Hideous Destructor 4.10.0b

[Abba Zabba]

Really? I was going to say that the hunter's standard skeet choke of 1 leaves a lot more small humanoid monsters alive on a (seemingly) clean hit, only to bleed out right after. This might be my aim not taking into account the muzzle sway and instead having most of the shot align with the edges of monsters, where before I used flick shots most of the time like a TF2 scout with long range capability. The commando's hefty frame still holds up to a shotgun blast without armor though, only now on average he has a pinch more longevity. Can't comment on relative rifle firepower, yet.

Speaking of which, when he does his 360° pivot search (I like that, this is a recent AI behavior correct? It's a better counter for when the player has decent cover and can utilize several points of approach to ambush him), he appears to never stop this behavior until he has sight of his target, gets hit by something else, or dies. Can break some teleport traps from this.

[Eric_]

The aiming changes took some adjustment but aren't that drastic. It might be a little harder to track fast-moving targets at long range, but if anything I'm performing better in close-quarters engagements, especially in high-latency multiplayer.

My experience with wounding has generally been the opposite - large calibers have been performing better because they make huge wounds that enemies can't seal quickly, while shotguns have been incidentally nerfed because their many small wounds are all sealed at the same time and enemies don't stay stunned for as long as they used to. Hell Knights and Ninja Pirates are both noticeably more resistant to Slayer doubleshots and less resistant to 7.76, or roughly the same. On the player's side, it doesn't seem to have made any particular difference. Getting your face blown off by a Slayer jackboot is pretty much the same death sentence that it was before, and the minor wounding from 4.26 penetrating green armor is comparably treatable. Bleeding itself is much more of a problem, especially because bandaging is so much worse. It's often better to just leave your wounds open in favor of searching for proper medical supplies. Other than that, I don't think anything I mentioned needs any particular fixing. Ninja Pirates surviving a doubleshot is actually pretty interesting, because it does leave them severely injured, so they run and hide for a bit and attack again at a later, less predictable time. Now, the correct way to handle them is to put a few 9mm rounds in first, breaking the shield but not damaging them enough that they disengage. They'll attack again immediately, and the Slayer does them in properly at that point. It's not especially difficult to execute, it's consistent with how you handle shields on bigger enemies, and it lets the NP's unique behaviors shine when they were so easy to completely ignore for a long time.

The mage imp's Macross attack has been rendered almost useless by the AI changes. I wasn't even moving and it fired way to my left, at a vertical spread so large that I only would've been hit by two or three fireballs even if I was standing in its path. They also don't often turn to actually face you when they do it.

[Wolpertinger]

You can (rather quickly) induce a heart attack by holding jump and mashing the feign death key.
I feel like a tiny cooldown of a few frames before you can get back up might be necessary, or at least the stamina cost should depend on something actually happening.
You also can't feign death while zerked any more, I'm not sure whether or not that's intended.

[Matt]

Inability to feign death while zerked was a side effect but it was in character so I left it in.

Getting up should have been subject to a fatigue check and that has now been added.

[Abba Zabba]

Bug: Yeah, the scan turn state for the commando doesn't have any interruption for scanning or scan turning, so when there's no target to see, it's an unending loop.

Had this strange, seemingly unimpactful bug where an arachnotron disappeared when I dodged into it at close range, perhaps related to that visually bounce/squish effect that monsters exhibit when they're dogpiled or clipped through each other? I tried a few times afterward to reproduce the effect but I didn't get it to occur again. The monster ceased to exist, using monster and actor search commands in the console turned up nothing, and since it was removed in this bizarre fashion, the kill count didn't update to display a death since it never 'died'. Have never seen a bug like that before, hopefully it stays that way.

Lastly, how are the new crosshairs set up? I ask because noclipping makes this amusing effect of locking your crosshair into the last point or position it was facing before you step into the out of bounds void, complete with having projectiles launch where the crosshair lies rather than the position your actually facing. The 'bug' goes away however once noclip mode is disabled.

[Eric_]

Feels like the Macross attack needs to be aimed down just a bit more. On an equal height level, it still shoots a little high, and it'll go completely over your head if the imp has the high ground.
The drop adjustment for the Boss and Liberator got messed up at some point since 4.7.1c. The default setting of 300 is now shooting very high at 300 meters. (I fired at the horizontal line I'm looking at in the screenshot). 125 drop adjust is much closer to a proper zero for 300 meters.

[Melodica]

Seems like the smoothed out crosshair movement completely got rid of the quirk the previous crosshair movement had where it would actually follow where your shots would go in multiplayer, which sucks for high latency games since you no longer have a visual to where your shots will actually mostly go and just have to guess and try to "lead" your shots with the current crosshairs. Here's how it looked before versus how it looks now. Both clips were recorded with around 150~200 latency. Could there be a way for the crosshairs to follow where your shots go in multiplayer with latency again?

