High Noon Drifter v1.2 - Between God, the Devil, and a .500

[erni945]

Attaching mana doesn't make sense in any context. No starting weapons in Hexen use mana.

Why not?, Then the realism and overall playability of the game would increase

[Cryomundus]

Well, by far the biggest problem is Hexen's EXTREMELY tiny ammo pool. You really don't get much to work with, really. That said, this isn't exactly a "normal" Hexen weaponset sooo I'd say it should get added as an option, if for no other reason than to mirror Doom's option, and the fact that the more choices, the better.

[Valherran]

Well, by far the biggest problem is Hexen's EXTREMELY tiny ammo pool. You really don't get much to work with, really. That said, this isn't exactly a "normal" Hexen weaponset sooo I'd say it should get added as an option, if for no other reason than to mirror Doom's option, and the fact that the more choices, the better.

Just do what MSX does, drop clusters of ammo in place of the mana pickups.
Weapons 1-4 would spawn ammo at blue mana spots, and weapons 6-8 would spawn at green mana.
Grenades would spawn in place of flechettes (or with Flechettes if Term has plans for those.)

[Gollgagh]

I was really hoping not to have to do it for the patch, but more from a pragmatic programming perspective than from a design perspective.

1. First off, the new mana-based revolver would have to be given a new identifier, maybe ManaRevolver, as you can't overload ZScript class identifiers.
2. Since the ManaRevolver would be a new class, the only way I know how to change the player's starting item is to make a new player class; again with a new class name, maybe HexenWesternPlayer.
3. There are several classes that CheckProximity specifically for a WesternPlayer (notably CorzoHat, which can spawned by every single weapon); these would all again have to edited to check for HexenWesternPlayer instead and given new identifiers.

There are probably a few trickle-down classes that interact with those last classes, but you get the idea. The reason the other weapons work is because they're not part of the starting inventory.

I can do it, but as far as I know it's not a trivial change.

Alternatively, I could (probably?) use ACS to TakeInventory and give the new revolver, but that is currently beyond my expertise.

Well, by far the biggest problem is Hexen's EXTREMELY tiny ammo pool. You really don't get much to work with, really.

In the patch, I actually scaled ammo usage to offset this. Shells are 2 blue mana each, Arrows are 5 blue (this probably needs balancing but no-one has complained about it yet), 3 Bullets per 1 green mana, DarkStaff uses both mana but gets slightly more runtime than Doom with no backpack, and the Artifact usage is similarly reduced.

[Zhs2]

You actually don't need to do any of these things to the revolver to help it respect Hexen mana. All you need to do is have the appropriate "el_revolverammo" check section in Realload (heh) also check if(gameinfo.gametype == GAME_Hexen) and account for mana instead of El_Bullets, accordingly. Of course, since it's more balanced in this regard to have the revolver feed on blue mana, you could also have a counter that increments and uses up 1 blue mana for some odd amount of bullets loaded into the revolver. (2? 3?)

EDIT: And for 'no revolver reloads' probably want to throw the same functionality into firing too.

[Gollgagh]

...it somehow did not occur to me to overwrite existing files (even though I did it with the ACS files >__>).

Let's try this again: HNDv1.1b Hexen Patch v1.1 (Dropbox)

It uses green mana because I am a contrarian; 2 bullets per mana though.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I just encountered an issue: if I set the mod options to 'Gun Reloading' to [EDIT: 'Off'], 'Revolver Uses Ammo' to 'On' and 'Revolver Starts Full' to 'On', then the Revolver starts empty!

Also, have you considered making it so we can slide leftward, rightward and backwards?

A couple more things:

- The more I look at the Supershotgun sprite, the more it does not look right to me. Like, there is something wrong with the perspective and as such the weapon looks shorter than it should be.

- Blood splatters do not match the enemy's blood colour.

[TerminusEst13]

I just tried that and wasn't able to replicate it, sorry. Are you loading something else alongside?

Have I considered? Yes, and another friend asked me that recently. Dunno if I'll actually go through with it yet, but it's on my mind!

Enemies are unmodified, and I'd rather not include enemy modifications just for the sake of changing blood color.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I tried with two different installs and the Revolver starts empty if I have 'Revolver Uses Ammo' on and 'Gun Reloading' off. Turning 'Gun Reloading' on does give me 8 bullets, but that is it.

Looking at the player.zsc file in SLADE, though, I think I see the problem:

Player.StartItem "Revolver";
Player.StartItem "ShotgunRound", 10;
Player.StartItem "CoachgunRound", 2;
Player.StartItem "SMGAmmo1", 60;
Player.StartItem "ElArrows", 25;

It seems the player does not start with bullets.

