Metroid: Demon Hunter - 1.5d, Beta and Github (1/7/22)

[R4L]

We kind of already have a hyper beam with the chroma storm, so that's a no go for me.

The annihilator beam idea however sounds pretty neat. The charge combo would be handy for crowd control, although the Ice Beam's charge combo is pretty similar.

[R4L]

Quick update!

Almost done adding the option to switch between 2D sprites and 3D models. I've also nerfed the Wave Beam charge combo, because even in the original mod it was way too powerful. It was super laggy too, and thanks to Chris I was able to see just how bad it was: almost 9,000 sprites rendered all at once for about 30 seconds. Further investigation showed that using this combo added about 18,000-20,000 calls in the VM.

Now, the duration is halved, with roughly 1,000 sprites drawn instead. It still sounds like a lot, but if this laptop (i5-4310U, 8GB RAM, Intel HD graphics) and my Core 2 Duo machine with 4GB of RAM at work can handle it with no frame dips then I'd say it's good to go. I'll have to investigate the power bomb, since that is the next culprit for low FPS.

Another thing I keep forgetting to do is comment the code where I've made changes, so I'm going to try to remember to do that lol.

[Chris]

Now, the duration is halved, with roughly 1,000 sprites drawn instead. It still sounds like a lot, but if this laptop (i5-4310U, 8GB RAM, Intel HD graphics) and my Core 2 Duo machine with 4GB of RAM at work can handle it with no frame dips then I'd say it's good to go. I'll have to investigate the power bomb, since that is the next culprit for low FPS.

Another thing to look at is the Chroma Storm Canon. It throws out a lot of particles too and has a really bad FPS drain. More generally, however, I find that canon about as useless as the long beam. It fires really fast after some time winding up, but IIRC has a rather short range. There's also no combo shot. Like the long beam, I never run into an issue where I find that canon to be a good choice, whjich is problematic considering it's supposedly the final-tier weapon; the wave beam is fairly effective with crowds, the ice beam is good at slowing enemies down (with a bit of splash damage), the plasma beam is okay at straight forward ripping damage (though even there, I don't find myself using it often), while the basic power beam is.. well, intentionally basic.

It might be interesting to see the Chroma Storm be more like Prime's Phazon Beam. Fast auto-fire with high damage, high pain chance, and probably an aim-assist, but not easy to use... perhaps depleting missiles and health while attacking, or you need to create a (temporary) pool of phazon and you can only fire while standing in/near that pool.

[Wivicer]

Not entirely sure what you're talking about with the no combo shot. It fires the chroma laser, which is like the rainbow laser spell from guncaster. You have to hold down the alt-fire button.

[Chris]

Not entirely sure what you're talking about with the no combo shot. It fires the chroma laser, which is like the rainbow laser spell from guncaster. You have to hold down the alt-fire button.

Oh, interesting. Hold down the alt-fire then also hold down fire and it starts with the normal chroma shots which eventually turns into a straight long laser beam. I guess I missed that since it started firing the normal chroma shots and I didn't think continuing would produce anything different. Not totally sure on the effectiveness though, since that beam also absolutely wrecks performance.

[R4L]

Use it on a cyberdemon. It absolutely annihilates it in a matter of seconds. It will probably annihilate your frame rate too.

I dig the idea Chris. I'd probably make the player move much slower just so there is a con to using it.

[R4L]

Wow. Nerfing the Chroma Storm's charge combo is going to be challenging.

In 10 tics, the VM has a whopping 210,000 calls!!! The distance between the player and a solid object is the main factor; I shot the beam into a wall about 1500mu away, and my FPS was non-existent.

EDIT: Once again, another thing fixed, but I need opinions on the decisions I've made. The chroma beam combo no longer kills FPS, at the expense of making the range of the beams much shorter. It no longer spans 1024mu and, I'm not sure why that was even the value set originally. I've decreased the amount of particles spawned while shooting as well, which means I had to up the damage to compensate. It still looks neat, but it's much nicer on your hardware now.

Since it is also incredibly OP, I've made it use 2 missiles every second instead of 1. Originally I had set it to use 5, but that is way too short, even at max missiles.

[TerminusEst13]

I'll probably just axe it to be honest. It really serves no purpose in single player.

It doesn't!
For context, at the time, it was designed very much with PvP usage in mind. My priority then was integrating all the classic beams and then figuring out how to make them all viable against other players.
See, Eric and I really loved to DM with Dreadnought, but one extremely common tactic was to turn into a morphball and zip away if something went sour. With all of the classic Metroid beams, there wasn't anything that could feasibly be good in DM to snipe from a distance. So I figured, "Well, Long Beam let people shoot further. What if it was turned into a long railgun, like the Imperialist? That was one of the most popular guns, and it'd be a nice way to expand on the 'long' feature."

...In retrospect, that was a little short-sighted of me. In PvE, being able to attack enemies from a distance isn't really that useful, given how enemies are extremely slow and Samus has no trouble closing the gap.
I'm assuming DM support isn't a huuuuge priority for this, so I'd be extremely interested in what you have in mind for a PvE alternative!

[R4L]

I'll probably just axe it to be honest. It really serves no purpose in single player.

It doesn't!
For context, at the time, it was designed very much with PvP usage in mind. My priority then was integrating all the classic beams and then figuring out how to make them all viable against other players.
See, Eric and I really loved to DM with Dreadnought, but one extremely common tactic was to turn into a morphball and zip away if something went sour. With all of the classic Metroid beams, there wasn't anything that could feasibly be good in DM to snipe from a distance. So I figured, "Well, Long Beam let people shoot further. What if it was turned into a long railgun, like the Imperialist? That was one of the most popular guns, and it'd be a nice way to expand on the 'long' feature."

...In retrospect, that was a little short-sighted of me. In PvE, being able to attack enemies from a distance isn't really that useful, given how enemies are extremely slow and Samus has no trouble closing the gap.
I'm assuming DM support isn't a huuuuge priority for this, so I'd be extremely interested in what you have in mind for a PvE alternative!

I should see how this runs in Zan. If all is well then I'd probably keep the long beam and make it Multiplayer exclusive. As for a PvE alternative, I have no clue yet lol. Some ideas are running in my head, but nothing absolute yet.

[R4L]

So, Zan doesn't care for my CVar I've added. In the code for the beams, I check if the CVar is on and if so, go to a different state instead. Zan says there's an unknown reference to the CVar and fails to load. Going to have to look into that...

As for now, 1.4 is released! First page has the updates in the change log. As always, I appreciate any feedback regarding bugs or feature suggestions.

[R4L]

This is really for anyone making mapsets, but Varia Suit is in, and Charge Beam has to be obtained now. Going to add the option to bypass that of course.

[MissNewtype]

So has anyone made any levels yet for this? I tried out the base mod and I'm blown away with the feel and function. Keep up the great work!

[R4L]

I might know of someone making maps...

[Chris]

Sweet. I may not be responding much, but I'm still intently focused on watching progress and trying updates.

[R4L]

Sweet. I may not be responding much, but I'm still intently focused on watching progress and trying updates.

I promise I'm working on stuff