[v1.7.2] Critical Shots - Headshots, Backstabs and Crits!

[Crudux Cruo]

Hey Mikk, great mod you've got here! I love simply playing this with classic Doom!
First impression is that it's very organic in gameplay and quite likable. Haven't looked at the settings, but would like more doomey sound and visual indicators.
Also think it's a shame backstabs are limited to melee attacks only, would add incentive to use silent weapons and the like I've been trying this with different mods and have thought that's the only thing I'd like to tweak.

Perhaps a cvar or menu option that changes damage to be exclusively custom punch and or other melee attacks recognized vanilla or to include hitscan or projectiles as well.

By the way, would it be ok if I used this in a mod with credit?

[Spaceman333]

^Seconding that.

Currently playing with a weapon mod that doesn't have compatible melee attacks, so often feel longing of just having any of my weapons deal a backstab, especially since its rare for any enemy to show their butt to me unless they're inactive and unaware or afraid.

Maybe make it so that there is a configurable max distance where the backstab can work, so that atleast there would be a need to get close to an enemy to actually score a backstab. (instead of landing one from a mile away)

[Nems]

Ran into a crash using this mod with Final Doomer. When using the Doomguy weapon set, hitting a Cyberdemon in the head with a BFG ball causes a VM abort.



Aside from the aforementioned crash this is a nice mini-mod and it's definitely going in my auto-load list. <3

[Siorus]

My first message here, but I felt I had to give feedback. I've been using your mod regularly and I really like it, it is quite a gameplay changer. I use it often with Doom EXP, which has a glory kill system. Your mod works perfectly except when I perform one of these glory kills. Sometimes works, other crashes gzdoom (using 4.3.3, because 4.4.0/4.4.1 seem to have problems with Doom EXP) to the console. The crash message is always the same and so far only with human sized enemies (imps, ex-marines and so on). Doom EXP has some extra monsters, but they are the same size as the standard ones and apart from glory kills, Critical hits works seamlessly on them. Maybe they are simply incompatible, but I drop this just in case it is of any help for you.

PS: I dunno how hard it is, but the sound effects of your mod are barely audible with the usual mayhem going on in Doom. Do you see it possible to somehow regulate their volume in the future?


Thanks in advance for your time.

[BROS_ETT_311]

@Siorus - Pretty sure it's an issue with Doom EXP. Try loading this patch alongside with both Doom EXP and Critical shots, should do the trick.

[Siorus]

Thanks man. I got the issue both to here and Doom EXP discord and both of you agree, it is solved. ^^

[Mikk-]

Hi! Sorry for the absence, I've pushed out a minor update to Critical Shots. I've added a volume slider for each type of Hit sound effect, a new visual Hit & some tweaks and fixes to hopefully avoid crashes with other mods. I've also enabled a compatibility feature with Doom EXP which allows you to gib monsters with SSG headshots.

download HERE!

[Josko]

Could you add back the random crits as an option?

I really like the random crits like in tf2 but only getting crits when a monster is attacking seems bad.

Maybe a feature where you can select which weapon can get crits and headshot to customize it even more!

One could then enable crits on pistol/chaingun only for example to make it a more viable weapon.

[Ferretmanjcdenton]

This is SERIOUSLY my favorite add-on for doom since i found droplets ..
These both mods together are insanity pure ..
Thanks a lot for this awesome piece of code ..

I would love to get some more sounds for headshots and crits ..
Would be really amazing ..
But even if not this is an absolute blast to play ..THANKS A LOT

[Josko]

Also nice if the "Critical Hit" Visual indicator from TF2 were added too, all the current visual indicators simply does not look good.

When I score a critical hit I want it to say "Critical Hit!" like in TF2. I think if this was added, this mod would be absolutely amazing!

[Drake Raider]

I'd love to see the Weapon specific criticals, like Josko said. One weapon I find particularly bothersome is the Super Shotgun, where it's almost impossible not to get one, or the Plasma Gun, where a few headshots is enough to kill anything in the game. Also, if it's feasible, (though I doubt it) for shotgun class weapons to be limited to only do headshot damage if they're dammeged by multiple tracers. I know Quake did a thing where hitscan attacks were combined to calculate simultaneous damage, I don't know if that's how Doom does it, or if it's possible in ZScript, but it would really expand on the feel of the mod.

[Mikk-]

Thing is, once you add weapon specific criticals it no longer becomes universal. I'd have to manually incorporate every single shotgun weapon ever created into some sort of array, and check that each time a monster is damaged and even then it's not foolproof. Unless you specifically only check for vanilla guns, but then what's the point? I'll only have people coming to the thread saying "oh why don't you add support for guncaster's shotgun, or brutal doom's minigun or whatever. I've already had to break "fully universal" idea in terms of bodged compatibility patches because other mod creators don't understand that actors should exist for at least one tic.

While it would be nice to add such a feature, it doesn't seem possible from where I'm standing.

[Drake Raider]

Maybe a damagetype and a compatibility patch. Can the head hitbox be sensitive to damage types? I know back when people used to just stick a decorate object on top of the original actor that was possible. While it wouldn't be mandatory for this mod, players could throw together a patch that gives shotguns a unique damage type that does full damage to monsters, but the hitbox only takes like a fourth of the damage or something. (I don't know if that's plausible, just building from what I read in the pk3 and my very limited knowledge of zscript.)

I used to have a patch for one of the older headshot mods out there that did something like that, I think it was to give different rifles or machine guns different headshot damage modifiers. Never wound up finishing the project I was using it on, but possibly the same idea could be converted here. Instead of actually giving the weapons specific crits, just give the hitbox unique damage factors and let modders take care of the rest with their favorite weapons packs if they want.

Again, if the damagefactor idea doesn't work with how you've implemented it, that's a whole different issue.

[Ryuhi]

The only thing I can think of in relation to very strong attacks is to have a check for the inflicted damage before the alteration, and then have it have an alternate lower calculation for the bonus damage. That would fix things like the plasma headshots nuking stuff instantly, but not as much for spreadshot style attacks. Since MOST hitscan weapons use BulletPuff or other puffs inheriting from them, doing a CheckProximity call and having reduced calculations dependent on the number of simultaneous puffs could be a start, but it wouldn't account for Projectiles, FastProjectiles, and so on without having additional calls looking for them in a similar manner. It also implies that they're spawning the puff on hit as their damage source, which isn't always the case. Don't know how plausible any of that would be, but thats the the most universal idea I can think of, messy as it is.

[Mikk-]

I think I may have a solution, the idea is that after a successful headshot, give the monster an item that only lasts a couple of tics, if another headshot is detected within that time it is skipped, so this works in the case of weapons that fire multiple shots at once. For example, a shotgun fires 7 pellets, pellet #1 hits and registers a headshot, the item is given. pellets #2-7 also hit, but because the monster has the token the subsequent pellets only register their normal damage, but not as a headshot.

Testing this out proves it to be effective, with the feature off a shotgun blast to the head can deal upwards of 300 damage with a headshot multiplier of 4x. With the feature enabled, the damage is limited to just around 100 - so while still very powerful, it's much less overpowered.

It's not the cleanest solution, but it does work, it could also translate over to rapid firing weapons to prevent spamming critical hits. I might also add separate factors for projectile & hitscans solely because projectiles have a higher damage roll compared to hitscans (1d8 vs 1d3).

also I was thinking of ditching the insta-kill cutoff stuff, it doesn't really seem like that much of a useful feature in hindsight.