DOOM: Knee Deep in D20 Dev Progress and QNA (Retired)

[Thomased22]

This thread is retired. See the main release thread.

Hello! I'm Thomased22. I've been playing classic DOOM for a while. Mostly modded, as well as the newer games. My favorite gameplay mod is Hideous Destructor, though I do like to play more traditional mods as well. I'm an aspiring game designer, though lacking the practical skills to make a mod or a game by myself, when I make a concept for something, everyone who gives it a look usually has something good to say. Even though I mostly play with theoreticals when designing things, I'm currently finishing up a playable version of a project I've been working on for a couple months now. A "Table Top" (mostly geared towards over text gatherings but it could be played table top theoretically) RPG based off of DOOM. Not a video game, but a more traditional roleplaying game. I can't find an example of a game like this based off of DOOM, even though it makes a lot of sense. As the old gang at ID enjoyed D&D themselves. I've not put a ton of time into tabletop games but I have multiple friends who have (spending far too much money on plastic men lmao). And they've been a good help. The game takes many aspects from Classic DOOM, Modern DOOM, and Hideous Destructor, to create a unified world that you could do a lot with. Hideous especially added a good amount of lore, weapons, items, and mechanics that inspired me to expand the scope of the project. Allowing me to really make what even my table top veteran friends consider a fleshed out and depthful roleplaying game. You don't need to know anything in particular about Hideous (or other table top RPGS) to play the game as I've made documents explaining the rules, and all the items come with flavor text explaining their lore. And/Or their modified lore to fit into the unique world of the game. 

On top of this the game is made with "Modding" in mind. You can add weapons, items, and especially monsters. If you put enough time into reworking things you could probably even make "Total Conversions" of the game. I especially imagine that the game could be reworked to fit games like Half Life and Hexen. You could even make a more traditional Classic Doom RPG out of it if you were willing to rework many of the mechanics and remove all of the hideous items and weapons and Modern Doom shenanigans. I wouldn't, personally. But you could. The vanilla version of the game is just the version of the game is just the version of the game I think I and my friends would enjoy the most. The game has interesting combat mechanics, a lot of character progression, teamwork mechanics, character expression, and many monster types. The monsters are the key to making the game dynamic and fun, and the game is designed with the DM making and adding their own monsters to fit their campaign, and keeping them a secret until the players discover the monster in battle or otherwise. This especially goes for the big bad evil guy characters, called the "Icons of Evil". I decided that the Icon of Sin wouldn't exactly have a place in a game who's era is supposed to be post Doom 64 but pre Doom 2016. (Though you could make your own interpretation of the Icon of Sin himself if you wanted to disregard that lol). So instead I decided it'd be better if the DMs created their own Icon for their campaign to act as the final boss. The Icons don't follow any particular rules other than being nigh invulnerable and being able to spawn soul cubes which spawn monsters. So you can really do whatever you want. And that goes for the players too, if the DM lets them, they could modify their weapons to slightly change their stats, or create new items that aren't already in the game using various types of "Scrap" which drop from cybernetic enemies. All it'd take is for the DM to give the item or weapon a weight, appropriate stats, and etc. And you can add anything to the game on the fly.

That's a relatively condensed explanation of the game. I won't go into incredible detail about how I designed the combat that synergizes with the progression meant to last you for quite a long time for long campaigns. Nor will I explain the perks as there's potentially going to be around 100 perks, 50 of which you can choose to spec into right as you create your character, though you only get 3 points to start with. Many perks can even be specced into many times to increase their benefits. Some buff your stats, some give you a new ability or upgrade an ability, and some improve your weapons and items. All in all I'd consider this game my first real game design project and very successful at that. A friend might be paying me 20$ to add multiple types of shotgun shells  though so don't quote me on that lmao. The way shotguns work in this game is so cool I will say. The feature complete version will be version 0.5. When I finish the first campaign of the game with my friends, whatever changes we decide would be good will become version 1.0. And when 1.0 happens I'll be giving the game a real name. If I can think of one lol. I also plan to make my own mods for the game for stuff that is a bit too funky for the base game or adds more bloat, like extra weapons and Hideous' "-ERP" robots. I don't think that the vanilla V0.5 will take much longer than a week or so. So long as I'm not distracted or have to deal with more IRL stuff. My laptop died mid development and set me back as is lmao. 

Here's an image of the doc, game's not ready for me to start posting it and then have to go "update your character sheets, this or that changed." Please wait for the feature complete 0.5 release to ask for a link to the docs. They'll be posted when it's all ready adjacent lol. There will also be one more doc soon that explains the basics of what and how to do stuff in combat. For both players and DMs.

[Thomased22]

Update: since it took a bit for this post to get approved, multiple things have occurred. For one the doc explaining all of combat is in the works now. That'll likely be the first doc I post here. Secondly, the final chunk of the game that I need to finish (tier 3 perks) is rapidly approaching completion.

Thirdly, yes I did get those 20$. And yes, there are alternate shotgun shells now. Which had, minor consequences to certain things. But tbh the addition of alternate shells is for the better lol. Here are screenies of them, buckshot was the original shell and was hardly changed. There's two shell types that aren't shown here because I'm not super sure about their current implementation. An overpressured shell that lets the pump action fire in semi auto, and a powerful slug shell, that ended up acting a lot like the brontornis, but obviously much lesser in strength. Dealing some recoil self pain if not mounted, busting through shields (and even garrison green armor which is unique to this shell, no other shell can deal crit damage to any type of armor), and instantly incapping human sized enemies, and faltering medium sized targets. It also weighs 5 bulk instead of 1 lol.

