Shotgunnery mod v1.85 (latest update: 7/10/23)

[Chaosvolt]

I'm tempted to revert that yeah, yeah. And on the list of things for me to tackle in a bit, for some reason fast fire isn't going into the inventory bar when the "carry powerups" setting is on, and I need to do something to get the incendiary shell's fire crackle noise playing in Heretic it seems.

EDIT: and latest updates:
* Fixed incendiary shell's projectile lacking a compatibility entry in SNDINFO.
* Fixed fast fire powerup failing to pick up properly when "carry powerups" setting is on.
* Nerfed value of shell boxes from 20 down to 16.
* In exchange, bumped up max shell capacities from 50/100 to 80/160.
* Tweaked sprites for shell boxes slightly.
* Per request, went ahead and set it so slugs can gib again.

[Captain J]

This is very clever! IRL Shotgun shell variants are indeed vast and it's nice that we can use more than plain ol' buckshot shells in doom. Also i like the accuracy on Akimbo SSG each time you fire barrel after barrel!

More shell variants would be awesome too. Like making Rainbow of Shells!

[Chaosvolt]

This is very clever! IRL Shotgun shell variants are indeed vast and it's nice that we can use more than plain ol' buckshot shells in doom. Also i like the accuracy on Akimbo SSG each time you fire barrel after barrel!

More shell variants would be awesome too. Like making Rainbow of Shells!

Thanks! I was certainly tempted to add even more shell options, though right now it's pretty much at the point where there's an ammo type for basically every main vanilla weapon available, and slotting more into the spawns might be difficult. On the other hand, both bouncy rubber slugs and tazer slugs would still be very tempting to add, if I could think of good places to put them. Possibly as alternatives for what regular slugs and incendiary shells spawn respectively...

[GoalDude-00]

Very good work, it really breathes some new life into the single gun concept. Found no bugs, though I do have a single suggestion: change the firing sound for the plasma shells. The SSG's mighty boom might be powerful, but it's just not the same as the BFG's firing/crashing sound. The flash and impact sounds can stay the same.

That's it, this mod is weirdly enough very good for slaughterish maps. It's not particularly overpowered and I nearly died on Anomaly Report's map 15, which I do normally struggle to get through without dying at least once or twice.

[Chaosvolt]

I was tempted to edit together some sounds to fit the variant shells a bit, yeah. Possibly starting with the basic gunshot sounds, then mixing in something fitting from one of the energy weapons, if the result blends together decently...

[Chaosvolt]

And now with 1.4 I finally have indeed implemented some different sounds. Explosive shells get a firing sound that blends the relevant gunshot sounds together with the grenade launcher firing sound from Strife. Incendiary shells meanwhile make use of two fiery weapon sounds, Flamestrike and Bloodscourge from Hexen, mixed and tweaked a bit to have a bit more consistent sound when meshed in with the gunshot effect. Plasma shells for now make some fairly basic usage of sounds edited together incorporating the BFG plasma ball impact.

On top of that, I added a third option to the powerup options to randomize what spawns in place of berserk packs and chainsaws. By default, chainsaw spawns yield fast-fire while berserk spawns yield guns akimbo. With the new option enabled, both pick either one at random. Best used for Chex Quest since you don't seem to encounter berserk packs in there, also useful for episode one of Doom.

And also incorporated some proper gloved punching sprites, again edited from Angled Doom. Bit more consistent that way. Since you're depicted swapping shotguns fairly quickly (and editing that brass knuckle ring thingy onto any visible left hand in the shotgun sprites would be a bigger pain in the ass), they've also been edited so that the primary fire punches lack the brass knuckles, as the altfire jabs already did.

EDIT: And worked on another update afterward:
* Added an option that allows the quick-melee function to also block projectiles if you time the swings right. Won't block bullets, and trying to use it on a rocket is a Bad Idea, but does have some utility if enabled.
* Added an option that sets it so that dual shotguns will fire all four barrels one altfire, if they're all loaded. Comes at cost of increased spread and recoil, regular altfire can still occur with this setting on if you have less than four barrels loaded.
* Fixed dual shotguns with explosive slugs still using generic shotgun sound effects instead of the custom sound for explosive slugs.
* Updated readme.

[ArchVain12]

Its possible have smooth doom animation or not in future updates?

[Chaosvolt]

Its possible have smooth doom animation or not in future updates?

Might be doable, though I'd have to be mindful of the animations where offsets are used to position things, to make sure it doesn't end up looking janky.

[Chaosvolt]

For now though, messed with a big bundle of updates:
* Overhauled how reloading and loaded chambers are handled, making the shotguns significantly less fragile and less vulnerable to ending up in a state that might leave you unable to select a weapon.
* Also fixed the issue where co-op always forces the player to respawn with fists equipped.
* Set it so that you can cancel out of a reload into quick-melee if you hit the zoom command early enough. Also means the shotguns will be able to force a reload if you've somehow put them in a state where they're both ready but also empty.
* Converted the weapon name script into part of the custom ZScript HUD. This fixes some issues where the displayed weapon name could potentially fail to trigger.
* Shifted around the damage of incendiary shell projectiles to favor a bit more direct hit damage and slightly less burn damage, also adds a tweak to how its velocity changes on hitting monsters, allowing it to burn a beaten zone into a crowd of enemies instead of settling at the very edge of the group after initial impact.

