Guncaster Vindicated 3.3.5

[Morcillete]

Vindicated is the only flavor of guncaster I actually enjoy playing due to the whole balance thing.
I'm having a blast playing this with hexen so massive thanks dinosaur! Amazing job.

[ABalen]

Hi!! After I finish the map E2M7 and the game begins the map tower of babel, but the cyberdemon doesn't appear, and in its place is an exclamation point, so its impossible to finish the level! But if I use the code IDCLEV28, the game goes to a different level (than if I finishes the E2M7 level), which doesnt have this cyberdemon problem.

[comet1337]

> powerwolf music
cool and good
> screen full of multicolor static
the opposite of above

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

Hi!! After I finish the map E2M7 and the game begins the map tower of babel, but the cyberdemon doesn't appear, and in its place is an exclamation point, so its impossible to finish the level! But if I use the code IDCLEV28, the game goes to a different level (than if I finishes the E2M7 level), which doesnt have this cyberdemon problem.

Yep.. I dropped the ball again while updating things, I've fixed it on my end, I'll have this patched in a day or two.

> powerwolf music
cool and good
> screen full of multicolor static
the opposite of above

Is this a bug report?
Please be specific so I can correct the problem.

Make sure you include your load order so I can figure out what is going on.

Vindicated is the only flavor of guncaster I actually enjoy playing due to the whole balance thing.
I'm having a blast playing this with hexen so massive thanks dinosaur! Amazing job.

Glad you enjoy it!
I'm about to update everything in a couple of days, there are some things that still aren't behaving right. Stay tuned!

By the way, one of the features I like about this mod and Project Brutality 3.0 is the replacing of the Icon of Sin with the floating Icon Boss. It feels like an actual final boss battle should. However, I noticed Guncaster Vindicated doesn't do this for most other map sets, like Maps of Chaos Overkill. Are there plans to fully implement this feature? I think it's way too easy to waltz into the boss chamber and just pop John Romero's head through the wall with the Railgun.

To be fair, Project Brutality doesn't do this with very large map sets like Compendium either, likely due to the renaming of MAP30.

Brutal mods do this by checking the map location of actors. This mean any map that has, for example, John Romero's head at the same map coordinates of DOOM2, Plutonia or TNT will spawn the Icon boss in the exact same location.

The icon boss popping up on "Maps of Chaos" is basically a misfire of the map enhancement system because MAP30 of maps of chaos is pretty much mostly copypasta.

I don't like doing this for many reasons:
- The coding for this is very ugly, and a massive headache. It was very miserable to disassemble all the mess involved in order to mimic the effect.
- This has the potential to produce very bad behavior on maps that are similar, for example, MAP01 of HOTNE is a fully re-made version of the original DOOM2 map, but the Brutal map enhancement system misfires, and treats it just like DOOM2 vanilla because the map coordinates are the same, spawning actors in bad places and replacing textures producing an ugly effect.
- Actors can be spawned inside world geometry, if the level has an item at map coordinates that the map enhancement system expects it to be, but world geometry is otherwise different. This has the potential to cause game breaking lag, if a solid actor such as a barrel is caught in a moving ceiling or floor like this.

brutal mods accept this risk because they seek compatibility with zanronum which suffers from obsolete code that cannot benefit from safe checks like Map Hashes.

GCV Checks map hashes in order to be absolutely sure that map enhancement will only be deployed to the exact maps in which it is intended.

It is possible to apply the icon boss to map packs such as "Maps of Chaos", and I have plans to make my map enhancement system more heavily scripted, so that less work would need to be done in applying map enhancement to future projects. I don't currently have a scripted method to apply the icon of sin boss, so it must be positioned manually for the time being. I could add "Maps of Chaos" MAP 30 to the list of recognized maps for the boss to spawn, and then position it accordingly, I'd just need to know which version of maps of chaos is the definitive one, as I'm confused by all the different versions.

All this being said... I probably need to apply it to Recurring Nightmare, since that's a map pack I've aimed to support.