[Thomased22]

Let me give you guys a little bit to cook with here. Here's the character progression document. Explaining how you level up your character, your guns, and gain perks. Not all of the perks are done as mentioned earlier. But we are getting there.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VGu ... sp=sharing

As well as this I may as well throw in the item doc. Since that's pretty much finished besides one little detail. And you essentially need it to contextualize half of the perks lol.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vnj ... sp=sharing

These two things I'm relatively sure won't change drastically for the time being.

[Thomased22]

Still scheming.

[Thomased22]

IRL stuff got me stalled. I'm gonna be getting back to work soon. Those perks won't finish themselves.

Friend bought me cookie clicker, he's getting a sword adjacent "utility blade" in return. It will have art since it's an entirely made up weapon. It's basically a rectangular utility blade with a very small cross guard, maybe a red stripe down the middle of the blade, in the ZM66 color scheme. As it's made by volt.

Also adding my own sword, a system shock plasma rapier inspired laser sword, that works like the BFG on hit. Inspired by a modder named potebloke who has a similar weapon as a hideous mod on the backburner. I just really like the idea, he didn't seem to mind me adapting the function of the idea. Will be aesthetically unique to the sys shock sword though lol.

[Thomased22]

I return! Those "swords" are in fact a thing now. I gave the traditional sword the knife's old level 1 prof perk. And now knife prof 1 unlocks melee throwing. I finally caved in lol.

I can't post the descriptions of either of the items, as they result in images that are too large. Go check out the item doc if you are interested. They are at the bottom of the weapons category.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vnj ... sp=sharing

Here's the art for one of the weapons:

image_2023-08-04_130330402.png (2.81 KiB) Viewed 3343 times

Aside from that, there's just one more OC weapon that'll be the example for what a modded weapon should vaguely look like. Which will be given the honorary vanilla weapon title, for filling a very good niche that none of the other weapons do lol.

Gonna get back to work on this for realsies. Those perks won't finish themselves. After that, it's just the combat overview doc, and shit will finally be done lmao.

[Thomased22]

(Oh hey I have full posting perms now, now my updates won't be outdated by the time they reach you guys lol.)

[Thomased22]

I'm seeing a steady stream of people coming into the docs. If that's you, give me a shout, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Idk how legal it is to advertise a discord server on the forum but I'm considering making one for this game. It'd be a good way to gather all of the people interested, so people can make parties to play. Would yall be interested in that?

[Thomased22]

The weapon categories with larger weapon variety (like pistols and smgs, ARs and manual action rifles, etc) have tier 3 perks where you have to spec into one of them, but lose out on the other. While shotguns just have two competing perks that effect both vanilla shotguns. Working on the rifle perks atm. They are designed specifically with adding "modded" weapons in mind. Once again, too big for Zdoom, so check out the perk doc, you can literally see me work live lmao.

I'm taking a tea break rn though lol.

[Thomased22]

Manual action rifles (bolt action, hammer action, etc) and assault rifles got two tier 3s each. Check them out if you want.

[Thomased22]

This is the description of the tier 3 Machine Gun perk. A series of references that make me feel far cleverer than I'm sure I actually am.

Perk Type: Machine Gun Mastery
Perk Category: Weapon Mastery
Perk Effect(s), Max Purchases: Machine guns are intermediate automatic weapons (normally full auto) that are big, ultra high capacity weapons that can have multiple mags fed into it, a single, huge proprietary mag, or a ton of loose rounds directly loaded or fed into it via the backpack or internal mag, external non detachable hopper, or etc. Vanilla examples of machine guns being the Vulcanette and the BFG’s machine gun fire mode. These weapons are not the same as assault rifles. And do not gain benefits from assault rifle perks. This also applies to vice versa. However despite the downsides these weapons are both hugely powerful and versatile. And aren’t too hard to keep fed with ammo. When using an applicable weapon, for every kill you get with it without switching to a different weapon, and without getting hit by an attack, gain +1 base damage up to a maximum of +20 damage. You lose the buff if you get hit or draw another weapon.
Prerequisites: E#6, UV#4 (Max), C#6 (Max).
Incompatible With: TBD Launcher/Cannon Perk.

[Thomased22]

I think I may have finished the final perk... Maybe, we'll see.

[Thomased22]

I'm working on the combat overview doc right now. I think once it's done I can make that big 0.5 release I wanted to make. I will be accompanying it with a discord server dedicated to the game. As well as a thread in a more general location where I can announce big updates, release expansion packs/mods/whatever you'd like to call them, and link to the main discord. Major stuff, unlike this thread which will remain an active development thread. Both for the main game and the official mods/expansions I plan on making.

Anyhow, anyone willing to toss name ideas for the game? I don't want a generic edgy name, but the current name is too far in the direction opposite to that. I've yet to come up with anything better though.



Thanks to everyone for keeping an eye on this thread and the good bunch of you I saw looking at the docs lol. Stay tuned. I'm gonna post the combat doc when it's done. And then eventually after that, once I know everything is complete, be making that aforementioned release thread and discord server lol. 

[Thomased22]

Name I reached with my friend and co designer last night while sleep deprived was "Doom: Hell's A Party" which I think is tonally and wit wise in the right direction. But I'm not toooo sure about it. If nothing better comes I'll prolly just wait till 1.0 to change the name lol. Thoughts?

[Thomased22]

Someone has suggested "Doom: Thy Dice Consumed" as an alternative name. Thoughts on this?