Tranquility (On Hold, 2017-08-12)

[Caligari87]

That's three four things

1. Right now it seems to match the vanilla pistol pretty well, which was my goal. I admit it could be a little deadlier, so I'll look into tweaking the damage output, maybe raising the multiplier a point or two.
2. I"m going to enhance the movement with a dashing feature to help counteract that problem, along with a faster sprint speed, stamina/fatigue, etc. If you go back before the ZScript refactor you can get a taste of this, along with a preliminary mantling system.
3. The initial state of the pistol is a little iffy right now, I'll clean that up for sure. There's also the issue of the slide starting locked back with a round on the feeding ramp, which wouldn't happen in real life.
4. Another overlay for the trigger wouldn't hurt things I suppose It'll also help with feedback on the "slow/heavy trigger" feature I have planned.

[Matt]

Gotta remember that the regular Doom pistol's power is based on you being able to hold M1 and dodge and aim without thinking about anything else until you're completely out of ammo or the baddie is dead. I think the extra care and attention placed on the significance of each bullet should be reflected in the payoff. (especially if you go the heavy-trigger route )

[-Ghost-]

Gotta remember that the regular Doom pistol's power is based on you being able to hold M1 and dodge and aim without thinking about anything else until you're completely out of ammo or the baddie is dead. I think the extra care and attention placed on the significance of each bullet should be reflected in the payoff. (especially if you go the heavy-trigger route )

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. One of the biggest nerfs you can do to a Doom weapon is to get rid of the autofiring, so the power should increase to match that.

[Caligari87]

How powerful are we talking? I upped the multiplier average a bit and now it fairly consistently one-shots zombiemen and shotgunners, and two-shots imps. Is that too much?

[wildweasel]

How powerful are we talking? I upped the multiplier average a bit and now it fairly consistently one-shots zombiemen and shotgunners, and two-shots imps. Is that too much?

With the amount of time it takes to reload, and the relatively small magazine size, I'd say that's perfect.

[Caligari87]

I pushed an update to increase the damage output, seems fairly reasonable now. I may tweak it down when/if more powerful weapons get added.

Be aware that the latest commit does include some oddity with loading rounds to mags: I'm working on a feature that has the player's "hand" holding up to five rounds for loading/unloading and dumping excess or pulling more when needed (think how Hideous Destructor handles shotgun shells). It's unfinished at the moment and I think it's miscounting in some places. Just something to be aware of; I should have it fixed soon.

[Caligari87]

New Release!

You think you've seen sexy? You've never seen anything this sexy. New alpha release showcases polished magazine reloading as a new "weapon" on slot 2 with the pistol. You can load rounds to a mag with [Fire], unload with [Altfire], or pick another mag with [Reload]. Make sure to find cover when you do this! Also damage output has been increased to compensate for slower gameplay, plus a few other tweaks and bugfixes.

(no, I haven't fixed the grimace face yet. Soon.)

[Caligari87]

Added an "aimed shot" mode last night, you can try it by downloading the latest commit from Github. Hold [Zoom] to tighten your sights, then hold the trigger to fire (like ww-skillguns). Un-aimed sights are a little more floaty now to compensate.

With that, How does everyone you feel about the current key setups? Is everything relatively intuitive? Any suggestions on tweaks that could help improve the control scheme, especially swapping between the gun and the mag-loader?

[dawnbreez]

The current key setup seems pretty solid. I'd put the gun itself on a higher priority than the mag-loader, since you may need to switch back to it in a hurry--i.e., once you implement the shotgun, it may be a valid tactic to switch to the pistol instead of trying to reload the shotgun in the heat of battle.

That having been said, this is getting me all excited. I liked Receiver, but could never get it to run smoothly--and your system of holding one key then hitting others is a brilliant way of reducing the amount of Finger Twister going on on my keyboard.

[Crudux Cruo]

WOW this is phenomenal! Perhaps if Siddoyle implemented something like this for his RW6 mod he was working on...

As a firearm enthusiast i would have to say there are a few aspects to gunplay that are not present in this *keeping in mind this is a game*

-adrenaline: the more of it, the more "twitchy" you are, and more prone to jerk on the trigger, causing left/right accuracy drift.
-trigger pull: unless you're firing a revolver or a 1911, the trigger usually has weight. this means, if untrained, front sight sway. also certain triggers have factory settings that favor slow shots or fast shots, and have a unique "feel"
-grip/flinch: unless trained, involuntary over-gripping of the pistol or flinching results in somewhat unpredictable muzzle behavior
-base accuracy: most guns with a 6 inch barrel are accurate at 50 yards up to 1.5 inch groupings...
impressive! but only people like bob munden or jerry miculek can take true advantage of that accuracy for a sniper style shot.
-muzzle flip, recoil, gun weight: most guns have small querks that make things like rapid firing and accuracy somewhat variable

now some of this is of course not video game friendly, but i'd like to say this is perhaps as far as a doom mod can come.
Also:
WW did a progressive gun upgrade system a while back that included trigger pull, quick fire accuracy, and whatnot.
Another guy named Kodi did an intriguing free aim system

Keep it up, this was super interesting to me and i'll keep my eyes pealed for more content from you!

[Matt]

--and your system of holding one key then hitting others is a brilliant way of reducing the amount of Finger Twister going on on my keyboard.

Seconding this. The combos are very well laid out.

[Caligari87]

@dawnbreez: I think the loader priority issue has been fixed on github, I just haven't done a formal release tag yet.

@Crudux: The latest github code has aimed shots and heavy trigger now! Hold your [Zoom] key and you'll see a slight zoom-in; your sights also will settle faster and be less susceptible to movement. Hold the trigger for a few tics to fire. I also plan on implementing a lot of the things you mentioned for "un-aimed" shots (jitter, flinch, adrenaline, stamina, stuff like that) to encourage players to slow down. I've also implemented a much-improved "tumbling" system that affects base accuracy somewhat for the bullets themselves, and I'll add some additional parameters (such as barrel length or rifling perhaps?) to make the gun itself impart a base (in)accuracy to rounds it fires. Muzzle flip and recoil should also be somewhat modeled in the latest github as well. Again, no formal release (I have some bugs to quash) but I'm gonna try to get one out this weekend.

Thanks for the comments on the key combos! I thought long and hard about those, primarily with the goal of only using keys the average player is likely to have bound already.

[CasualScrub]

Call me stupid, but how do I actually run this, since it doesn't come in a PK3/PK7/WAD/etc. format?

[Caligari87]

If you download the repository as a .zip (either the master branch or any of the previous releases) you can run it directly, just like a pk3 (which are usually just renamed zips anyway). You could even just rename it to .pk3 if you want.

[Caligari87]

New release!

Mostly under-the-hood refactoring, but a lot things should look/sound/feel better now. This mostly makes the pistol feature-complete and should allow finishing E1 if you play carefully. Feedback welcome! Next up will be new weapons.