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

[ToxicFrog]

I'm still fiddling with the 0.10 branch; I'm pretty happy with the Reviv and Shield redesigns, and I'm still working on the Submunitions and Explosive Death rebalances. I also want to see if I can get the ECM upgrade in because it's a very cool idea.

thinking of ideas for player/weapon upgrades while playing a bunch recently.

1. projectile/bullet count.
2. blast radius/damage radius
3. move speed
4. health regen
5. some trade-off type upgrades (+X%/X damage for -X% fire rate) or something and other things like thing (maybe the inverse, +X fire rate for -X damage)
6. maybe shift dark harvest to a player perk and make it less effective per stack somehow? or capped.

also, please make homing prioritise enemies nearest the crosshair or something maybe? because currently they jus hit the floor or ceiling if the closest enemy is flying

(1,2) Bullet count is basically impossible to do while maintaining compatibility, as far as I can tell, because of the way hitscan attacks work. Same deal with blast radius -- that's baked into the actor definition.
(3) I've considered this and keep going back and forth on it. Movespeed increases are obviously useful but could also break levels by letting the player make jumps they're not meant to be able to, and too high movespeed is hard to control. (In some games like XEvil stacking too many move upgrades lets you clip through walls, but gzDoom probably doesn't have this issue?)
(4) Health regen I've avoided because I don't want anything that encourages shoot-n-scoot tactics or parking yourself in a safe room to recover between fights -- everything in GB that restores health (or other resources) requires you to fight things, and that's an intentional design choice.
(5) Also something I've considered but haven't pulled the trigger on -- someone earlier in the thread suggested "+damage but also +ammo usage" as another tradeoff idea. Maybe someday?
(6) This is what Scavenge Blood/Lead/Steel are already.

Is there an icon or something to tell if infernal forge is working?

Nope. That's something I want to add at some point -- possibly along with HUD elements showing you what stacks enemies have -- but UI work is hard and I don't like it.

I have a small idea to present for more esoteric players: A "Choice Timer" players can toggle on to force them to make a choice, elsewise the powerup is randomly chosen.

I concede I have zero idea if this is possible, just throwing this idea out.

Might be possible, not something I ever thought of but if it is possible it wouldn't be hard to add, I think -- another one for the notes file.

[Dan_The_Noob]

(1,2) Bullet count is basically impossible to do while maintaining compatibility, as far as I can tell, because of the way hitscan attacks work. Same deal with blast radius -- that's baked into the actor definition.
(3) I've considered this and keep going back and forth on it. Movespeed increases are obviously useful but could also break levels by letting the player make jumps they're not meant to be able to, and too high movespeed is hard to control. (In some games like XEvil stacking too many move upgrades lets you clip through walls, but gzDoom probably doesn't have this issue?)
(4) Health regen I've avoided because I don't want anything that encourages shoot-n-scoot tactics or parking yourself in a safe room to recover between fights -- everything in GB that restores health (or other resources) requires you to fight things, and that's an intentional design choice.
(5) Also something I've considered but haven't pulled the trigger on -- someone earlier in the thread suggested "+damage but also +ammo usage" as another tradeoff idea. Maybe someday?
(6) This is what Scavenge Blood/Lead/Steel are already.

-basically, need more player level options to push the scavenge options from appearing in every level-up as all 3 options (when using 3 choices)
-are all upgrades equal chance?
-the scavenge perks are basically a "never pick" for me since most content i play is chaotic nonsense and excess items are just more actors for more lag.
-I understand the health regen thing, but maybe you could give it a condition like "X% chance to heal 1hp when attacking an enemy"
-the trade-off perks would be the most interesting choice, because it's easy enough to balance as "it's your own fault" if people pick something too many times etc.
-not a scavenge fan as mentioned above, but am a dark harvest fan... just that fist and chainsaw and basically 100% unusable and the pistol sucks even to just get a level (even at 50% exp on Wimpy weapons)

Nope. That's something I want to add at some point -- possibly along with HUD elements showing you what stacks enemies have -- but UI work is hard and I don't like it.

a simple screen effect would work too. or if it's possible some kind of effect on the weapon sprite layer itself.

