Spear of Destiny Enemy Attacks

[Murdoch]

Gentlemen, lend me your ears...

In converting the old Spear of Destiny mod I worked with Laz Rojas on to Eternity, I have been pondering something.

In order to make it work with his then limited knowledge of DEH code pointers, Laz made some enemies attack differently to the original game. Most notably, the mutants fired Imp fireballs and the officers in white had chainguns. In the original game, both had pistols.

Now on one hand, I would like to be as close as possible to the original game. But on the other hand, the different attacks add variety to a game where otherwise approximately 70% of the enemies basically shoot you with a pistol.

Now lend me your thoughts - accuracy or variety?

[Amaster]

Im all for variety.

[TheDarkArchon]

I always thought the imp-balling zombie looked like ass, so I would vote against that one: Give it an MG or something like that. I say yes to the chaingunning officer, though.

[Glassyman]

I prefer accuracy.

[Tormentor667]

Why Eternity? Why not ZDoom? :(

[TheDarkArchon]

Because he prefers Eternity.

[Tormentor667]

So is it just playable with Eternity then? :(

[sirjuddington]

Yes.

[Glassyman]

ZDoom is my favourite port so I hope this wad will be compatible with it.

[Tormentor667]

Sad to hear that :( Beyond conc. the thread itself: I always found it kinda boring that the original SoD enemies just had hitscan and melee attacks. I'd be more glad if you could enhance the mod for Eternity a bit... maybe add the original way of combat from SoD but as well also enemy variants with projectile and other attacks. I mean, if I want to play SoD, I get myself DOSBOX or the new Wolf3D port. If you really want to enhance this for eternity, add new stuff as well :)

[Tango]

wtf why aren't you making this for legacy i'm sad :''(((

I'd say variety as well.

[DooMAD]

Glassyman said:

ZDoom is my favourite port

Good for you, no one cares. This WAD is for Eternity.

Tormentor667
Why Eternity? Why not ZDoom?

The next person I see making a post containing anything resembling "Why not <insertporthere>? I love <insertporthere> in the arse." is going on my ignore list. Keeping in mind that, whoever that person is, they will be the first person anywhere to make it on to my ignore list in the history of the internet. To emphasise further, you truly must be a spacktacular fuckwit to make it onto my ignore list. It's not an accolade I hand out to just any old mong.

Get it through your thick fucking skulls. If someone is developing a WAD for a certain port, they don't need to explain to you why. They're not going to change their project and use another port just because you're a rabid fanboy. The port you like is irrelevant.

You may as well get used to the notion that you're going to have to use another port to play it in. It really doesn't take that much effort to install another piece of software, but if it is, then just shut the fuck up and don't play the WAD. Your loss.

[kristus]

Amaster said:

Im all for variety.

[Belial]

Thank you, DooMAD.

I'm all for giving them chainguns, but for the mutants I think the original design would be better. Unless you could incorporate them flailing their arms into some knife throwing or similar attack.

[Murdoch]

LOL at DoomAd and DarkArchon, thanks for the backup guys. Tormentor, I could turn it back on you - why ZDoom?

Here's the simple truth of the matter. Please note this is not an attack on ZDoom. It is overall an excellent port that has done a lot for Doom. In my opinion, as a player and "simple" level designer's port it is a good choice.

For a mod like this one which changes a lot of the internal gameplay mechanics, however, ZDoom is the worst possible choice of all the ports. I have seen too many WADs break between ZDoom releases (notably RTC-3057 but I am sure there were others). Hell even one is too many, in my opinion, cause it defeats the ultimate purpose of this project, and that is to future proof the mod so all you need to play it is the latest version of a port.

I don't want to have to update it. I don't want anybody having to use those crusty old Boom mods I originally coded in DOSBox or VDMSound, or a newer custom engine that might eventually suffer the same fate of operating system incompatibility, or most silly of all, having to keep old versions of the port I chose just for this mod.

Please do not moan and bitch of the choice of port. As the other guys said, I am not going to change it cause you do not like it. Please, please exercise some maturity, accept an alternate point of view and do not derail this thread into a port flamewar.

Back to the point, thanks for all the people who have voted so far. The consensus seems to be accuracy is preferred but that the chaingunning officer is actually an improvement, and I am inclined to agree. I'll leave the poll up for longer though before making a decision.

[Tormentor667]

@Joel - Thx for the kind and detailed explanation, this makes sense ;)

@DooMAD - Calm down dude :) This wasn't in any way offensive or one of these "Eternity sucks, use ZDoom" complaints, I just asked as I always thought (concerning ACS and DECORATE) ZDoom is a more easy to use port in this case, that's the only thing behind this question.

[Graf Zahl]

JoelMurdoch said:

For a mod like this one which changes a lot of the internal gameplay mechanics, however, ZDoom is the worst possible choice of all the ports. I have seen too many WADs break between ZDoom releases (notably RTC-3057 but I am sure there were others). Hell even one is too many, in my opinion, cause it defeats the ultimate purpose of this project, and that is to future proof the mod so all you need to play it is the latest version of a port.

Projects break when the creators exploit bugs or undefined behavior.

What do you want to do if they just don't care if someone says 'don't do that, it's not safe' or are just careless? The case sensitivity issue with actor names that breaks RTC-3057 was well known long before it was changed and it was repeatedly stated on the ZDoom forum that it was eventually going to be changed. Did anyone bother? No, of course not. Apparently nobody cares even now.

Another good example was the ZDoom community map. Some people had to use the coolest feature of the day (DEHSUPP) to create a stupid new weapon although it was repeatedly said that this was not supposed to be used for editing and the inevitable result was that it promptly broke with the next release of ZDoom. It's not that the people responsible for this disaster weren't warned before.

And besides, who guarantees that Eternity will not end up with some similar problem eventually where the choice is to either keep unwanted behavior in the engine or break one single map in order to fix it?

Last but not least, I haven't seen any properly designed map or script break unless there was a bug in the engine affecting the map. I'm playing a lot of Doom levels - including older ones and so far there have been exactly 3 cases where I had to fix something in order to play it with the latest version of ZDoom. All 3 were problems the mappers brought upon them themselves by being careless.

[Murdoch]

Actually Tormentor, Eternity has a rather powerful scripting language called Small, and Quasar has finished ACS interpreting functions for it. And between BEX and it's data definition EDF files, Eternity has most of the functions of Decorate covered too. Only weapons are not covered, but they are in the works.

The only real advantages ZDoom has in my opinion are higher resolution support and slopes. Other than that the two ports are pretty evenly matched.

@Graf - I told you, this is not up for debate. I prefer Eternity because my personal experience with it is better than my experience with ZDoom. I don't care what was posted on the damn forum. I don't read many forums, and am not going to start just to watch out for an announcement of a change that might break my mod. I told you. I don't want to update this. I want to do it, and leave it.

Everybody experiences things differently, everyone has different opinions, different favourites. I like Windows XP, some people think it was crafted by Satan. So what. Maybe Eternity will eventually have a version incompatibility issue, you are right, but for now it's track record is better than ZDooms in my experience. I make my choices based on what is, not what might be. I have chosen Eternity, just as you would chose ZDoom. That is not what this thread is about. The project is for Eternity, and I am not going to scrap hours of work cause a few people say so. End discussion. If this continues I will personally ask one of the mods to close this thread.

[Glassyman]

JoelMurdoch said:

The only real advantages ZDoom has in my opinion are higher resolution support and slopes.

Great advantages!

[Murdoch]

Glassyman said:

Great advantages!

Yes in some cases, but for a project converting maps and graphics from a 15 year old game, utterly meaningless.

