[1/31/2022] Doom Delta v2.5.0! (+ mapping starter kit!)

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Retraux Squid
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by Retraux Squid »

DrPyspy wrote:
Retraux Squid wrote: Personally I think that slapping a helmet onto the Skelegant machine gun guy would make the best former human machinegunner. A zombieman with an SMG would be difficult to discern at a glance (and impossible from the back) from a rifle-wielding zombie; additionally, given that chaingunners (and logically, machinegunners) have 70 HP, it would not make sense that one would randomly have nearly 4 times the HP of its rifle-wielding compatriots. The brown shirt of the Skelegant machinegunner is immediately identifiable from tan riflemen or slate gray shotgunners, and practically the only thing bad about its sprite is the rather strange-looking hair, which can be easily corrected by giving it a helmet (which also lets you immediately identify it- helmet + brown shirt = trouble).

Speaking of rifles, I know that this is a concern that id already fixed in the release versions of Doom, but the rifle is far too weak for its appearance. Giving it somewhat superior accuracy, a slightly-improved firing rate (perhaps 262.5 RPM, or an eight-tic refire instead of the stock 14-tic refire/150 RPM), and maybe a damage range of 8-24 instead of 5-15 would markedly improve the feel of the weapon- and avert the problem of it becoming literally pointless once you have absolutely any other weapon. Doing what was done in Doom64/PSX Doom and increasing the gunshot damage of former humans to a max of 24 would also make them slightly more dangerous as enemies instead of simply walking bullet clips.

All of these balance out to make a fun enough experience- I've applied them all to my personal install of Doom Delta and I think it's a good set of modifications.
What I had in mind was that the machinegunner would be closer to the former humans rather than the chaingunner, as the machine gun doesn't give off as much of a powerful vibe as the chaingun. As such, the machinegunner's health would be closer to the 20/25 range, and reflect the appearance of its brothers. The spawning plan goes like this: early on, there will only be machinegunners. As levels progress, pairs of machinegunners will be 'merged' into a single chaingunner if they meet certain qualifications (distance between them, etc.) This is still in the planning phase, as this has the potential for making late-game encounters way easier than they should be.

As for altering the damage values of the former humans, I'm not sure if I'll go in that direction. Many maps are designed with the default damage values in mind. Former humans are usually placed as fodder, and I fear if I buff them too much, it will mess up the balance and make many maps unfair. This is the main reason almost all the enemies are unaltered in terms of damage/health values (with the exception being that the lost soul is weaker because lost soul bad they make me big furious)

I have been considering changing the rifle's role to stand out more from the other two clip-based weapons, so I'll take your suggestions into consideration. :D
I do like the idea of gradual replacement, but then you'd have to buff the Chaingunner. I think that it would be rather difficult to implement a location-based spawning system without directly editing maps; even if you did manage to, say, spawn a trio of machinegunners without any clipping or bugs where every chaingunner was, they would pretty much always end up infighting each other to death- unless you removed hitscanner infighting for machinegunners, which I don't imagine would be preferable.

If you have just one machinegunner for every (vanilla) chaingunner, with replacements occuring later, then it's rather pathetic; where 70-hp enemies once were, you get 30-hp ones. You could counterbalance this by, say, giving them 50 HP (not as much as the chaingunner, but still more than a former human), and the chaingunner 150 HP or something like that; given that chaingunners are huge and beefy, and look to be wearing heavy plate, that could work well (or, as an alternative, 100 HP and some sort of armor). I personally don't like chaingunner spam, so slightly reducing the health of most of them in exchange for the occasional elite enemy would work well.

If the rifle ends up becoming accurate and powerful, the former human could have a rather simple- yet not horribly broken- buff. Cut its cone of fire from 22.5 to 11.25 and it suddenly becomes a weak "sniper" type enemy that can deliver 9 damage on average every five or six seconds (factoring in misses and such) from a long range, while still remaining weak at close range. Given that former humans fire single shots, I'd wager that they would at least shoot slightly better than other types of zombies.
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DrPyspy
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by DrPyspy »

