Tortured Transmission: Alpha v1 Hotfix! (Repost)

[Ænima]

The gameplay doesn't feel all that different from Doom2's aside from being a lot harder and having some new weapons and grenades. There's no new gameplay mechanics other than that parkour thing that was in that other FSR wad, which is rarely (if ever) useful in most maps. That's kind of something you need to tie in with well thought-out architecture in your own custom levels, because good parkour opportunities don't occur very often, unless of course you increase the player's speed and jump height.

[W1D3A55]

As far as gore goes, I don't really think we're gonna remove it, nor is it necessary to do so. By the logic you gave, any mod trying to use gore is just copying brutal doom, which isn't so. There have been mods before brutal doom that made gore, like nashgore. We got the inspiration for gore from games like Quake 3 Arena, Duke Nukem 3d, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Killing Floor, Turok 2, and Doom 3. With Doom 3 specifically, it directly inspired the close up shotgun gib that we have in the mod, and the blood on the walls and such in Quake 3 Arena helped inspire our own.

I hate to say it, but this does feel like its trying to copy brutal doom as far as gore goes. You have HD bloodsprites and lots of blood actors that spawn upon shooting someone, not to mention the dripping blood effect that looks very similar to brutal doom.

As far as gameplay goes, this is what I think of it.
[spoiler]
This feels like some sort of mod that i would play once and never pick it up again.
The gore is very BDish. Not gonna lie, this just looks almost copypastad from Brutal Doom.
The sparks that the Chainsaw, Gauntlet, and many other weapons give are unrealistic and a bit distracting. They look more like fireworks than sparks.
Speaking of the Chainsaw, it looks like you're humping the chainsaw.
The sprites on some of the weapons (as stated by other people) look kinda bad. They look very unpolished and dull.
The Machine Gun makes no sense in one case, how can it be such an average sized weapon, yet still able to fire a large (and slow) as hell grenade.
The BfgBall looks very green. So green in fact it almost hurts.
The Fireballs the imps fire just don't seem realistic or appealing.
Was there a need to replace the health bonuses with recolored ones that give you 5 HP instead of 1?
Also, was there a real need for all those skill levels? Honestly, the last 3 are too difficult for most people. I'd suggest removing them.
The Custom blue automap just doesn't look very good at all.[/spoiler]

Honestly, this mod needs a lot of work. It feels like it's trying to be the next best mod out there, but right now this feels like something someone slapped together in a few days. Feel free to make your own maps for it, but until this mod gets cleaned up immensely, there's no way im going to play this anytime soon.

[Hypnotoad]

I reviewed your mod because I was bored: http://zandronum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=4314

You're lucky because I was in an extremely generous mood.

[mifu]

Garo does have maps in mind; He's going to be releasing some later that use the features of the mod to a decent extent.
As far as gore goes, I don't really think we're gonna remove it, nor is it necessary to do so. By the logic you gave, any mod trying to use gore is just copying brutal doom, which isn't so. There have been mods before brutal doom that made gore, like nashgore. We got the inspiration for gore from games like Quake 3 Arena, Duke Nukem 3d, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Killing Floor, Turok 2, and Doom 3. With Doom 3 specifically, it directly inspired the close up shotgun gib that we have in the mod, and the blood on the walls and such in Quake 3 Arena helped inspire our own.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestion. Would you explain what you dislike about the current gameplay in the mod?

Well with this post... I guess i better pick bits from it and explain somethings to you.

First things first, you say that my logic is flawed by posting this.

By the logic you gave, any mod trying to use gore is just copying brutal doom, which isn't so.

I am afraid that it is not flawed. I am aware that there were gore mods before brutal doom, however we are not talking about that. This mod is almost close too brutal doom, except without all the fancy fatalities and shit. The gore is brutal doom-ish (and I hate to admit this btw guys), but brutal doom seems to do a better job then this mod does.

It is almost like you are trying to compete with brutal doom, and at the moment, you are falling short.

As for my complaints about gameplay... well Hypnotoad summed it up quite well in his review.

As i said before I guess, you should go back to the drawing board and think of a way to improve the gameplay that will blow shit out of the water. Of course, thats up to you guys. Take my criticism or not, I'm only trying to help you guys in the end.

