Hideous Destructor 4.10.0b

[Eric_]

If the dirty window setting is disabled, you're unable to pick up items placed behind impassable lines. It worked out in this instance, but only because one of the lines was only player-blocking, and non-UDMF maps don't have the distinction, so a similar setup would render the items completely ungrabbable.

Also, is it intended that monsters/projectiles/the player if they're quick can break non-window midtextures, regardless of whether or not the window setting is enabled? Lost souls, babuins, and archviles frequently tear up maps just by wandering around because of this.

[Caligari87]

Also related to breakable windows, I found out that imp fireballs (and probably others) can hurt you through the window without breaking or penetrating it. I presume this is due to some radius check which doesn't account for the window being in the way.

[Matt]

Also, is it intended that monsters/projectiles/the player if they're quick can break non-window midtextures, regardless of whether or not the window setting is enabled? Lost souls, babuins, and archviles frequently tear up maps just by wandering around because of this.

Damn that looks badass. So tempted not to fix this...

Also related to breakable windows, I found out that imp fireballs (and probably others) can hurt you through the window without breaking or penetrating it. I presume this is due to some radius check which doesn't account for the window being in the way.

I'm assuming it's doing the full latch-on-and-keep-hurting thing, in which case I'm guessing it's because it only checks for the presence of a blockingmobj not the absence of a blockingline. I think I've fixed this now (the remaining initial damage is intentional).

[Caligari87]

Would it be possible to get a quick overview of how the new wounds work? Depth, width, patching, sealing, how they interact? I'm trying to update UaS Medical, and I'm just having trouble understanding how it all fits together so I can add some additional tracking on top (infection, cleanliness, obstructions) and properly manage manual healing (stitching, stapling, packing, etc)

[Matt]

The new system is a thinker that tracks the following:

bleeder, source: the relevant actors
depth: depth of the wound but also how much of it is open
patched: how much is temporarily stabilized by bandaging
sealed: how much is permanently sealed by Second Flesh or magic
width: how quickly blood is lost through this wound
regenrate: how quickly the wound regenerates (non-players only)

Monsters/NPCs continuously regenerate as depth amounts move to patched, patched to sealed. Players also do a bit of this but much slower - basically imperceptible unless you uncomment out that logging call and look at the numbers.

hdbleedingwound.findbiggest(actor bleeder, int flags=0) will look for the biggest wound that needs the most treatment. Flags are HDBW_FINDPATCHED and HDBW_FINDSEALED.

hdbleedingwound.clearall(actor bleeder) instantly removes all wounds from an actor.

[Abba Zabba]

Also, is it intended that monsters/projectiles/the player if they're quick can break non-window midtextures, regardless of whether or not the window setting is enabled? Lost souls, babuins, and archviles frequently tear up maps just by wandering around because of this.

That's what slipped my mind when I posted about low speed (brisk babuin roaming from being alert) monsters breaking down midtextures as if they're made of sugar glass. Thanks, forgot to mention the setting check.

With this new monster attack overhaul, will there (or is there already) be a check for arachnotrons to not accidently blow themselves up on static terrain right in front of their face? I've had this happen a few times where they're on the high ground, I'm on the low ground, and there's some manner of obstruction (usually just the ground from the ledge they're standing on) directly in front of them, and they always blast themselves. Hilarious, but broken. I believe the normal LoS check for hostile demons still makes them cease fire as intended.

[Caligari87]

The new system is a thinker that tracks the following:

Awesome, thank you! A few follow-up questions!

1. Some testing on the range shooting myself with a HERP and DERP seemed to usually produce wounds with roughly equivalent width/depth. I presume it's possible for these values to be mismatched? So a wide, shallow wound would bleed a lot but be easy to patch, and a deep, narrow wound would bleed more slowly but take longer to patch?
2. It looks like regenrate is not factored in at all for player wounds. Would it be possible for player wounds to use this but have it initially set to that extreme low value? My thought is that it would be nice to be able to adjust the regenrate for wounds treated with UaS trauma kit, so they heal faster (without needing to manage the patched/sealed rates manually).
3. Could wounds track the damagetype which created them? Would make descriptions possibly easier and more interesting to generate.
4. It seems like when wounds clear they typically just disappear, and oldwoundcount ("tissue damage") seems to be relegated to a kind of mundane "soft" aggro damage, like scar tissue that can sometimes randomly be reduced by second flesh. Is this right? What is this supposed to represent, so I can figure out a good procedure for addressing it? Previously this was what the UaS trauma kit helped to clear (through manual action), but that doesn't seem like a good fit anymore.

Thanks for helping me out, I think I'm starting to get some ideas on how to make some really interesting medical mechanics.

[Matt]

Everything I read is so constantly inconclusive that I'll just leave it as actual channel size and direct damage caused by temporary cavity (plus secondary channels if the bullet fragments) for now.

The rationale for wounds just disappearing is that they'll still have influence after being sealed and however long that takes to wear off. I know it should scar and whatnot but this remains a concession to playability to keep people from just IDCLEVing to the same level for a fresh start.

[Eric_]

Playing dead causes you to lose a bunch of health.
Thunderbuster beam is exploding on wet targets now. I think something broke in this commit.
Sometimes, when an enemy first spots the player, they just perform a melee attack in place, even if they're not anywhere close. I've noticed this mainly with the humanoids, imps, and Hell Knights.

