DoomStorm (v0.92 March 2017)

[Zombieguy]

Just increase the HUD size and you'll see the blue bar.

[Machalite]

Apparently I'm unable to see the blue bar at the lower left side of the screen, which I guess it was the ammo for the Thumper.

You have to turn off the 'alternative hud' in the options; the Thumper ammo will only display in the minimal hud, not the full one.

@DBT: I actually have the exact opposite experience with the leash as you do. I find it convenient (under certain circumstances) to drag distant enemies to me, typically cacodemons, to make the most of the shotgun. Not to mention that its capacity to stun the enemy negates most of the inherent danger in doing so. It's reflective of good gameplay balance. And I agree with you that such a feature that's sequence-breaking is harmless enough, since players can only be expected to use it at their discretion. I just feel that the conflict with shootable items complicates matters, which is why I was listing off all the reasons I could think of to justify making that change. On that note, I would also like to point out that items tend to get in the way of leashing enemies. I certainly respect your reasons for keeping things the way they are, though. If I feel the need to make the change myself, all I have to do is remove that flag from each item, right?

On another note, I occasionally have flails attach to enemies well above the enemies themselves. I'm pretty sure I've only noticed it happening with mancubi. I kept forgetting to take a screenshot whenever it happened, but I can work on getting one if it'll help to understand what I'm talking about.

[DBThanatos]

Now that I have attuned to this mod, I can raise up some things and issues...

Those minigunners are quite nasty fellows. If you don't have any cover, or cover's too far, you get hurt. And if there's group of them, you turn into mincemeat. Most of my deaths happened by them. What could alleviate this, is to increase their spin-up time to give you time to respond either attacking or getting away. This is probably my biggest issue so far.

Hailstorm Minigun could keep barrels rolling, when not directly in combat. As a drawback, cooling time slows a bit. Peacemaker can't keep enemies stunned enough, and heavy hitters are not always the best bet, especially, if you need to conserve or you're outta ammo.

Some enemies can get into stasis when you booted barrel that needed only one kick more to explode.

With proper distance and estimation, you can shoot targets behind high barricades because the flare's spiraling. I did this accidentally, when flare missed monster, and it hit bunch of guys. Only bad thing is that I didn't manage to take screenie of it. :/

And, hell yes, kickable bouncer balls! <3
Only thing is, you need time your kick, and after that, let's play some deadly soccer...

-Minigunners: In all honesty, yeah, they're hard as hell, but I dont think they are THAT bad. Comparing numbers, at a measured distance, chaingunners vs Hailstormmers, can kill a 100% health player, no armor, in average 19.2s vs 13.13. At melee range, 2.2s vs 1.7s, respectively. So, yeah, they are bad, but not the hardest thing. I will tweak it a little, but dont expect them to go all that low. I'll keep their killing efficiency over the standard chaingunner, but a bit closer this time.
-Hailstorm: That thing charges itself, what else can one ask for? That one Im not touching. I've found it really fair, if not overly fair.
-Stasis barrel. I dont get that one at all. There's only one projectile in the kick sequence, and if it hits the barrel, it cannot hit anything else.
-Flare's movement. Is a good thing to have, and a bad one too. Is all about finding the best use for it. I honestly use it to one hit kill barons and archies.
-Bouncer: Yeah, I added that for the sake of amusement, and to make the bouncer balls more dangerous to the player. I wasnt really expecting anyone to use it.

Some observations:

- Charged Penetrator lacks the melee functionality present in Bulletstorm.
- The kick animation is barely noticeable due to how quickly it plays.
- I can't seem to get a zoom effect similar to the videos. Instead I get a sort of an circular cutout effect. How I need to have my settings to get it look right?

EDIT: Sometimes when a map starts, the player will be stuck and unable to move. However, tackling seems to remedy this issue.