[ToxicFrog]

All upgrades are equal chance, yes. At the moment there's ten possible player upgrades; of those, Intuition is max 2 levels and Juggler max 1 level, and Indestructable only appears if you have the Indestructable mod installed and have configured it to be managed by Gun Bonsai. The other seven (all three Scavenge upgrades, Thorns, Blast Shaping, Tough as Nails, and +Damage) are always available and equally weighted. So getting all three Scavs as options repeatedly, while not impossible, is pretty unlikely.

Chance-to-heal-on-attack is tricky. Scavenge and Dark Harvest both proc on kill and even with that DH has gotten nerfed severely since it was added because it was too easy to rack up 999 health/armour with it. Scavenge is meant to be somewhat balanced out by the fact that it's a player upgrade (so much rarer than gun upgrades) and you have to run over to where the enemy died to get it (so it can be some reliable healing post-battle but is risky to try to heal in mid-fight). I'm not opposed to the idea of a Diablo-style lifeleech-on-damage effect but it would be tricky to tune it so that it heals enough to be useful but not enough to make the player functionally immortal. (I would probably base it on a % of damage dealt, too, rather than % of attacks.)

Oh right, and I did notice your bug report about homing missiles loving to fly into the floor/ceiling -- I'll look into it. Maybe have them widen the lock-on cone the further they fly.

[Dan_The_Noob]

Oh right, and I did notice your bug report about homing missiles loving to fly into the floor/ceiling -- I'll look into it. Maybe have them widen the lock-on cone the further they fly.

ya it seems like the mod acts like actors are infinitely tall or something, if a caco is not visible on my screen (maybe it's above a doorway or below a ledge) but are closer than something i'm aiming at. it will often shoot the floor/ceiling. it doesn't curve to them either, it straight up goes like

[gun]_/

--EDIT--
could we possibly get a slider or setting for the weapon damage/bloodthirsty perks to increase how much they change damage by? (maybe between 0 and 100%/level) or something.
finding that i don't pick them so often because a lot of the elemental effects are just better. unless its a rocket or BFG type weapon where it does obscene damage to begin with.

[Gourry]

Another vm abort; don't know why this is happening. Playing on the PB mod with gzdoom 4.10.0 and last weapon used was assault rifle.

https://imgur.com/a/zzotAJb

Load order:

valve.wad
Project_Brutality-master.zip
GunBonsai-0.9.8.pk3
CorruptionCards-v4.3.pk3
gearbox-v0.7.2.pk3
BDBE_v3.2b_Flashlight.pk3
HXRTCHUD-PB3_v8.3RC3a.pk3
target-spy-v2.0.1.pk3

[DELTAtheDboi005]

If I were to recommend mods to play with my mod, this is certainly one of them. It gets even more ridiculous on slaughter maps where the XP goes absolutely off the charts!

Overall, absolutely fantastic job mate! You're doing gods work!

[invictius]

Any way to cheat at this? I just want to sample some of the upper tiers of weapon mods. So far I've just bound mdk and summon cyberdemon and killed them for fast xp. I had a look at some of the code in slade but didn't notice anything that could multiply the xp given.

[ToxicFrog]

I think I finally have a fix for the "homing shots love flying into the ceiling/floor issue"; the root cause was that A_SeekerMissile completely ignores the turn speed limits when it comes to setting pitch, the turn speed limit only applies to yaw. So I have a few localization fixes to do and maybe one more upgrade to add and then 0.10 is ready to go.

If I were to recommend mods to play with my mod, this is certainly one of them. It gets even more ridiculous on slaughter maps where the XP goes absolutely off the charts!

Overall, absolutely fantastic job mate! You're doing gods work!

