What are your thoughts on the new Brutal Doom release? (no haters)

I had a play with it, and while it's mad fun, performance is shit. Areas with lots of monsters that were giving decent frames in V20b are slow and clunky in this version. This was with gzdoom. 

Looks like a lot more gibs are spawned, especially when they stick to the ceiling and bleed down. My performance has been alright in Zandronum, but I've only played Whispers of Satan with it, which mostly has normal monster counts. GZDoom has never liked BD on my computer. Now, for some quick, constructive gameplay critique:

-Changes to Berserk punching mechanics make them feel weaker and impractical even against Pinkies. The Chainsaw, with it's massive range, seems a lot better at holding back a Demon/Spectre rush.

-Headshots are still way too good against mid-tier demons. You can pop a baron's head off in like half a second with the Chaingun, or one good/lucky SSG shot, which makes the hitscan weapons extremely strong against, well, everything.

-Dual-wielding accuracy appears to be a lot worse, making it rather pointless compared to well-aimed single weapons.

+The BFG is finally good though and the game feels better overall compared to the previous version.

On 11/3/2017 at 8:30 AM, Praetor said:

Well yeah.

I mean, "well the people like it!" doesn't really make the product any better.

 

Take Terraria and Minecraft for an example. Both have deplorable programming, with Terraria in particular being especially awful, but both also have massive fanbases. Just because they have massive fanbases and are both award winning and loved by many does not mean that the quality of the code is good. I really don't see what point you're trying to make.

When a guitarist goes into a bar where a live band is playing, the guitarist will critique the band. Everyone else will be digging the groove. But this guy is saying to himself: "Hey, he hit the wrong note... Hey, his picking is sloppy... Hey, I wish it was me up there!"

The fact that people like it is important. It suggests that he is doing something right, sloppy code notwithstanding. Even if the code itself could be improved, the players are enjoying what that code is accomplishing.

The point I was making is: People enjoy what Sgt. Mark was trying to accomplish. Therefore, improving his code benefits a lot of people, whereas criticizing the work benefits no one.

On 11/3/2017 at 8:30 AM, Praetor said:

 

Well, again I haven't taken a look yet at the codebase, but I'm assuming that if all these rumors of it being built up primarily of code and resources stolen from other projects and thrown together, it must be held together by tape, and I imagine there's all sorts of issues there.

In all respect, the words you've used (assuming, rumors, imagine) suggests that some fact-finding may be warranted. I don't know if resources were stolen or not, but I do know that almost every mod uses, at least, some resources not made by the modder. Of course, all content creators should be credited. In many cases, content creators encourage the re-use of their resources, as long as credit is given. That follows the "spirit of Doom modding", and it's largely one of the most cool aspects of the Doom community.

There's lots of types of resources: textures and flats, sounds and music, fonts and huds, and scripts. As far as scripts go, you can only shove so many separate scripts into a mod before stuff starts breaking. You end up with name collisions, and with scripts doing opposing work, competing for the same triggering mechanisms, etc. It is fairly obvious (to me, at least), that Sgt. Mark was going for a cohesive whole: a complete science, where effects work with each other to present a new, consistent environment. This simply cannot be done by adding more unrelated scripts. Instead, the code must be tailored to ensure that all subsystems are compatible with each other, and that the desired effects are produced.

I have no doubt that, at the beginning, lots of things were "borrowed", and credit should be given. But, I feel that, at this stage, there's a lot more going on than a simple cut+paste job. The careful combining of these separate simple pieces has caused something new to be created. Knowing how to combine these parts is what has made BD successful.

On 11/3/2017 at 8:30 AM, Praetor said:

I'm just going off of what I know, and that is that Doom is 25 years old or so, and a mod for a source engine can not run properly for some reason on computers that run current generation games perfectly. Makes you kind of start thinking about some things. It's either the mod, the source engine, the computer running it, or a mixture of them. Now seeing as to how I run other mods and wads just fine, I am going to point towards the issue being something to do with the mod, but then again, the other mods I play aren't really as ambitious as Brutal Doom.

A fair assessment. Here's something to think about. A single ill-written script can bring the game to its knees (for example, a script that calculates PI to 1 million digits, on each tic), and that's true, regardless of the age of the host program.

In vanilla Doom, putting a multi-patch texture on a one-sided wall would make the game run dozens of times slower, when that wall came into view. (Medusa effect). A single wall. Who's at fault here? The Doom engine? The multi-patch texture? The mod with that texture on one of its one-sided walls? The player that chose to look at the wall?

