Scavver's Paradise V2.3.1 - A Survival Horror Mod

[Whoah]

I gotta say, I'm really enjoying this mod! It's a nice challenge without being as involved as a lot of the other realism/survival mods out there. I do have a couple critiques though:

-Some weapons could stand to have some more visual flair. Some of the animations are kinda choppy while others are super smooth, particularly with the breach-loaded shotguns. A little more feedback when shooting could be nice too.
-An option to turn off auto reloading for the guns would be nice. I personally don't like auto reloading (or auto firing for that matter) in slower paced mods like this, so the option to turn either of those off would be great.
-Not a big one, but manual pumping for the pump shotguns would be really cool in my opinion.
-ALSO not a big one, but that machete could really use a new idle sprite so it doesn't look like I'm holding a butter knife.

But yeh, great work dude! You got a really good thing goin. I look forward to being able to use that new HUD in the next update.

[CaptainNurbles]

-Some weapons could stand to have some more visual flair. Some of the animations are kinda choppy while others are super smooth, particularly with the breach-loaded shotguns. A little more feedback when shooting could be nice too.

Sadly with the weapon visuals there's only so much that I can do with my skillset. Graphics design is something I'm not experienced with so the fluidity of weapon animations depends mostly on the source of where the sprites came from. The main thing I can think of to smooth animations out is to offset the sprites between key frames to increase fluidity, though it will still look rather choppy due to a limited amount of key frames. What're some ways I can increase weapon feedback, though?

-An option to turn off auto reloading for the guns would be nice. I personally don't like auto reloading (or auto firing for that matter) in slower paced mods like this, so the option to turn either of those off would be great.

That is something that's been biting me in the ass with recent play testing, actually. Probably wouldn't take too long to do, either.

-ALSO not a big one, but that machete could really use a new idle sprite so it doesn't look like I'm holding a butter knife.

Also a limitation of the sprites available to me, but I definitely agree.

[CaptainNurbles]

So it appears that Weight Based weapon limiting is leading the polls! While voting is currently still going on, I've gone ahead and worked the weapon limiter system in. I'm going ahead and uploading the updated mod with the weight limiter system to see what you lot think of it! If it turns out more people prefer the old way I'll upload a version of the mod with the old limiter system in place as well as all the new features and fixes.

> Me over a week ago: Fuck's sake, finally done coding in guns, let's work on fine tuning.
> Me now: Hey let's add a new gun.

And most importantly, a brand spanking new HUD! Snazzy and somewhat minimalist, giving the player all the information that they need, and FINALLY secondary attacks on the 5.45mm assault rifle and the 7.62mm battle rifle show up on hud.


DOWNLOAD HERE (Updated 18/1/21) (NOTE: THIS UPDATE WILL BREAK SAVES DUE TO NEW ACS SCRIPTS AND SUCH.)

Changelog:

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1.1 Weight Lifted Off My Shoulders! Uploaded 18/1/21 (WILL BREAK SAVES DUE TO NEW ACS SCRIPTS)

* New HUD which finally displays ammo for weapons' secondary functions, shows how much weight is being carried, etc.
* Permanent character upgrades (knuckles, reinforced boots, powered greaves, medical harness, and nanofiber armor) show up on your HUD when present in your inventory.
* Medical buffs show icons on HUD when active (Including Stimpak, Bandage, BloodPack, PainKillers, Super Stim, Berserk, and the Medical Harness's morphine.)
* Weapons are now limited not by category, but by weight. Different weapons weigh different amounts, and the player can carry a maximum of 60 pounds of weaponry. I would extend this to include ammo, equipment, etc, but that's outside of my range of skills and would require the whole game to be rebalanced as well.
* Changed some of the colors around for the map spawned player corpses.
* PDAs and MapPDA have been reduced in size to a more sensible size. No longer will the PDA be the size of your leg.
* Archvile now does proper Flame damage.
* .22 Pistol plays the right sound when unloaded.
* 5.6mm Carbine now displays the proper Subclass (was listed as an SMG.)
* TazeFist and Chainsaw now both have the proper sway style.
* Changed the name of the 20G Shellbox sprite since it conflicted with Obaddon maps.
* Gave the Fireproof Armor a new HUD icon since the old one was TOL.
* TazeFist now shows the correct world sprite.
* NEW WEAPON: 4.6mm Pistol) For when you need your handgun to also pierce armor.
* 10mm Pistol Zombieman has a 1/32 chance to spawn with a 4.6mm pistol.
* Axe and Sledge zombies have had their attack sounds fixed.
* Barrels explode with a proper sound and explode faster.
* Revenant's missiles now play a new sound.
* 84mm Rockets now have larger explosion visuals (blast radius and damage are the same, explosion sprite is larger.)
* Weapons no longer reload when you fire on an empty magazine. Keep an eye on your ammo meter.
* New sound for switching fire modes.
* Fixed issue where 5.45mm Assault Rifle couldn't fire the shotgun if out of rifle ammo.
* Plasma Cannon has new idle state when out of ammo.
* BFG3K's idle animation stops when out of ammo.

