[WIP] Disopolis, Looking for testers

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Ed the Bat
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Re: [WIP] A Hexen Thing With No Name

Post by Ed the Bat »

SallazarSpellcaster wrote:I am afraid I cannot give a concise answer, since I'm inexperienced with coding and or other processes involved on mod supports. However, the way the literacy system was described makes it seem to me that the characters are going to be modified; seeing as Wrath of Cronos certainly modifies the characters themselves, plus it has two new classes, I figured it would need some tweaking in order to function.

I apologize however for my ignorance, if this is not the case, and WoC would require no additional support.
Wasn't a criticism, just a question. I don't know the internals of WoC, and wasn't sure what would need to be specially supported.
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SallazarSpellcaster
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Re: [WIP] A Hexen Thing With No Name

Post by SallazarSpellcaster »

I'm aware it was a question, though I was not aware whether it was a silly one.

And I see how it goes with the classes.

Now, regarding your mod itself, seeing as you mean to implement a literacy system, perhaps you may consider its opposite, that is, a physical strength system? I mean, if certain situations in the game are meant to be solved through the characters' literacy rate, that would put the Fighter at a disadvantage, seeing as he is illiterate; so in order to give him a marked advantage of his own over the other characters, as the Mage has with his high literacy, there may also be certain situations that can be solved through brute strength. It may be worth considering, in order to make gameplay more balanced.
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Ed the Bat
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Re: [WIP] A Hexen Thing With No Name

Post by Ed the Bat »

I'll want to keep an eye on whatever develops of this literacy system. I play most projects with my own home-made class package, so if anything comes into play here that would influence that, I'll just go ahead and add support in my project for this one, rather than ask it to support mine. I always felt that any conflicts would be the responsibility of the mod being added ontop of others (mine, in this case); I wouldn't want other projects going out of their way on my behalf when I can easily add the necessary support on my own end, more so due to the fact that my project has no public release, so it's only reasonable for me to handle it.
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zrrion the insect
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Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen)

Post by zrrion the insect »

I understand where you're coming from, but as easy as it is to do I figured I could go ahead and make it work with a few mods. Plus I might as well add support for mods that I'm going to play with this anyway.

A strength system is a neat idea, and certainly something to consider. The Fighter does learn how to read at some point, and then go and do the reading stuff, so it's not as if the fighter misses out, he just has to do things in a different order. A similar thing with strength would work to balance the fighter against the mage, but then the cleric would have the chance to be both literate, as well as strong, and that would make him op. Perhaps the cleric would be limited to starting with one or the other, but not both.
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Re: [WIP] A Hexen Thing With No Name

Post by Tormentor667 »

...you should join HPack... really :P
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Ed the Bat
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Re: Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen)

Post by Ed the Bat »

If you're still thinking of a name for this project, the talk about the literacy (and potentially brute strength) system made me think something like "Knowledge and Power" could be a fitting name.

EDIT: Looks like another idea got in before I did. :3:
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SallazarSpellcaster
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Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen)

Post by SallazarSpellcaster »

zrrion the insect wrote:I understand where you're coming from, but as easy as it is to do I figured I could go ahead and make it work with a few mods. Plus I might as well add support for mods that I'm going to play with this anyway.

A strength system is a neat idea, and certainly something to consider. The Fighter does learn how to read at some point, and then go and do the reading stuff, so it's not as if the fighter misses out, he just has to do things in a different order. A similar thing with strength would work to balance the fighter against the mage, but then the cleric would have the chance to be both literate, as well as strong, and that would make him op. Perhaps the cleric would be limited to starting with one or the other, but not both.
In this case balance could be done perhaps this way: Mage starts off with 100% literacy and 0% strength, Fighter with 0% Literacy and 100% strength, and Cleric starts 50/50%. As far as I understand, at some point the characters will get the chance to get either Strong or Literate, however, both skills require a lot of time and training to hone and bring to their fullest, so it would make sense I believe that the Mage and the Fighter can get only up to 50% of their lacking attribute, thus making it so the Mage could be 100% literate and 50% strong and the fighet 50% and 100% respectively. In the case of the Cleric, if he reached 100% and 100% that'd indeed make him OP, so instead, it could be made so he gets the chance to choose whether to become 100% literate or 100% strong, that way he'll also end up being 50/100% and adapting his play style accordingly.
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Re: Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen)

Post by zrrion the insect »