Each could be blamed. Arguably, it's all of their faults, and yet, no one's fault. Placing blame, and criticizing do nothing to help. Helping the modder fix the issue helps everyone.

Some of the things being done in BD are difficult to do in a script. Scripts only allow limited access to what's available in the engine. Maybe something can be done to improve the scripts, maybe not. m                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

On 11/3/2017 at 0:01 PM, dew said:

Yo if Mark starts contracting or rewarding coders for work on his mod, I'll be happy for everyone involved. It's how the system should work once you "go pro", imo. If that's what kb1 meant, we're on the same page.

I see what you mean. I had never considered the money thing. Still, it's a tricky subject:

If it's "Donate to me, and I'll keep doing X", that's pretty vague, and it doesn't mean anything other than "I'll keep doing X".

But, if it's "Payments for services X, Y, and Z rendered", he is obligated to do X, Y, and Z in a timely manner, to include contracting out work, or whatever it takes.

If I were accepting monies to work on Doom, that shit would be da' bomb, at all costs. But, I do that anyway... Heh.

3 minutes ago, kb1 said:

In vanilla Doom, putting a multi-patch texture on a one-sided wall would make the game run dozens of times slower, when that wall came into view. (Medusa effect). A single wall. Who's at fault here? The Doom engine? The multi-patch texture? The mod with that texture on one of its one-sided walls? The player that chose to look at the wall?

 

Each could be blamed. Arguably, it's all of their faults, and yet, no one's fault. Placing blame, and criticizing do nothing to help. Helping the modder fix the issue helps everyone.

But first you need to know what to fix. The engine? The texture? The mod with the texture?

The player? Well, duh. Just don't look where you're not supposed to.

37 minutes ago, kb1 said:

The point I was making is: People enjoy what Sgt. Mark was trying to accomplish. Therefore, improving his code benefits a lot of people, whereas criticizing the work benefits no one.

Then you run into the reverse chicken-egg problem, though. If the only ones saying anything are the ones with only positive things to say, how will the code get improved if there's no reason to improve it from the perspective the creator?

Hell, that seems like a great way to leave the worst parts to fester and get even worse, due to the creator adding more stuff based on the positive feedback without any concern to make it so that they don't split the seams of the hackjob even more.

1 hour ago, kb1 said:

In vanilla Doom, putting a multi-patch texture on a one-sided wall would make the game run dozens of times slower, when that wall came into view. (Medusa effect). A single wall. Who's at fault here? The Doom engine? The multi-patch texture? The mod with that texture on one of its one-sided walls? The player that chose to look at the wall?

I say the engine is 100% at fault. They designed the patch and texture system in such a way that would imply you could create multi-patch textures and use them where you please. If the game takes a shit when using one on a one-sided wall, that sounds like a bug. Period.

When I run mods that affect the blood-splash animations (like Brutal DOOM), am I supposed to have the blood set to sprites or particles?

@dugan I have it set to sprites+particles. I think if you have just sprites on, you'll miss out on the blood cloud effect when things explode.

4 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

Looks like a lot more gibs are spawned, especially when they stick to the ceiling and bleed down. My performance has been alright in Zandronum, but I've only played Whispers of Satan with it, which mostly has normal monster counts. GZDoom has never liked BD on my computer. Now, for some quick, constructive gameplay critique:

-Changes to Berserk punching mechanics make them feel weaker and impractical even against Pinkies. The Chainsaw, with it's massive range, seems a lot better at holding back a Demon/Spectre rush.

-Headshots are still way too good against mid-tier demons. You can pop a baron's head off in like half a second with the Chaingun, or one good/lucky SSG shot, which makes the hitscan weapons extremely strong against, well, everything.

-Dual-wielding accuracy appears to be a lot worse, making it rather pointless compared to well-aimed single weapons.

+The BFG is finally good though and the game feels better overall compared to the previous version.

 

I tried playing with Zandronum and things have improved quite a bit. 

