ZDoom

Someone64 wrote:So I played some of this mod and I have to say that I'm as shocked with the design decisions with normal weapon use as Somagu is. The biggest issue here is that Doom maps were not designed for them to work like this. The way you made weapon range work in itself is totally fine... if the maps were designed with these weapon mechanics in mind (though personally this kind of range system irks me regardless). The problem is that a ton of Doom maps were designed with the fact that you can use Doom's vanilla weapons with their effective range just like the vanilla game and the ammo, monster placement, weapon placement, etc are balanced with this fact. This is an issue with almost all mods to varying degrees but most mods make an effort to make things playable despite their design differences. Unfortunately, playing SGD can be impossible in some circumstances because your idea of weapon roles being forced into the design is entirely incompatible with many megawads.

A major example of this is the shotgun and SSG. In vanilla Doom you can literally use the shotgun to snipe enemies at pretty long ranges due to the low spread. The SSG can be used for crowd control of zombies at decent range. Both of these functions are rendered impossible due to SGD's range limitations. Another example is the chaingun. I understand the pistol replacement is meant to work as the sniper but often times, a map will just provide you with a chaingun to tap fire with which in vanilla, works fine as a sniper but just like the shotguns it has bafflingly short range.

There's a good reason games in general don't implement range the way this game does, too. There's a difference between making a weapon ineffective to use at range and making it literally impossible to use at range and making it impossible by making your hitscans vanish beyond a certain point is frustrating and really contrived. That's why shot spread exists as a mechanic and you can just make a weapon function badly at range by increasing its spread appropriately.

Sorry to sound harsh about my criticism but I really do like the idea of this mod. It's just that at the moment it can be borderline unplayable except in very specific circumstances where the map just so happens to fit it perfectly. Even if you made maps specifically for this mod it's still too frustrating to play.

Lastly, I have a minor issue with the feat based upgrade system which is that the mod is not transparent about this mechanic in terms of what enemies to kill, how many you already have killed, and how close you are to getting an upgrade. You should probably put this in the HUD or delegate this to a bind that brings up a screen that shows this.

Captain J wrote:some weapons' special move prevents you stop moving. It's about using the move wisely, but i honestly think it just don't go well with Vanilla Doom Firefight: Where the thing mostly goes hectic.

Captain J wrote:Despite all the problems, i actually enjoyed this mod and i think the concept is very clever and make it exciting!

Spoiler:

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Also, SGD has now been localized for Finnish. If anyone has a GitHub account and wants to provide additional localizations, please consider forking the mod's GitHub repository and making pull requests for your language.* files (where * is the language code). Of course, bugfix contributions are also welcome, but I'm primarily looking for localization contributions if anyone happens to be so inclined.

Link to GitHub repo: https://github.com/MFG38/sgd

• Reworked finishers - I'll admit that I was never entirely happy with the finishers in the 1.x versions of SGD, hence I took on the task of reworking them for v2.0. Almost all finishers have been reworked, with only a few left mostly intact. (I say "mostly" because even in the finishers I decided were good to keep, I did some tweaks in their implementations.) Decimate your foes with all-new finishers such as railgun-like slugs, Argent bombs and the power to briefly stop the flow of time!
• Less ACS, more ZScript - With the exception of the feat system, all systems that were previously powered by ACS have been converted over to ZScript. I mostly did this as an exercise in learning more about the intricacies of ZScript, but with some luck, that exercise will also have resulted in marginally better performance across the board.
• "Classic powerups" mode - For those who want their gameplay experience to be that much closer to vanilla, SGD v2.0 introduces an option that brings back the classic Doom powerups.
• Finnish localization (with possibly more to follow) - 'Nuff said.

Spoiler:

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• Increased the "warmup" time for the Dark Matter Cannon projectile (i.e. it does not begin to absorb things as quickly).
• Fixed Barons giving the wrong token upon dying from Holy Water and Fire damage.
• Slightly modified the spawning logic of the Holy Water Pool particles.
• Slightly modified the Spider Mastermind's AltMissile state code.
• Modified firing behavior for the Shotgun and Double-Barrel Shotgun.
• Rebalanced skills 5 and 6:
  * Enemies deal 130% damage instead of 200% on skill 5 and 170% damage on skill 6.
  * Stimpacks, Medikits and Megaspheres function normally on skill 6.
  * Ammo pickups give normal amounts on skill 6.
  * Monsters have 20% more health instead of 50% on skill 6.
• Renamed TeleportFX to SGDTeleportFog.
• Implemented 4 new cvars to affect thing replacements: sgd_replaceplasmagun, sgd_replacebfg, sgd_replacebackpack and sgd_classicpowerups.
• Reduced the amount of ammo given by the Flamethrower from 100 to 90.
• Increased the Fists' damage from random(2,5)*5 to random(3,5)*5.
• Added strategy_guide.txt.
• Changed all visual effect cvars from server-side to clientside.
• Increased the amount of starting Rifle ammo from 40 to 48.
• Increased maximum Rifle ammo capacity from 150 to 160.
• Modified the behavior of the Light Amp Goggles.
• Tweaked the behavior of the Holy Water Grenade.
• Updated cvar checks to the recommended ZScript method.
• Decreased pain chance from Holy Water damage for Archviles, Cyberdemons and Spider Masterminds.
• Decreased pain chance from Fire damage for Archviles.
• Added Finnish translation.
• Made dynamic lights emitted by light source props togglable (via the sgd_propdynlights cvar).
• Removed flat glows.
• Reworked almost all finishers.
• Renamed DemonizerPickup to DemonizerOrb.
• Migrated ACS-based functionality to ZScript (except the feat system).
• Piles of rockets now give 4 rockets instead of 3.
• Modified behavior of FinisherFreeze (it now reduces player's speed during some finishers instead of freezing them entirely) and renamed to FinisherSpeed.
• Reduced the Minigun's windup time slightly.
• Added pitch interpolation for the Double-Barrel Shotgun's recoil.
• Renamed the Light Amp Goggle sprites.
• Removed the low health screen flash effect.
• Re-implemented the HUD in ZScript.
• Decreased the speed of the Argent Rifle's cooldown in the OverheatLoop state.

Spoiler:

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• Fixed missing A_BossDeath calls from the Baron's special Death states.
• Localized the difficulty setting descriptions.
• Added tooltips (courtesy of libtooltipmenu by ToxicFrog).
• Rebalanced skill 1 (ammo pickups give normal ammo amounts instead of 50% more).
• Updated the HUD to use fullscreen coordinates.
• Removed monster spawn behavior option because it was breaking Lost Souls spawned by Pain Elementals.