DoomGuy II - Difficulty Test Ready

[Zippy]

I've updated the first post with some small screenshots of Poison Cacolich's basically finished map. I've enclosed the screenshots in a spoiler tag this time so it reduces space (and put the old ones in a spoiler tag too.) Also, I've settled on the name "DoomGuy II". Not terribly fantastic, but it's better than the old MegaDoom II and it does fit the theme.

I'm moving at a reasonable pace, so progress is usually being made daily. Still going to take some of course, as mapping always does.

One issue I'm looking over is managing the difficulty in the wad. I fully intend to keep the normal Doom difficulty choices intact, but in terms of the first 8 levels difficulty is obviously going to have to be dynamic since the player basically chooses which order they want to go through the levels (so if it was static it would either start too hard for an ill-equipped player, or it would be too easy later on for a well-equipped player.) That in and of itself is simple enough with some quick scripted that checks how many bosses the player has beaten. However, I don't think that by myself I can make a good judge of this varied difficulty. So what I think I'm going to do is when I hit the next bout of "mapping is boring as hell right now", I'll take this complete level, populate it, and write some scripts that allow setting how many bosses are beaten, what weapons you have, etc, and giving the map out here so I can get some feedback on the difficulty. Then I can use that as a scale for the rest of the maps.

[Alterworldruler]

Any news on that zippy?

[Zippy]

I'm just tiring down from working on the next map, so I'll probably start on the difficulty sample real soon.

...............

But first, Half-Life 2: Episode 1!

............... not that that'll take very long.

[Dr. Mutagen]

Heh. I was wondering when a project like this would come along.

Just finished the sample wad, and I have to say, it really does an excellent job of mixing elements from both Doom and Megaman. The successful implementation of the rock-paper-scissors aspect of the Megaman games literally made me piss my pants. I've been hoping and praying for something like this to show up in ZDoom (or GZDoom) for a long time. I'll be sure to keep an eye on this project.

[chronoteeth]

Heh, ya know, with a project like this you'd think you get to use the arm cannon. :/

[ggg]

Heh.

Heh

Of all the Doom community trends, this has to be the weirdest.

[chronoteeth]

Whats wrong with heh? Hell, ya know, I feel as though the word "heh" is the doom community's catchphrase. In all my experience i've seen on the internet, we've used the word heh far more then any other community, heh.

[ggg]

I feel as though the word "heh" is the doom community's catchphrase. In all my experience i've seen on the internet, we've used the word heh far more then any other community, heh.

Yeah, every community needs a catchphrase, I suppose.

[chronoteeth]

^ heh

[Da Spadger]

Why are there no hands on the shotgun? I think it looks nicer with it. :/

[Zippy]

Sort of on a whim.

Originally I had a faster firing rate on the shotgun since it is the default weapon the player starts with and they'll be forced to do some amount of combat with it before obtaining another weapon. Also, I did not want to it to become obsolete as soon as the player obtained another weapon (much as the pistol becomes mostly obsolete once the player gets a shotgun in regular Doom.) The default animations for the shotgun don't look terribly good when sped up, so instead I just had frames with different offsets to look like "kickback." It was at that point I arbitrarily decided to remove the hands. (It rather reminds me of the shotguns from Quake and Doom64 as such.)

Incidentally, after playing some normal maps with the shotgun and other weapons, I wound up slowing down the shotgun to nearly its normal firing speed anyway.

[Alterworldruler]

Maybe some new screenshots zippy??

zippy anyway you cleared half-life 2:episode one? i cleared it in 3-4 hours!

[Da Spadger]

My friend here has two notes about this. First, the music in the boss arena doesn't loop perfectly, secondly, what's that crusher in the room before the boss for? O_o

[Zippy]

My friend here has two notes about this. First, the music in the boss arena doesn't loop perfectly, secondly, what's that crusher in the room before the boss for? O_o

It loops fine for me. ZDoom isn't the most graceful thing to use in timing music appropriately. Oh well, have to work within the limits. If it's not looping correctly for a lot of people, then it's something to worry about.

The crusher was arbitrary and random. It's not there anymore. You're going to get the chance to see for yourself now.

I've finished taking Poison Cacolich's complete level and filling it up and trying to balance out the dynamic difficulty. It's available here. There's a text file with just about everything you need to know, but I'll quickly cover some stuff here.

The point of this difficulty sample is to get some feedback for just how appropriate the difficulty is. Due to the nature of the wad, the player effectively gets to choose the order they want to do the first 8 levels, so the difficulty has to dynamically scale with that. The difficulty of the map when you get to it is based on two things: The skill you chose and how many levels you have already beaten. The idea is it should roughly fit this table:

Code: Select all

Difficulty Table : Higher number == harder
     SKILL|  Easy  |  Medium  | Hard  |
  BEATEN  |        |          |       |
  --------------------------------------
  0 or 1  |   0    |    1     |   2
  --------------------------------------
  2 or 3  |   1    |    2     |   3
  --------------------------------------
  4 or 5  |   2    |    3     |   4
  --------------------------------------
   >= 6   |   3    |    4     |   5
  --------------------------------------

I'd be most appreciative if some people could play it and give me some feedback about it. Obviously, I can't expect people to play through all 12 possibilities, but feedback from even just playing one can be helpful to me. For example, if you play on Ultra-Violence with >= 6 levels prebeaten and things seem ludacrisly easy, I'd like some feedback on that.

The only level implemented in this difficulty sample aside from the titlemap and boss select map is Poison Cacolich's. He's in the lower left of the boss select. So how it works is like this: Start a new game at your preferred skill level. Go to the boss select screen. Here, you can use three scripts I've provided to set levels to be "prebeaten". These will make the "prebeaten" bosses disappear from the screen and you'll get their weapon. Once you have that set up how you want, just go to Poison Cacolich's level and play it.

Code: Select all

puke 30 [1-7] : Randomly defeats the number of bosses you specify.  Poison Cacolich is excluded from the random selection on purpose since his is the only level.  If you don't like your random loadout, you can just do this again to rerandom

puke 31 [1-127] : This sets up which guys are defeated and not defeated specifically based on all the 127 different combinations.  It's all done bitwise, so if you aren't any good with binary to decimal conversions you'll want to use the next script.  There's more detail (like the bit order of the bosses) in the text file.

puke 32 [1-7] : This just sets the boss you give it to defeated and gives you their weapon.  The order of which boss is which number is in the text file.  If you want to have 4 specific guys defeated, you just do this one at a time for each of them.

Remember where the thresholds are on the difficulty table. Playing the level with 4 bosses beaten is the same as playing it with 5 beaten.

There's some final notes in the text file which you'll want to read. Just reminders on the how the ammo system works in this wad, and that use of jump is expected (and required), etc.

Hope you enjoy it. I'm looking forward to any feedback. Even if it's not specifically about the difficulty I'd still like to hear it.

Once again, get the difficulty sample here.

[chronoteeth]

Why not an actual blaster arm?