[Development Halted] Rogue: The Doomlike

[Arthropleura]

his 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

That's a relief, Keep getting cornered and eaten by purple worms so a bow would be a lot of help. I'd love to help with the texture pack but my skills don't go beyond "finding shit on Google images" But if I remember correctly that image i found was procedurally generated, so I'll take a shot at tracking down the program used for it. might be able to randomly make our own textures.
EDIT: found it, it's from a closed source rougelike game. http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?tit ... atio_Regum It's got some good ASCII art, maybe the author will let us use his art generator. If not we could always just copy it's style.

[Josh771]

Sounds good... and I just remembered why loading Doom behind Heretic is a bad idea, hehehehe...

Also: Eureka!! I modified my potions code and they should now be randomized per game, in addition to being carryable across maps.

[Arthropleura]

Okay, he's got a twitter https://twitter.com/UltimaRegum and a Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ultima-R ... 2228145728 So if you want to drop him a line about it These would probably be the places to do it. I'd do it myself but I don't have an account for either.

EDIT: I've been coming to think about the weapons, I've come up with an idea to make them more distinct. MY thinking goes to specialize them along the lines of Speed, power, reach, and knockback.
Dagger- sacrifices everything in the name of speed, miserable damage reach and knockback but godly speed. Pretty much the chainsaw.
Longsword- Balances all attributes evenly, jack of all stats.
Spear- Reach is best, power is above average, speed is below average, knockback is abysmal.
2HSword- Power to the max! knockback is above average, reach average, speed below average
Mace- Can't touch this! max knockback, above average damage, low speed, terrible reach.
Obviously this is just a general idea and I based it heavily off of reality, but i think it will help make the weapons distinct while being rather intuitive.

[Josh771]

I've got a Facebook that's gathering cobwebs... I might contact him, but then again, I might just try it myself first. I don't mind putting some art together, and, besides, it'll mostly be positioning large text symbols on black to make recognizable patterns (vines, bricks, etc). I'll give it a shot myself first.

Also, I must brag: a took a potion of extra strength and brought down a dragon with my dagger. Mind you, a zombie ate me fairly soon afterwards, but it was still pretty cool.

EDIT: I like your weapon suggestions. They stray a little from Rogue, but you know? DoomRL made Doom into a roguelike by stuffing Doom into Rogue's box. Let's go ahead and stuff Rogue into Doom's box, shall we? I'll get to work editing the weapons and making them more specialized.

[Arthropleura]

Sweet! Oddly enough i haven't yet found a single dragon. I think I've found just about everything else though.

EDIT: I remembered that in Doom 1.4 Demons used a ranged hitscan that allowed them to initiate infighting, I figured that in such a melee heavy mod a little melee infighting would really give the player a hand.

[Josh771]

Yeah, right now the only possibility for infighting is a dragon blowing fire on its friends. Of course, that's likely not going to help you except that it kills whatever it breathes on. I think I once got a dragon to breathe fire on a purple worm and the two fought to the death. I'll consider changing their melee attacks to short-range hitscans.

I'm playing around with the weapon tweaks and part of me wants to try to preserve the original numbers. Having a full arsenal will make more sense when I have weapon throwing in; it will make finding extra daggers or swords lying around much more meaningful if you can throw them and possibly lose them in the process. Besides, I was already cheating a little when I made the dagger faster.

Has someone already ripped the Witchaven (sp?) graphics? Those would be perfect for this mod: daggers, swords, bows... I don't know why I hadn't thought of it sooner. Also, do you think I should develop the ASCII graphics alongside this (exclamation points for potions, etc.)? I'm tempted to just shift to developing this with full graphics.

EDIT: Bah, Witchaven didn't have a sling or a spear, as I recall. I'd really like to have all the weapons represented if I'm going to animate them. Hmm... the staff from Heretic could easily be adapted to a spear.

[Arthropleura]

I certainly think you should keep the ASCII graphics. Although i don't use them now that we've got actual monster pics. Isn't the graphics part of what separates this from a Hexen clone? If you don't want to make the ASCII graphics then by all means stop. But I personally would like to see what can be done with the ASCII style. I really like the touches like the bloody Z and the antennae on the A. I think it would also make the mod extremely distinctive, as far as I know nothing like this has been done before, and I'm all for pushing the limits of DOOM.

[Josh771]

Alright, I'll put together some !'s and make the more Doom-style potions a part of the optional roguepics wad. The ASCII graphics don't take a whole lot of time to put together and they are a distinct feature of the mod, even if they aren't a huge selling point outside the roguelike fan base.

I feel like the weapons need some kind of representation when you swing them, even if only something to let the player understand the pace of the swing a little better. Maybe just a sort of slashing, "swish" image for the different weapons? Let the weapons themselves be sort of ethereal and just display jabbing "motion" for the dagger or an overhead "swoop" for the mace? I'll play around with some ideas.

[Hetdegon]

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.
.

