[0.10.6] Gun Bonsai -- everything-compatible weapon upgrading

[stainedofmind]

So a few times now, in the middle of what I would describe as a "heated battle", I've gone to quickly upgrade my weapon and get right back into the fight, not realizing I'm also sitting on a player upgrade, and I'll inevitably accidentally click on a random upgrade, somewhat wasting my opportunity. Not sure if you want to leave this as a feature of "screw you, pay better attention!", swap things so that the player upgrade is offered first and the weapon upgrade second, or allow the player to select which order things are offered in. ... Or of course dealer's choice if you have a better idea.

I actually mentioned this before, and if I remember right an optional confirmation message for upgrades is planned for the next release.

EDIT: Quote regarding my suggestion for the confirmation message.

That's a good idea and I've added it to the slate for 0.9.x.

Derp... I do remember you mentioning that now. Don't drink and Doom kids!

[ToxicFrog]

The actual prompt isn't going to be in 0.9.1 (although it's still on the docket), but what is is a change where it will not automatically open the player upgrade window -- so if you take a weapon upgrade, and doing so earns you a player upgrade, you'll get a notification as such but the upgrade won't appear until you manually open the window, same as weapon upgrades. So the experience is now consistently "push button, choose one upgrade, back in the game" rather than being prompted to choose two sometimes.

[mamaluigisbagel]

Honestly that sounds like a better and less annoying fix. Good to hear!

[retronutcase]

Ran into a bug with a lightning based Unmaker on MetaDoom. It creates invincible Titantulas. Twitch clip below. I think any Lightning based weapon can do this though.

https://clips.twitch.tv/DeliciousIntere ... azVPDcy81v

[ToxicFrog]

That sounds like another manifestation of the same bug that makes centaurs immortal when electrocuted in which case it might be fixed in 0.9.1 -- please try it and report back.

Speaking of which, here's 0.9.1!! There are a few balance tweaks but most of this is bugfixes and UX improvements, including several requested in this thread; headline items:
- configurable size of upgrade spread on level-up, including "all the upgrades" and "just pick one for me automatically"
- improved weapon type inference code which should work better with Hexen, among others, and reduce occurences of "Bonsai offers you bouncy shots on a weapon that already fires them" and the like
- lightning should no longer make enemies immortal
- a number of crash fixes, including Blade of Agony and other mods that fiddle with the player's inventory

For 0.9.2 I plan to focus primarily on adding more non-elemental upgrades, since it's been a while, but bug reports are as always welcome.

---

- New: number of upgrades you can choose from on level up is configurable
- Player and weapon counts can be configured separately
- A setting of 1 will randomly choose an upgrade for you as soon as you gain a level
- A setting of 0 will let you choose from the complete list of available upgrades
- New: improved weapon type inference code
- detects melee weapons based on average engagement range rather than trusting the (often missing or misused) `+MELEEWEAPON` flag
- detects FastProjectile weapons and weapons firing seeking, bouncing, and ripping projectiles
- these types can also be set manually in the BONSAIRC lump
- upgrade selection will avoid spawning upgrades that don't work (e.g. Homing on a FastProjectile weapon) or are redundant (e.g. Piercing on a weapon that fires ripper shots)
- New: `bonsai-level-up` netevent is emitted when you gain enough XP to level up (before you open the menu and choose an upgrade)
- New: emitted netevents are now documented in [MODDING.md](./MODDING.md)
- Change: "base level cost" menu item is now a textfield
- Change: the player levelup menu will no longer open automatically on levelup
- Change: `bonsai_show_info_console` replaced with `bonsai-dump`, which is an alias for `netevent bonsai-debug,info`.
- Change: `bonsai_choose_level_up_option` netevent renamed `bonsai-choose-level-up-option`. The old netevent is still emitted for backwards compatibility with AutoAutoSave but will be removed in 0.10.x.
- Change: a number of other netevents were renamed but as far as I know no-one else was using them for anything, so they don't get compatibility shims
- Balance: Damage (weapon) is now +20%/+1 rather than +25%/+2
- Balance: Shield is now 20% and stacks up to a max of 60%, rather than 50% -> 75%
- Balance: Shield cannot reduce incoming damage below 1
- Fix: HUD should now render overtop of other HUD elements
- Fix: Hexen cleric mace & Strife punch dagger are now considered melee weapons
- Fix: BONSAIRC now reports when it's enabling conditional configurations, and which ones
- Fix: BONSAIRC now produces a single error and stops parsing when encountering a malformed type, enable, or disable command
- Fix: Lightning will *probably* no longer permanently paralyze enemies, or (in some mods) make them immortal
- Fix: Homing Shots now properly sets the `+SEEKERMISSILE` flag on projectiles
- Fix: the levelup flash/sound settings are now respected for player levelups
- Fix: crash when subjected to an instadeath (e.g. bottomless pit) that kills `PlayerInfo` but leaves `PlayerPawn` intact
- Fix: crash when the player's inventory is taken away (fixes Blade of Agony)

