Astonishing Jhessica Jhett [alpha 1]

[WORrior]

The Amazing Adventures of Astonishing Jhessica Jhett
The bravest space bounty hunter... of the 23rd century!


What's up, space cadets!
After weeks of work, I'm hereby presenting you a new (G)ZDoom gameplay mod: The Amazing Adventures of Astonishing Jhessica Jhett (J-Jhett, for short). It's heavily influenced by B-class science fiction movies and relies heavily on "In Pursit of Greed" resource stockpile. See CREDITS.TXT inside the pack for full credits list. After you do that, get ready for a lots of robots, aliens, laser weapons...

...and bugs. As you can see, this is an alpha version. On top of that, it's been made by a beginner. While I've tried to do my best to make it shine (lots of Wiki and forums research) I'm more than sure that there will be maaaany bugs to hunt down. I'm also not going to hide that code and firepower-balance issues might be the biggest of troubles since I'm quite a Sunday doomer (and not a programmer) as well.

On the good side, though, it doesn't exactly have to be the worst mod you have ever played. I've tested it on couple of WADS (Doom 2 seems to be beatable) and introduced some quite fresh features. If you're curious about them, see the spoiler below.

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1. Advanced Survivalis System - this is a nod of appreciation towards In Pursuit of Greed which this mod seems to rip off almost everything pay homage to. Anyway, that other game featured the "A.S.S. camera" (a rear mirror). Here, A.S.S. became a little inventory item that lets you buy certain power ups at any time (providing you have enough "memory chips", of course). Press "Use item" to activate A.S.S. anytime during the gameplay.

2. FPP dying sequence - make sure to disable Zdoom's "Death camera" first and get ready to accompany JJhett on her final... err, final fall-down. Note, that this trick needed a "Buddha mode" turned on so you can actually die when you have 1 HP left and get hit one more time (I guess it's a right thing to say that dying with 1 HP on a status bar isn't a bug - it's a feature )

3. Rescue the princess mini-game - a bad sci-fi movie can't simply exist without damsels in distress, so here's your one.

And here goes your share of screenshots:
Shots were made while playing Equinox, Slaughterfest 2012B and Evilution - note, that most of those WADs have alternated the HUD font (which as to set to something custom anyway).

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Misc info:
- To rescue prisoners, kick them with Alt fire.
- A "Rescue the princess" mini-game isn't crucial for completing a level, treat it as a bonus feature - you can win a fat prize but don't loose very much in case of failure (the fight shouldn't be that deadly...); that's because in many maps Cyberdemons/Spidermasterminds teleport to player location from remote sectors.


Get your laser rifles ready!
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0c7dle


Known bugs:
Mod is still in works but since this is an alpha version, you may expect a marathon of bugs. Feel free to report them on PM or in this thread. Many things (like HUD) are a subject to change. As for now though, here's the known bugs roster:

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- Probes can dissappear on exploding.
- Player's projectile can sometime sink into a wall - I really don't know what happens here...
- Sometimes you can't escape A.S.S. interface by hitting "Use item" key; if that's the case, just select one of the weapons.
- Mask enemy spawns a lot of electro-traps after you die.
- Bullet casings are spawning mid-air if you look down or up

And here's the most crucial to-do:
Fonts, player sprites, title cards, take a closer looks at recolors

EDIT 03-06-2013: re-uploaded; alpha 2 is in works!

[TheLightBad96]

i absolutely love the death sequence.... it is fricken awesome but unique to doom modding as well

[Enjay]

Very nice. Very different. I like it.

[Matt]

Definitely digging this 80s-metal postapoc vibe.

Just one crit: all the inventory and special messages stuff I think should just be ordinary Prints/Logs/CustomInventory/etc. so a new player can go back and see what happened in the console and we can use things without binding a whole new set of keys just for this interface.

What exactly is my reward for rescuing the princess anyway? And what are the chips for?


EDIT: One suggestion that's been on my mind ever since I saw the instruction that you free them by using your kick. At first I thought better of suggesting this, but YOLO ::punches self in mouth for said acronym use::

After the rescue sequence, the princess gets up with a "MMH... HAHA!!!" and starts running around shooting stuff. Might be she does that right away and you need to buff the demon a bit for those times you don't even pick her up at all.

[LilWhiteMouse]

I like the princess rescue concept. Kudos.

[WORrior]

Thanks for your nice opinios! There are some other ideas I'd like to introduce to that mod (some of them might get scrapped since they doesn't seem fit the Doom gameplay) but I'll get to that after I finish polishing this version. I'm very glad you liked it!

Definitely digging this 80s-metal postapoc vibe.

Just one crit: all the inventory and special messages stuff I think should just be ordinary Prints/Logs/CustomInventory/etc. so a new player can go back and see what happened in the console and we can use things without binding a whole new set of keys just for this interface.

