Guncaster Vindicated 3.4.6

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

Just tried this, and damn is this MOD hard... My only real gripe with this so far is I think the zombies need their damage toned down a bit, they tear me up more than the bigger enemies do, and there's so many of them.

Well, if that's what you were going for then I'd say they're not fragile enough xD For me they feel almost as durable as imps. I mean, when you're starting out you probably only have the Longhorn and the Strucker, and former humans can take a point-blank blast from the Strucker without dying, also they usually attack very fast after seeing you, so you always get some damage, unless you use the Longhorn, which is a precision weapon and I have to be really in the "zone" to get them without taking some damage. Everytime there's a former human around the corner it feels like a fast-draw duel xD and if I miss a single shot they attack so fast that I usually get some damage, and the damage from each former human keeps piling up, specially in higher difficulties. In the end it feels like I'm being encouraged to adopt cover tactics, which doesn't seem like what Guncaster is about. They even fire in bursts and take time to reload, which seems suited to that strategy.

The feeling I'm going for with the Cult Soldiers in my mod is quick alert and deadly enemies that are super vulnerable when targeted. Glass Cannons.
They are accurate and quick to react, but if a light breeze rolls by them they'll enter their pain state, and then they're stunlocked until they die.

I have made a gameplay video that showcases the experience I hope Guncaster Vindicated will bring you guys in The Ultimate DOOM!

I have included it here

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This is played on the maximum difficulty (Last of your kind) and is a No-Deaths run of Episodes 1 - 3. This is not the only way to play Guncaster Vindicated, this is just my particular style of play. Try rushing scourgebreath as your first spell, it is really strong... and I nerfed it for my playthrough and will be nerfing it for the next patch. (Nerfed version has an upfront cost of 30 mana, and then the usual 2 mana cost per looplet. Even after this nerf it's still helariously strong early on.)

This video will also show you guys some tricks you can utilize to help put those nasty little cultists in their place... under your boot! hah!

Just out of curiosity, did you do any balancing for Heretic?

I was giving it a try and even Undead Warriors are total bullet sponges requiring up to eight shotgun rounds to kill.

The shotgun (strucker) is currently balanced to be used as an automatic weapon. With the update to Guncaster 3.0 this will change, and strucker will do more damage shot per shot, and will likely have a rather expensive stratocaster for automatic fire.

In regards to heretic, the monsters are exactly the same as they are in Guncaster 2.8. The Player character and weapons are changed to their Guncaster Vindicated versions, many of which are less powerful than the Guncaster 2.8 versions. I intend to make changes to heretic, no further comment on that, I want it to be a surprise

[Valherran]

I was doing great today up until my saved game was screwed over. Somehow I got stuck on an ash pile and couldn't move after I had saved, so I went to use noclip to get out of it and that [censored word] sv_cheats lockout prevents me from using anything in the console.

[iVoid]

Just tried this, and damn is this MOD hard... My only real gripe with this so far is I think the zombies need their damage toned down a bit, they tear me up more than the bigger enemies do, and there's so many of them.

Well, if that's what you were going for then I'd say they're not fragile enough xD For me they feel almost as durable as imps. I mean, when you're starting out you probably only have the Longhorn and the Strucker, and former humans can take a point-blank blast from the Strucker without dying, also they usually attack very fast after seeing you, so you always get some damage, unless you use the Longhorn, which is a precision weapon and I have to be really in the "zone" to get them without taking some damage. Everytime there's a former human around the corner it feels like a fast-draw duel xD and if I miss a single shot they attack so fast that I usually get some damage, and the damage from each former human keeps piling up, specially in higher difficulties. In the end it feels like I'm being encouraged to adopt cover tactics, which doesn't seem like what Guncaster is about. They even fire in bursts and take time to reload, which seems suited to that strategy.

The feeling I'm going for with the Cult Soldiers in my mod is quick alert and deadly enemies that are super vulnerable when targeted. Glass Cannons.
They are accurate and quick to react, but if a light breeze rolls by them they'll enter their pain state, and then they're stunlocked until they die.

I have made a gameplay video that showcases the experience I hope Guncaster Vindicated will bring you guys in The Ultimate DOOM!

I have included it here

---

This is played on the maximum difficulty (Last of your kind) and is a No-Deaths run of Episodes 1 - 3. This is not the only way to play Guncaster Vindicated, this is just my particular style of play. Try rushing scourgebreath as your first spell, it is really strong... and I nerfed it for my playthrough and will be nerfing it for the next patch. (Nerfed version has an upfront cost of 30 mana, and then the usual 2 mana cost per looplet. Even after this nerf it's still helariously strong early on.)

This video will also show you guys some tricks you can utilize to help put those nasty little cultists in their place... under your boot! hah!

