Zandronum

What is Mercenaries?
Mercenaries is a gameplay mod for Zandronum. I originally started this mod more than 6 years ago, for Skulltag 97b. As the years went by, the project grew and grew, and eventually got a bit out of hand. The previous version, v1.9, was a cluttered mess. It was around 60mb of CS rips, mismatched hands, redundant weapons, unbalanced classes, broken scripts, overpowered monsters, etc. So I've decided to restart the Mercenaries project from the ground up and give it a fresh new start!

How do I play?
Kill monsters to make money. Then use that money to buy weapons, ammo, health, and useful equipment so that you can keep on killin' baddies and fillin' your bank account.

What's in the mod so far?
Tons of weapons like assault rifles, SMG's, carbines, sniper rifles, semi-auto shotguns, 4 different grenade types, landmines, attack dogs, a snazzy buy menu that you can use anywhere, and much more!

What's to come in future versions?
"Bounty" kills or "hits" that give you lots of money, "rare" items and weapons, auctions for rare items, a Mercenaries HQ map where you can train and save your items (so that you can come back to the server later!) and do cool stuff, "mission" maps (aka coop with objectives), deathmatch and possibly CTF maps, player classes like medic, sniper, and recon, and even more weapons will be added along the way!

What is Mercenaries compatible with?
Pretty much any map pack or megawad! The only mods Mercenaries is NOT compatible with are wads that contain R667 monsters (you won't make money from killing custom monsters) or mods that replace weapons or playerclasses. And no, Mercenaries is not compatible with Brutal Doom so don't even ask.

What do I need to play Mercenaries? (besides an IWAD like doom2)
1.) skulltag_actors.pk3
2.) skulltag_data.pk3
3.) the latest version of SST (needs to be loaded before Mercs when you list the wads on your server/launcher)
Also, if you're going to play Mercs with a custom map pack, you need to load that right before skulltag_actors.pk3.

Can I see some screenies/vids before I download?

Spoiler: sure! (Open)

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Where can I download Mercenaries?
>> HERE! <<

Spoiler: changelog (Open)

• alpha 2:
• made the shellbox $50 instead of $100
• fixed: you couldn't buy more than the non-backpack amount of ammo
• made it so that money pickups don't respawn in multiplayer
• reduced the vertical spread on the uzi's altfire to make it better for crowd-control
• increased the weedsphere pickup sound volume cuz it didn't seem loud enough
• made the p228 slightly more accurate
• altered the clusternade sprite to distinguish it from the fragnade
• made grenadeweapon undroppable
• fixed the "tutorial" messages
• increased the ak-47 raise speed
• m16 now clicks when clip is empty

Feedback and discussion is much appreciated!

This looks really cool!
When I saw the buy menu I thought of Soldier of Fortune 2, then I saw that the clips for the weapons used the SoF2 loading bar, and I was like AW YEAH!
Looking forward to this

-TZK

I will admit I'm impressed by the grenade arcs showing up before you throw them. This is looking rather promising compared to the last iteration. Don't tell me the terrible KDiZD-alike map01 is a part of it, though. :v

ClonedPickle wrote: I will admit I'm impressed by the grenade arcs showing up before you throw them. This is looking rather promising compared to the last iteration. Don't tell me the terrible KDiZD-alike map01 is a part of it, though. :v

He hasn't even begun to map!

Apparently he's been feverishly working on this if he's announcing it, since it's only recently been a vague concept. Still has many complex things to do.

I'm really thinking this will properly do the Mercenaries concept justice.

I'll hope it does when it's out.

This is amazing! That menu is impressive. Try adding a mouse for it once you feel like being fancy ;)

The fact that I get money by killing monsters and buy stuff in the middle of the game from a menu is not only just awesome, but it makes this mod playable with almost everything.

Make it support (T)LMS so I get awarded for killing players, and be able to either buy some stimpacks (and armor and stuff like that) to heal myself or spend all the money on a stronger weapon. Dunno, it's just my thoughts on what can be done with this.

Well that sure looks nice. (Man, do I even say anything better than that these days? o_O)

Can't wait for an unfinished release or something, though. Because reasons.

Not gonna lie, this actually looks pretty good and slick. Might I suggest a new HUD though? I suppose you may have one planned, but new graphics would be neat instead of the SST ones (and that SoF2 loading bar just constantly screams "ripped").

Theshooter7 wrote: Not gonna lie, this actually looks pretty good and slick. Might I suggest a new HUD though? I suppose you may have one planned, but new graphics would be neat instead of the SST ones (and that SoF2 loading bar just constantly screams "ripped").

Well, the deal is that it's been built out of SST to make it faster and easier to build. All that stuff will be gone eventually.

YAY IT'S BACK!

And looking cooler than ever!

Wondering when there'll be a release. Sorry, but I'm stoked for this now.

New video!

ClonedPickle wrote: I will admit I'm impressed by the grenade arcs showing up before you throw them.

Thanks. That was an idea partly inspired by Syphon Filter 2, along with the grenade target reticle appearing on the ground where it will land.

ClonedPickle wrote: This is looking rather promising compared to the last iteration. Don't tell me the terrible KDiZD-alike map01 is a part of it, though. :v

Oh. No that's SSTMAP01 from Super Skulltag.

ALIENwolve wrote: Apparently he's been feverishly working on this if he's announcing it, since it's only recently been a vague concept. Still has many complex things to do.

Yeah I've been working on it for at least an hour a day for the past 2 weeks. School's out, woohoo. I still work part-time though.

Medicris wrote: I'm really thinking this will properly do the Mercenaries concept justice.

I'll hope it does when it's out.

Oh it will. At least I hope so.

Konda wrote: This is amazing! That menu is impressive. Try adding a mouse for it once you feel like being fancy ;)

I'll try, once I figure out how to check mouse movement via GetPlayerInput. It's INPUT_PITCH and INPUT_YAW, rite?

Konda wrote: The fact that I get money by killing monsters and buy stuff in the middle of the game from a menu is not only just awesome, but it makes this mod playable with almost everything.

Yeah that was something that I really felt like i screwed up in the original Mercenaries. Having to go to a Store map in order to buy stuff required either voting for "changemap store" or editing the server's maplist so that STORE would be inbetween every other map. It was tedious and frustrating. Now it's instantaneous, and instead of waiting for the next map change, you can buy a grenade or a medikit when you really need it, or stock up when you get a quiet moment (because the buy menu doesn't pause the game and you can get killed if you do it in the middle of a firefight).

Konda wrote: Make it support (T)LMS so I get awarded for killing players, and be able to either buy some stimpacks (and armor and stuff like that) to heal myself or spend all the money on a stronger weapon. Dunno, it's just my thoughts on what can be done with this.

PVP gamemode support is DEFINITELY something that I want this mod to have, but it might not have it in the first release. As you may have noticed, i'm still trying to figure things out. Shouldn't take too long though. Until then, you can just play coop/inv. There might also be "mission" maps like in the original Mercenaries versions, except we'll do it better this time, and there will be a focus on actual objectives instead of just killing everything like in normal Doom coop. Example: "Defend the shipment, steal the WMD blueprints, etc etc"

ALIENwolve wrote:

Theshooter7 wrote: Not gonna lie, this actually looks pretty good and slick. Might I suggest a new HUD though? I suppose you may have one planned, but new graphics would be neat instead of the SST ones (and that SoF2 loading bar just constantly screams "ripped").

Well, the deal is that it's been built out of SST to make it faster and easier to build. All that stuff will be gone eventually.

Possibly. I actually started this as an add-on to SST. That way I can just inherit from the SST actors that I was probably gonna copy+paste into Mercenaries anyways. Inheriting from SST just seemed like the logical thing to do, since it's fresh in my mind and it gives me a lot more options than building from scratch. I can also use all of the "eye candy" decorative stuff that I used in SST. (As you may have noticed in the video, the grenade explosions and fire and blood and gibs and bullet sparks are all from SST.) Like I said before, i probably would have just copied those over anyways. Why waste time and filespace? The current filesize of the new Mercenaries pk3 is only 5.44MB! :P

Boreas249 wrote: YAY IT'S BACK!

And looking cooler than ever!

Wondering when there'll be a release. Sorry, but I'm stoked for this now.

Fourth of July. The first public alpha test will probably be ready by then.




Thanks for all of the comments and support, guys! Does anybody have any ideas or suggestions? (besides the HUD, which might be redone at some point anyways)

This looks really good, nice work so far, can't wait to give it a go! :D

Wow this brings back memories. I can't wait to try it.

When this comes out, I think Doom's gonna need a lot more urban environment maps. Cause I'm gonna wanna tear me up a city or two. >:D

Gosh, this is a great surprise! I got a lot of fun out of the original Mercenaries, and this looks like it brings some really solid changes, especially as far as spending money goes.

I'm happy to see Mercenaries' back on its two feet again. :D

I would like to know if My M1 carbine or my Tar 21 can be part of Merc? (maybe both O.o) :P

Capt.J3 wrote: I'm happy to see Mercenaries' back on its two feet again. :D

I would like to know if My M1 carbine or my Tar 21 can be part of Merc? (maybe both O.o) :P

You'd have to define their niche, since the idea is every weapon has a specific use.

Hey Ænima, want some of my old toys for this? I never ended up using them for anything :)



I'm free to do some sprites right now too, I could probably redo some of the hud for you if you want to pm me.

So if you buy everything in a menu now..does that mean there will be no shop map? I loved the atmosphere of it back then :<

Parad0x wrote: So if you buy everything in a menu now..does that mean there will be no shop map? I loved the atmosphere of it back then :<

I think there will be a hub map, but I can't confirm that yet.

Dayum. Black M16 with a grenade launcher. That'd be way cooler. AEnima, you could totally have the burst fire just be part of an automatic function. Launching small radius grenades would be so boss.