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Enjay wrote:You could have a point about the armour. There isn't much. There are three regular (100 point) armour items but two of those are in secrets and the third is quite far through the map. There are three 200 point armours but two are in secrets and the third is in the final area and only on the easy setting. There is a Mega powerup (200 armour) in a secret near the end. There are also 10 of the 5 point armour bonuses but five of them are in the final arena and some of the enemies drop random numbers of armour shards (1 point each). So, although that is quite a long list, it's a big map and not much of the armour is available without finding secrets. Perhaps I should add some more easily-findable items. I'll have a look at where might be suitable.
As for the Boss' auto-railgun, it seems to have the exact effect that I wanted. Sure, it does actually do quite a bit of damage but it is nowhere near as powerful as people generally expect railguns to be. Also, the way he strafes it around makes it look impressive by filling the air with rail particles but you'd have to make a real effort and actually try to be hit as many times as possible from a single volley. The idea was to create something that made the player go "oh shit, his got an auto railgun", make it threatening enough that you don't want to be hit by it but not totally overpowering.
so no wonder why i freaked out when i encountered him first time, but hey. my fingers are better than his triggers. and i see about there's got useful secrets, but i couldn't found any secrets but one; to get a auto magnum. and other secrets were cryptic to be find in normal diff.
anyway thanks for understand, just only few regular armors or least useful items at first~or middle part of the game would be enough to balance.
OK, I looked at the armour situation and I decided that I agree with you: I had not been generous enough with it (at least not without finding secrets). There is now an additional regular armour out in the open (replacing one of the bonuses) reasonably early on in the map and I have bumped up the number of 5 point armour bonuses around the map by quite a bit. With them being 5 points each, you can collect quite a few and get a reasonable armour total even without grabbing a full armour vest.
I left the super armour as it is. With the armour vests that are out in the open, and with the number of bonuses that are lying around, it is possible to hit 200 armour without finding any of the advanced armour vest secrets. In fact, even if you only pick up armour bonuses and no vests, you could hit the 200 cap before entering the final room. Of course, the bad guys would be working against you by chipping your armour away, but it is at least theoretically possible.
I hope that using the armour bonuses in this way means that finding secrets with full armour vests (regular or advanced) in them will still be valuable enough because you'll get a full 100 or 200 (super protection) in one go. I did consider making the armour bonuses no longer alwayspickup items and removing their countitem flag too rather than have the player waste them but I guess that, most of the time, the player is unlikely to be on 200 armour and so would not waste much armour by picking up a bonus whenever he finds it (if he is trying to get 100% of the items on the map).
Thanks for the feedback. Download has been updated. With any luck, this will be the last bit of tweaking required.
[edit]
You want secrets? Because this is how you get secrets. (Video)
Funny bug: kill a male civilian (the one that does not attack you) and he will forever dryhump the gound
Yes, this bug has been reported and (I hope) addressed. MaxEd spotted that I had missed a "Stop" instruction at the end of the crouched-down death sequence. This has now been added and the file online updated. I am assuming that you got the file a couple of days ago. The one that I uploaded last night should be OK. If it isn't, please let me know because that means the problem lies elsewhere.
I mentioned previously that I was having difficulty reproducing the bug. I'd only seen it once despite killing that actor many, many times. I think that it happens when the lack of "Stop" confuses GZDoom and it tries to interpolate the model between two frames (I'm guessing last and second last). The reason I haven't seen it recently is because I was using the latest versions of GZDoom for my testing and interpolation is broken in those so the bug in GZDoom was masking the bug in my DECORATE. At least, that's my guess. The only time I saw the bug was when I was using an older exe.
hey, stopping by to say that i played this today and had a blast. shooting the bad guys who i wont spoiler feels like such an improvement when you can stunlock them properly. some of the stuff felt like it got out of hand on the UV-equivalent but after i took a step back and rethought stuff you always have some kind of an out for the player. being able to find secrets helps too.
I'd just finished it. It was certainly a new (though not totally) experience for me in terms of the gameplay approach that I had to take, which is mostly taking cover while shooting things. I do do that while playing Doom, but not to this extent. I struggled a little at first, but steadily became adjusted to it. The game was a little challenging for me playing on the default skill setting, but nothing I couldn't handle. The final boss was a pain. I died 4 or 5 times before I was finally able to take it down -- it just absorbs a lot of punishment!
There are a couple of things that took a bit away from the otherwise great experience for me:
I play with keyboard only and autoaim enabled. This setup doesn't go well with weapon recoil.
The status bar/HUD cannot be scaled up on my in-game resolution of 800x600, which makes it a little too small. Yes, I know 800x600 is such a small resolution in this time and age, but this is my preferred, and I cannot go beyond 1366x768, anyway.
