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

[ValeriePalerie]

Really enjoying the new balance pass, one minor thing I've noticed is that you still spawn a normal bloodsplat sprite when your shields are hit, which isn't a big deal normally, but very noticeable when using droplets or nashgore.

[TheRailgunner]

Okay a little bit of feedback :

-movement seems a little slow, I have the auto-sprint option enabled. Like a tiny bump in the default movement speed would be a benefit, unless I'm doing something wrong ?
- not sure how much of a headache it would be but to be able to dash while ADS, un-zooming would keep it balanced I feel.
- maybe its just me but the rocket launcher feels like it needs a little bit of splash damage, i didn't notice any.
- other than that the railgun is beautiful along with the shotgun, assault rifle feels a tad weak, alt fire feels good on it though.

Overall this is a ton of fun, keep up the good work !

Alright, SO:

*I'm probably gonna tweak the movement speed again - the base value for the player's movement speed in any direction is 0.4, making the sprinting speed 0.8, about 20% slower than Doomguy. Yeah, I should bump that up to 0.5/1.0.
*Dashing DOESN'T unzoom while ADS? I'm almost certain I designed it so sprints and dashes can be done during ADS and unzoom while doing so.
*Probably - I'm considering expanding the damage radius and possibly adjusting the amount of ammo torpedo pickups give. There SHOULD be, though (by default, most weapons that can hurt the player do less damage TO the player - for multi-layer explosions, the largest damage radii generally don't hurt the player at all, with only the smaller, closer-range damage radii actually posing a threat; this allows the player to survive some of the more damaging explosions in a pinch, though most point-blank explosions still deal potentially fatal damage anyway, the K-JACK's default torpedoes excluded)
*I actually JUST nerfed the Nishimura Seven Battle Rifle...sort of. Expanded its magazine from 24 to 36 and reduced the per-bullet damage from 20 to 15, mostly because "the rifle is OP" is a very common item of feedback I've received. I don't really know what to do from here - I want the N7 to FEEL overpowered, but I don't want it to BE overpowered...but I also don't want it to be an automatic peashooter either. It's supposed to have (metaphorical) TEETH, dammit.

I found that you can go pretty fast by sprinting & punching at the same time, it is definitely faster than dashing. But this can’t be done when you equip the shotgun.

...you can't? I could probably use some information on this.

Really enjoying the new balance pass, one minor thing I've noticed is that you still spawn a normal bloodsplat sprite when your shields are hit, which isn't a big deal normally, but very noticeable when using droplets or nashgore.

FUCK, I didn't realize (probably because I'm not using Droplets or Nashgore) - I'll see if there's a workaround, which might actually be more possible now that I've hastily ported the player to ZScript.

It seems that, at the very least, I should increase the movement speed and maybe mess with explosions somewhat. Also, gonna root around for input and state transition bugs, particularly the shotgun.

[ValeriePalerie]

I feel like the AR could work pretty well with the old clip size/damage output but around half total ammo, similar to how Final Doomer's Hellbound set chaingun works.

[Turnock]

The New spreadshot on the Railgun feels very nice, works very well at quick crowd control, something that was slightly lacking. (Since most of the effective crowd control attacks caused damage to the player at close range) I have tested with the sidearm, the shotgun, and the rifle. When closeup to a wall, the shots will always be underneath and to the right of the crosshair, when using the sights, the shots will be directly underneath the crosshair. When at range, its unnoticeable since the shots will go to the crosshair, regardless of the sights. Its not really a nuisance since it is only in close quarters. Also, when shooting over any chest high barrier, such as the platforms in Doom2 Map01 in the Window room connecting to the exit. If you try to shoot any target on the other side of the platform, the shots will hit the platform instead of where the crosshair is, making it look like your rounds are coming from below your weapon.

[TheRailgunner]

The New spreadshot on the Railgun feels very nice, works very well at quick crowd control, something that was slightly lacking. (Since most of the effective crowd control attacks caused damage to the player at close range) I have tested with the sidearm, the shotgun, and the rifle. When closeup to a wall, the shots will always be underneath and to the right of the crosshair, when using the sights, the shots will be directly underneath the crosshair. When at range, its unnoticeable since the shots will go to the crosshair, regardless of the sights. Its not really a nuisance since it is only in close quarters. Also, when shooting over any chest high barrier, such as the platforms in Doom2 Map01 in the Window room connecting to the exit. If you try to shoot any target on the other side of the platform, the shots will hit the platform instead of where the crosshair is, making it look like your rounds are coming from below your weapon.

