[Development Halted] Rogue: The Doomlike

[Tux]

no instadeath?
absolute blasphemy

[Josh771]

no instadeath?
absolute blasphemy

Well... there are certainly ways to get dead almost instantly. Random Rogue can be anything from casual to just plain suicidal. I'll probably scrap a lot of skill levels and offer "Normal" and "Hardcore" settings when I get more roguelike features in place.

I'm having a surprising amount of fun developing this mod, I must say. It doesn't exactly take a whole load of artwork to pull off, which is the only reason I even started this. Maybe someday I'll get some artsy folks to help me make something more serious; I'm more of a programming and design kinda guy.

EDIT: I'm curious, if anyone cares to share their two cents: should I make some basic representative images for creatures and weapons instead of using ASCII? I'd be just fine with giving it a shot; they wouldn't be animated, just gliding portraits in place of gliding letters (and I'd be just fine with the answer "Make both," as that's what I'm leaning towards doing anyway). I think this could be slightly classier and just a little less confusing, maybe make the mod feel less like a jokewad and more legitimate. Just curious.

[Josh771]

Well, this is a pretty cool update, even if I do say so myself.

I took a break from writing game logic and painstakingly edited 26 representative images for the monsters. The included "roguepics.wad" can be loaded on top of "roguedoom.pk3" now to replace those scary letters with fantasy sprites. The creatures are still not animated, but it's much better than contending with letters (at least, I think so).

[Josh771]

Alright! I've just produced an early prototype of the potions system for Rogue: The Doomlike. Only a handful of potions have actual in-game effects right now, but the ones that do have already changed gameplay in rather interesting ways.

Unfortunately, potion randomization occurs on a per-map basis right now, via an OPEN acs script. I assumed that variables outside the scope of all scripts (global variables?) would be persistent from map to map, but that assumption seems to have been flatly wrong. If anyone could show me how to randomize them once at the start of a new game, I'd be rather grateful. Until then, I'll just develop the potions as-is.

[Arthropleura]

The graphics pack looks awesome! Dont like the massive lack of weapons though, cant seem to find any in game.

[Josh771]

Glad you like the monster pics! Weapon scarcity is a bit much I think; I may make them more common. I'm also considering making the "Gentle Rogue" difficulty easier, a sort of casual mode where death is a little less frequent. Have you played around with any potions yet?

EDIT: I've just made weapons more common, removed the Doom chainsaw and powerups (you're welcome), and removed those "Doom" difficulty levels -- although I can add those back if anyone misses them. Lemme just upload that...

[Arthropleura]

I have indeed found some potions, a tasteless on and a poison one, they both seemed to do nothing. I figured you were probably working on the randomization before implementing effects. And i'll check the new update out, gonna try it with heretic.

[Arthropleura]

Just finished my playthrough of doom2, The addition of weapon drops has helped IMMENSELY. Got all the way to level 3 on random rouge! Also, Cruel rouge difficulty seemed to be missing from the list. On the weapons themselves, I found the 2HSword Mace and spear in my game and they seemed largely indistinguishable. This is probably due to them all being melee weapons, and the fact that in rouge itself they differed only in stats. Maybe if we had a stat sheet for Weps, Mobs, etc. in with the download for people to refer to. Loving this mod so far, I can't recall another WAD I've played just to see how far I could get. Keep up the fantastic work Sid.

EDIT: Couldn't get heretic to work which is a shame cause' the maps would be perfect.

[Hetdegon]

Gave it a try. Potion randomizing seems to work properly, although some effects seem to be not implemented (mostly negative ones like poison, paralysis, confusion, etc), but that's fine. However you are randomizing potions every map, you should keep a global control boolean and check against it to do the shuffling only the very first OPEN so they stay consistent as you progress.

Also, enemies respawn randomly? I love that. Do that more. I love when wads have foes respawn but not "always, all the time" like Nightmare mode. Makes backtracking more interesting.

