Scavver's Paradise V1.9.9.4 - A Survival Horror Mod

[Abba Zabba]

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Right, work on version 2.0 is commencing. I'll be posting occasional videos on my YouTube channel to show new features and whatnot. Progress will be slowed though since I am in the process of getting a job, likely going to nail an interview soon.

Hope you land it!

So far, a few weapons have new sprites to make them look and feel that much nicer. The chaingun has been given a buff in the form of a larger magazine, and the LMG has been replaced with a lighter SAW, boasting a reduced magazine size, but is more accurate than the chaingun with a faster fire rate and a relatively speedy reload rate, while also being lighter in weight than the LMG to make it that much more attractive over the chaingun.

While I'm not overly familiar with either the chaingun or LMG (since they're so rare generally), these changes sound good. I think I never had an issue with the LMG running out too soon, but the chaingun definitely felt like it ran out fast for a weapon that's supposed to either be belt fed or have a large magazine/multiple magazine ports.

The revolver is now both a bit nicer to look at with new sprites, has better reload animations, and is less painful to use thanks to some new code. Now the player character has realized they can remove all spent casings in their gun at once before speedily loading bullets into it, rather than removing a spent casing, adding a new round, then moving on to repeat the process ad nauseum.

Good change, the old behavior made it seem like it was some ancient (especially by the mod's time period) fixed cylinder revolver.

To further improve the revolver, I'm working on adding a speed loader, allowing for an instantaneous reloading, as well as the function where you can load spare bullets into an empty speed loader.

Love this idea, to the point where I might reconsider keeping it over the compact colt .45 ACP and select-fire 9mm.

I'm planning on adding alternative ammo types to a few different weapons. For the sake of not having a nightmare of a time trying to balance clip/clipbox and cell/cellpack spawns, I'm specifically targeting slot 3 and slot 5 weapons (with one exception, see below) since those ammo pools are a bit less varied. 20 gauge shotguns are getting slugs which overall are slightly weaker than if all pellets hit in a standard shell, but it pierces armor significantly better. I'm still split on what to add for 12 gauge shells, currently considering either dragonbreath shells to flambe your foes, flechette shells that are a bit weaker but pierce armor, or 000 buckshot which has fewer pellets, but they're much stronger. The crossbow is also getting new ammo types, two of them in fact: An electric bolt that stuns fleshy enemies and deals extra damage to robotic enemies, and an explosive bolt. Gonna throw in hollow point bullets for .357 weapons which would be significantly stronger than the standard round, but would fare much worse against armor. 40mm grenade weapons will also gain incendiary rounds, and I'm contemplating adding plasma shells for the 20mm cannon.

Great options to make loadouts more flexible! If you want just one alternate ammo type for 12ga, I'd go with flechette (even though they're unfortunately sort of meme tier iirc) or triple-ought buck so that you can use the totally not a Spas against crowds of chaingunner tier spawns.

All in all, this update sounds hefty. Will this update change medical to a finite system rather than acting as a temporary ticket to gain a powerup healing effect? I'll try to help where I can, but I'm at roughly the same, if not less, level of experience you're at. At the very least I'll throw around word to see where it goes, if and when. Thanks for keeping us up to speed, and I hope the interview goes smooth!

[Sartana]

I had a small suggestion re:armor the player doesn't plan to use, either because it's a step down from their current gear or its stats not being what the player is looking for.

Maybe we could interact with it with the "scrap weapon" state active and turn them into an "armor patch" that instantly restores a little of your current armor's durability. Perhaps a static number, or more ideally, a number based on the tier of the scrapped armor. My thinking was 10 or 15 points per tier. Scrapping a ballistic jacket would give you 10 or 15 points of durability. Scrapping a marine armor would be worth 50 or 75 points.

It just seems a shame to leave armor behind, especially late-game when you have good armor that you'd rather try to keep.

[CaptainNurbles]

It's going to be a long trip to getting everything I've planned for version 2.0 finished and fine tuned. Before I can start this journey off properly, I've done a bit of cleanup duty to make things look and feel a bit nicer.


Nothing super meaty's been worked on so far, mostly just new sprites for the revolver, .22 WMR pistol, and the burst carbine, with the LMG being worked into a lighter SAW. Also new bullet casings, and most importantly, improvements to the revolver. I think currently the revolver is the most mechanically complicated weapon in the mod, since you've got a firing state, an alt fire sequence that speeds up the firing state, two different reload states, and several under-the-hood workings to make it all work just fine. Getting it to spit out all spent casings at once when reloading was a RIGHT pain in the ass to fix up, lemme tell you.