[Whoah]

Sadly with the weapon visuals there's only so much that I can do with my skillset. Graphics design is something I'm not experienced with so the fluidity of weapon animations depends mostly on the source of where the sprites came from. The main thing I can think of to smooth animations out is to offset the sprites between key frames to increase fluidity, though it will still look rather choppy due to a limited amount of key frames. What're some ways I can increase weapon feedback, though?

I was thinking just some offset tweaking to make firing the guns feel a little more impactful, or adding subtle impact sounds when your shots hit an enemy. I suppose weapon feedback wasn't the most optimal term to use, but you get what I mean.

Also, minor bug report. I killed a rifle zombie who dropped a lever action rifle and a handful of .357 bullets, but upon picking up the bullets, I only got 1 instead of 6. I then tried just summoning the same ammo pickup through the console and it gave me the full 6. Also being able to see my full inventory bar when cycling through items would be nice as it helps me select stuff when under pressure. Other than that, great update! I'm having a lotta fun with this and am really digging the new HUD

[CaptainNurbles]

I was thinking just some offset tweaking to make firing the guns feel a little more impactful, or adding subtle impact sounds when your shots hit an enemy.

Shouldn't be too hard! I'll look into this.

Also, minor bug report. I killed a rifle zombie who dropped a lever action rifle and a handful of .357 bullets, but upon picking up the bullets, I only got 1 instead of 6. I then tried just summoning the same ammo pickup through the console and it gave me the full 6.

If I were to wager a guess here it's probably because of how Doom handles ammo when dropped by an enemy (Eg. Shotguns picked up from the floor give 8 shells, but 4 when grabbed from shotgunguys. Chainguns give 20 bullets off the floor, 10 from chaingunguys.) If that were the case it should give 3, not 1. Could just have them drop 6 individual bullets instead, which would also prevent wasting a pickup of 6 if all you need is 4. I'll look into it.

[Whoah]

Yeah that might explain it. Individual pickups for each round might be the way to go for the single-loaded guns to prevent the issues you mentioned. Plus it just makes sense from a realism standpoint. Oh, also, while playing I discovered the P-46 can be reloaded without needing a spare mag as long as it isn't empty

[CaptainNurbles]

Oh, also, while playing I discovered the P-46 can be reloaded without needing a spare mag as long as it isn't empty

I've tested this and have been unable to replicate it. Is there anything else you're doing while you're able to reload without spare magazines?

EDIT: Nevermind, I've found the issue and fixed it. I wasn't able to replicate it because I would IDKFA myself everything. The code was checking for 10mmPMags in the Partial Reload sequence, which caused it to reload when you don't have spare mags, and prevented me from initially finding the error because my inventory had 10mm pistol mags. Fixed.

[Abba Zabba]

The updates are too fast for me to catch! Great work, I think that new HUD suits the mod quite well, I enjoy minimalist style HUDS with plenty of info and good spacing (not lumped in a pile on the bottom center of the screen blocking the gun view sprites).

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However, I did have a bug that may or may not have been fixed already, and it's the aforementioned automatic rifle with the masterkey underslung shotgun; I picked up the rifle, with no rifle mags for it, but a handful of 20ga. shells. I went about my business using it normally, and tried use the masterkey shotgun, but it failed to fire. The default 4/4 shells was loaded, but unusable. However, once I reloaded the main rifle, then switched back to the masterkey shotgun, it fired. Not sure what logic was locking me out of using it when it was both fully loaded and with my person carrying 20ga. shells in reserve.

