[v1.0.0] Psychic -- HEY LOOK ITS RELEASED NOW

[DBThanatos]

So you hopped' aboard your Tardis.
Went back to 1996.
Beat some kid up and stole his custom doom maps from his BB Server?
Came back to 2004 and used Ye Olde ZDoom.
Transported to beginning of 2010.
Then released it...

LOLz 1996 Map design.

Whoa! you nailed it perfectly. Except for the sole and simple fact that THIS IS NOT A MAPS MOD. Now, investigate a bit more before posting please. Or if Im asking for too much, at the very least, download the mod before posting this kind of "feedback".

[Xaser]

Dee dum da diddly dum dum dee doo da-dee dah dah...



Much as I'd appreciate the reference, it's TARDIS, silly.

[XutaWoo]

BoldEnglishman, DBThanatos

.....SIR Belfin (MasterOFDeath) - Accidental co-founder, ideas&support, future mapping

He's actually hinted it at other times also, soooo.

[SoulCrow]

Xutawoo: Oh I'm aware of that, but that clearly states "future mapping". I was merely saying that the level shown in the specific screenshot quoted by Godzilla probably wasn't the work of the Masters of Insanity team.

[Xaser]

For the record, that shot is from Map23 of Requiem, which is quite the oldie. None of the maps shown in those screens are directly related to Psychic or we Masters at all ('cept the E5M1 screenshot )... they're not quite awesome enough.

If he'd quoted a screenshot from Zen Dynamics, though, I'd suppose that would just be karma catching back up with me.

[XutaWoo]

At anyrate, replaying this I noticed some problems:

--The grenades have the "ZDWars Problem"- that is, the projectile is actually bigger than the player. The result? It blows up if you're against a wall. This ended an adventure of mine rather painfully while I was backing up.
--The powered-up plasma now works completely with the explosions appearing each time you hit a monster with it. It's still not as good as regular plasma to me, however.

[amv2k9]

Simply amazing. Despite the fact this is a "Beta", it looks & plays in the kind of polished fashion you'd expect from one of the commercially-available games based on the Doom engine back in the day. Even after a couple days of playing, this mod continues to suprise me:

Just last night I was blowing up some barrels and ran over the green gloop that remains. I thought it would hurt you, or was just for show, but it turns out that stuff increases your armor/health! Never thought to try that before.

I have a suggestion for a new Psi Power: Draw, that would pull loose BloodMoney towards you. Not the coins that are stationary in the level, just the coinage that pops out of enemies. I've noticed in a lot of the levels I've played, that there'll be alcoves with enemies in them that you can't reach on foot, or coinage'll get stuck on a ledge. I just think it'd be nice to have a way to pick it up. Just like any other power, Draw would expend psi energy through use and would be upgradeable, each level better at picking up BM than the previous. Level it high enough, and you'd be able to defy gravity and pull BM up out of pits, or yank it away from distant ledges.

A couple of minor caveats I have:
1. The digits for health, armor, and BM are really hard to read. At first I thought it was a resolution thing, but after going from 640x480 to 1280x1024, and looking at your screenshots, it looks like that's true on any resolution.

2.The Buy Menu not pausing the timer for things like Radsuits & the like.

[Xaser]

Thanks for the comments, there.

I've contemplated the notion of adding "passive" psychic abilities in the past, although such a feature is unlikely to make it in any time soon because they would be tough to add in (mostly because the buymenu system is so rigid). The ability to draw nearby coins would be really cool indeed, though actually getting it to work right would be a little on the tricky side. I don't think I'd be able to do such a thing and keep the bouncing behavior intact, but then again, you never know.


As for the grenade, I'm seriously tempted to feature suggest some sort of pseudo sprite-offset feature for situations like this. The grenade projectile is not very large but is fired from the player's right side (so it looks correct according to the HUD), a fairly common practice. Of course, this means that the projectile has a habit of exploding prematurely if the player is pressed up against the right-hand wall. Not fun, that.

In the "olden days" of DEHACKED modding, this effect (aligning the fired projectile to an angled HUD weapon sprite) was done simply by changing the offsets of the projectile sprites. Of course, changing the offsets also means that looking at it from the opposite angle would make it look like it's coming from the wrong side.

I wonder how feasible it would be (and how much use people might see in it) to suggest a "thing offset" property that specifies (in x, y, and z) where in relation to the actual object that the sprites are drawn. A thing offset of (8,0,0), for example, would draw the sprite 8 units to the right (in actual game space, regardless of facing) of where the thing itself is. Practically speaking, shouldn't affect things too much as long as this is used correctly, though I guess one may find it a bit odd that the sprites themselves aren't actually dead-center, hence why I'm hesitant to suggest such a thing.

I may just resort to changing the grenade/nail projectile offsets anyway and just deal with it, or alternatively just make them spawn from the center anyway (a la Painkiller). This sort of thing is starting to bother me a bit as well.

tl;dr -- skip to this part:

I'm thinking of revamping the grenadegun projectiles to make them a lot more useful. The biggest problem is still the fact that it's so easy to hurt yourself with it, which really hampers its usefulness since it's not that great at long ranges either. I toyed with the idea of making the explosions not hurt the shooter at all, but then it would be too easy to use since you can just run into a group of baddies and shoot them all in the face (though admittedly you could do that in DMC ).

A possible solution: I'm thinking of making the grenades have two explosion radii -- a large one (same range as the current) that does less damage and doesn't hurt the player, and a smaller one (around 128-radius to keep it in tune with a standard rocket) that damages the player but also deals extra damage to baddies. This would not only make the 'nades a tiny bit more useful (dealing more damage near the center of the explosion) but also greatly reduce the range from which you can get hurt without sacrificing its current huge explosion radius. It may take some tweaking to balance it right, but do you feel it would be more useful this way?