Retraux Squid wrote: I do like the idea of gradual replacement, but then you'd have to buff the Chaingunner. I think that it would be rather difficult to implement a location-based spawning system without directly editing maps; even if you did manage to, say, spawn a trio of machinegunners without any clipping or bugs where every chaingunner was, they would pretty much always end up infighting each other to death- unless you removed hitscanner infighting for machinegunners, which I don't imagine would be preferable.
The system was pretty easy to implement and currently works pretty well. You're correct about there being a problem with infighting, so I'm currently thinking up some ways of solving it without outright disabling infighting between machinegunners. Maybe I could prevent them from infighting if they're within a certain distance from each other, or keep them from firing if another machinegunner is in their way?
Retraux Squid wrote: If you have just one machinegunner for every (vanilla) chaingunner, with replacements occuring later, then it's rather pathetic; where 70-hp enemies once were, you get 30-hp ones. You could counterbalance this by, say, giving them 50 HP (not as much as the chaingunner, but still more than a former human), and the chaingunner 150 HP or something like that; given that chaingunners are huge and beefy, and look to be wearing heavy plate, that could work well (or, as an alternative, 100 HP and some sort of armor). I personally don't like chaingunner spam, so slightly reducing the health of most of them in exchange for the occasional elite enemy would work well.
Good points. I'll keep these in mind for when I start balancing the machinegunner spawns.
Retraux Squid wrote: If the rifle ends up becoming accurate and powerful, the former human could have a rather simple- yet not horribly broken- buff. Cut its cone of fire from 22.5 to 11.25 and it suddenly becomes a weak "sniper" type enemy that can deliver 9 damage on average every five or six seconds (factoring in misses and such) from a long range, while still remaining weak at close range. Given that former humans fire single shots, I'd wager that they would at least shoot slightly better than other types of zombies.
Not too sure about this. I'm still pretty uncomfortable with shaking up the balance of the base enemies themselves.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by Retraux Squid »

DrPyspy wrote:
Retraux Squid wrote: I do like the idea of gradual replacement, but then you'd have to buff the Chaingunner. I think that it would be rather difficult to implement a location-based spawning system without directly editing maps; even if you did manage to, say, spawn a trio of machinegunners without any clipping or bugs where every chaingunner was, they would pretty much always end up infighting each other to death- unless you removed hitscanner infighting for machinegunners, which I don't imagine would be preferable.
The system was pretty easy to implement and currently works pretty well. You're correct about there being a problem with infighting, so I'm currently thinking up some ways of solving it without outright disabling infighting between machinegunners. Maybe I could prevent them from infighting if they're within a certain distance from each other, or keep them from firing if another machinegunner is in their way?
Retraux Squid wrote: If you have just one machinegunner for every (vanilla) chaingunner, with replacements occuring later, then it's rather pathetic; where 70-hp enemies once were, you get 30-hp ones. You could counterbalance this by, say, giving them 50 HP (not as much as the chaingunner, but still more than a former human), and the chaingunner 150 HP or something like that; given that chaingunners are huge and beefy, and look to be wearing heavy plate, that could work well (or, as an alternative, 100 HP and some sort of armor). I personally don't like chaingunner spam, so slightly reducing the health of most of them in exchange for the occasional elite enemy would work well.
Good points. I'll keep these in mind for when I start balancing the machinegunner spawns.
Retraux Squid wrote: If the rifle ends up becoming accurate and powerful, the former human could have a rather simple- yet not horribly broken- buff. Cut its cone of fire from 22.5 to 11.25 and it suddenly becomes a weak "sniper" type enemy that can deliver 9 damage on average every five or six seconds (factoring in misses and such) from a long range, while still remaining weak at close range. Given that former humans fire single shots, I'd wager that they would at least shoot slightly better than other types of zombies.
Not too sure about this. I'm still pretty uncomfortable with shaking up the balance of the base enemies themselves.
The Doom Bible says that former humans of all types are possessed and not just mindless corpses. I'd imagine that they would try to take cover and do other intelligent things if it was possible in the engine (which it is not).

You could represent such thinking by giving each former human a cone of invisible tracers immediately preceding each shot, and if there is another former human in front of them in the cone's arx, they will not fire. Accidental hits are thus very possible.

And for reference- 11 degrees is about the firing arc of a Super Shotgun. It's really not something that guarantees one bullet will always hit even at close to medium range.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by XLightningStormL »

not too keen on the chaingunner/group of machine gunners random spawn system, I think it'd be better to have a 1:1 spawn ratio, randomly spawning between the two, it wouldn't fit doom's style to:

- Have 1 1:y spawn ratio, where y spawns whatever amount of enemies, whilst 1 is the Chaingunner
- Have one enemy type appear in early levels only to disappear in later levels, Zombiemen still appear in later levels despite chaingunners existing at the same time. Imps, Hell Knights and Barons are virtually the same, but still spawn.
- Wouldn't having a 1:3 ratio (or more than a 1:1 ratio) break compatibility with mods, and maps? I'm seeing that drpypsy is referring to zombiemen needing to stay the same due to being a workforce spam enemy, but x3 Machine gunners would be a pain in the ass/arse, just as much, if not: worse, than Chaingunners.

