Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beatable™

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Boondorl
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Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beatable™

Post by Boondorl »

Current version: 2.0 [beta]

Tested on: GZDoom 4.3.3

Originally named Enhanced Nightmare, I present to you the latest in gameplay AI enhancement mods: this thing.

Have you ever found yourself thinking Man, Nightmare! is becoming a snore fest. I sure wish someone could make a mod to fix that, preferably one with an incredibly lengthy name.

No. You haven't. But now that you have, you're stuck with this. Revisiting the way the game handles enemies and updating them to the modern standards of Quake 1, Doom But It's Harder Except It's Still Realistically Beatable™ does more than just decide that giving the Cyberdemon homing missiles is peak balance. Such amazing AI improvements include but are not limited to:
  • Enemies no longer being blind and firing into their teammates
  • Enemies not firing at you when you're clearly behind an indestructible torch
  • Enemies no longer seeing through walls and deciding shooting at them is productive
  • Patented Pinky Jumping™ technology has been added (can it even be a gameplay mod without it?)
  • Cacodemon Strafing 2.0 has been deployed (it's the least annoying version you've seen yet!)
And so much more! I'm definitely not running out of features to talk about. For those of you who want something spicier but are too babby to play on Nightmare! difficulty, Ultra-violence has been beefed up as well. Sunlust? More like SaveScumlust.

Change log for v1.0:
Spoiler:
Attachments
Enhanced Nightmare.pk3
(25.68 KiB) Downloaded 339 times
Last edited by Boondorl on Wed Feb 05, 2020 12:37 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Boondorl
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by Boondorl »

Ok, I was informed there were some problems with the download over at Doom World. I've attached it to the post so it can actually be played now.
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armymen12002003
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by armymen12002003 »

is this compatible with other mods too? or just vanilla?
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mrtaterz
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by mrtaterz »

Keep working on this, if you find ways to change the game, make it harder or more modular, add in a menu to customize options.
This is some really good stuff.
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Boondorl
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by Boondorl »

Beta 2 is now out! Some tweaks to make enemies less derpy and some reworking of the back end to make it better optimized. I'm using some more "experimental" features so be sure to let me know if there are any crashes or weird behaviors.
mrtaterz wrote:Keep working on this, if you find ways to change the game, make it harder or more modular, add in a menu to customize options.
This is some really good stuff.
I'll likely be skipping the customization options this time around since it feels like it'd kinda defeat the point. I'm all ears for new features and better ways to tweak enemies, though.
armymen12002003 wrote:is this compatible with other mods too? or just vanilla?
It's compatible with any mod that doesn't replace Doom's default monsters. If it does then you'll need to load this one second to make sure it gets priority on the monster spawns (this unfortunately means things like Smooth Doom's monsters won't work with it).
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mrtaterz
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by mrtaterz »

You should find a way to make Ultra Violence & Nightmare the only difficulties and name them "Normal" & "Hard" if possible, as a little joke. :lol:
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Boondorl
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by Boondorl »

Beta 3 is out now. Not much new here so it's just a small update. I'm pretty happy with the set of features I have now so I've mostly just been doing optimizations where it's easy or makes sense. The Revenant got some more tweaks to its gameplay which concludes the saga of me trying to make enemies fully respect 3D when firing projectiles/dashing at you. Other than that it's just minor tweaks. Arch-vile fire and Cacodemon strafing are now a tad bit less expensive to calculate which should help out on slaughter maps, especially for the Arch-viles. The Revenant's extended hitbox, on the other hand, received a massive optimization fix that significantly lowered its cost.

If all goes well, this will likely be the build that transitions into 1.0.
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sir_firebrand
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by sir_firebrand »

I'm getting an Error when loading this:

Code: Select all

Script error, "Enhanced Nightmare.pk3:actors/painelemental.txt" line 77:
Unknown identifier 'compatflags'
Script error, "Enhanced Nightmare.pk3:actors/painelemental.txt" line 77:
Unknown identifier 'COMPATF_LIMITPAIN'

Execution could not continue.

2 errors while parsing DECORATE scripts
Any help?

Edit: GZDooM update fixed it.

