[Beta] Contra Doom b06 - Wanted: Player skins

[VriskaSerket]

This mod is getting intense!
Are we going to see Hard Corps weapons? Maybe as an altrnate edition?

[Captain J]

Are we going to see Hard Corps weapons? Maybe as an altrnate edition?

i think so, since this mod is all about contra 3 now. would be awkward if this mod got mixed with everything.

[IMX]

I finally gave this a try. Loved it. Especially the Smart Bomb feature since I've been trying to get something similar going for a long lost project of mine. If you could manage to make the cloud effect in GZDoom that would be great.

[YukesVonFaust]

Are we going to have an optional Monster Pack? (you know, with aliens and soldiers?)

[Captain J]

if someone can donate some of enemies from contra to this mod, especially contra 3 ones.

[ZDUser]

Wow, this is great. As a fan of Contra, I'm biased. This is the mod of the year of 1990-2050.

[Beed28]

New version is out; this is a huge update this time! The biggest feature is the new, upgradeable weapons system, and new sprites! Special thanks goes to Captain J for rotations for the Homing Missile, Crusher Missile, and Laser!

Also, if you couldn't tell from the thread title, we have Zandronum support! Just a small warning, I haven't been able to test this thing online, so expect some bugs to appear!

Download b04
ZDoom: https://www.sendspace.com/file/uqmjob
Zandronum: https://www.sendspace.com/file/q6xrtb

CHANGELOG:

---

b04
* New README.txt file.
* Upgradable weapon system from Super Contra (Arcade) and Contra 4! Weapons can be upgraded into a more powerful form by collecting a weapon token for one you already have.
* Fixed a bug where monsters were reacting (pain chance) to the Boss Brain damager the weapon projectiles spawn (which allows you to kill the Icon of Sin).
* New explosions; straight out of Contra 4!
* Redid death animations for the smaller enemies, except Lost Soul.
* NOBLOOD added to player character; you can no longer milk points in co-op by shooting each other.
* Lost Soul no longer bleeds, but will still give out points when attacked.
* Dropped items can no longer be crushed.
* New projectile sprites for the Machine Gun, Spread Gun, Homing Missile, Laser, Flamethrower, Crusher, enemy bullets, and suicide bullets.
* New weapon sounds.
* Proper support for decals.
* Forgot to replace one of the quit messages; that's been fixed now.
* Optional music wad now properly supported in Zandronum.
* Speaking of which; a separate version supporting Zandronum is ready! We had to make some sacrifices, but I hope you'll enjoy.

[Captain J]

now that's some big and explosive update! nice work, but i got somethings to complain about;

- i see some problems that not reaching the contra 3 much, well. it you want to make this even more retrospective, make the machine gun fire much faster and make laser longer. i know it's going to be overpowered, so you'd better decrease their damage.

- i hear some doom sounds from every projectiles except flame, even they plays their own sounds. also some of them don't even leave any decals at all.

- homing missile sound is more like, GBA-ish. rather than SNES'; it's buzzing.

- spread gun can fire endlessly rather than two times like cruiser missile does.

- monsters still fights each other, i don't think original game was did it either.

- now i can take the cyberdemon's rockets down? what kind of humiliating moment is that? you just made him really weak, you know.

- lastly, the title music still plays good ol' 8 bit contra title theme, although it's outta the place. so if you want something short and dramatic also from the same game, i recommend this one.

other than that, thanks for your cooperation!

[Beed28]

now that's some big and explosive update! nice work, but i got somethings to complain about;

- i see some problems that not reaching the contra 3 much, well. it you want to make this even more retrospective, make the machine gun fire much faster and make laser longer. i know it's going to be overpowered, so you'd better decrease their damage.
The only reason I stated Contra III was because it has the HUD, weapon roster and Smart Bombs from it. I've refined the OP after releasing b04, stating that it takes elements from other Contra games as well. The Machine Gun and Laser may start out slow, but collecting the Rapid Fire upgrades makes quite a big difference, providing you can hold onto them.

- i hear some doom sounds from every projectiles except flame, even they plays their own sounds. also some of them don't even leave any decals at all.
They still have Doom sounds when impacting; I couldn't reuse the "ping" sound since I'm already using that as an audio indicator for when you're hitting something shootable. For some reason, some decals don't show up on Zandronum, yet they do on latest ZDoom/GZDoom SVN revisions.