The Machine Gun Guy should be a uniquely paletted version of the Zombieman that uses a Machine gun that is more accurate, pistol damage, and slower firing than the Chaingunner, only one of them should spawn at once, not three, not two, not four, and in later levels Chaingunners should appear, and overtake SMGguys at a 70/30 spawn ratio by Map 22 (every 7 levels or 1 episode it should increase, from the Episode 1/Level 1 0/100 ratio.

Example Ratio:
Level 1-7 (Episode 1) 0/100 (SMGGuy vs ChaingunGuy)
Level 8-14 (Episode 2) 30/70
Level 15-21 (Episode 3) 50/50
Level 22-30 (Episode 4) 70/30
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DrPyspy
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by DrPyspy »

Retraux Squid wrote: The Doom Bible says that former humans of all types are possessed and not just mindless corpses. I'd imagine that they would try to take cover and do other intelligent things if it was possible in the engine (which it is not).

You could represent such thinking by giving each former human a cone of invisible tracers immediately preceding each shot, and if there is another former human in front of them in the cone's arx, they will not fire. Accidental hits are thus very possible.

And for reference- 11 degrees is about the firing arc of a Super Shotgun. It's really not something that guarantees one bullet will always hit even at close to medium range.
Giving the infighting-prevention logic to the other former humans seems like it could mess up certain encounters. I guess that'd happen with a lot of stuff present in the mod, though. If it sticks the style of the mod and plays well, I could see it working.

Additionally, if you're interested in a mod that enhances the intelligence of enemies, Kinsie is working on a mod that adds some cool stuff. In this clip, a former sergeant runs out of ammo and takes cover to reload.
XLightningStormL wrote:not too keen on the chaingunner/group of machine gunners random spawn system, I think it'd be better to have a 1:1 spawn ratio, randomly spawning between the two, it wouldn't fit doom's style to:

- Have 1 1:y spawn ratio, where y spawns whatever amount of enemies, whilst 1 is the Chaingunner
I feel that having enemy spawns being random could have the potential to make some playthroughs too easy and some too hard. Imagine the same hallway, but with two outcomes: a hall full of weaker machinegunners, or a hall full of chaingunners. If spawns have a more consistent process (i.e. calculating the 'power' of the enemies around them to balance it out), I feel it'd work better in the long run. However, there's a good thing going on there with the set amount of spawns, I think that would help a lot with variety.
XLightningStormL wrote: - Have one enemy type appear in early levels only to disappear in later levels, Zombiemen still appear in later levels despite chaingunners existing at the same time. Imps, Hell Knights and Barons are virtually the same, but still spawn.
Machinegunners wouldn't 100% replace chaingunners, and vice versa. It may happen with certain levels and the spawning logic, and chaingunners may become more likely in later levels, but both will always have the potential to spawn.
XLightningStormL wrote: - Wouldn't having a 1:3 ratio (or more than a 1:1 ratio) break compatibility with mods, and maps? I'm seeing that drpypsy is referring to zombiemen needing to stay the same due to being a workforce spam enemy, but x3 Machine gunners would be a pain in the ass/arse, just as much, if not: worse, than Chaingunners.
I don't know of any mods that work well with Doom Delta anyway, so I'm not too worried about breaking compatibility with other mods unless they're specifically made to go with Doom Delta. Map balance is definitely something I'm more worried about, so I try to keep a closer eye on that sort of thing. So far I haven't encountered a situation where the machinegunners were more annoying than the intended chaingunner, but I'll still keep an eye out.
XLightningStormL wrote: The Machine Gun Guy should be a uniquely paletted version of the Zombieman that uses a Machine gun that is more accurate, pistol damage, and slower firing than the Chaingunner, only one of them should spawn at once, not three, not two, not four, and in later levels Chaingunners should appear, and overtake SMGguys at a 70/30 spawn ratio by Map 22 (every 7 levels or 1 episode it should increase, from the Episode 1/Level 1 0/100 ratio.
If you're interested in what the machinegunner currently looks like, he uses sprites made by Skelegant, with the hair recolored red to make him more recognizable from a distance:

Image

This talk of spawn ratios seems pretty interesting, and I could probably manage a ratio system with ZScript. I'll look more into it.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by JohnnyTheWolf »

Alternatively, you could leave the Machinegunner spawning up to the player's preference like you did for the Lost Soul.

Like, you could add an option to have it replace the Zombieman altogether or to gradually replace it, a la MetaDoom.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by Retraux Squid »

A few balance notes:

- The Unmaker and Dark Claw are rather weak against high-tier enemies. One blast of the Unmaker only does around 500 or so damage (1/2 of a Baron's HP) and you need to fire the Dark Claw many times just to bring down a Baron- taking far longer than just plasma-gunning them. Buffing them to around 2x damage against demons would notably improve their utility. The Doom Bible notes that demon-tech weapons like that hurt "pure demons a lot, demon-humans very little, tech demons some"; giving them like 0.1x damage factor against former human type enemies would give the plasma gun/BFG some utility in comparison, as you would actually want to use those if you're fighting zombies instead of just demon-tech items.