Since you didn't include the source, I can't tell you exactly what's wrong, but yeah, just declare a global int/boolean and set it to true once initialized.
I declare such a variable in my own upcoming TC as this:

Code: Select all

global bool 0:WorldInit;

and then I use this function to initialize

Code: Select all

script "G_Init" OPEN {
	if(!WorldInit) {
		log(s:"Initializing world data...");
		WorldInit = true;
                //Data init omitted to avoid a wall of text :P
	}
}

Moving from map to map even outside of the TC's set hub doesn't repeat init. So something like that will work.

[Josh771]

I did some reading on the ZDoom wiki and discovered the global declaration last night, although I appreciate the gesture. Potions are now identified in a global array, and the potion script has undergone few changes apart from that. If you're curious, I'll go ahead and put the randomizer up, but it's nothing special.

---

Code: Select all

#library "randpots"
#include "zcommon.acs"

global int 1:potids[];

script "initPots" OPEN
{
	if (potids[0] == 0) {
		int curPot = 0;
		while (curPot < 14) {
			int nextPot = Random(1,14);
			int failure = 0;
			for (int checkPots = 0; checkPots < 14; checkPots++) {
				if (potids[checkPots] == nextPot) {
					failure = 1;
					break;
				}
			}
			delay(1);
			if (failure == 0)
				potids[curPot++] = nextPot;
		}
		log(s:"Potions Randomized");
	}
}

script "getPotion" (int potid)
{
	SetResultValue(potids[potid]);
}

[Josh771]

New update! I've implemented the confusion, paralysis, and poison potions. I've also raised the player camera a little and made monsters wander the "dungeon" aimlessly a la Rogue. Some weapon tweaks have been implemented, most notably the spear has a longer reach and the mace now has the highest knockback factor.

[Hetdegon]

I did some reading on the ZDoom wiki and discovered the global declaration last night, although I appreciate the gesture. :) Potions are now identified in a global array, and the potion script has undergone few changes apart from that. If you're curious, I'll go ahead and put the randomizer up, but it's nothing special.

Haha, you are welcome, I seem to always arrive late to help though.

Anyway~ Gave it another test run. I like how monsters have a certain ease to surprise you while you are moving around. Also met a mimic...how fun D: (hint: I died horribly) And my luck decided to not give me a single potion. I might try again later today.

[Josh771]

I have noticed that you can have a potionless run pretty easily, although I have also witnessed upwards of 5 potions on Entryway. I am still playing with the speeds of monster wandering and have started work on a basic prototype for the hallucination potion. My current implementation spawns several monsters which feign attacks and which can pass through each other (and the player). I even have harmless dragon's breath to from imagined dragons -- but none of this is currently uploaded.

Those mimics are scary; just imagine how much scarier they will be when they assume the form of any random item! Anything from weapons to red potions to scrolls... someday.

I think I may add gold as a simple INVBAR item so I can have leprechauns steal it from players. I may also allow nymphs to "seduce" (steal from) players soon. After that, I think I want to add some armors and make the rust monster destroy weapons and armor. I also need the floating eye to freeze the player -- is there perhaps a way to dull the mouse sensitivity severely so long as a floating eye is in view?

Anyway, I've got a lot to work on, but I'm enjoying the work. It's really starting to come together, I think.

[Josh771]

Well, it's not exactly a bow, but I've implemented weapon throwing in this latest release. I've also included ASCII sprites for potions and an implementation of the hallucination potion (although it's imperfect; I'd like the effect to make enemy graphics shift randomly -- similar to the actual behavior in the major roguelikes). Carry up to 5 daggers to use as throwing weapons until I add more legitimate ranged weapons.

[Hetdegon]

Yes, yes, I hate mimics, make me hate them more, as it should be. I guess some multi-label jumps to set their initial appearance and using ---- or #### as sprite definitions in following states could do.

I kind of like how, if you wait around in Entryway, enemies will manage to eventually appear in front of you. Regular Doom monsters seem far more restrained... and I like this change, really. Makes them more active and fun than the usual ones.

About potions, I think it's fair if none at all appear, although you can perhaps give them a TID to count them, then use the amount of potions in the level as a way to change the probabilities.

Personally, I am all for gold. One reason is making the Ls work as expected, other is gold-as-score is a trope in the original Rogue which, while obsolete by today's gaming standards, is still a way to motivate picking loot.

And lastly, yeah, you can perhaps do that E effect with ACS, but I think you need to touch the user's sensitivity variables, so make sure to keep backups of those. Also, you could perhaps use a slowdown effect which makes a bit more sense in a real-time engine, or directly remove all speed from the player to pin it to the ground and use control variables (or an "inventory as variable" thing) in DECORATE to prevent the player from attacking, so you get an effective paralysis where all you can do is look around until it wears out. Would be faithful to Rogue, but if you make the paralysis too long or too easy to re-apply, it'll get annoying fast, so think of a suitable immunity period or a limiter if you go that route.

I am quite interested on this now, looking forward for the next update, I'll try it in a more "faithful" environment with a few OBLIGE maps in hand.
EDIT: Oh hell yeah throwing weapons! :wub: