[WIP] Malice - Version 1.0pre5 [BURNING MELEE!]

[TheRailgunner]

Glad you are getting it closer to a release and more over by the effort you have put into this can tell you're having a blast making it. Will this work in the latest LZDoom? I am very interested to be a playtester

I don't know for sure - I'll test it in LZ, but given its description (from the ZDoom downloads page, "LZDoom is based on an older version of GZDoom. It does not provide all features currently supported by GZDoom but in turn is capable of running the hardware renderer on older hardware which does not support modern OpenGL features.") - to my knowledge, Malice requires the newest version of GZ owing to the excessive use of alpha-channel graphics and GL features, but I can also check which particular effects or actors cause it problems; if LZ has, say, Vulkan support, it should be fine. A potential Zandro version of Malice would also face a similar problem - there are certain flags and arguments for state calls and functions that are GZDoom-only, which can prevent the mod from running on Zandro without significant alteration.

I need to see another type of shotgun on this..

Given that the existing shotgun is pump action and I'm avoiding semi/full-auto shotguns at the moment, that leaves something like the Super Shotgun as an option - which I'm sort of trying to avoid in Malice: the weapons are anachronism soup, simultaneously possessing features in common with both sci-fi energy weapons and antiquated firearms, and while I love the Super Shotgun and its relatives, I don't feel like it fits here. Besides, the N12 Railgun already replaces the Super and the N10 has a two-round burst mode. That said, nothing is certain, and one might show up before release.

Might.

So, I've finally settled on a Chainsaw replacement - the Tractor Beam:




Fairly straightforward - the Tractor Beam immobilizes and pulls enemies towards you, its effect being most noticeable from a distance, where the beam affects the largest area. The beam's effect narrows as targets are pulled closer to you, holding them in place once they reach point-blank range. It'll have a Repulsor Beam as an alternate function, which will, well, push enemies the fuck away from you.

[Linz]

A tractor beam huh?

Looks like it be cool,although what made you decide to replace the lance with this?

[TheRailgunner]

A tractor beam huh?

Looks like it be cool,although what made you decide to replace the lance with this?

The Lance was both overpowered for what it was (a melee weapon) AND less fitting as a Chainsaw replacement owing to a lack of painlocking capability. Besides, it was originally supposed to have an altfire that allowed you to throw the Lance, Unit 00-style, for ludicrous damage, but I wasn't at a point in development to make it look polished and I faced the dilemma of either allowing the player to permanently sacrifice the Chainsaw for a one-off BFG-level attack or giving the player an incredibly broken weapon that uses no ammo. At first, I thought I'd just replace the BFG with some special tech gloves and have THAT do the Lance throw attack, but I found the visual effect and the path of destruction it created lacking, so I started messing with effects and various forms of radius-based damage dealing and somehow wound up with what became the CFG's fireball instead, which, in turn, led me to just outright replace the "BFG gloves + Lance of Longinus" concept with the Cosmic Force Generator, a weapon that, in my opinion, fits in a lot more in a mod that purports to have Doom's original arsenal in mind when determining the roles and functions of the weapons within. In addition, the CFG is essentially, lore-wise, not native to Malice's universe, being a transplant from a different cluster of universes altogether (the series of interlinked fictional universes created by Nanoyagi, a development team consisting of my brother, who sometimes shows up on this site as "Adrian Malacoda", my friend Debugman, sometimes rendered as "Debugman18", and myself), and is obviously meant to be a play on the BFG 9000.

Wait, I got sidetracked - you wanted to know why I replaced the Chainsaw. Basically, I wanted something that felt like it could be used more similarly to the vanilla weapon, and the Tractor Beam has an area-of-effect painlocking ability that I find makes it more...erm, chainsawy, and the Lance is, lorewise, an absurdly powerful weapon to scale down and just leave in a broom closet on some godforsaken techbase on Mars.

At any rate, I'm gonna continue refining and testing the Tractor Beam - it works, but it's got some issues I still need to sort out.