- The BFG-9000 just feels weak. You need almost the entirety of the blast to take down a Baron- compared to the vanilla "kills 3 barons per shot" BFG, it's just weak. I'd recommend increasing the power of each plasma shot, or giving each one a slight "explosive" effect.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by DrPyspy »

Retraux Squid wrote:A few balance notes:

- The Unmaker and Dark Claw are rather weak against high-tier enemies. One blast of the Unmaker only does around 500 or so damage (1/2 of a Baron's HP) and you need to fire the Dark Claw many times just to bring down a Baron- taking far longer than just plasma-gunning them. Buffing them to around 2x damage against demons would notably improve their utility. The Doom Bible notes that demon-tech weapons like that hurt "pure demons a lot, demon-humans very little, tech demons some"; giving them like 0.1x damage factor against former human type enemies would give the plasma gun/BFG some utility in comparison, as you would actually want to use those if you're fighting zombies instead of just demon-tech items.
I'll try boosting the damage of the Unmaker. Maybe now would be a good time to introduce the pure demon/demon human/tech demon thing as well. I'll need to do some more testing with the Dark Claw, however. It's main purpose is to take down large crowds, so I worry that too much of a buff will diminish that role, but too little will keep it where it is; I'll see what I can do.
Retraux Squid wrote: - The BFG-9000 just feels weak. You need almost the entirety of the blast to take down a Baron- compared to the vanilla "kills 3 barons per shot" BFG, it's just weak. I'd recommend increasing the power of each plasma shot, or giving each one a slight "explosive" effect.
I'll try some stuff out. The explosive effect sounds particularly interesting. :D
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by Retraux Squid »

A quick suggestion: Don't let possessed humans drop souls unless you have a Dark Claw or Unmaker. You can build up a LOT of ammo by the time you grab one of those weapons, and since they each only eat 1 human soul per shot (despite each firing several souls per shot?) it takes an eternity to drain their ammo in comparison to the cell-based weapons.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by Retraux Squid »

-edit: removed-
Last edited by Retraux Squid on Tue Jun 27, 2017 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

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Retraux Squid wrote:Obviously this is not an "official" release in any way, shape, or form. I'm just tooling around with editing Doom Delta to my liking and I decided to post in case the mod author would find any use out of said changes- something I'd be perfectly fine with. I apologize if these seems like it's "stealing the show" or something like that- it's not intended to be anything but my two cents on balance.
I feel it'd have been better if you PM'd your "take" on the mod to the author instead of publicly posting it here, in the original mod's thread.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by Retraux Squid »

Blue Shadow wrote:
Retraux Squid wrote:Obviously this is not an "official" release in any way, shape, or form. I'm just tooling around with editing Doom Delta to my liking and I decided to post in case the mod author would find any use out of said changes- something I'd be perfectly fine with. I apologize if these seems like it's "stealing the show" or something like that- it's not intended to be anything but my two cents on balance.
I feel it'd have been better if you PM'd your "take" on the mod to the author instead of publicly posting it here, in the original mod's thread.
...Yeah. In retrospect that seems to be a better idea. Sorry for the goof-up.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by DrPyspy »



The weird graph thing in the bottom of the helmet HUD has a new use! It can be used to detect secrets in a radius around the player. This video also showcases the new key list and Chaingun.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by Onslaught Six »

This is amazing stuff--probably the closest to a true "alpha/beta Doom" project that anyone has ever made it. Would love to see some of those projects take their maps--if indeed they even exist--and be rebuilt around this.

That all said--the number one thing I've always hated about the alpha HUD (other than how much it tends to get in the way of the sides, but it is what it is there) is the damn numbers on the ammo counter. They've always looked so terrible, unfitting and just bad. I tried to make a replacement set for myself real quick (based off the blue Alpha HUD BIGFONT Jimmy made but just coloured completely blue) but it scales weirdly in-game; would love to know why that is. (Here is a Dropbox to a zip with the font if anyone is curious or knows how to alter it to make it work: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5afxce39e21hw ... s.zip?dl=0)

Other than that and a few questionable sprite changes (I believe things like the imp fireballs and red/green fluctuating BFG/Plasma balls were changed for a reason, they looked stupid in the alpha/beta--but again, that's all to taste, your mod is accurate to the original intent) this mod is amazing.
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Re: Doom Delta v1.1 - Evil has been unleashed!

Post by JohnnyTheWolf »

Does the new release include new music as well?
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