-Penetrator: True. For some reason I always forgot to add it. I guess I never really used it in Bulletstorm and that's why it didnt sticked in my mind. I'll add it.
-There's no "kick" animation. Is a hack. Is not a HUD element. In fact, is an sprite flying in the game world. This one wont change because like this, you can use the kick anytime, and if I do it through the actual HUD, it either is fullbright (ACS display) or is bound to a TON of checks in the decorate weapons. Neither case seemed good enough. I thought of leaving it invisible and "feel it" through the camera motion and the sound, but then I added this little sprite you might or might not see.
-Zoom effect? That's the alt fire key in pretty much all the weapons.
-I have never experienced that issue you say about being unable to move. Ever.

@DBT: I actually have the exact opposite experience with the leash as you do. I find it convenient (under certain circumstances) to drag distant enemies to me, typically cacodemons, to make the most of the shotgun. Not to mention that its capacity to stun the enemy negates most of the inherent danger in doing so. It's reflective of good gameplay balance. And I agree with you that such a feature that's sequence-breaking is harmless enough, since players can only be expected to use it at their discretion. I just feel that the conflict with shootable items complicates matters, which is why I was listing off all the reasons I could think of to justify making that change. On that note, I would also like to point out that items tend to get in the way of leashing enemies. I certainly respect your reasons for keeping things the way they are, though. If I feel the need to make the change myself, all I have to do is remove that flag from each item, right?

On another note, I occasionally have flails attach to enemies well above the enemies themselves. I'm pretty sure I've only noticed it happening with mancubi. I kept forgetting to take a screenshot whenever it happened, but I can work on getting one if it'll help to understand what I'm talking about.

Leash: For small enemies, is great. But try to leash barons and you'll see how is not that effective, which of course, was on purpose.
Shootable items: Im not really willing to change that. Is a compatibility issue, and I certainly am willing to live with it. As far as testing goes, it has caused little troubles. Some maps might work better than others (you might argue some dont work at all, but then that's a case of "dont use that one"). I'll just patiently wait until the suggestion is added, and if it never is, I might consider changing that. But as far as the "official" mod goes, it'll have it there for now. You said about changing it yourself, and that is correct. Remove the shootable flag and that should do it.

And yes, flails sometimes might behave strangely, but those are rare bugs that are caused because of all the hackyness inherent to the "flailing system" (consider that is not as easy as sticking something through A_Warp, as it mostly respects the height where it flailed the monster, and that it has a sequence for "wrapping around" the thing. Now, if somebody finds the bug in the code, please submit a fix, and I'll gladly add it

[CorSair]

-Minigunners: In all honesty, yeah, they're hard as hell, but I dont think they are THAT bad. Comparing numbers, at a measured distance, chaingunners vs Hailstormmers, can kill a 100% health player, no armor, in average 19.2s vs 13.13. At melee range, 2.2s vs 1.7s, respectively. So, yeah, they are bad, but not the hardest thing. I will tweak it a little, but dont expect them to go all that low. I'll keep their killing efficiency over the standard chaingunner, but a bit closer this time.
-Hailstorm: That thing charges itself, what else can one ask for? That one Im not touching. I've found it really fair, if not overly fair.
-Stasis barrel. I dont get that one at all. There's only one projectile in the kick sequence, and if it hits the barrel, it cannot hit anything else.
-Flare's movement. Is a good thing to have, and a bad one too. Is all about finding the best use for it. I honestly use it to one hit kill barons and archies.
-Bouncer: Yeah, I added that for the sake of amusement, and to make the bouncer balls more dangerous to the player. I wasnt really expecting anyone to use it.

About Minigunners:
They're problem when they are scattered around, getting some potshots at you or you're in ambushed in small area. If you can't react in time, or you don't have enough firepower/health&armor, you pretty much get mowed down by them.
And maybe I deserve to die because you're not paying attention. But my point is, that in vanilla, you can survive the ambush if you're fast enough, but in DS, you have minimal chances to survive, even if you keep your aim fast yet steady.
But, you're the artist, so I am not going to debate this any further, how you tweak it, or do you even need to.

Hailstorm:
I rarely use that, so I haven't noticed that. I use it only when I really need to do some crowd control, stunlocking mastermind or I just get overwhelmed by enemies and need a way out.

