ww-diaz Remake: Assistance needed

[wildweasel]

http://armory.drdteam.org/wwmods/inprogress/wwhc-diaz.rar

NOTE: This version of the mod is a BETA. There are features that have not been implemented yet, there will be bugs, and you will need the latest version of GZDoom (1.0.27 as of this writing) to run it.

Now that that's out of the way.

I am calling upon all of you people for a public test of the mod. Download it, play it with your favorite mapset, and help with the mod's balance.

What I want to hear:
- Ideas for adjusting how much ammo is available to the player
- Tweaks to the weapon range and accuracy
- Power adjustments for each weapon
- Ideas for more monsters to add
- Anything else useful

What I don't want to hear:
- "Weapon mods suck". I know there are a fair number of people here that don't like weapon replacement mods. You don't need to restate this to me. I'm not trying to please everybody. I just want to make a mod that's good and fun to play.

- "It's not Doom". That's the point. I'm trying to add a new flavor to the gameplay because I can't stand the stock Doom weapons anymore.

- "Make your own graphics instead of ripping them off". I am not an artist. I am not capable of drawing the resources needed for a mod of this size and scope. There is not likely to be any artist within the community that can do such a thing.

All that being said: feedback! Please tell me what you think.

[the iron hitman]

That is awesome! Just one request. Could you enhance the rifle's power to make it a little bit more powerful? Close but not equivalent to an SSG, just to make the rifle damage more realistic. Shame you can't use this on skulltag. Would be really good to use =( Nonetheless a 5/5 from me =)

[Snarboo]

I agree. The rifle seems rather...well, crippled. :/ It doesn't feel powerful enough given the down time between shots as you cycle the bolt, and while the secondary "iron sight" mode is nice, the increased accuracy is of little benefit given how slow the player moves. I'd much rather use a faster weapon that stuns monsters or the Revolver, which is a similar weapon without the pause between shots.

I think it should be upgraded to act more like what it is: a slow, accurate and powerful rifle. I think an attachable scope upgrade that you could pick up would make it that much better.

[wildweasel]

Snarboo said:

I think it should be upgraded to act more like what it is: a slow, accurate and powerful rifle. I think an attachable scope upgrade that you could pick up would make it that much better.

I'll see what happens when I beef up the power. I'm planning on redoing the bolt-action animation a bit too.

As for a scope attachment: since G/ZDoom currently can't manipulate zoom levels, I don't see what possible benefit a scope would add to the game. I currently just use a zoom alias, since that's about the only reliable way to do it.

[Impie]

But....but the original was perfect!

[Jodwin]

I played a few TNT maps with this and I have to say that it at least feels like this mod, too, suffers of the common issues that many gameplay mods have with adapting to Doom's "power levels." By this I mean, of course, the differences in weapon and monster strength and how they work together in the end. I didn't play around much with the BFG replacement and the explosives, but those aside I'd say that all of the other guns, except the SMG, are simply too powerful:

The starting pistol could be faster but take, on average, two hits to kill a zombieman. It's a bit too leisurely to kill zombies with it, could use a little more frantic action there.

The revolver is simply too powerful. Did I really kill that one hell knight with four shots? Hmm, I think I counted right... Not to mention that you can easily find a lot of ammo for this. The low range and poor accuracy ARE setbacks, but then again they are mostly effective setbacks only against hitscanners and this isn't a weapon to use against big groups of zombies anyway, so that makes the setback a bit pointless already. Less damage, thanx.

The shotgun is ridiculous. It's almost as powerful as the stock SSG is, takes less ammo and is faster. I think that the SSG is a good weapon to compare to: If your mod has a general use weapon, like the SSG, that is stronger than it is (in both damage/ammo and damage/time ratios) then you have a problem. Even more so if this weapon is also available in Doom 1. However, I wouldn't say that the shotgun has to be dramatically weakened. If you set it to the level of the original shotgun then you could soon easily have a problem of having too weak guns. I'd say around 1.25 times the strength of the original shotgun could be a good starting point. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.

Obviously, I'll have to disagree about the strength of the rifle. I don't see it as a weapon that's supposed to be used against mid-level monsters (except revenants, or their replacements, and even then only because of the way they are often placed in the maps). It's obviously a long range weapon, and the more common targets at longer ranges are revenants and hitscanners. In fact...I'd say that the rifle should kill all zombies with a single hit, but it's a bit too powerful against the revenant replacements. Four-three hits on average to kill one of those would be fine.

