Imp Hunter wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 6:01 pm
Yeah, I've got sprite collisions in some mods I did in the past too. You can rename for something more "random", but it's impossible to really avoid it, I guess. Especially if you expect people to mix your mod with other wads.
I've also noticed another minor issue with AEoD. When using items that damage monsters, the damage might use the elemental damage from the weapon that you're currently holding. For example, in AEoD there's a item called Ice Shield that freezes monsters around you. While holding a Railgun with Venomous Inscription, the item also applied poison to those enemies while freezing them.
Maybe someday gzdoom will support sprite namespacing or something, but until then, it is what it is.
As for monster-damaging items, yeah, that's a known issue -- it can tell
that you damaged the monster, but it can't tell if you damaged it with your weapon, or an offhand attack like the Ashes boot knife, or a damaging item, or a special attack added by another mod, or what. Basically, it can only differentiate three categories of monster damage:
(1) damage inflicted by something other than the player, such as infighting;
(2) damage inflicted by Gun Bonsai upgrades, such as the blast damage from Explosive Death;
(3) damage inflicted by the player and not by Gun Bonsai.
As a general rule, (1) it doesn't react to at all, (2) awards XP but has special handling to make sure that (e.g.) you don't end up with an infinite loop of Fragmentation Shots going off, and (3) both awards XP and triggers upgrade effects. Which means that if you have non-weapon attacks, those will inherit the special effects of whatever weapon you have wielded at the time they hit.
Xubs wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 8:31 pm
I really like this mod! A universal level-up mod is something I never knew I needed. I know earlier it's been said that you had trouble coming up with new upgrades, and while I've seen you have a lot of suggestions for new ones on your plate, I thought I'd throw in my two-cents too. I'll provide justifications in [] brackets and italics so you can get an idea of what I'm thinking with these ideas.
[...]
I hope you like these ideas.
This mod got the creative juices flowing since I saw it and thought I'd share. Maybe I'll come up with more if you like them. Thanks again!
Thank you! I've copied them all down for further consideration. I do always appreciate upgrade ideas; even if they're not viable or I don't like them they often inspire something else.
Initial thoughts:
- not sure I like Spectral Inscription as written, but I do like the basic idea of trying to find "rapid-fire-ish" approaches that are actually viable to implement. It's given me some ideas for shot duplicating/splitting effects, too.
- Resurrection: the T2 lightning upgrade (Revivification) is conceptually similar to this, although it needs some serious rework to avoid confusing level scripting or inconveniencing the player. This might turn into an entire "summoner build" tree with Revivification worked into something else, or parts of it might get used to improve Revivification in place.
- Crossfire: I like this a lot and it probably wouldn't be too hard to implement, although it'd need some new hooks. I might make the limit a certain amount of damage or shots rather than a certain amount of time so that it remains useful on weapons with long warmup times, though.
- Tracker: I don't think I can separate out "see monsters" and "see monsters and items"; the PowerScanner power is hardcoded to always display all actors and the only other way to adjust this is by wiggling the am_cheat cvar. This is an idea I've thought about in the past, though, and I like the idea of "one upgrade makes computer maps better and the next upgrade makes them builtin".
Netheritor wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 4:32 am
Umm... About Blades of Agony; As you know, there is no configurable key for gunbonsai in the mod, so I use the default i key. But it said unknown command menu something that I forgot what's in bracket even though I just played it 4 minutes ago.
I didn't actually know that; GB should add a key configuration section. Does BoA override that menu completely or something?
If you need to rebind it and can't access the menu for it, try
bind i "netevent bonsai-show-info" in the console. You can also access the GB options menu through the console with
openmenu GunBonsaiOptions.
DarkkOne wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 12:30 pm
That sounds really good actually. I'm not sure how you'd handle "shield" for that, but for the others that certainly seems like a really good way to balance them. Also, at that point, allowing the flag to influence the decision making process has quite a bit less downside, since if you want to get Dark Harvesting with your shotgun, you've got to get in danger range.
Yeah, Shield is the big unanswered question there. The best idea I've had there so far is that Shield is always active when the weapon is wielded, but its effectiveness is scaled based on what percentage of attacks you've made with that weapon are in melee range, reaching peak effectiveness at, say, 90% and above. So on mixed melee/ranged weapons it's still
good but not
as good as it is on a pure melee weapon.
Basically, I think with your mod, options is the way to think about it. Sometimes nerfing something adds options, because it takes things that were no longer useful options and allows them to be useful again. So while you're making something lesser, you're actually increasing the available "useful" options over all. So when thinking about melee vs. ranged balance, the big question isn't "is this too strong" on its own, but "is this so strong that people would never reasonably choose other choices."
Over all, I think this is in a pretty good place on that. But it helps as a tool to consider things. Will a shotgun with dark harvest and shield mean nobody will use a plasma rifle with homing, piercing shots? Dunno. But it's less about "are they balanced in overall power" and more just "are they each fun enough to play that neither is likely to be entirely left out."
At least that's my view on it. Hope this wasn't too much a ramble. I remember you mentioned being interested in balance considerations earlier on, so hope this felt useful, or at least interesting.
This is basically my philosophy on balance for this mod. It doesn't need to be balanced with respect to other players, and it will never (by design) be balanced with respect to vanilla Doom (and if people want to achieve some kind of balance with other mods, that's a large part of why it has so many tuning options). But the options do need to be balanced
with respect to each other; I don't want anything to be so bad that it's a dead slot in the upgrade list, or so good that it crowds out other options.
However, I am also not -- by profession or avocation -- a game designer; I'm a programmer who hangs out with game designers sometimes, and my
implementation of that balance philosophy involves a lot of "throw numbers at the wall and see what sticks". So I always appreciate feedback!
