scalliano's 667 Shuffle! - IT'S BACK!!

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

Did you fix the Cheshire Cacodemon by removing it? Because I just played a whole game of Doom 2 without seeing one.

What makes the Cheshire Cacodemon hang ZDoom, anyway? Sometimes, I see it open its mouth to attack and then time stops forever. It has weird powers, but I'm sure ruining my game isn't one of them

[NeuralStunner]

What makes the Cheshire Cacodemon hang ZDoom, anyway?

Poor coding. (Specifically, an unmitigated 0-tic loop.) We investigated the problem, and the Realm667 version was fixed and updated.

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

Does that mean the Shuffle will be updated yet again? Bit of a pain since there's no patch and it has to be downloaded in full every time, and there's a lot to download.

Maybe I should wait a month again...

[scalliano]

The Cheshire was removed temporarily because of the glitch. I'll probably reintroduce it in its fixed state ... sometime ...

Patching a mod like this would only serve to create a bigger mess in the long run - many of the WADS are now inter-dependent and occasionally assets are removed as well as added. Even with a proper .pk3 file structure this would be an issue.

[thesleeve]

I feel hesitant to bump this topic, as it hasn't been updated in over six months. Also, I realize that being a newcomer to a forum and bumping an old topic is sort of poor etiquette. So, I apologize.

That being said, I would like to try my hand at making some modifications to Scalliano's 667 Shuffle, and I figure this is really the only proper place to get that ball rolling. I see that Scalliano is still quite active on the forums, so I hope to hear back from him!

I have been playing with Scalliano's 667 for a few weeks now, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a lot of fun, and it really breathes some new life into WADs that I've been playing over and over for years and years. However, the sheer number of weapons can be a bit overwhelming, and a little unbalanced, especially with the customized and highly-specific ammo varieties.

There are cases where, for example, you could get your hands on a ton of the less common ammo varieties (demonic sphere, sniper rounds, etc.), but never find the actual weapon that uses them. Conversely, you could be finding weapons left and right, and end up with so many types that you don't know what to do with them all... for example, there are a total of eleven cell weapons that fit into the class 6 slot... That makes it a pain to cycle through to find the one you want in the middle of a fight. While I realize that each one of them has its own quirks and unique capabilities, I feel that some of them just don't differentiate themselves enough to warrant inclusion.

So, my proposal is pretty simple. I want to see if it's possible to make a Scalliano's 667 Shuffle "Lite", which would get rid of some of the wackier stuff to give players a more balanced experience that's somewhere between the original game and the current incarnation of the shuffle. The current version of the shuffle contains ~47 weapons, and I would be looking to maybe cut that in half. I assume that it might be possible to do this by simply removing WADs from the pk3 and then deleting any references to them in the script that generates the shuffle. The only problem is, I've never edited WADs before, so I'm not sure where to start. I would be willing to learn and do the legwork on that. I just need some guidance on getting started.

If this would be too difficult or painful to do using the current incarnation of the shuffle, perhaps I'll go off on my own and make a 667 module from scratch for the Oblige random level generator, using Scalliano's Shuffle as a guide.

Scalliano, if you're there, please let me know what you think.

Thanks, and sorry again for bumping an old topic.
TheSleeve

[insightguy]

To edit the wad. you will first need slade which can be downloaded here

When you edit it. do not delete the entire wad files as they usually house all the scripts of the weapons in one decorate

I would also suggest removing all the weapons that over power and rearrange the drop rates for each gun.

To remove weapons, simply delete their decorate and their value in the randomizer code

And you can screw all what I said and play AEOD. It's much better than this. trust me.

[thesleeve]

Thanks, insightguy. Your answer was very... insightful?

Seriously, though... that helps a lot.

I grabbed Slade and I'm digging through the massive .pk3 archive. It looks like the randomizer scripting is all contained in the DECORATE file in the _mwr wad. It's all starting to make sense. I guess most of the new stuff just inherits from already-existing content and has a random chance of spawning in place of the original. For example, the plain ol' zombie spawner:

Code: Select all

actor ZombieSpawner1 : RandomSpawner replaces ZombieMan
{
	+ISMONSTER
	DropItem "NewZombieMan" 	256 10
    	DropItem "NewShotgunGuy" 	256 3
	DropItem "ChainsawZombie" 	256 1
	DropItem "FemaleZombie" 	256 2
	DropItem "PistolZombie" 	256 2
	DropItem "FemaleSergeant" 	256 1
	DropItem "RapidFireTrooper" 	256 2
	DropItem "ZSecPistol" 		256 2
	DropItem "ZSpecOpsShotgun" 	256 1
	DropItem "UziZombie" 		256 1
	DropItem "SMGGuy" 		256 1
}

Basically, the relative chance of each item being spawned is shown in the far right. "NewZombieMan" is ten times more likely than "ChainsawZobmie", for example. If I really didn't like one of those enemies for whatever reason, I could just lower the number to zero, and there would be zero chance that the item in question would ever be spawned.