Like I said, the SMG is fine. Don't touch it.

The assault rifle could use a little less shakey and in addition a little less damage. It also needs less ammo. Actually, if you drop the ammo enough the damage could stay as it is.

The machinegun is ridiculously powerful. But then again, yeah, it's ridiculously inaccurate too... Again, maybe drop the shakey just a bit and damage an other bit.

[the iron hitman]

WildWeasel said:

I'll see what happens when I beef up the power. I'm planning on redoing the bolt-action animation a bit too.

As for a scope attachment: since G/ZDoom currently can't manipulate zoom levels, I don't see what possible benefit a scope would add to the game. I currently just use a zoom alias, since that's about the only reliable way to do it.

The bolt-action animation is fine. It's the power of the rifle that I was'nt too sure about. By the way, the aim-down-the-sight addition to the rifle suprised me. So coming from me, keep the animations and the aim-down-sight thing, and focus on the power of the rifle.

Also, I love the new BFG.

Positives:-
Everything apart from the rifle power and recoil from a lot of weapons. So there's my 2 cents. A very high 9.9/10 from me. Your weapon modding amazes me =)

[wildweasel]

I've released a massive updated version:

http://armory.drdteam.org/wwmods/inprogress/wwhc-diaz.rar

MASSIVE NOTE: I've added custom skill level settings to the wad file through MAPINFO. However, this feature is not in any official version of ZDoom at the moment, so you'll need to go download an SVN binary from http://84.40.169.249/al/files.php?sAddDir=/raztk/zdoom (which appears to be down as of this writing, but ought to be back up eventually). GZDoom will crash with an error. A temporary solution would be to delete the MAPINFO lump from the wad file. This shouldn't affect gameplay at all, because my only real changes to the skill settings are removing the double ammo, and changing Nightmare so monsters no longer respawn but do twice the damage and are twice as aggressive.

New in this version:

- Footstep sounds courtesy of Wooliewool666
- Body fall sounds, also thanks to Wooliewool666
- Enhanced blood effects from nashgore.wad by Nash
- A skill level overhaul
- The hitscan-based enemies now need to reload at regular intervals, similar to the player. They will now also eject shell casings and drop clips.

Balance Changes:

- The Colt .45 pistol can now fire much faster but does about half the damage it used to.
- The Skorpion now only holds 20 rounds to a clip, and has a damage setting of 8 instead of 8.5.
- Recoil was reduced on the Skorpion and RPK.
- The Shotgun's power was reduced drastically.
- The Magnum's power is about 2/3 of what it was before.
- The Magnum troopers will drop their weapons less often (84/255 instead of 128/255) and their ammo even less still (44/255 instead of 100/255). So Magnum ammo shouldn't be ridiculously common anymore.
- The Mauser rifle's power was increased a bit, particularly while not in Iron Sight mode. It still doesn't do as much damage without the sights, though. In theory, you should be able to kill the pinkies with one aimed shot most of the time.

Known Issues:

- The assault rifle soldier still reloads after 30 rounds instead of 20 like the player's rifle, which means that at this point he'll never reload because the SkorAmmo counter can never reach 30 for him. I just forgot to change this before uploading the mod again, so it'll be fixed in the next release.
- For some reason, my Berserk replacement is also affecting the bullet weapons and not just their melee attacks. I don't want it to affect bullets and projectiles.
- I need some extensive testing on the BFG replacement, because I suspect it might be too strong.

[Nick Perrin]

"Execution could not continue.

Script error, "MAPINFO" line 1:
Bad syntax."

This is using version 1.0.27 of GZdoom, and it happens on startup.

[Lizardcommando]

GZDoom will crash with an error. A temporary solution would be to delete the MAPINFO lump from the wad file.

[Jodwin]

It's pretty damn good now. :) If you get told that it's a little too hard, I'd say make the hitscan monsters have a little less accuracy. But if there's not much concern over that, I think it's better the way it currently is. Makes fighting hitscanners a bit more tactical which is a nice change of pace.

edit: Oh and the new pistol is great. :)

[Nick Perrin]

Jodwin said:

It's pretty damn good now. :) If you get told that it's a little too hard, I'd say make the hitscan monsters have a little less accuracy. But if there's not much concern over that, I think it's better the way it currently is. Makes fighting hitscanners a bit more tactical which is a nice change of pace.

