvile put his seed in the Mancubus's belly? Thank God I wasn't playing HR with this wad.

[Ryan Cordell]

So the archvile put his seed in the Mancubus's belly? Thank God I wasn't playing HR with this wad.

.. You just made it sound like an odd Doom adult fanfic. XD

[SoulCrow]

Yeah, what actually happens will you kill an Arch-Vile? As mentioned above, the first new encounter with an Arch-Vile was with two of them. So I killed 'em both without any major aggravation, but then suddenly everything starts coming back to life (as there were quite a few corpses around).

I'd feel like I was playing Empire Earth. I'd kill about 40% of the monsters, then move on to the other 60%, then when I've killed 40% of those monsters, I'd turn around, and the original 40% I had killed would be reanimated and killing me again! Though I did note this didn't go on forever, which confuses me even more. Does the Arch-Vile create some invisible new Actor when it dies that goes around reviving things? O.o I'm confused.

[Matt]

I agree with the suggestion that custom maps should be made for this mod, as it does not work well with traditional Doom maps

So do I... it's just a matter of me sitting down and actually focussing on something for more than two minutes without instant feedback >_>

That said, amazingly enough someone's working on a trench-warfare-style map already...

Btw, if anyone's wondering, my next update is scheduled for New Year's and includes a mapinfo with skill definitions. The easiest level reduces damage to levels that vaguely resemble normal Doom.

[Phucket]

I'll see if I can put something together.

By the way, is there any way to put the "Kenny monsters" down permanently? The only thing I found that really works is the kill monsters console command.

[Matt]

IIRC the dying archvile releases about 19 "seeds" and they'll generally go where you go, so the best thing to do is to move to an area with weaker monsters (possibly ones that provide ammo) and keep killing until nothing comes back to life anymore. Zombies are especially good since they both give you ammo and dense groups tend to kill themselves off in crossfires speeding up the process.

Or you could just exit the level before the raising monsters catch up with you - outstanding "seeds" that haven't raised anything yet won't go against your kill count.

[Matt]

So yeah, I finally had a chance to try this thing over the net.

...Jesus Flexing Christ.

Thing desyncs from the very start: hitting F12 shows the other player as a different class. Doesn't seem to be related to the "weighted random" extra class hack, and the problem exists even if I take out the LOADACS, so I can only assume it's "something" in the DECORATE (possibly involving the random numbers all over the place). This is going to take a lot of work.

EDIT: Fortunately the desync also happens with the standalone mook file, which should make this a somewhat less daunting task than I'd feared. Or not - must have been a typo.

EDIT2(3?): Turns out it was just the playerclasses. Apparently the randomization kicks in before each computer can tell the other which class the player has, which leads to Player X being one class on one machine but another class on another machine. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong here or if this is a problem with ZDoom.

[Matt]

I won't have time tomorrow, so I might as well post what I've got now. The reload animations (haha) still look like ass. Fixed up a lot of other shit, though!

First and foremost: Multiplayer does, in fact, work. Actually, the lives/gameover system might be completely shot as far as I know, but at least now there is no instant playerclass desync.
EDIT: Fixed the classes. The lives system is in fact bad, as I'd somehow assumed that ACS variable values would be communicated to all computer every time they're changed for one player. Will need some work.

Other changes in no particular order (details here):

• Added that new skill setting I've been talking about. Still pretty horrible to get surrounded by enemies, but at least it's a slow and gruesome death rather than a quick and brutal one!
• Armour and equipped weapon now affect your normal speed. Best mobility: fist, hand grenades, rifle, SSG. Worst mobility: chaingun.
• Rifle now overheats. Added bullshit excuse in manual why it doesn't suffer any permanent damage.
• Separated that huge description into its own text file complete with actual instructions and implied storyline.
• Drastically reduced the number of ACS scripts used, in the meantime cleaning up a lot of crap.
• Got rid of the auto-pickup option. If desired, I may bring it back in non-suck form. (This, I must add, would be very easy now that I've got all non-automatic pickups inheriting from a single primitive actor)
• Made the pickups big again - no more pixelbitching!
• Found and fixed the code that was keeping the bots from respawning.
• Lives/gameover checks are now done on death instead of respawn (actually this is why I suspect the system might be shot now).
• Removed a few unnecessary copyright infringements.
• New status bar.

Courtesy download link

[Matt]

I've completely revamped the lives code. Haven't tested it yet (my desktop has just learned a cute little trick where it goes through a hard reboot if I run ZDoom) but hopefully I've got the knack for making sure each vital check has a direct causal link to some "objective" event that's unlikely to desync.

And, incidentally, I've fixed a crapton of the old bugs with the system - killing off the other players can actually end a deathmatch game with the no exit dmflag on now!

Courtesy download link


EDIT: Nope, lives system is still shot. Good news is I think I've narrowed down why - I still haven't gotten around the obstacle of imposing player 0's cvar on everyone else. Having everyone set the cvar seems to work, though, but I suspect this would have worked even before I revamped the code.

There seems to be a bug where the wipeout sequence doesn't kick in if the second-last person to die doesn't respawn until the last person has also died. I have no idea what causes this.

[Unknown_Assassin]

When I sprint, I lose health. Is this intentional?

[Matt]

Yes. It started off as a very cheap way to get the player to grunt and breathe heavily after being forced to stop sprinting, but I liked the way it turned out. Kinda helps drive home the notion that health in this mod is supposed to represent a lot more than just actual, body-envelope-violating wounds.

(It's also been in for quite some time, except only recently did I change the implementation to count total time spent sprinting rather than total distance covered. Maybe I should change back... EDIT: Changed.)

[Unknown_Assassin]

It's also been in for quite some time

Oh. I haven't used SVN until recently, but that is because ZDoom (the official version) hasn't updated in quite a while.

[Matt]

I think I've addressed all desync issues involving players (class name and team ID bug notwithstanding). Now for the monsters...

EDIT: Purged all instances of A_CheckSight. Now I don't want to create a brand-new team mode if I don't have to, so I'll just wait a few more days to see if anyone has time to look at that TDM bug :/

[MG_Man]

I noticed how you used HideThing instead of TNT1 for players. Granted, it doesn't work UNLESS you use a frame that isn't used in the player sprites. For example, TNT1 Z would actually show a blank.

[Matt]

...huh, hadn't tried the TNT1Z thing. I think I'll keep it the way it is though, since it's easier to figure out the intended effect from a quick glance at the code.

Say, has anyone had any problems with the new status bar? Crashes, weird garbage on the sides of some graphics, etc.?