Hell Caliber [HC2 Status Update]
Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2018 12:04 am
by Samarai1000
The hell is this?
Spoiler:Recommended Mods:
This is a gameplay mod I've been working on off/on for a while now (in terms of time its existed, actual time put into development probably isn't that substantial) featuring monster and weapon replacements. The weapons feature what you'd expect, with some work put into making them 'feel' good to use and fire. Some are based on their vanilla counterparts or weapons that could be compared to their vanilla counterparts, others are a bit more imaginative/stupid. Most require reloading while others have weirder gimmicks, like overheating or a charge-up system.
Monsters are a bit more weird, gun-using enemies abide by the same 'rules' you do; they need to reload after firing a certain number of shots and their accuracy is similar to yours. Most of the more demonic enemies have other weird quirks or changes explained in detail in the other spoilers. There's also some blood and gibbing effects that are probably horrendously optimized.
Spoiler:What's not done?
High resolution Doom sound effects by Perkristian
A mostly comprehensive replacement of Doom 1/2's sound effects utilizing high-quality versions of the same stock sounds used in original Doom. I highly recommend you stick this in your autoload, it's great with anything, and it'll remove the odd dissonance of modern high-quality sound effects with those you hear in an old DOS game.
Immerse by JRHard771
Do you like viewbobbing? Do you like footsteps? Do you like configuration? This is for you. Immerse is a combination of a few mods listed on the github page, all made to play nice with one-another. Configure it to your heart's content. Personally, with HC, I have movement tilting and 'realaim' enabled, with the aim sway rate set to 1.0 and the multiplier set to 0.5, with standard doom viewbob set to 0.05, but try whatever works for you. Also good autoload material!
Nashgore by Nash (Whoa!)
Heavily optimized, delightfully over-the-top and vaguely cartoony, Nashgore: Vengeance is a great heavily-customizable blood/gore mod that is truly universally compatible. (Unlike another certain sauce-named gore mod that touts itself as such...)
Droplets by JRHard771
A much more subtle, but very beautiful blood/gibbing mod focusing on more realistic blood splatters created by spawning many small 'droplets'. This means no two blood-splatters look the same, and like Nashgore it fully supports custom blood colors. Beware that, due to the amount of actors and models, this mod can be much more intensive then Nashgore (or other gore mods of the same nature) despite covering a smaller area. Turn the blood limit down and you should be fine.
Spoiler:Weapons:
Currently, all weapons are and monsters are complete. Balance is also a bit of an issue right now, and I'm considering adding alternative attacks to some weapons later, but I can't confirm that.
Spoiler:Click here to download the mod from Dropbox!
Slot 1: Kick, punch, it's all in the mind!
Punching! You can do left jabs and right jabs with the left and right mouse buttons. Either jab works the same and does the same, boring, vanilla damage with vanilla calculation. However, if you alternate between left and right jabs you can punch much faster than normal. Berserk-affected punches don't have this luxury, though.
With your fists, and all other weapons, you can kick by pressing your Zoom key. Kicking can only be performed when you're not in the middle of reloading, switching weapons, etc, but can be handy for when you run out of ammo with an enemy stuck in front of you. Kicks deal mediocre, non-randomized damage, but can become powerful if you hit an enemy with one while moving at a high velocity. The higher your speed, the more damage your kick deals. Berserk increases the base damage of your kick by a little, but the velocity-based damage is left unchanged. You also can't kick when looking above a certain point, you don't want to pull a muscle.
Slot 2: Beretta M9; Takes 9MM Bullets
Whoa, slam the brakes on this roller-coaster of an arsenal! A Beretta? It fires about as fast as you can click, but gradually grows more inaccurate with quick sustained fire. Keep an eye on how much your view jitters with recoil in case you're trying to fire at far-away targets. It holds a maximum of 15 rounds, plus 1 in the chamber. It's not amazing, but it's relatively quick to pull out and it's always with you.