Would you consider doing something to improve the Hunter reload? It feels very clunky and the low health behavior is a terrible flaw that no other weapon suffers. I think the jackboot's reload sequence is actually faster, and I'm sure they don't slow down when injured.

[Caligari87]

Everything I read is so constantly inconclusive that I'll just leave it as actual channel size and direct damage caused by temporary cavity (plus secondary channels if the bullet fragments) for now.

That's fine, it serves the gameplay purposes as-is and isn't really something that can be 100% realistically modeled anyway. For what it's worth, I did some manual testing and was able to confirm this behavior happens in gameplay—

a wide, shallow wound would bleed a lot but be easy to patch, and a deep, narrow wound would bleed more slowly but take longer to patch

—so this could be leveraged in HDest to create interesting wound dynamics by biasing an inflicted wound one way or the other. I'll experiment more.

The rationale for wounds just disappearing is that they'll still have influence after being sealed and however long that takes to wear off. I know it should scar and whatnot but this remains a concession to playability to keep people from just IDCLEVing to the same level for a fresh start.

Also fine. The length of time it takes for a decently-sized wound to heal is effectively "scar tissue" in gameplay terms anyway. My question was more what oldwoundcount represents in HD's new medical meta, so I can work it into my treatment systems.

I agree with Eric a little; I don't mind the standard reload behavior at regular health (HDest has the best shotgun mechanics of any game I've played), but the Hunter is seemingly the only weapon where physical performance is hindered by the player's health value. Either all weapons should get some kind of fumbling mechanic for manipulating them at low health, or the Hunter should lose this particular weird nerf. I lean toward the latter personally, as it'll make the game more playable even if it's not strictly realistic.

[Matt]

To be honest the health thing has survived this long because it spaghettifies the code enough to keep me from wanting to look at it.

I shall look at it this weekend. Nope, it's just spaghetti for other reasons, or rather I'd already removed some of the variation in the past when I needed to make other changes and it was just too unmanageable otherwise.


The TB change is intentional though.

[Abba Zabba]

Would you consider doing something to improve the Hunter reload? It feels very clunky and the low health behavior is a terrible flaw that no other weapon suffers. I think the jackboot's reload sequence is actually faster, and I'm sure they don't slow down when injured.

Strongly agree, glad to see it was addressed now. I believe, years ago, I mentioned it when it was new, but it needed a good while to test the waters in normal gameplay. It just doesn't make sense to go from 3 shells (presumably, inbetween all 3 spaces of your fingers leaving your thumb available to push the primer side of the shell into the port) down to 2 and then finally 1 when you're on death's door. It was almost like it was simulating fingers being blasted off or otherwise becoming broken, which HD doesn't try to simulate (along with broken bones of any variety.)

The new strain to attack is utterly brutal, I hope it stays for the long run. Making me rethink some approaches to common scenarios. In addition, the removal of spirit armor and (ID) inclusion of shield cores is throwing a big curveball to how I normally tackle maps. I like it.

To be clear, 'wet' targets are targets that bleed, correct? At least, from glancing at the commit.

[Matt]

The idea of the "wet" target was something like the body's natural systems should be able to pump away some of the ionized blood to mitigate the charge differential. But neither blood nor electrons really work that way, though really the entire Thunder Buster is a bit of a handwave.

The shotgun loading difference was more a matter of losing fine motor control so you couldn't really grip anything between any two fingers other than your thumb against everything else.

[Eric_]

Ejected unfired shells from a Slayer simply disappear into thin air, rather than landing on the floor or in your pockets.
Marine corpses are still being revived as friendly by Archvile curses. There also seems to be a disconnect in names when this happens, the name they have in chat messages is different from the one that appears in their death obituary.
Friendly marine chatter is duplicated in multiplayer depending on player number - player 1 only sees one line as expected, player 2 sees it twice, 3 sees it three times, etc.
The gunpos/gunheight changes seem to have made grenades launch out of the player's eyes rather than their gun. Old and new for comparison. Rocket mode grenades act as expected.
Thunderbuster has some issues with ceilings while crouched, too. Old/new.

Regarding the Hunter reload, I do think the base animation is too slow, personally. It takes less time to put six rockets into the rocket launcher than to put six shells in the Hunter. It's mainly how long you spend raising and lowering the weapon that makes it so unresponsive. There's a time and a place to be admiring the crasftmanship of the gun, and it's not when I need to get a babuin off of my ass.

[Abba Zabba]

Personally, the hunter's normal 3-shell reload speed with the side saddles feels pretty quick and balanced to me, the rocket launcher reload is simply blazing fast by comparison. Fast to the point where I don't know how you'd realistically be dexterous enough to grab an entire grenade, load it, and have another grenade grasped in the span of ~1/3 of a second. At least, after the initial reload 'preparing to load' sequence is complete.

Is anybody else getting automap scaling weirdness with the latest 4.8.0 GZ stable? The user scale settings still work fine, but everytime the automap is opened, there's a split second where all the descriptors (map title, kill/item/secret count, total playtime) are at default scale before they automatically adjust to your setting. Fairly jarring.