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Abba Zabba wrote:Blazing fast response because I seemingly found a sweet spot with the inconsistency of these tics of the engine; remove a little over one quarter of a second from the duration of a given effect, in tics only. So for example, with stims, they normally would have a tic duration of 140 (4 seconds, each second being about the same as 35 tics) but when I shave off 10 tics (technically 8.75 tics, but since you can't do decimals with this effect, just round up. Plus it's a nice clean easy to remember number.) to get a value of 130 tics, it seems to fall in a sweet spot and trigger correctly every time, but I'm not holding my breath just yet. I tested with 20 stims so far, while taking away health in increments of 10, and it's worked correctly so far.
Lowering by 10 tics did help a notable amount with stims, but with bandages it still has a chance to heal one extra point of health since it lasts for longer and therefore has more tics to potentially overcount. I won't worry about it too much because it's not really game breaking. At some point though I'll look for smoother methods of slowly regaining health, since I do want to have stims heal that 20 HP in 3 seconds, which isn't doable with PowerRegeneration since it heals X amount for Y seconds.
Lowering the bandage tic duration by 15 tics still occasionally heals 11 points instead of 10. If you count the seconds while you're healing you can weasel that extra hit point in if you apply a second bandage just under one second after a bandage wears off. I even went so far as to lower it by 20 tics and it still can heal 11 instead of 20. I'm just going to leave it at 340 tics duration to prevent any possibility of being healed 9 instead of 10.
Last edited by CaptainNurbles on Thu Feb 04, 2021 4:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
I tested 50 stims with a duration of -12 the intended amount of tics, and all stims worked as intended. It seemed to give just enough budge to make the slower counts have enough time to trigger another second of healing, while being just short enough to stop an erroneous extra second of healing. Now I'll test bandages and tack on to this post. If bandages count cleanly, blood bags should be fine as well.
Edit: yeah this might just be a case by case type of deal. Shaving off 12 tics for stims seems to be ideal, I'll see if bandages work best with a particular amount.
Spoiler: So far:
Stims: 128 tics Bandages: 328 tics (if utilizing 10 HP over 10 seconds)
Edit: fair enough on the logic of not shorting the player anything. I'm wondering if, on item use, you can set an amount of hidden points for a given healing item (for example, BandageHealing, 10 points) to provide to the player, then you have some function gradually take away these hidden points (which could be a function given on item use, too) and give the player in return however much health one point of a healing item gives when it's taken away. That way, you have locked, definite amounts of health, and the only variable up in the air is the exact miniscule amount of time variance that you happen to be healed.
Abba Zabba wrote:fair enough on the logic of not shorting the player anything.
I've spent a good bit of time using your values and I've not noticed any instances of being shorted health. I also have been trying my damndest to time the heals to the 35 tic timing as best as I can and so far it works fine without giving extra or less health. I'm keeping it for now, at least unless it does cause issues later.
Abba Zabba wrote:I'm wondering if, on item use, you can set an amount of hidden points for a given healing item (for example, BandageHealing, 10 points) to provide to the player, then you have some function gradually take away these hidden points (which could be a function given on item use, too) and give the player in return however much health one point of a healing item gives when it's taken away. That way, you have locked, definite amounts of health, and the only variable up in the air is the exact miniscule amount of time variance that you happen to be healed.
Might be an ACS or ZScript thing, but once I do start learning those it wouldn't hurt to look into.
Aaaaaaaaaanyways, gonna go ahead and push this update. I still haven't completed the extra monster attack patterns. Genuinely don't even want to think about clicking on the Monster DECORATE lump because I spent an inordinate amount of time with it balancing out enemy damage resistances to be less dumb and I am sick and tired of it lol. A good number of small tweaks, fixes, and balancing has been done, but shouldn't break saves.