[CloudFlash]

This mod would be cooler, if:
-less gore/option to turn gore down/amount of gore increasing with difficulty
-clarification that this is ripfest
-no reload where unnecessary, or altfire reload
-some sound buffs and sprite buffs
-maybe (a big fat maybe) if there were more monster variations
-getting rid of grenades/putting grenades as fist altfire

[Medicris]

I have a small question. Why did you use something other than "reload" as the reload bind? First time I played I was wondering why hitting R wasn't reloading, and turned out it was a different command. Every other mod uses "reload", so one key works for all of them.

Nothing awful, but I'm just curious why.

Also, those shotgunners are horrible to fight, played a bit of Plutonia with it. Got shot once across the whole start area and nearly instakilled me, damn. Took a look at the decorate and it's 10 fastprojectiles, each doing (random 1,5)*3 damage, at a spread of 8°. That leaves the average damage at 90, and a possible range of 30 to 150 per shot.With their tendency to be used in large numbers and in teleport traps, and habit of shooting on sight in very quick succession, it can feel pretty cheap and inescapable in many situations where you simply can't kill them fast enough or are coming from all directions. You could say "dodge the projectiles", but they move fast enough that it's only an option when you have the luxury of enough lateral space to maneuver around an 8° cone of 100-unit-per-tic projectiles.

That goes for chaingunners, too. Those fire a projectile with the same damage except at the rate of the Skulltag minigun (2 tics per shot = 17.5 per second = 1050rpm + avg 9 dmg per shot = 157.5 average DPS!), with less spread than the Doom shotgun (6°). Oh god, any teleport ambush ever.

For how heavily reliant on numbers zombies are placed in most maps, I think it can just get a little absurd. I always reasoned that the reason zombies can't shoot for shit in Doom is because they're rotting and clearly not in a level of intelligence or dexterity to put their sniping-200m-with-shotguns-and-underarm-gatling-gun marksmanship training to use. But hey, that's just my two cents.

[Bloax]

did you know that completely absurdly shiny metal is a delicate art
and no you didn't do it properly because it requires drawing quite a lot of light

[Ijon Tichy]

Why did you use something other than "reload" as the reload bind? First time I played I was wondering why hitting R wasn't reloading, and turned out it was a different command. Every other mod uses "reload", so one key works for all of them.

this isn't zdoom, there is no standard reload key yet

[Medicris]

Why did you use something other than "reload" as the reload bind? First time I played I was wondering why hitting R wasn't reloading, and turned out it was a different command. Every other mod uses "reload", so one key works for all of them.

this isn't zdoom, there is no standard reload key yet

Every other mod uses "reload", so one key works for all of them.

Most Z& or older zdoom mods I've seen that have reloading and don't use altfire to trigger it use "reload" as the bind/command for self-explanatory reasons. For this reason binding r to "reload" for one mod works in the majority of mods. Kind of an unofficial thing I've noticed.

Nothing big.

[Ted]

The gameplay doesn't feel all that different from Doom2's aside from being a lot harder and having some new weapons and grenades. There's no new gameplay mechanics other than that parkour thing that was in that other FSR wad, which is rarely (if ever) useful in most maps. That's kind of something you need to tie in with well thought-out architecture in your own custom levels, because good parkour opportunities don't occur very often, unless of course you increase the player's speed and jump height.

There will be some maps added later, Garo's already planned for it. Thank you for the suggestion though.

---

Garo does have maps in mind; He's going to be releasing some later that use the features of the mod to a decent extent.
As far as gore goes, I don't really think we're gonna remove it, nor is it necessary to do so. By the logic you gave, any mod trying to use gore is just copying brutal doom, which isn't so. There have been mods before brutal doom that made gore, like nashgore. We got the inspiration for gore from games like Quake 3 Arena, Duke Nukem 3d, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Killing Floor, Turok 2, and Doom 3. With Doom 3 specifically, it directly inspired the close up shotgun gib that we have in the mod, and the blood on the walls and such in Quake 3 Arena helped inspire our own.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestion. Would you explain what you dislike about the current gameplay in the mod?

Well with this post... I guess i better pick bits from it and explain somethings to you.

First things first, you say that my logic is flawed by posting this.

By the logic you gave, any mod trying to use gore is just copying brutal doom, which isn't so.

I am afraid that it is not flawed. I am aware that there were gore mods before brutal doom, however we are not talking about that. This mod is almost close too brutal doom, except without all the fancy fatalities and shit. The gore is brutal doom-ish (and I hate to admit this btw guys), but brutal doom seems to do a better job then this mod does.