What wasn't pointed out specifically is all the tweaks I've made to many weapons to make things that much more balanced, not to mention several fixes (The 7.62mm battle rifle is so rare it took me til recently to realize that shooting grenades with it also spends a round of 7.62mm ammo and also spits a 7.62mm casing in the process.) Constant work is going into fine tuning the item spawn pools, particularly the weapons and especially ammo. When you've got so many different unique types of ammunition available and only have 8 ingame Things that are ammo pickups, making sure that every weapon gets just as much ammo as it needs is a real pain in the ass.


Hopefully next time I'll have more to actually show. Progress is going to be slowed since I'm now back in the work force, and unlike my last job I won't be able to code during down time. Planning on doing even more writing as well. So far I've added 16 more data logs that can be found and read, and plan on adding more as ideas come along. I'll also be working hard on getting alternate ammo types implemented for shotguns and the crossbow, give them more versatility and more reason to hold onto them outside of their common ammo.

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Hope you land it!

Thankfully I did, appreciate the concern man!

Good change, the old behavior made it seem like it was some ancient (especially by the mod's time period) fixed cylinder revolver.

Yeah, that was just a result of me not thinking too deeply into how to get all the casings to eject at once when I first added the revolver.

Love this idea, to the point where I might reconsider keeping it over the compact colt .45 ACP and select-fire 9mm.

I am definitely doing lots of thought on how to best balance the .45 magnum and the revolver out. I don't want one to be too much better than the other, so I'm trying to make sure that both are appealing in their own ways.

Will this update change medical to a finite system rather than acting as a temporary ticket to gain a powerup healing effect?

I'm definitely going to look into this. At the moment, I haven't a clue how to manage that, but I'll poke around the forums to see if others have managed something better, maybe see if a better system is available in any of the Realm667 items.

I'll try to help where I can, but I'm at roughly the same, if not less, level of experience you're at. At the very least I'll throw around word to see where it goes, if and when. Thanks for keeping us up to speed, and I hope the interview goes smooth!

Feel free to send me a PM here on the ZDoom forums and we can hand over our Discord IDs. If nothing else it'll be nice to swap ideas and get some input from someone who's really invested in the mod and is smelling what I'm stepping in, as it were, with the general ideas and intentions with the mod.

I had a small suggestion re:armor the player doesn't plan to use, either because it's a step down from their current gear or its stats not being what the player is looking for.

Maybe we could interact with it with the "scrap weapon" state active and turn them into an "armor patch" that instantly restores a little of your current armor's durability. Perhaps a static number, or more ideally, a number based on the tier of the scrapped armor. My thinking was 10 or 15 points per tier. Scrapping a ballistic jacket would give you 10 or 15 points of durability. Scrapping a marine armor would be worth 50 or 75 points.

It just seems a shame to leave armor behind, especially late-game when you have good armor that you'd rather try to keep.

I'm not sure if I'll do exactly that with the armor, but I do want to have it where you can remove or even carry armor with you. Ideally, I'd want it how Hideous Destructor does it, with armor keeping track of its condition, but that is impossible with DECORATE without making an incredibly convoluted series of checks and custom states for each piece of armor. With my skill with ZScript (AKA none) and my patience for this sorta thing, it'll probably end up being closer to how Doom RL: Arsenal handles it (Removing armor that isn't in perfect condition destroys it, and armor can be carried and worn as desired. An addition I'd add is carried armor having weight, to keep the player from just infinitely hoarding copies of every armor in the game. Otherwise you'd just don a suit of marine armor and keep a spare suit on hand 24/7, breaking the difficulty of the mod.)

[-Ghost-]

Nice! I think focusing on upgrading the aesthetics is a good idea, particularly the weapons. Any plans to take another pass at the HUD?

[CaptainNurbles]

Nice! I think focusing on upgrading the aesthetics is a good idea, particularly the weapons. Any plans to take another pass at the HUD?

Probably won't be making too many modifications to the HUD. Might reduce the size of some of the icons that pop up, and might change how weapons with alternate ammo (5.45mm/7.62mm rifles, rocket launcher, revolver's speed loaders, as well as others once I add alt. ammo for them) display on the HUD so that it takes up less screen real estate. How would you say I could improve it?

[-Ghost-]

I think mainly just decreasing the size of everything a bit, but that could depend on people's resolution, too. Maybe find some good replacements for the HP/armor icons so they look a bit less default Doom next to the weapon icons.

