Boondorl

Well, I already put out a mod for it, so you can pretty easily tell what I wanted changed. The answer is quite a bit, but I'll mention something novel: quality of life for the items. Stuff like being able to pick up backpacks at full ammo and soulspheres at full health is annoying and I feel slows the game down when you're trying to avoid picking them up early by accident. Armor is also unintuitive and forces you into a similar dance when trying reeaaaaally hard not to pick up that green armor on accident because you're at 99% with blue armor. Armor and health bonuses are nigh useless and I feel are mostly there to taunt the player more than anything else. This one is apparently more controversial, but I don't like the RNG damage. Shooters largely got rid of it after Quake and for good reason. It's not only annoying when the player gets screwed by it (hello, Revenant missiles and Berserk fists), but it's also a pain to balance for. Removing it makes everything simpler because you'll always know what something is doing when a player fires their gun or gets hit. Though small amounts of randomness, like a Hellknight doing 30-40 damage on its missile instead of 8-64, I would be fine with. Doom just takes it way too far in this aspect in my opinion.

Inspired by the skulls in Halo, I decided to throw together a small mod quickly that allows you to add similar optional challenges to the gameplay. While there's nothing groundbreaking in here, it does lay out what I feel is a pretty cool framework for spicing things up. Tested on GZDoom 4.1.3 but it should be compatible as far back as 2.4. The Story So Far Back for more, eh? You've cleaned the infestations of the Phobos and Deimos labs, battled your way through Hell itself, and came back to Earth to finish what you started. But it wasn't enough. Feeling bored, you needed something new to keep you going. Regular demons just weren't cutting it anymore. Looking through your endless supply of cells and shotgun ammo, you found some curious artifacts you had collected along the way. Gripping one of the alien objects, a burst of energy unleashed itself from the artifact, knocking you back and sending a pulse across the universe. "That didn't happen last time," you muttered to yourself as you got back on your feet. When you took a look around, however, you noticed the monsters that were once so frightened by your stature had changed. They were tougher, more aggressive, and were out for blood. "This will work," you thought to yourself as a malicious grin swept across your face. The artifacts have the ability to change your foes and make them tougher than you've ever seen before. Will you have what it takes to survive their relentless onslaught? Weary - This artifact will downgrade all health items a tier. You didn't need that Megasphere, though, right? You already dodge everything. Weakness - As if Weary wasn't bad enough, this artifact will downgrade all armor items a tier. The demons got smart and started hitting you where it hurts. Famine - And now they're taking your ammo, too! There's gonna be Hell to pay after that one, even if you have to use your fists to do it. This artifact downgrades all ammo boxes to their more fun sized variants. Feather - Light as a feather, as they say. This artifact makes you and your foes have half mass. Conservation of energy need not apply. Shadow - Spectres are easy. How about a Cyberdemon? All your foes now stay out of sight with partial invisibility when this artifact is active. You hope it's just as bad on them as it is on you. Iron - Now you know where all that armor went. Your foes stand dauntless while using this artifact, flinching far less often when you shoot them. Retaliation - With this artifact your enemies are more aware, switching targets instantly when taking damage. So much for using those Hellknights to distract that Cyberdemon. Rage - You know all about this one. When active, this artifact will cause monsters to attack you far more often. Catch - Hope you brought your glove, preferably over this artifact. Your enemies were training while they hid, and now toss their projectiles faster than ever. Undead - Things are supposed to stay dead when you kill them! But they just keep coming back for more. When active, this artifact causes enemies to resurrect. All of these artifacts can be accessed in the options menu, if you're brave enough. Worth noting that these artifacts only apply when enemies spawn in, so mostly at the start of the level. Ok, kinda neat, but can I use it with anything else? Yes! This mod should be completely compatible with any other gameplay mod. Obviously I haven't tested all of them, but there should be little to no conflicts. If there is, feel free to leave a comment here so I can fix it. How does this work with difficulties that already have some of those things? I thought about tweaking the difficulties to make up for that but since so many mods use their own, I found it best to not touch them. Rage won't have any noticeable impact when fast monsters are on, but beware of Catch. Unless you think you can handle projectiles moving at the speed of sound. I would leave Undead off when playing on any difficulty that has respawning enemies. I'm not sure what will happen, but it may cause some weird behaviors. So, I had this idea... Lay it on me. I can't guarantee it'll work since I'm limited by what GZDoom allows, but I'm always open to hear new ideas. Don't be afraid to report any bugs either so I can squash them. ----------------------------------------- Update v1.2 Fixed a critical issue with Weary and Weakness not being able to be toggled Fixed a bug where the player's mass would keep halving as they entered more levels when the Feather artifact was turned on Added the Famine artifact ----------------------------------------- Artifacts v1.2.zip

