[WIP] The Space Pirate (WHERE'S MY UPDATE MARTY?, Pg 34)

[scroton]

I figure now might be a good time to clarify that by:

If they fit the above criteria (don't break other things, can be placed behind cvars) and you're alright with sharing them they'll probably get in to the mod proper so others that want the same things you want can have them too.

I meant things like the existing cvars or otherwise gameplay changes or things like huds and so forth that would typically be a "mutator."
Like if someone wanted to have chaingunners fly and deal double damage, that would have a good chance of getting put in under a cvar. Or have Droplets instead of normal blood, or maybe they really want the NC-Hud. All of those could get put in without being a major undertaking, wouldn't affect people playing without them, and wouldn't impact filesize very much.

That doesn't mean that addons (like adding 4 new chaingunners and 5 new weapons, say) have no chance of getting in, but they aren't subject to the same philosophy as the listed above are, and aren't as likely to get in.

Feel free to share your addons here or in the irc though, and we'll link them in the OP for others to play.

If you're putting work into an addon with the expectation that it will get into the mod proper, it would be a really good idea to talk to Marty before continuing on it and keep him informed while working on it if he says it's okay.

[Shouts In Void]

Greetings, everyone!

Just registered to offer some feedback.

I downloaded the github version of the mod, not sure if it is the most recent build, but i decided to express my opinion on some of the aspects of this fine project. I apologize in advance if i brought up any issues that already have been fixed or mentioned before or if i am mistaken about anything. Again i realize that it is alpha and far from being complete, but still, right now the mod is good but not perfect. So i decided to try to make it better, by reporting some problems and making a couple of suggestions.

What i like:
Theme. Pirates are awesome. I'm sure we all remember great Doom Pirate mod. And Pirates in space are even better, because they fit in standard Doom setting so nicely.

Custom HUD. Looks great, serves it's purpose, doesn't obstruct vision - nicely done.

Custom monsters. Some variety is greatly appreciated, finally you don't have to fight the army of clones.

That one hit kill mode is pure insanity - changes the game completely. Reminds me of Hotline Miami (i highly recommend it, BTW). Unfortunately the game becomes almost impossible to play. More on that in "What i would change section".

Custom weapons. Pistol is good, especially in full-auto mod. Crossbow is a nice addition. As for SMG... UZI? Really? A little bit archaic, especially in space-themed mod, don't you think? But, whatever. Shotgun is a very effective weapon gameplay-wise, but it does look a bit cartoony in comparison to other weapons. If you don't want to swap the model, you could add a couple of details to it and probably change the finish. That should do the job.

What i don't like:
Errr... not "piratey" enough? This is a tricky one. Not sure how that could be rectified, but playing this mod, i didn't really feel, that i was playing a pirate. Should be better with the addition of some weapons, i think.

Melee. With berserk i can't kill an infantry unit in a single hit! Why even bother then? Perhaps i'm doing something wrong, but i just could not get the hang of this whole combo strike system thing. I dunno. Also, WHERE BE ME CUTLASS, MATEY?! This is a pirate mod, you gotta have standards! I'm not asking for tricornes on character models (even though it sure would look great), but a melee weapon is absolutely a mast (he-he). And make it powerful too, plz. There is nothing worse than a useless weapon.

Bugs:
I think mp40 ate my ammo once. Didn't notice that again, could be a fluke.

When shooting imps with hellfire ammo they occasionally don't leave a corpse. Weird.

Poison gas from green shells damages player health, but increases armor. Huh? I once had more than 1000 armor points because of that.

When you shoot while crouching, projectiles fly from your head, and not from the barrel of the weapon. It's as if you were shooting while standing. Especially bad case of this is with the rocket launcher and plasma rifle.

It seems that sometimes standard crossbow bolts go right through the target without damaging it.

