[Release] The Trailblazer - 1.5e

[PillowBlaster]

No, I mean who made the Midi in the pk3?

Eheh whoops, my bad. I should add that in the credit file, which I'm gonna do right now, and it's gonna be in the next update. It's Motley Crue's "Kickstart my Heart" from this site - wish it would list the conversion author. DoomNukem and I love that track, and it was in the trailer before, so I have had decided to use it as a menu theme.

Prepare for "hey, can I use these sprites in my project?" times infinity.

And - sad as it is - "I borrowed these sprites but didn't ask for permission" times twinfinity. These are really great resources, though, and I am very, very happy that this mod is finally available to the public. The Skullthrottle is, hands down, one of the most satisfying weapons I've seen in a Doom mod in a very long time. The sound of its barrels spinning up reminds me of an air-raid siren.

About my only real complaints are a couple of things that stood out to me...

The Sidekick pistol makes for a fairly nice starting weapon, but because it's fully automatic, I found it hard to fire it semi-automatically. I usually don't hold the Fire button down when using pistols, because I'm so used to one click for one shot. Because of this, the aim mode is difficult for me to use effectively.

Overall, the weapon animations seem a little on the stiff side. They are smooth, which is good, but some things look like they move in straight lines a lot (especially the FMG's reload sequence). A little bit of bobbing and weaving probably wouldn't hurt. The Uzis could probably lower about 10-20 pixels while reloading, too; the new magazines appear to be sucking themselves into the guns, which looks a little strange (unless that was actually your intent with that animation!).

I'm afraid so... but I guess I should learn to live with it already. I already feel stupid for being so oppressive about it, so I guess I'll shake it off to the people who at least will do great job with the things they'll borrow. I just hope they'll mostly ask beforehand, so I know where it lands first. Albeit once Guncaster will be "somehow" out, I won't show any mercy! (Just kidding, but still - any unauthorized use of the super quadshotgun won't be seen in good light, if I can be honest.)

Yeah, the GL is also a little stiff in that depart... albeit it's made of many elements that I totally don't feel like changing that. I still could tackle the uzis and the FMG, as it shouldn't be so bad.

I've just noticed every gun has NOAUTOAIM, and a number also have AMMO_OPTIONAL. How come?

Heh, whoops - I am so used to not using autoaim that I forgot I used the same template for each gun which had that added. Otherwise, if there's a way now to make it take into account random pitches, that'd be cool, as it makes all of the shotgun shots fly completely flat at the target. As of the ammo_optional - I've had added it, so the weapons that reload won't automatically change while you run out of ammo. I'm aware you can select an empty weapon with no way to reload it. If there are some better ways to handle that, I'm listening!

For everyone else, yeah - the mod supposed to be over-the-top - not Russian Overkill's level of over-the-top, but still... so don't be surprised if things die quicker than usual. Just use some harder wads for your satisfaction. Chrome Justice's purpose is to mostly maul crowds or big targets. And I won't be touching the weapons in any graphical way (especially that I am not skilled enough to do such things) - DN killed his motivation completely due to trying to rework things, so I wouldn't expect anything. And I think there should be some gore mods for your needs out there as well.

[Ed the Bat]

Heh, whoops - I am so used to not using autoaim that I forgot I used the same template for each gun which had that added. Otherwise, if there's a way now to make it take into account random pitches, that'd be cool, as it makes all of the shotgun shots fly completely flat at the target.

You have a point with the shotguns; multi-projectile (not hitscan) weapons look a little funny with autoaim. Even still, since autoaim is a player option, I really think that should be left up to the player to turn on or off, right?

As of the ammo_optional - I've had added it, so the weapons that reload won't automatically change while you run out of ammo. I'm aware you can select an empty weapon with no way to reload it. If there are some better ways to handle that, I'm listening!

This can be done with AMMO_CHECKBOTH. If you need help making that happen, I'd be glad to handle it for you.

[-Ghost-]

Yeah, this works perfectly with Dark Doom or other mods that add enemies that are too tough for just vanilla weapons. Will you be keeping it weapons only so it stays compatible with them?

[PillowBlaster]

You have a point with the shotguns; multi-projectile (not hitscan) weapons look a little funny with autoaim. Even still, since autoaim is a player option, I really think that should be left up to the player to turn on or off, right?

So my idea is to keep autoaim on everything, except for Chrome (spreadfire projectiles), Patriarch (wouldn't like the trajectory to go off with an explosive weapon), Minigun (also has projectile spread), Magnum (Sniper weapon... except for the altfire. It would actually be cool to work with alt-fire... maybe I could just make the gun dynamically change the autoaim flag while alt-firing?) and Nutcracker (you want it to line it up on your own), while everything else will be left to the player's choice. Does it sound fair?