About barrels:
I did this morn some testing. So, I did some leash, kick, repeat until barrel exploded, and when explosion hit zombie behind the crate, he was wrapped into stasis.
Sorry for unnecessary blabbering in last post.

Flare incident:
Some good ideas happens accidentally...

And Bouncer:
I just felt inclined to see how it works. Only things what player should know is that:
- time the bouncing interval of the ball
- time the kick
Otherwise, when it hits, you can boot it to other side of the room.


And one more thing:
The kicking. When I tried to make ambush via barrels, you need to perfect your aim, otherwise, the barrel goes to right or left.

[Rangaisia]

-Penetrator: True. For some reason I always forgot to add it. I guess I never really used it in Bulletstorm and that's why it didnt sticked in my mind. I'll add it.

Cool. As for its usefulness in Bulletstorm, it's a great way to conserve ammo and charges when fighting Burnouts.

-Zoom effect? That's the alt fire key in pretty much all the weapons.

What I meant that the effect looks wrong compared to the one in the videos. When I zoom, the edges around the visible area are perfectly circular. I presume there is some OpenGL setting that affects how it looks, so that's why I asked about the settings.

-I have never experienced that issue you say about being unable to move. Ever.

For the record, it has happened to me only twice. It's not a huge issue due to the reason I mentioned.

[Zombieguy]

Will there possibly be hitboxes for smaller monsters? And maybe combined with skill-shots?

[DBThanatos]

Hitboxes for smaller monsters? I dont get what you mean. And skillshots? That was discussed since the first page of this thread. My position remains the same on that subject.

I have successfully nerfed the chaingunners to a point where I think is fair enough. However, for the sake of challenge (and because I do have the menu graphics already there) I will be adding a new skill for those hardcore people.

Things to do before new "beta release":
-Add melee drilling for the charged penetrator
-Make barrels able to be put on stasis through thumper*

* I think is better to have it just through thumper, as the leash and kick work very well to push and pull at ground level, instead of following some weird vertical slow motion.

Any other sugestions?

[Zombieguy]

By Hit-boxes, I mostly meant headshots. I'm not too sure it's a good idea for this mod, but BulletStorm had headshots/skillshots/etc, so it's just kind of an idea.

[Xaser]

Allrighty, I'm giving this a shot, and I'll edit/repost as soon as I play with it a bit, but I just got the "Wrong reload key!" message -- why do I need to rebind the reload key to a new one? Is this meant to be compatible with 2.5.0 or some official GZDoom release?

[EDIT] I see that the OP is linking to svn.drdteam.org for the recommended GZDoom build, so it seems not? What gives, then?

[DOUBLE-EDIT] Just had a quick runthrough of the weapons so far, so I figure I'll share my initial impressions:

The Goods:

• Yay, title screen + menu.
• Seems like most of the weapons have been ported pretty faithfully. Sounds are spot-on, and there's charge n' everything! Cool stuff so far, and most of the guns feel awesome to use.
• The Flailgun is especially well-done. The animation for wrapping around enemies looks really cool and it works like a charm. Kudos.
• The Bouncer seems particularly fitting in its new superweapon role. I never cared much for the original because it felt really weak for what it was meant to be. Not the case now.
• Blood effects are pretty damn awesome. Nice n' gory and not cliche.
• Good to see that all the other mechanics -- Leash, Kick, and Thumper -- are all present. I'll need to play around with these more.

The Not-So-Goods:

• A couple of the animations in particular are incredibly jerky and strange -- most actually look and work just fine, actually, except the Bone Duster reload (the 'raising' animation is very slow in both cases) and the Headhunter recoil (which jerks around like crazy). Both should be fixable, IMO, without needing to rip any additional frames -- the latter in particular is more the fault of the Offset calls not matching the actual animation of the weapon than anything else.
• The Bone Duster and Screamer really shouldn't be slot-stacked. They don't use the same ammo and neither "obsoletes" the other, so it just makes the Screamer much harder to get to. I'd suggest shifting everything over one to the right or even to the left, doing something like putting the Peacemaker on 1, Screamer on 2, Duster on 3, and put the chainsaw on 9/10 since it's the oddball melee weapon.
• It's good to see the minigun as a permanent weapon, but why is there no numeric ammo display? Disguising the ammo pool as the Charge icons is really illogical and inconsistent with the rest of the weapons. What's the harm in putting the pool above the overheat counter?
• I'm a bit disappointed in the Bone Duster's knockback. It hardly pushes enemies an inch, and that was one of the megacool things about that weapon.
• Screamer Charge shots look like a solid blob (in Software at least -- haven't tried in GL). Seems like they're missing the "Additive" render style.
• I kinda miss reload animations for most of the weapons... I guess it's not so bad in most cases, but the Screamer in particular is wonky in that you can clearly see the ammo drum not being changed.

So, not bad thus far. Still need to play more, naturally.

[DBThanatos]

By Hit-boxes, I mostly meant headshots.

In that case: no. That'd make things overly complicated.

Allrighty, I'm giving this a shot, and I'll edit/repost as soon as I play with it a bit, but I just got the "Wrong reload key!" message -- why do I need to rebind the reload key to a new one? Is this meant to be compatible with 2.5.0 or some official GZDoom release?

[EDIT] I see that the OP is linking to svn.drdteam.org for the recommended GZDoom build, so it seems not? What gives, then?

What happens here, is that the reload key, in this mod, is actually an script that handles all the checks for printing messages, checking the weapons states and whatnot. For example, you will not be able to reload a headhunter while zoomed; doing all that through decorate would've been a big hassle, and I didnt want to rely on the weapon being on the "ready" state to be able to trigger the reload messages and stuff. I wanted the player to see the game acknowledged he is trying to reload, and that as soon as possible, the game will do that. It works in the sense that if you're out of ammo for the reload, in the middle of a firing sequence, it will tell you so, instead of having to wait until the weapon reaches "ready" again.

The Goods:

• Yay, title screen + menu.
• Seems like most of the weapons have been ported pretty faithfully. Sounds are spot-on, and there's charge n' everything! Cool stuff so far, and most of the guns feel awesome to use.
• The Flailgun is especially well-done. The animation for wrapping around enemies looks really cool and it works like a charm. Kudos.
• The Bouncer seems particularly fitting in its new superweapon role. I never cared much for the original because it felt really weak for what it was meant to be. Not the case now.
• Blood effects are pretty damn awesome. Nice n' gory and not cliche.
• Good to see that all the other mechanics -- Leash, Kick, and Thumper -- are all present. I'll need to play around with these more.

For each point:
- I wanted to make something that looked a little more professional, but simplistic at the same time. It seems it worked
- I tried to bring them the closest I could, but with a new balance, to make the game more dynamic that it's original counterpart
- I take no credit for the flailgun coding. It was Major Cooke who figured it out when the programmed the weapon for AEoD v6
- Yeah, the bouncer is supposed to be one hell of a weapon here. Sometimes I feel I have too much ammo for it, though.
- Again, it was Major Cooke who made a big part of that. If anything, I just added some adjustments here and there, but is mostly his work there
- At first I wasnt going to bring the extra mechanics, but then I thought "oh, what the hell! Almost everything is doable one way or another"

The Not-So-Goods:

• A couple of the animations in particular are incredibly jerky and strange -- most actually look and work just fine, actually, except the Bone Duster reload (the 'raising' animation is very slow in both cases) and the Headhunter recoil (which jerks around like crazy). Both should be fixable, IMO, without needing to rip any additional frames -- the latter in particular is more the fault of the Offset calls not matching the actual animation of the weapon than anything else.
• The Bone Duster and Screamer really shouldn't be slot-stacked. They don't use the same ammo and neither "obsoletes" the other, so it just makes the Screamer much harder to get to. I'd suggest shifting everything over one to the right or even to the left, doing something like putting the Peacemaker on 1, Screamer on 2, Duster on 3, and put the chainsaw on 9/10 since it's the oddball melee weapon.
• It's good to see the minigun as a permanent weapon, but why is there no numeric ammo display? Disguising the ammo pool as the Charge icons is really illogical and inconsistent with the rest of the weapons. What's the harm in putting the pool above the overheat counter?
• I'm a bit disappointed in the Bone Duster's knockback. It hardly pushes enemies an inch, and that was one of the megacool things about that weapon.
• Screamer Charge shots look like a solid blob (in Software at least -- haven't tried in GL). Seems like they're missing the "Additive" render style.
• I kinda miss reload animations for most of the weapons... I guess it's not so bad in most cases, but the Screamer in particular is wonky in that you can clearly see the ammo drum not being changed.