What i would change:
Shotgun. Not sure about 4(!) kinds of shells. A little bit like an overkill, if you ask me. 2 or 3 would be better, in my opinion, because right now switching between different types of shells is a pain, especially during the combat. I would remove poison shells i think. Maybe give that function to crossbow? That way each weapon will have 3 types of ammunition.

Ammo pool. It seems that 96 units are reserved for buckshot even if you set the option to have the same ammo pool for all shells. Why is that so? If i want to drop all types of shells and carry 192 (or whatever the number was) shock shells - it should be an possible for me to do so. Also maybe add an option to not pick up certain types of shells even if you have space for them. Or, even better if it is possible let the player allocate the ratio in the menu.

Hellfire shells are not centered properly. They are fired from under the barrel for some reason. Makes aiming tricky. Also, they are way, WAY, too slow. I would prefer them to be more fast moving, maybe armor-piercing. Like a shotgun slug, but incendiary. That would be cool. Or should i say hot? Well, you get the idea.

Poison shell pellets are a little bit too bouncy i think.

Blur sphere sprite should probably be replaced with a more sci-fi-ish thing, say active camouflage kit. Same thing with invulnerability sphere - defensive barrier generator or something.

Archviles. Is it me or do they have invulnerability spell now? Don't make them more powerful, dammit! They are annoying enough as they were. If anything, you should probably swap them with something else. (Same thing with pain elementals). Many mods did that, and benefited from it, like Accessories to Murder and Police Brutality: Terrorists.

What i would add:
Melee weapon. Something like a high tech sword sounds about right. In fact i remember seeing something like that in one of the screenshots, but i didn't find anything like that in the game itself, even after using [give all] cheat, so i'm assuming that this feature is not yet implemented.

Some kind of long range sniper weapon. Some maps are huge and high precision hit scan or fast moving projectile would be an awesome addition to the arsenal. The easiest way is probably to give crossbow zoom function and increase bolt speed. A zoom alone is probably enough.

BFG. Some kind of big cannon would be much appreciated. After playing this mod for several days i came to conclusion that the current arsenal lacks a rapid killing AOE weapon. My suggestion would be something like a laser target painter, which allows a pirate ship to shoot its cannons from orbit. How about that?

Grenades. Some kind of a frag would be very nice. It's just so convenient, that whenever i play the mod without them something seems to be missing.

What do you think about adding some kind of loot system? Say, you kill former humans and they drop some valuables, which then can be used to buy some stuff between the levels. (upgrades? ammo? Armor?) Alternatively, maybe add some kind of score system, which would count the amount of valuables you picked up (without the shop). This should give the feel, that you are actually pirating and not just blasting stuff. That would be nice, however if its too much work, then forget it - not really that important.

One-hit kill mode should be an option in the menu i think. That way players could play on easy difficulty with less enemies, who are still extremely deadly. I would also disable gibs, if it is possible. It just feels wrong, that everyone dies in such a gruesome manner even after being shot once with a pistol.

Of course all that is just my opinion, and the decision to change anything or not is yours.

In conclusion i can say this: a very ambitious project, which requires a lot of polish. If all the problems are fixed, this mod has the potential to become one of the best.

Thank you everyone, who contributed to this mod. Great job so far!

P.S.:

Forgot about shock shells. I think they should electorcute target immediately, rather than after a short delay.

What's up with Lost Souls? Is there any difference between those variants? Whenever they ambush me i can't shake the feeling that someone opened a bag of fiery flying undead skittles.

[scalliano]

WHERE BE ME CUTLASS, MATEY?!

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Nope, I got nothing.

[Sgt. Shivers]

As for SMG... UZI? Really? A little bit archaic, especially in space-themed mod, don't you think?

The Uzi's a classic! What self respecting Man (or Woman) of Action wouldn't wield one?

[Shouts In Void]

As for SMG... UZI? Really? A little bit archaic, especially in space-themed mod, don't you think?

The Uzi's a classic! What self respecting Man (or Woman) of Action wouldn't wield one?