Slot 3: UASG-12: Takes Buckshot
Finally, something worth using. The UASG-12 is... a shotgun. The functionality seems oddly familiar, but the UAC insists it's a unique, in-house design. It holds 7+1 shells of 12 Gauge Buckshot, firing a relatively tight spread of 8 projectiles all dealing respectable damage each. Good at hitting things within range of most areas you'll run through. Reloading while standing in front of anything angry might be a bad idea.
Slot 3: "Super Shotgun": Takes Buckshot
Two barrels of the same buckshot you load into the UASG. Same amount of projectiles, same amount of damage per-pellet. Lower accuracy and double the kick.
You also must manually load it between shots, limiting it's effectiveness outside of short bursts of high damage. unless you enable the auto-reload cvar
Inexplicably, it can't fire a single shell at a time, nor be loaded with one shell instead of two. Truly, the Juicero of firearms. I'll leave you to guess how many shells it's loaded with.
Slot 4: FFS-9x19: Takes 9MM Bullets
An oddly designed UAC machine-pistol firing at a whopping 1000 RPM (16 rounds a second) from a 50 round drum magazine. Ammo may seem plentiful, but this beast will quickly chew through your reserves if you can't show restraint. Short, controlled bursts.
Помогите, они берут кредит на ПП-91 Кедр!
Slot 5: "Bumper" 40MM Grenade Launcher
A somewhat compact experimental grenade launcher. It fires from an automatically-rotating cylinder, loading a new grenade each time the last is fired. It fires 6 grenades before requiring a reload, and is loaded one-shell at a time from a port at the bottom-back of the cylinder holder. Reloads can be cancelled in the same way you cancel reloading the UASG-12. Each grenade packs a hefty punch, but the UAC can't leave a weapon completely normal and practical. Each grenade is able to bounce once before exploding. Grenades that impact with soft targets will explode instantly.
Following some in-field testing that resulted in the unfortunate maiming of the weapon's user, RnD implemented a safety-range on the launcher that is far more advanced than most. Grenades will not explode if they impact near you, but will instead become irretrievable duds that are harmless until 'disturbed'. The range is also very strict and precise, and you can still catch yourself in the blast radius.
Slot 6: Plasma Rifle: Takes cell charge, able to overheat
A pew-pew Plasma Gun that loudly beeps at you 90% of the time whilst you're using it. What more could you ask for?
Firing the rifle causes it to quickly build up excess heat, eventually causing the weapon to forcefully vent out the heat and rendering it inoperable for a few seconds.
The red border around the weapon's icon represents heat. Be warned that when the gun stops beeping at you while overheating, it isn't fully cooled off. Firing right after will cause it to repeat the cooldown process. The Plasma Rifle also scales back its fire-rate when overheating.
Despite the potential to overheat, the lack of the need to reload makes the Plasma Rifle amazing in situations where you absolutely cannot afford to reload one of your weapons and need more consistent sustained fire. It stays almost entirely accurate under sustained fire, as well.
Slot 7: BFGSG: Takes cells, charge up for maximum damage
Potential Epilepsy warning! This gun is the flashiest and even renders things grayscale/inverted for a moment after firing at high charges, this will hopefully be made into a Cvar later!
The penultimate example of me not knowing how the hell to balance things. The BFGSG fires a spread of plasma projectiles, each projectile doing the same damage as a singular BFG "tracer" in vanilla. Holding down the fire button causes the weapon to charge, converting cells to BFG charge at a 1:1 ratio. Each unit of charge will cause another plasma ball to be fired upon releasing your fire button. Charge maxes out at 40. The more charge the weapon has, the more the plasma balls spread out from one-another. This means that using less cells can create more accurate shots that are much more efficient against weaker enemies. Make sure that you actually see the green spikes forming from the gun when you release your fire button, otherwise nothing will happen.
Last updated: March 2nd, 2019
Minor update informaton:
Spoiler:
November 13th, 2018November 14th, 2018
- -Made the pistol and machine-pistol suck less by actually giving them proper vanilla damage instead of whatever I was trying before.