I'd say it's too hard. Maybe it's just me or the taller view makes it feel like I'm moving slower?

Anyway, the single most annoying thing in this wad that made it much more difficult was that you fought a lot of hitscan monsters, and, while that's not a problem, your view moves in a random direction every time you get hit. And you can't dodge a hitscan weapon, so that was really no fun. I'd be aiming at guys and suddenly WHOOSH I'm facing the ceiling, constantly readjusting my aim and direction until I'm killed in what is usually a very easy level.

Manually pressing reload for an empty clip makes things harder for sure, it can get a bit annoying too, rather than having reloads happen automatically after running out of ammo in the current clip.

That being said, this mod is extremely well-made and can be very much fun to play. It feels great and adds a new degree of action to the game, a definite notch above most other weapon mods.

[Jodwin]

Nick Perrin said:

Anyway, the single most annoying thing in this wad that made it much more difficult was that you fought a lot of hitscan monsters, and, while that's not a problem, your view moves in a random direction every time you get hit. And you can't dodge a hitscan weapon, so that was really no fun. I'd be aiming at guys and suddenly WHOOSH I'm facing the ceiling, constantly readjusting my aim and direction until I'm killed in what is usually a very easy level.

This is pretty much what I was talking about in regards to more tactical gameplay. Some maps have a bunch of situations where you need to take a whole new approach, with which it won't be that hard anymore. For an example the courtyard in TNT map03 is one such area where you'll be facing a pretty certain death if you just rush in guns blazing, but with a little slower pace and particularly utilizing the rifle it won't be even nearly as bad.

But, yeah, I'll repeat from my previous post that the hitscanners are very accurate *and* very aggressive (which means that they can shoot you the moment you step out from behind a corner). It could be possibly toned down a little.

Also, after a bit more playing, I'd suggest trying to set the assault rifle damage to 8.25 or 8.3 and see how that would work. It's not exactly bad, but could perhaps use just a *little* extra boost. Kinda hard to comment on more though, since I have no idea how those damage values work in practice.

And yet an other thing, could the pistol's max ammo be increased by extra two clips? It's not a big issue, but the decrease in the pistol's power obviously increases its ammo consumption a lot, so a few clips more could be nice.

Oooh, and if you can, please get the shotgun a new sound.

Edit:
Aaand, if you are going to change some original monsters, get a replacement for pain elementals. Not because they'd be crappy enemies (I like PEs) but because they don't work that well with the mod's weapons. It's not really the mod's fault, more like a trait. But, if you are going to change the PEs, don't use that "zombie PE" replacement, it's getting way old...

[wildweasel]

I'll see about toning down the player pain effects for the next version - to be honest, I'm getting kind of sick of them as well, but I don't want to remove them entirely because like Jodwin said, I like the more "tactical" approach it forces the player to use. However, that does tend to make some maps (particularly HR and AV-style maps) damn near impossible to play...especially if you're macho and decide to play it on "Wepon Modz R 4 Noobz!!1" difficulty, where the enemies are faster, super-aggressive, and do twice the damage.

[Scuba Steve]

http://www.doomworld.com/gbd2/misc/MKRGB0.png

Replace this frame in the revolve state and it will stop looking like it is reloading forward, then going backward.

[Tamashii]

will this mod be available for regular zdoom? i'm having difficulty getting gzdoom to work :/

update: ok got the new diaz working with some regular version of zdoom. awesome. i love the original diaz, and i like where this is going (especially fond of the diaz frag grenades.

few thoughts:

Hitscan monsters are a little too hard atm.

please bring back the spas-12, but with 8 clips, instead of the 4 atm. the bolt rifle's an interesting idea, but would be nice to make it... stronger, maybe. shotgun was weaker than i remembered (loved the original diaz spas 12.

love what you did with the 150 clip m-60mg(or w/e)

grenades, awesome as usual

rpg, the usual.

special weapon/bfg. room for improvement on this slot. the original railgun was nice, though clip size was way too small.

Edit: ok, i'm growing into the new BFG. Out of curiousity, can you make a secondary fire that makes the BFG overload, and self-destruct? It would be like a satchel, but deal RIDICULOUS amounts of AOE damage. press the secondary, and the weapon is tossed to the ground. player runs runs away (if they can). few moments later, the BFG explodes ridiculously and you lose the weapon, until you pick up another.

i was thinking whether you can add some sort of existing weapon that sets ppl on fire, and have them die in the strife-fire animations that a few of your weapon mods had. setting ppl on fire was always a delight.

right now i think the new diaz experiences a problem where there's no good gun for when you meet 2-3 barons up close and explosives aren't an option. the old spas-12 from old diaz provided that solution wonderfully. the 150 round m-60 can potentially do that now, but you don't get the weapon often, and maneuverability is hindered.

keep up the good work wildweasel! i love your weapon mods. <3

Can i have your babies?


