[V0.59a 12-2-21] Live Through DOOM: Survival Horror Gameplay

[Grey-Wolf]

As Ghost already explained, there's a realistic reload option which is ON by default. It's still a bit incomplete, but yeah, if you don't unload first, you'll lose your current mag. You can just disable it from the mod options though, it's pretty straightforward.
Most of the other bugs you mentioned are being looked at, and most of them will definitely be gone when the next version will be released.

[OfficialYeen]

Hey! I've played around with this mod for a bit, completed a few small wads and single levels with it and I really like it. Every enemy feels like a threat and I love that I'm always running the risk of death if I don't approach encounters carefully. However, I've noticed a few things that I think could be improved and want to share my thoughts.

• The bleeding mechanic is a death sentence in the survival difficulties (not regular HMP/UV where bandages are fairly common). When you get a laceration, you're better off just loading a save instead of trying to find a bandage. Maybe there could be something similar to Hideous Destructor where the player can stop bleeding without the use of an item? It could be balanced by it taking a longer time, only stopping the bleeding instead of healing as well, or using a common resource so that hunting something down when you're bleeding doesn't feel like a lost cause.
• Likewise, being poisoned is incredibly debilitating because an antidote is way too scarce to find and crafting one is rarely an option, which brings me to my next point.
• The crafting system is super impractical. I almost never have materials, and when I do, I can never find a crafting station. This entire mechanic goes largely unused as a result, which is a shame because I'm a sucker for resource management and crafting in survival games.
• The gunshots are way too loud and some of them aren't synced correctly. Primary fire on the double shotgun has two audible fire sounds in succession, but the gun fires both barrels simultaneously. The revolver's fire sound is delayed a bit, so the gun fires slightly before the sound should be played. Also, the sound syncing on the revolver's altfire is just nonexistent all together.
• The player grunts way too much. The smallest drop in elevation causes a dsoof to play, so going down staircases in most levels will result in a barrage of oof oof oof oof oof.
• I don't know if this is intentional or not, but the radsuit and lite-amp goggles can't be used from the inventory, it has to be equipped using the keybinds.
• This last one is more of a personal thing, but it would be cool to see an inventory limit option implemented. Something like setting a max amount of guns the player can carry, modifying the amount of ammo reserves, etc. for a more survival-y, you-versus-them feel.

One thing I absolutely love is the damage output on the weapons. Taking the time to aim for the head actually feels meaningful since zombies and imps go down in one or two shots, so making your bullets count in this way is very rewarding.

All in all, some balancing issues and sound design is all that's keeping this from being a must-play. It is super fun to play since it makes you think of levels differently. Managing resources has always been fun for me and surviving any encounter is a triumph (the ones that I don't run from, at least).

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also i'm deaf now /s

[Grey-Wolf]

Alright, thanks for your feedback!
You made a couple of good points, many of which were already considered and they'll be most certainly addressed in the next version (we're taking a break for now though).
I want to give my opinions on some of these points, as well as previews on our intentions on others:

- The bleeding system is indeed deadly, but bandages shouldn't be that rare even in the most unresourceful difficulty settings. Still, I'll make sure to make them more common, as well as making the Survivalist able to craft them more easily. I don't like the idea of doing it "for free" to be honest, but this should balance things out.
- The poison is built in a way that's not as hard to manage as the bleeding. Its effect only occur after long pauses, it's not very deadly, and you can kinda anticipate when they're gonna occur, so you can try taking cover before it happens. Poison is meant to be debilitating, yes, but not very deadly. I also don't think the cure are this much rare: the poison itself should occur that often, and the portable medikits are kinda rare, but not that much. The poison is also automatically cured when traveling to another map.
- The crafting system is not meant to be an early game mechanics unless you get very lucky. Crafting stations are very rare for a reason, and you can probably find quite a number of them during a megawad playthrough, enough to feel kinda fair. It is true that it still need some balancing, and I'm absolutely going to work on it, but if you really want to craft stuff and you're playing single levels and mini-wads, then using the Scientist class would make more sense.
- I'll talk about the loudness of some sounds to my sound designer, but as for the "double SSG shot", the two sounds overlapping is actually intended. Older models of double barreled shotguns had their trigger one in front of the other, so when you "fire both barrels", you're actually firing one AFTER another in a very small time window. As for the revolver, I'll look into it, thanks for the report.
- I mostly agree on everything else you said (and yes, the HEV suit thing are intended), and as for the weapon limit, that's actually an already planned feature for a new class that's hopefully gonna be live in 0.6, "the Scout", which will have plenty of stamina and other skills, but he's gonna be able to bring with him just a limited amount of weapons divided by categories.