Despite those little niggles, I enjoyed the map, overall!
Thanks for the feedback and the positive comments. I'm glad that people are enjoying playing this.
The intention was that it should be familiar enough in style and weapon balance to Doom for people to feel reasonably at home but that the style of the map and enemy balance should be different enough that it felt like its own thing too. Judging by the comments, I managed to hit that reasonably well.
To comment on the points Blue Shadow raised (thanks for doing so)
Blue Shadow wrote:I play with keyboard only and autoaim enabled. This setup doesn't go well with weapon recoil.
Fair comment. I guess I'll just take that on the chin and say that the mod simply wasn't designed with that configuration/style of play in mind. However, I'm not a huge fan of large recoil effects myself and much of what I did was more of a visual effect than anything (i.e. the weapon recoils but is then set back to the same, or almost the same, pitch within the firing sequence). The machine gun still climbs a bit like it does in Quake 2 but this has been significantly nerfed compared to Q2.
Blue Shadow wrote:The status bar/HUD cannot be scaled up on my in-game resolution of 800x600, which makes it a little too small. Yes, I know 800x600 is such a small resolution in this time and age, but this is my preferred, and I cannot go beyond 1366x768, anyway.
I did test out a few resolutions but HUD scaling and the exact result does vary from resolution to resolution. Everything I tried looked OK to me (I don't recall if I tried 800x600) but then not everyone likes or needs the same thing. I guess the other option would be to use the Alt-HUD if my HUD doesn't work in a way that you like.
Blue Shadow wrote:What can I say, I'm a slow player.
Well, that probably is the longest time I'm aware of. At least I kept you busy for a couple of hours.
Blue Shadow wrote:The final boss was a pain. I died 4 or 5 times before I was finally able to take it down -- it just absorbs a lot of punishment!
Well, it is a boss.
I confess that I'm not a huge boss battle fan and often my "boss battles" don't feature a single boss but a tough fight with a lot of enemies, or an escape scenario, or something. So, balancing a boss fight is a bit tricky for me because I'm never sure what people like. In saying that, I can't say that the boss battle has ever given me much difficulty or even taken that long. I've even completed it a couple of times without taking a single point of damage. Of course, I know the actor and the battle inside out. I did actually get a comment that the battle was too easy and that worried me but now that I see further comments from people finding the opposite, perhaps that means it's at least close to being OK.
For a breakdown of how the battle plays out...
Spoiler:
When you enter the room, a number of standard grey tanks are waiting in pits around the room. There is also an incomplete Strogg near the door but he is harmless and will just wander around wheezing. Lines to activate the tank pits criss-cross the room and sooner or later you will cross one (and you have to before reaching any of the pits). So, the reveal of the tanks is randomised a bit in as much as it depends on how the player wanders around the room.
Killing those tanks is a pretty straight forward battle.
Once the tanks are dead, the lines that activated the tank pits are re-set so that they will now activate the tank boss elevator. So, again, how the player wanders around the room will affect exactly when the boss appears, but he will not do so until the first tank wave is dead and the player crosses an activation line.
The tank boss is a damage sponge. He has a lot of hitpoints and has his damage factors altered so that he takes reduced damage from all attacks, doesn't take explosive damage (i.e. like most Doom boss monsters) and BFG damage is particularly reduced (without this the BFG can take him down far too quickly).
The first phase of the fight with the boss is just a one on one. However, once you have damaged him significantly (I forget the threshhold) walls around the room drop to release additional tanks. These are slightly tougher hit-point-wise than the standard tanks and have faster altered attacks (especially the machine gun attack). Their red colour indicates that they are not standard tanks.
Shortly after the reveal of the additional tanks, if you keep chipping away at the boss, his appearance should change once his health drops below another threshold. His skin has a damaged appearance, his walk sound is more clanky and his attacks are altered. His rail attacks in particular are less problematic (and the rail looks different (only orange and more "jaggy") to back this up). However, he will now sometimes shoot a BFG shot from his eyes. Fortunately, the build-up to this attack is very long (he stands still, takes a deep breath, gets on one knee and then fires) giving you plenty of time to get into cover. By the time he is doing this, he is relatively close to death.
Once you kill the boss and any remaining additional support tanks, the exit is clear and you can leave.
How I approach it...
Spoiler:
My strategy is to take the first tank wave out with normal fight tactics. If you go into the room and skirt left and right, you can pick up some of the ammo supplies in the corners of the room before the tanks appear.
Once the boss appears, I start whacking him with BFG shots. If I am playing on a setting that makes the invulnerability available, I often use it at this stage so that I can get in close and hit the boss at almost point-blank range. The boss does have a high level of protection against the BFG but unloading a full ammo supply of BFG shots into him will bring him pretty close to the next phase fairly quickly.
