Is there Doom Objective Waypoint System Mod?

[GripZ]

Has anyone tried to make a mod that makes key finding and backtracking more easier.
Its basically a boner killer if all of you're adrenaline fueled carnage is put into a temporarily long hiatus due to the lack of monsters in the now blood/gib filled map.

A 3d arrow pointing to a specific key would do, anything to fucking finish the map

[Matt]

Think of it as a dating simulator rather than a porn Flash game.

[GripZ]

Think of it as a dating simulator rather than a porn Flash game.

What?

[Airos]

Think of it as a dating simulator rather than a porn Flash game.

What?

I believe the joke here is that, rather than treating Doom as a "porn flash game" and worrying about "boner killers" and trying to skip all the downtime in favor of just more action, you should instead treat Doom as a "dating simulator", meaning that it's something you invest your time in and explore.

Try Chaos Colosseum. No keys, no switches or buttons, no puzzles, and no backtracking, just endless hordes of monsters.

edit: additionally, you can enable an automap option in (G)Zdoom that indicates where keys are when using the full automap+actors cheat.

[GripZ]

Think of it as a dating simulator rather than a porn Flash game.

What?

I believe the joke here is that, rather than treating Doom as a "porn flash game" and worrying about "boner killers" and trying to skip all the downtime in favor of just more action, you should instead treat Doom as a "dating simulator", meaning that it's something you invest your time in and explore.

Try Chaos Colosseum. No keys, no switches or buttons, no puzzles, and no backtracking, just endless hordes of monsters.

edit: additionally, you can enable an automap option in (G)Zdoom that indicates where keys are when using the full automap+actors cheat.

Kudos

For a second there i thought he was referencing hdoom

[Jaxxoon R]

I thought GZDoom had a marker system for the automap, where you could place numbered points and return to them later?

[Enjay]

Yup, pretty sure it's been there from the original doom.exe days. Bound to M by default. On the automap press the button and a number, starting at 0, appears at your current location.

[Airos]

I thought GZDoom had a marker system for the automap, where you could place numbered points and return to them later?

Yup, pretty sure it's been there from the original doom.exe days. Bound to M by default. On the automap press the button and a number, starting at 0, appears at your current location.

That's still a far cry from a "3d arrow pointing to a specific key", let alone a system that points players towards the next objective. While it's no doubt a useful tool to assist with backtracking, it doesn't "solve" the map for the player, (as much as "there's a key in that direction" can solve any particular map).

--------------------

When the complaint is (to paraphrase) "I don't enjoy keycard hunts, backtracking, and areas void of monsters", the only really helpful response I can conjure is "play maps that don't have those things". I don't think the solution to this complaint is more or better tools to navigate towards keys quickly, nor more or better tools to streamline backtracking. When a game is moddable, just remove the shit you don't like (generic "you"). It seriously has to be less work and more fun than inventing a new way to hurry up and get those parts over with.

Or maybe I'm way off base, and the solution is just "play maps that are better designed". I haven't gone through the megawad yet myself, but listening to ICARUSLIV3S on YouTube talk about Back to Saturn X, he's praised its design for keeping a forward momentum, and looping the player back around to previous areas in good ways that aren't "backtracking".

I mean, hell, for that matter there's always good 'ol NOCLIP. That also saves time having to hunt for switches and keys. Or, go into the options menu and (somewhere, I'm pretty sure) flip on enemy respawns.

[Enjay]

I bet there would be a way of using zscript to put a MoHAA-like compass on screen that gives direction and distance to the keycards on any map. Of course, it wouldn't be able to know which card was needed next so you'd have to be able to select that somehow.

[Airos]

I don't know nothing 'bout Zscript, but I gave this a quick jab in photoshop.

mock-up.png (27.7 KiB) Viewed 2027 times

edit: I didn't give much thought to indicating distance. I personally would opt for a more subtle approach, not giving actual distance in units, but by moving the closest key to the foreground, while still giving information about the location of, and total number of, keys on the map.

mock-up-v2.png (28.38 KiB) Viewed 2023 times

[Enjay]

I like how distance was indicated in MoHAA (the further apart the two brass balls are, the further the distance to the waypoint) but it can just be a number like in my old WAD from 2006.



That was based on code by Grubber which, in turn, started in Apotherm's ACS database thread a long time ago in a galaxy far... oh, you get the point.

[Nash]

I was working on an Oblivion/Fallout 4-styled ZScript-based universal compass mod... currently it marks monsters (just like in the aforementioned games), but it would be interesting to see it mark level exits.

For keys, it's very simple to detect if something is a key and plot it on the compass.

For the "objective flow", what I could do is: First only mark the key pickups. Then when the key is picked up, mark the lines it's mean to open. The problem with the latter is, I can imagine the compass would get very cluttered as usually multiple lines will be marked as locked... hmmm...

For level exits, we could probably check if the marked line is an exit special (I helped figure this out for JPL's KeyMaster mod so I know this is already possible), and if it is, I will spawn an invisible actor at that the center of that line's XY, and have the compass mark it.

It'll be a while before I get this mod into a polished-enough-for-release state but just stating that yes, what the OP wants is possible and hopefully I get to release something as soon as possible. :D

[Enjay]

For level exits, we could probably check if the marked line is an exit special (I helped figure this out for JPL's KeyMaster mod so I know this is already possible), and if it is, I will spawn an invisible actor at that the center of that line's XY, and have the compass mark it.

I take it that it can't cope with exist triggered via scripts?

[Nash]

I take it that it can't cope with exist triggered via scripts?

Correct, unfortunately... there just isn't a way for me to check what an ACS script does, that information just isn't available in ZScript. At least from what I can tell.

[Airos]

Another mod Gripz may be interested in checking out is Doom Delta. I haven't played it myself, but one of the videos on the first page of the thread shows how keys appear on the minimap.

Since it's just a gameplay mod, I'm going to assume it would be compatible with most maps.