---

Basically, a friend and I got to messing around with the mod in co-op. Good news is I figured out that the host can just set their mod options however they like during a normal instance of GZDoom and it'll automatically take effect when they host a game later on. I did run into some bugs though, the only major one was quickly fixed in v1.51 soon after (having "share powerups" enabled wasn't working right since it was still taking line of sight into account).

For the other stuff, most of it was either display oversights or related to ammo behavior. I'd done A LOT of work to try and tightly control how loaded chambers are handled to ensure it never breaks, but this was because any case where you end up with zero loaded chambers and aren't immediately switching weapons risked softlocking the player, because both the actual ammo and the loaded chamber ammo were considered mandatory. A minor side effect of this discovered in playtesting was that co-op players would always switch to fists the instant they respawn, luckily without breaking weapon switching.

This required me to completely, heavily overhaul how the shotguns handle ammo behavior. It required, among many other things, setting it so that loaded chambers weren't considered valid ammo for the primary fire, making it so the fire states consume loaded chambers via A_TakeInventory, some tweaks to how the fire states end, etc etc. Eventually that rigged it all so that shotguns should now be FAR less fragile if you somehow get them in a state that has it sitting there with empty chambers.

A side effect of this is that I was ALSO able to rig it so that you can interrupt part of the reload state to quick-melee, letting you follow up both barrels with a pistol-whip if you're quick enough. This is an improvement over only being able to slap enemies when in the ready state.

As for visual stuff, it was all tied to how the weapon name was set to display. Basically, it was displaying it via a script that calls HudMessage via a big-ass pile of if-else hackery. This of course only works so long as every possible case where you might switch weapons calls the script, and also doesn't update if you change POV using co-op spy. To fix all that, I had to work it into the HUD itself. Took some fiddling and some pestering the forum with questions (once again I ran afoul of the lack of documentation for ZScript status bar stuff), but eventually got it working.

And finally, another friend gave some thoughts on the incendiary shells. Their main role is for cleaning up crowds and for area denial, but firing it square into a group of enemies had a fairly underwhelming effect. At first, making it a ripper projectile seemed like the only real way to give it some way to burn its way into a group of enemies. I wanted to then make it randomly lose momentum and settle across a "beaten zone" after initial contact, but I soon found out that bouncing and ripper behavior do not play nice, namely the Bounce.Actor state doesn't seem to trigger for ripper projectiles.

So the fix I settled on was a sort of extension of the existing fuckery that makes the flames drift forwards at random as they burn. In this case I set it so that, if the projectile is still in midair and hits its death state, instead of completely halting it continues forward with a random, vastly-reduced, velocity. Bouncing off walls and the like meanwhile will generally arrest its momentum as normal.

In addition, I also shifted a bit of the damage from the burn effect to the projectile itself, so you have valid reasons to want to pelt a big monster with the main impact OR try to pepper the ground so they get caught in the maximum possible afterburn.

[lulle]

Nice mod. I mean: Sometimes less is more

[Chaosvolt]

Nice mod. I mean: Sometimes less is more

Thanks, heh. I find myself tempted to see what other lil touches I can add to improve things and add to gameplay, and while Demonsteel-esque flairs like dashing or a combo mechanic tempt me a lil bit, I can't think of many additional ideas that would actually pair well with the core idea of "shoot, reload, pace yourself and you'll be able to handle anything" that I've found dominates gameplay with this mod.

Sounds and sprites are definitely something I'm tempted to add more work towards, stuff to give a consistent appearance across the games it's compatible with and ensure I don't have to risk any problems that might ensue from having vanilla sprites and sounds stashed away for IWAD-compatibility stuff, but part of why I ended up getting so involved in this instead of another project I have on the backburner is being that mod needs a lot more in the way of complex sprite editing before I feel up to release it, especially weapon sprites which are the bane of my existence if I have to do them myself.

[GoalDude-00]

Something that crossed my mind the other day, would you say adding a temporary "ultra shotgun" to go with invulnerability spheres could fit the mod's gameplay? You could just use Eriance's SSG sprites for that, I think. The mod's not exactly hurting for anything else but who knows, maybe it could play a little into making is a smidge Demonsteele-y.

[Chaosvolt]

Something that crossed my mind the other day, would you say adding a temporary "ultra shotgun" to go with invulnerability spheres could fit the mod's gameplay? You could just use Eriance's SSG sprites for that, I think. The mod's not exactly hurting for anything else but who knows, maybe it could play a little into making is a smidge Demonsteele-y.

Hmm, maybe? Not sure what it'd do behavior-wise. One other small idea that came up, which admittedly would be less Demonsteele and more High Noon Drifter, would be to see about implementing some sort of slow-motion effect, possibly bound to a meter rather than a powerup (one that fills based off damage same way HND refills the Dead Man's Holster meter maybe?).