Nevertheless, I'm glad you found your overall experience entertaining, and as always, I'll make sure constructive critics from users won't go unlistened. You've been very helpful!

[OfficialYeen]

The bleeding system is indeed deadly, but bandages shouldn't be that rare even in the most unresourceful difficulty settings. Still, I'll make sure to make them more common, as well as making the Survivalist able to craft them more easily. I don't like the idea of doing it "for free" to be honest, but this should balance things out.

Where do bandages spawn, exactly? Maybe I'm just getting unlucky. I'll play around a bit more and get a better feel for how to manage it better.

The poison is built in a way that's not as hard to manage as the bleeding. Its effect only occur after long pauses, it's not very deadly, and you can kinda anticipate when they're gonna occur, so you can try taking cover before it happens.

Ah, yeah, this is true. I agree, the poison mechanic is fine the way it is in this case.

The crafting system is not meant to be an early game mechanics unless you get very lucky . . . you can probably find quite a number of [crafting stations] during a megawad playthrough, enough to feel kinda fair

I'll try playing some megawads! I usually don't since I like to play Doom in a couple sittings at most (unless I'm playing RLA+RPG which is a huge time sink). Do you have any megawads you recommend?

Everything else I understand and I'm looking forward to the next version! No rush, though, I'm having enough fun with LiTDOOM to last me a while. Do you mind if I make my own sound patch in the meantime?

[Grey-Wolf]

Bandages have a random chance of spawning instead of stimpacks, and in a few more places.
As for megawads, there are A LOT of good ones, so I'll just say the ones I remember right now:
- Ultimate torment and torture (supportive edition)
- Hellground
- Darkmoon and Darkstar (not megawads, but the atmosphere is perfect for the mod.)
- Ultimate Doom 2
- HoNTE (Hell on new earth)
- Doom 2 Reloaded
... and of course SGT_Mark last version of "Extermination day", that even though is still incomplete, I found it quite enjoyable together with this mod.

I'm probably forgetting a lot more, even among my favourites, but you should be able to find some good ones on your own and by your taste criterias.
Finally, of course you can make a sound patch if you want. If it turns out well, You could even upload it as an addon, in the moddb's page.

[SHayden]

Crafting system is VERY confusing

[Captain J]

Can you elaborate more which part is by far confusing?

[SHayden]

Nevermind, I figured how it works by playing a bit with it. What I don't understand NOW however is how to get the various colored vials; like blue, green, yellow...I find empty ones everywhere but not those.

[-Ghost-]

Yeah, it takes a little bit of experimentation. I've actually been working on various PDA logs, etc that will give more information like specific crafting recipes, enemy weaknesses, gear specs, and more. They'll be items you can find randomly spread throughout the maps to give a little more world and lore building alongside useful gameplay information.

[Grey-Wolf]

You can drop empty glass vials on some special colored blood clots left by some demon's corpses to harvest them: cacodemons drop blue, bruisers drop green, undeads drop yellow bone marrow.

Also, you can find manuals on our discord server: https://discord.gg/ceGp6TW

[SHayden]

What is the purpose of bandages? I am sometimes low on health and says I'm bleeding, I use like 5 or more of them and nothing happens, I'm still bleeding and I'm not getting health back, have to use one of bigger packs from inventory...
Also I tried "crafting" bfg9000 and the game crashed, didn't save the crash logs so can't provide them, if it happens again I will put them.

[Grey-Wolf]

Weird, this didn't happen to me or other people. Are you using other mods together with LiTDoom? is your GzDoom client updated?

[SHayden]

Only other mods I use with it is dark doom for darkness...that's it. Version I use is 4.3.3.

[thugsta]

I hope you don't mind but i took the time to edit your sound/combat files to normalize the loud audio and convert into ogg.

If you do mind, i don't mind to take this down and just upload the sounds that will need to be replaced in the original download instead, let me know.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10YYD179OS7Hk0TOOt7CmWv7KoR-g4r-Z/

[Grey-Wolf]

Not at all! Even though, following the users' advice, we're probably gonna tweak the sounds on our own. But you're still free to do whatever you need to make the mod more fit for your tastes!