DOOMablo: a looter-shooter DOOM (v0.2.1a -Flasks are searching for their place in life)

[Darkbeetlebot]

A good suggestion. I think I'll raise the accuracy in a later update. I'm also thinking about adding "homing projectiles" affix for RL as well.

Homing rocket launchers would absolutely be sick as hell. I fully support this.

Yeah, but it should still have much higher DPS. Hasn't it? I'll check what can be done there anyway.

Honestly can't tell. They both fire extremely quickly. But what I do know is that I tried using the BFG2701 on a cyberdemon and it absolutely did not end well in the slightest. It took about 30 seconds and my entire cell supply to kill it with invulnerability on at point blank.

Oh that's a good one. But the problem is that I can't determine if the current monster is a summoner when giving the affixes, so if I restrict archvile only, it won't prevent modded archviles from being summoners...
My current idea is to change the summoner affix logic. Instead of making the monster summon monsters of the same class, summoners will summon some low level monsters only (selected by their HP value). No archviles this way. It's currently in the works, but I'm having some technical issues with implementation.
I also think the "Horde" affix should work the same way as well.

Ah, yeah, that sounds like a pretty stubborn problem. Having them summon just basic imps and former humans would be a good solution though, as long as you exclude chaingunners and lost souls.

What would you think if I double accuracy affix effect if it's applied to shotgun?
About flechettes: I think they should be made either faster or smarter, or even both. Will do that for the next release.

Well, the accuracy affix already works better on shotguns natively because of how it's a proportional reduction and shotguns have the widest spread. If you were to do that, it would probably need to be ONLY on the single shotgun and not the double, otherwise the double would still be always a direct upgrade. But yeah, that would be a solution. For flechettes, I think making them work better should be the priority. They're very dysfunctional right now, often either not homing at all on nearby enemies or flying off track and trying to hit the wrong enemies. Especially problematic if the enemy is on a different Y axis. They're so bad right now that I avoid picking them up unless it's a really high damage weapon or a super shotgun/chaingun.

Formula for levels is the following:
expForNextLevel = (baseAmount + A * currLevel) * M ^ (currLevel/K)
baseAmount is XP required for first level you gain (level 2), it's 500.
A is additional required XP each level, it's 200 currently.
M is exponent base, it's 1.275 now.
K means "each this many levels the required amount is multiplied by M", and is 6 now.
Stats scaling (damage and monster HP) uses very similar formula but with other constants.

Ah, so it's an exponential function. A harsh one, at that. That explains the behavior. Given how enemies (I assume) give a static amount of XP when killed, but the XP required grows, I think you should either give monsters bonus XP reward base on their level or flatten the XP needed curve so that it's linear instead with a soft cap at level 100. I actually got a mathematician friend of mine on this and they said it was "terrifying".

But this idea may be not as good as I think of it (I'm playing poe2 too much lol). What do you think? Would it make the mod better?

I think it's a great idea. Just make sure you aren't adding too many items to the mod, as they can be a pain to juggle around. Just having a dedicated hotkey for the potion in the options would also be a good idea. Would certainly help with resource-starved maps. I'd also maybe suggest the idea that the potion can be filled up by picking up medipacks/kits or health bonuses when you health is already full.

[MsrSgtShooterPerson]

(I'm playing poe2 too much lol).

Convert all health to shield Chaos Inoculation energy armor when

[fakemai]

Just another abort to report, press inventory next or previous, in prior versions it would make the inventory icon disappear for a bit like it's supposed to be displaying a list like in Heretic. Speaking of Heretic, those arc of death scrolls seem to follow its inventory rules of losing duplicates on map transition, intended? Horde, it was cute seeing it summon one of the Wolfenstein dudes, and I'll note that that effect can also use higher tier enemies as the game progresses because they don't seem to get levels. As for the rechargeable health potion idea, it'd probably be nice for harder mapsets. I'll intend to try more of Plutonia in the coming days.

[vfunky]

Getting killed by enemies with the "Anger" affix don't properly trigger the Indestructible mod

[Darkbeetlebot]

Just another abort to report, press inventory next or previous, in prior versions it would make the inventory icon disappear for a bit like it's supposed to be displaying a list like in Heretic. Speaking of Heretic, those arc of death scrolls seem to follow its inventory rules of losing duplicates on map transition, intended? Horde, it was cute seeing it summon one of the Wolfenstein dudes, and I'll note that that effect can also use higher tier enemies as the game progresses because they don't seem to get levels. As for the rechargeable health potion idea, it'd probably be nice for harder mapsets. I'll intend to try more of Plutonia in the coming days.