Another issue I just noticed: if I acquire SMGs normally, I cannot toggle between single weapon and dual wield. However, if I type in 'give weapons' in the console, then I can. How come?

[TerminusEst13]

I thought you said the issue was with when "Revolver Starts Full" is On and the revolver still starts empty. If you had that setting off, then the revolver not starting with ammo is intentional.

And because they're two separate weapons, you're supposed to have one at a time. Cheating gives you both. Simple as that.

[DoomRater]

Something I should take a look at sometime is if there's a way to overwrite the ammo capacity for a weapon based on whether the player is supposed to be holding one or two. I was about to say I solved that problem but then realized why it wouldn't work in this case- my weapons didn't reload so they didn't need to worry about a magazine size. That would allow both weapons to be one single weapon, instead of "cheating gives you three songs".

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I thought you said the issue was with when "Revolver Starts Full" is On and the revolver still starts empty.

That is exactly what I said. More specifically, the Revolver starts empty when I have the option 'Revolver Uses Ammo' turned on and the option 'Gun Reloading' turned off.

Basically, I want the Revolver to work like the vanilla Doom Pistol.

I am already not even sure why you would give the player the option to start with an empty revolver, since this is the starting weapon.

EDIT: Okay, I have added the line 'Player.StartItem "ElBullets", 40;' to player.zsc. Not sure if it is the best solution, but at least, I do not start with an empty Revolver.

And because they're two separate weapons, you're supposed to have one at a time. Cheating gives you both. Simple as that.

That does not make any sense. You acquire one SMG at a time, so once you acquire a second SMG, you should be able to switch between holding a single SMG and dual-wielding SMGs.

Frankly, I find this design decision counterintuitive. I mean, there are already plenty of Doom mods that gives the player the option, e.g. Brutal Doom, Shadow Warrior TC, Samsara...

[DoomRater]

Read my post, there's a reason it wasn't done- no one has solved how to handle that situation without giving someone three weapons

[Zhs2]

Something I should take a look at sometime is if there's a way to overwrite the ammo capacity for a weapon based on whether the player is supposed to be holding one or two. I was about to say I solved that problem but then realized why it wouldn't work in this case- my weapons didn't reload so they didn't need to worry about a magazine size. That would allow both weapons to be one single weapon, instead of "cheating gives you three songs".

My solution was simple, and I used Terminus' already existing SMGAmmo1 and 2 to do it. 1 has a limit of 60, 2 has a limit of 120. SMGAmmo2 represents the real ammo count. Every time the weapon is fired while both SMGs are active, one SMGAmmo1 is taken in addition to two SMGAmmo2. Therefore, the rest of the code...

Code: Select all

// Reloading code.

if(CountInv("ActiveDoubleSMGs"))
{
    until(!CountInv("ElBullets") || (CountInv("SMGAmmo2") == 120))
    {
        A_GiveInventory("SMGAmmo2", 1);
        A_TakeInventory("ElBullets", 1);
        if(CountInv("SMGAmmo2") > 60)
        { // Of course you want to load one SMG before the other :P
            A_GiveInventory("SMGAmmo1");
        }
    }
}
else
{
    until(!CountInv("ElBullets") || (CountInv("SMGAmmo2") >= 60))
    { // Load just one SMG's worth of capacity.
        A_GiveInventory("SMGAmmo2", 1);
        A_TakeInventory("ElBullets", 1);
    }
}

// Switching to double.
SwitchToDouble:
TNT1 A 0
{
    invoker.SetTag("$WN_SMG2");
    A_GiveInventory("ActiveDoubleSMGs");
    A_SetInventory("SMGAmmo2", CountInv("SMGAmmo2") + CountInv("SMGAmmo1"));
    A_PlaySound("up/smg",CHAN_BODY);
}

// Switching to single.
TNT1 A 0
{
    invoker.SetTag("$WN_SMG1");
    A_TakeInventory("ActiveDoubleSMGs");
    A_SetInventory("SMGAmmo2", CountInv("SMGAmmo2") - CountInv("SMGAmmo1"));
    A_PlaySound("up/smg",CHAN_BODY);
} 

I suppose by virtue of this post I can say that, yes, I merged up the Grasa weapon code for Terminus to consider adding to the next build so that the pushy "WTF WHY CAN'T I SWITCH BETWEEN ONE SMG AND TWO" people can have their cake and eat it too. Calm down, JohnnyTheWolf.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

There was absolutely nothing rude about my post. Please, do not misrepresent me.

Anyway, if I want to do the change myself, all I have to do is to add the lines above to the end of the wep5-smgs.zsc file? Or is it more complicated than that?