The /newstuff Chronicles #330

Reading Remiel's review was fun. It deserves some review of the week award for bringing back with full force the time-honored tradition of whining about reviews.

Which is something I'm rather surprised about, considering that everybody EXCEPT the author is whining about said review. Really. It's good to have a little humility once in a while, and Remiel's review is 100% author-approved.

But Remiel is an asshole and he should never make reviews for /newstuff ever again because ugh he's so harsh and GAGHHDCV

Yeah actually I kind of agree with Remiel on the whole matter of Weasel's Diaz mod. Weasel, you're great at weapons mods and all, but every time I have weapons that do the exact same thing as another weapon except slightly differently I die a little inside. And for the record your reloading is annoying because it doesn't happen automatically. I'd have preferred you went more Half Life 2 than "retarded generic modern FPS with 50 weapons with the precise military names so no one knows what exactly they are supposed to be." I suppose that's just flavor but sometimes I'd like to just have it say "Pistol, Shotgun, Magnum, Rifle, Submachine Gun, Rocket Launcher."

Case in point: You have 3 pistols. The obvious thing to do is have one that is normal, the second silenced, and the final one as the powerful Magnum type gun. Instead I get 2 pistols that are nearly the same except one is more useless and you don't even pick up that one, and a magnum type. For another: 3 machine guns. It's rare you need to switch between 2 in most games, but it can be done. You included a mounted gun you carry with you for whatever reason, though. I don't understand why you need it when it's just overkill and redundancy. And 2 rocket launchers is far far more than you will ever need in your lifetime.

The problem here is oversaturation. Do you know why Half Life 2 only has about 7 actual guns (not counting grenades or the gravity gun, or the crowbar and the antlion pod thing)? Any more and their purposes would overlap, and knowing what you need in any situation would be a science and not a reflex.

So here I propose any more mods you make should be very very limited in scope. You are forbidden to have more than 2 pistols, more than 1 machine gun (because in Doom the need for the more accurate less fast one is much much less), and more than 1 rocket launcher. You can have at most 2 shotguns, and only if one of them is clearly more powerful than the other but uses more ammo (a la supershotty). If you put in grenades you only need one type (but that's basically all you've done, good job), and future/plasma weapons should be limited to two with very different functionality. If you include a rifle it needs a scope if at all possible, and if not then just make it ridiculously accurate in the first place. If you HAVE to have a reload mechanism, don't make it realistic (because it tends to suck if you throw away ammo by reloading in pauses). Gimmick weapons should be at most 2, and should either be super bonuses or actually useful (which I have to say I do like the idea of the psi-amp, but it's a little slow on the recharge). And finally you can only have at most 2 melee weapons (which you don't really like so that's okay, but this could be a good guideline for everyone else!).

Really, Weasel, you're obviously talented, but you throw away all these neat ideas in an orgy of pretentious weapon-mongering by making stuff like this. Too many weapons, too much information, and too realistic. You need to think like a game designer, not a weapons manufacturer.

PS: To make this a little more positive, I'll list some of the things I liked:

* A story, which was kind of interesting I guess. I'll be honest in that I didn't read it, but it makes me feel better that all these random enemies and scientists have some sort of connection to each other.
* Random enemy replacement, which gives it more replay value. It's been done before, of course, but it's still a good thing to do.
* Including a viable sniper weapon, and only one of them at that.
* Making unarmed combat kind of interesting!
* A weapon that wasn't a gun or an explosive device (psi-amp).
* Not replacing most of the demons (because I hate endless recolors or ugly sprites).

PPS: Holy shit I just noticed the auto-reload. Editing my reload rant. Sorry Weasel. Just make it auto-on in the future, please :P.

ler said:

You are forbidden to have more than 2 pistols ... 1 machine gun ... 1 rocket launcher ... 2 shotguns, and only if one of them is clearly more powerful than the other but uses more ammo ... grenades you only need one type ... future/plasma weapons should be limited to two with very different functionality ... And finally you can only have at most 2 melee weapons.

You know, that's not a million miles from Doom's original weapon set ;)

Yep. Again, simplicity is best, and Doom did it first. Too bad it didn't have a sniper weapon or an extra powerful pistol. Those would have been good.

@ler:

Simplicity is often a good thing (no AgentSpork puns intended), but I see no harm in deviating from the standard formula every once in a while. If one wants to play with a simple ruleset, one can just play with Doom's original weapons. Or there's plenty of enhancement mods out there (Beautiful Doom comes to mind) that improve the original weapons while keeping the feel. If that's your cake, then eat it. ;P

But Diaz's goal isn't to be so simple. Likely, it won't appeal to everyone because of that, but the entire approach of the mod is to play and feel entirely different from Doom. For some the change is a little disorienting, but for some it's a breath of fresh air. It's just opinion, mate.

Example: I, for one, love manual reloading. It gives me much more control on whether I want to take the time to reload my current gun or quick-shift to a different one. With auto-reloads, I'm often caught reloading a weapon unintentionally in a pissed-off baron's face. That's no fun. :(

Conclusion: If Diaz isn't your thing, no problem with that at all. But it's nonsense to accuse Weasel's methods so bluntly. It's not wrong, just different. That is all.