• Being able to disable reloading is wonderful. But why does it have to keep turning itself back on?
• The assault rifle is too useful to be demoted to a low-priority slot 4. Muscle memory demands it to come up when I press 2. This is especially the case with the minigun being severely reduced in utility (see below).
• I like the new weapons, but only as extras on top of the original set. They shouldn't spawn unless you have the (modified) originals already. E.g. I should not see a combat shotgun unless I already have a super shotgun. I should not see a railgun unless I've already picked up a plasma gun. And so forth. (I know this is possible to code, I've seen it in other mods.)
• Not having to reload is great. Having to go through the menus at the start of every map to deactivate it again is a chore. Please fix this.
• Separating bullet ammo into two incompatible rifle/pistol types was not a great idea. Bullets are now rather more scarce than I would like.
• Rifle ammo drops are also a lot smaller. A chaingunner used to drop 30, now he drops 10. With the minigun being sped up, I find it runs out of ammo almost as soon as I start using it. I've found I've ended up avoiding using it at all, as a result. The assault rifile is much more useful. Yet it's low priority on slot 4 so I have to wait for the minigun to come up and go down again every time. Argh!
• Stop nagging me to increase the corpse queue size. I heard you the first time, but I'm still not going to change it.
• Unlike the red blood, the blue and green blood never gets janitor'ed.
• The fade in at the start of every map has to go, it makes you blind for 2 seconds and gives any enemies who start facing you a free shot.
• I love being able to disable reloading, but why oh why oh why isn't the setting persistent?

The minigun is insanely good at killing anything with burst fire at close range; including a Cyberdemon in under 10 seconds when aimed at the head. It's definitely overkill to use on low-tier enemies, which the Assault Rifle or the slower Machinegun are better for in regards to ammo.

The minigun is awesome, shredding gangs of zombies and imps never gets old. Hey, real miniguns fire at up to 6000 rounds per minute so I got no problem with its fire rate or its ability to demolish bigger foes in seconds :D 

Then the power difference between your minigun and the Chaingunner's minigun is just absurd. Yours can kill a Cyberdemon in mere seconds, his takes a good few seconds to kill you at any distance outside of point blank range. 

I noticed a bug on purist mode, in that the rocket launcher pick-up is invisible and the weapon is never selectable.

10 hours ago, Arctangent said:

Then you run into the reverse chicken-egg problem, though. If the only ones saying anything are the ones with only positive things to say, how will the code get improved if there's no reason to improve it from the perspective the creator?

 

Hell, that seems like a great way to leave the worst parts to fester and get even worse, due to the creator adding more stuff based on the positive feedback without any concern to make it so that they don't split the seams of the hackjob even more.

Agreed. No developer can improve if no constructive feedback is given.

Of course, a developer also needs to listen to such constructive feedback to improve. As a great negative example for this, may I cite "Doom Rampage Edition"?

1 hour ago, TootsyBowl said:

Then the power difference between your minigun and the Chaingunner's minigun is just absurd. Yours can kill a Cyberdemon in mere seconds, his takes a good few seconds to kill you at any distance outside of point blank range. 

Undead zombies cannot aim as well as a tanked-up muscleman.  Just like in vanilla Doom how the Chaingunner's weapon dealt less damage and was less accurate than the player's Chaingun. Fact is, it's ridiculously mad fun, and truthful to real world miniguns. I do not see the point of the SMG though, there is the minigun, the rifle and machine gun in the same slot. Too many guns in the same slot and the SMG is basically a weaker duplicate weapon. It could work in the no. 2 slot though sharing its ammo with the pistol owing to its lower rate of damage and as a fallback weapon , but tbf it's superfluous and really doesn't need to be there. I think get rid of the SMG and put the rifle in the no.2 slot. 

The railgun is plain awesome, nothing like zooming in on distant chaingunners and giving those pieces of shit their just justice. The dual wield weapons are  an awesome way of getting out of a deadly situations, who cares about accuracy, I mean you are holding 2 rifles, plasma guns etc, it is a great tool to get out of sticky situations, it is not for accuracy. 

12 hours ago, kb1 said:

The point I was making is: People enjoy what Sgt. Mark was trying to accomplish. Therefore, improving his code benefits a lot of people, whereas criticizing the work benefits no one.

Just chiming in to remind you that criticizing work is always beneficial if the criticism is properly substantiated and it's very bad practice to go around telling people you shouldn't criticize anything. Without criticism, the mod won't improve for people who want it to improve since all Captain Zimbabwe Infinity will hear on the subject is "this mod is perfect"

Anyway, I don't like the new version in much the same way I have basically never liked Brutal Doom. I feel that, as with all previous versions I have played, the gameplay essentially boils down to an elaborate session of peekaboo and unfortunately this cannot be really addressed without addressing every single part of the mod, so in the interest of avoiding wasting any more of your time, I will leave my criticism at that barring anyone actually asking me to elaborate

I haven't played Brutal Doom since v15, so needless to say I'm super out of the loop, but I'll say that map enhancement script is unlike anything I've ever seen before.
 

