Okay, so I had a quick go before bed last night and I'm impressed with some of the tweaks so far. One thing I probably won't be incorporating is the rather mental level of powerup spam (I literally found TWO terrorspheres in E1M2 ), but those bugfixes are all definitely being brought into the mix. Granted, some of the ultra-rare items in the base mod are probably a bit too]/i[ ultra, but I think I can find a nice middle ground.Spaceman333 wrote:Thats hilarious, I had thought you knew all this time but just were too busy in real life to respond to it.
I didn't think a PM was needed since I posted it on your thread and you had been active some time before it.
But yeah, the main features of this unofficial update are:Aside from the otherwise unused experimental homing rocket launcher from /vr/, which can be added into the mix as an optional addon, there is no new content nor changes in visuals/graphics. Its just polish, fixes, tweaks and adjustments of existing content across the board.
- All map 100% Monster Kill issues have been resolved.
- The replicating lost-soul Shade had its cloning ability nerfed to prevent it from multiplying by the hundreds in difficulties with Fast mode on.
- All weapons tweaked/balanced/buffed/adjusted so that they're all useful and more distinct with their variants.
- Cleaned up a lot of rogue actors used in weapon effects that failed to delete themselves, causing them to stay around permanently (example in the current official version of the mod: Fire the Soul Render cannon at full power, then switch to automap view, hit IDDT IDDT and you'll see a dense trail of invisible objects that were left there permanently to stick around)
- The randomization file has been changed drastically to loot drop everything the mod has to offer, making spheres, usable items and more obscure or unused weapons and items available and more common.
- Overall the gameplay has been made slightly more buffed for the player's benefit with increased weapon damage.
And YES, please do incorporate anything and everything you like from the update. I made the unofficial update to fix all the bugs that were harming gameplay (100% kills on a map not being possible) and tweak some things to make unavailable content appear in the game (certain fully functioning items not spawning ever or *extremely* rarely) and make certain weapons not become useless in my arsenal the moment I pick up something else.
I must point out that there is an element of personal preference in the unofficial patch for more overpowered, chaotic experience with the abundance of loot drops for things that provide significant boosts and increased weapon damage. I must also disclose that I play the mod with an addon called Omni Shields that I made, which allows me to get temporary god mode and use weapons like rocketlaunchers up close and survive ambushes and map encounters that otherwise would be impossible to handle with the monsters of this mod, so the experience I play is closer to Russian Overkill lite than vanilla Doom 2.
This is just how I prefer and enjoy this mod the most.
If you're cool with that, you can simply take the unofficial update and use it as the main base for the mod for future development to add new content. If not, then you can copy all the monsters, the randomizer loot file and the soul render cannon from this unofficial update into your dev branch.
Since its been many months since I worked on the update and many more months since I released it, I don't even remember all the fixes I did. The monsters and soul render are the only I vividly still remember. It may be safest to just use the unofficial version as a base and work from there I think.
EDIT:
I also remember there were a few things I was not able to fix in the unofficial update:
- The ally demon summoning sphere item, the one that can spawn a friendly pinky, baron or archvile, is also supposed to spawn a "Scalliano" character too, but I think its not working since either I've never been lucky enough to get them or whenever I did, the item seemingly summoned no ally character at all.
- The Soul Render can occasionally harm the player when firing its projectile. I think the projectile actor accidently shoots the player with a lightning blast when the soul render shot is very close to the player.
- The Devastator BFG damages the player, even thought I've tried to make the explosions not harm the player and made the projectiles friendly. Not sure how to fix it or if its working as intended.
The Devastator is, unfortunately, working as intended. Same goes for the Pyro Cannon. Both of those weapons operate exactly as they do in Stronghold and Demon Eclipse and as such they are VERY DANGEROUS! Just watch the zombies wielding them immediately immolate themselves upon seeing you.
The "scalliano" actor has been dummied out since Cameron is now a playable character, but the code should have already been amended to reflect this. I was actually toying around with the idea of a second summon powerup which calls in one of the other player characters, but it's a bit impractical the way the mod is currently set up and will need a bit of rejigging to achieve.
Just out of interest, did you make any changes to the character loadouts? The reason I ask is because I have been beavering away in private, despite not posting any updates and it would save me a bit of work if I can just use the most up-to-date versions I have with your base for further testing.
Nice to see things being kept alive in my absence all the same. As I said, I do want to get at least one more character released (possibly two, although one will require a player sprite set) as well as some new baddies. The final couple of ToPII maps are my priority at the moment, but I might be able to get an interim release out the door with the bugfixes included at least sometime in the next couple of weeks.