I agree with deviating from the norm, but the problem here is that Weasel is going in a direction that is dumb no matter how you take it. It's complex, but it's not deep; only redundant. There are ways to make weapons mods without following the outline I gave (I remember a pretty interesting imp weapon mod which I thoroughly enjoyed, and the weapon mod Wizardy 2 is my favorite overall because of all the originality). Weasel doesn't take incredibly out there and original approaches, however. His approach is to throw in a bunch of real life guns or approximations/inventions similar to them, and maybe one or two actually interesting concepts. This is fine, except in how he executes it. I would love it if he did something like this but without as many guns and thus more coherency and purpose (though I wouldn't find it terribly new or exciting, but instead just excellent executed; sorry Weasel :P).

By the way, mine's an opinion too. I wouldn't suggest using that line :P.

As for reloading it's nice that he had the option there. The original problem I had was that I thought there WAS no option, but it was just semi-hidden (serves me right for not closely examining the buttons). The other problem I have is still valid however.

And finally, you can have the same sort of weapons Doom has plus a few and still be RADICALLY different due to execution. For example, as soon as you include some sort of sniper weapon, you will be picking off enemies from a distance. With silenced weapons, the stealth option is then included. Even with a different machine gun you might find yourself using other weapons to take down cacos.

I have to say at this point that Diaz has pretty much scratched my "realism" itch for the moment. My next mod (when/if I get around to making it) will be more simple. I do take note of all comments and criticism, so please don't feel as if I don't listen.

One of my mods currently has three machineguns. I've been thinking long and hard as to what roles these weapons are supposed to have and I think I can do it. The small machinegun you start with is nice but wimpy, the machineguns you pick up overshadow it at close range with their dual fire mode, and the third machinegun is purely a support/camper role (because although it offers cover when deployed, you can't move while it is mounted). There's only one shotgun, and the rocket launcher is more or less a BFG in role. That covers all the basic weaponry, I think.

I'll just add to the Diaz discussion that the automatic hitscan weapons aren't redundant, even if there's three of them. The smg is great for enemies with high pain chance or for large groups of zombies and imp, the assault rifle is fairly accurate on single shots so it's a good choice for sniping when you can't use the mauser and it's also pretty effective against bigger monsters and the machinegun is great for crowd control or as a panic weapon, but it usually has so little ammo that you can't just use it whenever you please. I guess they can look redundant if you just take a quick look at the mod, but once you've spent some time actually playing you'll start to see all the differences between the guns.

... Speaking of simple weapon sets, the problem with those is how to deviate from the "pistol-shotgun-machine gun-rockets-energy gun" norm while being interesting and fun to play. If someone made a weapons mod for Doom that simply followed that norm I don't think I'd bother even downloading it since there's really nothing new there.

Jodwin said:

... Speaking of simple weapon sets, the problem with those is how to deviate from the "pistol-shotgun-machine gun-rockets-energy gun" norm while being interesting and fun to play. If someone made a weapons mod for Doom that simply followed that norm I don't think I'd bother even downloading it since there's really nothing new there.

There's really only so many weapon types possible without going into crazy scripted behaviour.

Doom natively supports hitscans, melee and projectiles. G/ZDoom allows for more behaviour options taken from other Doom engine games. Even then, when replacing Doom's defaults, it's very difficult to make a good set of weapons that deviate from the norm without drastically changing everything else to follow suit. The biggest reason is balance: if you make a weapon set that is either too powerful or too weak to handle Doom's monsters, most people will complain.

That is why I think Diaz is one of the best weapon mods released to date. Weasel really thought of everything when making this and left almost nothing unchanged. It really feels like a different game, and the weapons work well with the new and old monsters. I didn't feel that any of the weapons were redundant, even if most of their behaviour is similar.

Early in Quake's modding days, new models and weapon art were hard to come by, so creativity was forced (and i'm spoiled from that, which is why I see these post-Immoral Conduct bullet slinging redundancies unimpressive no matter how many reload frames there are)

My next mod should hopefully make at least a few of you happy.

leileilol said:

Early in Quake's modding days, new models and weapon art were hard to come by, so creativity was forced

If by "forced" you mean "release a QC patch with 100 weapons, 10 on each key" where only five or six weapons were actually cool or useful, I agree. :p

That said, there were some great mods for Quake. PerQuake was one of the best. It not only added a bunch of new weapons, but a few of them were off-the-wall, such as the go-kart and mech suit. It was also very well made.

Jodwin said:

... Speaking of simple weapon sets, the problem with those is how to deviate from the "pistol-shotgun-machine gun-rockets-energy gun" norm while being interesting and fun to play. If someone made a weapons mod for Doom that simply followed that norm I don't think I'd bother even downloading it since there's really nothing new there.

It is very possible to take that same exact formula and do something new with it, like having homing rockets, or explosive bullets, bouncing plasma, etc (which is possible in zdoom, gzdoom, possibly edge, and soon eternity)

Well, technically, it's already possible to replace the weapons and make them do those things in Eternity, there's just no ability to add new weapon slots yet. :p

In time, my friend. In time. Eternity will beat Zdoom into a bloody but adorable pulp. :D