On the health and armour bonuses

[MrFlibble]

I've always thought that the health and armour bonus pickup messages aren't very original, as they use the same item names as in Doom. I was thinking of re-wording them to something else, like "vitality boost" and "protection enhancement". What do you think?

Another idea that occurred to me is that maybe from the game lore standpoint, the armour the player wears could be "divided" into a physical vest and an energy shield? That way, the armour items would be:

• armour vest - 100%
  
• armour vest + fully charged shield - 200%
  
• small shield charge - +1%

With that, the 200% armour could be made to look like the regular 100% vest, but with some kind of aura around it, indicating the presence of the energy shield.

I should also note that I find the current health and item colours a bit counter-intuitive, especially the red armour bonus. I keep thinking of it as a health bonus because its appearance can be interpreted as a weird shaped vial with blood. You know, like those health items in Powerslave.

[MrFlibble]

NOTE: This is an update concerning the proposed item names only. Please see the post below for a more detailed explanation.

I just thought that, considering the current appearance of the health bonus, perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it something like vita-booster instead (for a more "techy" kind of name).

Also, while it is my understanding that the appearance of the sphere items is not finalised yet, perhaps their names could include the word orb instead of sphere, just for the sake of being different? I know Orb of Healing/Vitality does sound generic, but at least it's different from the names of their counterparts in Doom.

[jmickle66666666]

pretty sure there are much bigger priorities than dedicating time to revamping armor/health bonuses.

[Voros]

Chungy and fraggle are fine with 1% armor/1% health bonus and don't plan on changing it either.

[MrFlibble]

jmickle66666666 said:

pretty sure there are much bigger priorities than dedicating time to revamping armor/health bonuses.

Revamping? I merely suggested changing their names in the text strings, doesn't sound like much effort involved.

[jmickle66666666]

you also suggested changing the sprites etc. either way, priorities. starting a discussion on whether to make these changes takes importance away from the big changes that need to be made. I just think there's time much better spent elsewhere.

[MrFlibble]

jmickle66666666 said:

you also suggested changing the sprites etc.

Only in the first post which I made quite some time ago (25 December 2015).

A few days after that, raymoohawk used the terms vitality boost and shield charge when he created new sprites for them (27 December 2015), which I took as a tacit acceptance of the changed names (in the absence of any feedback in this thread).

After that, as you know, raymoohawk took inspiration from the very old health bonus pickups from an early build of Freedoom and drew his own version (30 December 2015).

And now it has occurred to me that perhaps a name like vita-booster could be more appropriate to the new, current design of the health bonus pickup, as it now looks more like a man-made medical item rather than an abstract item of obscure origin.

As for the shield charge, raymoohawk designed the current armour bonus pickup to explicitly look like a battery, and IIRC an updated version of the green armour also incorporates a battery as well (I can't find that version ATM though). [Edit] It appears that this is the current version in the repository. The battery is at the belt.

I'm sorry if the way I initially presented this was confusing. And of course, I do not even remotely insist on these name changes, it's just a suggestion. Sorry if my posts took time from something more important.

[duh]

Learn to use whacked or edit dehacked patches (not hard http://www.teamhellspawn.com/exl/whacked4/) and push to Git (not hard https://try.github.io/levels/1/challenges/1), see if it gets accepted, if it does and someone start to bitch, it is the maintainers problem. Also, the fact you have been here for two years bugging people to get your way is annoying.

[Diabolución]

https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/commit/2bd40ddafdcada960458e7d7c23642505d189109

https://github.com/freedoom/freedoom/pull/292

It seems that was actually added. However, this change was reverted one month later. Both mantainers didn’t like this change.

[MrFlibble]

Litrivin said:

It seems that was actually added. However, this change was reverted one month later. Both mantainers didn’t like this change.

Well, I was completely unaware of that.

XCOPY said:

Learn to use whacked or edit dehacked patches (not hard http://www.teamhellspawn.com/exl/whacked4/) and push to Git (not hard https://try.github.io/levels/1/challenges/1), see if it gets accepted, if it does and someone start to bitch, it is the maintainers problem.

Actually you're completely right. I've long gone past the stage of being an impartial observer, and it's time I started to take a more active stance. Thanks for helping me realise that.

Still, I do believe that a discussion of some matters in the forums before submitting changes certainly do no harm, and could be beneficial in some cases.

[Voros]

MrFlibble said:

Still, I do believe that a discussion of some matters in the forums before submitting changes certainly do no harm, and could be beneficial in some cases.

From what I learned in these forums, everyone has a different view of what's good and what's bad, and there's usually no "judge" around here that makes the final decision. This can make things stay limbo because you'll find yourself asking the question "should I or should I not?" Go with your guts and hope for the best. Seemed to work for v0.11.

But yes, discussions can be beneficial sometimes. That's what the forums are for anyway.

[fraggle]

I just don't think these are good terms. "Health" and "armor" are pretty established terms in video games - their meanings are clear and there's no reason not to use them. At the very least if we were running make a change like this then other things should be changed to match too - it's the worst of both worlds when the status bar calls it "health" but in the HUD it's "vitality". But regardless, I don't think it's a good idea anyway.

[Voros]

An old thread I found about adding a dehacked lump in Freedoom.

From what I can tell, most of the strings are actually placeholders?