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

[Chaosvolt]

Ah, nice. I'll definitely keep it in mind for if I do overhaul it to be a recharging ability instead of a powerup, thank you. Plus now I know who to credit if I do end up going with that. :3

[ravage]

Thought I'd make some bigger shell versions. Maybe you could find them useful?
Originally made from the unused id shells.

[Chaosvolt]

Ooh? Looks neat, guessing those could be used for ejection effects if I were to add those, otherwise not sure where they'd fit in best. They'd be hard to see in the reload animation as it is now for example, hence one can only really see a flash of the coloration during it just for consistency.

Though I can see that an ejecting shell effect would require a little bit added complexity, mostly just to ensure that only one shell spawns if you reload with one barrel still usable, or if only had one shell left to load beforehand. My guess is something that gives the player spent shells as inventory items each time they fire, then on the reload animation specifically depletes that counter and spawns spent shells based on how many you had at the time...

[Chaosvolt]

And now after a bit of working on it, version 1.75 has been released.
* Made the plasma shell spread more consistent with the other ammo types, from base spread of 10 to 6.
* To balance for this tightened spread, and to reduce risk of lag since every pellet gives off a dynamic light, reduced base pellets per shot from 40 to 30.
* Fixed some inconsistent damage in slug firing states, and standardized them around now matching the average damage of all the pellets in buckshot, instead of simply being far higher damage-wise.
* Converted Fast Fire powerup into an adrenaline effect, combining double firing speed with a movement speed buff, and moving the buffed melee damage from Guns Akimbo to it.
* Adrenaline can now be toggled on and off from an item that starts in your inventory, with the adrenaline powerup adding 60 seconds worth of charges to it. Prints a message on turning adrenaline on or off, or if you try to use it without charges.
* Due to above, the added powerups now always go in inventory instead of being instant-use.
* Tweaked the status bar info to account for the above changes, with it showing a faded inventory icon if adrenaline is selected but not currently usable, plus with it showing the charges of adrenaline instead of the activator item's quantity.
* Made the tint of the adrenaline effect a bit easier to notice.
* Did some tweaks to decaldef and lighting stuff to try and make plasma shells a bit less laggy when point-blank'd into a wall.

The major thing would be the adrenaline mechanic, replacing the old fast-fire powerup from before. Aside from just bundling up a movespeed buff and moving the melee damage bonus over to it, it also works as basically a Duke Nukem 3D style powerup, where picking it up grants charges that are depleted over time when you toggle the powerup on. It does mean the status bar face (which didn't show in Chex Quest and Heretic anyway, weh) and option to insta-use the mod-specific powerup are lost in the crossfire, but oh well.

I've still got some other stuff I want to work on sometime too, notably implementing the watcher code suggested earlier so that a specific option can be set to regain charges of adrenaline with kills. My rough thinking is probably 3 seconds worth per 1000 HP of kills, 1 second's worth if using adrenaline to do so. Something like that, basically to encourage building up adrenaline faster by racking up kills without it, but still making it feasible to actually sustain it with enough meat in front of you.

The other thing I oughta mess with is the reload animation for dual shotguns. Basically just use a faster animation that only depicts opening and reloading the left shotgun if you have enough shells loaded that only the left shotgun has been fired. That way the player isn't effectively punished with a time penalty for reloading early. Main complication here is it needs to also vary if there are only 1 or 2 shells left to load...

EDIT: For now I've given up on the event handler idea as it doesn't seem to work right when I try to implement it. For now, additional updates:
* Set it so that you can't waste guns akimbo powerup if you already have it active, in the event you found more than one in a level.
* Added keybinds for quick-using adrenaline and guns akimbo, which can be bound in the mod options menu.
* Also set it so available charges of adrenaline are also shown under the weapon tag while adrenaline is active.

[Chaosvolt]

I return from the void with a small update. I want to eventually actually tackle some of the stuff on my to-do list but been busy juggling other stuff, but for now I remembered to tack on a minimum arming distance bit to explosive slugs.