Lithium 1.7.0 Beta (Apr. 17, 2022)

[Dr_Cosmobyte]

Outta curiosity, what map is this?

[Fallingferret]

kinda sorta off topic. is armor in a working state currently, or is it still too early in current 1.6 to be functional?

e: oof. having to sit through the intermission counter when you take an extended amount of time on a map. i adore the choice of sound effects for the menu and and intermission, though

[Marrub]

Outta curiosity, what map is this?

Lithium's test map, which you can get to with `map TESTMAP` in the console.

kinda sorta off topic. is armor in a working state currently, or is it still too early in current 1.6 to be functional?

It is working entirely.

oof. having to sit through the intermission counter when you take an extended amount of time on a map. i adore the choice of sound effects for the menu and and intermission, though

Huh, could have sworn I'd made holding the use key speed it up. Must've screwed something up, will fix.

[Frozenwolf150]

I took Lithium through a slaughtermap wad so I could stress test it and see all the high end upgrades, and I have a few comments.

Glitches and Criticism:

When using the Doom RLA Monster Pack, the arch-vile replacer doesn't work properly (and leaves an error message in the console) so only normal arch-viles are encountered.

There is a long save delay after a few maps, depending on your character's level. It typically starts happening when you reach lvl 40.

The Cyber-Mage's Mateba sprite looks odd, in that he appears to have a right hand coming out of his left arm holding the pistol.

On rare occasions when spamming Cercle de la Mort, the magic spears that it summons can hang in the air instead of flying off and disappearing. Anything that touches them, including the player, dies instantly.

The "EXPLOOSIONS" upgrade is very useful for max difficulty, but has somewhat inconsistent behavior. When ballistic rounds hit certain enemies like cacodemons and revenants they explode on impact, whereas with other enemy types they do normal damage and do not explode. The only way to reliably take advantage of this upgrade is to fire it at surfaces near enemies instead of at enemies themselves.

The Plasmatic Laser does zero damage if the "EXPLOOSIONS" upgrade is active.

The Cyber-Mage's Ion Rifle is the only reloadable weapon that can't be manually reloaded, which is problematic because it has a slow reload time. The Auto Reload upgrade can mitigate this though.

The C. Launcher for the Marine's Grenade Launcher isn't very user friendly. Using secondary fire to cycle through the modes, like with the Combat Rifle, would be preferable, since you can always just tap primary fire to fire individual rockets.


Suggestions:

Are there plans to offer upgrades for the Cyber-Mage's shotgun and the Marine's Super Shotgun? An assault shotgun type upgrade would be nice.

Will the shop offer a wider variety of items and power-ups? At the very least it should offer healing items, which can become very rare in max difficulty.

It would be helpful if the crosshair had a hit indicator that shows when a weapon has hit an enemy, similar to certain other mods.

The Marine's final upgrade for the Omega Cannon is very hit or miss. Half the time, it immediately kills you upon firing. There should be a way to prevent it from emitting a ray directly back at the player for 1-2 seconds after firing. Also, it's odd that the Cyber-Mage can get his instant kill weapon early, whereas the Marine needs to shell out 2 billion credits.



Overall, any mod that adds RPG elements to Doom gets my endorsement. Awaiting v1.6 with bated breath.

[Fallingferret]

oof. having to sit through the intermission counter when you take an extended amount of time on a map. i adore the choice of sound effects for the menu and and intermission, though

Huh, could have sworn I'd made holding the use key speed it up. Must've screwed something up, will fix.

ya got it, thanks.

the feedback on the shotgun and rifle standard mode are a really good touch. there's something so satisfying about that punch and shell ejection on the shotgun
the lack of recoil on the rifle when using modal mode make it LITERALLY unusable though :^)

also i don't know if this has been brought up at any point(outside the thread), but BTSX E1 causes _Lith_PlayerUpdateCBIGUI to explode by picking anything up sometime after the 2 minute mark and checking the log. i can't really pin the time down, but it's run away in the middle every map without fail for me if i try to check the log, or mindlessly switch to that tab. jpcp, uacultra, and doom64 for doom2 have yet to explode on me.

also before i forget https://i.imgur.com/Y8hY9u9.png the map name always gets obscured on exit
https://i.imgur.com/WaJ68Xc.png

[Marrub]

When using the Doom RLA Monster Pack, the arch-vile replacer doesn't work properly (and leaves an error message in the console) so only normal arch-viles are encountered.

There is a long save delay after a few maps, depending on your character's level. It typically starts happening when you reach lvl 40.