* NEW SPRITES) Fire Axe: Now with the appearance of an actual fire axe! * 5.45mm sniper was able to be picked up no matter your weight due to a typo. This has been fixed. * Hectebus was made smaller since they had a chance to get stuck in walls on spawn, breaking some encounters and even maps. * 4.6mm PDW has new sounds again. Just wasn't too happy with the old sounds. * Explosives were rebalanced: Shrapnel) Decreased in damage. 40mm) Decreased impact damage, decreased splash damage. Jesus Christ, these things were ridiculously powerful. 20mm) Slightly more shrapnel generated, but decreased impact and splash damage. 84mm) Increased rarity of ammo and an alternative ammo type. See below. Impact Bomb) Increased frequency of appearance, but weaker splash damage. Flame Bomb) Slightly less rare. Frag Grenade) Lowered splash damage. Land Mine) More shrapnel generated. Barrel) More shrapnel generated. * 84mm rockets and 40mm grenades are rarer, and their big box pickups give less. * Monster damage resistances have been reworked entirely. A lot of the OG resistances just didn't make a lot of sense, and too many critters had high physical resistances on top of large health pools. * Forgotten Ones have a slightly larger explosion radius on death, as I've not once been harmed by their death explosion. * Squire shields last longer. * 7.62mm Battle Rifles are more likely to spawn off Plasma Rifle Spawns. 5.56mm LMGs are now able to be spawned on Plasma Rifles given their usefulness and rarity. * BFG3K can now be scrapped properly. * Skull keys have been given more visual flare. * 6.2mm Combat Rifle's semi-fire mode has been sped up. * 84mm Launcher's reload sequence was fixed (before you could reload even if the gun was fully loaded, wasting a rocket.) * Bandages now give 4 units per pickup, but only heal 10 per use. * Bloodpacks, berserk kits, super stims, berserk injectors, and pain killers can be carried up to a max of 5. * BFG9K/BFG3K have been buffed in damage (BFG9K/BFG mini ball both have a higher damage minimum, but damage maximum is the same.) * BFG balls, large and small, also emit tracers in a 360 degree field now, rather than the OG 90 degree field. Tracers still emit from the projectile itself, though. * BFG balls, large and small, now show proper decals on impact. * Rail Guns have had their damages buffed. Was a bit iffy on this, but I wanted these things to be more useful against boss encounters. * 84mm Launcher now has two ammo types: Standard is a high explosive yield dealing Explosive damage, and rarely HEAT rockets can be found that deal Shaped damage. Ammo type can be changed with a new binding. * 40mm grenades have a slightly larger blast radius. * 84mm HEAT rockets have a smaller blast radius. * Magnum zombies now drop .357 ammo ONLY if they aren't wielding the .45 magnum. * Magnum zombie now drops .45 pistols when gibbed only if they were previously wielding them. Before a gibbed revolver zombie would actually drop .45 magnums and not revolvers due to a mistyped State name. * .22 Pistol Zombie now drops a lead pipe giver (before he was dropping a regular lead pipe, which after a few tics turns into a lead pipe giver.) * Inconsistent healing amounts have been kinda fixed but not really ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ * FUCKIN' HELL I THINK THIS WHOLE TIME THE PAIN KILLERS AND ZERK INJECTORS WEREN'T ACTUALLY REDUCING INCOMING DAMAGE. Just now noticed that they protect you from DamageType "None" and likely has been doing so since I initially released this. Fixed. * Motion blur removed from knife swing.
Just wanted to add, this actually works pretty well with the Project Malice monster pack too. I combined it with a few other mods to get a nice spooky atmosphere with limited ammo and scavenging. Use to pickup definitely feels like a must since it's easy to grab too many weapons by accident and slow down.
Have you considered having lootable corpses, either enemies or decorations? It'd be cool to have some more variety in barrels and such, maybe a small chance of supply crates, bodies with ammo/broken guns/meds, etc. it can help create some environmental storytelling when you've got a marine body surrounded by spent ammo, but still a little loot to grab here and there.
-Ghost- wrote:Use to pickup definitely feels like a must since it's easy to grab too many weapons by accident and slow down.
One of the first things I'm going to look into doing is integrating Use to Pickup directly into the mod. I tried that some time ago but ran into some issues.
-Ghost- wrote:Have you considered having lootable corpses, either enemies or decorations? It'd be cool to have some more variety in barrels and such, maybe a small chance of supply crates, bodies with ammo/broken guns/meds, etc. it can help create some environmental storytelling when you've got a marine body surrounded by spent ammo, but still a little loot to grab here and there.
That actually might be doable in DECORATE. Have corpses, both spawned on maps and dropped by enemies, also have a Thing spawn on top of it that you would interact with with Use to Pickup. Just press the Use button on it and it spits out random bits of gear that thematically fits whatever corpse you're looting. This would replace the ammo that's dropped by zombies.
I'll look into that another time, though, since my plans for the next update I push out involve adding CVARs for having spent magazines and casings disappear over time and for controlling how scarce loot is, adding Use to Pickup, and other such general improvements. Thank ye for the idea!
Second lootable corpses, they could even have the monster name as an item (but as a tiny, centralized item bound to the monster, rather than the corpse's hitbox itself. Would definitely help reduce clutter so you could focus on weapons first, then scrounge for ammo if you want, making it easier to keep track of things. Would double too as a deterrent in a fight, too, as the slight bit of extra time required to fish through pockets for ammo and medical items can get you killed, while still offering dropped weapons as an immediate means of arming. I like the concept.
Cool to hear that throwables will get a prep throw state like the landmine, the required throw windup is part of the reason I'm leery of using them on anything able to attack the split second I peek my head out.
On the subject of PDA logs, could you add timestamps to all messages, except the ones that already have a more official 'government server' date header? It's cool to know exactly what time these were written and how these things change over time, like my favorite message, the Hope log.