As for compendium maps and the like... I'm not sure I want to apply the Icon of Sin boss to those map packs, as very often MAP30 is supposed to be a puzzle. Yes you can technically snipe John Romero's head through a wall, but if I were to delete the head and replace it with the boss, the original mapper's intended puzzle will be destroyed and replaced with a boss that is likely to get very old very fast if every single doom2 map pack ends with it.
So I'm kinda leaning towards keeping the icon boss to "DOOM2 iwad-like" map packs, such as HOTNE, Maps of Chaos, and Recurring nightmare, and of course TNT and Plutonia.

Another feature I wanted to ask about is the enemy health readout from the main Guncaster mod. Currently I'm using the JP HUD, which works fine, but are there any plans to include enemy health?

I plan to include that with the next GC Official update. I was spooked when I heard it was causing malfunctions in multiplayer after the release of GC 3.2 and I disabled it and reverted back to the ACS health check for allied players only. I would have actively tried to help with the thing... but I had a ton of work on my own end that needed doing, and I'd probably have ended up just bothering the upstream team if I obsessed over it too much.

Long story short, yes I plan to include enemy health, I'm just lazily waiting for the Official team to fix it. XD

[comet1337]

Is this a bug report?
Please be specific so I can correct the problem.

Make sure you include your load order so I can figure out what is going on.

gzd 4.1.2
load order is nothing but

[BoneofMalkav]

Is this a bug report?
Please be specific so I can correct the problem.

Make sure you include your load order so I can figure out what is going on.

gzd 4.1.2
load order is nothing but

You using Vulcan Render? If so, that's why the screen looks like that.

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

Another bug report:

Having the Draugh Suit equipped causes the black chests to glitch and only drop powerups related to the suit. They will not drop Power Suit parts unless the Draugh Suit is unequipped. This has occurred whenever I get the Draugh Tome early, as I tend to leave the suit equipped at all times. When encountering a black chest, I usually quicksave the game to see what comes out. When the Draugh Suit is equipped, the chest only drops things like Voidwalker's Touch or Lost Traveler's Journal. I was wondering why I kept going through an entire game without ever finding any Bishop parts. But then I reloaded the game, unequipped the Draugh Suit, and opened the chest. This time, I finally got the lower part of the Power Suit.

This is a reply to the post made on the GC official forum:

The Black Chests are unique to GCV and not present in GC Official.
from the list of GCV new features on the OP of this thread:

-Dynamic Progession superweapons: Your superweapons (powersuits and BFGs) are contained in a large black weapons case that selects your weapon based on what you already have. No more hoping for a powersuit when you've already collected old dreadful for the 4th time! This new chest will make sure you are granted something that will help you toward your goal of ultimate power every time.

The chest giving you upgrades based on what suit you have is intentional, afterall, why would you need travelers journal or voidwalkers touch if you have powersuit? Why use mana tome if you have Draughsuit?
Powersuit is also guaranteed to get tiberium core, since it powers up the arm cannons as well as old dreadful, while draughsuit gets arbiter module, which is a dreadful exclusive tool.
This also helps you get the most important upgrades the fastest.
If you got Draugh Tome first, but want powersuit instead, this is accomplished by removing Draughsuit BEFORE opening the chest. This helps the chest distinguish whether you are actually intending to use draughsuit as a powersuit, or as a summoned weapon.

The responsible code can be found in the Guncaster_Vindicated.pk3 at ZScript/Chest.txt beginning at line 356

[Frozenwolf150]

Okay thanks. And sorry for putting this in the wrong thread. I'll keep that in mind next time.

I usually use both, and switch back and forth between them frequently, depending on the situation.

[MaxRideWizardLord]

Sigil of the Gods or Punisher. Which is better? These two spells seem to be very intentical, unless I miss something and punisher somewhere shines more than sigil of the Gods.

[huntrag94]

Curious will you be updating this with the new features added to Guncaster 3.3?

[Frozenwolf150]

I finished the Heretic campaign and have some feedback.