It is almost like you are trying to compete with brutal doom, and at the moment, you are falling short.

As for my complaints about gameplay... well Hypnotoad summed it up quite well in his review.

As i said before I guess, you should go back to the drawing board and think of a way to improve the gameplay that will blow shit out of the water. Of course, thats up to you guys. Take my criticism or not, I'm only trying to help you guys in the end.

Well, as with imperfections in the mod, we're still rounding it out with suggestions and how we feel about it. As people have actually started suggesting things and not just saying they dislike this and leaving it at that, it'll help push the mod further. I think Garo wasn't trying to go overboard with the gore, just enough to be satisfying when you do gib an enemy; Not overly laggy, but you should still see some intestines and a ribcage here and there. It was mostly included because we like gore, too, and we wanted to see some of it in our mod. It was fun in the games we played in our youth, and we'd love to revisit some of it, Nostalgia, I guess? Would you like to go into detail about how we can improve the gore, maybe?

And as far as gameplay goes, that's why we posted it here, to get some feed back and let people see what they think about it. It's really designed to just make you take some cover instead of barging straight into a room like you're superman. Doomguy's no superhero, just another man, trying to fill his duties (however stretched they may be at this point) and he's no less susceptible to a shotgun shell to the chest as anyone else, unless he's wearing armor, of course. This also ties into the title, (as well as being a reference to a Doom 64 song, as Hypnotoad pointed out), off and on Doomguy is contacted through the game telling him to do different things, where he has to go and what needs to be done; It certainly wouldn't be a stretch to say he's going through torture as well. He goes through hell, fights several demons and zombies on his way, and by the end of it, is likely made up of 90% gauze pads and bandages from the medikits from all the wounds he receives along the way. Any lesser man would have collapsed under the stress or the wounds, but not him. His torture goes on.

Thanks for posting your suggestion and feedback here. Hopefully you get the chance to review it some more later when we have the opportunity to tune it up some more and make improvements here and there.

---

This mod would be cooler, if:
-less gore/option to turn gore down/amount of gore increasing with difficulty
-clarification that this is ripfest
-no reload where unnecessary, or altfire reload
-some sound buffs and sprite buffs
-maybe (a big fat maybe) if there were more monster variations
-getting rid of grenades/putting grenades as fist altfire

I'll ask Garo later what he can do about a gore option; Depends on whether or not the gore is clientside, so we'll see.
All of the resources, to our knowledge, have been properly credited. If you see something that hasn't been, feel free to let us know, via PM or IRC, or you could even post it here.
Some of the weapons use alt fire to function differently, otherwise I could see your reasoning here.
Got any suggestions for buffs?
Monsters are being worked on; So far we have two new ones and the classic monsters received a buff or different ways to make them more unique. Feel free to leave a suggestion on monsters if you'd like. (Edit: We did plan on having an extra monster in, but due to the current Zan limitations it had to be cut.)
Fists already have an altfire; It lets out an uppercut, that does more damage than the normal punch does. (Hint: Run and uppercut.)

---

I have a small question. Why did you use something other than "reload" as the reload bind? First time I played I was wondering why hitting R wasn't reloading, and turned out it was a different command. Every other mod uses "reload", so one key works for all of them.

Nothing awful, but I'm just curious why.

Also, those shotgunners are horrible to fight, played a bit of Plutonia with it. Got shot once across the whole start area and nearly instakilled me, damn. Took a look at the decorate and it's 10 fastprojectiles, each doing (random 1,5)*3 damage, at a spread of 8°. That leaves the average damage at 90, and a possible range of 30 to 150 per shot.With their tendency to be used in large numbers and in teleport traps, and habit of shooting on sight in very quick succession, it can feel pretty cheap and inescapable in many situations where you simply can't kill them fast enough or are coming from all directions. You could say "dodge the projectiles", but they move fast enough that it's only an option when you have the luxury of enough lateral space to maneuver around an 8° cone of 100-unit-per-tic projectiles.

That goes for chaingunners, too. Those fire a projectile with the same damage except at the rate of the Skulltag minigun (2 tics per shot = 17.5 per second = 1050rpm + avg 9 dmg per shot = 157.5 average DPS!), with less spread than the Doom shotgun (6°). Oh god that mob of chaingunners at the end of Plutonia MAP01 and like any teleport ambush ever.