Well, the way I was planning on doing the literacy system isn't going to work. Which is a shame. If I can get it to work some other way I will, but I'm going to go ahead and try my hand at some more maps before I worry about it too much.
Tormentor667 wrote:...you should join HPack... really :P
Perhaps...
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Re: Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen)

Post by zrrion the insect »

Image
I've started work on MAP02. It's sort of a ruined/fiery take on Winnowing Hall, although it should differ enough to not be a carbon-copy, but still feel familiar.
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Re: Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen)

Post by zrrion the insect »

Look, progress!
Spoiler:
So that above post, the one talking about how MAP02 will sort of be a ruined/fiery take on Winnowing Hall, well, that post has not been followed, and the level is not looking much like Winnowing Hall at all. Oh well.
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Re: Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen) Update

Post by zrrion the insect »

Quadruple pose for the win. Anyway, the first post's been updated with a new version. It The first level's been tweaked a little, and there's a piece of a second level in there as well. The second level's still a bit rough, and about half finished.

Obligatory screenshot:
Image
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Mav3rick
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Re: Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen)

Post by Mav3rick »

is this supoce to happen??
in middle of the torchs the sky become weird and even show the library texture
Spoiler:
here is more weird as mentioned early
Spoiler:
here also happen the same
Spoiler:
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Mikk-
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Re: Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen)

Post by Mikk- »

It's a glitch with Stacked Sectors, unfortunately. I don't think there's any way to actually fix it.
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zrrion the insect
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Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen)

Post by zrrion the insect »

Well, some of the class-specific stuff has been changed a bit from what I had initially decided to do. The literacy thing will be there in some sense, but It'll be loss "you can/cannot read so you can/cannot do this thing" but more of "this puzzle must be solved differently because the fighter just wants to smash it but lacks a big enough smasher, whereas the Mage can read it and knows that it does a cool magic thing." The fighter still gets cool stuff from smashing, but it's different from the cool stuff the Mage gets from magicking the thing, and that is different from what the cleric gets from his half-understanding of the magic. So It'll be the same puzzle, just solved differently by each class.

And I'm about 60 - 75% done with the second level. So that should be done before long.
Here's some shots of all the sweet action I've got going on:
Spoiler:
If anyone's well versed in Hexen lore/would like to help with play testing, PM me, as I'd like some help balancing things for all three classes.
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Re: [WIP] Disopolis (hexen)

Post by zrrion the insect »

Gonna' pull a Gooberman and start doing "development journals" of a sort. If for no other reason that to have a place to try and get the ideas I have for the map in a place/format that someone can stop me before I make a bad design choice. Plus it'll help me work through any blocks I have by trying to explain them in a way that someone else could understand.

I've been tinkering a lot with ideas recently. My initial goal was to make this project using exclusively vanilla resources (excluding new midis/ACS.) I was going to rely on the stock textures and stock behaviour of all the monsters/items/weapons and stick to the resources that the game has. The problem I've run into it that, while the textures are good and plentiful, there are a few kinds of texture that Hexen lacks. There are hardly any textures that can be used to accent environments and make them stick out. I've done a lot to try and make things look varied, and MAP01 certainly looks nice for that effort, but it's a small map with 3 (or 5 depending on how you count) rooms total. MAP02 is a different beast entirely. It's got lots of places that need to be different and distinct. Hexen, while it does have nice textures, only has so many texture combinations that work well. I'm having a little trouble making parts of the map distinct visually from other parts and It's making the level feel, in some ways, forgettable. In an attempt to remedy this I'm planning to adding a handful of new textures to the mix which I will either make/edit or they'll be pulled from Heretic/the Hexen alpha/beta textures. Nothing too drastic, but enough to flesh the texture palette out a bit so that I don't get stuck building a large map from the same 5 textures.

On the Actors side: I was initially going to stay away from decorate at all costs. However, more and more I'm finding that I want to tweak things. Most notably the Mage's weapons, which are woefully underpowered (except the arc of death) for the mana they consume. I understand the mage's attraction is supposed to be that all his weapons are ranged, so he can kill most enemies before they have a chance to kill him, but they aren't particularly effective in that regard. I just can't seem to balance things for the mage without throwing mountains of mana and/or artifacts at him. In short, he isn't fun to play as, and I'll probably resort to mucking about with his damages/mana usage to fix that so that He'll be a character that someone'd actually want to play as. There may also be some additional SFX added, but nothing too drastic is planned there.

So map development is at a bit of a halt until I get texture's gathered and decorate changes made.
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