Going to go ahead and drop an extra update because Use to Pickup is now integrated directly into Scavver's Paradise! Was able to get it running fine. Now we can all rejoice as Health Bonuses can be picked up with great ease instead of having to be grabbed one at a time! At least, until I can think of a more interesting use for them and change their behavior entirely. This shouldn't break your saves if you've been running Scavver with Use to Pickup, but if you weren't using it and update to this it might cause issues. Not sure if it will or not, though.
* Added time stamps to many of the data logs to help give more a sense of progression to the happenings of the world. * Integrated argv's Use to Pickup directly into the mod!
Thanks for adding time stamps, and integrating Use to Pickup! Now I can remove it from my load profile.
Spoiler: Suggestions
Cyberbarons are less aggressive than cybruisers. I've added the +MissileMore flag to the Cyberbaron and it feels appropriately brutal. I don't see why being a tougher base demon would somehow make them calmer.
The 5mm sniper variant could be more accurate, when in comparison to all the other snipers available. It's optimal use, picking off small monsters like zombies, imps, and lost souls at range, is fairly diminished when it has such a hefty chance of missing. I'd boost it's current accuracy by about 50%-75%.
I think one suggestion for the healing items, maybe unifying the visual effects a bit more and making them more subtle. The entire screen overlay effects definitely let you know something's working, but the blue or white tinge can mess with the lighting. I tend to run my games pretty dark with flashlight/flare mods and using the bandages is like a free light amp depending on the room. Maybe a pulsing icon on the bottom, or something that fades out as it runs out?
New update! Not too many additions or changes, BUT there is now an options menu featuring controls for how much loot is spawned on maps, and an option to enable a casing/spent magazine despawner to help out with performance if desired. Also a new health pickup that replaces the old Health Bonus!
1.7 You Need Glasses If You Want To CVAR Away! Uploaded 8/2/21
* Added tags for keys and hellish pickups. * Reworded the data log for the 9mm auto pistol. * Blue skull would float and bump against the ground. Fixed. * Caco variants should stop infighting now. * Cyberbaron is more aggressive. * 5.45mm Sniper is slightly more accurate. * MAJOR: New menu dedicated to Scavver's Paradise settings! * Sliders to determine how often supplies are replaced with useless goods. * Setting to enable a Junk Cleaner! Enable it and empty mags and spent casings are removed from the map after a minute to help with performance. * Weapon, health, and ammo spawners have been modified and rebalanced with these sliders in mind. Particularly, 40mm/84mm ammo boxes give more ammo out per pickup to make up for this. * Melee vests are more likely to spawn; Weave Jackets are less likely to spawn. * Health items no longer light up the screen when active, with the exception of the berserk injector. * NEW ITEM: Adrenal Boost) Boost your way out of an ambush at a cost. * Health Bonuses are now replaced with Adrenal Boosts, and are much rarer now. * Updated Medical Goods PDA document to have better formatting.
By the way, what would you folks think about having a dodge mechanic? Press jump while moving left, right, or backwards and perform a quick dodge to the side to get the player out of harm's way. I was given a script for something like that for an older mod project of mine and I could implement that code into this one pretty easily. Could make melee combat feel that much more fun since you would be better able to handle yourself under fire from ranged projectiles.
Bug: 9mm rifle zombies can drop .45 ACP pistol magazines for seemingly no reason. Unless this is intended for this zombie since it's a sergeant tier spawn.
Good update! I'm personally a fan of dodge mechanics in games, as I've yet to see one that detracts in anyway (bear in mind these are generally great games, such as FromSoft games or Enter the Gungeon.) If added, I'd think that monster melee would need some sort of buff, mainly along the lines of movement. One way could be to make melee monsters move into their attack so that they close the distance to ensure their melee strike lands, along with potentially boxing you in for more pain. Dodging by way of quickly darting back into cover is also a good counter to gun toting zombies.
Also, just to be clear, scav logs 1,2,3, and 8 have incorrect dates, yes? It seems like the setting takes place around 2108, some decades into the invasion, but these logs seem to erroneously have an extra hundred years tacked on (potentially barring scav log 8, which is the ID Software crew, but even then, it's weird for them to be in 2108 but you get what I'm saying.)
Abba Zabba wrote:Bug: 9mm rifle zombies can drop .45 ACP pistol magazines for seemingly no reason. Unless this is intended for this zombie since it's a sergeant tier spawn.
Tis intended. All the gunner zombies have various things they can drop. They always drop the gun they're carrying, either functioning or broken, have a chance to drop ammo for said gun, have a lesser chance to drop a tiered pistol magazine if they aren't already using a pistol, and for the shotgunner-tier and chaingunner-tier zombies a chance to drop either an impact bomb or a frag grenade, respectively. This will be expanded once I work in corpse looting.