* The new enemy behaviors and enemy replacements ensured the game never became monotonous or predictable. Would love to see more new behaviors for enemies in the future.
* The rewritten story and redesigned boss maps are a nice touch. The new bosses offer an appropriate challenge. On the hardest difficulty, it never felt like they were unfairly hard or ridiculously easy. It was necessary to plan and use strategy, but they didn't require burning through all of the most powerful artifacts at once.
* The feature to play through all episodes with the same inventory gave it a good sense of continuity, and feels like it should have been in Heretic from the start. By episode 3 the most powerful upgrades became affordable. I came up with the strategy of upgrading the Carnage Collector all the way, using a Gunzerk Potion, and firing the Mini Nuke to wipe out the entire map. This extended the Gunzerk effect long enough to completely replenish the tiberum ammo.


Heretic Specific Glitches:

* Red health potions randomly disappear from the player's inventory between levels. It only happened once early on.
* The Asbestos Suit in Heretic doesn't offer complete protection like in Doom. Damage floors still cause a slow rate of health loss.
* In certain Heretic maps, like E2M1, there are invisible objects on the ground that can block the player. They don't appear on the map, even with the map cheat. They occur in areas with stalagmites, but no such objects are visible in the specific locations.
* When fighting Maulotaurs in Heretic, the game flashes the message "terminating" several times whenever the Maulotaur performs its ground flame wave attack.
* If the player uses the "warp to start" ability in the VIND08 map Portals of Chaos, there is no way to reenter the boss room and exit the level.


Doom Specific Glitches:

* Propane tanks randomly disappear between levels. It seems to coincide with moving between a 10th map and an 11th map. Normally after picking up the first propane tank, there will always be an item slot reserved for them, even when the quantity is zero. However, this slot vanishes entirely during the glitch.
* There is an incompatibility with the floating bridge objects used by some map makers, where the bridges become completely impassible. Scythe is an example of a wad that uses such bridges.


Balance Issues and Suggestions

* The TNT carrying restriction isn't consistent with the amount of TNT that spawns in Doom, since rocket boxes have a random chance to become either Matriarch slugs or TNT crates. Each TNT crate gives the player 5 units, so 2 crates will max out the count. Since the idea is to limit the overuse of TNT, would it be possible to decrease the probability of TNT crates?
* Most enemies in Heretic drop large quantities of ammo, making the game too easy. For example, the Sabreclaws drop 3 Augur rounds each. It takes only a single Augur round to kill most enemies in Heretic, and the player quickly ends up with a surplus for one of the strongest weapons in the game. Smaller units would be more than sufficient.

[user5124]

MAP07 and onwards of the "sunder.wad" are, even with all performance options enabled in the "here be dragons" section it is diving to framerates of unplayable levels due to monstrous hordes of enemies. Effectively unable to continue. No crashes, just getting only a few fps. Is there any method for improving performance in maps with unreasonably large numbers of enemies? A "corpse and gib remover" would help a lot. Some levels were empty but running at less than 10 FPS due to what I presume is a vast numbers of corpses.

[user5124]

..also, how do you recharge phlegetons? I activated it on a nigh impossible level and good god was it incredible. I went from gnat to unstoppable force. This is such a wonderful mod and it just gets better all the time.

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

Update to 3.1.0

giant jumping jackrabbits this was a hell of a long time overdue... Lets talk about some FEATURES!!!