This can be done with AMMO_CHECKBOTH. If you need help making that happen, I'd be glad to handle it for you.

Nah, I can handle it just fine. Thanks for the tip!

Yeah, this works perfectly with Dark Doom or other mods that add enemies that are too tough for just vanilla weapons. Will you be keeping it weapons only so it stays compatible with them?

I don't plan making monsters, unless as a separate patch, so there shouldn't be a problem with that! While making weapons is piece of cake for me, doing some interesting monsters isn't that obvious to me... or I am fooling myself just so I won't give myself an extra crap to work with because I am lazy.

[Ed the Bat]

Sadly, autoaim can't be changed on the fly. I made a feature request for something like that a couple of years ago, but still no luck. That flag is for weapons that simply don't work right with autoaim, such as gavity-affected projectiles, so you would be using it correctly on things that do that. I know you have a lot of specialty weapons in this set, so I can understand using NOAUTOAIM on some of them. In a perfect world, we could get better control over autoaim, but as things stand now... yes, what you propose sounds plenty reasonable.

[PillowBlaster]

Sadly, autoaim can't be changed on the fly. I made a feature request for something like that a couple of years ago, but still no luck. That flag is for weapons that simply don't work right with autoaim, such as gravity-affected projectiles, so you would be using it correctly on things that do that. I know you have a lot of specialty weapons in this set, so I can understand using NOAUTOAIM on some of them. In a perfect world, we could get better control over autoaim, but as things stand now... yes, what you propose sounds plenty reasonable.

Arf, that quite destroys my ideas to fix that. Oh well, For now, this should do, hopefully!

[Matt]

Just a thought about allowing autoaim for everything: at least with the spread-shot fastprojectiles, can you spawn one dummy projectile that then spawns the real projectiles with the spread?

I have no idea how you could accomplish this for a hitscan shotgun, at least without making the player unshootable for 1 frame (I've got a shotgunguy hack in which the shotgunguy fires 1 dummy hitscan puff in midair that then spawns a second object "behind" it that then aims and shoots the "real" shotgun blast at the first dummy hitscan puff which by that point is not shootable)

[Ed the Bat]

Spreadshot hitscans already honor autoaim properly. Look at Doom II's Super Shotgun for an example.

As for making a projectile fire more projectiles... I think that possibility was already investigated and deemed unsuitable. Many threads over the years have come up about ways to get around this problem, and as far as I'm aware, there was never a solution found.

[Jeimuzu73]

Why have two kinds of revolvers (the dual double-actions and the single-action incendiary magnum)? Is it a deliberate design choice to show that revolvers are just better? It feels kind of redundant to me.

[Zhs2]

Revolvers are always better. Don't kid yourself.

[Armaetus]

Got a question, does this have any weird powerups that have some sort of copyrighted music that would be instantly detected by ContentID on Youtube if a video was recorded and posted?

[Zhs2]

Nope. No powerup music. Not this time, at least!

[PillowBlaster]

Also I love the quick melee attack. It looks like he's pounding his fist down on monster faces, like how Duke hits the nuke button at the end of a level

And since this kind of disappeared in the mass of posts, and wanted to mention that - yeah, it's funny because I believe it's exactly the same hand! I guess I didn't achieve the effect of uppercutting effectively, but if it isn't jarring, but rather hilarious... that also works for me.

[Matt]

Spreadshot hitscans already honor autoaim properly. Look at Doom II's Super Shotgun for an example.

As for making a projectile fire more projectiles... I think that possibility was already investigated and deemed unsuitable. Many threads over the years have come up about ways to get around this problem, and as far as I'm aware, there was never a solution found.

Was the hitscan behaviour changed for ZDoom, or is this an SSG thing that's dependent on other stuff? I remember back in the day the assumption was always that all of the shotgun's pellets would autoaim, which was exploited with Twilight Warrior's overpenetrating rifle bullets (and I thought as a teenager that the shotgun fired large full-metal-jacket slugs).

I don't really see the problem with creating sub-projectiles, as long as you set them up right so they're not omitted if you fire point-blank against a wall. Then again, that in itself does require quite a few extra lines of code, so I see how that might be unpalatable...

[Ed the Bat]

I'm not familiar with Twilight Warrior so I can't speak to anything there, but none of that sounds familiar to me. Hitscans in ZDoom with multiple pellets will retain their vertical spread even in autoaim. I'm not well-versed in the internals of vanilla Doom, but I do know the SSG had vertical spread and that autoaim could not be turned off (necessary with no vertical freelook).

As for the sub-projectiles bit, if you have a solution, let's hear it. I/We've been hoping for an answer for years now. Citing precedent: http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=33288