Something to make it a bit more survival horror-ish, somehow, like some thin borders and such to help organize them better while keeping them out of the way. I'm not really sure, to be honest, beyond less is probably better to give it that immersive horror vibe.

[CaptainNurbles]

Apologies for the lack of updates! Long story short, the drive to keep modding has kinda fizzled out, unfortunately. What I'll probably wind up doing is tack on a few quality of life improvements over what I've currently got, improve balancing even further, and fix the bugs that I've noticed while play testing and release that as one last update before I put this on hiatus. I ain't giving up on this forever, just gonna pull the breaks here while I work on getting out of this modding burnout.

[Abba Zabba]

I take it the burnout has struck in full?

[CaptainNurbles]

I take it the burnout has struck in full?

Pretty much lol. I've spent some time on some bug fixes, but I plan on trying to get at least some work done soon on making a couple of features better, as well as toying around with a weapon replacement.

[CaptainNurbles]

Just a heads up, I have started working on getting more work done with the mod. Many of the previously planned features won't be making it in just cause I ain't got the patience nor skill to implement it, so this upcoming update will mostly just be quality of life, bug fixes, and a few niceties such as more rotations for magazine sprites and such. Gonna be pacing myself this time to prevent burnout, but nevertheless I do plan on at least getting a dedicated quick grenade and quick kick button done up for all weapons!

NINJA EDIT SO AS TO NOT SPAM: Expect an update soon, turns out the big ticket things that I thought would take a long time only took me like a day to do. Now it's just quality of life things. The desire to add visual flare such as gunsmoke and impact particles is there, but I ain't exactly great at the spriting thing, and I also don't have the patience lol. I plan on releasing this final update some time before Friday, to give me time to play test it, finalize the balancing of supplies, and catch any last minute bugs or issues that I haven't yet caught. Just in the past two days I've caught so many things that needed improving or fixing!

[CaptainNurbles]

BIIIIIIG UPDATE. And probably the last one, outside of major bug fixes. (EDIT: This is a lie. After working on a bit of bug fixing for a hotfix I was gonna post I decided "Fuck it, let's improve the monsters some." The zombies that have a chance to spawn with an alt weapon are planned to be split up, eg. an SMG zombie and a separate carbine zombie with different sprites. Also adding new sounds to as many monsters as I can, to lean into the horror side of the mod, as well as new sprites, behaviors, and new monsters altogether.

Been working hard to polish this mod out as best as I can, fixing as many issues as I could, including some quality of life things that the mod should have included since Day 1, and so much more. This is the last update for the mod that I plan on posting as I've basically done everything with it that I can. There are definitely issues that could be worked on, but I've tried and they're just outside of my skillset. A large amount of what I had initially planned for the mod simply didn't make it in because either A) Too complicated, would have been a mess of spaghetti code, or simply something I do not know how to do, B) Just not a good idea overall, or C) Couldn't be assed. I do regret making promises for new features such as alt ammo for certain weapons, legendary quality weapons, etc, but heck, what I've got now is plenty fine as it is. Better to keep it simple than to bloat it with too many features, eh? Especially when I don't know what I'm doing. However, I also may add more data logs for players to read, so if I do come up with more story ideas I'll definitely upload updates for more writing.

I will be checking the forum thread regularly, though, in case there's any bugs or anything that I've missed! I definitely don't want the last release to have outstanding issues, so if you do catch any issues please bring them up, and I'll have a hotfix done up ASAP. Just be sure to reference the Known Issues tab on the main post.


DOWNLOAD HERE (Updated 28/5/21)

Changelog:

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1.9 Final Fixin's! Uploaded 28/5/21