What exactly is my reward for rescuing the princess anyway? And what are the chips for?

You get max health, armor and chips for rescuing the princeess. Chips on the other hand are treated as currency. When you press "USE ITEM" key during the gameplay, a A.S.S. device shows up the screen and lets you pick a power-up (like CPR system, brief invincibility, robot-hijacker) for a price of those - I'll try to hint those more clearly in next version, accompanied by console logs.

Last but not least: do you think that such mod should have blood splats in?

[Matt]

Last but not least: do you think that such mod should have blood splats in?

I personally like the way it looks now, big blood splats in combat kinda detract from the look IMO.

[twinkieman93]

Last but not least: do you think that such mod should have blood splats in?

I personally like the way it looks now, big blood splats in combat kinda detract from the look IMO.

While normally I'd disagree, given that all the weapons seem to be energy weapons of some description, there should be no blood unless something gets gibbed. It's the same reason lightsabers don't draw blood; the bolt cauterizes the wound. Some people say "well how is that efficient when it comes to killing people", but they apparently didn't notice that while the wound isn't bleeding, it's a very, VERY large wound, and probably a fist-sized lump of some poor guy's torso has now been vaporized. That's going to cause some issues, blood or no.

Loved this, played it through with Equinox because it's an astonishingly good fit. The princess rescue thing was pretty friggin' cool, as many others have said, and the auto-revive thing was also awesome. I wish there was ammo on sale in the shop. Not that ammo is an issue or anything but it'd be nice, and while I'm thinking of it being able to buy armor would also be nice.

[WORrior]

(...)
After the rescue sequence, the princess gets up with a "MMH... HAHA!!!" and starts running around shooting stuff. Might be she does that right away and you need to buff the demon a bit for those times you don't even pick her up at all.

Good point! Since I'm also planning a Space Amazons addon (oops, probably I shouldn't have said that), I'll try to spare one female enemy spritesheet just for warrior princess. It's going to be a heck of sprite editing but wish me luck with those

(...)
Loved this, played it through with Equinox because it's an astonishingly good fit. The princess rescue thing was pretty friggin' cool, as many others have said, and the auto-revive thing was also awesome. I wish there was ammo on sale in the shop. Not that ammo is an issue or anything but it'd be nice, and while I'm thinking of it being able to buy armor would also be nice.

I'm glad you liked it I decided to leave ammo and armor out of the shop due to possible gameplay balance issues. I was kind of worried about making this mod to easy for more experienced players but when I think about it now, it doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. Another thing to reconsider for next version!

EDIT: Argh, I accidentally double-quoted two users...

[Matt]

oh god I just saw the fullscreen hud it is huge

also what does the stun gun upgrade do?

and how do you tell how many chips you have?

[twinkieman93]

The "upgrade" lets you hit alt-fire and instantly disable any robotic enemy. You can only do this three times before needing a refill.

The amount of chips is above your ammo.

[WORrior]

oh god I just saw the fullscreen hud it is huge

also what does the stun gun upgrade do?

and how do you tell how many chips you have?

Just like twinkieman93 said Also, does your HUD look any different than the one depicted in OP's screenshots?

[twinkieman93]

Ah, I just remembered, I saw more than once that freed hostages were beating the shit out of still-captured hostages. I'm sure their intention was to free the guy, but all they end up doing is beating him down like it was a gang initiation.

[wildweasel]

Here's a few suggestions I can give.

- Equinox.wad might be the best possible fit for this type of mod.
- The scatter-blaster ejects five empty shells every time it fires?
- Perhaps have the rescued hostages deal a special damage type that sends unrescued hostages to their rescued state?
- The HUD looks kind of not-good when scaled up. Perhaps adding a statusbar version of it would be useful.
- On the note of Equinox.wad, since it changes the status bar numbers, it makes the HUD a little difficult to read as well. Perhaps include your own numbers?
- I like your use of IPoG resources.
- Some of the enemies refer to the player as a male ("Which way did he go?" etc.).
- I don't know if you're inheriting most of your weapons from Doom's own guns, but perhaps it'd be a good idea to use the Tag property to change their names for people who use the Weapon Tags function in Display Options. Most of the guns are identified as "Plasma Rifle" when selected with the mouse wheel.
- A minor polishing issue: I find that using the "laughing" sound as your weapon pickup sound 100% of the time gets a little silly when you're picking up rooms full of dropped weapons (like if you've just destroyed a room full of the shotgunner replacements). Perhaps use a $random in sndinfo, and have it play a generic clicky noise 75% of the time, and the current sound 25% of the time?

[twinkieman93]

Or perhaps have the laugh for higher-tier weapons, chick-chick sounds for lower tier weapons, and maybe some sort of powering on sound for mid-tier weapons? I dunno. Hell, have different noises for each one that is the character making a quip about that particular weapon. Only the first time she picks it up, of course, after that it should be a generic sound.