2 hours ago, DILDOMASTER666 said:

I feel that, as with all previous versions I have played, the gameplay essentially boils down to an elaborate session of peekaboo (…)

That sums up my impression of the mod and the main reason that I don't like it perfectly. This goes for most (every?) other modern shooter since the introduction of regenerating health as well.

BDv21? Well it looks best if Shotgun sound is back.

On 11/5/2017 at 9:32 AM, GoatLord said:

I have to say that I'm liking the weapon selection quite a bit, and it's interesting that some of them are randomized in the sense that you may get one of two BFGs, one of two shotguns, etc., but sometimes this can cause a sudden spike in difficulty. For instance, you know the BFG in Industrial Zone? Well, if it randomizes the pickup as the traditional BFG, you can clear the area of enemies easily. But the alternative BFG, which takes quite a while to fire and is not nearly as powerful, simply cannot get you out of that situation if you pistol start the map and rush to the area. I also noticed that since invisibility spheres have been replaced by allies, they are often killed before you can even get to them, as enemies will attack them as if they are players. Basically, gameplay is still kind of unbalanced at times, though this is easily the most entertaining version of BD so far.

The allied marines can be revived even if dead. Go up to the pole they are tied to and press space and they reverse death animate back to life and break free. At least in v20 (I haven’t tried v21 yet). I have no clue if that’s a bug or a feature but I take advantage of it :D

Just downloaded it. This'll be the first time I touch Brutal Doom since v0.9, I believe - thoughts coming up shortly. Stay tuned and wish me luck.

Okay, here we go...

Pros:

+ Contrarily to what some people have reported, I ran into no performance issues with the mod in GZDoom.

+ Weapons are satisfying to use.

+ Blowing enemies into a thousand pieces of bloody debris is damn satisfying.

Cons:

- To start off with the biggest gripe I have with it, I'm REALLY not a fan of the map enhancement system. So many things just look out of place and unnecessary. (Thankfully it can be turned off.)

- Speaking of things that are out of place and unnecessary, the taunts. Seriously. Ugh.

- Minigun eats up ammo way too fast.

- The explosion radius of the barrels is way too high and makes Doom 2's MAP02 near-impossible in the latter section of the level.

- Finally, not exactly a con, but I have mixed feelings about the new Icon of Sin. While the overhaul is quite welcome in my book, it does need some serious balancing. I typed in the "resurrect" command during that battle more times than I care to admit.

Been seeing a lot of complaints about the map enhancements. Am I the only one who thinks they're neat? I played a few maps that use it and it breathed a lot of new life into them.

19 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

Been seeing a lot of complaints about the map enhancements. Am I the only one who thinks they're neat? I played a few maps that use it and it breathed a lot of new life into them.

I've seen screenshots of a handful of them, and while I think there's some good ideas among them, all of them are executed poorly and the rest is just pretty much butt-ugly.

And also, there's Bloodfalls ...

59 minutes ago, MFG38 said:

- The explosion radius of the barrels is way too high and makes Doom 2's MAP02 near-impossible in the latter section of the level.

It's actually one of the easier bits of the map, since you can shoot one of the barrels from a distance and kill almost everything in the sub sections.

47 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

Been seeing a lot of complaints about the map enhancements. Am I the only one who thinks they're neat? I played a few maps that use it and it breathed a lot of new life into them.

I think they work well at lower resolutions, especially on the city maps. I'm less keen on them at 1080pp, but you can toggle them on or off, so I don't see them as a problem.

7 minutes ago, Urthar said:

It's actually one of the easier bits of the map, since you can shoot one of the barrels from a distance and kill almost everything in the sub sections.

Well, yeah, but the problem is that if you go down first and shoot only then, the chain reaction of the barrels going off will inevitably kill you.

Map enhancements should be separate.

Unlike most of you guys, the map enhancements are cool IMO. Because Brutal Doom is a mod, not the original game... if you don't like a certain feature, don't play it.

Though, the voxel plane looks like shit and they need to remove it asap.

"Enhancements" is entirely subjective per player. Also the OP with the "(no haters)" part in the topic simply makes him sound like a blatant defensive fanboy for the project.