MAJOR:
* DEDICATED KICK BUTTON: Whack yer kick button and swing yer leg! Lighter weapons have faster kicks, while huge weapons have slower kicks.
(Note: Alt fire on melee weapons now performs their alternate functions, rather than reload)
* DEDICATED GRENADE BUTTON: Whack yer grenade button and throw some explosives!
(Note: All other thrown explosives have been removed.)
(Note: Grenade damage has been modified greatly. Less impact damage, wider splash radius, more splash damage, and more shrapnel.)
* .357 Revolver can now use speedloaders! Make sure to bind your alt reload key.
* .357 Revolver zombies have a RARE chance to drop speedloaders on death.
* NEW WEAPON: 5.56mm LMG -> 5.2x40mm Squad Automatic Weapon. Lighter in weight, but smaller magazine.
* MODIFIED WEAPON: Flamer -> UAC Type-1 Flamethrower. Lighter, and now uses UAC-B Energy Cells! IT CAN BE RELOADED.
* New type of data log: EDF. Read messages and stories from members of the mysterious Earth Defense Force.
* 22 new data logs have been added. Get hunting and get reading!
- 16 new logs from other scavengers.
- 6 logs from members of the EDF.
* Rocket, Grenade boxes, when despawned by the ammo despawner slider, now drop at least a little bit of ammo, since not having explosives really sucks dick.
* 9mm Rifle/.357 Lever/5.45mm Sniper/5.6mm Bolt/7.62mm DMR/8.6mm Sniper rifles have all had their damages buffed to increase their usefulness. I've found myself rarely using them either because ammo is too rare or the damage doesn't justify using it.
* SMG Zombie now has a chance to spawn with a 5.6mm Carbine.
* Flame Turret is now a proper turret rather than a spinny flame device. Targets enemies and lights them up with flame.

NOTABLE:
* NEW SPRITES: .22 WMR Pistol) Looks nicer.
* NEW SPRITES: 5.6MM Carbine) Looks significantly less trashy.
* NEW SPRITES: .357 Revolver) Two handed, with nicer looking sprites and animations.
* HUD has been tinkered with, removing the weapon sprite in the lower right corner as it is wholly unnecessary, adding a grenade counter, and decreasing the size of many icons.
* New bullet casing sprites! There's a greater amount of variety in the appearance of casings.
* Chaingun has a larger magazine.
* .357 Revolver's reload has been sped up slightly thanks to the player ejecting all the spent casings at once.
* .357 Revolver's fire state has a slight delay due to a heavier trigger pull. This can be alleviated by pressing alt fire to manually pull the hammer back for single action functionality.
* Weapon and Ammunition spawns have been rebalanced to be a bit more fair, with a bit less emphasis on world-ammo-spawns giving you common gear, and more chances for rare ammo for effective weaponry to spawn. This was mostly applied to Clip/ClipBox/Rocket/RocketBox/Cell/CellPack spawns.
* Chainsaw now only spawns powered melee weapons.
* 7.62mm Battle Rifle no longer uses rifle ammo to shoot grenades, and doesn't spit bullet casings when firing grenades. How in the FUGG did I not catch this earlier?
* 5.6mm Chaingun is a bit less accurate.
* 5.2mm SAW is very slightly more accurate.
* .45 Magnum is slightly faster to fire.
* Adrenal Boost has been made more useful (Effects last longer, damage resistance buff is now more potent) and has also had an issue fixed where when jabbing yourself with a boost, once the debuff is given you could jab another boost and would never get the debuff once the second boost wears off.
* Adrenal Boosts are harder to find.
* Scavenger's 9mm pistol was swapped for a .357 revolver.
* Marksman's revolver was swapped for a .45 magnum.
* 9mm Pistol/Auto, 10mm Pistol, 4mm Pistol, .45 Pistol, .357 Revolver, Crossbow, 4mm SMG, 7.62mm Battle Rifle, Laser Cannon have had their weights reduced.
* Backpacks give a random Support Consumable on pickup.
* Weapon and Ammo spawns have been modified to favor rarer spawns, since many common spawns are found off of enemies. Common ammo, therefore, was easier to find than it should be.
* 5.6mm Carbine has had its damage normalization increased (less variation in damage.)
* .357 Lever now gives 10 ammo when scrapped rather than the previous 14.
* Player run speeds and jump heights have been slightly reduced.
* .357 Lever has had firing and reloading sequences changed up (Firing has been sped up with new cocking "animations," firing the last round in the tube skips the cock animation like with all other manual actions, and reloading now spits a spent casing if reloading on empty.)
* 12G Pump reloading sequence has been altered (Player racks the pump back before reloading shells, then when finished slides pump forwards like the 20G pump. If gun is empty, spent shell will eject on reload start.)
* 20mm Cannon has a larger magazine (from 12 to 16.)
* Fireproof armor is more protective against physical attacks, making it that much more useful.
* Powered Greaves effect used to run out when resurrect command was used/adrenal boost item was used. Fixed.
* 5.6mm Hunting Rifle is now faster to cycle (bolt-action is sped up.)
* Lead Pipe and Pipe Wrench power attacks combo better.
* New firing sounds for 9mm auto pistol/10mm pistol/10mm SMG/5.6mm Carbine/4.6mm SMG/TazeFist.
* 5.6mm Carbine's semi-auto mode can be fired much faster now.
* TazeFist's magazine has been doubled (from 120 to 240) and its stab damage has been buffed, making it that much more appealing to use.
* Turrets have been given armor plating for better resistances and longevity.
* Blaster Rifle has a decreased charge rate and rate of fire.
* 5.45mm Assault Rifle's shotgun now skips the pump when firing last shot.
* Dark Matter Gun, when fully empty, now only loads one battery instead of two if all you have is one energy cell (Before you could load two batteries into the gun even if you only had one extra battery.)
* New Effect! Gunsmoke.
* 12 Gauge Shotguns have had their damage normalized more (from 3*random(3,6) to 3*random(4,6),) making them more consistently damaging.
* Nanofiber Armor has had its defenses modified slightly.
* 10mm Pistol Zombie/Double Shotgunner Zombie/SMG Zombie/Rifle Zombie have had their health decreased from 40 to 30.
* Crossbows are now more common.
* Medical Harness now actually shows up in gameplay (How in the fuck did I forget to include it in the spawns?)