Likewise, for weapons...

Code: Select all

actor ShotgunSpawner : RandomSpawner replaces Shotgun
{
	DropItem "NewShotgun" 256 10
	DropItem "NewSSG" 256 2
	DropItem "AutoShotgun" 256 2
	DropItem "CannonShotgun" 256 1
	DropItem "SuperPump" 256 1
	DropItem "AlphaRifle" 256 1
}

Same idea. If I don't like a particular weapon, I can just prevent it from ever spawning. Nice. Of course, I would then want to go and find any enemy that has that weapon listed as a drop item (dropped when the enemy dies), and either prevent that enemy from ever spawning, or just edit its DECORATE file and change the items listed under its DropItem list.

I guess I could just pick the weapons I don't care for, and go through that exercise with each of them. That seems like the safest method, since removing WADs from the directory entirely would result in a bunch of broken dependencies and probably would cause a launch failure when trying to run the WAD.

Makes total sense!

Scalliano, if you're around, let me know if I'm missing something. I'm going to go off and see how this works out.

I only have one remaining question. If I want to remove the land mines entirely, for example, I could set the spawn chance to zero, but the ammo will still be displayed in the ammo list on the HUD. Any easy way to just remove them entirely, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

[scalliano]

And you can screw all what I said and play AEOD. It's much better than this. trust me.

Insightguy somewhat missing the point there Trust me, if less is what you want, AEoD is NOT the way to go

This probably would have been better as a PM, but never mind ...

Anyway, despite the lack of an update in recent months, I'm still maintaining this project and had been planning on letting this thread die and starting a new one whenever the new version was ready.

There's nothing stopping you editing the mod, however bear in mind that a lot of the .WADS are interdependant and arbitraily removing stuff can mess up other stuff. You'll need to take note of which .WADS reference items contained in other .WADS in the .pk3 - something I can't even help you with as it's hard enough keeping track of all the crap in there myself.

Or you can just bind a key to drop the weapons you don't want.

EDIT: Removing ammo icons is as simple as removing the "Inventory.Icon" entry from the ammo's DECORATE lump.

[thesleeve]

Excellent. Thanks very much, Scalliano. I would have private messaged you, but since I was a new member to the forum and hadn't posted yet, I wasn't allowed to PM until one of my posts was approved by a moderator. I guess that's their method of keeping spammers out.

I'm very much looking forward to playing whatever you have in store for the next version. Like I said, the Shuffle has been giving me hours of entertainment!

In order to do the least amount of editing, but give me maximum flexibility in enabling/disabling weapons I'm considering the idea of replacing all of the ammo and weapons in question with a spawner, and then just fill in the appropriate replacement weapon or ammo. For example, if I wanted to remove the BFG from the game entirely (just replace it with a plasma rifle, let's say), I would add this:

Code: Select all

actor NewBFGReplacer : RandomSpawner replaces NewBFG
{
	DropItem "NewPlasmaRifle" 256 1
}

So, if a BFG is spawned in the map, or dropped by an enemy, it will automatically be replaced by a plasma rifle. Problem solved!

[edited 22:26 EST to clarify]

[insightguy]

I suggested for you to remove the ones you want to remove so the file size will be lighter

[BlueFireZ88]

Interesting mod, I'll have to play with it more.

[Hellser]

And you can screw all what I said and play AEOD. It's much better than this. trust me.

---

Not everyone wants to play AEOD. Anyways. Going to give this a try, seems rather fun.

[atar]

I really looking foward playing the updated version of 667 mode!Please give it to us!And also please don't remove older weapons/monsters if it is possible.Thnx in advance.

[insightguy]

And you can screw all what I said and play AEOD. It's much better than this. trust me.

---

Not everyone wants to play AEOD. Anyways. Going to give this a try, seems rather fun.

We all have our own opinions.

But I think we can all agree that doomguy's warzone was the worst randomizer evar.

The reason I said to play AEOD is because this had no update in a while, so if he wanted an updated randomiser, then play that (IMO)

[scalliano]

I really looking foward playing the updated version of 667 mode!Please give it to us!And also please don't remove older weapons/monsters if it is possible.Thnx in advance.

Relax, nothing is being removed from the new version, but you'll have to wait until it's ready™. You can expect a pretty major upgrade, though. Not just in terms of content, but gameplay too.

@insightguy: AEoD is amazing IMHO, but I started this as a more "sensible" alternative for people who may have thought it was a bit too crazy. Sadly the idea never really caught on with anyone else (as Doomguy2000 clearly demonstrated )

Also LOL @ Hellser