Hideous Destructor 4.10.0b

[Somagu]

Got a nasty desync for you to unravel. It can happen under much more ordinary conditions, but this is the most reliable reproduction I've got:
Go to the range with two players. One player goes into the tunnel and waits at the other end of the range (does not leave the tunnel yet). The other player summons a bunch of hell knights (about 30 will do, more wouldn't hurt), alerts them, then hides in the tunnel. The first player in the tunnel, not yet known to the knights, comes out at the far end of the range and flies back towards the counter and the horde. Somewhere along the journey, it'll desync or even hard crash on Linux.
I don't think this is actually specific to hell knights. It seems more related to general targeting functions, because it only desyncs under the exact circumstance that the first player in the tunnel is never seen or heard by the knights before the second player has alerted them and then left their line of sight. It might even be the result of a GZDoom-side change, considering the OS-specific hard crashes and that I was able to replicate the desync as far back as 4.7.1b, even though it only became a prominent issue much more recently.

Regarding the bonedrone: now that the fragmentation has been cut down, it feels pretty reasonable switching their fragtype back to hdb_scrap again. They do a lot more armor damage compared to hdb_frag without the constant oneshots. It maybe feels just slightly too weak on average, but the projectile is so fast and hard to avoid that it really shouldn't be that strong, and when it does roll well, you certainly feel it the same way you feel a vanilla revenant rolling an 80. Boners stand as the tier between imps and hell knights, so their attack probably shouldn't be both harder to avoid and more instantly deadly than balefire.

Seconding this second notion. A lucky revenant can still knock your ass out in one go, they still give armor a worse day than any other non-hitscanner, and if they catch you without a vest, you're gonna burn through most of a medikit just treating the one fireball, if you don't die outright.

[Abba Zabba]

Seconding this second notion.

Thirding. I did some runs with this tweak and, while I wouldn't call the damage type 'slightly' weaker, the consistent higher armor damage combined with the now relevant burning damage (because you survive the initial hit) from the drone, gave me a much more fitting fight against such a strong, blazing fast projectile. Dead-on center mass hits are also still quite brutal, turning you into barely living mush if you have garrison armor, or a moderately wounded marine if you have battle armor. Two recommendations, though:

One, with the above damage type change, increase the amount of of scrap projectiles (rather than fragments) generated from drones by a bit. The damage is great but it feels just a slight bit too weak. Maybe around 20% more?

Two, buff the revenants missile fatigue so that it still stands out from other monsters with the cooldown being lengthy, but not so long so as to make the revenant utterly helpless after it launches its initial two drones. I've had an easy time with good cover when the revenant launches the initial two. It may as well shrug its shoulders at me after that, or go full kamikaze and run up and punch me.

---

Bug: Strongly, strongly recommend removing the bone drone's ability to interact with switches and levers and the like via collision, as I've had exit switch linedefs triggered by them bumbling around small, enclosed rooms. This is quite easy to reproduce, just load up the range, enable god mode, stand a meter away from the exit/range reset switch and summon some drones. After about 10 or so, the switch should trigger. Also, other than map exit linedefs, this can totally screw over the player in other ways such as soft locking map progression, or triggering a booby trap.

Bug: Monsters have no check for obstructions before attempting to interact with stuff. You can reproduce this on the range quite easily by spawning a monster close to the locked red keycard door, and grappling it with the grab command so that it stays against the door while 'roaming', you will consistently open the locked door from the other side due to the monster's interact ability. In my case, I used a healer imp, and even that monster's small size was big enough to trigger the linedef on the other side of the door.

Oversight: Please for the love of God and all that is holy, remove the ability for the drone and monsters in general to interact with anything beyond unlocked doors and (I'm guessing) lift switches. I believe this is what caused the mysterious crusher switch bug in MAP01 of Old Still Life. I'm not sure what vanilla permissions are, but those are the only two that come to mind. In the drone's case, it doesn't interact with stuff beyond obstructions, but for some reason it's capable of activating exit linedefs, perhaps because it calls the same function as the player's use command. And in the general monster AI case, they can't activate exits linedefs (but are capable of exiting a map if it's setup like the aforementioned map example,) but everything else is seemingly possible to activate, with no obstruction check.

[Matt]

Monsters being able to interact with stuff is intentional, drones less so.

