Scoredoom: About using the chaingun

While I was playing Scoredoom, one thought was just bugging me the entire time: Does anyone use the chaingun at all? I'm just asking as I doubt it's fast enough to keep the bonus chain going like the plasma rifle does.

It's good for Knee-Deep in the dead where theres a lot of imps and zombie men. But in situations for example, when there are a ton of cacodemons, I'll just shoot each one once with a super shotgun to dish out some damage, then take them out one by one per shot.

True, though I wish the chaingun's firing rate was a bit faster, as I personally use the plasma rifle more often.

Hmmn, I hear you about the chaingun being less able to pull off chain bonuses against harder enemies. It might be an idea to increase its speed, which will allow it to be on a more equal par with the other 'premium' weapons of double shotty, plasma & rocket launcher etc...

If you keep the chaingun trained on your target and make sure all your shots hit, you can kill pink demons and spectres with the chaingun while keeping your chain bonus intact. Compare this to the shotgun, where, at close range, it can kill pink demons and spectres in either two or three shots, the latter of which will kill the chain you have going...

BilboHicks said:

Hmmn, I hear you about the chaingun being less able to pull off chain bonuses against harder enemies. It might be an idea to increase its speed, which will allow it to be on a more equal par with the other 'premium' weapons of double shotty, plasma & rocket launcher etc...

It'd probably be preferable to tweak a tiny bit the chain bonus function than to modify a stock Doom weapon's behavior...

Alternatively, the Skulltag minigun's graphics and DECORATE code are available. The addon pack could replace randomly some chainguns with miniguns.

Gez said:

It'd probably be preferable to tweak a tiny bit the chain bonus function than to modify a stock Doom weapon's behavior...

Alternatively, the Skulltag minigun's graphics and DECORATE code are available. The addon pack could replace randomly some chainguns with miniguns.

Yes, come to think of it, I'm a bit leery about changing stock weapon behavior, and Green Herring makes a decent enough point.


BTW, while I'm at it, a final version of Scoredoom I'm planning to release this weekend, along with the latest hi score server files, for people to run their own servers. I've lost the motivation to work anymore with it, partly because I'm happy with it in it's current state. The final version will have full HACX & Heretic key support, and the add-on-pack will have a bunch of new critters from Torm's latest Beastiary competition, as well as tweaking to current monster difficuties (Azazel will be buffed down a bit etc...)
I'll be playing more in the future instead (so many wads I havent played yet), and maybe try and organize some co-op competition too.

Adding at least a few new weapons to the addon pack would be fine, too. (Like the aforementioned minigun, and the railgun for cutting through a long line of weaker enemies.)

Also, there were two other things that were bugging me about scoredoom. One of them was that the shadow's fireballs were green, weirdly-animated puffs instead. The other was that the bloodfiend is looking like the nightmare demon.

gun_psycho said:

Adding at least a few new weapons to the addon pack would be fine, too. (Like the aforementioned minigun, and the railgun for cutting through a long line of weaker enemies.)

Also, there were two other things that were bugging me about scoredoom. One of them was that the shadow's fireballs were green, weirdly-animated puffs instead. The other was that the bloodfiend is looking like the nightmare demon.

Thanks, will look into fixing this for the add-on-pack tweaks.

I'm not sure that I want to add new weapons to be honest, but adding your own weapon pack add-ons of course will work, just the 'official' hi score table will not support them, since it will cause the md5 hash to not be recognized. I probably havent played enough Doom just yet to want new weapons, even though some of the weapon mods I've seen are really cool. The smart-bomb I envisioned as really more of a powerup than anything, even though it fills a weapon slot.

Perhaps adding an Alt-fire 'fast' mode on the chaingun is a good compromise, since it eats up more ammo. But aesthetically, it would be odd adding altfire to only 1 weapon, but maybe not.

Well, adding a railgun alt-fire to the plasma rifle (for taking out groups of monsters that are all lined up, that is) wouldn't be bad idea either. I don't mind the rest of the weapons not having alt-fire, as I know they're strong enough as they are.