-Made fists slightly less mediocre by, again, giving them vanilla damage. I really don't know what I was thinking before. Berserk is actually effective now, too.
-Experimenting with improving the knife. It now deals damage similar to berserk punches, but with slightly different calculation. It deals 20 damage multiplied by a number between 1 and 5. It is intentionally not affected by berserk.
-Fixed a typo causing the SSG to take loaded shells from the normal shotgun.November 18th, 2018 (sorry for the pause between updates, and that there isn't much here)
- -Second pass at Plasma Rifle balance. TL:DR reduced damage, increased fire-rate that lowers when close to overheating
-Second pass at BFG balance. It charges twice as fast and is twice as accurate. Probably won't change much.
-Separated performance-based Cvars under their own submenu in the MOD OPTIONS menu. Expect more submenus soon.
-Added Cvar to make guns auto-reload when dryfiring.
-Removed changes to player speed.
-Removed dynamic lights from bullet projectiles.November 20th, 2018
- -Added 'tips' that pop up when you enter a level. There's only a few right now, and they're intentionally a bit cryptic or outright unhelpful. Feel free to suggest more. (as long as you also actually provide feedback on something.
)
-The speed increase pinky demons get from being hurt is now clamped to only going up to twice their normal speed. Light-speed pinkies were funny, but not all that -great for gameplay.November 21th, 2018
- -Added a few performance-based Cvars for handling limiting of bullet casings, magazines, and barrel parts without disabling them entirely. I worry that the casings CHECKING for these Cvars may cause problems of their own, but maybe it's fine.
-Tried a new reload animation for the Super Shotgun. I'd say it looks better, but still not great.
-Nerfed the damage and tracking ability of Revenant rockets.
-Halved Lost Soul health.November 23rd, 2018
- -Modified projectile offsets for most guns to be more centered on where your crosshair actually is. I prooobably should've actually used a crosshair during testing, huh?
They may look somewhat odd, but they're much better for gameplay.
-Lowered radius and height of Bumper grenades, they should be much more reliable.
-Added a new 'safety range' mechanic. Grenades will no longer explode if they're within very close distance to yourself and they 'try' to explode. However, they'll become unexploded "dud" grenades that can't be recovered and only explode when damaged. The range is rather strict, too, and you may sometimes still take small amounts of damage from the explosions. Dud grenades don't do much if they directly hit an enemy, by the way.November 24th, 2018
- -Finally added a Cyberdemon replacement. They're in need of feedback and balance, so fight em' a few times!
-Hopefully fixed that stray pixel on the pistol sprites.
-Removed the "PCOK" pistol sprites as they ended up going unused.November 25th, 2018
- -Changed mod name, both on this forum and in the file itself, to "Hell Caliber". Thanks, Whoah!
!!!MAKE SURE TO MODIFY YOUR LOADORDER SINCE THE FILENAME IS DIFFERENT!!!
-Changed blood sprites to be solid grey instead of a mix of shades. This means blood splatters mix together much better without z-fighting and generally look a lot better.
-Blood droplets now create decals and disappear if they hit a wall.
-Created a single actor for spawning effects/gibs for gibbing. Not too visually different, but means some monster's XDeath states are somewhat cleaner.
-Slightly reduced the 'pause' during the FFS-9x19's reload animation.
-Added +ForceXYBillboard to some effects that might benefit from it.November 27th, 2018
- -Replaced the old knife with the new... knife. I mean, it's meant to be a sword, but the sprites ended up looking a little too short for that. It hasn't been balance-checked much at all and it is in a completely bare-bones state right now. Give it a try, though, it's a dedicated slot-1 weapon now.
-Implemented LossForWords logo and new pickup sprites for the UASG-12 and FFS-9x19. Thank you again!
-Added a very basic Titlemap, mostly for fun.