[Josh771]

Potion randomizing works in the following way:

I initialize an array of potion IDs to -1 (for 14 potions, that's {-1, -1, -1, -1...} all the way through). The OPEN script checks to see whether the first potion ID is -1. If it is, this should indicate that the potions need randomizing. Since this hasn't prevented it from randomizing the potions on every map, I imagine there is some way to make global variables that pass from map to map of which I am totally unaware. The array is declared and initialized outside of any script. Some insight on how to do this would be welcome.

Enemies actually respawn on a long timer. Where the original Doom Nightmare mode has a respawn time of 12, Rogue the Doomlike has a respawn time of 80. Since, IIRC, Doom has a built-in random variation on the delay per monster, I imagine it seems much more "random" than usual (although I've really not gone out of my way to make it any more so).

The weapons are barely distinguishable, true. The spear, for instance, has the best reach and knockback, but this is hard to discern in practice and would take looking through the raw data just to discover. I'll consider throwing a spoiler on the OP that dispenses weapon stats and the like. And I did apparently remove "Cruel Rogue"; I can throw that back in if it's missed. Personally, I thought it was a bit over-the-top to be squished by dragons, trolls, and purple worms every other room, but maybe it has a place in the mod after all.

The potions are not all implemented. Currently, the only working potions are blindness, levitation, haste, healing, extra healing, and infravision... I think. They are currently in the works.

I'll play around with adding support for Heretic; this had already crossed my mind for obvious reasons, but you're absolutely right. Thanks for all the comments, everyone! Glad to see this is more enjoyable than your run-of-the-mill jokewad (although I'd never really meant this to be a "jokewad" in the first place).

[Arthropleura]

Levitation sounds fun! And I consider this a port of rouge to the doom engine rather, while DOOM RLa is simply backporting DOOM RL features. Althoughe it's not quite a direct port due to the shift from RougeLike to DoomLike.

EDIT: okay i fired up ALT and found out that the SS officer has not been replaced. Granted it's a "Hidden" monster, but some mapsets do actually use it. Maybe we could replace him with our own easter egg monster.

EDIT2: Loaded up fragport and noticed yet another oversight, seems due to a lack of ranged hitscan weapons, you cant hit any distant switches on maps that require you to do so. Not sure how to "fix" this other than a no damage hitscan weapon.

[Josh771]

I considered replacing the SS but never bothered. I suppose it would be devastatingly difficult to battle well-armed nazis with swords and maces. I've got Heretic running the mod now, but it's dead silent since I'm using Doom sounds (and the Revenant's melee sound from Doom 2). I need to replace audio for the creatures and weapons, but that seems like it's going to be a big, hairy ordeal. For now, I'd like to polish up the potions and get them fully functional.

Levitation is pretty fun, to be honest. You'll be swigging mystery flasks and suddenly one of them lifts you from the ground. It's so much more satisfying when you're not expecting it.

I've added Cruel Rogue back to the mix. I have yet, at the time of this post, to upload these changes, but they should be up soon enough.

[Arthropleura]

Found a decent image for what a graphics pack would feature

---

This should give us a good idea on how ascii doom textures should look. And yes, the SS killed me in one shot. It was just ridiculous.

[Josh771]

Cool! I like it. I may put my hand to something similar at some point, unless some kind soul would like to put together an appropriate texture pack and contribute it to the project. All I can pay is gratitude and credit you for your help, whoever might be so inclined.

I just uploaded a new pk3 that should support Heretic, although it will be silent. I haven't tried loading DOOM2.WAD as a pwad to see if that would supply the needed sounds without obliterating everything. Also, Cruel Rogue is back (as previously mentioned).

[Josh771]

EDIT2: Loaded up fragport and noticed yet another oversight, seems due to a lack of ranged hitscan weapons, you cant hit any distant switches on maps that require you to do so. Not sure how to "fix" this other than a no damage hitscan weapon.

I encountered this in Plutonia, the Well of Souls map with that invisible bridge? I "idclip"d my way in there and smacked the switch with a mace -- not exactly how I'd like that to work. This isn't intended to be a melee mod, though: I hope to add, in the future, ranged weapons and weapon-throwing, as well as randomized wands (equipped as weapons with invisible ammo counts for charges). So I imagine the problem will someday be fixed; I might add a "Telekinesis" spell or something in the meantime.