[0.10.6] Gun Bonsai -- everything-compatible weapon upgrading

[Keldian]

The submunitions need to be reworked. Not only is it imbalanced because of the chain reaction, but it eats frames instead of breakfast when there are too many orbs. Ideally, the orbs should only fall out of the monster when the player kills it.

[ToxicFrog]

I was going to say "submunitions haven't chain-reacted since 0.8.4", but testing it, it looks like they can indirectly:
- you have a high level of acid or poison on the same weapon that has submunitions
- kill an enemy and it drops bomblets everywhere
- those inflict acid/poison on enemies they hit in addition to doing damage
- the acid/poison kills those enemies and they drop more bomblets...
which is not intended behaviour!

They could probably also stand to be toned down a bit in terms of sheer damage, although they're no longer as absurd as they were in 0.8.x.

[Dan_The_Noob]

submunitions honestly aren't super effective. at least, individual bombs.
So, I would say make it drop 1 bomb per rank and be stackable.

[Netheritor]

I see some fps problem. How about an additional thing for upgraded weapon? Beside the turn off/on upgrade, you can also decrease and increase the level too. Really need that for some upgrades. Lv6 submunitions isn't fun at all while using BFG (Like, upgrade is frag, sub, explosive death, and an element. No way I use frag for BFG).

[Dan_The_Noob]

i can't wait to see what else this mod gets, hopefully one day some co-op testing. i don't know how to debug for netcode errors, so i'm not holding my breath

[ToxicFrog]

Honestly, making it netcode-friendly should probably be my next focus, since the longer I put it off the hairier it's likely to be. I just am really not looking forward figuring out how to set up a multiplayer test environment.

[stainedofmind]

I see some fps problem. How about an additional thing for upgraded weapon? Beside the turn off/on upgrade, you can also decrease and increase the level too. Really need that for some upgrades. Lv6 submunitions isn't fun at all while using BFG (Like, upgrade is frag, sub, explosive death, and an element. No way I use frag for BFG).

I've been getting really bad, unplayable slowdowns with high levels of elemental effects, seems to be due to particles, so I've taken to just disabling them directly in the code for now, but may I suggest a menu option to reduce or turn off particle effects? Don't think this would help with Submunitions though. Speaking of, I had a suspicion that it was still triggering when it shouldn't, but was always too busy trying to survive while playing to notice! Lastly, it was mentioned by some that Rapid Fire isn't working all the time, and while I haven't been able to sit down and verify it fully myself, I feel like I've noticed it not working sometimes. When I get some time, and I notice specifically when/what its not working with, I'll update you to verify if its Gun Bonsai or the specific mod itself.

[ToxicFrog]

Turning off particle effects is doable, although I'm surprised you report it only with "high levels" of elemental effects -- the number of particles spawned doesn't scale with the upgrade level. I do wonder if I'm using them wrong; the documentation implies that particles should be extremely cheap and thus that you should be able to get away with large numbers of them.

For rapid fire, by "not working sometimes" do you mean "on some weapons it doesn't work, and on some it does", or "on any given weapon, it only works some of the time"? The former case means that my psprite wiggling code probably isn't as broadly compatible as I thought, the latter points to a likely bug in my OnActivate() code.

On the multiplayer side of things, I've actually been able to find and squash a bunch of desync bugs, and it's now at the point where if you set "upgrade choices per level up" to 1 so that it doesn't open the menu at all, it stays in sync. Opening the info menu is also fine, but opening it to choose an upgrade desyncs the game even before the upgrade is chosen, so there's definitely something weird going on there.

[ToxicFrog]

Ok, I think I may actually have it multiplayer-ready; at least, I can't get it to desync, although I haven't had a chance to test it extensively. There's a pre-release here; I'd appreciate it if anyone wishing to use GB in multiplayer would give it a try and let me know if it works, or if not, where it crashes or desyncs.

[stainedofmind]

Turning off particle effects is doable, although I'm surprised you report it only with "high levels" of elemental effects -- the number of particles spawned doesn't scale with the upgrade level. I do wonder if I'm using them wrong; the documentation implies that particles should be extremely cheap and thus that you should be able to get away with large numbers of them.

For rapid fire, by "not working sometimes" do you mean "on some weapons it doesn't work, and on some it does", or "on any given weapon, it only works some of the time"? The former case means that my psprite wiggling code probably isn't as broadly compatible as I thought, the latter points to a likely bug in my OnActivate() code.

On the multiplayer side of things, I've actually been able to find and squash a bunch of desync bugs, and it's now at the point where if you set "upgrade choices per level up" to 1 so that it doesn't open the menu at all, it stays in sync. Opening the info menu is also fine, but opening it to choose an upgrade desyncs the game even before the upgrade is chosen, so there's definitely something weird going on there.

Honestly, its hard to say what exactly is causing it, but since I've taken to doing runs with the particles disabled, I haven't had any issues. I feel like the issues started arising around Fire and Electric powers with the Elemental upgrades, but I'll definitely have to do more testing. I feel like I haven't quite managed to roll the same upgrades as I did when having the issues. I suppose it could also have something to do with the Submunitions going berserk too. There's also times when it feels like one of the effects is continuously triggering when it shouldn't, but I can't pin that down either.