[mamaluigisbagel]

I think I IMMEDIATELY found a problem. When you press the Gun Bonsai "Show Weapon Info" bind, you get an error that says "Unknown command "Bonsai-Show-Info""

[DarkkOne]

In regard to the +MELEEWEAPON thing, if they're tagged with it, is the tag still useful in letting this mod know they're melee weapons?

[ToxicFrog]

I think I IMMEDIATELY found a problem. When you press the Gun Bonsai "Show Weapon Info" bind, you get an error that says "Unknown command "Bonsai-Show-Info""

Whoops! Hotfixed, please re-download. You may need to rebind your "show info" key.

In regard to the +MELEEWEAPON thing, if they're tagged with it, is the tag still useful in letting this mod know they're melee weapons?

No -- I've seen both melee weapons without the flag, and ranged weapons that have it (e.g. some of the shotguns in Ashes). The current version relies entirely on average engagement range. I may experiment with using the flag as a hint in the future if I can figure out how, but in general neither the absense nor presence of the flag can be trusted.

[DarkkOne]

How close is close range? And how permanent is this "detection?" Like, is it re-run every level from scratch, or is it across the whole lifetime of the weapon? Like, if I have a hybrid Melee / Ranged weapon that's primary melee, do I have to try to avoid getting too many ranged kills early on to make sure it gets categorized right?

I'd honestly be in favor of additive categories where if it has the +MELEEWEAPON it'll always have the melee upgrades in the pool, then if it qualifies for other types through detection it can have theirs as well, but if it doesn't have the flag, then it'll depend on the close range detection. I'm not a big fan of like... coding too much around people mis-using tags. Forgetting them / not knowing of them is one thing, but applying them to weapons where they don't belong is kinda something else in my weird brain?

But over all, I'm mostly just worried about hybrid weapons ending up only in one category or the other if I don't used them balanced-ly enough.

[Netheritor]

Ah, nice mods. At time of this writing, I'm not downloaded 0.9.1 yet.
The poison weakness is something else for me, I played it with DNA (Declare New Apocalypse), wreck the training room, I'm powerful enough, try unique hard difficulty, still died easily, more like the self-damage is too great (enemies explode after death). No problem with this one.

I also saw piercing shot upgrade when playing the mod, what's the condition? Only in this mod I got it, and after lv26 too. Maybe because it's flamethrower? But that mod already has piercing though, and it offered with lv26 weapon too. Can you optimize?

I'm still brainstorming my brain for ideas about new upgrade. Currently my mind has 5 new elements and a non-element;
Dark; Inspired by blind and blackhole.
Light; inspired by player buff and fast-homing tracing projectiles (realm 667 elemental gems)
Earth; Inspired by shockwave/knockback projectiles, petrify, and golem summoning.
Ice; Slow and freeze enemies (realm 667 elemental gems)
Water; heal players while damaging enemies (realm 667 elemental gems too)
That ideas still a draft though. Inspired by your upgrade patterns.

Also, idea for new non-element; Enemies killed will create a small range seeking explosive mines. Damage and range will increase based on upgrade counts, will explode in 10-15 seconds if not detecting enemies. How's that?

Edit: More suggestion, question and info; Can you add aura mod for player upgrade (I know there is thorn), like heal aura or DoT (Damage over Time) aura?
What the difference between corrosive and poison DoT?
Like I said before, your mod is great. May as well call this anti corruption card mod.

[openroadracer]

Also, idea for new non-element; Enemies killed will create a small range seeking explosive mines. Damage and range will increase based on upgrade counts, will explode in 10-15 seconds if not detecting enemies. How's that?

That could actually be an upgrade that requires the "Submunitions" upgrade, if you ask me. Make the explosive projectiles that enemies drop on death into homing bombs.

What the difference between corrosive and poison DoT?

Acid works better on weapons with high per-shot damage, and slowly converts Acid stacks into damage with increasing rate if the enemy has less health and/or more Acid stacks.

Poison works better on weak but fast firing weapons, and is a shorter lived damage over time effect, with duration extending from adding Poison stacks to the target. More Poison stacks also cause more damage to the target.