These aren't anything I can fix. Go yell at Yholl and the GZDoom developers, respectively.

The Cyber-Mage's Mateba sprite looks odd, in that he appears to have a right hand coming out of his left arm holding the pistol.

Er, that's a sleeve.

On rare occasions when spamming Cercle de la Mort, the magic spears that it summons can hang in the air instead of flying off and disappearing. Anything that touches them, including the player, dies instantly.

Seems something is broken with Cercle's code, I'll have to check it out.

The "EXPLOOSIONS" upgrade is very useful for max difficulty, but has somewhat inconsistent behavior. When ballistic rounds hit certain enemies like cacodemons and revenants they explode on impact, whereas with other enemy types they do normal damage and do not explode. The only way to reliably take advantage of this upgrade is to fire it at surfaces near enemies instead of at enemies themselves.

The Plasmatic Laser does zero damage if the "EXPLOOSIONS" upgrade is active.

Both of these are intentional.

The Cyber-Mage's Ion Rifle is the only reloadable weapon that can't be manually reloaded, which is problematic because it has a slow reload time. The Auto Reload upgrade can mitigate this though.

You can switch weapons while it's reloading, otherwise this is intentional.

The C. Launcher for the Marine's Grenade Launcher isn't very user friendly. Using secondary fire to cycle through the modes, like with the Combat Rifle, would be preferable, since you can always just tap primary fire to fire individual rockets.

The mechanics are in reference to Unreal, and that's how it works in that game, so that won't be changed.

Are there plans to offer upgrades for the Cyber-Mage's shotgun and the Marine's Super Shotgun? An assault shotgun type upgrade would be nice.

The Super Shotgun won't get any upgrades, but Cyber-Mage's SPAS always can. An assault shotgun upgrade would be cool, but I have that planned for another player class currently.

Will the shop offer a wider variety of items and power-ups? At the very least it should offer healing items, which can become very rare in max difficulty.

Yes, I've been thinking of stuff to add, and suggestions for this are welcome. I won't add healing items though; the mod did have them in the shop at one point and it simply made the game too easy.

It would be helpful if the crosshair had a hit indicator that shows when a weapon has hit an enemy, similar to certain other mods.

No.

The Marine's final upgrade for the Omega Cannon is very hit or miss. Half the time, it immediately kills you upon firing. There should be a way to prevent it from emitting a ray directly back at the player for 1-2 seconds after firing.

Er, what? It shouldn't ever be able to damage the player at all, what the hell? I'll have to check that out.

Also, it's odd that the Cyber-Mage can get his instant kill weapon early, whereas the Marine needs to shell out 2 billion credits.

Huh?

Overall, any mod that adds RPG elements to Doom gets my endorsement. Awaiting v1.6 with bated breath.

Thanks

also i don't know if this has been brought up at any point(outside the thread), but BTSX E1 causes _Lith_PlayerUpdateCBIGUI to explode by picking anything up sometime after the 2 minute mark and checking the log. i can't really pin the time down, but it's run away in the middle every map without fail for me if i try to check the log, or mindlessly switch to that tab. jpcp, uacultra, and doom64 for doom2 have yet to explode on me.

That's strange, I've never had that issue, and I mainly test on BTSX. I'll see if I can reproduce it.

also before i forget https://i.imgur.com/Y8hY9u9.png the map name always gets obscured on exit

I don't think I can fix this, unfortunately.

https://i.imgur.com/WaJ68Xc.png

oops

[Frozenwolf150]

OK nevermind the aesthetic comments then.

The Marine's final upgrade for the Omega Cannon is very hit or miss. Half the time, it immediately kills you upon firing. There should be a way to prevent it from emitting a ray directly back at the player for 1-2 seconds after firing.

Er, what? It shouldn't ever be able to damage the player at all, what the hell? I'll have to check that out.

I'm beginning to suspect this has to do with playing it with the Doom RLA Monster Pack. The rays emitted by the projectile seem to use the same instant death script as the Hellstorm Elemental's projectile, which basically telefrags the player or anyone else it hits. So there might be a mod conflict. What happened was that when I fired the Omega Cannon and it malfunctioned, I got the same visual effect and the same death message "player was telefragged" as when getting hit by the Hellstorm projectile.

[Fallingferret]

also i don't know if this has been brought up at any point(outside the thread), but BTSX E1 causes _Lith_PlayerUpdateCBIGUI to explode by picking anything up sometime after the 2 minute mark and checking the log. i can't really pin the time down, but it's run away in the middle every map without fail for me if i try to check the log, or mindlessly switch to that tab. jpcp, uacultra, and doom64 for doom2 have yet to explode on me.