Once the BFG ammo is gone, I either use the heavy magnum or rockets to take him down to when the second set of tanks appear.
Things can get hectic here but the walls that drop to release the tanks also allow access to more supplies. I usually go around picking up supplies and pretty much ignoring the enemies unless they get in the way. Once I'm charged up again, I concentrate my attacks on the boss, trying to be mindful of where the other tanks are but I tend only to engage them if they get in the way. That being said, by the time the boss finally falls, the other tanks have usually gone too - either because of my direct action or because of crossfire. Sometimes, if I am playing on a setting where the invulnerability is available, this is when I pick it up. This means I can get up close and personal with the boss without worrying about being shot in the back by his minions.
As far as the room is concerned, I have found that it gives pretty good cover. The four large pillars are good for ducking behind and allow you to dodge the boss BFG shots. The pillars of the elevator that the boss comes up on and the stroggification surgery machines also provide barriers to the enemy attacks. The computer consoles are also useful. I tend to try and keep my distance from the boss (unless I'm invulnerable) and run around the outer part of the room. This tends to keep the boss fairly central and in a position where he is likely to have his view/attack obscured by a pillar or something. I'm better at firing around cover than he is so those obstacles are not a problem for me. The boss railgun is also fired in an arc of attacks rather than them all being aimed at the player. So keeping a good distance between yourself and the boss means that there is a big gap between the rail attacks by the time they reach you and so it is unlikely that you will be hit my many of them. The same goes for the tank machine gun shots.
So, my general strategy for the room and the fight is to stay towards the outside, keep moving, keep the boss near the middle, duck behind big pillars when I see a big attack being geared up for, only engage minor enemies if they get in the way and keep pouring fire onto the boss at every opportunity (often as I strafe between two pillars while facing the boss). Works for me anyway.
I played it right now and have only two letters to say: GG
You done a very well prequel to Quake 2, couldn't imagine something better to start the Strogg war.
Btw, i almost, ALMOST, did the same tactic you explained, in exception i wasted all my ammo missing shots, rofl.
I get trolled lots of times with Rocket Launcher because i'm accostumed with the RL of HM that is faster even in the speed of the rocket, i delayed alot to not try shot myself in a wall LOL.
Revilution wrote:I played it right now and have only two letters to say: GG
You done a very well prequel to Quake 2, couldn't imagine something better to start the Strogg war.
Btw, i almost, ALMOST, did the same tactic you explained, in exception i wasted all my ammo missing shots, rofl.
With this mod being so model-based, coming from someone as adept at using models in GZDoom as you, that really means quite a bit to me. Thank you.
As far as the story goes, I mentioned a while back that the idea had been sparked by an article elsewhere, specifically:
Quake Wiki wrote:There was also at this time a Human colony of some description on the planet Mars; indicating that interplanetary manned spaceflight was just beginning to develop....
A report from an unidentified news agency on Earth, broadcast just days the war erupted, indicated that the aforementioned Martian colony had been abandoned (for reasons yet unknown), and that plans were afoot to re-establish it. It went on to state that this had "nothing to do with the arrival of the mysterious aliens in the Solar System". The report may have been informed by a government press release, perhaps seeking to cover up the facts of the abandoned Mars colony's fate.
Well i know the limitations of MD2 models especially the Quake 2 ones that you used, you made them act so exactly as they does in Quake 2, well in exception of the barrel rotation of Hyperbaster when shooting that i noticed it does not have interpolation.
I was never so deep into these Wikias, never get so much interest to take them to read (i tried do with Mass Effect wikia and stopped right in Charon Relay) but anyway you did it well without break the Quake aspects
When it came to using the pillars in the room, trust me when I say I abused them . We did the good old "dance around the pillar" thing, it and I, with me shooting it with the super shotgun. I kinda gave up on shooting it with the BFG when I emptied my whole full supply of energy cells on it, with it being still alive and sound! The fact that the BFG does a little charging before actually firing the projectile (which I believe more so than Doom's BFG) just puts me in a lot of risk of being exposed to its fire. True, you could hide behind a pillar, charge, pop out in time to fire. However, you need to know exactly where the boss is after you come out from behind the pillar, otherwise you'll most likely miss your target. Also, the BFG takes a quite a bit of time to ready the next shot, which makes this whole process just feels convoluted (for me, anyway). I relied on what I found the easiest to use yet with decent firepower and firerate (in comparison to the BFG and railgun's firerate), the super shotgun.
So, in the end, you can say that the boss fight was tough because I'm not that used to these weapons (namely the BFG, here), I'm not "in-sync" with them, if you will, as I am with Doom weapons.