- I tried to make the best out of the avaialble frames (that's why there was a whole page where I was posting the comparisons between the old animations and the new ones. I did spend a lot of time on them, but working with offsets for such long animations really drove me crazy.
- Weapon arrangement: Actually, that's a great idea I never thought about. Consider it done
- Minigun: This is a rather weird point. The idea behind that weapon, was to make it a weapon you could not measure. I didnt want it to say "you have 200 shots left". Instead, you're supposed to look at the bars and say "oh, I still have some ammo, i just dont know how much". Battery life predictions are not always faithful IRL, and I wanted to reflect that feeling. Besides, it does work in stages. Is not a big counter of X amount of shots total, is broken into 4 parts. The weapon also recharges ammo (slowly), and I didnt want the player to go "ever X seconds, it gives +1 to the ammo". All in all, I think it acomplishes the purpose, a completely different weapon from all the others. No charged fire, no ammo counter. Just some bars that hint you how much battery you have left. The only thing I never did, despite the fact I always say to myself I would, is changing the battery bar's colors, to avoid confusing them with actual charged shots.
- Boneduster knockback: For some reason I never thought of adding it. I guess is like with the penetrator melee attack, I just never considered it. I will probably add it, but I need to ensure it doesnt feel too hard; if it kicks an enemy too far, it looses effectiveness for the next shot (you know, shotguns in doom are to be used at close-medium range)
- Reload animations: Here's the story. The boneduster was ripped by Major Cooke for AEoD6, all with it's reloading animation, because that was supposed to be the only weapon from BS to be ported. Then he insisted about the Screamer, to which I agreed, but I refused to have a reloading animation, as in AEoD, no weapons reload actively, and because it was going to take me forever to add doomguy hands to all the required frames. Then I got myself bulletstorm, played it, and went nuts with the idea of adding all weapons into AEoD. Same case, no reloads for the reason mentioned here. Then, after AEoD was done, I decided to make this mod, and I realized I had no reload animations at all. I decided to go the cheap way with the reload you see in Doomstorm now, because re-ripping the weapons, would take waaaaaay too much effort. And in this mod, I even thought of removing the duster's animation to keep them all in the same animation level. And that's how my uncle stole christmas three times in a row in a single year.

Thanks for the feedback, this demonstrates that I keep on missing things around, like the duster's knockback

[Kate]

I'm just going to chime in that there is a way to [wiki=GetPlayerInput]check for the standard reload key[/wiki]. You can even emulate the "execute script on keypress" behavior:

Code: Select all

Script 6 ENTER
{
    if (GetPlayerInput(-1, INPUT_BUTTONS) & BT_RELOAD && !(GetPlayerInput(-1, INPUT_OLDBUTTONS) & BT_RELOAD))
        ACS_ExecuteAlways (YOUR_RELOAD_SCRIPT, 0);
    Delay (1);
    Restart;
} 

[Major Cooke]

The Goods:

• Yay, title screen + menu.
• Seems like most of the weapons have been ported pretty faithfully. Sounds are spot-on, and there's charge n' everything! Cool stuff so far, and most of the guns feel awesome to use.
• The Flailgun is especially well-done. The animation for wrapping around enemies looks really cool and it works like a charm. Kudos.
• The Bouncer seems particularly fitting in its new superweapon role. I never cared much for the original because it felt really weak for what it was meant to be. Not the case now.
• Blood effects are pretty damn awesome. Nice n' gory and not cliche.
• Good to see that all the other mechanics -- Leash, Kick, and Thumper -- are all present. I'll need to play around with these more.