Issue with that admittedly would be I'd want to bind yet another key, presumably a user-state key. Also that'd raise the issue of whether to keep the fast-fire powerup as it is or replace it with something that either unlocks the slow-motion ability or adds a bonus to its meter, or what...

[Chaosvolt]

It's been a while, but I made a couple little updates to the mod lately, and hashed out some possible plans for further additions. For now it's just some simple stuff adding to effects. Slug impacts now have a short-range quake effect when they hit, similar to other hard-hitting effects in the mod. Likewise, when you've got a damage boost from gun akimbo (since right now it also effectively doubles as berserk and still grants a melee damage bonus), using quick-melee will also have a similar impact. No such effect on boosted fists yet, though I could maybe...

Plasma shells also got a slight tweak to how their damage works. Basically just shifted part of their damage over from the actual hitscan effect to a short-range AoE, set to not harm the user (unlike explosive slugs and incendiary shell effects), and also (for now) still affecting bosses like incendiary shells currently do. End result is the same average damage per plasma pellet, but min and max damage is both nudged closer to the average a bit.

One thing I'm tempted to do is change the fast-fire powerup into some sort of adrenaline powerup. Basically set it so it grants a movement speed boost as well as its current rate of fire effect, and additionally switch it up so the melee damage bonus is assigned to it instead of to guns akimbo.

One thing this does tempt me to ponder is the possibility of an adrenaline mechanic instead of a limited powerup. This would require dabbling in a bit more scripting to basically set it so you have a specific ammo that drains steadily over time, requires a certain minimum level to activate, etc. The big question there is, should this be implemented as a powerup that stays in inventory to toggle on or off as needed, or should it be assigned to yet another keybind? Since altifre, reload, and zoom are all already assigned uses as it is, this would require setting aside yet more keys for the player to juggle unless I stuck with using the inventory hotbar. That said, if I did go full potat and set aside a separate keybind to toggle an adrenaline mechanic on and off, I could also do the same for toggling dual shotguns on and off.

The other thing to ponder, if I were to do that though, is whether to have such a mechanic recharge over time, or rig a way to make it check for damage or kills...for the latter, a very easy way to do this without any monster overrides for the hitscan ammo types would just be to have the XDeath states call A_GiveToTarget to give the firing player a given amount of adrenaline relative to how much damage being doled out. But since the flechette and incendiary shells are non-standard projectiles, that would'nt cut it for them. I'm guessing I'd have to look at how High Noon Drifter implements its method of checking for monster kills to refill its Dead Man's Holster meter, seems like the most logical since it also scales by the victim's HP.

[Zhs2]

The other thing to ponder, if I were to do that though, is whether to have such a mechanic recharge over time, or rig a way to make it check for damage or kills...for the latter, a very easy way to do this without any monster overrides for the hitscan ammo types would just be to have the XDeath states call A_GiveToTarget to give the firing player a given amount of adrenaline relative to how much damage being doled out. But since the flechette and incendiary shells are non-standard projectiles, that would'nt cut it for them. I'm guessing I'd have to look at how High Noon Drifter implements its method of checking for monster kills to refill its Dead Man's Holster meter, seems like the most logical since it also scales by the victim's HP.

ZScript would be required for this, but it's pretty simple. What I did in High Noon Drifter was give a number of tokens to the killer based on the enemy's spawn health in a WorldThingDied event, like so:

Code: Select all

override void WorldThingDied(WorldEvent e)
    {
        let victim = e.thing;
        let killer = e.thing.target;
        if(victim.bISMONSTER == FALSE) { return; }
        if(victim.bFRIENDLY == TRUE) { return; }
        if((killer is "PlayerPawn") && killer.CountInv("AttainedSpaghettiAbility"))
        {
            // Only run if the killer is a player, he knows how to spaghetti, and can't currently spaghetti.
            if(victim.DamageTypeReceived == "QuickDraw")
            {
                // If the monster was killed by quick draw, do nothing.
                // Prevents cheaty scenarios like quickdrawing a boss for an instant fill.
                return;
            }

            // Give the monster's starting health as charge weight.
            if (killer.CountInv("SpaghettiCharged1") == 0) { killer.GiveInventory("SpaghettiCharge1", victim.GetSpawnHealth()); }
            if (killer.CountInv("SpaghettiCharged1") == 1) { killer.GiveInventory("SpaghettiCharge2", victim.GetSpawnHealth()); }
            if (killer.CountInv("SpaghettiCharged2") == 1) { killer.GiveInventory("SpaghettiCharge3", victim.GetSpawnHealth()); }
            
            if(killer.CountInv("SpaghettiCharge1") >= 4000 && killer.CountInv("SpaghettiCharged1") == 0)
            {
                killer.GiveInventory("SpaghettiCharged1",1);
                killer.GiveInventory("SpaghettiPickupEffect",1); // Simulates a holster pickup.
            }
            ... // ditto for spaghetti charges 2 and 3

You can see the rest of this code in HND at the bottom of zactors\items\quickdraw.zsc. If you wanted to do this based on damage instead you could use a WorldThingDamaged event to get the raw damage, and from the Inflictor field make sure the damager is a player by checking if the inflictor is a projectile and getting that thing's target. See more info on events at Events and handlers.