[Proof of Concept] Build Your Skill

[-Ghost-]

As long as the pistol has a fairly quick equip time I think it has a purpose. I've pulled it out a few times when the shotgun was too slow to take down an imp or something getting close. Medkits would be a pretty cool addition, it'd be great to somehow break it down to treating individual injuries or something with parts of the medkit. One of the games that did that simply yet well was Call of Cthulhu when I played it. Application was pretty simple, but you had to know what went for what injury.

[twinkieman93]

I have what I think is a pretty neat idea. Implement player classes, but instead of having unique weaponry or abilities or something like that, have each one get a head start in a particular skill. For an example, if athleticism and first aid become skills as predicted, there could be a police officer, a paramedic, and an athlete. The police officer would have more training in firearms(although not as much as a soldier, it would make him a competent shooter), the paramedic would have training in first aid, and the athlete would already be quite the runner.

Just a thought, of course.

As for the first aid, something like CoC would be a little too in-depth, I feel. Keep it even simpler than that; medikits and stimpacks heal a certain amount and take a certain amount of time to apply. Increasing your first aid skill would both shorten application times and make the treatment more effective.

[wildweasel]

Yeah, the SMG is overpowered. Doesn't help that aside from any shaking your character does, it's actually perfectly accurate.

My original intent was to show that weapon accuracy is entirely down to the shooter and not the gun, but it does occur to me that ballistics isn't a perfect science either, so maybe I should add some mild bullet spread to the SMG (probably 2.5 by 3 degrees, just to keep the pistol useful in the long term).

As long as the pistol has a fairly quick equip time I think it has a purpose. I've pulled it out a few times when the shotgun was too slow to take down an imp or something getting close.

I think you're right. In the next version I will make the pistol raise and lower more quickly. (or should I time the weapon equip animations with weapon skill? I'd have to be careful with it, but maybe...)

Medkits would be a pretty cool addition, it'd be great to somehow break it down to treating individual injuries or something with parts of the medkit. One of the games that did that simply yet well was Call of Cthulhu when I played it. Application was pretty simple, but you had to know what went for what injury.

Maybe not quite that complicated; that sort of system would require me to design an entire system around wounds and random locational damage, which I feel is a bit beyond scope.

Here's the system that I've got planned in my head (again, no guarantees that it'll work exactly like this)...

All health items would be replaced with portable versions that go into the inventory. When used, a health item works gradually, a la System Shock; it heals you one hit point at a time up to the item's maximum healing factor (for balance, I'd say 15 HP for Stimpacks, 40 for Medikits). For each use of a healing item, your Medical skill will go up, and this will cause the heal to go slightly faster for each successive use. Of course this is all subject to balance, so it might not be precisely 1 skill point per item used. Maybe it'll depend on how many actual HP get healed (so using the Stimpack at 99 HP and healing the 1 missing HP only advances the level-up counter by 1 instead of 15).

I have what I think is a pretty neat idea. Implement player classes, but instead of having unique weaponry or abilities or something like that, have each one get a head start in a particular skill. For an example, if athleticism and first aid become skills as predicted, there could be a police officer, a paramedic, and an athlete. The police officer would have more training in firearms(although not as much as a soldier, it would make him a competent shooter), the paramedic would have training in first aid, and the athlete would already be quite the runner.

Just a thought, of course.

Here's the thing, though; why wouldn't the police officer or the paramedic have running skills?

I admit, player classes were suggested to me once (I think over Skype) and I didn't really like the idea when it was first pitched to me. It makes the thing feel too much like a heavily stats-based RPG. But on the other hand, why not give players an option for an initial specialty? Edward850, Yholl, and Kyle873 on IRC were all talking about the "lore" of the project and trying to get into the mindset of the player character...there may be some merit to this, and maybe I should be writing up some lore for it myself.

[edit] Thinking about the health and armor bonuses and suddenly getting inspired by Dark Souls' Estus Flask and GUN's whiskey bottle...health bonuses don't get used right away either, but are instead added to a water bottle that can hold up to, say, 20 units (ounces) of water. When you use the water bottle, you immediately regain health equal to how much water's in the bottle.

[twinkieman93]

But they do; you can hold down the shift key and run, can't you? They just won't be able to run as well as the athlete, that's all. At least, not initially.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this, but if you add just one more gun, could you make it a bolt-action rifle? It would work similarly to the shotgun, except with slightly more jitter, slightly less recoil, and a slightly heavier trigger pull. And of course, the weapon would be far more accurate.

[-Ghost-]

I think having equip time being somewhat affected by skill would be fair. Assuming it's in a holster it would take some practice to be able to whip the gun out quickly and be ready to fire. As long as there's still a clear order of speed, like the pistol always being the fastest, maybe shotgun the most cumbersome, and the SMG being somewhat in between.

That med system sounds like a good way to implement it. Could armor shards be turned into some sort of repair mechanic, like each shard gradually restores a certain amount of armor over time depending on your repair skill? Of course, I'm not sure how complicated that'd be either.

[zrrion the insect]

This is quite an interesting mod. The leveling felt very natural. Something like this would do wonders in strife.

[YukiHerz]

I'm slowly building something kinda similar for my strife mod, but instead of a "learning how to use weapons" thing, is more of get better and more accurate attacks and stuff, and also, i prefer doing nooby stuff in decorate than advanced stuff in acs, so i expect someone to do a much better job than me

[Snarboo]

I admit, player classes were suggested to me once (I think over Skype) and I didn't really like the idea when it was first pitched to me. It makes the thing feel too much like a heavily stats-based RPG.

Yeah, I remember suggesting player classes built around weapon specialties, but also adding things like magical weapons into the mix, with one of the player classes (a cultist) starting with a big boost in that category. :p

[HexaDoken]

Pistol is actually kind of extremely difficult to use as a backup weapon, due to the insanely long trigger pull time. By the time you get to shoot the thing once, the enemy probably gets to shoot you once as well, and since pistol damage is basically nonexistant it's always kind of a much better option to either load a shell into your shotgun and fire it off or simply bail.

Of course, by the time you reach higher levels, the pistol becomes far more viable, but by that time you also become a machine of mass destruction and murder, so if there is truly a situation where you can't afford to reload your primary weapons, the only sane option is most likely to be retreat.

[wildweasel]

Today's work is done for now, so I have uploaded a new version. Here are the changes:

- Thanks to Yholl, I've fixed the "disembodied" shotgun and the skill "overflow" problem. Level 99 should now be achievable without screwing up the trigger pull.

- The SMG now has a bullet spread.

- SMG now takes separate ammo from the Pistol; SMG ammo drops replace Bullet Boxes and Cell Packs, and are given plentifully from SMGs and backpacks.

- Player now starts the game with a water bottle containing 10 HP worth of water. Using this bottle will heal as much health as it can (the bottle holds a maximum of 20 HP), until either your health is full or the water bottle is emptied. Picking up Health Bonuses will fill the water bottle by 1 HP per bonus.

- Some damage tweaks to the SMG and Shotgun; Shotgun should more reliably kill Demons in one shot, while SMG can no longer kill a Baron in one magazine.

[twinkieman93]

Played through The Shores of Hell with the newest update, just finished it. The level scaling for Doom 1 is perfect; in the first two episodes you will be level 99 for the final encounter, so long as you kill everything, or pretty close to it anyways. No grinding required, which I REALLY like. I haven't tried it with Episode 3 yet but I imagine it will be similarly well-scaled. I'm not even gonna attempt Episode 4 because I haven't even beaten it vanilla yet. >.>

The water bottle idea was neat, but past the first two maps or so I never used it... I mean, there's plenty of medikits and stimpacks lying around to make it kinda pointless. I bet it'll get more use when you lower the player speed and make that a leveling thing, though, as you won't be able to evade attacks as well initially. Or once medikits and stimpacks are no longer just as instant. We'll see, I suppose.

[wildweasel]

Yeah, the medikit system is going to come next, so the water bottle system will become a lot more useful when your medical kits take time to use.

[Snarboo]

The water bottle idea is pretty interesting! I haven't really seen a similar system to that, at least not that I remember.

This might be a bit much to ask, but any chance the water bottle could also be filled in sectors with water as their floor texture?

[twinkieman93]

This might be a bit much to ask, but any chance the water bottle could also be filled in sectors with water as their floor texture?

Ugh, that water's filthy though. You don't know how long it's been where it is, demons have been traipsing through it, there's a good chance you've killed demons in it somewhere upstream or in the very pool you're standing in, and who knows what drinking water laced with demon blood would do? On top of all that, you're standing in this water. Think of all the stuff you've had to wade through! Blood, toxic waste, mud, acid, lava, fleshy masses, corpses, skulls, and god knows what else. And you're going to drink that water?

Well, a civvie wouldn't know any better, I suppose.

[Snarboo]

There's realism, and then there's realism! :p