Add: please up-the damage for the skorpion a wee bit please :3

[Craigs]

In all honesty, I'd like to see a different weapon instead of the Spas 12. If I had a dollar for each and every time that weapon has been used in a game/mod, I'd be a millionare. How about a different type of shotgun?

[Tamashii]

how about a pancor jackhammer?

also requesting:

* modifying damage of mauser to kill a demon in 1 shot on iron scope every time. increase damage of mauser in general.

* revenant monster (now some marine) not drop pistol ammo. (drop something else. maybe make it a rocket marine, drop a rocket.)

* six-shooter's remaining ammo not losabe like pistol or smg clip. in otherwords, kinda like shotgun ammo system. increase six-shooer damage to 3/4 of what it used to be, instead of 2/3.

* increase damage of skorpion (or increase its clip)

* alt fire to self-destruct BFG weapon. you lose the weapon.

* make the shotgun be the first thing that comes up (if possible) for weaponslot 3. you want something to defend yourself up-close before thinking of picking things off with a mauser.

*reduce the sound of the revolver firing just a wee bit please.

keep up the good work!

[wildweasel]

Scuba: Thanks, I've added your modified frame to the wad file.

Tamashii, addressing your points individually...

Hitscan monsters are a little too hard atm.

I'm trying to figure out a way to balance them out. Do they do too much damage, attack too often, move too fast?

please bring back the spas-12, but with 8 clips, instead of the 4 atm.

I got rid of the Spas because I hated it, in retrospect. I am adding one more weapon to the game once Marty Kirra finishes editing his graphic for it. It'll be a somewhat toned down anti-tank weapon, dropped by the Revenant replacements. That weapon won't damage the player in close quarters, but I plan on making the ammo for it very hard to come by.

the bolt rifle's an interesting idea, but would be nice to make it... stronger, maybe. shotgun was weaker than i remembered (loved the original diaz spas 12.

I'll try bumping up the sighted power a little and see if that doesn't totally ruin the game.

love what you did with the 150 clip m-60mg(or w/e)

The RPK was seriously influenced by the Heavy's minigun in TF2. I honestly started really hating the immobilizing set-up procedure, and never used the old RPK as a result. This makes it much more fun.

special weapon/bfg. room for improvement on this slot. the original railgun was nice, though clip size was way too small.

Edit: ok, i'm growing into the new BFG. Out of curiousity, can you make a secondary fire that makes the BFG overload, and self-destruct? It would be like a satchel, but deal RIDICULOUS amounts of AOE damage. press the secondary, and the weapon is tossed to the ground. player runs runs away (if they can). few moments later, the BFG explodes ridiculously and you lose the weapon, until you pick up another.

Could be interesting to do...I'll see what I can manage.

i was thinking whether you can add some sort of existing weapon that sets ppl on fire, and have them die in the strife-fire animations that a few of your weapon mods had. setting ppl on fire was always a delight.

Try the Psi-Amp's fireball attack (it replaces the Invis sphere).

right now i think the new diaz experiences a problem where there's no good gun for when you meet 2-3 barons up close and explosives aren't an option. the old spas-12 from old diaz provided that solution wonderfully. the 150 round m-60 can potentially do that now, but you don't get the weapon often, and maneuverability is hindered.

The upcoming anti-tank rifle ought to fill that hole.

how about a pancor jackhammer?

Considered it, briefly...there just aren't any really good Jackhammer graphics that aren't at an extreme angle (like the one in WW-XM).

* revenant monster (now some marine) not drop pistol ammo. (drop something else. maybe make it a rocket marine, drop a rocket.)

I'll address that by making him drop the new anti-tank weapon.

* six-shooter's remaining ammo not losabe like pistol or smg clip. in otherwords, kinda like shotgun ammo system. increase six-shooer damage to 3/4 of what it used to be, instead of 2/3.

For consistency's sake I'm going to leave it as is. I think the current power level for the revolver is fine as it stands, because it still kills Imps in one shot most of the time and takes a little more than a full load to kill a Hell Knight. Considering that it's more common than the Shotgun is, that's a pretty critical balance to keep.