For how heavily reliant on numbers zombies are placed in most maps, I think it can just get a little absurd. I always reasoned that the reason zombies can't shoot for shit in Doom is because they're rotting and clearly not in a level of intelligence or dexterity to put their sniping-200m-with-shotguns-and-underarm-gatling-gun marksmanship training to use. But hey, that's just my two cents.

I spoke with Garo about the accuracy; The reason for their accuracy is at the moment, Zandronum doesn't support the float random feature Zdoom does, so he can't properly randomize it like it's supposed to be. Hopefully in the next Zan 2.0 update it will be supported. It's really a shame that it's so behind (Roughly 2 years, if not over).

He also said that as far as the damage goes, the damage stresses the point of strategy vs brute force. You have to find a way to take down different enemies in the map without expecting to blindly run through it and expecting to survive. While they are zombies, this doesn't change the weapon function. It still shoots bullets that hurt, y'know?

[Ted]

For anyone that hasn't noticed, there's a hotfix posted in the original post. It replaces where the old one was, so download away!

[Popsoap]

Zandronum doesn't support the float random feature Zdoom does, so he can't properly randomize it like it's supposed to be.

There's a way around this.

Code: Select all

random(-60, 60) / 10.0

[Ted]

Garo told me to thank you, and if it works, it'll be included. Also, you haven't commented on what you think about the mod yet, man. Any thoughts?

[President People]

[quote=Ted]I'll ask Garo later what he can do about a gore option; Depends on whether or not the gore is clientside, so we'll see.[/quote]

Any non-interactable visual effects (such as gore) ought to be clientsided to start with, regardless of an option to toggle them on or off.

[Untitled]

I spoke with Garo about the accuracy; The reason for their accuracy is at the moment, Zandronum doesn't support the float random feature Zdoom does, so he can't properly randomize it like it's supposed to be. Hopefully in the next Zan 2.0 update it will be supported. It's really a shame that it's so behind (Roughly 2 years, if not over).

He also said that as far as the damage goes, the damage stresses the point of strategy vs brute force. You have to find a way to take down different enemies in the map without expecting to blindly run through it and expecting to survive. While they are zombies, this doesn't change the weapon function. It still shoots bullets that hurt, y'know?

The issue is, what happens if a trap opens up? You know, the classic traps that force you into right where the map maker wants you to be. What do you do?
Or what happens when you teleport into a surround-style ambush because the maps designed that way.
The issue is traps are sort of a large part of doom mapping and ruining them all is not a wise idea.

Also, try playing MAP32 of Plutonia, and prepare to die over and over and over again.

This is very much the same problem Mutiny has.

[Unholypimpin]

I don't want to come off as an asshole but gore and effect mods have been done to death. Seriously you arn't doing anything new with this mod that people havnt seen billions of times before. Imo you should think about something new and fresh and then make a mod rather than trying to do the same things others have done but even more over the top.

[Medicris]

I spoke with Garo about the accuracy; The reason for their accuracy is at the moment, Zandronum doesn't support the float random feature Zdoom does, so he can't properly randomize it like it's supposed to be. Hopefully in the next Zan 2.0 update it will be supported. It's really a shame that it's so behind (Roughly 2 years, if not over).

He also said that as far as the damage goes, the damage stresses the point of strategy vs brute force. You have to find a way to take down different enemies in the map without expecting to blindly run through it and expecting to survive. While they are zombies, this doesn't change the weapon function. It still shoots bullets that hurt, y'know?

The issue is, what happens if a trap opens up? You know, the classic traps that force you into right where the map maker wants you to be. What do you do?
Or what happens when you teleport into a surround-style ambush because the maps designed that way.
The issue is traps are sort of a large part of doom mapping and ruining them all is not a wise idea.

Also, try playing MAP32 of Plutonia, and prepare to die over and over and over again.

This is very much the same problem Mutiny has.

This. Try Plutonia MAP18's spawn as an example.

[Ted]

Since I see a lot of complaints with Plutonia and this mod, I'll give it a shot myself, and let you guys know how it goes. I'll be using the Turn up the Heat difficulty, which is right around UV for comparison.

[Sean]

I've played through this, and all I saw was impossible HD Brutal Doom without the fatalities.

[Ted]

I'll ask Garo later what he can do about a gore option; Depends on whether or not the gore is clientside, so we'll see.

Any non-interactable visual effects (such as gore) ought to be clientsided to start with, regardless of an option to toggle them on or off.

I asked Garo to be sure, and he did say gore was already clientsided. Thanks for the advice though!