The shotgun (strucker) is currently balanced to be used as an automatic weapon. With the update to Guncaster 3.0 this will change, and strucker will do more damage shot per shot, and will likely have a rather expensive stratocaster for automatic fire.

Alright! So the Strucker is balanced for the alternate fire mode, now I understand the mod a bit better. I'm not having as much trouble now, now it's just hard, not impossible xD I'm having fun! The Strucker's automatic fire consumed so much ammo that I reasoned that it would never be sustainable for extensive use and I should save it for really hard enemies, but it turns out the ammo drops are balanced around it. It is a bit misleading though... Not very obvious for new players. Also there's little reason to use the Strucker's normal fire mode.

Anyway, I'll be waiting for the next version =)

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

Alright! So the Strucker is balanced for the alternate fire mode, now I understand the mod a bit better. I'm not having as much trouble now, now it's just hard, not impossible xD I'm having fun! The Strucker's automatic fire consumed so much ammo that I reasoned that it would never be sustainable for extensive use and I should save it for really hard enemies, but it turns out the ammo drops are balanced around it. It is a bit misleading though... Not very obvious for new players. Also there's little reason to use the Strucker's normal fire mode.

Anyway, I'll be waiting for the next version =)

Yes, sorry for the confusion, this is still in beta and this mod needs all the testing it can get for the base stuff. In the 3.0 updated version Strucker will be rebalanced around standard fire, it will likely have flat damage as it does now, just more of it. I am not a fan of RNG damage coming from the player.

I was doing great today up until my saved game was screwed over. Somehow I got stuck on an ash pile and couldn't move after I had saved, so I went to use noclip to get out of it and that [censored word] sv_cheats lockout prevents me from using anything in the console.

sv_cheats are disabled in the same way they are disabled for Project Brutality. You can force them to be enabled BEFORE you start a new game if you like.

The noclip cheat should NEVER be necessary under any circumstances to complete any (normal) game. My mod is no exception. The issue you are encountering is a bug I failed to fix, for that I apologize. The bug in question is where monsters that have been killed by fire / lightning / blue lightning sometimes still block your path. If you ever encounter another enemy killed by any of these methods that still blocks you, please report it as a bug and give VERY SPECIFIC details on how/where this happened.

You can update to the latest version of Guncaster Vindicated by clicking the main download link now (provided below for convenience). In the up to date version this bug should no longer exist.

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Download Guncaster Vindicated

Thanks again to all you folks for helping test this mod! I'm sure together we can make it something great!

Cheers,
-Dino

[Baronos]

I like the premise of this mod.
I think you should rebalance some if the enemies,when you shoot them with the gun they tend to bounce around.
Speaking of the health,you should decrease the Cyberdemon and Spidermastermind,they have too much health.
You should add an enemy tier option similiar to Project Brutality,like low tier and high tier.

keep up the good work.

[Someone64]

Bug report: The Cauterizer's projectiles sometimes leaves a permanent sound effect stuck where the projectile disappears.

Also, I feel the Longhorn's fanning mode is way too accurate and that there's not much reason NOT to use it aside from extremely long distances (and even then I'm not sure how inaccurate it is at those distances. Might still be worth it.)

[MaxRideWizardLord]

Sovereign Demolition Cannon with different typed of magic attacks? I'm now confused, did you take guncaster or brutal guncaster as a base of your mod?

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

I like the premise of this mod.
I think you should rebalance some if the enemies,when you shoot them with the gun they tend to bounce around.
Speaking of the health,you should decrease the Cyberdemon and Spidermastermind,they have too much health.
You should add an enemy tier option similiar to Project Brutality,like low tier and high tier.

keep up the good work.

I'll work on the bouncing problem. It's kind-of a thing that happens in Guncaster 2.8 and I'll have to do testing to fix it.

On Cyberdemon and SpiderMastermind, try killing them with the matriarch, it will be very effective. They are immune to area damage so Sovereign, dynamite and Dreadful are bad options. I will be adding a special damage type for Ironblast to make it more effective against them.
The new weapon to be added in Guncaster 3.0 (Augur) will also be very effective against these guys.

If you are talking about the end bosses from The Ultimate Doom episodes 2 and 3, yes I will be reducing their health.

As for enemy monster switches, I will be adding a switch to play against Vanilla monsters. Low tier and high tier monster switches will be added MUCH later if at all, my monster spawner is much simpler than Project Brutality's and relies on very minimal ACS scripting. Playing against all low tier monsters breaks balance as you gain more and more Power Stimulants and the Power Suit you will just destroy everything without trying; Playing against all high tier monsters is a recipe for frustration. If you'd like to see how it feels, just play The Ultimate Doom and start on episode 4 (Thy Flesh Consumed) [Spoiler alert... it sucks].

Bug report: The Cauterizer's projectiles sometimes leaves a permanent sound effect stuck where the projectile disappears.

Also, I feel the Longhorn's fanning mode is way too accurate and that there's not much reason NOT to use it aside from extremely long distances (and even then I'm not sure how inaccurate it is at those distances. Might still be worth it.)

The Cauterizer projectile bug may actually be coming from the fried monsters, I'm not entirely sure yet. Either way, I'd rather just wait until next monday and let the cauterizer die peacefully (it's getting removed in guncaster 3.0). Sorry for the inconvenience

As for the longhorn, I've added a weapons guide to the OP. Check it out for when and why the fanning or standard fire of Longhorn is good for certain situations. (fanning mode does 20 damage with 5 independent A_FireBullets all at the same time at the same point, and standard fire does 30 damage with 5 independent A_FireBullets all at the same time at the same point.)

Sovereign Demolition Cannon with different typed of magic attacks? I'm now confused, did you take guncaster or brutal guncaster as a base of your mod?

On an academic level, I started my modifications using Project 555 Guncaster. It was in such an, ahem, unpolished (many things were outright broken, like strat fire strucker with gunzerk when you run out of ammo [it crashes the game]) state that it motivated me to completely re-do the whole Guncaster thing. It honestly made me just feel sad every time I saw "Have fun picking up things with undefined strings" in the console and saw shotgun shells and radiation suits with the wrong sprites, and broken effects that gave you non-functional powerups (none of these problems are present in Guncaster 2.8, but I can't have fun for very long with a mod where I can kill everything without trying, even if it's beautiful).

Side Note: I still respect LoisMustDie555 for at least trying and getting a decent bit right, something is almost always better than nothing.

The mod as it stands today is a frankenstein's monster of Guncaster 2.8, Project555 Guncaster, ProjectMSX and Project Brutality, with some sprinklings of zEpisodic and Hideous Destructor. Everything I use has been heavily re-engineered to behave exactly as I want it to.

I play my own mod all the time, and I can't stand glitches and bugs, so I've tried to ensure that I eliminate everything I can find that doens't work correctly. If you are used to playing Project 555 Guncaster (or brutal guncaster), give this mod a chance, I've worked very hard to try to design something that is well made (it even has the correct shotgun shells and radiation suits!!!), fun to play and most importantly, re-play (maybe even on a higher difficulty this time).

The next iteration of this mod will be completely re-built around Guncaster 3.0 (and I'm dreading the switch to zScript like you wouldn't believe...)

Sorry for the long story... but thanks for hearing me out!


Update on what I'm currently working on for those who are curious
On a side note, I've been working on player sprites that behave similarly to the player sprites in Project Brutality, with movement while shooting and crouchsprites rather than the stock sprites that freeze the player character in a fixed pose while shooting. Yes I know it's probably a waste of my time but I'm one of those silly nuts that actually plays multiplayer, and these things bother me.
I'm also working on updating my scripts for Extermination Day. I'm not sure when the official release is going to come out, but I'd like to have this ready in advance, it will also let me test the current beta version.

I really appreciate the feedback and bug reports you guys are posting, they help a lot.

Also thanks a bunch for the shout out Valherran! You're the man!

Cheers,
-Dino

[Valherran]

I finished this on the Brutal Doom map set, and now it's time for feedback!

As mentioned earlier, the difficulty of this is MOD is real. But as I progressed and picked up some know-how on how the enemies and items work etc, I discovered that it isn't overly hard, but rather the start of the game is incredibly imbalanced. The game got so much easier the moment I picked up that Exo-Suit because that natural self-healing and I think damage reduction helped greatly surviving the hordes of enemies that would normally slaughter me If I attempted to fight them Doomguy style. Which is kind of sad in a sense, a big bad-ass dragon standing 8-12 feet tall has to hide around corners like a little bitch to survive or else he gets wrecked... Anyways...

One major problem with the start of the game is that you are way too ill-equipped to handle the punishment the enemies put out. I had to save-cheese often for certain areas of the game til I got the Exo-Suit. By default you have it set to start with only 400 gold and low mana recovery. That is crap. The only thing you can buy in the beginning is 2 sticks of dynamite (which sucks ass, but I'll get to that later...) Sure I can set this default higher myself, but the default is crap. I recommend setting this to 2500 gold so people have options for when they start the game based on the map set they use.

The low mana recovery rate should be illegal . More than half the spells are so weak because of how high you jacked up the enemy HP values. 1 spell drains your entire mana bar at the start of the game, and it will take you about 5 min to get it back without pickups. Again, I could set that higher, but by default that's also crap. The spells will need to re-evaluated, because right now they are nearly useless. What I can do with a spell I can do with a gun 10x better, and that's a problem. If by default they will have a high mana cost, they need to worth casting, otherwise tone down the cost.The self damage you take from your own weapons also seems to be a little ridiculous. Ever accidentally shoot a Lost Soul point blank with a cryo grenade? Tell me how that works out for you. Before getting the Exo-Suit, I had to be extremely weary of not hitting myself with my own explosives because of how stupid the self damage was compared to most other MODs or games. Please look into that and tone it the hell down for the greater good.

Next up, the dynamite. God these things are terrible. They bounce WAAAY too damn much, and again the size of the projectile is huge so its more harder to throw these things around corners or down holes than it should be. Trying to throw these into an upper level? Forget it, they will find a way to bounce 1 mile down the road. And sometimes when I try to throw these in tight spaces, it will blow up in my face instantly. They also seem pretty weak even after the upgrade, it can't even kill a Hell Knight point blank. A damage buff would make these a lot better after you fix them.

Some bugs I came across:

1. Performing a kick or quick combo when climbing a ledge will result in your movement being permanently non-responsive.

2. Hitting various enemies with the slot 6 weapon can cause their sprites to disappear and reappear. One in particular is the Annihilator, his sprites go missing when you hit em with that.

3. The slot 6 weapon has really wacky damage. Sometimes it will only take 2 hits to kill something, other times it will take 5-6 against the same type of target.

4. There appears to be upgrades missing from the game (or possibly un-added) One of which is the slot 7 weapon fire mode that obliterates the entire map. I have never found it in-game legitimately, only saw it while testing the spells after using "give all" in the console.

5. Some enemy sprites also go missing when they burn to death.

6. The mana regeneration option in the menu is broken. You can't set it to any other value than low.

That's all for now. When you get around to making another patch, can you please put the AK-47 in the secondary slot 4 instead of the primary? "That would be great. Thanks."

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

Hey hey Guncaster Vindicated is back with a vengeance! Go get it you sack of trolls!

[Rowsol]

Okay, I just put 24 minutes into this (wow, I know) and here's my take away.

Not a fan of the slower run speed and lower jumping.
The soldiers death sounds are irritating.
I wish the barrel would release faster, seems a bit slow on the draw.
However, the casting is faster and feels better as a result. I don't mind the slower regen, it make the mana pots more useful.
I noticed the flame breath caused the enemy to bleed. Seems odd.
There's quite a few things missing from the shop.

Seeing as how 3.1 of GC just came out I expect you'll import those changes in time. Kind of unfortunate timing there.

This seems like project brutality and guncaster had a baby. I did notice there aren't any hitboxes spawning for headshots so thank fuck for that. It seems that the new enemies are really the selling point and on that front is succeeds, if you can handle the "kill him!" and "arghblarg" death sounds of the humans.

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

The soldiers death sounds are irritating.

SNDINFO.txt
Line 1667 is where the sound definitions that control the Human enemies start, there are only voices for basic and heavy grunts, Heavy grunts are the special forces and cult officers, basic grunts are the guys without helmets. You can just disable them there if they annoy you.

Not a fan of the slower run speed and lower jumping.

Your movement and jumping power improves dramatically with powersuit

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or when you have powered up the Draughsuit.

This mod is about progression, not outright being overpowered from the start.

I wish the barrel would release faster, seems a bit slow on the draw.

Thrown barrels do 4x the damage they do in guncaster3.0

There's quite a few things missing from the shop.

That's intentional, they're removed for balance reasons.

Seeing as how 3.1 of GC just came out I expect you'll import those changes in time. Kind of unfortunate timing there.

Working on it as we speak, yes timing was unlucky for me.

I'm glad you enjoy it otherwise! Hope to hear more from your experiences.

[Rheap]

For curiosity

What it's the music title of the main menu music? Or is just a custom one for this wad?

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

Just updated this mod to patch in the fixes for Guncaster 3.1
I've also updated a few other things to ensure they work properly, my apologizes if this screws up any save files you might have currently running with the Vindicated Campaign.

Bug Fixes are in the following spoiler

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Fixed a strucker graphical glitch when swapping on or off the envirosuit
Fixed an issue where Ironblast was doing extremely low damage to some enemies, it will properly make mince meat out of your foes once again.
Fixed the shaking issue with Augur strat mode while using berserk or having sufficiently powerful Draughsuit.
Fixed instructions for Voidwalkers Touch will now properly display when collecting it from the weapon chest.
Fixed level 10 in the Vindicated Campaign with bosses health bars not properly showing.
Fixed level transition to secret levels in Vindicated Campaign.
Fixed Mana regen switch to actually do what it says (my idea of extreme mana regen may not be the same as yours though)
All other patch fixes for Guncaster 3.1 applied. (please see official guncaster thread for details regarding patch 3.1)

For curiosity

What it's the music title of the main menu music? Or is just a custom one for this wad?

The menu title music is a cover of Armata Strigoi -Powerwolf, done by SirFrost666

You can find all other credits to music authors in the Credits.txt file located in the Guncaster_Vindicated.pk3

[AvzinElkein]

Do I need the original Guncaster to play this?