For each point:
- I wanted to make something that looked a little more professional, but simplistic at the same time. It seems it worked
- I tried to bring them the closest I could, but with a new balance, to make the game more dynamic that it's original counterpart
- I take no credit for the flailgun coding. It was Major Cooke who figured it out when the programmed the weapon for AEoD v6
- Yeah, the bouncer is supposed to be one hell of a weapon here. Sometimes I feel I have too much ammo for it, though.
- Again, it was Major Cooke who made a big part of that. If anything, I just added some adjustments here and there, but is mostly his work there
- At first I wasnt going to bring the extra mechanics, but then I thought "oh, what the hell! Almost everything is doable one way or another"

Thank you Xaser for the wonderful compliments. And thank you DBThanatos for accrediting me where due. Much appreciated, mate! By the way, beautiful leash, kick and thumper abilities as Xaser has said.

- Reload animations: Here's the story. The boneduster was ripped by Major Cooke for AEoD6, all with it's reloading animation, because that was supposed to be the only weapon from BS to be ported. Then he insisted about the Screamer, to which I agreed, but I refused to have a reloading animation, as in AEoD, no weapons reload actively, and because it was going to take me forever to add doomguy hands to all the required frames. Then I got myself bulletstorm, played it, and went nuts with the idea of adding all weapons into AEoD. Same case, no reloads for the reason mentioned here. Then, after AEoD was done, I decided to make this mod, and I realized I had no reload animations at all. I decided to go the cheap way with the reload you see in Doomstorm now, because re-ripping the weapons, would take waaaaaay too much effort. And in this mod, I even thought of removing the duster's animation to keep them all in the same animation level. And that's how my uncle stole christmas three times in a row in a single year.

I don't think I've laughed so hard from such an epic post. That last sentence is now my new avatar description.

[CorSair]

More annoyances;

- Flails can sometimes wrap around other objects, like weapons laying around. It is selective, though. If flail passes the item, and successfully wraps enemy, wrapped flail teleports to object instead sticking on enemy. If it doesn't manage to wrap enemy, nothing happens. Item which that happened was Bone Duster. Very annoying, especially, if there's object in front of you.

- Head Hunter's shots fire in extreme angles (about 70 to 90 degrees) makes bullets slow and/or unpredictable to direct. (Is this engine bug?)

.:edit:.
I think that Minigun's boxes with lightning icons would make good replacement for normal bars.

[DBThanatos]

- Flail bug: I noticed the issue before. In fact, in the "Long teaser" video (at 3:29) you can see that bug happening, and you can see how I was detonating them as quick as possible for the sake of keeping the recording momentum, but puzzled because I did not know why it was happening. Now you have just nailed the issue, therefore it can be reproduced now (I just did). I'll call Cooke to have a look into this, because, honestly, the coding for that thing goes beyond my understanding. Thanks for nailing it, though.

- Head Hunter buggy movement: Not sure how to fix that. The movement code was made by Isle, and Im not sure how to fix it. I'll check with him, but dont expect to have it fixed, as I dont know if it's even possible.

- Hailstorm: Displaying the battery power in the weapon sprite (like in the original game) would be a tremendous amount of work, a TON of sprites, and a incredibly long, confusing, and bloated DECORATE code. That's why I went with a HUD display in the first place. Ahh! I think I misunderstood. You mean using the same "bars system" but using instead, the "power" icon, like the one displayed in the weapon, not displaying it IN the weapon. True. I'll rip the ones in the game (as they are actually blue in the HUD) and use that!


EDIT
@Kate: Thanks for that tip. I might implement it, though is not a priority at the moment.

[DBThanatos]

Good news! The issue with the headhunter was fixed! I confirm now (again) that Isle is a genius in what he does. He just had a look into the issue and found the solution

Let's see if the flailgun issue can be fixed.

EDIT: Not quite sure, but seems like this helped. Since I installed the latest SVN, I have been unable to reproduce the bug (and the chainsaw issue was solved too, as it did happen in this mod)