I apologize that development is slowing a little. Hopefully I'll get back on track and be able to get working on the Spider Mastermind, soon.November 28th, 2018
- -Added a new alternate attack to the sword. Press R to begin charging it, exchanging your health to power up the attack. It attacks in the same arc as your normal attacks, but with slightly longer range and damage multiplied by the amount of charge. You cannot charge it when under 50 health, and upon going under half health while charging it you will be forced to unleash the attack early.
-Cleaned out the old knife assets.November 28th Also?
- -Finally put in some sound effects and made some insignificant cosmetic edits to powerups. Invulnerability will no longer make you want to tear your eyes out.
-Berserk now affects the Sword, but only speeds up how fast it swings by a significant margin. It also retains the vanilla behavior of switching to your fists, I might not keep this.
-Changed weapon bob speeds. I personally play with "Weapon Bob Amount" set to 0.05 in the display options, and use it alongside Immerse.
-Made it so Hell Knights, Barons, and Cyberdemons have a lower painchance against the sword. This was mostly done to prevent infinitely stunlocking these enemies with berserk.November 29th, 2018
- -Added the Spider Mastermind, finally. They're relatively fast, very dangerous, and have a few attacks. Unlike the Cyberdemon, she has no 'phase 2'. And also unlike the Cyberdemon, she does not feel pain. You cannot interrupt her attacks, so if she starts BRRRT-ing at you with her minigun you best run to cover.
They're barely tested, and have no interlevel 'tips' relating to them yet, hopefully those aren't an issue soon. Good luck!December 2nd, 2018 (notes might be inaccurate because I don't write down what I'm actually doing in each update while doing it, even though I really should)
- -Implemented the improved shotgun pumping animations that Wivicer put together for me. Thank you so much, man!
-Added some basic custom difficulties. As a test for 'difficulty-based mechanics', bullets move twice as fast on the hardest difficulty.
-Modified the FFS-9X19's firing animation with the power of A_WeaponOffset. The recoil effects for it were also tweaked.
-Added a blood limit Cvar that, unlike the other limits, uses Hexen's "corpsequeue" system. Also removed the buggy culling that probably did more harm than good.
-Modified scorch decals a slight bit and added some for BFG projectiles.
-Cyberdemon now moves a longer distance with each step taken. Watch out for his second phase!
-Added some misc. tips.December 8th (These patch notes might leave out small/big things because I don't write down what I do when I actually... do things.)
- -Redid how your fists work. Left click to punch left, right click to punch right. Both sorts of punches are functionally identical, but if you alternate between left and right jabs you can punch much faster than if you were to simply hold down one button.\
-Berserk punches now have unique (and somewhat silly looking) animations, but don't get the same speed benefits as non-berserk punches. The damage they deal should make up for that, though.
-Added kicking. Originally just a part of the fist rework, as soon as I figured out how to somewhat-easily apply it to other weapons without just copy-pasting code I HAD to put it in. (I wanted to put in a quick-melee since the start of this mod's development!)
Kicks deal a static five damage with no randomization, so most of the time (unless probability is being weird) they'll do less damage than your punches. But, your velocity is added on top of the kick's damage. Running and kicking an enemy deals a lot more damage than punching them without berserk, or kicking them while standing still. The timing takes a bit to get used to, though. Currently you can press your 'zoom' keybind to kick. Oh, and beware that you can't kick above a certain point. (a little over the middle part of your vision) No karate-kid nonsense for you!
-Added screen movement to punching and swinging the sword, as well as kicking. I will add a Cvar for this at my earliest convenience.
-Fixed how fist 'puffs' work, meaning the screenshake on them works properly. Who knew QuakeEX would end early when the actor it's a part of stops existing? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-Modified how 'flipped' enemy deaths work, since it turns out I don't actually need to make separate flipped sprites. Whooops.
-Added some new alternate death animations for the Shotgunguy, Chaingunner, and Imp. (none of them made by me, obviously! check the credits!)