I'm working on this for Demo 5 - I've changed the general alignment of projectiles from spawn offset x = 6 and spawn height = -0.95/-1 to spawn offset x = 3 and spawn height = 6, which also has the side effect of reducing the inaccuracy of player-spawned projectiles (from what I can tell, spawning a projectile from any alignment other than just about dead center - such as Doom's Rocket, Plasma Ball, or BFG Ball - causes it to hit slightly off, with the offset increasing as the spawn point's offset does; the offset also increases the closer you are to the projectile's impact, so shooting a wall from 500 map units is going to be more offset than shooting a wall from 10,000 MU, as the projectile's path can't align as well with the center line in the distance given - this also explains why bullet impacts tend rightward and not leftward - player projectiles are always spawned from the right side). The exception here is the N12 Railgun, and only while zooming, as the weapon's barrel is visibly much lower than the sight line - spawn height = 4. The new alignment also make shooting over chest-high barriers useful, and more convincingly gives the impression that the bullets are emitted from the weapons and not the player's torso.

I also found a bug with the N10 Shotgun's sprinting melee - apparently, when adjusting the weapon's recoil multiplier, I applied to quick melee recoil as well, cutting the sprinting melee thrust down to a quarter of its normal force (for some reason, GZDoom doesn't play nice with division - The Trooper's recoil divisors, for example, were inaccurate; I later had to go in, divide all of the recoil and pitch/angle shifts manually, then replace the divisors with multipliers in order for the final values to scale properly and return the crosshairs to their starting locations).

The Nishimura Seven Battle Rifle's increased magazine size is being kept, along with the old damage value (from Demos 1-3 - 20 damage vs Demo 4's 15), but as ValeriePalerie suggested, I am halving the ammo that ClipBox-equivalent pickups (i.e., full N7 magazine) provide, from 72 to 36 - this also changes the pickup from being two magazines to just one. I may reduce the Clip replacement from 6 to 4 and the N7 pickup's from 12 to 8. As much as I like the N7's reload (it was the first of the reload animations I ever did, and I put a disproportionate amount of heart into it), I can live with having to seeing it somewhat less often.

The N10's altfire may be replaced - I'm thinking something stunning rather than outright damage, more incapacitation-oriented.

I've decided that Malice desperately needs two things:
*Grenades! Goddamn, does this mod need quick grenades! I'm not sure how I'm gonna do it, but I'm thinking of having a limited charge regenerative grenade supply - you hold three, and they regenerate indefinitely once used, but have a recharge timer, so if you throw all three of them, you have to wait until at least one of your grenades has regenerated. It does give me a use for the User 4 key, though (I consider it "reserved" for an undetermined final weapon function).
*Dedicated version of Some Fists and a Kick - this is frequently requested, and if people ARE hoping to play this more like classic Doom, then it ought to have a standalone counterpart; otherwise, I'm just keeping melee away from purists, and that's just...wrong. Expect the Slot 1 version to have comboability and some special variations of the basic melee ensemble...plus any creative additions I managed to sneak in.

I'm gonna see if making Malice's HUD play nice with different resolutions is as easy as making variations of the fullscreen HUD with different resolution parameters. It probably isn't, but I REALLY don't know how to make it work seamlessly out-of-the-box.

[Ferretmanjcdenton]

Hey there ...

https://youtu.be/PV5-8_utIxE

I uploaded a small showcase ..

Sadly the run button doesn't work for me ..
I used. Delta touch (Android) with lzdoom 3.86a ..
Gonna test it also with gzdoom 1.9/3.2/3.8/4.5 later ..
But often there is something inside the code preventing these move add-ons to work probably with Delta touch ...

Also the whole weapons are amazing ..I didn't found ANY bugs (for now ..played only 3 maps) or problems with them except the big bfg variant causes when shooting some lag on mobile ...even on the strongest of SOCs ..(Snapdragon 865+)
Other than that it's perfect ...
Also ..what are the extra buttons for?
If these have a function then they also don't work ...

[TheRailgunner]

Hey there ...

https://youtu.be/PV5-8_utIxE

I uploaded a small showcase ..

Sadly the run button doesn't work for me ..
I used. Delta touch (Android) with lzdoom 3.86a ..
Gonna test it also with gzdoom 1.9/3.2/3.8/4.5 later ..
But often there is something inside the code preventing these move add-ons to work probably with Delta touch ...