Edit: It seems like this is related to dropping the weapon in the shotgun mode, logic I'm guessing is because the rifle mode is the main, default mode. Luckily, your nice new HUD illustrated this by chance, so I caught it. When this bug happens, both modes are selected and highlighted in green, but the fire mode is the shotgun, whereas the reload mode is the rifle. This is likely the bug I had before.

Suggestion I'd have would be to greatly increase the speed of barrel shrapnel, because as of now, they act like highly dangerous low gravity bouncy balls of death that hurt me way after I think they'd be cleared or despawned. This speed increase on barrel shrapnel would also prioritize proper positioning when one goes off, because as of now, I'm able to outrun or juke shrapnel if I run in the opposite direction if I'm out in the open or in a long hallway. Other than that...I can't really find anything jarring, other than maybe revamping melee some to better distinguish their characteristics (mostly fire axe vs sledgehammer, I'd give a little more speed to the fire axe, and make the sledgehammer stun a bit better for corner melee play.)

Edit: dropping the land mine 'weapon' creates an actor with a land mine value of 1, so you can abuse this to generate land mine ammo. Frag grenades and impact bombs are unaffected. Another bug I noticed would be the select fire pistol and select fire UAC rifle have a visual bug on the HUD if you drop them when set to a non-default mode, then pick them back up again. For the select fire pistol, it seems to use semi by default, and for the select fire UAC rifle, auto seems to be the default.

Flame bombs count as 3 pounds, but seem to have a pickup weight requirement of 0, effectively meaning you have to drop everything to pick them up, then scoop up all of your equipment.

And another BIG recommendation I'd like to suggest would be to add the classic 'hold use to pickup' mechanic a lot of ZDoom mods had/have, first coming to mind being ancient builds of Hideous Destructor. For a mod with this huge berth of weaponry, it would be greatly appreciated to selectively pick up equipment when desired. Biggest offender for this being melee weapons.

[CaptainNurbles]

However, I did have a bug that may or may not have been fixed already, and it's the aforementioned automatic rifle with the masterkey underslung shotgun; I picked up the rifle, with no rifle mags for it, but a handful of 20ga. shells. I went about my business using it normally, and tried use the masterkey shotgun, but it failed to fire. The default 4/4 shells was loaded, but unusable. However, once I reloaded the main rifle, then switched back to the masterkey shotgun, it fired. Not sure what logic was locking me out of using it when it was both fully loaded and with my person carrying 20ga. shells in reserve.

Actually caught this one like an hour before you initially posted the comment! But,

Edit: It seems like this is related to dropping the weapon in the shotgun mode, logic I'm guessing is because the rifle mode is the main, default mode. Luckily, your nice new HUD illustrated this by chance, so I caught it. When this bug happens, both modes are selected and highlighted in green, but the fire mode is the shotgun, whereas the reload mode is the rifle. This is likely the bug I had before.

This is something I have NOT caught.

The initial glitch of being unable to fire the shotgun when the rifle is empty was because of bad coding on my part. When I first added the shotgun I didn't know there was a flag to make an attack not use primary ammo, and the shotgun would indeed use rifle ammo as well as shotgun rounds when firing. Quick fix at the time was just have it give one rifle round after firing so that you have a net loss of no rifle rounds and one shell. This led to the weirdness of being unable to fire the shotgun when your mag is empty. Very easy fix, good and done.

However, the reason why both the ammo counters were green when you dropped it on shotgun mode and then picked it up is because when picked up the rifle also gives you a Token which tells the game "when I hit the fire button, shoot the rifle, not the shotgun." This also explains the issue you have with the 6.2mm rifle and the auto pistol as they do similar things with their alternate firing functions. Could probably work around this by messing with the starting inventory of player classes.

Suggestion I'd have would be to greatly increase the speed of barrel shrapnel, because as of now, they act like highly dangerous low gravity bouncy balls of death that hurt me way after I think they'd be cleared or despawned.

Agreed, actually. Easy fix.

dropping the land mine 'weapon' creates an actor with a land mine value of 1, so you can abuse this to generate land mine ammo. Frag grenades and impact bombs are unaffected.

Noted! I think I know roughly why.

