LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

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dawnbreez
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LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by dawnbreez »

Image
There are many beings who fight the forces of Evil.
Some use blades. Others use guns.
You...are a LASER PALADIN. You use LASERS.
Go forth, and rain LASER JUSTICE upon your foes!!


Laser Justice is an arcade-y, pistol-starts-enforced, score-attack, buddha-mode mod for Doom 1/2, inspired by both classic shmups like Gradius and modern action games such as Projections. That's a lot to take in, so let me break that down for you:

THE FIGHT GOES ON FOR EVER!
You are immortal, but that doesn't mean eating a fireball to the face isn't painful.
GO FOR THE HIGH SCORE!
Instead of tracking kills and items, watch your score in each level go up! Kill monsters and collect coins to boost your Multiplier, but beware--taking damage will halve your score and your multiplier!
USE BOMBS WISELY!
Wield bombs to nullify incoming projectiles, use Shield Tokens to protect yourself, and turn the tables with a LASER DODGE!

HOW TO PLAY:
FIRE: Your primary attack. Collect UPGRADE TOKENS to improve it, or a GUNLIMITER to wield the power of many weapons at once!
ALTFIRE: Use a BOMB. Bombs turn incoming projectiles into bonuses, and stunlock enemies that get too close!
They also do enough damage to seriously injure or kill smaller enemies.
RUN: Attempt a DODGE. Dodging gives you a brief period of invincibility.
Dodging just as an attack hits (3-frame window) triggers a LASER DODGE--you'll know you got it just right when you see a blue flash.
THE HUD:
Image
Spoiler: Screenshots
DOWNLOAD HERE FOR GREAT JUSTICE!
Click on "Source code (zip)" and save as a pk3.
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That0neBr075
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by That0neBr075 »

Cool mod! Has the same frantic vibe as an actual arcade shmup, very nice!
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Captain J
 
 
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by Captain J »

Nice to see even more of arcade-inspired doom mod. I love the weapon level up concept and the gameplay is smooth and fast. Also Coins flying around, picking them all up is satisfying too. And here are some feedhack i'd like to show:

- Bomb you use manually personally feels underwhelming. The special effect is like it can kill multiple enemies around you but kills just one guy.

- First of all, i'm okay with my score resets each level and stored into the intermission, but my weapon power resets as well. Granted, you can level up all the way up but it makes later levels extra difficult. Certainly like you're forced to pistol-start in later, harder level. I understand why though.

- How can i adjust the swaying intensity of my weapon? It sways way too much in my opinion and can be quite a distraction.

Omega Beam is way too satisfying to use, have to admit. Decent gameplay mod with effective simplicity going on, my friend!
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dawnbreez
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by dawnbreez »

Captain J wrote:Nice to see even more of arcade-inspired doom mod. I love the weapon level up concept and the gameplay is smooth and fast. Also Coins flying around, picking them all up is satisfying too. And here are some feedhack i'd like to show:

- Bomb you use manually personally feels underwhelming. The special effect is like it can kill multiple enemies around you but kills just one guy.
The main use of the bomb is supposed to be stunlocking enemies and destroying incoming projectiles--much like in bullet-hell shmups, the damage is really more of a bonus than the main effect. That said, yeah, adding some damage couldn't hurt--and I should probably remove the damage falloff from it, since you're supposed to use it at a distance anyway...
- First of all, i'm okay with my score resets each level and stored into the intermission, but my weapon power resets as well. Granted, you can level up all the way up but it makes later levels extra difficult. Certainly like you're forced to pistol-start in later, harder level. I understand why though.
The weapons are very much balanced around pistol starts, yeah. I don't really have a plan for fixing that--it would be kinda busted if you just kept the Omega Beam throughout the rest of the game.
- How can i adjust the swaying intensity of my weapon? It sways way too much in my opinion and can be quite a distraction.
This is really important feedback--I'm still working on the weapon sway script, and it didn't even occur to me to add a way to control how far it moves. I'll get to work on adding some CVars for it.
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dawnbreez
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by dawnbreez »

VERSION 1.0.4: COOL HANDS AND BIG BOOMS
Is now available on the github!

Changelog:
Spoiler:
JohnnyTheWolf
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by JohnnyTheWolf »

Interesting mod, but I am not sure I understand how I am supposed to handle hitscan enemies: since they do not shoot projectiles, I cannot dodge their attacks!
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dawnbreez
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by dawnbreez »

JohnnyTheWolf wrote:Interesting mod, but I am not sure I understand how I am supposed to handle hitscan enemies: since they do not shoot projectiles, I cannot dodge their attacks!
I feel you, and I considered making enemy replacements to go with the weapon replacement, but ultimately I decided to release without enemies.