Minor:
* Fixed the click state on the 5.45mm sniper (Would show muzzle flash when dry firing.)
* Revolver zombies now scream when burning to death.
* 40mm Grenade Launcher no longer spawns grenades behind you when you scrap it.
* Chaingun takes longer to reload.
* 5.45mm Assault Rifle's shotgun is faster to fire.
* Adrenal Boost sprite is slightly smaller.
* Support Consumables (Sentry, Swarmers, Flame Turret, etc.) have had their maximum amount carried increased.
* Support Consumables are more common.
* Backpacks have a higher chance to give rare ammo instead of energy cells.
* 20G Pump's shells spawn from the proper angle (Ejection port on the right side, so shells shoot out the right side now.)
* 5.6mm Carbine has a rewritten data log.
* 20mm Magazine has had its sizes fixed (GOODNESS THAT WAS A WIDE BOI)
* Crossbow's select and deselect states now recognize if there's a bolt loaded or not.
* Dark Matter Guns now spawn 2 energy cells when scrapped.
* Magazines have more rotations.
* Overall improvements to weapon firing sounds (Simply changed the sound channel that certain weapons used when firing, prevents overlapping sound effects on rapid firing guns.)
* 12 Gauge Pump has a new stock in its world sprites.
* Magazine drop foley has been added. It isn't ~good~ foley, but it's something.
* 10mm Pistol Zombie now scream properly when burning.
* New sprites for Female Rifle Zombie.
* Many weapons have had their PDA descriptions redone to be more concise when needed and more descriptive when needed.
* 10mm Pistol Zombie now uses the right sprite on the first frame of its death.

[slyrboi]

Is there no fix for LZDoom? Or am i missing things out?

[CaptainNurbles]

Just tested the mod with the latest version of LZDoom. Apparently the crashing issue is with the medical harness's abilities, since LZDoom isn't apparently using the latest version of ZScript.

Unfortunately, since the code for the medical harness is somebody else's and I know bugger all about ZScript, the only solution I can come up with would be to delete the offending code. Either that or ask the original code author to modify it to work with LZDoom. It'll be a lil' bit before I can get to it but I can upload an LZDoom friendly version of the mod without the harness in it to solve the problem.

[slyrboi]

Just tested the mod with the latest version of LZDoom. Apparently the crashing issue is with the medical harness's abilities, since LZDoom isn't apparently using the latest version of ZScript.

Unfortunately, since the code for the medical harness is somebody else's and I know bugger all about ZScript, the only solution I can come up with would be to delete the offending code. Either that or ask the original code author to modify it to work with LZDoom. It'll be a lil' bit before I can get to it but I can upload an LZDoom friendly version of the mod without the harness in it to solve the problem.

Alright neat, but where to find the code? LZDoom only stated the error as "2 errors while parsing DECORATE scripts".

[CaptainNurbles]

That would be "ZScript/healydan.zc" (shocked I haven't been smacked for that godawful pun) which has the offending code. To fully remove the medical harness you'd have to delete HealyDan.zc, then mosey over to ZScript.zc in the root folder and remove the following line:

#include "zscript/HealyDan.zc"

That will fix the LZDoom crashing. I never use LZDoom myself so I never caught that issue myself.

I'll be sure to post an LZDoom friendly version of the mod soonish, I've caught a few bugs and errors while playing casually and I wanna try to catch more before posting a hot fix.