DERP
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mrtaterz
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by mrtaterz »

You should make it so hitscan enemies like the Zombiemen move a bit faster. You should also try and see if you can make it so they turn to face you before they shoot at you because enemies will sometimes be moving left or right then magically start attacking you; see if you can make them stop and then turn to face you before attacking.
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Boondorl
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by Boondorl »

Updated current version to 1.0 with no changes. A version that doesn't include the Wolfenstein SS has also been added to keep compatibility with some older mods that use DeHackEd to replace them.
mrtaterz wrote:You should also try and see if you can make it so they turn to face you before they shoot at you because enemies will sometimes be moving left or right then magically start attacking you; see if you can make them stop and then turn to face you before attacking.
This is actually how it's done in Quake, but Quake has a massive advantage over Doom in this case: fully 3D models. In Doom the limited sprite angles make it difficult to tell which direction the enemy is truly facing most of the time. While it wouldn't be impossible to implement I think the lack of angles would make it either completely unnoticed or just really jank looking.
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mrtaterz
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by mrtaterz »

Boondorl wrote:Updated current version to 1.0 with no changes. A version that doesn't include the Wolfenstein SS has also been added to keep compatibility with some older mods that use DeHackEd to replace them.
mrtaterz wrote:You should also try and see if you can make it so they turn to face you before they shoot at you because enemies will sometimes be moving left or right then magically start attacking you; see if you can make them stop and then turn to face you before attacking.
This is actually how it's done in Quake, but Quake has a massive advantage over Doom in this case: fully 3D models. In Doom the limited sprite angles make it difficult to tell which direction the enemy is truly facing most of the time. While it wouldn't be impossible to implement I think the lack of angles would make it either completely unnoticed or just really jank looking.
I don't think it would hurt to experiment with it, see how it works. Maybe it wouldn't look jank? Also, loving the updates!
Neophyte_Ronin
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by Neophyte_Ronin »

Your post title sucks.

Also, there has to be a way to adapt this in such a way that it overrides general actor behavior.

I understand that in Object-Oriented programming, if you have defined something, you can derive from it by putting in that cute space-colon-space and get the names right, perhaps even replace them. But now, it appears as though that, in order for you to port this to other portions of the code, you have to invert the location of it and make it into a source rather than an attachment. That way, it can compile onto actor behavior universally instead of just for a few effects.

Or, to put it in a way that is amazingly and yet offensively popular and sarcastic to say in the ZDoom forums: do what Nashgore did and what Bolognese (somehow) didn't.

Right now, individual actors have their base elements changed. There's an April Fools bullshit wad that changes up enemy behavior as well (e.g. Revenants always fire guided shots) which is probably a little more understandable at the face of it.

What if there was a way to put down code that says: A_EnhancedLook/A_EnhancedChase and have them replace A_Look and A_Chase?

Wait, never mind, those are contingent on player approach (e.g. melee range).

In other words, if there was a version of this that could be adapted to existing mods instead of being standalone, that would be the tits.
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StroggVorbis
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by StroggVorbis »

Any plans to make versions for Heretic, Hexen & Strife?
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Boondorl
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by Boondorl »

DabbingSquidward wrote:Any plans to make versions for Heretic, Hexen & Strife?
Heretic I would be very much interested in, but I feel Hexen unfortunately doesn't have the enemy variety to make good use of it (a mod that adds more monsters would be a better choice). Strife I don't have enough experience with the game itself but it does seem like it'd be a perfect fit for smarter AI given the nature of the game.

As for Neophyte_Ronin's post (sorry for the late response), no, there is zero way to override Doom's base functionality without straight up replacing it. You can thank DeHackEd support for that one. I haven't used Nashgore but if there is a way to attach actual behaviors to enemies, I'll be looking into it since I'd love to make this usable on any monster set. Keep in mind that Nashgore does not modify the enemies themselves but rather uses event handlers to add gore when an enemy takes damage. Looking into it there doesn't seem to be any event thrown when a missile is fired/melee attack is done or when A_Chase/A_Look are called so unfortunately this is the best I can do for now.
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sir_firebrand
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Re: Doom But Its Harder Except Its Still Realistically Beata

Post by sir_firebrand »

Latest GZDoom (v4.3.3) updates killed the mod with 2 DECORATE errors:

Code: Select all

Script error, "Enhanced Nightmare.pk3:actors/ai_enhancements.txt" line 448:
Argument must be a modifiable value
Script error, "Enhanced Nightmare.pk3:actors/ai_enhancements.txt" line 455:
Argument must be a modifiable value
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