Flame bombs count as 3 pounds, but seem to have a pickup weight requirement of 0, effectively meaning you have to drop everything to pick them up, then scoop up all of your equipment.

Fixed this last night actually! This was, like many issues I've had to fix in the mod, due to lazy copying and pasting lol.

And another BIG recommendation I'd like to suggest would be to add the classic 'hold use to pickup' mechanic a lot of ZDoom mods had/have

I actually did get permission to implement Argv's Use to Pickup mod directly into mine, and I did attempt the integration to no success. I plan on giving it another go once I handle other matters with the mod. I'd try coding something like that myself, but I know BUGGER ALL about ZScript and my attempts to look into learning it left me feeling dizzy.

Super appreciate the bug reporting, man! Goes to show I should really stop shoving these updates out as fast as I am lol.

[chronoteeth]

honestly the only issue that we got with this mod is that a lot of the weapons dont feel too fun to use, but other than that this is super good, love it

Glad to hear you enjoy it man!

What would you say could make the weapons feel more fun?

like what whoah said, a lot of weapons need some more like, design flair and personality. theres a buncha overused sprites that get in the way, and the consistency/animations between them are too different. if u have a hard time finding anything new or want to spruce up stuff, peepin in the spriting carnival or the resources area can show a plethora of sprites to use!

[Crudux Cruo]

So, I greatly appreciate this mod existing because I myself have been meaning to do something similar, albeit on a much more conservative scale. Nonetheless, this mod is EXACTLY what has been missing and I really am liking this mod. Not in love yet though.

My critiques:

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Tighten up pistol controls and speeds to balance them. compare pistols to smgs, rifles, shotguns, and even melee they're pretty trash, to the point you're more likely to get killed using them than melee ing or using a different gun.

There are already keys you can bind weapon functions to, such as zoom, reload, and up to 4 weapon function keys that you can bind kicks, reloads, zooming down sights, changing firemodes, ect. to, and it would be wonderful if you did.

The use on pickup mod is good for certain things, but really, you can easily make weapons and armor useable in the game and leave the rest of the health items and ammo and bonuses normal, which are really annoying to click individually. You clearly know ACS so it seems like you wouldn't have a big issue doing it.

Consider the overall balance of weapon drops and such vs utility, and the inventory system. certain weapons are so rare to find ammo for and so hardly not worth using, like SMG's and Rifles, it seems to make more sense to just use the chaingun (which is nearly impossible to run out of ammo for) and 20 gauge police shotgun and then just pick up and empty other guns as needed.

The health system is wonky if you use multiple items. also, it seems like there's an over abundance of damage and no health to mop it up. I get it's about survival, but dang.

Head crabs are super overpowered and come up unpredictably. Zombies are annoying too, but at least you usually have time to react to them. if you're in a horde of imps, you'll lose a large chunk of your health without any chance to respond, making the damage almost unavoidable, which is very annoying in a survival game.

Liking a lot of what i'm seeing.

[CaptainNurbles]

Spoilering this one since it is LONG AS FUGG.

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theres a buncha overused sprites that get in the way, and the consistency/animations between them are too different.

At some point I'll look into sprucing sprites and animations up. Tis on the list, but I want to iron the gameplay out first. Personally I'd rather something that ain't pretty but functions damn well than something that's great to look at, shame about the gameplay. If somebody out there wants to get in touch to help work with me on the animations and perhaps just visuals in general I'd love the help! I may have a lot of free time on hand, but I am but one man with limited skills and patience.

Tighten up pistol controls and speeds to balance them. compare pistols to smgs, rifles, shotguns, and even melee they're pretty trash, to the point you're more likely to get killed using them than melee ing or using a different gun.

I actually haven't had too many issues using handguns against enemies, but I can easily blame that on me being very intimate with the functions of the mod I usually save them for imps and zombies, maybe a pinky or two if there's room and I've got a high enough caliber handgun. Anything that doesn't appear as a standard enemy in Knee Deep in the Dead gets larger weapons. Pistols are also handy for saving your bacon if you ain't got the time to reload during a firefight, and I always make sure to pack either a revolver or a .45 magnum. (Plus what doesn't help with the current public release is that one of the pistols, the 9mm auto pistol, has its damage messed up due to laziness on my part. The burst and auto fires use the old damage formula, while semi fire uses the new one. Is fixed for the next update.)

