I present to you: COUNTRYBALL COMBAT
- Title Card
I asked on the IRC if I could make this post, and with the graces of the mods, here it is. I'm hoping to get a number of things done by doing this; particularly because I'm still pretty rusty with modding I could use some housekeeping guidance, and for those WTF moments in the middle of all my programming work, I can point people to the Github link to show whatever files I've since prepped.
PLATFORM
I am currently building this on GLOOME (for legal reasons), and will continue to. I know it's a discontinued sourceport now, but I have gotten so deep into developing on it, that I had some compatibility errors going into the latest GZDoom, so I decided to stick with what already works now. I also know there's GZDoom-GPL, but I really want to focus on what I have going now. I'm also still unclear if the proprietary removal was done yet, so until that's confirmed I'm staying here where I know no updates will be necessary, at least yet... Besides, I would like to see this work pay off one day, so I would appreciate keeping the commercial-friendly aspect.
I have successfully migrated the mod over to GZDoom 3.1, now that it has been made to GPL compliance.
(Though I still need to upload it to Github soon...)The IWAD I am using is Freedoom's "freedm.wad". I wanted to use a base wad where there are no monsters available, as well as readily-usable multiplayer maps I can play with later on.
The entire CC project is PK3 format folder. One day, I'd like to make it a standalone wad, but until that time comes, I'd rather the ease-of-use with PK3.
DEVELOPMENT STATUS
In progress, as of June 2017. Took a break earlier because IRL.
You can download it at the Github repository here: https://github.com/Tricorne-Games/Countryball-Combat
Download the zip at the green button, unzip it, click the GLOOME.exe, and play around with it. I recommend using IDCLEV00 to go to my sandbox level I'm using to test features like the electric floors and whatnot. And use IDKFA to try out whatever weapons I've so far made available.
Note that the mod _is_ the CNBLCMBT directory. I specifically changed the .ini file to read the entire directory so you can play around with it. It also makes for having less branches for each time I update this demo.
HELP WANTED
I have been on and off this project for a year and a half. A lot of the functionality in it now stems from the help you guys gave me, both here on the forum and on IRC.
Coding help would be absolutely rad. Both DECORATE and ACS. I've done a good number of the things myself, such as the ccWeapon class that allows all weapons to have things like Zoom, Alternate modes, and Reloading, but a lot of others I got help with, and I am so grateful for it. And with the amount of complexity put in to get the features available, I will need the help way more than ever. It's like I "understand" how things are done, but there's always one more issue slowing me down, which is why I'm kind of focused on the art right now.
I'm not up to it yet, but eventually I'm going to want help with sound effects and music. I am still figuring out how to use LMMS, and I'm fair with Audacity, but I'm not musically inclined. I'm also not entirely interested in MIDI unless you can make something sound superior. Thus, I would prefer all music and sound to be in .ogg format.
The #1 rule is to remember the entire project should be as libre as possible. I don't want any "protected" content, and anything you do make towards contributing will be put under the libre license scheme.
As I intend, I will credit you. I seriously value the help.
But as of right now, I'm focused on the "infrastructure" of the game, to get all the bells and whistles I want working before I carry on to things like a full set of levels.
PS: It's obviously not required, but I highly HIGHLY recommend you acquaint yourself with the comics if you want to contribute. There's a kind of "finesse" to them that really sets them apart from shitposts or rageface comics, and knowing that would add greatly to the spirit of this project.
CURRENT FEATURES
- Every resource in the PK3, from scripts to sounds to graphics, is made to be as Libre as possible by using the MIT license, so you can simply peel out what you want to use for your modding work and go with it.
- Migrated from GLOOME to GZDoom 3.1, so now the mod can be updated along with GZDoom's own updates.
- Hazardous sectors, such as Electric Floors, Gaseous Areas, and even Ice-Cold water that damages you the longer you stay in it.
- Reloading mechanism, reminiscent of Goldeneye (go down, go up). The ammo you collect gets fed into a "current" reserve until you hit a max. Also forces you to reload manually as if it were the real weapon; for example, the missile launcher fires a rocket, you manually reload to set up another one rather than chain through it like in Vanilla Doom.