Also the whole weapons are amazing ..I didn't found ANY bugs (for now ..played only 3 maps) or problems with them except the big bfg variant causes when shooting some lag on mobile ...even on the strongest of SOCs ..(Snapdragon 865+)
Other than that it's perfect ...
Also ..what are the extra buttons for?
If these have a function then they also don't work ...

So, I don't know how to adapt the user function keybinds for Delta Touch - does it have equivalents for Weapon States 1-4? Weapon State 1 is quick melee, WS 2 is fire selectors, and WS 3 is unique to any weapons that have them. WS 4 will, eventually, be the quick grenade key. Do reload and zoom work on DTouch (R and Z, respectively)?

There's an option under "Malice Options" to enable autosprint (it should be enabled by default, I'll have to look into it), which will remove the need to use the Run key.

I'm still working on paring down the CFG's special FX so lower-end and mobile computers can handle it - it's an ongoing process, but I'm hoping that by the end of this, Malice won't so much as ding the framerate on something like a Pentium 4.

For the most reliable experience, I recommend running Malice with the newest (preferably development build) of GZDoom, and I recommend using Vulkan as your hardware renderer, as I've noticed that it handles the FX much more easily. I'm not sure how LZDoom will fare - I'll have to test it.

[Ferretmanjcdenton]

Oh ok .. I'll definitely try ..
So there are missing features due to not working keys ..
Damn ..also I saw there is a sword I can't use ...

I can actually assign the keys in menu but they don't do anything ..
Can you maybe check that ..(you can install Delta touch on your PC with an Android EMULATOR ...)
Of course only if you have the time ..

[Ferretmanjcdenton]

Yeah ..I checked with gzdoom 4.5 ..

There's another problem ..the HUD can't be scaled probably .. meaning it won't fill the whole screen ..

Also vulkan isn't available yet ..
And the bfg variant still lags a bit in gzdoom also ..

I was hoping the keys would work in gzdoom but nope ..sadly.not ..
But running works now after I checked the always run option ..that's cool ..

[Irozu19]

okay I have some updated feedback after doing two HMP and UV runs on both Ult doom and Doom 2

-assault rifle feels fine the more that i use it i'd leave it alone
-dashing does work while ads (I'm just a dolt and was messing it up)
- in regards to the rocket launcher and splash dmg , a teeny tiny dmg boost would help the weapon overall

other than that the mod gets better the more I play with it

[TheRailgunner]

Wait a minute, did you say a fucking sword? The Trooper, Malice's predecessor, had a sword, but Malice does not, mostly owing to a lack of futuristic swords and sprites to match, if we're being honest here. Unless I missed something?

Yeah ..I checked with gzdoom 4.5 ..

There's another problem ..the HUD can't be scaled probably .. meaning it won't fill the whole screen ..

Also vulkan isn't available yet ..
And the bfg variant still lags a bit in gzdoom also ..

I was hoping the keys would work in gzdoom but nope ..sadly.not ..
But running works now after I checked the always run option ..that's cool ..

I decided it would be best to do this:

---

These should cover the most common issues with Malice - controls, HUD problems, and so on. Note that these were all taken in GZDoom 4.5pre131, as is obvious by the state of the "Classic Scale Menu" options - I'll start grabbing different source ports and seeing which ones play nice with Malice (so far, only GZDoom - and dev builds, at that), which ones need more work done ON Malice to run (presumably LZDoom and Delta Touch), and which ones will never work with Malice (at the moment, ZDoom and Zandronum fall into this last category until someone decides to build GZandronum - Weapon State functions and a battery of flags are indefinitely incompatible with Zandy).

[Tazer]

hi, I would like to playtest this mod

[Yeetee]

Please can I do a playtest? Looks really fun!

[Ferretmanjcdenton]

Sadly ..I must tell you the controlls issue can't be fixed by assigning the buttons ..just don't work ..

What the aspect ratio depends ..I did everything except the resolution which is in my case my phone resolution ..

1698*810

I'll try later if I can fix the HUD by changing the resolution ...
Would be really awesome if you could check the controll issue cause your mod is amazing .. would love to play it right ..

[-Ghost-]

Nice mod! Kind of seems like a spiritual successor to Project MSX. I'd be happy to playtest in the next wave if you need more testers.

Where would you put the power scale of everything right now? From the videos it looks like the player and weapons are pretty powerful, not like Russian Overkill levels, but strong.