There is no arguing here. UZI is featured in an astonishing amount of movies, video games and what not. Over the years this weapon became iconic and easily recognizable. Which is one of the reasons for trying something else. It's like SPAS 12 - aren't you sick of seeing this shotgun in every shooter since Half-Life 1? Even if that's not the case, what year does Doom take place in? UZI was designed in 1948. That's like, if someone tried to fight in modern war with a flintlock. Just feels somewhat jarring to me.

[mamaluigisbagel]

I guess because its not meant to be an immersive mod? Usually people don't look at mods to see if its realistic, but to see how fun it is. At least, thats how I see it as far as Doom goes.

If that sounded offensive, sorry. Its just that I prefer fun over realism.

[Shouts In Void]

Its just that I prefer fun over realism.

You say it like other weapons can't be fun, which is not true. If anything, using some obscure or cutting edge design, which is rarely seen in real life or media should be more fun, simply for the novelty factor. BTW, this mod is relatively realistic and tame compared to others. So i don't really get your point.

[mamaluigisbagel]

iow I imagine this won't have lore* so the weapons shouldn't matter. But you mentioned losing certain ammo types, the melee, etc which dragged me into this mod in the first place. I do agree that weapons dont take away fun, but the fact that its how the creators wanted it, and personally I guess its their decision if they want to make new weapons to replace existing ones. Whether the mod is intended to be appealing to the players, or how the creators planned.

.....

At this point I don't know what I'm saying to be honest. Let me go bash myself in the head to jog my memory real quick.


*I should remember the whole background story at the first friggin post. <_<

[Somagu]

The Ammobox, or Micro Uzi as it were, is most likely in (and here to stay) because it is Ada's sidearm in RE6. This is important, because Mel is Blatantly Not Ada Wong.

[Shouts In Void]

The Ammobox, or Micro Uzi as it were, is most likely in (and here to stay) because it is Ada's sidearm in RE6. This is important, because Mel is Blatantly Not Ada Wong.

Oh, that's the reason. I never played Resident Evil, so i don't know those characters. No matter. This SMG is not the biggest problem anyway. Speaking of Ammobox - isn't that the name of the launcher? Anyone else here thinks that alt-fire is too slow?

Anyhow, in my opinion, making a cutlass is a top priority rignt now.

[Somagu]

Toolbox is the launcher.

[wildweasel]

Anyhow, in my opinion, making a cutlass is a top priority rignt now.

Hmm, does the Nikana not do it for you?

[Shouts In Void]

Hmm, does the Nikana not do it for you?

Is that a sword? Like i said in my original post i didn't find any melee weapons in the game. Did i miss something?

[scroton]

That one hit kill mode is pure insanity - changes the game completely. Reminds me of Hotline Miami (i highly recommend it, BTW). Unfortunately the game becomes almost impossible to play. More on that in "What i would change section".

It's currently not completely functional--it will soon have Action Doom style projectiles rather than hitscanners. Possibly a cvar to toggle to Demonsteele style beams if the player wants more visible projectiles.

Shotgun is a very effective weapon gameplay-wise, but it does look a bit cartoony in comparison to other weapons. If you don't want to swap the model, you could add a couple of details to it and probably change the finish. That should do the job.

DoomNukem is currently in the process of making a new shotgun spriteset from scratch from what Marty tells me.

Melee. With berserk i can't kill an infantry unit in a single hit! Why even bother then? Perhaps i'm doing something wrong, but i just could not get the hang of this whole combo strike system thing. I dunno.

Berserk implementation right now is very placeholder and isn't meant to be anything close to a final implementation. As for the combo system, it's what people refer to as a "dial-a-combo" combo system. Marty could explain it better than I.

Also, WHERE BE ME CUTLASS, MATEY?! This is a pirate mod, you gotta have standards! I'm not asking for tricornes on character models (even though it sure would look great), but a melee weapon is absolutely a mast (he-he). And make it powerful too, plz. There is nothing worse than a useless weapon.