- Player slows down when carrying a heavy weapon, or mucking through shallow waters, or suffers enough damage.
- Hi-Res graphics on a number of things, including menu selector, the base player skin, and a sample water texture (with more to come as I learn more modding technique).
- Simple tracer shots instead of hitscan shots; to add that frightening effect of a bullet coming at you instead of an instantaneous click-and-hit.
- Some weapons feature the ammo casings flying out.
- Multiple Ammo modes (ie: the shotguns can use buckshot, slug, or incendiary rounds).
- Multiple Weapon modes (ie: You can operate the pistol loud or silenced).
- Functional Weapon Zooms.
- A clean and crisp-looking HUD display, featuring the currently-armed weapon, its ammo reserves, and a color-changing health/armor interpolation.
- Code as cleanly organized as possible. This is not to say it is perfect, and everyone has their own way of polishing code, but I tried to heavily regiment how each file laid its code out so it's uniform and documented between any file.
- LANGUAGE lump add-on featuring the famous "Countryball Engrish" the non-anglophone countries speak.
- 5 Difficulties (which I may end up altering later; implemented for the sake of learning), from easiest to hardest: Cannot Into Skill, Of Reasonable, Gib Challenge, O KURWA!, and ANSCHLUSS ZEIT!
- Smooth weapon-firing animations for such few frames. Includes DryFire, Recoil effects, and automatic/semi firing tweaks.
This list will without a doubt update as the project goes on...
- A hell of a lot of debugging, including things I haven't even imagined to test yet.
- Hi-Res graphics on everything else I haven't already done yet.
- Hi-Res skins for the possible 200+- countries, states, and other organizations for your character choices.
- A Quicksand sector.
- A theme and logic plan for monsters, to enjoy single-player mode.
- A large variety of weapons to come, including shurikens, katanas, miniguns, molotov cocktails, revolvers, flamethrowers, etc.
- A solid purpose to playing single-player mode and how I will develop enemies based on that.
- Level Pack system, so the game has a base set of levels, and additional ones can be added on to it. Some levels, on and off the base project, will be made specifically for multi-player fun.
- A quick but powerful and flexible collection of patches for a variety of environments, including Jungle, Arctic, Desert, Urban, Cavern, etc.
I have a lot of people to thank for getting me as far as I have, some whose names I can't even remember anymore and I apologize if I didn't readily list you here (still you know who you are), but here are those of you who have significantly helped in some way so far.
- Glaice, for getting me into ZDoom modding in the first place, as well as general advisory.
- BlueShadow, for a lot of the programming help I needed to get things like electric floors and weapon inheritance and such.
- JDRedAlert, for demonstrating a multi-mode weapon system that now allows me to make weapons do way more than just one task.
- Nash, for his scripts that allow for things like strafe-tilting and underwater sway.
- WildWeasel, for his Gunlabs tutorial that allowed me to make reloadable weapons.
- Gez, for pointing out the trick to circumvent the palette-green limitations to make green colors on flags possible.
- Vaecrius, for help with the grenade code.
- AFADoomer, for help with the ladder code.
This project is still way, way in the middle of development for it to even be considered pre-alpha, or pre-pre-alpha, but for the sake of showing what I do have working so far, here is a screencap.
- A demonstration screencap for HUD effects and ammo casings. Resized due to forum limit.
FINISHED CHARACTERS
Here is a list of characters that I have finished building, whether or not it's in the above link. I would list which ones are to do, but with the plethora of countries out there (give or take 200+ including some historicals), that list would be pretty long.
In some cases, planned characters with unique features (UK has a tophat and monocle, Serbia has a military beret and a patch eye based on the heraldry on the flag, Kazakhstan is not a ball, Sealand and Vatican are very tiny balls, etc.) will take longer to finish because they won't be on my boilerplate process.
- Poland (the star of the comics)
- Not Polan (the correctly-oriented flag version of Poland; called "not polan" by fans when artists draw white-top red-bottom because it's not true to the comic's origins.)
- Greece
- Italy
- France
- Brazil
- UK
- USA
- Germany
- Russia
- Serbia