[CODOR]

If this isn't playable under Doom 1.1 on a 386 with 4MB of RAM and PC speaker sound effects, then I'm going to jump off a bridge. I refuse to play Eternity 'cause it once tried to kill me. And it burned my house down. And slept with my wife.

But seriously, go for variety. If anyone wants accuracy they may as well play the original game...

[Graf Zahl]

JoelMurdoch said:

@Graf - I told you, this is not up for debate. I prefer Eternity because my personal experience with it is better than my experience with ZDoom. I don't care what was posted on the damn forum. I don't read many forums, and am not going to start just to watch out for an announcement of a change that might break my mod. I told you. I don't want to update this. I want to do it, and leave it.

I honestly don't care what engine you are developing for. But your reasoning is flawed IMO.

If you live in fear that your mod might break you are just paranoid. Well designed mods don't break unless this is caused by bugs that will logically get fixed. And I can't imagine that with this you will resort to hacks in the first place.

The problem you seem to see is not one of ZDoom but one of its users. You can tell people endlessly to not hack around unless they would like to see their mod get into trouble. Do they listen? Mostly not. Do they consider safer methods to do things? Of course not. Do they whine when their oh so great hack stops working when the glitch that made it work in the first place gets removed? You bet! (RTC is an exception though. It just used undefined behavior. Once the behavior got defined it had a problem.)

Once Eternity finds a larger audience be prepared that the same thing will happen. People will find holes and try to exploit them. But being holes, glitches or bugs they logically are not guaranteed to work forever. That's just the way things are.

[zap610]

Graf Zahl said:

I honestly don't care what engine you are developing for. But your reasoning is flawed IMO.

So you don't care what engine it's for, I guess that solves that right? Oh wait, it's not good enough. You have to stay and shove your "logic" down his throat. Carry on.

[Murdoch]

Send me a 386 CODOR and I'll see what I can do. As for your wife, Eternity said she came onto him first.

You are right Graf but your closeness to ZDoom is perhaps making it harder for you to understand where I am coming from. I'm not "living in fear", I just don't want to update the mod if it can be avoided. Your reasoning is perfectly sound, but as a developer myself and a sometime computer tutor, I know all too well the difference between developer logic and user logic, and how the two do not always gel. You can argue things from the developers point of view and be absolutely right - from that angle. Users are only concerned with what works and what does not.

[Hobbs]

Tell me Graf, in your mind does everybody that disagrees and gets into an argument with you automatically lose that argument by default?

[Murdoch]

Please guys, don't derail this thread any more than it already has been. There's enough utterly pointless bickering clogging up the net, we don't need any more.

[zap610]

JoelMurdoch said:

Please guys, don't derail this thread any more than it already has been.

Ah, so true. Strange how odd things like that happen when Graf is around, but it's probably nothing more than a coincidence. I voted to keep it accurate, though personal touches of new ideas never hurt. It's just that the idea of humans shooting imp fireballs out of a gun is a turn off for me.

[Scuba Steve]

Ugh. Tormentor that was the most pointless and asinine thread diversion I have seen. This thread has nothing to do with ZDoom, why the hell did you even bring it up. I love ZDoom, but damn, people can use whatever port they want without anyone (you) giving suggestions. I was actually disgusted to see your comment.

I'm going to say Accuracy... well... screw it... variety. I never playd the original Spear, but I imagine it is boring just like Wolf3D. Anything to spice it up, ala Wolfendoom is a welcomed change.

[Murdoch]

Actually I'm beginning to think I might be able to cater for both. Eternity lets you create GFS files which tell it what WADs to load for a particular game, and what EDF files to use. You can then associate GFS files with Eternity in Windows, so all you gotta do is double click it and it runs the game.

Now the EDF files contain, among other things, enemy and frame definitions. I could make two sets - one "pure", the other with more variety. Then all the user needs to do is pick the GFS that best matches their taste, no clumsy copying, renaming or command line parameters.

Hmm.... :D

[Szymanski]

I voted accuracy but after a quick spin through the game variety is probably the best option.