Wowza, been a while since I updated this. I've had some free time lately and decided to come back to this project and fix it up a little. Still a lot of cleaning up to do, but I figured I'd get an update out in the meantime. Lots of tweaks for bullet projectiles that should help make them more satisfying along with some offset fixes (most noticeable on the Spider Mastermind). A lot of time away from it gave me a fresh view and I feel that overall some things were a little too fast such as the swap speed. Shotguns have also gotten a light rework to make them a bit more realistic in the ballistics department, mainly inspired by adding the new cone-based spread system. Nothing drastic this update, but hopefully with the new Doom 64-based recoil system it can give the weapons some more oomph. The more controversial stuff will probably be the changes to the formerly hitscan enemies. I haven't extensively tested it out but the extremely high damage of the Sergeant makes me a bit worried, and the increased range of the Mastermind might also be problematic (though for a boss enemy it really should have some better range).

Alright, I finally got around to cleaning up all the stuff I said I would. The addon I made is a huge overhaul to the game that fixes up almost all of the differences in terms of gameplay (well, at least it tries to). If you see anything you like, feel free to use it, Nev. If you're interested in going retro with Retribution, you can check it out here.

Note: This mod serves as an addon for Doom 64 Retribution and does not contain the base files for it. Make sure to download it first over at ModDB. This addon should be loaded after Doom 64 Retribution, otherwise it will not work properly. Tested with a controller in GZDoom 4.1.3 Download link: Classic Gameplay v1.1 Normally I wouldn't bother to turn something like this into its own topic, but this is such a massive overhaul to the gameplay that I wanted to make a new thread to get feedback instead of cluttering up Nev's. This mod serves as an overhaul to Doom's gameplay built on top of Doom 64 Retribution. The goal is simple: recreate Doom 64's gameplay as accurately as possible using nothing but ZScript. As such, this mod does not require its own source port. Using Doom 64 EX's source code as a base, almost everything has been revamped, including: Animations Weapons Visuals Player movement Gravity, friction, and knockback Enemies and their mechanics That weird Cyberdemon on the title map And possibly more in the future. Feel free to give any feedback on things that seem inaccurate so I can look into them. I want this to be as close as possible to the original (well , as close as ZScript will allow). Some known issues: Non vanilla Doom 64 maps will break. Enemies in these maps were not made with Doom 64's base stats in mind but rather modified ones, causing enemies to get stuck in walls in certain places. Support for these maps might be added in the future Maps and most props were not touched so there will likely still be some visual inaccuracies The audio has not yet been fully reworked and still has some inaccuracies Some timings are simply impossible to port correctly due to differences between Doom 64 and Doom's engines. Unfortunately this can't be fixed without making a custom source port Many Doom 64 Retribution customization options do not work with this mod. This is intentional to keep the gameplay as close to the original as possible and likely won't get support in the future

Now, for the real question: how would the original missing enemies be balanced in Doom 64? I imagine the Chaingunner and Mastermind would fire in bursts similar to the Arachnotron. Would the Arch-vile be the same? It seems the Motherdemon's fire attack is modeled after it and she's even called the Resurrector internally suggesting maybe she was gonna be an Arch-vile type monster. I imagine Revenants would be identical outside of firing from their shoulders and having a proper hitbox (in that case, would they fire two rockets?).

Hey, y'all! Scott here! I've taken up an interest lately in ZScriptifying some of the aspects of this project while also fixing up some of the stuff that's different from the original Doom 64 (recoil, Unmaker, timings, etc.). I figured I'd dip my toes in the water first and have uploaded an addon for it which can be grabbed here. It readjusts the Unmaker to get as close as possible to the original. Unfortunately the timings are impossible to port properly due to the difference in engine tic rate, but I believe all of the other gameplay aspects are emulated perfectly. I'm also crossing my fingers that it doesn't break anything because admittedly I haven't really tested it out in all the levels extensively. The only known issue is that it can still be swapped to if your cell ammo is > 0, even if you can't fire it. A fix would require me to write a new base class that all the weapons use so for now I'm leaving it, but it could be easily fixed if all the weapons were ported over to ZScript (not sure how much time I'll have to do it, but I'm sure I'll get done eventually).

