scalliano's 667 Shuffle! - IT'S BACK!!

[Vader]

@Vader: I've been through the Incarnate's DECORATE code and I don't see the invisible actor you speak of. I'd add the flag if I could find it.

Sorry, my bad! Someone seems to have updated the code since I looked at it the last time, so ignore what I said.

[Moti]

I'm in for decreasing Moloch's HP. If you want balanced gameplay for the most part, monsters can have more HP but not by that much. Some maps tend to give limited amount of ammo to fight certain monsters, and if their HP is higher than the original by, say, 3000, this can easily break the gameplay. So, both Moloch and the Terminator's HP should get down to 5000.

Also, if already, I suggest adding the gibbed sprites for the original Doom 2 monsters made by Eriance. He used them in Demon Eclipse, if I recall. (I remember gibbing Pinkies and Archviles).

EDIT:
Sorry for causing havoc, I accidentally said that the Terminator and the Cyberdemon infight, while I meant to say the Annihilator and the Cyberdemon infight, while they both use rockets. Though, you've already been given a few suggestions, so I doubt fixing it would be so hard.

[lzvk25]

(As posted in Tormentor's Forum http://realm667.com/board/viewtopic.php ... 1702#p1702 )

Here is the fix for the Afrit, and it is just like I always say, there is nothing like a good clean code, without it it is almost impossible to find even simple errors.

Just look at the attached file, in the Afrit_Fixed.zip file you will find the following :

http://files.drdteam.org/index.php/file ... -fixed.zip

Afrit.wad - The new fixed wad
Afrit_original.dec - The old ugly code made by children
Afrit_formatted.dec - The old ugly code but at least in a readable format
Afrit_formatted_fixed.dec - The fixed code with comments where I found errors

Guys :
When you engage in this kind of projects, many times is necessary to reformat old code, otherwise, you can spend months and never find the reason for a particular bug.

[scalliano]

@Moti: Taken on board, even the Lord of Heresy will infight with the Barons, but the new "Species" property should correct those, and give me a bit of freedom in choosing who infights with who. I'll give that a bit more investigation tomorrow, and I'll probably add this to Threshold's custom monsters too.

@lzvk25: I had a look at your modified Afrit, and the ground attack still isn't there, however he now fires the white Baron balls much more frequently, and with less warning. Is this intentional?

[lzvk25]

@lzvk25: I had a look at your modified Afrit, and the ground attack still isn't there, however he now fires the white Baron balls much more frequently, and with less warning. Is this intentional?

About the white Baron balls, I just fixed the code, just look at my comments, in the "Missile" state, the original code completely skips the part where the "HellFire" is launched. Just by adjusting the "A_Jump", now, there is the probability to execute that part of the code. I think that the original intention was to throw those "HellFire", but with the horrible code, it was very difficult to count correctly the frame steps. Obviously, once corrected, now, that part is being executed and therefore there are more projectiles.

About the "Ground" attack, as far as I can see in the code, the Afrit has 3 attacks, melee, and 2 projectiles, "Comet" and "Hellfire", so, as far as I could see all of them are there. Also keep in mind that a good bunch of frames are "NULL", therefore, nothing will be displayed. If you think there should be another one, please let us know.

[scalliano]

The Hellfire is the ground attack pictured here:

It slowly chases the player until the Afrit who spawned it is killed.

[lzvk25]

Well, obviously that picture belongs to another version of the Afrit, in the current code, there is nothing that could indicate anything which could be capable of chasing the player, all of the missiles here are simple ones.

So, now, we have a question. From where did you get that screenshot ?

Maybe we need to investigate somewhere else.

[NeuralStunner]

Personally, making a radically different monster with the same name as a vanilla Hexen enemy seems like poor form to me. (Besides that it's a burning, ambulatorily challenged Baron of Hell.)

[scalliano]

@lzvk25: The shot is of the original Afrit in an older version of GZDoom. The flames chase the player by constantly respawning themselves in his/her general direction. However, according to the bug report I posted about this the other week, it would appear that this issue has now been fixed for the next update of Z and GZ, so the best idea may be to sit this one out.

@NeuralStunner: Bad form indeed, but personally I think it looks quite cool.

I should have another update of this uploaded tomorrow. Hopefully I can resolve the remaining balance issues in this release.

[Moti]

Hope you'll include some new monsters in this following update. Infernux Grand sounds like a pretty epic monster to fight.

[ZDG]

Isn't he the red n' blue annhilator in scoredoom?

[NovaDragon]

Yeah he is. The main differences are he now has prox. mines,
and some bouncing laser thing which i think is pretty cool. Gives
variety so that you have the cyb with rockets, the annihilator
with homing rockets, thamuz with plasma weapons, and the
grand would have prox. mines and lasers. Just reduce his hp since its
set at 12000 normally.

[scalliano]

New version uploaded. This should address the gameplay balance issues mentioned before. A few new monsters added and the overpowered bosses have had their HP reduced. Enjoy, and keep the feedback coming, as always.