* increase damage of skorpion (or increase its clip)

I've done some testing with the Skorp in its current config, and honestly I like it where it is.

* make the shotgun be the first thing that comes up (if possible) for weaponslot 3. you want something to defend yourself up-close before thinking of picking things off with a mauser.

Noted and fixed. That did kind of annoy me too, but somehow I hadn't bothered to fix it until you said something.

*reduce the sound of the revolver firing just a wee bit please.

Anybody else think it's too loud? I don't see any problems with it...

Oh, and Nick, I removed the pain flinch effect entirely. Once I do a little more testing on this myself, I'll upload another version.

[Tamashii]

thanks for the reply wildweasel. there is one shotgun replacement i think i saw somewhere on your website. it looked a little like a counterstrike M3. i remember loving that shotgun because it had a decent balanced blast radius.

and when you asked about the hitscan monsters. they fired too quickly, and too often. they usually popped out and shot me before i had a time to react. Especially problematic was the magnum revolver zombies.

For the shotgun, can you increase the clip size to 6, instead of 4?

played through the diaz beta through:

- The Ultimate Torment&Torture
- Titan
- Equinox
- City of the Damned
- Container

I especially enjoy testing weapon mods through Titan and Equinox because their levels get progressively more difficult and unforgiving.

Thanks for the replies. Waiting eagerly for your next release. GL.

[Lizardcommando]

I was just playing around with this and you can gib a normal pistol guy with the melee attack for that shotgun. I don't remember if I just attacked the normal pistol guy with the melee attack without doing any other attacks on him or if I had shot him once with the shotgun and then used the melee attack on him.

But yeah, doing one of those things will gib a normal pistol guy.

[Craigs]

Strife support (assuming you're still working on that part) seems to be working just fine for the most part. I did find a glitch with the grenade launcher though. The pickup sprite has been replaced with a giant grenade, and when you pick it up you just get the grenade launcher, and once you change weapons you can't even use it again.

[wildweasel]

Craigs said:

Strife support (assuming you're still working on that part) seems to be working just fine for the most part. I did find a glitch with the grenade launcher though. The pickup sprite has been replaced with a giant grenade, and when you pick it up you just get the grenade launcher, and once you change weapons you can't even use it again.

I am still working on Strife support, attempting to figure out how to replace some of the weapons. The Grenade Launcher has not yet been replaced, and is not in the Keyconf definition, so you can't select it without using the console.

In theory, though, Heretic support on the other hand should be just about complete.

[the iron hitman]

Well this is a dumbass solution, but what about a minigun type thing? Or could gzdoom not handle the amount of particles given off by a fast rate of fire?

[Tamashii]

monsters don't hurt each other anymore. is that intended?

[wildweasel]

I tried to disable infighting through a simple DeHackEd patch, but that seems to have stopped everybody from even hurting each other, let alone turning against themselves. I'll just delete the DeHackEd.

And about a minigun? Sorry, I think the RPK is enough of a rapid-fire weapon. Seeing as I have three rapid-fire machine guns in the mod now, I think any more would just be pushing it too far. Not to mention, I hate miniguns.

[Tamashii]

when's next beta release? :3

[Patrick]

the muzzle flash on that Ak-47 looking thing is just way too big

[wildweasel]

The next version of the mod has now been uploaded, containing many fixes, a few balance adjustments, and the Psi-Amp is now completely silent to monsters.

http://armory.drdteam.org/wwmods/inprogress/wwhc-diaz.rar

My plans for the next version mainly include making more monsters to replace old ones, working on the new weapon, and possibly adding Deathmatch obituaries to the weapons. If those were a bit more flexible, I'd like to create obits for suicides for the weapons as well, specifically killing yourself with psionic burnout.

I've also done some co-op testing with the mod, playing through TVR!.wad on Wepon Modz R 4 Noobz difficulty. Adds a definite Rainbow Six feel to the game.

I'd also like to solicit some more feedback - a few people have told me that they don't like the manual reloading, and that the weapons should automatically reload when they're empty. Does anybody else agree?

[Jodwin]

WildWeasel said:

I'd also like to solicit some more feedback - a few people have told me that they don't like the manual reloading, and that the weapons should automatically reload when they're empty. Does anybody else agree?

Assuming that there's no way to make it possible to switch weapons while reloading, I'd prefer manual reloading.