- homing missile sound is more like, GBA-ish. rather than SNES'; it's buzzing.
In both of the sound files I received, the Homing Missile sounded... off. It didn't sound like anything when I used it in the original SNES Contra III for myself. My emulator of choice is BizHawk, using the bsnes compatibility core when playing SNES games.

Small warning, the following information may contain some technical jargon, so get ready. To record the Homing Missile, I went as far as defeating the stage 2 boss with the Homing Missile as one of my weapons. After the boss died, I froze an "address" in the RAM Search dialogue box (address 00159C, to be exact) which controls the timer for properly ending the level. There, with no other sounds or music playing, I recorded the Homing Missile sound with Audacity.

- spread gun can fire endlessly rather than two times like cruiser missile does.
It's not that simple to emulate limited projectiles for the Spread Gun. It was easy to do with the Crusher Missiles since it just shoots one projectile at a time, but the Spread Gun shoots 5 (or 9) projectiles simultaneously.

- monsters still fights each other, i don't think original game was did it either.
Monster infighting is a main mechanic of Doom, so I left it in.

- now i can take the cyberdemon's rockets down? what kind of humiliating moment is that? you just made him really weak, you know.
The Cyberdemon's rockets could always be shot down from the first version of Contra Doom. To be fair, you could shoot down rocket based projectiles in the main Contra games as well. But hey, it can still get pretty tense when you go up against multiple Cyberdemons at the same time.

- lastly, the title music still plays good ol' 8 bit contra title theme, although it's outta the place. so if you want something short and dramatic also from the same game, i recommend this one.
I don't think the Game Over theme would really fit to be the title theme, to be honest. If we go beyond the 16-bit games, the closest I could see fitting would be the title theme from Contra ReBirth.

other than that, thanks for your cooperation!

My comments is in red.

[Captain J]

thanks for some reasonable replies, but i got more things to say, for the last time;

It's not that simple to emulate limited projectiles for the Spread Gun. It was easy to do with the Crusher Missiles since it just shoots one projectile at a time, but the Spread Gun shoots 5 (or 9) projectiles simultaneously.

well, that sounds pretty pickle. is there any ways to make it least less powered? lowering the damage is not pretty right.

In both of the sound files I received, the Homing Missile sounded... off. It didn't sound like anything when I used it in the original SNES Contra III for myself. My emulator of choice is BizHawk, using the bsnes compatibility core when playing SNES games.

Small warning, the following information may contain some technical jargon, so get ready. To record the Homing Missile, I went as far as defeating the stage 2 boss with the Homing Missile as one of my weapons. After the boss died, I froze an "address" in the RAM Search dialogue box (address 00159C, to be exact) which controls the timer for properly ending the level. There, with no other sounds or music playing, I recorded the Homing Missile sound with Audacity.

i've recorded their sounds with audacity while running it on zsnes. it can mute the each sound channels and plays them real clean, also runs much every roms pretty well.

The Cyberdemon's rockets could always be shot down from the first version of Contra Doom. To be fair, you could shoot down rocket based projectiles in the main Contra games as well. But hey, it can still get pretty tense when you go up against multiple Cyberdemons at the same time.

oops, my bad. but i think some of them were destructible if they are homing, and that's reasonable. but in this mod, they explodes in one shot? not quite good idea especially some of maps with merciful monster settings, such as only one cyberdemon in one map might be easy to take it down.

[DoomRater]

Remote detonation bombs needed some way to communicate between projectile and the person who threw them. That was used, obviously, to blow them up. In this case we'd need a way for those projectiles to tell the player that there are this many projectiles still around so that you can't fire more than a certain amount. That's what I'd look into in order to enforce the x projectile limit.

[Beed28]

Coming soon:

---

A screen nobody wants to see.

[YukesVonFaust]

---

come on, you don't wanna lie.

needs hi-score and your score.

[Captain J]

i guess that game over sequence starts much faster in 1 second or that kind of short time later when you got killed, why don't you slow it down while stopping the music like in...well, original game.

oh, also hope it replaces the music into game over one, obviously.

[Beed28]

The Game Over sequence starts as soon as you "respawn". And yes, it does play the Game Over theme.

The screenshot doesn't show it, but it does show the final score after the music finishes playing. It doesn't record or show a high-score yet, though. You also can't restart the map yet unless you reload from an earlier save.