That's strange, I've never had that issue, and I mainly test on BTSX. I'll see if I can reproduce it.

well i had it happen while playing through d62d2 on the 16th map. so i'm back early, i guess?

i'm running QZDoom-q2.1pre-885-g8d655613f-x64(25th's build) with the idgames release of btsx. i don't think it's a qzdoom issue, but i'm still waiting on the buildbot to post a gz build that handles acs_scriptcall or i'd check.

---

map01: open up cbi, navigate the log tab, close cbi, and check back on it periodically throughout the level collect all the things until you get to the nukage and then check the log https://www.twitch.tv/videos/232993781 recorded with wadsmoosh, but the same steps cause runaway with doom2 iwad.

it seems like it overflows if you leave it on that tab too long while picking things up?i had it fail to fail when i forgot to switch to the log at the start, andwhen skipping over the weapons.but that doesn't explain how i first ran into it,
since i never left the cbi on the log tab. runs away even if i don't leave the cbi on the log tab from the get go. it's a mystery

[Mr. Fancy Pants]

It looks like something ate the link for Shut Up and Lithium - any mirrors?

[will183]

Maybe limit the use of hitscanners as much as possible, its caused me to take unnecessary damage from chaingunners when i was overwhelmed with enemys in a longer range arena. if i could actually dodge chaingunner fire i would've been able to limit damage as much as possible

[Marrub]

As of writing, Lithium 1.5.3 will be the final 1.x release, and the current state of 1.6 is "playable in some versions of GZDoom, unplayable in others." There are lots of placeholders but you can still attempt to run the current git version. The reason for this is because I am moving the mod from ZDoom to Eternity Engine, the first release of which will be Lithium 2.0 (Nevermind) and will be rewritten from the ground up.

The mod is currently unplayable and unmaintainable because the engine is frequently making breaking changes (intentional or not) and trying to fix it is a hopeless cause, much like the engine it's running on, which is eating it alive. I don't like ZDoom and to be frank never have, and it's just been convenient until this point, where I have far too many personal afflictions with the developers and GZDoom as a whole. Not to mention issues with performance and actually being able to run the mod. I think EE is a superior engine in every way. This has been considered for a very long time (years,) before 1.0 was even released.

The goal is to rebuild and not to remake, and hopefully I'll be able to reimplement some of the stuff I removed from older versions due to engine limitations. The project will continue along what I have planned after that. It will have to be a source mod (hard mod) rather than a fully EDF mod (soft mod,) i.e. the user will have to run a custom executable, due to EE as of now not having sufficient modding capabilities. It will in the future be converted to a mod using AngelScript after Aeon is finished, but I don't know when that'll happen and Quasar is quite busy right now.

I'll start work on it when I have time to. Currently another project is taking priority as I want to get it in a playable state before I start working on Lithium again, which in and of itself could take months. Rewriting everything from basically the ground up will be rather arduous, and take even longer, but I am not afraid of taking the time to do so. It'll still be on this thread as this forum allows for mods on other engines as far as I know. I'd post it on Doomworld as well but I'm not familiar with the forum at all. If nothing else, I'll host it on my website.

[Cardboard Marty]

I'm excited to see what the eventual Eternity version will be like, and what kind of new challenges await! I feel like the move you're making is the best given the circumstances, hopefully your future endeavors with this project will be less stress-inducing!

[fakemai]

@Marrub
I sympathize given that your mod has never been stable for me. It doesn't take long for crashes on entering a level, and starts happening sporadically before that. That said, if EE is actually working on a scripting framework it may well be more valuable to wait for it, or even helping develop it instead of doing a modified source port that will eventually be thrown away. Forking is always messy.

[Marrub]

@Marrub
I sympathize given that your mod has never been stable for me. It doesn't take long for crashes on entering a level, and starts happening sporadically before that. That said, if EE is actually working on a scripting framework it may well be more valuable to wait for it, or even helping develop it instead of doing a modified source port that will eventually be thrown away. Forking is always messy.

I will help develop it when it comes to fruition, but as far as I know there is no code for Aeon in the repository yet. I did help a bit with the inventory/weapons features that were recently merged. The thing with AngelScript is that it's basically just C++, so porting code I've hard-modded will be far easier than for instance porting ZScript or DECORATE code to C++.

[AvzinElkein]

What is "EE"? I've never heard of it.