Speaking of additional wads to high-score in, I say wads like Biowar, Herian, and Herian 2 would be great high-score candidates. This megawad is a good one, too. http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=9180

Genius idea. I think this would be cool to add. I'm against too many weapons bound to a single key (like to keep it simple), but alt-fire for the chaingun and plasma gun would be cool to add. I always loved the railgun in Quake 3 as well, also some of the custom monsters utilize railguns, so this addition would make some sense.

Thanks for the megawad suggestions, Biowar, IIRC, is already there, and I already intended to add Herian 2 and few new wads. Herian too maybe.

About the super shotgun, though, would you be thinking of adding an alt-fire for it that deals double damage and costs twice as ammo? That can be useful for the bigger monsters.

gun_psycho said:

About the super shotgun, though, would you be thinking of adding an alt-fire for it that deals double damage and costs twice as ammo? That can be useful for the bigger monsters.

Wouldn't make much sense. A chaingun can be made to spin faster, a futuristic energy weapon might have wildly different fire modes; but a good old sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, shooting four shells at a time? If anything its alt-fire would be similar to the normal shotgun, by firing just one barrel.

Gez said:
If anything its alt-fire would be similar to the normal shotgun, by firing just one barrel.

Maybe one 10-pellet shell with a greater vertical spread than the shotgun. After all, the fact they use the same shells can be taken as a gamism; there are two types but by chance the marine always has the type he needs. Even ignoring this "explanation" it stays consistent with current behavior.

Gez said:

Wouldn't make much sense. A chaingun can be made to spin faster, a futuristic energy weapon might have wildly different fire modes; but a good old sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, shooting four shells at a time? If anything its alt-fire would be similar to the normal shotgun, by firing just one barrel.

frag-12 high-explosive shotgun shells.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQYp9fOJ9VI

set them to twice the damage of normal shells and have them light up those zombies with pretty flashes when they hit. that's up to ~600 hp for eating an ssg at close range. literally blowing scorched zombie shreds into the opposite direction. cons: back blast, albeit not as strong as rockets.

our marine just has them handy when alt-firing, easy as carrying 100 rockets half his own size.

Torr Samaho said:

frag-12 high-explosive shotgun shells.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQYp9fOJ9VI

set them to twice the damage of normal shells and have them light up those zombies with pretty flashes when they hit. that's up to ~600 hp for eating an ssg at close range. literally blowing scorched zombie shreds into the opposite direction. cons: back blast, albeit not as strong as rockets.

our marine just has them handy when alt-firing, easy as carrying 100 rockets half his own size.

Hehe very cool. Its tempting to add secondary fire to all the weapons actually. Just got the altfire for chaingun & plasma working satisfactorily. More comfortable with the weapon decorate now, but will probably leave it at that, for my own good. Famous last words ;-)

People can try the 2.4 preview beta here:
http://files.filefront.com/gzscoredoom24betaR2rar/;13690960;/fileinfo.html
(copy the files in the archive over a prexisting install)

Im particularly interested in feedback for the altfire for the plasmarifle, in terms of weapon balance. It consumes 10 cells per shot, does 100 damage and there is a delay to compensate for its destructive power. Any suggestions are welcome.

I say that alt-fire is just fine damage-wise, but the delay should be very slightly shorter as it's still likely that you can lose the kill chain against enemies that take two hits from it.

gun_psycho said:

I say that alt-fire is just fine damage-wise, but the delay should be very slightly shorter as it's still likely that you can lose the kill chain against enemies that take two hits from it.

cool, yeah, that's my concern, the time delay. Duly noted.
Also found a bug with how I'm dealing with monster-specials, (Doom 2 map07 for instance). So atm, I've decided to put the release back until thats fixed.

EDIT: It was a problem with my custom DECORATE for a monster.

One last thing before you release the latest version of scoredoom: Please get rid of those hell rose monsters. I don't like having to deal with immobile monsters. Also, lower the pain chance on Bormereth. I'm sick of the shotgun doing next-to nothing against him.