I'm also brainstorming ideas for tweaking the weapons/psychics when playing deathmatch mode. I've always wanted to implement a simple Psychic multiplayer DM mode in which you can choose a starting psy power (via a modified buymenu or such), sans dark for balance. As-is, though, the set of powers wouldn't be balanced very well for deathmatch (lightning would be virtually useless while plasma will rape everyone). Tweaking the effects just for Deathmatch is a simple task (the means to do so is actually already in the wad), but I'm not sure what to do with a couple of the powers. Would anyone really find Gravity that useful in a shootout with your buddies, and who's crazy enough to want to try fragging people with a lvl.1 Needlepoint?

Any suggestions for balance and such, let me know. I've been putting this portion off for a while, but I figure it's a fruitless pursuit to wait for Skulltag to update. That and I need to get off my lazy arse and work on Psy a bit more.

[amv2k9]

I toyed with the idea of making the explosions not hurt the shooter at all, but then it would be too easy to use since you can just run into a group of baddies and shoot them all in the face (though admittedly you could do that in DMC

One of the ideas I had was to implement something I'll call "Overkill". Basically how it works is, if you kill an enemy with a weapon that is WAYYY more than is necessary to kill it, the resulting BM would be worth less; an incentive for the player to use the breadth of his weaponry and Psi and not just spam the Grenade gun 'cause it has infinite ammo. This would probably be hell to add though, and I'm not even sure if it's a good idea...

A possible solution: I'm thinking of making the grenades have two explosion radii -- a large one (same range as the current) that does less damage and doesn't hurt the player, and a smaller one (around 128-radius to keep it in tune with a standard rocket) that damages the player but also deals extra damage to baddies. This would not only make the 'nades a tiny bit more useful (dealing more damage near the center of the explosion) but also greatly reduce the range from which you can get hurt without sacrificing its current huge explosion radius. It may take some tweaking to balance it right, but do you feel it would be more useful this way?

This, on the other hand, sounds like a good idea. Maybe you could add a bit of knockback (maybe limited to the player only? I can imagine having enemies get pushed back as well might create problems) to the wider explosion radius. That way, you still have a little danger in getting too close, but not as bad as taking tons of damage.

[DoomRater]

Actually overkill IS implmented in the game... and it actually gives you MORE BM.

[Ribo Zurai]

This game is just fantastic. I'm playing with DVII and I'm enjoying very much. But I have a question, how do I increase the PSI Points? I just use all mine, and I'm needing it.

[amv2k9]

This game is just fantastic. I'm playing with DVII and I'm enjoying very much. But I have a question, how do I increase the PSI Points? I just use all mine, and I'm needing it.

The Nightmare O weapon increases the rate at which Psi naturally replenishes, and the BloodMoney dropped from stronger demons, like Cyberdemons, boosts your Psi by a bit. Also, you can buy a powerup that refills it.

[amv2k9]

Tweaking the effects just for Deathmatch is a simple task (the means to do so is actually already in the wad), but I'm not sure what to do with a couple of the powers. Would anyone really find Gravity that useful in a shootout with your buddies, and who's crazy enough to want to try fragging people with a lvl.1 Needlepoint?

I think Gravity in DM would only make sense if you had some melee weapon.

Gravity could also be expanded to do other things. Say, for example, there's a switch of some sort. You can't get to it on foot, and you can't shoot it (blocked by glass or something). You could, however, use Gravity to pull the switch remotely. The switch would have to be visible from wherever you cast Gravity; not blocked by a wall, not too high or too low in relation to you, etc. Basically, if you had a direct line of fire and could shoot and hit the switch normally, you can use Gravity here to activate it.

Back to the melee weapon idea: Since you're using DMC weapons, you've got a few options: Force Edge, Alastor, Sparda, and Yamato. Sparda would be hell to recreate in Doom, seeing as how its this Soul Calibur-esque monstrosity, but the others are more akin to traditional single- or double-edged swords in design, and there are probably a few sprites floating around that could suit the purpose.

I think the bigger problem with adding a melee weapon would be having to rebalance all the weapons, and making sure the sword has it uses, but never drowns out the other weapons. My best guess? Take the Psi Regen effect off the Nightmare O, and put it on the melee weapon (of course, then you'd be taking away most of the use of the Nightmare O). That way, the player has to be a little more brave and get in close if he wants to regen Psi quicker in a fight. Or, the sword could have some sort of block technique that lessens damage from attacks, at the expense of Psi. 'Course, I don't know quite how that would work, because Sec. Fire is reserved for Psi powers. Maybe you'd tap Pri Fire to slash, tap it multiple times to do combos, and press & hold it to do the block. I suppose the block would also limit your movement speed a bit, so you couldn't be too cheap and just run around blocking.

And as for the Needlepoint in Deathmatch, I suppose you'd need maps with a lot of underwater sections. Underwater fights could be kinda cool, but I think you'd need more than one weapon that worked underwater. Here, again, a melee weapon might do the trick. Slow down the speed of the sword swing to simulate the resistance encountered whilst doing that in water.

[amv2k9]

Quick question:

I've noticed on the HUD there's a blue dot above the Blood Money counter. Sometimes it's blue other times green. At first I though it signified when you had enough money for a weapon/Psi upgrade, but after fooling around with upgrades, I'm not so sure. What's it for?

[Viscra Maelstrom]

It's an armor indicator. Like, if you have green armor it's green.