[Development Halted] Rogue: The Doomlike

[Arthropleura]

Loving the weapon throwing as implemented! Gives me some hope for recoverable arrows, Another DOOM first! (I think)

[Josh771]

Loving the weapon throwing as implemented! Gives me some hope for recoverable arrows, Another DOOM first! (I think)

Hey, I'd be glad to claim a DOOM first if I can! I do intend to make arrows randomly recoverable when the ranged weapons are implemented. Sling and rocks will be less effective, but rocks will probably never break and make the sling a more reliable ranged weapon in terms of ammunition.

I'm currently trying to get some decent sounds in the mod -- mostly, right now, to make playing the mod in Heretic more enjoyable. After that, I'm not sure which direction this will go. I may start work on scrolls, but I'd like to finish the potions out completely. Of course, experience potions and restoration / extra strength potions are going to be incomplete or useless until I have an experience and strength system in place. Perhaps I should just do something straightforward like add the types of armor.

Still plenty to do. I'll do some part or another. But I do have a question: does it matter if I break multiplayer compatibility to properly implement the hallucination potion? I suspect I can properly cycle monsters' graphics with some miserable DECORATE and produce the classic effect, but it would make any player's hallucination experienced by all players. This is just theory; if someone has an idea of how to shift the monster graphics individually per player/renderer, that would be fantastic. Basically, I want a hallucinating player to see common objects flash images for random monsters and items, perhaps even every tic.

[HexaDoken]

There are CVars that can be stored locally at the client, right? Perhaps you could somehow make the thing dependant on a client-stored CVar. This _THEORETICALLY_ should not lead to desyncs since only the graphic appearance is changed but not the gameplay functionality of the monsters, but who knows.

What you could definitely do is simply make hallucination potions appear in SP only.

Or do nothing and have one bad drink sending entire party on an acid trip. Because fun.

EDIT: also strongly advising against changing graphics every tic because it will cause severe eyebleeds even for me, to speak nothing about people with actual eye problems.

[Josh771]

I did have a thought that I could somehow have an overlay that cycles through a bunch of neon, rainbow colors. Nearly opaque; like a more distracting blindness potion. I really need it to do something other than spawn hallucination actors (since Rogue's healing and extra healing potions cure hallucination and I don't want multiple players sharing hallucinations).

So, @HexaDoken, what you're suggesting is that the potion apply a scripted effect which randomly changes a CVar for the duration of the hallucinations, producing shifting images on a player-by-player basis? I can try to figure some way to do this... but I'm doubtful. Can you change some kind of graphics pointers in-game? Point the renderer to sprite B when it asks for sprite A?

I may just try to do something simple. Or I may do everything else and come back to this.

[HexaDoken]

I was actually suggesting to have a cvar dictate whether the player is currently hallucinating or otherwise, but that can work too.

The only thing in the vein of what you suggested with graphics pointers is the "####" "#" thing - a frame with this will use whatever was the previous specified frame. You could perhaps somehow toy with this. Could perhaps become a clusterfuck.

[Hetdegon]

Yeah that was what I suggested for the mimics. However doing the hallucination enemy changes per-player is probably not possible as of now, alas. Would require to be single-player only because there is no way from preventing every player from tripping balls at the same time once an enemy changes looks.
I do like your suggestion of making the potions singleplayer-only though! That would be nice and would keep it multiplayable.

[Josh771]

I am considering removing potions of hallucination or giving them another name and function, since I do not know that they are the most pivotal of potions. In fact, the very version of Rogue I am trying to emulate (v4) did not, as far as I can tell, have hallucination potions (or levitation, but that was easy enough to add and I appreciate their use). I am open to suggestions for another type of potion, but I think it needs to have a negative effect of some kind, since we are replacing hallucination. Or if there is rather a great outcry for hallucination potions, I suppose I can set myself to the arduous task; I'm simply trying to keep the workload bearable here so that I can bring this thing into an enjoyably finished state.

Production has been slow as of late; I have concerned myself with other matters in life recently, but I will still work on developing the mod. Thank you all for being attentive, critical, and supportive; it has made this the easiest project I have ever tasked myself with.

[Arthropleura]

Is it possible to reverse keybindings? so that pressing strafe left makes you go right? If it's possible then we could have a potion of confusion.
Maybe we could use modified Hud sprites to implement hallucinations for individual players? IDK but it would be very hacky to do so...
Potion of lightspeed? Raise the players movespeed enough to be uncontrollable E.G. tap left and go flying across the map.
Potion of monsters? Spawns monster at players location?
Potion of transformation? morph the player into a random monster? Could be good(dragon) or bad (snake)
Potion of lead? Keeps the player from jumping and slows them down?
Potion of Weakness? player takes more damage and/or deals less?

Just some ideas.

[Josh771]

Is it possible to reverse keybindings? so that pressing strafe left makes you go right? If it's possible then we could have a potion of confusion.
Maybe we could use modified Hud sprites to implement hallucinations for individual players? IDK but it would be very hacky to do so...
Potion of lightspeed? Raise the players movespeed enough to be uncontrollable E.G. tap left and go flying across the map.
Potion of monsters? Spawns monster at players location?
Potion of transformation? morph the player into a random monster? Could be good(dragon) or bad (snake)
Potion of lead? Keeps the player from jumping and slows them down?
Potion of Weakness? player takes more damage and/or deals less?