The use on pickup mod is good for certain things, but really, you can easily make weapons and armor useable in the game and leave the rest of the health items and ammo and bonuses normal, which are really annoying to click individually. You clearly know ACS so it seems like you wouldn't have a big issue doing it.

I actually know bugger all about ACS! The scripts in use were provided by others from the ZDoom forums and I've modified the code as I need it. I do agree with you, though, that the mod would absolutely benefit from having a Use to Pickup thing baked into the mod itself. At some point I will look into trying to wrap my head around ACS and maybe even ZScript, but so far my attempts to do so have just left my dumb ass irritated from confusion lol.

(also real talk, the more work gets put into this the closer it is to becoming Hideous Destructor Lite. Like one of the big changes I want to eventually tackle is converting all 50 guns to ZScript so I can benefit from internal ammo, fixing the issue of scrapping a mag from an empty weapon.)

Consider the overall balance of weapon drops and such vs utility, and the inventory system. certain weapons are so rare to find ammo for and so hardly not worth using, like SMG's and Rifles, it seems to make more sense to just use the chaingun (which is nearly impossible to run out of ammo for) and 20 gauge police shotgun and then just pick up and empty other guns as needed.

I've not noticed too much issue with supplies, though I will not deny that certain weapons are hard to find ammo for. Some of them it is by design, such as the 8.6mm bolt action rifle that deals over 100 damage per shot, but with others it's because I haven't touched supply balancing in some time. I have made it so that Cell and CellPack drops have a good chance of dropping some of these rarer magazines, but that could use some work too. A lot of it is the luck of the draw, sadly, since there are 9 ammo pickups available in the game (one of which being the backpack) and there are over 20 calibers of ammo that needs to be smartly distributed between the remaining 8 vanilla ammo drops. Supplies overall (not just ammo) will get a bit of work in for the next update.

The health system is wonky if you use multiple items.

I have also noticed this, but I haven't done much to look into how to best tackle it outside of just making it impossible to use two health items at once. All health items, outside of the Medical Harness, use basic DECORATE for their functionality, inheriting from PowerRejuvination to get that gradual healing effect. I'm sure there's a more elegant solution via ACS or ZScript, but I'll look into that another day.

Head crabs are super overpowered and come up unpredictably. Zombies are annoying too, but at least you usually have time to react to them. if you're in a horde of imps, you'll lose a large chunk of your health without any chance to respond, making the damage almost unavoidable, which is very annoying in a survival game.

This has been touched one some, actually. Damage and radius are reduced, and I FINALLY fixed the double explosion thing (turns out there's an A_Die function! Exactly what I needed.)

Lots of good feedback, folks! Glad to see people are enjoying my nonsense, and glad to see all this lovely criticism come my way. Y'all are helping push me into making this something worth a damn, so many thanks goes to you all.

[Abba Zabba]

Bug: the P-46 (UAC 4.66mm pistol) displays TS-12 (10mm military pistol) frames on deselect.

Oh, and are there any particular controls listed anywhere? At first I didn't know that reload was an alternate melee attack for some weapons. And a dedicated kick key would be great.

[CaptainNurbles]

Oh, and are there any particular controls listed anywhere? At first I didn't know that reload was an alternate melee attack for some weapons. And a dedicated kick key would be great.

At the moment there are no special keybindings, with Reload and Altfire being the only extra binds needed for functionality. Tempted to add a dedicated button for ammo scrapping, but not sure if that would be needed if and when I convert all the weapons to ZScript... SOMETIME in the future (likely not soon.)

A dedicated kick attack on all guns would be real handy to have, but a right pain in the ass to implement on 50 guns. It's certainly tempting! But I'll look into working it in once I iron out a few more things with the sound design and balancing.

[CaptainNurbles]

New update is out! Bug fixes galore and more sound design! New monster pain sounds, weapon impact sound effects, etc. Most importantly, more balancing with supplies, melee weapon damages, and some changes with monster damage. Shouldn't break your saves if you're updating from the last version to this one.