I'll try to keep an eye out for that desync but it does feel like some kind of memory handling issue...

[Eric_]

I've since been able to replicate the desync as far back as HD 4.4.2c on GZDoom 4.4.2, on three separate computers running different operating systems, so whatever's causing it, it's apparently been around for a long time. I suspect this one's a red herring - not that it's not a problem, but we'd have picked up on it sometime sooner in the past two years if it were so easily tripped. What's been occurring in normal gameplay might be something else entirely. I got another desync very similar to these two when I wasn't recording, and that was on a Doom 1 map where the only monsters involved were shotgunners and imps, so that rules out anything specific to the hell knights, archviles, or cacodemons that were present in the other fight. My first suspicion before I'd started focusing on hell knights was something relating to fear - thunderbuster BeamSpots being fired near enemies in the moments leading up to three separate desyncs doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. Unfortunately, it's proven really hard to replicate in a controlled environment, or even on the very same maps where the desyncs happened the first time. Every time we think we have a lead, we either play a session intentionally trying to trigger it and instead enjoy several maps in a row desync-free, or we get evidence suggesting something else is at fault besides what we were thinking.

[Abba Zabba]

Monsters being able to interact with stuff is intentional, drones less so.

Thanks for that change for the drones, I was beyond confused when it first happened out of the blue. With regards to monster behavior, I (wrongly) assumed that HD gave all monsters somehow more permissions than vanilla for interacting with map linedefs, namely switches and levers, like the drone was able to do. However, monsters can unfortunately still interact with stuff beyond blocking lines despite that recent AI commit, so that doesn't work. The frequency of interaction occurring is seemingly the same as before, too.

In regards to that particular map, the switch is covered (along with being slightly recessed into the wall, meaning vanilla monsters shouldn't be able to have their hitbox collide with it) but this blocking line bypass bug is what allows them to trigger it. No idea what flags that switch as being interactable with monsters as SLADE says they aren't permitted to, but it's irrelevant to the aforementioned bug, just wanted to be clear what's causing this.

[Matt]

In regards to that particular map, the switch is covered (along with being slightly recessed into the wall, meaning vanilla monsters shouldn't be able to have their hitbox collide with it) but this blocking line bypass bug is what allows them to trigger it. No idea what flags that switch as being interactable with monsters as SLADE says they aren't permitted to, but it's irrelevant to the aforementioned bug, just wanted to be clear what's causing this.

I'm guessing the TryMove check manages to overlap both the blocking line and the switch line at once, causing the switch line to register as the blocking line.

If that's the case I'm not terribly inclined to fix this just because it'll require a bunch more extra checks whenever that happens (which is a lot).

[Abba Zabba]

I'm guessing the TryMove check manages to overlap both the blocking line and the switch line at once, causing the switch line to register as the blocking line.

If that's the case I'm not terribly inclined to fix this just because it'll require a bunch more extra checks whenever that happens (which is a lot).

Would it be possible to simply limit the range of this interaction check so that you don't need to restructure a separate, more CPU intensive check? That way it still only activates things the monster brushes up against rather than penetrating through walls or anything else. It would be great to see this bug squashed in one form or another.

Awesome to see both robots get a static guard mode! That's one of the things I particularly wanted for the HERP, as its only saving grace for things running it down was to moderately increase it's fire rate. Handy for the DERP too so I can set it up defensively where I know trouble is waiting, without alerting everything to it and ruining the element of surprise.

[Matt]

Looking at the code again it seems there should be a limit to the activation range. Not sure if this will actually address the issue but it'll at least stop lines from activating that should clearly be too far away to touch.

[Abba Zabba]

I'm assuming the change is supposed to deny interaction when the distance is 5 or more map units away? If so, the current implementation doesn't work. The red keycard door at the HD range has that common 8-unit thick door track, and that still doesn't stop monsters from opening the other side. Also, I'd recommend shaving down the distance some to maybe 2 or 3, unless you ran into bugs on your end while testing.

[Eric_]

Mancubi incorrectly have the +map07boss2 flag instead of +map07boss1, so killing the last one in a map triggers both Dead Simple specials.

