Pan's Mod Thing

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Pandut
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Pan's Mod Thing

Post by Pandut »

Figured I'd poop this out here since I'm more or less near the tail-end of beta testing it. In a nutshell, this is a nothing more than a first foray into the world of Doom modding. This mod is simply an actiony gameplay mod that doesn't particularly add anything new to the table of actual gameplay mechanics. I played around with some light concepts but nothing really awe-inspiring or ground-breaking.

Though in the case details being desired, I shall list thee below;

-This Mod contains a fairly large variety of weapons and enemies that serve different roles and at least attempt to be different.
-This Mod has about 95% reworked sound effects that I've either made or edited myself. Every monster has new sounds and you'll likely not be hearing things you've already heard in other mods.
-That being said, this mod uses a lot of Realm 667 enemies. Though they have been altered extensively (code-wise) so they should hopefully be a little different then what you're used to.
-This mod uses a somewhat different damage system. Certain enemies are more resistant/exposed to certain damage types. Example being, enemies that are relevant to fire (Imps, Cacodemons, Pain Elementals, Hell Knights/Barons and Archviles) are heavily resistant to thermal-based weapons, however are torn apart fairly easily by good ol' fashion bullets. Cybernetic enemies (Mancubi, Arachnotrons and some "new" enemies) are resistant to bullet weapons but are more exposed to explosives, plasma and piercing weapons. This is really just an attempt to make each weapon more useful/useless in different scenarios so there's no "one gun does all" syndrome.
-Most weapons have alternative firing modes. Some of them are a bit wonky which I'm still in the process of fixing.
-Certain weapons can only be acquired off of particular enemies.
-Enemies are tougher, more aggressive and should hopefully put up a challenging fight at times.

Version 0.2
Changelog wrote: -Many, many sounds have been altered.
-Plasma Pistol and Automatic shotgun removed from spawns. They just seemed like redundant weapons though they can still be acquired via console commands.
-Merged Automatic Shottie with the SMG. The SMG's alternate attack is now a rapid fire, underslug shotgun.
-Combat Rifle is now fully automatic, alternate zoomed mode offers a stronger, more accurate 3-shot burst.
-Changed Tracer effects a bit. Altered tracer spawnpoints on guns so they should line up with the crosshair better.
-Balanced enemies. Added some new enemy variants (Some might be a bit buggy). Added a stupid silly "easter egg" enemy that might be more annoying than amusing.
-Added parasites; small children creatures that have a chance to spawn from the corpses of certain hell monsters. Added 2 new enemies that cater specifically to the new parasite monsters. They're a little buggy but not game-breaking.
-Added a new Weapon, the "Plasma Caster", which is more or less a mortar-esque weapon that lobs superheated plasma at people. Primary firing mode is more rocket-esque while the alternate fire shoots 3 globs that arc slowly through the air.
-Sentry Launcher should now work properly.
-Fixed the weapons that looked chopped off in certain screen modes.
-Optimized effects and gore.
-Bunch more changes but I forgot what they were.
Please run with GZDoom and Doom2. Haven't tested this on any other ports.
Spoiler: Screens for the Screen God
Spoiler: Credits for the Credit Throne
Last edited by Pandut on Mon Jun 15, 2015 7:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Slax
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by Slax »

Looks fun. Demon killing will commence shortly.
Judgement cometh:

While I get what you were going for with the varied weapon selection, the arsenal ultimately ends up feeling cluttered. You end up fumbling through your huge stack of guns in the heat of battle (after running out of ammo for your favorite gun, resulting in the mod switching to your fist) and that more often than not leads to an infuriating death.
This, coupled with some enemies being resistant to certain damage types, makes it even more aggravating. Making weapons insta-switch might help soothe this issue.

Oh, and maybe make the weapon sprites more distinct. At a glance, most of them just look like black globs. Add some color. Bells and whistles! Something to make each weapon stand out more.

Solid effort. That's for sure. But I'm sad to say there's much need for polish and a paintjob.
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wildweasel
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by wildweasel »

Time to give this the ol' once-over.

I'm not especially fond of how slow the fist feels. The animation may be a little too "smooth" - try speeding it up as it comes out, and reverting back to the slower movement when retracting. Compared to the animation, the fist feels vastly overpowered; I was killing demons in just one punch without even having found Berserk.

The pistol takes a very, very long time to kill the red Imps. I did my testing on Darken2.wad, by the way, where they seemed to appear in great number before I got any weapons. Actually, it feels like the pistol is just far too weak in general; the shotgunner-spawned zombies are quite difficult to put down with the pistol, where the combat rifle one of them dropped did a much better job of things. ...Hmm, does nobody drop pistol ammo at all?

The status bar might be stylish, but it makes it quite difficult to tell exactly how much ammo you have left.

For the combat rifle, you should create an alternate "zoomed" state that doesn't display the weapon's sprite, so that it doesn't look dumb. I think it also gives way, way too much ammo for being dropped as frequently as it is; I found myself completely full of rifle ammo not even 2 minutes into Darken2.wad map01.

Very good job with the sounds. Nice, satisfying gunfire, monsters, pickup sounds. Kudos on putting the Chasm stuff to use.

You may want to mess with the Weapon.SelectionOrder properties; running out of ammo switches you to your fists regardless of what you're using.

The automatic shotgun has far too much A_Recoil.