-To get around my own laziness (and total lack of artistic skill) and make it seem like a neat detail, some of the Shotgunguy/Chaingunner death animations don't show a helmet on them. So, these animations will cause a 'helmet' item to pop off them that can be collected as an armor bonus. I hope this being a random event and all doesn't mess balance up too badly, but it would be pretty weird to have a helmet lying on the ground you CAN'T grab.
-Shoved in Enjay's awesome splash.pk3 almost-unmodified because I'm far too lazy to put in the effort he did making it from scratch. Thank you so much for putting this out there.January 8th, 2019
- -Redid sound effects for some weapons, mainly firing sounds.
-Gave the Plasma Rifle the new sprites CapJ suggested to me. Sorry, Vos, your plasma rifle sprites are still awesome, I would just feel bad asking for a more complete set of them. Thank you so much.
-The plasma rifle no longer slows down when getting close to overheating. And overheating will now actually vent heat, but will leave you defenseless until the weapon is cooled down.
-Added some F1 help screens for quick tips and all of the weapons. (excluding the sword)
-Finally made up my mind on how the sword's health-sacrificing attack works. Aside from giving more charge per point of health, slices from this attack travel an extreme distance while still following an arc. Use it to clear lines of low-health enemies.
-Actually made the BFG worth using by dramatically increasing the charge rate. The charging animation now looks a lot better. A_WeaponOffset is still magic.
-Mirrored the kick so it doesn't look like Doomguy is trying to shoot himself in the foot. It isn't that weird to kick with your left leg, is it?
-Ran a lot of the mod's sprites through the PNG optimization function in SLADE, slicing off a few megabytes of size. Unfortunately most of the mod's size comes from sound files because I have no concept of prioritization.
-I think I buffed the kick's damage? I really can't remember.
-Turns out ACS code is a lot more effective if you actually remember to compile it. The aforementioned added tips should actually appear in-game.
-Added dumb quit messages.
This update is pretty small, and might be the last for the mod, (unless any serious bugs come up, or there's renewed interest for it) but will hopefully make the hardest difficulty a little more 'bullshit difficult', like it's meant to be.Thank you so much for the support of this dumb mod.
- -Bullet speed can now be configured with a slider in the options. Your set speed is overridden in the hardest difficulty.
-Yeeted the blood and gib effects from the mod after getting frustrated with their issues, and how they break compatibility with mods like Nashgore or Droplets. In the end, it was just a worse, badly optimized/looking version of those two mods. So use em'!
-Added some extra monster behaviors to the highest difficulty. You can stop reading here if you'd rather find them out for yourself.
(all further patch notes apply to the hardest difficulty only)
-Pistol zombies will play dead until you get close to them or hurt them, and won't be alerted by gunfire. Technically this makes them less dangerous, since they won't be alerted when they see you or you fire a gun, but it means they can catch you off guard.
-Spectres will engage you a lot less slowly. If you're looking at them, they'll stand still, but when looking away they advance.
-Imp cloak duration is randomized.
-Bullet speed is forced to twice as fast.
-The auto-reload Cvar is overridden to be off.
March 2nd, 2019March 2nd, 2019
- -Added Cvars to toggle individual aspects of recoil. Screenshake, view movement, etcetera.
-Made Plasma Rifle recoil much less disorienting and generally unpleasant.
-Added a Cvar to toggle screen movement for melee attacks.
-Removed the Cyberdemon's heavily exploitable melee attack, he now creates small AOE attacks (explosions) each time he steps to discourage hugging his mechanical glutes to try and avoid hits. Please let me know if this causes problems, but the stomps should only deal damage if you're very close or directly in his way when he takes a step.
-Changed most weapons to be faster to switch, fire, reload, or otherwise use in some way. The super-shotgun and sword are the most noticeable changes.
-Replaced most, hopefully all, monster melee attacks with invisible rail-attacks rather than using the normal melee attacks. The change shouldn't feel much different, but this means you can avoid melee attackers whilst still being in their melee range, and melee attackers with a lunge (Imp, Demon) can now preemptively jump at you.