Most of the time it's a change that's accompanied by making them more aggressive (see: Doom 64). That way they don't take as many shots to kill but will immediately get on your face if you don't prioritize them. Doom 1 is also in that awkward state where it doesn't have the SSG yet so Lost Souls feel pretty spongy. They also don't get any buff with fast monsters unlike our pink friends so they pretty much always stay useless.

A lot of it boils down to balance philosophy. Some designers prefer starting weapons be bad to encourage players to find better weapons. This can have its own benefits, like encouraging the player to not stick with the weapon the whole time and to explore for new ones. The downside in Doom's case should be obvious: dying resetting your arsenal means every level needs to be designed to be beatable from Pistol start, and if the Pistol is bad, well... This can cause levels to feel watered down in comparison to how challenging a level near the end of the game realistically could be. Some WADs just straight ignore this rule either by assuming you're saving or giving you every gun at the start (even MAP30 does this in Doom 2). On the other hand, some designers prefer diversity of roles in a weapon arsenal. To a lot of people, why have the Pistol if the Chaingun is better in every way? Duke 3D takes this approach more with its pistol being a fast firing, accurate weapon with its major downside being a brief reload. In Doom's case this can fix the aforementioned problem of levels needing to be watered down since you can assume the player has a good weapon at all times, but mods that attempt it often feel off because the game simply wasn't designed around it (read: it can make the game too easy). For maps that don't care about Pistol starts it feels much more fitting. There's other balance differences but those aren't specifically related to starting weapons. Designers that want to "fix" the Pistol are usually more focused on diversifying weapon roles while those who are fine with it as is are okay with a more tier-based system.

You're gonna have to make the Pistol shoot nukes if you want people to actually use it. Accuracy isn't an issue when tap firing works like it does. I'm bias here because of my own modding history, but I found the best way to balance weapons is to find what they already excel at and push those strengths while weakening other aspects. Personally, I turned the Chaingun into a close-range shredder by buffing its fire rate and removing the bonus accuracy from tap firing while buffing the Pistol's accuracy and damage. That gives the weapons two fundamentally different roles which gives you a reason to pick one over the other in certain situations.

I like how this change would make the Chaingun unusable in episode 1 of Doom.

Updated current version to 1.0 with no changes (outside of tweaking the change log, of course). Also included a version without the Wolfenstein SS for the few rare maps that replace them via DeHackEd.

In Doom, projectiles work like you'd think. Everything in the game uses a single rectangular collision box, projectiles included. If the projectile's box collides with anything solid, the projectile blows up/disappears/whatever. Quake is similar with its collision boxes except projectiles don't have any. Instead they do a check to see if their origin point crosses anything solid, and blows up if they do. This gives much tighter precision to them since they no longer get caught on corners anywhere near as often and can thread the needle through monsters. My question is, which do you think is better? Projectiles with collision boxes that are harder to dodge but get caught on more things, or projectiles with no collision box that require greater accuracy to hit?

I could see it being easy enough to work around a lot of the gameplay issues. You could set each monster up with its own randomizer that can only randomize to a select set of monsters (e.g. Possessed could only turn into Imps or Demons at highest, but Barons could turn into pretty much anything). You could also add some weightings so a monster is more likely to turn into something similar to it. It'll keep the gameplay in line with a lot of the natural scaling most maps already have. Cyberdemons and Masterminds would be tough simply due to their size and would likely need to be excluded. A hilarious workaround would be to shrink everything down to the player's size, but it's not really vanilla at that point. Another would be to just make sure monsters can only randomize into monsters of similar size (e.g. no Imps into Pinkies).

Beta 3 is out now. Not much new here so it's just a small update. I'm pretty happy with the set of features I have now so I've mostly just been doing optimizations where it's easy or makes sense. The Revenant got some more tweaks to its gameplay which concludes the saga of me trying to make enemies fully respect 3D when firing projectiles/dashing at you. Other than that it's just minor tweaks. Arch-vile fire and Cacodemon strafing are now a tad bit less expensive to calculate which should help out on slaughter maps, especially for the Arch-viles. The Revenant's extended hitbox, on the other hand, received a massive optimization fix that significantly lowered its cost. If all goes well, this will likely be the build that transitions into 1.0.