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wildweasel

The next WW mod: GZMecha

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The reviews of Diaz: The Last Hours of Purity were wildly mixed this last newstuff, but many of them had the same complaint: that I should be keeping things simple, and not throwing fifty thousand machineguns into the wad file. I personally deny that any weapon acts the same as another (exception being the P50 and Judgment, but they're both starting weapons so I consider that exempt).

Regardless, though, this feedback has certainly been taken into consideration for my next mod: GZMecha. In this mod, you play a giant robot.

Hold on - didn't Jekyll Grim Payne make a mecha mod, too, you ask? Well, his mod is based on an earlier version of mine, with plenty of modifications, and despite the size of these robots, I feel that there is room in the community for both our mods. It's not like we're competing. But I digress.

GZMecha is a (sort of) simple gameplay modification for GZDoom. It MIGHT work in ZDoom; I don't guarantee that, though. The core idea for this mod is that you are a supremely powerful giant robot, you can stand on your own against barons and cyberdemons without breaking too much of a sweat, you can absorb bullets like water, and - here's the kicker - there are only six weapons in this mod. BUT - and I emphasize this - each weapon has some upgrade potential, simply by picking up more than one of the same weapon.

I've got the mod more or less gameplay-complete, barring some replacements for the armors and powerups, the addition of new player sprites, and some other aesthetic tweaks. You can get it here: http://armory.drdteam.org/wwmods/inprogress/ww-gzmecha.zip (and I must stress this, go get a GZDoom SVN version or else the mod WILL NOT work properly!)

Gameplay notes below:
-- Make sure to bind keys for Shutdown Override and Use Coolant from the keyboard controls!
-- Your mech runs on a fusion reactor, which is used to power your energy weapons, flamethrower, and missile launcher. Overstressing the reactor will cause your mech to overheat. The onboard computer will tell you if you're getting too hot, and will shut the mech down to prevent heat damage. Pressing the Override key will stop the shutdown process, but be careful: keeping the mech too hot in this state will cause the reactor to explode, destroying the mech and killing you in the process.
-- There are canisters of coolant fluid lying around (replaces the Stimpack). Picking these up will store them; pressing the Use Coolant key will dispense one into your mech's reactor, instantly reducing your overall heat level by 10%. You can carry up to 10 coolants at once, but they don't carry between levels (except for one).
-- The Run key is disabled.
-- Bind a Crouch key; you WILL need this unless the map you're playing is very wide open.
-- Unfortunately, the size of the mech, the reduced speed, and the need to crouch can and will make some map sets completely unplayable - Doom 2 Map06 is extremely difficult due to the inability to reach the blue key on UV, 32in24-d.wad cannot be played at all due to it disabling your Jump and Crouch keys, and I'm sure there are many others that may be hard or impossible.

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Jodwin said:

Bad: Mecha. :(

LoL...

Hey Weasel, at first I thought it couldn't be good, because of the file size, but playing it makes fun and it makes the doom play different. Well done! And the control system is easy to handle, good job!

The only thing that is missing are the specific levels for it...

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Deeforce said:

<picture of mech HUD>


Are those Battletech weapons I spy in the bottom right hand corner? How do you 'upgrade' battletech weapons, other than through years of R&D? ER and Pulse technology doesn't just happen by strapping two normal ones together.

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AlexMax said:

Are those Battletech weapons I spy in the bottom right hand corner? How do you 'upgrade' battletech weapons, other than through years of R&D? ER and Pulse technology doesn't just happen by strapping two normal ones together.

This project is inspired by Battletech, yes, but I took several liberties for gameplay purposes, so this really isn't SUPPOSED to be Battletech. It just...kind of looks like it.

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That really makes me feel like playing Mechwarrior! However, I think you could make the robot a little bit smaller. And the flame looks somehow strange, but apart from that it's cool. An the cockpit is great. It'd be interesting to play it in DM...

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hervoheebo said:

Fuck yes, this is something awesome. Never seen something like this before. Any good maps for this?

I've been looking - so far I've had the best luck with large-scale city maps, for example Map15 of Fragport.wad, Map02 of Hellcore 2.0, and to a lesser extent, Doom 2 Map13. I haven't been able to find many, really.

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I really like it, but I would like to see the mech be stronger. I get my ass kicked using the mech in certain wads in which I usually do well on without.

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What about the mech is weak to you? I've been slowly increasing the power level of most of the weapons, in particular the PPC (used to do 150 damage, 225 with the upgrade; I almost doubled it to 250 and 500), the machine guns (formerly 3 damage, now 5). I'm trying to think of other ways to make the mech stronger overall than Doomguy.

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I think that for a mech, it really doesn't take much damage to die. Due to it's slow speed, it is much easier to get hit than say if you're playing as Doom Guy. I get mauled to death by simple bull demons which hardly happens to me if I play as Doom Guy. Perhaps give it some sort of force shield like in most mecha shows? I really do like the theme though. I think it would be a great mod on coop.

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Maybe I could give the mech 1,000 hit points instead of 600, and change the armors to absorb more damage? You might have noticed that there's already some "shield" representation in the mod; the blue ring around the health display was intended to show that.

As for co-op, yeah, that and DM are my main focus for this mod - I want to relive the old NetMech days. Now if only I could just fix the message and shutdown glitches in multiplayer...

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WW, I forgot to mention a couple of things. Firstly, you should remove player's blood, 'cause a robot shouldn't bleed. Secondly, I think that the hit-color(or whatever it is called, I mean the color your screen fades to when you're hit) shouldn't be red or should be removed at all (AFAIK it can be removed, but I didn't need it, because in my mod Mecha's shield absorbs 100%, and in this case screen doesn't fade to any color at all). Thirdly, I had an idea which you may like to use: a force strike which blows enemies dealing few damage but pretty far away (giving quite a lot of heat to the mecha). This may help to get away from being clutched by enemies, mostly pinkys - for a slow player it can be useful.

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I don't suppose it would be very consistent with mech "mythology" but IMO it would be cool, when you died, to have a chance of surviving as the pilot and spawning next to the mech debris as a regular guy running around with your sidearm. Of course, I have no idea how possible something like that might be (a morph system of some sort?)

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