[Linz]

Well that was quite the lengthy explanation but thanks for telling me

I can imagine pulling foes to you and beating the shit outta them will be fun :3

Oh question,can the Tractor Beam affect bosses

[TheRailgunner]

Well that was quite the lengthy explanation but thanks for telling me

I can imagine pulling foes to you and beating the shit outta them will be fun :3

Oh question,can the Tractor Beam affect bosses

Alas, it cannot - it can pull or push any other monster, though, as well as barrels and similar objects.

So, I pretty much just have to do player sprites, and I'm ready to send Malice to playtesters. If I haven't responded to your message yet, I've just been procrastinating - assume that you'll get a link.

[Linz]

Shame,although the thought of pulling a Cyberdemon or Spider Mastermind in and beating the suit out of it is hilarious to think about


Can it grab items?

[TheRailgunner]

Shame,although the thought of pulling a Cyberdemon or Spider Mastermind in and beating the suit out of it is hilarious to think about


Can it grab items?

I experimented with this briefly, but apparently I can't do this without turning items into barricades for monsters - this is a shame, as the potential to have players completely break a lot of maps and progression this way would be staggering. Also note that while the Scorpion can't currently move bosses, it DOES painlock them.

EDIT: I gave the beams +FORCERADIUSDMG, which makes moving boss monsters possible.

At this point, I can send out playtesters a link after I've finished the following things - while the Help screen is tedious work, I could get all of this done today:

*Pickup/movement sounds for the Scorpion Tractor Beam
*Pickup sound for Light Amp
*Tips and hints in the Help screen (possibly optional, we'll see)
*Pickup sound for keys - Don't know if this is possible, actually
*Quad Damage (gonna replace Invisibility with this)
*HUD indicator for Berserk

In addition to any bugs or suggestions that playtesters provide, this is what is left between playtesting and release:

*FX reduction
*Improved crosshairs
*Possibly improved shield graphics
*Maybe unique sprites for the damaged N4/starting weapon

Finally, I may make one final change before sending it out:

*Make the N7 Battle Rifle the starting weapon instead of the damaged N4 - this would allow immediate ammo replenishment from Zombiemen instead of forcing reliance on a Cell-equivalent based weapon until you get something you can actually find ammo for early on.

Suffice to say, expect a link within days - maybe sooner.

[Dr_Cosmobyte]

Yes, i am eager to play this!

[Linz]

My disappointment is insumerable over that inablity for the Tractor Beam,but hey

Malice soon

Also I find it funny how three of the weapons have the theme of being named Nishimura and a number

Makes you wonder...what were 1,2,3 etc were like?

If they even exists that is

[Cyanide]

I'd like to play test the hell out of this!

[TheRailgunner]

My disappointment is insumerable over that inablity for the Tractor Beam,but hey

Malice soon

Also I find it funny how three of the weapons have the theme of being named Nishimura and a number

Makes you wonder...what were 1,2,3 etc were like?

If they even exists that is

Yeah, I'm sad about non-moving items as well - I hope to make a separate monsters-only mod for Malice, and I'll include versions of the items that move, since I'll be able to give the monsters the appropriate flags to be able to walk through solid/shootable items.

Also, since you mention the Nishimura weapons:


Note that the N7 designs are slightly out of date in regards to the scope and carrying handle.

At the top of that image is the Nishimura One Rifle, a prototype for what would eventually become the Nishimura Seven (the Nishimura Two was the N4's prototype and predecessor and the Nishimura Three was a non-bullpup rifle prototype, essentially a Space Garand - see "Nishimura Thirteen"). Generally similar to the N7, but is far less reliable, prone to fouling, and vulnerable to containment failures. As for the rest, the N5 was a machine gun prototype (eventually folded into the Proximity Control Rifle and the AN-08 MG), the N6 is, for lack of a less ridiculous description, a cylinder-mag fed programmable miniature rocket/grenade launcher, in the basic form factor of a one-night-stand between Big Iron and a Milkor MGL (sans-stock, naturally - the N6 wasn't exactly a production weapon, with most references to it being when used by Nishimura himself - more on that another time). I haven't decided on what the N9 would be, and I can probably say that there will never be a Nishimura Eleven - for some reason, I just...don't like using 11 for things. Don't know why.