[Eric_]

The BFG's firing sequence sets the frightening flag, and then never unsets it, leaving the player permanently frightening if they fired the BFG even once and then never used it again. Would I be right to guess that the inflictor.bfrightening line in ShootBall (the last time the flag is modified in the sequence) is supposed to be setting it to false?

[ZikShadow]

I've been watching some beginners play HDest in various streams and finding it odd that while weapon controls and movement from GZD are copied in HDest Controls for convenience, it seems that Inventory-related stuff that's just as important aren't included. Players who are used to just playing vanilla Doom with GZD (no other IWADs like Hexen or Strife) takes a considerable time figuring out that the inventory keys are even used at all in HDest. Would it be possible to include them as well?

[Abba Zabba]

I've been watching some beginners play HDest in various streams and finding it odd that while weapon controls and movement from GZD are copied in HDest Controls for convenience, it seems that Inventory-related stuff that's just as important aren't included. Players who are used to just playing vanilla Doom with GZD (no other IWADs like Hexen or Strife) takes a considerable time figuring out that the inventory keys are even used at all in HDest. Would it be possible to include them as well?

You're saying default keybinds for inventory are unbound, to be clear? I suppose an argument for providing something could be made, but can a mod's default keybinds override pre-existing controls when the mod is loaded? The instructions for HD and general tips make it pretty clear, too. But that's just my opinion.

Also, the indefinite scan-turn behavior has a REALLY long behavior period where the chaingunner shuffling around in place and is preparing to enter the scan-turn state - it reminds me of a cat or a dog tamping down ground for a while before being comfortable enough with it and laying down, lol.

[ZikShadow]

I've been watching some beginners play HDest in various streams and finding it odd that while weapon controls and movement from GZD are copied in HDest Controls for convenience, it seems that Inventory-related stuff that's just as important aren't included. Players who are used to just playing vanilla Doom with GZD (no other IWADs like Hexen or Strife) takes a considerable time figuring out that the inventory keys are even used at all in HDest. Would it be possible to include them as well?

You're saying default keybinds for inventory are unbound, to be clear? I suppose an argument for providing something could be made, but can a mod's default keybinds override pre-existing controls when the mod is loaded? The instructions for HD and general tips make it pretty clear, too. But that's just my opinion.

They are bound by default, but like I said, I've seen enough streamers bumble through HDest that it might be good to give an idea to beginners that the Inventory controls are used in the mod by way of having them put in HDest Controls just like GZD's action and movement keys.

[Matt]

Given how HD got started when everybody and their dog had Hexen-style inventory items in their mod it feels so surreal to think that someone picking up this mod wouldn't just assume they were there.

But I suppose people are approaching this from what they've known about Doom rather than GZDoom now...

(do either 16 or Eternal have usable items?)

[Caligari87]

I'd say that having Doom-ish expectations is definitely where most people are coming from. HD's inventory carousel also doesn't visually present as a standard inventory bar like a lot of mods and games use, so it's a bit less "discoverable".

Doom 2016 and Eternal have stuff like grenades that can be cycled through and used/activated, but in UX terms they're usually presented more as a "power" or "spell" that recharges after use, rather than a physical distinct object which is managed in a stack of other objects.

[Eric_]

I have to object to this change to stimpack behavior. In one session, we had one player overdose themselves and another remove their armor in the middle of a fight because they weren't switched off of stims after using them. Knowing when to let go of altfire to avoid punching your patient wasn't a hard skill to learn even on high latency, and the change provides no benefit whatsoever in singleplayer, only a higher possibility of overdosing yourself by accident. Perhaps it should only stay on stims after altfire and not primary fire? Distributing stims to multiple allies is not an uncommon use case, but you're never going to want to keep stims selected after using one on yourself.

Also, the "trying to use a medkit on you" messages are being sent to everyone in multiplayer again, not just the affected party.

[Matt]

The expected behaviour is that the acting player switches to fists, but is stuck not doing anything until they let go of the button. That's what always happens when I test this now, in both fire and altfire.

Are people hitting the button repeatedly? There might be a window of time where the weapon switch fails. (I'm guessing - I just tried this now and if there is a window I can't fit into it.)

Also which string *exactly* is it? There are so many different messages.
And did it *ever* work properly? I don't think I did anything since it was "fixed".

EDIT: I'm completely unable to replicate either of these problems.

EDIT: I think I've worked around them anyway. The tediousness of re-selecting a new stim after each use is intentional.