[WIP] eliw00d's Enhanced Weapons Mod

[eliw00d]

After seeing Eriance's new UAC sprites, I decided to start updating my old mod, GZDoom Advanced. The name was always kind of a placeholder, and since it has literally been years since I worked on it, I figured a name change would be a good idea.

The Pistol is now considered to be 9mm, and I figured a 15 or 17-round magazine would work well for that. As before, you can leave a round in the chamber for 15+1 or 17+1. It will be accurate at short range and start to drop off after that. It is also much faster than before.

The single-barrel Shotgun is being tweaked to be more useful. It has a fairly long barrel, so it will maintain a tighter group than the double-barrel Shotgun at short to medium range. Hopefully this will give it a use even when you pick up the double-barrel Shotgun.

The double-barrel Shotgun will not have any alternate fire modes. Instead, it will have a two-stage trigger, so that if you hold the fire button both barrels will fire in quick succession. If you only want to shoot one barrel, you just tap the fire button once.

The Microgun is being replaced by the Submachine-gun, which is considered to be 9mm. It will have a 30-round magazine and shares ammunition with the Pistol. It is accurate at short to medium range and has a selector switch for Semi-Automatic or Full-Automatic. I may look into keeping the Microgun as something only the Chaingunners (Microgunners in that case) would drop.

The Rocket Launcher will be the same as its Doom counterpart, except for maybe a reload animation or something.

In the past, I tried to update the Plasma Gun and BFG. However, this time I will be leaving those mostly intact and focusing on the standard firearms. I have also decided to abstract some of the realism for simplicity because hey, it's Doom! For example, instead of individual magazines as ammunition, it's just bullets. The reason for this is that I wanted the Submachine-gun to share ammunition with the Pistol, and having different kinds of magazines would complicate that. For the most part, the mod will be similar to its old counterpart in terms of trying to balance these weapons to their original counterparts as well as making them realistic.

One thing I am considering is giving a range to the bullet / pellet weapons.

I wasn't very good about sorting out credits in the past, so I plan on improving that this time around. Please let me know if I am missing anyone in the credits and I will correct it immediately.

Also, I am not an artist, so I am looking for help in the editing department. Some examples of what I would like to do: modify the reloading frames for Eriance's new pistol so that they have the slide locked back and barrel showing; add reloading frames to Eriance's new shotgun (inserting shells); add reloading frames to Eriance's new submachine-gun (removing / inserting magazine, bolt release).

Nothing to download at the moment, as I am learning about the changes to ZDoom over the past couple of years and updating my ancient code. Here is a screenshot of my modified Doom HUD, though:

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If you guys have any suggestions as far as what you would like to see changed from the last GZDA version, feel free to let me know!

[Mike12]

I like the look of the status bar face a lot. Though, judging from the screenshot, you need to fix the placement of it a little bit, since it appears to be slightly off-center.
At any rate, interested to see how this turns out.

[eliw00d]

I just quickly edited the default HUD to support my new ammo types. It's been a long time since I downloaded that helmet mugshot, so I don't remember who made it. I'll have to look it up.

[eliw00d]

Here is a quick preview build of the Pistol: Download

I will make adjustments to the Mugshot in future builds, obviously. I wish I could find who made it, but I am having no luck with searches so far. The Pistol graphics are made by Eriance, of course. The smoke and casings are also something I need to find the authors for, but I have always liked their quality.

Anyways, let me know what you guys think of the pistol so far! It feels about right in speed to me.

[-Ghost-]

Cool, glad to see you're working on this again! I loved the earlier versions of your mod and was disappointed to not see any new releases for awhile

[eliw00d]

Well, life changes. I got bored of Doom for a while and spent the last few years working on a Company of Heroes mod. I am still working on said mod, but I peek my head in these forums every so often and got super excited when I saw Eriance's new UAC stuff.

[Mikk-]

Aww hell yeah! I loved GzDA - can't wait to see the finished product!

[gh0st]

Oooooh GZDA update eh? This news made me actually click the sign in button, after a year... lol.

[eliw00d]

For those of you that downloaded the preview, what did you think of the Pistol?

I have most of the other weapons done, but without reload animations.

[-Ghost-]

I played Map 1 and a little of Map 2 in Doom 2 with it. Fire rate and damage seem good, but the reload feels a little slow. It's more of a personal gripe, but I've never liked reload animations that feel unnaturally slow, it doesn't feel like it fits the situation; I'd reload as fast as possible if I was in a firefight. Overall the pistol looks nice, all I'd suggest is to either speed up the reload a little, or make the animation have more to it so there's not that 2 second pause before he puts a new magazine in. For instance, maybe he takes longer to slide the magazine in, if you want to keep the reload speed, rather than doing nothing for a couple seconds.

[eliw00d]

Well, there's a pause there as he grabs a magazine from a pouch or something. The pause can maybe be shortened a little bit, but it is also a balancing factor because of how much faster you can shoot versus the vanilla Doom Pistol.

[-Ghost-]

That makes sense. It's not too big of a delay, I'd only shorten it slightly.

[wildweasel]

I would shorten the delay between eject and insert, and make up for it by adding a slide pull animation or similar. You can keep your lengthy reload animation without the gun just kind of hanging there for a whole second.

[Greenmarine]

I would shorten the delay between eject and insert, and make up for it by adding a slide pull animation or similar.

In the interest of realism I respectfully disagree. You would not need to rack the slide, you'd only need to push the slide lock once the new magazine is in. My recommendation is to leave the reload as long as it is, but add some sound while the gun is hanging on-screen, something to indicate the player is searching his pockets or pouches for ammunition. In theory you can reload a pistol extremely quickly, in practice you are often slowed down by factors outside of your control - a battlefield is not a firing range, nor is it a clean room. To be truly realistic, the reload should be quicker or slower on a basically random basis.

I was overjoyed when I saw this topic come up on the forums, as I really liked the old GZDA, and I was disappointed when it was put on an indefinite hiatus. With that said, I for one would be happy if you'd err on the side of realism rather than gameplay for once - for example, instead of reloading from a "pool" of bullets, you'd have magazines similar to how the sidearm in the ZDoom mod "The Adventures of Salvo Jettison" works (each point of ammunition is an extra magazine, when you reload, you lose the current magazine even if it had rounds in it. This is a good approach to a realistic reloading system, as it's simpler than the more accurate SWAT4-style or Red Orchestra-style reloading system where the rounds in individual magazines is tracked - I don't think you could even get a system like that to work in Doom.)

One thing I'd like to see that was present in the earlier versions of GZDA was the more reasonable pumping for the shotgun - to elaborate, in the early version of GZDA, you'd keep the weapon pointed out straight and would only pump the slide, loading another round, as opposed to how it was handled in Doom wherein you'd fire, take the weapon off your shoulder (?!?!?) pump the slide right in front of your face, then re-shoulder the weapon and prepare to fire again. I see that Doom-style pumping in a lot of games these days, and it's just needlessly silly. Realistically you would keep your weapon on-target at all times, and indeed even when a recreational shooter such as myself is handling a shotgun, I never let the stock leave my shoulder when I'm firing either, as it's a good way to give yourself a bruise. Probably I'm just a pussy though.

Anyway, I'd like to see this become one of the few realism-oriented mods, where the weapons actually behave like their real-life counterparts, and so far I think it looks great!

[eliw00d]

With a round chambered, there would be no need for racking the slide. I planned on having a slide release for when the chamber is empty, but unfortunately I lack the time and skill required for those kinds of animations.