Thank you ♥ TBH most of what I write I write because I have a use for it, but it always delights me to know that other people are enjoying it.

Any way to cheat at this? I just want to sample some of the upper tiers of weapon mods. So far I've just bound mdk and summon cyberdemon and killed them for fast xp. I had a look at some of the code in slade but didn't notice anything that could multiply the xp given.

The in-game options has settings for XP multipliers and XP cost per level up, so turn one up and/or the other down for faster level-ups. If you don't see "gun bonsai options" in the gzDoom options, make sure "full options menu" is on, or use the "options search" to search for "bonsai". In that menu you can also change the settings to give you a list of every upgrade available on level-up rather than just a random subset of them.

The mod also adds console commands that you can use to grant yourself XP or just give yourself upgrades directly.

[Dan_The_Noob]

I think I finally have a fix for the "homing shots love flying into the ceiling/floor issue"; the root cause was that A_SeekerMissile completely ignores the turn speed limits when it comes to setting pitch, the turn speed limit only applies to yaw. So I have a few localization fixes to do and maybe one more upgrade to add and then 0.10 is ready to go.

oooooh hype for this fix, i love using seekers when they work as expected.

Any way to cheat at this? I just want to sample some of the upper tiers of weapon mods. So far I've just bound mdk and summon cyberdemon and killed them for fast xp. I had a look at some of the code in slade but didn't notice anything that could multiply the xp given.

set XP per level to like 100 and just kill 1 cyberdemon, and you'll get like 20-25 levels.

[ToxicFrog]

0.10.0 is out!

This release changes a lot. While it is save compatible with 0.9.x in the sense that your save files will still load, depending on what the circumstances of the save were you may experience unusual effects or be permanently locked out of some upgrades. Starting a new game is recommended.

Highlights include:
- 3 new player upgrades
- 4 new weapon upgrades (2 melee, 1 projectile, and 1 hitscan)
- Major Lightning redesign; it's now a slow instead of a stun, and Revivification is now a mastery upgrade that gives you a single, extremely powerful minion.
- Major redesigns of the Shield upgrade and the entire Lightning tree
- Lots of balance tweaks and bug fixes

For complete details, read the changelog on the release page.

[Dan_The_Noob]

YOINK

[Unregret]

Awoooo!!!! I wonder version 1.0 would be look like.

[DarkkOne]

Are seekers really common enough to warrant two upgrades relating to them? Since one's a weapon upgrade and one's a player upgrade, they'll never take up two of your choices at the same time, but like... most of the upgrades here are "generally useful." They aren't restricted to only affecting specific enemies, or other narrow situations.

Both of these almost feel like a bonus effect that should go on a more general ability. Something like "static skin" which could slow enemies that melee attack you *and* have the ECM effect. Or one of the fire elemental upgrades having its normal effect as well as "projectiles generate enough heat to distract enemy seekers" or something.

Like, I like both effects, I just feel like, on their own, every time they pop up I'm going to be disappointed they weren't something else that increased my damage output opportunities instead.

[Gourry]

New vm abort with shield. Should I have not added the melee buffs on the ssg? It still shows up for that.
Was about to click a switch in Plutonia experiment with PB 3.0 when it vm aborted.

Edit: turned off the melee options on ssg and no vm abort for now

Error image: https://imgur.com/a/YU1fwRi

Load order with gzdoom 4.10.0:

Project_Brutality-master.zip
Corruption-Cards-v4.5a.pk3
GunBonsai-0.10.0.pk3
gearbox-v.0.7.2.pk3
flashlight_plus_plus_v8_5.pk3
target-spy-v2.0.1.pk3
HXRTCHUD-PB3_v.8.3RC3a.pk3

[mamaluigisbagel]

Using BDLite, the Aggressive Defense ability on a weapon will destroy projectiles VISUALLY, but will still hurt the player if they reach them. It basically just turns the projectile invisible.