[Imp Hunter]

I'm very impressed to see that this mod works even with randomizer mods like Aeons of Death and Project Complexity. Modern Doom mods never cease to amaze me! On Aeons of Death, the only issue I encounted is that the Explosive Death shows a weird plasma explosion sprite, but that might be a AEOD issue anyway (sprite naming issue).

[ToxicFrog]

How close is close range? And how permanent is this "detection?" Like, is it re-run every level from scratch, or is it across the whole lifetime of the weapon? Like, if I have a hybrid Melee / Ranged weapon that's primary melee, do I have to try to avoid getting too many ranged kills early on to make sure it gets categorized right?

It's across the whole lifetime of the weapon, and is based on average engagement range for every attack you make with the weapon that successfully damages an enemy. The range threshold is 85 -- so a bit further than Strife's punch dagger, and about 33% further than the reach on the Chainsaw or Fists. It's fine to attack enemies further away than that as long as the average attack range is below that threshold.

I'd honestly be in favor of additive categories where if it has the +MELEEWEAPON it'll always have the melee upgrades in the pool, then if it qualifies for other types through detection it can have theirs as well, but if it doesn't have the flag, then it'll depend on the close range detection. I'm not a big fan of like... coding too much around people mis-using tags. Forgetting them / not knowing of them is one thing, but applying them to weapons where they don't belong is kinda something else in my weird brain?

But over all, I'm mostly just worried about hybrid weapons ending up only in one category or the other if I don't used them balanced-ly enough.

So, part of the complication is that the +MELEEWEAPON flag doesn't actually mean "this is a melee weapon" -- it means "monsters that prefer to +AVOIDMELEE should be extra worried about the player when this weapon is equipped". Looking at the code it looks like the "avoid radius" in that circumstance is 192 map units, so it probably makes sense to increase the melee detection threshold to that (although, fun fact: Hexen's melee weapons have such absurd reach that you can hit enemies with them when they're still far enough way that they think they're not "in melee range"; Gun Bonsai has a special override to treat them as "melee").

So that means that you could plausibly argue that all of these are valid uses of the +MELEEWEAPON flag:
- weapons that can only attack in melee
- weapons that are primarily for use in melee, but have a ranged alt-fire
- weapons that are primarily for use at range, but have a powerful melee alt-fire, even if it's infrequently used
- weapons that are entirely ranged, but get significantly more dangerous at close range, such as wide-spread shotguns and the BFG9K

And by a literal reading of the actual name of the flag without digging into AI behaviour, it also seems reasonable to apply it to:
- weapons that have any distinct melee attack whatsoever, even if it's weak or rarely useful

On top of that, there's a balance aspect. The hitscan/projectile distinction is primarily functional and secondarily aesthetic; hitscan weapons can't bounce or rip, for example, and projectile weapons interact badly with rail shots and look weird with the explosive VFX. The melee/ranged distinction, though, is because I wanted to give melee weapons some more powerful upgrades in the pool to counterbalance the increased difficulty and risk of using them, thus upgrades like Dark Harvest and Shield (both more powerful versions of player-level upgrades), or Swiftness (which has no equivalent outside melee weapons at all). I wanted to make those exclusive to melee weapons, both to give melee playstyles a unique reward, and to avoid the possibility of, say, a Dark Harvesting Swift Plasma Rifle.

Typing that out has given me an idea, though -- what if I loosen the requirements for weapons to be flagged as melee (say, bump the melee-range detection to 192 map units and just require ~40% of the weapon's attacks to fall within that range), offer the melee upgrades on any weapon that falls within those requirements, but only trigger them on melee combat? So you could, say, get a shotgun with Dark Harvest on it, but it would only proc on kills made up close and personal.

Also, idea for new non-element; Enemies killed will create a small range seeking explosive mines. Damage and range will increase based on upgrade counts, will explode in 10-15 seconds if not detecting enemies. How's that?

That could actually be an upgrade that requires the "Submunitions" upgrade, if you ask me. Make the explosive projectiles that enemies drop on death into homing bombs.

I actually experimented with homing submunitions in an earlier version, but couldn't get them to work right. It's on my list of things to re-investigate, though.

Edit: More suggestion, question and info; Can you add aura mod for player upgrade (I know there is thorn), like heal aura or DoT (Damage over Time) aura?