DOWNLOAD HERE (Updated 20/1/21)

Changelog:

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1.15 Balancing and Fixing! Uploaded 20/1/21

* Fixed some forgotten credits, also removed entries from the credits list for weapons I wound up canning.
* Extra foley in the form of weapon impacts and monster pain sounds.
* .357 Lever zombie now drops bullets individually.
* Fixed an issue where the flame bomb couldn't be picked up if you had more than 3 pounds of equipment.
* 4.6mm Pistol used to be able to be reloaded even if you were out of magazines. Fixed.
* 4.6mm Pistol's deselect sequence was fixed (Used to display the 10mm pistol when deselected.)
* 9mm Auto Pistol, 5.45mm Assault Rifle, 6.2mm Combat Rifle, and 7.62mm Battle Rifle all had issues with the fire modes when dropped and picked up again. Fixed.
* Glitch was fixed in which the masterkey shotgun attached to the 5.45mm Assault Rifle wouldn't fire if you were out of rifle ammo.
* Shrapnel has been made less jank and is more like actual shrapnel. It doesn't bounce off walls anymore, and the damage has been normalized (from anywhere between 5 and 40 damage to anywhere between 21 and 42 damage.) Shrapnel is also faster and more numerous.
* Shrapnel now hurts the owner of the projectile that produced it (Player's grenades can harm the player, monster missiles can hurt the monster via shrapnel, etc.)
* Shrapnel damage has been removed from the mod and in its place, explosive shrapnel deals Pierce damage instead. KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
* The land mine previously could generate ammo if dropped and picked back up. Fixed.
* Axe is now slightly faster.
* Players now have a unique sound for fire deaths.
* Melee weapons' puffs fixed (used to display the bulletpuff sprite when hitting a bleeding target.)
* Fixed the 9mm Auto Pistol's damages (Used to deal proper damage only on semi firing.)
* Imp trite's blast radius was shortened slightly and deals less damage. Suicide sequene was fixed so that they no longer explode twice.
* Forgotten ones now mildly explode on death.
* Squires can now produce portals to block attacks and block the player. Needs more play testing to check for effectiveness but in theory this will be nasty in close quarters.
* Health and ammo pools have been rebalanced some:
Ammo) Less pistol ammo, slight increase on rifle ammo, increase of SMG ammo on Clip spawns. ClipBox now has a decreased chance of spawning sidearms, no longer able to spawn common, weak handguns, and has a decreased chance of spawning empty mags. ShellBox spawns now have a chance to spawn empty ammo boxes. Cells have a greater chance of spawning rare ammo, but slightly decreased chance of spawning cells, and don't spawn 20mm Cannon mags anymore. Cellbox no longer spawns blaster rifle, and has an increased chance to spawn rare magazines.
Health) More likely to spawn off Stimpacks and Medikits, from a 1/4 chance of spawning to a 1/3 chance, with a 1/2 chance of spawning off Berserk spawns.
* Lead Pipe and Pipe Wrench's power attacks play meatier sounds.
* Sawed-off Shotgun Zombies no longer drop .22 WMR magazines.
* Chance of SMG and rifle ammo dropping off SMG and rifle zombies has been slightly increased.
* 20G Shotgunner obituary has been fixed.
* Healing effects now travel between levels.
* Melee zombies now deal proper damages. Their attacks are weaker than what the player can deal with the same weapons, but are overall stronger than they were before. Their attacks are slower to make up for this increase in damage.
* The player can no longer hold dickloads of .22 WMR ammo (Reduced from 15 mags totalling 450 bullets to 9 mags totalling 270 bullets.)
* The player can now hold more 10x22mm pistol magazines (Increased from a max of 9 magazines totalling 108 bullets to 12 magazines totalling 144 bullets.)
* Knife deals slightly less damage and has a slower stab attack.
* Machete's swing sequence is fixed (The fourth swing has a slowed grace period where you can't attack, but you can combo a power attack into it.)
* Lead Pipe is less damaging (Before it was as strong as the machete,) and has a slightly slower power attack.
* Pipe Wrench is slightly stronger, but slightly slower, with a fixed power swing sequence (If you power attack during a normal attack sequence the player won't lower the wrench as it is already lowered during the swing sequence.)
* New key sprites and sounds.
* LMG has been slightly buffed. Slightly more damage variation than the chaingun, but it is no longer dealing comparable damage to the 9mm pistols.
* Husks are slightly less likely to spawn, and 20G shotgunners and 9mm SMG zombies are slightly more likely to spawn.