I also have an inventory-related bug. Pressing next or previous in the latest test version causes a crash, and I can't bring up the gearbox inventory wheel like I usually can.

[sidav]

A new version is here.
- Added (experimental) damage scaling for monsters' infighting. It is done in a crude/hacky way because direct damage scaling is messing with knockback. Please let me know if infighting is broken somewhere.
- Fixed inventory crash. Sorry for it taking so long, I didn't get email notification about this thread for some reason. The report in GitHub issues was the only one I've been notified about.
- Fix potential null pointer crash when a monster is dealing damage to other monster (I really don't know how it didn't show up yet)
- Flechettes are now faster (12 -> 14), brighter (gray -> yellow) and SHOULD be smarter.
- Horde and Summoner monsters now summon low-level monsters only. It's judged by monsters' HP, so it may not work as good as expected. But at least a summoner/horde archvile is not that punishing anymore.
Thanks everyone for the reports!

[fakemai]

If the horde effect is just summoning random enemies that exist it's got some unintended consequences with monster mods in that I had a random zombieguy appear with Angelic Aviary, it also happened to spawn a magus doll which normally only appear when dolls are resurrected by Putto. The bigger problem is that it'll ignore the mod settings if it's not making the "spawner" object because angels come in "quiet" versions which are a different actor class, the dolls additionally have "smol/quietsmol" with lower height, a couple are also optional for reasons, in particular some are NSFW but I think those are all above the HP threshold. Finally the spawners handle tag 666/667 logic which could be a problem if it's bypassing that, I also noticed the Ophanim ones get picked up by the enemy info displayer.

Also thanks for making the "full HP on level-up" optional, it took some time to realize that's what was happening but it's far too strong. Also flechettes still feel lacking but at least they don't resemble dust now.

[sidav]

If the horde effect is just summoning random enemies that exist it's got some unintended consequences with monster mods

Ugh... The problem with this is that I have no idea how to deal with mods for summoners logic. I mean, what possible criteria for the monster class picked for spawning are there then?

Also thanks for making the "full HP on level-up" optional, it took some time to realize that's what was happening but it's far too strong.

Maybe it's worth it to make this a "percentage of health healed on level up" slider with 0-25-50-75-100% values?

[fakemai]

Thorny. As much as hard-coding sucks, maybe it's simplest to just list off the low tier enemies and ensure they're spawned with ALLOW_REPLACE. Mods like Colourful Hell already put you at RNG's mercy so it doesn't really matter if this happens to spit out EX Benellus, and it should avoid most other issues, another would be with DRLA monsters on the difficulties intended to have a single monster tier, I did test that summoning ZombieMan in the console was respecting that. I'm also not sure now if the 666/667 tracking is an issue at all. Alternatively revert it to spawn the same as the host monster but with debuffs like low HP, or limiting the modifer to lower HP enemies to begin with. Disclaimer, I am not actually that intimately familiar with GZDoom, others should probably comment on this first.

Oh I almost forgot, I'm fine with the on-off switch. It can be made more granular if you like though, but it's best to not let configurables get too out of control.

[sidav]

Thorny. As much as hard-coding sucks, maybe it's simplest to just list off the low tier enemies and ensure they're spawned with ALLOW_REPLACE.

Which monster mods do you have the most problems with? I'll try to test current solution locally with them.

[fakemai]

I mostly just use the three of Colourful Hell (colour-based tiering with higher ones rarer, plus optional tiers like cyan and abyssal), DoomRL Monsters (tiering, plus nightmare/technophobia/armageddon difficulty to only spawn one tier of monster, adaptive to gradually favour higher tier enemies, functions if you have set danger level to increase per map but generally works best with DoomRL Arsenal), and Angelic Aviary (already listed its problems, I forgot it also has Heretic variants of most angels which have altered stats but also drop Heretic-specific items which technically exist even when GZDoom is loading other IWADs so you get glitched invisible items).

[sidav]

New release is there. There are a new affix, new sprites and new spawn code for summoners/horde which should make mod compatibility better. Full changelog is on the release page.

[Darkbeetlebot]

I am absolutely loving the new flechettes. Especially the graphics. Makes it look like I'm shooting fire, the shotgun variants look really cool. Though it made me realize that I don't actually know how one part of how they and the mini-rockets function. On their description it says something like "0.7x damage". Is that how much damage the flechettes/missiles deal in proportion to the listed damage instead of its normal damage, or is it BONUS damage they also deal on top of the listed damage? And do the mini-rockets deal all their damage as splash or is the bonus damage they deal all in the splash? Or is it perhaps that the splash damage is determined by something completely different? I think those descriptions would benefit from being clearer in how they function.