Regarding rapid fire, I can't say for sure honestly which issue it is. Sometimes it feels like nothing is working, and other times it feels like only certain weapons aren't working, but then again, I also feel like maybe I'm just not good at judging if something is faster or not. I REALLY need to do some really good testing before I can say for sure which it is.

Sorry I don't have more concrete answers right now. I only have a limited amount of time to tinker, so my ability to do deep troubleshooting is a tad lacking. I will let you know if I find anything solid though.

Update: Got off my arse and did some VERY quick testing using the "Vanilla" RapidFire powerup, and it just flat out doesn't seem to work with some mods. The two I tested off the hop were Hell Crusher and Codename: DEMOLITIONIST, and as I suspected, neither of them played nicely with RapidFire, so I really don't think it actually has anything to do with your mod, but either some weirdness with how certain mods are built, or how the engine handles the powerup.

[Dan_The_Noob]

Ok, I think I may actually have it multiplayer-ready; at least, I can't get it to desync, although I haven't had a chance to test it extensively. There's a pre-release here; I'd appreciate it if anyone wishing to use GB in multiplayer would give it a try and let me know if it works, or if not, where it crashes or desyncs.

seems to work perfectly now, at least for the 8-ish maps i did so far with my friend.
another stone for the perfect co-op infinity gauntlet of mods

[Ryuhi]

Been having a lot of fun with the latest version as usual, had a few concerns/requests to propose as well:

1) Bouncy shots still feel a bit buggy. They work fine, but moreso the issue is with the detection to allow it as an option: I know you can stack more levels to allow shots to bounce off enemies for example, But I think the detection gets a little screwed up by shots that bounce and then hit enemies. I've had multiple weapons where it stops offering it as an option after only 1 or 2 levels. Best example are weapons like the shotguns in the Final Doomer Whitemare set, which is a shame since the SSG in particular feel awesome with the bouncy shots. As a workaround I've found that you can take and then disable the upgrade until gaining a few ranks in it, but I don't know where that type of workaround sits between intentional behavior or manipulating the detection methods, so figured I'd mention it.

2) Damage source bug. I know it has to do with the pointers not being calibrated in a standard way, but the aforementioned Whitemare set is another example: The burning effect from many of its weapons does not give experience. This happens with a few other mods as well, like the mini-arti subweapon in the Past Linked set in Combined Arms. Unfortunately I couldn't offer a suggestion to fix this, but wanted to bug report it nonetheless.

3) Piercing shots are way too strong, due to the nature of rippers. You can make a custom ripper that only hits once per target to fix this, otherwise you would want to do something extreme like reduce the projectile's damage by 90% and make it multi-tier, with each subsequent tier reducing the damage penalty by something like 5%. I really like the idea but never take it due to how absurdly strong it is.

4) Would it be possible to have a way of "reverting" to lower levels of an upgrade? I love how you can toggle them on and off, but there can sometimes be guesswork for when a power has too many tiers. The newly introduced rapid fire stacking is a good example of this, but others like fragmentation rounds can sometimes result in too many stacks starting to create performance issues, which leads to either disabling them or reloading earlier saves and/or savescumming before upgrading to test. If its not possible its not a big deal, as at least the aforementioned methods work for testing purposes.

I absolutely love pairing the mod with corruption cards, the two combined gives a great sense of progression to a lot of gameplay mods and the foresight for things like adjusting xp thresholds and rates gained was pretty genius. With enough tweaking it feels like you can make it balanced with damn near anything, even if you're only gaining levels once every few maps.

[Dan_The_Noob]

2) Damage source bug. I know it has to do with the pointers not being calibrated in a standard way, but the aforementioned Whitemare set is another example: The burning effect from many of its weapons does not give experience. This happens with a few other mods as well, like the mini-arti subweapon in the Past Linked set in Combined Arms. Unfortunately I couldn't offer a suggestion to fix this, but wanted to bug report it nonetheless.

this is a bug with Whitemare, more than Gun Bonsai.
probably things aren't tagged correctly to be considered part of the same weapon/player.

[Ryuhi]

2) Damage source bug. I know it has to do with the pointers not being calibrated in a standard way, but the aforementioned Whitemare set is another example: The burning effect from many of its weapons does not give experience. This happens with a few other mods as well, like the mini-arti subweapon in the Past Linked set in Combined Arms. Unfortunately I couldn't offer a suggestion to fix this, but wanted to bug report it nonetheless.

this is a bug with Whitemare, more than Gun Bonsai.
probably things aren't tagged correctly to be considered part of the same weapon/player.

Yeah, in that case in particular im pretty sure it has to do with how the thermosuit buildup mechanic works. I've seen it in other mods as well that use secondary damage sources, which is why i mentioned it. I was pleasantly surprised when the mod already had the ability to track damage properly from things like barrel explosions, so just wanted to see if there might be a similar possibility. Unfortunately the pistol in said Whitemare set is agonizingly slow to level, as it relies on said burning damage far more than its direct output.

[Beed28]

Been using this mod for a while now; and I've been loving it. I even used the Vampire Survivors level up sound effect for it. A few problems I've found as of the latest version, though I'm not sure if they're pointed out already:

- Having too many points in the High Velocity upgrade seems to prevent you from aiming the projectiles up and down, with both mouselook or autoaim.
- High Velocity doesn't seem to appear for the vanilla BFG?
- Rapid Fire doesn't seem to account for the GunFlash frames properly? Especially once its maxed out (best seen on the vanilla Super Shotgun, for example).