That said, *technically* your dodge works on hitscans--you get +INVULNERABLE for 10 frames when you dodge, so anything that tries to shoot you in that period of time will do no damage. In addition, your Bomb will stunlock enemies inside its radius, and does enough damage to kill all three vanilla zombies, so you could try getting close and then setting off a bomb.

I might make a standalone enemy replacer that just replaces the hitscanners with projectile-based enemies later.
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openroadracer
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by openroadracer »

I'll download this and give it a shot later; but with all these shmup-based gameplay mods, I notice that they're all based on Japanese arcade shmups. I wonder if anyone's ever thought to try bringing over the mechanics of a Tyrian or a Jets'N'Guns to DooM.

I can't be the only person that's thought of replicating that kind of gameplay in DooM, can I?
JohnnyTheWolf
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by JohnnyTheWolf »

What enemy replacement mod are you using in the screenshots?
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openroadracer
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by openroadracer »

JohnnyTheWolf wrote:What enemy replacement mod are you using in the screenshots?
The one showing the HUD seems to be Combined Harms, while the first one in the spoiler looks like Rampancy. Can't tell in the others, sadly.
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openroadracer
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by openroadracer »

Okay, I did download and play this a few hours ago; honestly, while I'm impressed by the effort put in to designing the mod and making it all work, even after just two maps it's obvious that this mod doesn't suit me at all.

The main thing was the fact that my weapon is permanently locked to whatever upgrade level it's at, instead of giving me the ability to switch to whatever's most useful at the time, I.E. Wide Laser for up close, Long Laser at range, Dual Laser for crowds, Buster Laser for hard targets, you get the idea. Also not a fan of forced inventory resets; never have been, never will be.

I guess this all means that, well, yeah, a Tyrian- or Jets'N'Guns-based, or otherwise euroshmup-based gameplay mod would be much more my style.
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dawnbreez
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by dawnbreez »

JohnnyTheWolf wrote:What enemy replacement mod are you using in the screenshots?
As openroadracer points out, I took the screenshots with Malefactors (formerly known as Combined Harms) and Rampancy. A couple of the later screenshots also feature Touhou Doom Enemies. This should work with any enemy replacements, as well as vanilla.
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marco.nadal.75
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by marco.nadal.75 »

Any chance of making the player mortal? Game is no fun if there's no challenge.

Otherwise, cool mod, I can see playing slaughterwads with this.
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Doctrine Gamer
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by Doctrine Gamer »

I liked that are immortal and life is infinite, with that I just need to focus on the score but for players who appreciate extra challenge the mod could have an option to turn damage on and off.

Captain J

"First of all, i'm okay with my score resets each level and stored into the intermission, but my weapon power resets as well. Granted, you can level up all the way up but it makes later levels extra difficult. Certainly like you're forced to pistol-start in later, harder level. I understand why though."

dawnbreez:

"The weapons are very much balanced around pistol starts, yeah. I don't really have a plan for fixing that--it would be kinda busted if you just kept the Omega Beam throughout the rest of the game."

A suggestion:

in this case, it could be the player's normal mode be able to change the weapon, so whoever wants to have more challenge can just continue the whole game with the laser beam without changing weapons in hard levels or else in this case use some kind of punishment score for using more powerful weapons if the option to reset weapon power is disabled.
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dawnbreez
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Re: LASER JUSTICE: Yet Another Shmup Doom Mod

Post by dawnbreez »

marco.nadal.75 wrote:Any chance of making the player mortal? Game is no fun if there's no challenge.

Otherwise, cool mod, I can see playing slaughterwads with this.
The idea is that instead of using death as the punishment for bad play, your score suffers. You can achieve astronomically high scores if you play perfectly, and if you just facetank all projectiles, your score will suffer for it.

...maybe I should edit the HUD and make the score a bit larger...
Doctrine Gamer wrote:I liked that are immortal and life is infinite, with that I just need to focus on the score but for players who appreciate extra challenge the mod could have an option to turn damage on and off.
I mean, sure. I might implement that whenever I figure out what I'm gonna do next for this.
Doctrine Gamer wrote: A suggestion:

in this case, it could be the player's normal mode be able to change the weapon, so whoever wants to have more challenge can just continue the whole game with the laser beam without changing weapons in hard levels or else in this case use some kind of punishment score for using more powerful weapons if the option to reset weapon power is disabled.
I was honestly thinking of doing a second playerclass, possibly after playing some of the shmups that openroadracer mentioned. I'd have to rebalance the weapons *anyway* to account for the ability to switch weapons at any time, so I might as well build another character who uses the rebalanced weapons.

That said, I'm probably not coming back to this for a while yet. One, I need to do research so I can get the second playerclass right, and two, I have other stuff I wanna work on. I'm happy with where the mod is right now, so I'm okay with leaving it alone for a bit.

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