There's a WIP Nikana that's kept from being given by idfa/give all because it's incomplete. If you want to try it in-game type "give melnikana" in console

I think mp40 ate my ammo once. Didn't notice that again, could be a fluke.

If you were using mags rather than a doom-style ammo pool it's probably because of the wonky way the mp40 handles mags due to it using the same ammo type as the pistol but having a mag that is twice as large--it displays a dummy ammo type on the hud rather than the actual ammo type and it divides the number of mags by two for display purposes. It didn't actually eat any ammo, but it looked like it did if this is the case. I'll take a look and make sure it's accounting for 2 / 1 = 0.

When shooting imps with hellfire ammo they occasionally don't leave a corpse. Weird.
Poison gas from green shells damages player health, but increases armor. Huh? I once had more than 1000 armor points because of that.

Thanks for pointing these out, should be fixed soon.

When you shoot while crouching, projectiles fly from your head, and not from the barrel of the weapon. It's as if you were shooting while standing. Especially bad case of this is with the rocket launcher and plasma rifle.

This is an oversight, will take care of it soon. The way they handle projectiles requires the player not actually firing the projectile but instead firing an intermediary actor that then spawns the actual fired actor. I forgot to account for the player crouching though.

It seems that sometimes standard crossbow bolts go right through the target without damaging it.

They're ripper projectiles so they will always go through the target. They may not cause as much damage as usual if the dicerolls (that are done for all doom projectiles) come out low or if you happen to nick the corner of an actor (actors are boxes, not cylinders, in Doom) rather than fire down it's center, since damage dealt by rippers is dependent upon how many tics they are "in" the actor.

Shotgun. Not sure about 4(!) kinds of shells. A little bit like an overkill, if you ask me. 2 or 3 would be better, in my opinion, because right now switching between different types of shells is a pain, especially during the combat. I would remove poison shells i think. Maybe give that function to crossbow? That way each weapon will have 3 types of ammunition.

The crossbow may get a poison gas function, but the shelltypes are here to stay. There's also a poison shell shotgun zombie going in soon, and that won't really work as a crossbow bolt only as it would be too unfair for the player.
It's easier to switch them once you've played a while, but there will also be optional keybinds to switch to each specific shell soon.

Ammo pool. It seems that 96 units are reserved for buckshot even if you set the option to have the same ammo pool for all shells. Why is that so? If i want to drop all types of shells and carry 192 (or whatever the number was) shock shells - it should be an possible for me to do so. Also maybe add an option to not pick up certain types of shells even if you have space for them. Or, even better if it is possible let the player allocate the ratio in the menu.

Originally the ammo pool was 96 total across all shells, but with the addition of other WIP shotgun weapons that use only buckshot we moved the buckshot to it's own ammo pool, effectively doubled the total shell pool for players in the process. There was also widespread dislike at having the Buckshot in the same shell pool as the other shells before this change. As for picking/up getting rid of shells there's the "drop current shells" button you can use to empty the current specialty shell type in the zeke, and we'll also go ahead and add an option to not pick up certain types of shells soon. Ratios would be a bit trickier, though possible, but I'm not sure how soon that might get in.

Hellfire shells are not centered properly. They are fired from under the barrel for some reason. Makes aiming tricky.

This will get fixed soon along with the other incongruous firing offsets.

Also, they are way, WAY, too slow. I would prefer them to be more fast moving, maybe armor-piercing. Like a shotgun slug, but incendiary. That would be cool. Or should i say hot? Well, you get the idea.

Did you use the melee/special button after firing to make them spread out? They are slower to account for that.

Blur sphere sprite should probably be replaced with a more sci-fi-ish thing, say active camouflage kit. Same thing with invulnerability sphere - defensive barrier generator or something.

I'll talk it over with Marty and see what he wants to do.