Regeneration effects are something I've considered, but I want to avoid creating incentives to players to AFK between fights while their health regenerates; if I do implement something like that it'll probably be more like "if you have less than [threshold] health and have not taken damage in the past 2 seconds and there are no alert enemies, instant restore to [threshold] health", i.e. an "always start each fight with at least this much health" effect rather than something that lets you duck behind a pillar mid-fight and heal, or something that encourages you to sit in a hallway for five minutes between fights until you're at full health. Dark Harvest and the Scavenge upgrades all provide a way to recover health but they all require you to kill things to do it.

Similarly, at the speed that Doom combat tends to happen in, I think tuning an always-on DoT aura so that it was useful without overpowering would be tricky. I do like the idea of having more aura effects in general, though.

I'm very impressed to see that this mod works even with randomizer mods like Aeons of Death and Project Complexity. Modern Doom mods never cease to amaze me! On Aeons of Death, the only issue I encounted is that the Explosive Death shows a weird plasma explosion sprite, but that might be a AEOD issue anyway (sprite naming issue).

Yeah, all sprites need to have four-letter names and there's no namespacing, so sprite collisions are a sad fact of life. I could have used existing Doom sprites, but I wanted this to work with non-Doom IWADs. I could have copied the sprites from DOOM2.WAD into Gun Bonsai under the same names, so that they'd still be available no matter what IWAD was loaded, but the Doom license doesn't permit that. In the end I copied in some sprites from FreeDoom, but leaving them with their original name would have meant loading GB would also replace the normal Doom graphics with those (and pk3 lump filtering doesn't have any way to say "load these lumps in any game except doom"), so I also renamed them -- which opens the possibility of sprite collisions with other mods, as happened here.

There isn't really a good way around this, as far as I know. By changing the load order you can decide whether the AoD or GB graphics take precedence, but either way something is going to look wrong.

[DarkkOne]

Typing that out has given me an idea, though -- what if I loosen the requirements for weapons to be flagged as melee (say, bump the melee-range detection to 192 map units and just require ~40% of the weapon's attacks to fall within that range), offer the melee upgrades on any weapon that falls within those requirements, but only trigger them on melee combat? So you could, say, get a shotgun with Dark Harvest on it, but it would only proc on kills made up close and personal.

That sounds really good actually. I'm not sure how you'd handle "shield" for that, but for the others that certainly seems like a really good way to balance them. Also, at that point, allowing the flag to influence the decision making process has quite a bit less downside, since if you want to get Dark Harvesting with your shotgun, you've got to get in danger range.

One thing I'd consider, too, is that many games or mods have melee weapons that are already balanced against the other weapons in one way or another (such as Hexen, but also quite a few mods that change the game to be more melee focused in one way or another). I enjoy the power level of the melee upgrades and, especially with the reductions in Shield and Dark Harvest, feel like they're getting pretty close to in-line with some of the other upgrades. Heck, some of the crowd-control means of other weapons (any elemental crowd control effect like paralysis or fleeing + explosive rounds) actually outpace the melee stuff quite considerably.

While balance is good to pursue, there's kinda a few different "types" of balance. For things meant for competitive gameplay, obviously balance is about how much advantage is gained by doing or getting a thing. But for things for PVE gameplay, it becomes fuzzier. From the design standpoint, you often want to balance against the desired difficulty, but that's not entirely relevant to this mod since it's going to skew difficulty heavily on its own, and also depend an awful lot on what you pair it with.

But there's also balance in terms of "options." Does adding something increase options, because it gives the player more valid (or "fun") ways to do things, or does it (in a practical sense) decrease options, because it's so strong that no reasonable player (players trying to survive/thrive, as opposed to players intentionally making 'bad' decisions to increase personal challenge) would make certain other choices with it available.

Basically, I think with your mod, options is the way to think about it. Sometimes nerfing something adds options, because it takes things that were no longer useful options and allows them to be useful again. So while you're making something lesser, you're actually increasing the available "useful" options over all. So when thinking about melee vs. ranged balance, the big question isn't "is this too strong" on its own, but "is this so strong that people would never reasonably choose other choices."

Over all, I think this is in a pretty good place on that. But it helps as a tool to consider things. Will a shotgun with dark harvest and shield mean nobody will use a plasma rifle with homing, piercing shots? Dunno. But it's less about "are they balanced in overall power" and more just "are they each fun enough to play that neither is likely to be entirely left out."

At least that's my view on it. Hope this wasn't too much a ramble. I remember you mentioned being interested in balance considerations earlier on, so hope this felt useful, or at least interesting.

[Brohnesorge]

please don't nerf too much. The power skew is part of what makes the mod fun. The only thing I thought could use a nerf was shield and it got exactly the nerf I thought it should get.