Abba Zabba wrote:If added, I'd think that monster melee would need some sort of buff, mainly along the lines of movement. One way could be to make melee monsters move into their attack so that they close the distance to ensure their melee strike lands, along with potentially boxing you in for more pain.
Glad ya brought that up. I'll be sure to work on that once I finish expanding enemy attack patterns.
Abba Zabba wrote:Also, just to be clear, scav logs 1,2,3, and 8 have incorrect dates, yes? It seems like the setting takes place around 2108, some decades into the invasion, but these logs seem to erroneously have an extra hundred years tacked on (potentially barring scav log 8, which is the ID Software crew, but even then, it's weird for them to be in 2108 but you get what I'm saying.)
Heck, thank ya for pointing that out. Completely had a brain fart there. Dates have been corrected to prevent accidental scavenger time travel.
Another fun thing might be to create a "loot" monster, like a zombie carrying a lot of gear who spawns rarely but can drop bigger ammo drops, like a box of shells, bullets, etc.
Is it possible to play around with the weight limits as well, like maybe finding straps, satchels, backpacks etc that increase your carrying capacity?
Abba Zabba wrote:Bug: 9mm rifle zombies can drop .45 ACP pistol magazines for seemingly no reason. Unless this is intended for this zombie since it's a sergeant tier spawn.
This is by intention, to help sorta combat the relative rarity of .45 mags. All gunner zombies drop the weapon they wield, whether broken or functional, a small chance to drop ammo for that weapon, an even smaller chance to drop a tiered handgun magazine if not already using a handgun, and for certain zombies a highly rare chance to drop either impact bombs or frag grenades, depending on what the zombie is. This loot convention will translate into the corpse looting mechanic if I can figure out something clever for making that work.
Abba Zabba wrote:If added, I'd think that monster melee would need some sort of buff, mainly along the lines of movement. One way could be to make melee monsters move into their attack so that they close the distance to ensure their melee strike lands, along with potentially boxing you in for more pain. Dodging by way of quickly darting back into cover is also a good counter to gun toting zombies.
Agreed. I've gotten to the point that I'm rarely hurt by melee enemies, even when I'm going full melee on them. Will come in future updates alongside new enemy behaviors.
Abba Zabba wrote:Also, just to be clear, scav logs 1,2,3, and 8 have incorrect dates, yes? It seems like the setting takes place around 2108, some decades into the invasion, but these logs seem to erroneously have an extra hundred years tacked on (potentially barring scav log 8, which is the ID Software crew, but even then, it's weird for them to be in 2108 but you get what I'm saying.)
Good grief, how did I screw up NUMBERS? Fixed, thank ya for pointing that out.
-Ghost- wrote:Another fun thing might be to create a "loot" monster, like a zombie carrying a lot of gear who spawns rarely but can drop bigger ammo drops, like a box of shells, bullets, etc.
Definitely worth looking into! I'd need to look around for sprites that fit such a critter, but it's definitely tempting.
-Ghost- wrote:Is it possible to play around with the weight limits as well, like maybe finding straps, satchels, backpacks etc that increase your carrying capacity?
Maybe? I feel like it is possible, but with my limited knowledge of ACS I can't even begin to think of where to start since that would require multiple scripts to run, and would complicate the weapon pickup items already. Once I redo the weapons in ZScript I'll look into that, because I do agree that it's a good idea.
So this is likely going to be the last update I push before I start working on version 2.0, which is going to feature plenty of new goodies and all that shit. Weapons converted to ZScript, more writing, special ammo types for shotguns, legendary-quality weapons, and much more are currently on the list of "Shit what Captain Nurbles is going to attempt adding/changing to the mod but will not promise due to the difficulty in doing so." Any major, game breaking issues will be attended to ASAP, but I don't intend on doing much with the mod before I do this major update. EDIT: I forgot to mention that this will break your saves due to new ACS scripts.
Before that, tho, I'll be taking a good break from this mod to do things that aren't stare at SLADE and GIMP for hours at a time lol.
* Dodging! Press jump and left/right/back to perform a brief dodge to avoid being attacked. * Dates in the PDA logs have been fixed to make actual chronological sense. * Sledgehammer animations were cleaned up to look nicer.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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.
I've got a metric dickload of cool shit planned for version 2.0, and I can't guarantee that any of it will make the final cut. It all just depends on my ability to effectively code it in without actually knowing anything about coding lol. If you folks have any fun ideas for suggestions on neat stuff or improvements to throw in, be sure to leave a comment. Can't make any promises, of course. If any of you would like to throw in your hat to help me get this shit done, feel free to toss me a PM here on the forums. I'd be more than happy to take in all the help I can get!
by CaptainNurbles » Thu Feb 04, 2021 4:13 pm 