[ThatOneZDoomer]

So I decided to play through some maps with the version I downloaded as of 2-25 and here’s my feedback and suggestions. I do like to fight a wide range of monsters that fit within the Doom style and not too chaotic or rips from other games that look out of place. Some of the new weapons are nice to use as well, when they actually show up. This could grow to be quite the mix of stuff without being chaotic like AEoD. Despite the long list of complaints, I do enjoy playing this.

• There’s quite a bit of errors during the start up loading, at least as of ZDoom r2168.
• I think various enemies have too much health for what type of enemy they replace. I’m sure you have gotten this a lot already, but it can be annoying and leads to cases of running out of ammo easily. The middle size ammo boxes don’t always help in this case either. In general, I think the health values should match the original monsters a lot closer for whatever place they spawn in and maybe not any more than twice as much for the weaker monsters.
• I find it rather annoying that Chaingunners can spawn in the place of Zombie Men. I know there’s hardly much out there that comes close to the power of a Zombie Man, but how about the Rapid Fire Trooper?
• The Blood Field has 500 HP in the place of an enemy that normally has 150. Shouldn’t that be toned down by maybe at least 200 HP or so?
• I think the Nightmare Spectre would be a more fitting placement for the regular Spectre than the Demon. I think it would be better if the stronger monsters that replace the Demon show up on the list for the Spectre. In fact, looking through the code a bit, the spawners for both the Demons and Spectres are almost the same. For whatever reason, the PSXSpectre is the only monster spawning in place of the Spectres. It might be replacing the original Spectre and overriding the Random Spawner.
• I think the Archon of Hell has way too much HP, 2,000 in place of a 1,000 HP monster. Maybe it could be brought down to 1,000. Same thing for the Profane One and other Baron of Hell replacements I missed with massive amount of HP.
• I think the Bruiser Demon would be better fitting for a Spider Mastermind or Cyberdemon replacement due to how powerful it is. Of course, its HP could be increased from 1,500 if that were to happen.
• Hectebus, 1,500 HP in place of 600 HP enemy; my usual comments, especially since this is 2.5 times more HP.
• The Death Incarnate, although already mention some times in this topic, can be quite annoying to fight when it keeps coming back to life and you have no means of putting it down for good. Gibbing it or freezing it stops it from coming back, but how many weapons are strong enough to gib it aside from maybe the BFG9000? You’re not always likely to have a Freezer Rifle on hand either. Sure it has a chance of staying dead (1/4 chance), but should the player have to depend on luck to keep it out of the picture?
• Although the Diabloist has been brought down in HP from its original 1,400 (I think), its attacks are still way too powerful, especially considering it was originally a boss monster. Even for Archvile class, which is the most powerful class before the bosses, it’s still a bit much.
• The Nazis are completely unchanged. Perhaps more trooper enemies could be in their place, although possibly nothing that can’t be found with the usual three trooper enemies since Nazis are pretty rare.
• The Zombie Man Rifle seems to be rather pointless to use as it almost feels like it’s weaker than your starting pistol. So it does 40% more damage with each bullet I think, but due to the slow firing rate, it hardly feels worth using to me.
• The Sniper Rifle or sniper ammo has no pickup sound.
• Speaking of the Sniper Rifle, isn’t it way too weak to spawn in place of the BFG9000 of all weapons? That sure would be a fine way to mess you up when a map throws hordes of enemies at you and all you get is that instead of a BFG class weapon.
• What’s up with the Super Shotgun pickup having a chance of spawning a regular shotgun? I find that pretty annoying, especially when you’re expected to take on some tough forces with a Super Shotgun and all you get is a regular shotgun that isn’t quite up to the task. I know there’s a chance for a Super Shotgun to show up in place of the original shotgun, but at least you’re not getting cursed in that case.
• I know you don’t want to make this like AEoD with tons of monsters and especially tons of weapons, but maybe a few more unique weapons could help, for example, an automatic shotgun. Also, are both the Skulltag and Sonic Railguns needed? Maybe one or the other could be in, which I would suggest the Sonic Railgun due to two firing modes and thus, more uses.
• How about an add-on patch that spawns only new monsters and weapons without spawning the originals at all? Personally I would much rather face the new monsters only instead of having the originals show up. Maybe you could even start with the Zombie Man Rifle instead of the pistol. Right now, I think the original weapons and monsters spawn too often compared to the new ones, so it can feel like you’re playing with the original content and only sometimes see the new stuff.

In general, I think it’s okay if some of the stronger monster spawns have HP values closer to the original monsters while the weaker ones (like the trooper enemies and Imps) can have about double or even a little more HP without it being too much. A lot of the monsters on that site weren’t directly meant to just go in the place of the originals, but often they are designed to be stronger and thus, directly putting them in the place of original monsters without changes can be quite unbalanced. Thus, some changes would have to be done for various monsters to not make them too much more powerful to the original monsters they replace. Damage values of their attacks is also an important factor in balance, not just how much HP they have. This isn’t intended to sound too much like “turn this into TOZD Edition”, but my suggestions and feedback. That ends my rambling for now.

[supergoofy]

Please use ZDoom r2153 and GZDoom r741

Because ZDoom r2158 (or newer) and GZDoom r742 (or newer) have changes that will make some mods to stop working.

This is not ZDoom's and GZDoom's fault, it's errors that the mods have, and these errors should be fixed by the modders.