But yeah - given that this is essentially the "Infinity Legionnaire Arsenal" mod, it's frankly surprising that MORE weapons don't follow the naming convention (the Nishimura in question is the commander and creator of the Legion - essentially at the other end of the player's chain of command).

So, I pretty much just have to replace the Partial Invisibility indicator with a Berserk indicator and implement Quad Damage firing sounds, and I'll send out the first links - unless someone knows how to give keys a custom pickup sound...

[Linz]

Ah,interesting

See you in the future when they develop the Nishimura 9000

lel

[Twitchy2019]

Probably the whole reason you hate the number is 11 is because of the ancient meme "CRANK IT UP TO 11! BADASS!!" Anyways, liked the mod on the vids. Any chance any playtester spots remain open?

Edit: Just read the chainsaw replacement. Why on earth is the chainsaw replacement a simple Gravity Gun replacement? Doesn't seem really useful to me outright unless the thing has two things going for it, 1. A damaging effect as an enemy gets closer to you. 2. A badass beatdown animation when they get to point blank range of you. The more health an enemy has, the longer the melee animation sequence is until they die. That is my two cents on it.

[TheRailgunner]

Probably the whole reason you hate the number is 11 is because of the ancient meme "CRANK IT UP TO 11! BADASS!!" Anyways, liked the mod on the vids. Any chance any playtester spots remain open?

Edit: Just read the chainsaw replacement. Why on earth is the chainsaw replacement a simple Gravity Gun replacement? Doesn't seem really useful to me outright unless the thing has two things going for it, 1. A damaging effect as an enemy gets closer to you. 2. A badass beatdown animation when they get to point blank range of you. The more health an enemy has, the longer the melee animation sequence is until they die. That is my two cents on it.

To answer these questions:

1: It does very minor damage in general until its target is pulled into melee range (I may mess with this a bit for balance reasons), at which point it basically chews through them. The Repulsor Beam mode also deals more damage than the Tractor Beam does, primarily through collision and impact with walls and surfaces.

2: Badass beatdown is an option with any weapon, though I'm probably not going to go as far as to make the animation "until death" (I feel like melee should be powerful, but risky) - that said, I might add some special melee attacks for the Scorpion.

The main perks of the Scorpion Tractor Beam are close-range damage (much like the Chainsaw) and the ability to move enemies around - there are a LOT of situations where being able to pull or push an enemy is advantageous - from pulling Pain Elementals into melee range or pushing hordes of Pinky Demons away from your face. It also forces its target into its pain state, doubling as a stun effect. The Scorpion also has alternate functions for both of its firing modes:

*Tractor Beam -> Grappling Beam - Fairly self-explanatory - the beam pulls you forward, drawing you to wherever you're firing the Scorpion. Note that the beam must be held to do this.
*Repulsor Beam -> Thruster Burst - Launches your ass away from wherever you're firing the Scorpion.

3: Playtester spots are open until the final version of Malice is released.

Anyway, expect another video soon - gonna replace this HUD indicator and get this stone MOVING.

Also, I don't particularly dislike 11 or "turn it up to 11", so I can't really explain WHY I don't use 11 in more things. Maybe I should?

[ValeriePalerie]

Couple things from my first play session:

- movement is very non-traditional and I love it, even though it'll take some getting used to, I think the best way I can describe it is like Warframe meets ARMA
- certain inputs seem to buffer similar to Dark Souls games, a few times I've fired off an explosive shotgun blast after reloading without meaning to
- scope overlays make things tough to see in busy environments
- primary and secondary fire on the starting pistol could be swapped to keep it in line with how the rest of the arsenal works, ie primary for "safe" attacks and secondary for "dangerous" ones
- AR and shotgun ammo was /incredibly/ plentiful

Also I gave this a test run on Reverie on the UV equivalent and I think it nails a sort of 'side-grade' difficulty, especially with how movement works; lots of times I found myself getting into high risk/reward situations, especially when chaingunners are involved.