-Removed pistol zombie 'see' sounds, meaning they don't make any noise upon spotting you, and modified their idle sounds to make them less talkative and more moan-y, because zombies. They might be able to get the jump on you now, but they're still about as harmless as usual.
-Removed the pistol zombie's "playing dead" behavior on extra-hard difficulty.
-The armor bar is now green under at/under 100 armor, but gets covered by blue when above, similar to how the health bar works.
-Modified bullet impact effects a little.
-Fixed Hell Knights still having a custom blood type set, whoops.
-Standardized casing/empty magazine code somewhat.
-Added a placeholder menu theme (Stadium - HEALTH)
- -Fixed the SORD softlocking if you tried switching weapons while charging it.
-Increased revenant rocket speed and added A_Weave to make them spin around a bit in the air.
-Fixed the (long-existing) bug where picking up cells was possible even if you were full on them.
Credits: (taken from the mod's credits.txt)
Spoiler:If I forgot to credit your work, please tell me ASAP so I can rectify the credits file. My memory is terrible and I don't mean to leave out credit where it's due!
WildWeasal - Making the old, but still super useful Gunlabs tutorials that got me into DECORATE and Doom modding.
CaptainJ - Muzzleflash sprites, Grenade Launcher sprites, Shell Sprites, "Twinshaker" (sword) sprites.
CaptainJ + Chronoteeth - Far Cry 3 shotgun sprites.
GAA - Pistol casing sprites.
HEALTH - Placeholder Menu theme ('Stadium', from the Max Payne 3 soundtrack, used without permission I'm not the owner etc. etc.)
Kinsie, Phi108, Minigunner - Shotgunguy alternate death sprites
Vader, ItsNaturetoDie - Imp alternate death sprites.
osjclatchford - Another shotgunguy alternate death
Mike12 - Beretta sprites, Demontech Rifle sprites sampled for the barrel effects.
Vostyok - Angled Plasma Rifle sprites. (I just wish there were more, they look awesome!)
Sniper109 on Realm667 - Doom 2.5 Shotgun Sprites. (Even though they were an absolute ass to work with and still have a wonky perspective.)
Zrrion - Absolutely awesome-looking BFG sprites. (barely and badly edited by me)
Pillowblaster - BFG pickup sprite, aka Antonov sprite from Russian Overkill.
JoeyTD/BeardedDoomGuy - Pistol Zombie Sprites
Melodica - Shotgun zombie and Machinegun zombie sprites
Eriance - Cybruiser sprites
No More Room in Hell Team/Lever Games - Various foley, casing, and gore sound effects.
Underhell by Mxthe - Bullet Richochet sounds.
Insurgency by New World Entertainment - Numerous gunfire/handling sounds.
TerminusEst13 - Coding help and moral support.
Valve Software (when they made games) - Fist impact sound effects, bullet impact sound effects, numerous 'physics' sounds.
Vlambeer - Many gun sounds in this are taken from Nuclear Throne and mixed with others. Also Nuclear Throne is great.
"Enjay" on the ZDoom Forums for creating "splash.pk3", which is included in this mod unmodified. Thank you so much for making something so my lazy ass doesn't have to.
"Wivicer" on the ZDoom Forums - Creating a modified pumping animation for the Shotgun that looks much better. Thank you!
"Whoah" on the ZDoom Forums - Being the first person to suggest the name "Hell Caliber". It grew on me.
"LossForWords" on the Zdoom Forums - Creating the awesome mod logo, touching up the pickup sprites for the shotgun and FFS-9x19. Thank you so much!
GIMP Development team - Making GIMP, the thing I used to do any kind of visual edits.
Numerous people on the Sabbath discord server - Moral support and feedback.
[REDACTED] Steam Friend: Moral support and feedback! https://i.imgur.com/LNeeCjN.png
/doom/ - Being the one reason I have to go on 4chan, providing feedback, and not being afraid to tell me that the old shotgun pump animation made Doomguy look like he had parkinsons.