Just some ideas.

You apparently haven't run into a potion of confusion, have you? Hint: it does exactly what you've said and worse. (Half movement speed!!)
I really like the transformation one best of all. Potion of polymorph, perhaps? We'll see...

Oh, and by the way... UPDATE!!! Ranged weapons are in!! I'll add some more later, but for now there are a bow and crossbow. I've also made the player start with a couple of random potions and implemented the various armor types (although they currently rely on Doom graphics without so much as a translation). I'll begin working on some art assets for the armor now, but the release is already up.

[Hetdegon]

Oh fun, an update. I'll make sure to check it out with some OBLIGE maps as previously declared and report back later.
I can't think of any fun idea for potions right now, but polymorph is a roguelike staple and could do the trick, I second that suggestion!

Keep it up, it's starting to become really interesting by now :D

[Arthropleura]

I just played all the way up to the pit(I hate the pit) The addition of armor makes the game a lot more survivable. Plate armor FTW! Ranged weapons seem a bit weak, I think this may be due to the fact that the enemies are much faster than DOOMizens so there isn't much time to use them before melee becomes the better choice. I don't know, What does everyone else think? And YAY! for potion mimics! I like that you automatically quiver the arrows centaurs hit you with. I also finally faced the dreaded Dragon as well, he damn well lived up to the hype. I spent all my arrows and bolts on 'im fore i went in for the kill with my claymore.

[Josh771]

I just played all the way up to the pit(I hate the pit) The addition of armor makes the game a lot more survivable. Plate armor FTW! Ranged weapons seem a bit weak, I think this may be due to the fact that the enemies are much faster than DOOMizens so there isn't much time to use them before melee becomes the better choice. I don't know, What does everyone else think? And YAY! for potion mimics! I like that you automatically quiver the arrows centaurs hit you with. I also finally faced the dreaded Dragon as well, he damn well lived up to the hype. I spent all my arrows and bolts on 'im fore i went in for the kill with my claymore.

Yes, I had noticed that the armor has helped balance the experience a bit. I've also noticed how difficult it is to hit targets with the ranged weapons; I'm considering slowing down the enemies to nearer DOOM levels. I'm glad the new features have pleased (am I just terrible for not mentioning the potion mimics? hehehe...).

[tsukiyomaru0]

Not sure if you know how to or if it is even possible, but gonna toss an idea: Random map generator. Doesn't need to have stairs or anything, just a plain map with an exit that "resets" the map and cranks the difficult up a bit would be enough, I suppose.

[Hetdegon]

Did a longer run with a few OBLIGE maps. This is really fun!
Some observations:
1) Ranged combat is a bit iffy. Monsters are too fast to get a good shot. The easy solution would be to reduce their speed, although that'd make them much easier to deal with, so not sure what to say on that regard.
On that note, it's really easy to farm arrows from centaurs, you can try reducing their spawn chance a bit, or have them drop a quiver on death, instead.

2) You could apply a translation to weapon types, so they are colored differently and easier to tell apart as pickups.

3) It's kind of easy to forget what each potion does specially after a few restarts. Could you add a little change to the potion effects indicating their color, so they are logged to console and easier to track? Something like "you drink a potion of healing (brown)" or "you drink a brown potion of healing".

4) I notice a bit of a lack of ranged enemies, which is understandable given the source material, perhaps you could add a few palette-swaps of existing enemies to give them some more capabilities, such as orc archers or so, even if for later levels.

5) This is entirely forgivable given the current development stage, but it's very easy to reach the maximum amount of power and enemy challenge in map01 if the map features the right things. Once you get a 2HSword, it's pretty much the same thing all the way to the top. You can try adding map-sensitive spawners, that spawn different items and enemies based on map number, same as Rogue did. You can check ACS's GetLevelInfo(LEVELINFO_LEVELNUM) to get the number.

All in all, this is pretty enjoyable. With a mechanism to scale the challenge based on level it should very playable with longer mapsets (as in number of maps). As it is now I find it slightly more enjoyable with large individual maps, for what it's worth.

[Josh771]

Thanks for the input!

1)I am currently playing a version in which monsters' speeds have been reduced to make them better targets for ranged weapons, so we can expect that to be a part of my next release.

2) On weapon translations, I'm considering making graphics for the pickups and their projectile forms (spinning). It'll take a bit of work since I'll need mimics to still be able to mimic them.

3) I am considering my options for potion identification, which, as you've pointed out, is completely not implemented. I've already got (in my dev version) potions spawning now by their type instead of an equal spread among all colors, so that's actually already been helpful to me to remember which potions were helpful. Still, I would like to add a feature perhaps on pickup: "You remember that a red potion is a potion of healing." Something like that. Actually, is there an ACS method to figuring out which INVBAR item the player currently has selected? I could do something with that.

4) There is certainly a lack of ranged enemies. I may actually add some creatures outside of the scope of Rogue, perhaps some ranged opponents from Nethack (wizards, anyone?).

5) The problem of reaching full power so early and facing purple worms on Map01 has been on my list of things to fix from day one, I just hadn't gotten around to looking up the means to checking map number. Since you've dropped that in my lazy lap, I'm much more likely to get that feature implemented and out of the way now. So thanks.

I'm glad you enjoy the mod; I've found that even the tweaks I've made since the last release have rather helped the gameplay value. I'll add some of this stuff before I upload another version for you to have a go at.