[Release] The Trailblazer - 1.5e

[Nems]

In the Automap Options of GZDoom I have it set to always show keys. However, with Trailblazer it doesn't show keys on the automap even with that option on. Is this intentional? No big deal if it is but I wanted to at least bring it up just in case it's a bug.

[worldendDominator]

What's a good mapset to run this with? My imagination is limited to BTSX, AV and Hellbound.

[BoneofMalkav]

What's a good mapset to run this with? My imagination is limited to BTSX, AV and Hellbound.

Hell For Leather, Going Down, Somewhere in Time

[DoomKrakken]

respect your hustle tho lel

Many thanks, man.

and yea, moonspeak is a gift lel one of its purposes is that it only contains all the significant code I wrote, so I can just throw in a text detailing reuse permissions, cuz they're partly different from the rest of the mods (tb, gc and ro each have one such dir). it's like a library of sorts almost!

Oh that's cool... can I know what kinds of things are there? The code's going over my head a little...

BTW, I have a possible bug to report... was it intentional that the PUFFGETSOWNER flag was missing from the Uranium Shot-enhanced Eliminator puffs? If I shoot point-blank at a wall with an Eliminator, it can kill me or deal serious damage.

Another issue... if you're totally out of ammo for a weapon, you can't switch to it... meaning you can't craft ammo for it if you wish to craft ammo for it. Can this be resolved?

I have another suggestion... the Uranium Shot upgrade enhances both the Sidekick's bullets and Eliminators' pellets to become explosive, and the Uranium Shot-enhanced puffs cause the Eliminators to become super overpowered (at max upgrades, I can one-shot anything up to a Mancubus). Might I suggest featuring the upgrade as a general payload upgrade for the Dem Shells ammo, so that it can also enhance the capabilities of Dem Shells both in the Chrome Justice and Conqueror? Or should the Eliminators be nerfed so that they don't totally outshine the Chrome Justice? If the latter, I'd suggest a wider buckshot spread for the Eliminators, since I can pretty much snipe with those things as it stands right now, and I considered the Chrome Justice to be more the sharpshooter's choice due to its super-tight spread.

Yet another suggestion... I mentioned before how I shrank down the Chrome Justice sonic fire projectiles 'cuz they kept hitting walls and being overall useless in closed spaces. I have an idea for making the projectiles actually grow in size as they travel, each tic, so they can actually hit like a cone and be better at hitting things as the projectiles spread out, whilst giving a chance for the projectiles to go and hit something upon firing.

[1/18/22]: I encountered some situation where I couldn't upgrade the Eliminators (it said the weapon couldn't be upgraded). I had to drop the weapon and then pick it back up and then I was able to upgrade it.

The upgrade bar seems kind of useless at this point, where you can partially upgrade a weapon. Is there a reason why it can't just deny the upgrade if you don't have enough scrap, like with the blueprint upgrades?

[PillowBlaster]

- Puff: Probably not, might've forgot about it if I separated them from inheritance, would need to check at home.
- Ammo: I never had a mighty urge to craft ammo or keep the gun lock consistent, tbqh, given how annoying to handle this stuff can get.
- Eliminator: I'd rather not increase spread any further. Nothing irks me more than a gun with massive spread, unless I personally want it to have a behavior of what we call "rozrzutnik do gnoju" here due to high, intentional spread (which can be translated as "manure spreader"). I personally felt they are on par when both are fully upgraded. I'll see what I can do.
- Increasing projectile sizes: Unless I'd add some visual cue to it, it'd be weird, so I think I'll pass. Decreasing the size seems to work okay as-is, unless further tests will prove otherwise.
- Upgrade bar: I was experimenting with how to handle that stuff and this was done before I had done blueprints and the junk carrying limit was way less lenient, so you had to invest some beforehand. I left it as-is as you don't need a prompt to warn you about costs as you see it up front and reworking that felt like not worth it.

[DoomKrakken]

- Eliminator: I'd rather not increase spread any further. Nothing irks me more than a gun with massive spread, unless I personally want it to have a behavior of what we call "rozrzutnik do gnoju" here due to high, intentional spread (which can be translated as "manure spreader"). I personally felt they are on par when both are fully upgraded. I'll see what I can do.

What worked for me was a 5-degree horizontal and vertical spread for the pellets, and 2.5 if the Eliminators are focused (so I tightened the horizontal spread a bit and greatly increased the vertical spread, since it was near-zero). This way I can't easily one-shot things from the hip from far away (fodder notwithstanding), and can still use the Chrome Justice effectively. I didn't change the damage on the pellets, though they each deal MASSIVE damage, even with this spread I put in on my end, but not so much that it'd surpass the Chrome Justice at the ranged battle.

BTW, if the RNG is just right, I found I can kill a Mancubus or Arch-Vile with one shot. To do this at far range when not even the Chrome Justice is capable of dealing such damage to a single target really makes me feel it gets easily overshadowed by the Eliminators.

I kept forgetting to lay down these two suggestions every time I came back to this page:
- MacGyver Mode: either a toggleable option or a difficulty mode which replaces all ammo pickups with scrap items. The only ways you can obtain ammo in this mode would be via backpacks, weapon pickups, or primarily by crafting ammo with the ammo crafter item.
- Scrap Gun: introduce a new weapon to the fray that runs directly off of your scrap supply.

[openroadracer]

- Scrap Gun: introduce a new weapon to the fray that runs directly off of your scrap supply.

Something to think about for cases of particularly long mapsets with lots of backpacks and/or bosses. When you run out of things to craft, you're basically stuck either A) spamming 2 Bore shells to use up your scrap crafting them; or B) repeatedly crafting the "Armored Measures" blueprint so you can clear up scrap from your inventory. Having a weapon that directly used scrap as ammo would be useful.

---

Personally, I don't like leaving behind blueprints because my scrap is at max.

[KeksDose]

Oh that's cool... can I know what kinds of things are there?

mostly inner workings type of stuff and weirder things. tb has just view tilt or sth, ro and gc share a lot of maths stuff, ro has guided missile stuff, gc has the whole shop there, a few spells' workings, the file titles pretty much sum it up (well mostly lel).

[openroadracer]

So, I just have to ask: Would it be possible for you to adapt the debris code from Rampancy to work on this mod's shell casings? I know this sounds incredibly minor; but when there are lots of shell casings on my screen, my system starts to chug pretty bad.

Just simply having it where the player can choose the behavior of the shell casings(leave as they are now, despawn after a certain amount of time, or despawn as soon as they stop moving) so that they cause less of a performance hit would be much appreciated.

[DoomKrakken]

So, I just have to ask: Would it be possible for you to adapt the debris code from Rampancy to work on this mod's shell casings? I know this sounds incredibly minor; but when there are lots of shell casings on my screen, my system starts to chug pretty bad.

Just simply having it where the player can choose the behavior of the shell casings(leave as they are now, despawn after a certain amount of time, or despawn as soon as they stop moving) so that they cause less of a performance hit would be much appreciated.

There actually is code present to cause the casings to disappear, but only when they can't see you.

So I still second adding the toggleable option of having them disappear right in front of you.

[Rowsol]

Some things I've noticed.

• Paintrain is missing the instantswitch thingy in it's select state and it's raise and lower values are switched in comparison to the other guns.
• FMG is missing blazing raise and lower states.
• Weapons that spawn in the level can incorrectly be crushed. Map46 of RAMP is a good example.
• Weapons could use some weaponready states in their select animations so it's easier to skip past weapons.
• The barrels could use a Death.Crush state that doesn't produce effects. Lots of barrels being crushed leads to major problems as seen in Valiant map07. This would apply to all mods really. RO really likes to crash the game when lots of barrels are involved.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something.

[FelesNoctis]

Out of curiosity, does anybody else experience a brief moment (maybe about 1 second or so) of freeze the first time an explosion happens in a level/after a load? I feel like either my search-fu is failing me, or I just have some weird setting that's causing this.

[Rowsol]

That's just gzdoom caching the effect. It's normal.

[FelesNoctis]

That's just gzdoom caching the effect. It's normal.

Hmm. Is it possible to have it keep the effect cached for the entire session, instead of wiping it regularly? A setting somewhere?

Trailblazer has been the only thing that's had this hitching in my experience so far, so I've been stumped on what to do about it. Other similarly complex gameplay mods don't seem to experience it.

[Rowsol]

Try Precache GL in texture options. For me it makes the levels take a lot longer to load but I personally don't have an issue with the spikebombs, or maybe I'm just used to it.