-Sord! yep... I know I said many times that I wasn't gonna do it... but Pillow really won me over... I said he'd have to be a god to make me wanna include a sword... I guess I got shown up again. As usual, this thing has been re-worked heavily and sports a lot of nifty effects, such as damage reduction when your swings connect. I won't spoil everything. You can only find the sword once per player, and its drop is randomized.
- EXTERMINATION DAY!!! That's right, this is now fully compatible with SGT_Mark's Extermination Day. The HellOnEarthStarterPack has been removed from the mod and only resources that are necessary to run EDAY remain in place. You can check the Brutal doom, or Guncaster Vindicated discord servers for download links.
- Chillgrasp has been re-made! The spell is now an execution that instantly kills monsters below a certain health threshold based on your mana and damage ability. The killed enemy is turned into an explosive ice statue that can be kicked into other enemies to cause damage based on how big and powerful it was.
- BaelFire: New special power for draugh. All your fire abilities are empowered to be very effective at healing you or allies. Enemies killed by baelfire attacks will heal the player for a significant amount.
- Deadmaker full spell and abliity compatibility! You can now charge and cast all deadmaker spells with any weapon! OH YES!
- Shockwave Stomp re-worked: This ability now looks and feels a LOT better. It is guaranteed to hit all enemies in a cone in front of the player as long as they are close enough to the floor to be hit by the shockwave. This ability now travels up ledges.
- Cygnis Insults Everyone for 10 Hours! New HP bars feature some snide names for our dragon hero to call his adversaries. What's a dragon without some cocky mocking of his assailants?

Detailed stuff is here:

---

- Jump buffed: I've improved the player's jump height by a bit, I've also capped maximum jump height so that it shouldn't be annoying to have powersuit and berserk.
- Brand Spankin' new UAC marine allies for Extermination day and any mod that features allied marines. Their AI is very complex.
- Weather Script updated to use a dynamic sound effect.
- multiple weapon tweaks, no real damage changes here, just tweaks. Ironblast has been reverted to its old style because I find it more useful that way.
- Longhorn now has scaling damage according to what suit and power you have.
- Quad damage buffed to now reduce incoming damage in the same way berserk does.
- fixed a bug with midas sprites.
- STG44 strat is now a hitscan attack, making it super accurate.
- Monsters have built in code to prevent bullshit mechanics such as spawning into a room with at least 100 hitscanners. Monsters are now required to wait at least 5 seconds before riddling your scaly body with bullets.
- This mod now keeps track of your inventory to prevent resets by the ResetInventory mapinfo directive or from death exits.
- The heavy machinegun and other grabbable props are now ultra precise. No more "missing" the pickup animation
- multiplayer anti-slaughter code prevents huge numbers of bad guys from spawning before you and your teammates have a chance to get strong enough to fight the horde.
- Gold re-balanced. Picking up duplicate items will not longer award huge sums of money, to compensate, drops from slain monsters have had their gold increased.
- Map enhancement code consolidated and cleaned.
- Hexen Gibbet script is now in place and the level will never fail to run properly.
- Hexen bugs fixed.
- Heretic bugs fixed.
- Spin kick is now ultra precise just like the front kick.
- infinite kick jumping upwards fixed
- strucker rutger box fixed for draugh
- probably lots of stuff I forgot... heh!

MAP07 and onwards of the "sunder.wad" are, even with all performance options enabled in the "here be dragons" section it is diving to framerates of unplayable levels due to monstrous hordes of enemies. Effectively unable to continue. No crashes, just getting only a few fps. Is there any method for improving performance in maps with unreasonably large numbers of enemies? A "corpse and gib remover" would help a lot. Some levels were empty but running at less than 10 FPS due to what I presume is a vast numbers of corpses.

Seemed to be working ok for me... I have a pretty nice computer though.
Maybe try less demanding map packs if you have an older machine.
Test things out on DOOM2.wad or Heretic.wad and see how your computer handles it, then try map packs with more slaughterwad levels of monsters. The AI on my monsters is demanding and slaughter wads aren't going to play well.
You can of course use the menu options to swap back to the oldschool monsters to improve performance if you're just wanting to slaughter things.

..also, how do you recharge phlegetons? I activated it on a nigh impossible level and good god was it incredible. I went from gnat to unstoppable force. This is such a wonderful mod and it just gets better all the time.

you can recharge it in the shop for 10,000 gold.

lots of bugs

Now that I've finally gotten past the gc 3.3 update, I'll get to work on these.

[Fureyon]

Glad to see it has been updated and that you caved and added sord