Archviles. Is it me or do they have invulnerability spell now? Don't make them more powerful, dammit! They are annoying enough as they were. If anything, you should probably swap them with something else. (Same thing with pain elementals). Many mods did that, and benefited from it, like Accessories to Murder and Police Brutality: Terrorists.

Archviles have a radius healing spell, during casting they are immune to damage but not pain, and if they enter their pain state the casting stops and they lose their immunity.
They won't be swapped out.
They will also be getting a spell to create 4 flimsy copies of themselves that can use their normal attack and raise monsters (though not the radius heal the "real" one has.) They'll be limited to 4 per archvile and 8 per map; they'll have less health than a zombie and causing them to enter their pain state or die will cause the "real" one to enter a pain state to show the player which one is "real." If you cause the "real" to enter their pain state all the copies will disappear.

Some kind of long range sniper weapon. Some maps are huge and high precision hit scan or fast moving projectile would be an awesome addition to the arsenal. The easiest way is probably to give crossbow zoom function and increase bolt speed. A zoom alone is probably enough.

I'll talk it over with Marty and see what he wants to do.

BFG. Some kind of big cannon would be much appreciated. After playing this mod for several days i came to conclusion that the current arsenal lacks a rapid killing AOE weapon. My suggestion would be something like a laser target painter, which allows a pirate ship to shoot its cannons from orbit. How about that?

There is an altfire for the WIP 7 slot weapon. It's a hold to charge. The way it works is the amount of "jumps" the beam can do is dependent upon the charges it has. At the max charge it can jump 20 times. At the last charge it has (or if it doesn't have any enemies in sight) it veers off in a random direction and hits a wall. The damage it deals per jump does not increase when charged, but the explosion does.
This is getting reworked a bit though, to cause the initial shot to deal a greater portion of the overall damage and increase the tracking by making all shots fired by the beam actors 100% accurate hitscans. It will probably also be able to hit enemies after hitting walls, though that's likely but not certain.

Grenades. Some kind of a frag would be very nice. It's just so convenient, that whenever i play the mod without them something seems to be missing.

A couple of different types of grenades should make their way in eventually.
Zombies will also be able to throw grenades, including at your last known position if they can't see you.

What do you think about adding some kind of loot system? Say, you kill former humans and they drop some valuables, which then can be used to buy some stuff between the levels. (upgrades? ammo? Armor?) Alternatively, maybe add some kind of score system, which would count the amount of valuables you picked up (without the shop). This should give the feel, that you are actually pirating and not just blasting stuff. That would be nice, however if its too much work, then forget it - not really that important.

There's the currently unimplemented but planned Bounty system, but I'll talk to Marty and see what he wants to do.

One-hit kill mode should be an option in the menu i think. That way players could play on easy difficulty with less enemies, who are still extremely deadly. I would also disable gibs, if it is possible. It just feels wrong, that everyone dies in such a gruesome manner even after being shot once with a pistol.

I think Marty wants to keep it a separate difficulty, but it would be possible to do this as a cvar even with the different projectiles. I'll talk to him and see what he wants to do.

Forgot about shock shells. I think they should electorcute target immediately, rather than after a short delay.

If the script I've thought of doing but not yet got around to writing works, this may be possible. It's current implementation makes this impossible unless it got replaced by a single sprite.

What's up with Lost Souls? Is there any difference between those variants? Whenever they ambush me i can't shake the feeling that someone opened a bag of fiery flying undead skittles.

Not currently, but the green ones will spew poison gas clouds and their attack will poison the player, the red/orange ones will have fire trails that cause damage to the player and possibly light the player on fire, and the blue ones will have arcs that act like the shock shells and hurt the player if they happen to be caught in them. The arcs will be random, and this working needs the script I mentioned earlier.
Speaking of shock shells, there will also be a shock shell shotgun zombie, as well as a hellfire zombie.

[Cardboard Marty]

I've taken a lot of this stuff into account and I'm working out a game plan, thank you for your feedback guys!