[sidav]

I am absolutely loving the new flechettes. Especially the graphics. Makes it look like I'm shooting fire, the shotgun variants look really cool.

Glad to hear you love them! I've tried several variants until I came up with this one. Initially (the "dust" variant) they were simply the default gzdoom rocket trails.

On their description it says something like "0.7x damage". Is that how much damage the flechettes/missiles deal in proportion to the listed damage instead of its normal damage, or is it BONUS damage they also deal on top of the listed damage?

It is "the factor applied to the generated base stats", so it's a bonus.
Also there is the "rule of thumb" across all the mod's items: all the listed base stats for all generated items always are the final values used in the gameplay (they already do include all the affixes' effects), so you don't need to perform any calculations yourself. Thus, the main "damage" stat listed for weapons with Flechettes and Mini-Rockets already includes this factor. I'm showing this factor in affixes' descriptions just to show you the exact roll the affix received. Would you consider it a redundant info?

And do the mini-rockets deal all their damage as splash or is the bonus damage they deal all in the splash? Or is it perhaps that the splash damage is determined by something completely different? I think those descriptions would benefit from being clearer in how they function.

Oh, that's somewhat complicated. Similarly to the "normal" rockets, the mini-rockets deal both the base damage (this is the listed value) and splash (the base dmg for that is the listed value again, but it falls off with distance), so the "real" damage may be up to 2x higher. I couldn't make it with splash damage only, as it would make Cyberdemons fully immune to the weapon's damage. That's also why mini-rockets can generate with such low damage modifiers (factors x0.5-x1.0 being the most probable). I don't really know how better to display that without overburdening the stats table. It also seems that maybe this should be reworked, though, as I've made those minirockets affix one of the first, so it's still in somewhat an experimental state.

[Darkbeetlebot]

Would you consider it a redundant info?

I wouldn't say so. It's important to know what the damage modifier is. Rather, I think explaining the rule of thumb somewhere, perhaps in the main post, would actually be the correct move. Or perhaps you could add a help menu that explains the mod's mechanics? I know some other mods like GMOTA, Treasure Tech, and Combined Arms do that. It honestly might also be a good idea while you're at it to list DPS, or some other similar stat if possible. Reason being that otherwise, fire rate's impact on damage output isn't very obvious. It's an improvement that Borderlands 2 made on the original after many people in that fandom complained how hard it was to determine the DPS of a given gun, but idk how possible that would be in GZdoom since not even DRLA does that. Also WOW, so that means flechettes not only home but get a huge damage bonus? I've only picked up underleveled ones so far, so I can't say for sure how strong that is. It sounds crazy though.

Oh, that's somewhat complicated. Similarly to the "normal" rockets, the mini-rockets deal both the base damage (this is the listed value) and splash (the base dmg for that is the listed value again, but it falls off with distance), so the "real" damage may be up to 2x higher. I couldn't make it with splash damage only, as it would make Cyberdemons fully immune to the weapon's damage. That's also why mini-rockets can generate with such low damage modifiers (factors x0.5-x1.0 being the most probable). I don't really know how better to display that without overburdening the stats table. It also seems that maybe this should be reworked, though, as I've made those minirockets affix one of the first, so it's still in somewhat an experimental state.

Oh, yeah, that's understandable. I honestly don't think minirockets are that janky to begin with, it's just that their total effect isn't obvious. So it'd either be: Don't show anything but the flavor text, no numbers, just display it in the damage stat; OR show the additional explosion mechanic alongside the magnitude of the affix. For example, you could make it say, "Fires miniature rockets that explode, dealing base damage again over a small area. +0.7x damage." or something like that and it would get the point across pretty well, if you also add the rule of thumb. There could also be a secondary stat (like the total shot damage stat on shotguns) for mini rocket affix weapons and rocket launchers that shows the impact and explosion damage separately.

Another consideration you could make is just removing splash from minirockets and having them be cosmetic explosions while maintaining the damage boost, which would allow finer control over how strong the affix is, prevent player self-damage, and solve the Cyberdemon/Spider Mastermind issue in exchange for removing a lot of their crowd control. Though TBH, that could be its own affix. Maybe something like a "nailgun" affix that makes the gun fire nails which do this? Then you could also make use of wall-pinning mechanics.

Altogether, there are a lot of ways you could go about this to update these affixes and better communicate how they work.