[Doomperson 999]

Wait, I can suggest ways to make this way more realistic, such as,
1. Ability to blind things with eyes by shooting them in the eye.
2. Enemies always patrolling.
3. Lava instantly killing humans. not demons because they are used to that.
4. A Poison meter which starts going up when nukage is touched. Only way to stop it is to use an antidote.
5. 9mm bullets bounce off helmets & pure demon's skin because according to the lore, low-caliber bullets do not work on pure demons because their skin is as strong as steel.
6. Former humans & marines always drop their weapons & even their helmets & armor if they are wearing them.
7. Mega armor will protect you 100% as long as it lasts.

[ZikShadow]

HDest is a mod that's always been fair for both player and enemies. If enemies can be blinded by a headshot, then the player would be adjusted accordingly. Considering you can already die to an unlucky burst to the head (or if you're not wearing armor at all), having blindness from a random shot would be redundant because you're already dead.

2 is already a thing. 3 is a thing depending on the mapset, also 4 if the damagefloor uses Strife-style poison floors (though that one only requires the player to wait out the toxins). Also 5 in some regards 'cause enemies in HDest wear armor or have shields (though in case of shields, they bust faster because of the larger diameter compared to length). With enemies wearing blue armor, it takes a lot of rounds to drop 'em unless you use energy weapons or close in and punch 'em in the face, melee ignores armor completely. 6 is also a thing 'cause you can loot armor off of enemies that wear them by kicking their bodies. HDest's lore isn't Doom's lore, so try not to confuse the two.

"Mega armor" isn't a concept that exists in real combat. If something penetrates through, it penetrates through, doesn't matter how fully covered you are. HDest also already has shieldcores that fill this purpose in the magical sense.

Maybe play the mod first before making suggestions, hmm?

[Thanatonaut]

Unloading a bullpup Liberator's chamber yields empty brass, despite it containing a live round of any type.

[Matt]

NEW UPDATE!

Highlights of changes:

• New hd_instagib gameplay mode. Only affects player gear but it also removes armour so the gun-wielding mobs are practically insta-killing you anyway.
• hd_blacklist is renamed to hd_noloadout.
• hd_noloadout and hd_forceloadout can both take the all keyword to delete items spawned on the map as well as preventing their appearance in a loadout. The keyword can be included in the same way as any other loadout item and does not need to be the first item anymore.
• *.E.R.P.s now have extra modes where they don't move and only target what's directly in front of them.
• Rocket grenades "in the sky" but outside the actual sector now continue to track airburst time.
• Unchambering a bullpup Liberator would add to the brass tube without differentiating spent brass and live rounds, turning every round removed from the chamber into spent brass.
• Added a bunch of Ace's barrel light/sprite optimizations and edge-case crash fixes.
• Players no longer sometimes select their loadout weapons when becoming spectators.
• Encumbrance can no longer reduce movement speed past zero.
• Talisman ghosts are effective again.
• Disintegrator mode now has different effects. Your camera will now follow your attacker.
• Boss brain sends messages again.
• Endgame and spectator messages are now scaled to a virtual 320x200 screen.
• Spectators are now restored (killed and forcibly respawned as normal players) if you plant a flag in co-op or enable Power of Friendship midgame.
• Hitting Unload on an already-unloaded one-shot rocket launcher will no longer load it instead.
• Skins can now define their own footstep sounds.
• H.E.R.P. dot is now much larger, can interpolate, and can be detected by and scare off monsters.
• Map-placed D.E.R.P.s can be customized for what mode they're in.
• Monsters can now disable robots by picking them up and turning them off.

[ipaq]

Hey Matt,

Long time doomer but decided to do a playthrough of Doom 2 then all Doom's 4 episodes with HD. I did all of this using `hd-4.8.2a.pk7` with a rolling GZDoom version with the rest of my updates (GZDoom version g4.9.0-m tonight)

Today I'm on map05 of TNT then will wrap up with Plutonia. But my save00.zds quick-save became corrupted with an error on load: `Attempt to instantiate abstract class BlockThingsIterator`.

I also noticed this save's map05.map.json is 1.6MB while my map03.map.json earlier savegame was only 390K with an overwhelming majority of the text being from decals. Not sure how to resolve this just yet. I take hourly snapshots so I'll try comparing it with an earlier save00.zds, though I would rather not lose the progress given this error happened just before the next hour. Is this a known problem if somebody takes too long in a map or something of that tone?