The double-barrel shotgun's graphic...feels really short, and only seems like it's getting shorter when reloaded. The hands don't seem to fit very well on it, either, IMO. It also feels far too powerful to be given through enemy drops. Its reload animation could probably be a bit snappier, instead of the slow frame delays you're currently using (hint: it doesn't need to be faster in general; you can buffer it a bit by having frames where the sprite just moves instead of changing frames while the hand grabs more shells, etc).

The SMG doesn't feel worth it at all against most enemies. I suspect this and the pistol are the result of the strange damage system you're using, but I can't be sure as an end-user. Try coming up with some scheme - using custom pain states or whatever - to alert the player when the weapon they're using is not useful against that specific enemy. I used a similar system in ww-terror where enemies would make loud "CLANG" noises if their armor was absorbing the damage, but maybe you could come up with something a bit more fitting to your mod.

Should enemies be dropping as much health as they are? Especially the Diabloist, who appears in place of some Imps, and drops a rather powerful health orb?

One of your Revenant replacements is too tall and gets stuck in the ceiling when teleporting (can be seen in Map02 of Darken2). Remember, despite their tall sprites, Revenants' collision boxes are only as tall as the player.

The sawn-off shotty (Why are there three shotguns?) could use some work on its animation. It barely feels like the pumping hand is moving at all, and it does not appear to even be gripping the weapon when idle. I also find very little reason to use it when carrying either of the other shotguns, since its spread is terrible. Though I do grant it my award for having the best shotgun sound I've heard since the original Borderlands...

Does the Heavy Chaingun take pistol ammo? Because I am always out of that kind of ammo. It doesn't feel very satisfying to fire; consider adding some light A_SetPitch/A_SetAngle recoiling or a light A_Quake effect to improve its visual feel.

Geez, those red Imps are massively irritating. Seemingly too much health, and they're fast.

The chainsaw becomes very much an I Win button against any demons, putting down anywhere between 3 and 5 demons per SECOND. Maybe consider toning it down, since it has a high attack rate and will stunlock anything that it doesn't immediately kill.

Some enemies, particularly those that shoot plasma, are far, far too damaging to the player, even with armor.

The hand on the DPG looks like its thumb needs to go below the carry handle, not above it.

The "Rocket1Launcher" is not 16:9 widescreen-friendly and "disembodies" from the right side of the screen. Same goes for the Accelerator.

Too Long, Didn't Read?

Overall, this mod has promise; some balance and visual issues ought to be ironed out before it becomes truly great, but these issues shouldn't be difficult to remedy.
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Pandut
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by Pandut »

Much appreciate the feedback, fellahs :3. I don't have a lot of time on my hands currently but I'll definitely look into what you guys suggested when I get the chance.
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-Ghost-
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by -Ghost- »

Yeah, I agree with WW's points. Excellent sounds and effects, the guns are pretty satisfying to shoot, some of them just don't feel that useful. I mostly stuck with the sawn off shotgun because the autoshot had too much knockback for too little damage, while the double barrel was a bit too slow. I'd suggest another HUD too, unless you're able to get numbers on there for ammo and HP/armor, it makes it too hard to manage them otherwise. The flamer was kind of hard to use too, like it was almost point blank range only or something. When It tried to shoot down a hole into the blue key area in M02 in Doom 2 I'd just hit the wall rather than the monsters down there.
Last edited by -Ghost- on Fri Nov 21, 2014 8:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Sgt. Shivers
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by Sgt. Shivers »

Interesting stuff here. The gore seems a bit, i dunno, Clunky? The gibs seem kind of out of place to me for some reason. Weapons are quite nice though! :D
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Carbine Dioxide
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by Carbine Dioxide »

I like the idea of white gloves. I have only seen white gloves in a wad about twice. :)
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Hellstorm Archon
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by Hellstorm Archon »

Wow, this mod is definitely looking to be badass already. Would you mind if I actually helped you in making this mod more refined and complete?
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chronoteeth
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by chronoteeth »

yo for a first time this is pretty solid actually. yeah theres flaws but hey man, good on you! a nice balance
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RastaManGames
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by RastaManGames »

I really like this guns!
I like nice graphics and very nice sounds!
Good job!
niculinux
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by niculinux »

RastaManGames wrote:I really like this guns!
I like nice graphics and very nice sounds!
Good job!
agree!!
jimbob
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by jimbob »

I played switcheroom with your mod and like the mod so far. The blood and gore effects are nice and not the typical nashgore variants. ;) Switching between the many weapons could be faster. Some weapons are not widescreen friendly like the rocket launcher. I hope you can fix that in a next release.
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Crudux Cruo
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by Crudux Cruo »

Well overall i'd have to say its ok. if i had to give a critique, i'd say work on your sprites; the quality is inconsistent. some are decent, like the pump shotgun and the pistol, while some are awful, like the double barrel and the mp5k. One other thing; sometimes less is more. you could get away with half the weapons, some weapons are pretty much useless once you pick something else up, like pistols: why not just use a battle rifle if its the same ammo? stuff like that.
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RastaManGames
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by RastaManGames »

Oh, sorry for annoying, but i found some bug/feathure...

Deployed turrets invincible. Not player and not monsters can't kill them.
It's give some... Disbalance?
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-Ghost-
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Re: Pan's fairly generic gameplay mod

Post by -Ghost- »

What plans do you have for this later when you have time? I'm looking forward to the next version, you've got a really good base here and it just needs more polish.
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