Hideous Destructor 4.5.0a

[Ryan Cordell]

I'd post another laughing smiley instead, but I'm afraid I'd be stun baton'd by Phobus if I do.

[Captain Ventris]

There. That's all for you.

[Matt]

I think me meant the ... >_>

New update with hand grenades and a new ceramic armour that makes you nearly invincible but only for maybe two or three seconds under fire. Also the super shotgun can now fire one barrel at a time.

Wondering what to do with the super shotgun. Right now it's still much less effective than the regular one, at least the way I play. I'm considering lengthening the barrel, thus giving it less recoil and spread than the pump but justifying a tiny bit more damage that could make it "super" again. Thoughts?

[Captain Ventris]

I think me meant the ... >_>

...beggers can't be choosers.

I think lengthening the barrel would be great! Keep in mind, if played with the average map, a Supershotgun is not something to be taken lightly. After all, it's 3x more powerful than the normal shottie. To be as uncommon as is, without being worth it is silly.

[Matt]

Hence my concern - normally I'm just happy with piling on ad-hoc tweaking until each weapon has evolved into its own niche, but to take a weapon down from "I kill Satan for puppies" to "at least it's not the fist" is a bit much.

The way HD is set up right now the double-barreled shotgun blast is two normal shotgun blasts, each blast with 25% more spread and double that horizontally if both barrels are fired at once. (I may change this having learned that real side-by-side shotguns aren't actually supposed to be parallel like this, but converge towards a single point at a certain distance - shows what happens when you sacrifice common sense for video game bias.)

So thus far I've noticed the following situations where the double is advantageous:

- When you need to make two (and no more than two!) distinct shots in rapid succession (I've speeded things up since my last upload so that both shots empty pretty much at the speed of vanilla Doom's chaingun)
- When you need double the power of the shotgun immediately at very close range (basically only when you've ambushed an enemy marine; you can afford to wait for two pump shots with the spectre and anything else either needs more or needs less)
- When you need the extra spread to make sure you hit (somewhat dubious, since many monsters regenerate and can't be taken out through gradual attrition and you'd need to make a solid hit anyway)
- When you've got two one-shot enemies in line and can take them both out in one double-barreled shot (except for the first two goons in Map01 it's usually so much trouble to set this up you might as well kill them one at a time)

Now if I could somehow affect turning speed in ACS, I'd be able to account for weapon bulk much better. But sadly the only advantage I can give the double here is a faster select/deselect animation.

Now all that said, I have to concede this: It feels so much more awesome being able to take out the enemy with the double than with the pump. Maybe I'm just influenced by stuff like this, I dunno. Anyway, I'll at least give the extra-power thing a try before creating new graphics for it, so at least I don't do the latter for nothing if the idea ends up being no good.

[Matt]

The current version has a double with a shorter barrel but a narrower choke and 33% more power. After using it for a while I had trouble using the pump again, so it may be a bit overpowered.

Also various bugfixes and a different implementation of the rifle/grenade launcher switch.

[Matt]

Highlights of recent updates:

• New pump animation for the shotgun.
• Above justifying faster recovery time between shots. Just how this balances against the SSG is still to be figured out.
• Slightly different effects for the baron/knight, lost soul, and mancubus.
• More needlessly flashy imp attacks!

[Matt]

Request that this thread be moved to the Projects forum.

Also updated GZDoom lights definitions.

[Dancso]

Ah very nice!
But why is the player so slow? (I didnt try through all the classes)

Awesome effects when you get wounded

[Matt]

The player classes only determine what gear you start with.

The running speed is my best approximation of a person at a decently fast but not rapidly exhausting run... it seems really slow at first when you're used to normal Doomguy physics, but it makes sense if you look at a third person view. Sprinting (by default holding z while the player runs) can get you almost to normal Doomguy speeds, though.

Glad you like the wounding effects

Now if only I could get the player's POV while collapsing on the floor...

[Matt]

Just spent the weekend working out a lives system for coop.

Right now it works like this:

• Set the cvar hd_lives to any whole number to enable the lives system effective the next time you load a level. The number serves as the pool of lives the team will have.
• Every time you respawn, you use up one of the lives. If there are no lives left, you spawn as a passive observer.
• Once everyone has been turned into a passive observer, you receive a "Wiped out!" message and the level restarts.

One small bug: I've yet to figure out how to change the player height or make the playerpawn +noblockmap, so when people start getting killed off there will be these invisible indestructible pillars where you'd normally find a player's spawn point.

The good news now is that when you die, you respawn with your weapon already loaded, however empty you might have been when you died.

[Matt]

Well, it turns out that it should be [-solid -shootable] not +noblockmap which has other, undesirable consequences. Anyway, I've fixed it so now wiped-out players no longer block anything, but I'm still trying to figure out how to prevent the player from picking things up without resorting to +noclip.

Anyway, just did two things I've wanted to do for a while besides that: switch over to the other name I had in mind for the mod, and make inventory carry over between maps in amounts greater than one each.

And the mod now only uses scripts 550 through 570, not including 555.

Let me know if there are any places (besides old updates on the page which I'm leaving alone) where something was lost in the mass string replacement called for in this update.

[Belial]

I'd advise against the new name, only being different from an existing one with one letter and all.

[Siggi]

Hah, I thought this sounded familier...

[Matt]

...crap, forgot to look up the misspelled version when seeing if there was anything similar. >:O

Guess I'll change it back... [EDIT: Done. And yes, I do habitually postdate all my updates on this thing. >_>] Would anyone happen to know if there's already an hd.wad?
(Another reason for the change: the filename was too reminiscent of "Tenacious D"... if I'd wanted a Pick of Destiny weapon mod here I'd have made it!)