Samsara - No longer under active development.

[The Toxic Avenger]

LAZ Device as a shield? But....I like my 9K clone :(

[dekw]

Parias' serpent staff seems slightly buggy at the moment: when draining above 100 health, it sometimes randomly reduces the player to 100 health. This doesn't seem to happen on any consistent basis, but it's pretty frustrating to randomly lose 50-odd health.

[Ijon Tichy]

It's probably something about A_CStaffCheck - I'll see what I can do in changing it to pure DECORATE instead of Hexen's native code when I get the chance today. A_JumpIfCloser plus uncommenting a few lines should do the job...

Edit: Okay that should do it, with any luck.

[Untitled]

As much as I hate to say it, I don't like Ranger's slot 7. Not for being uncreative for anything (you cleared that issue), but for being a total BFG Class that takes Zero Skill to use. The BFG 9000, although it's firepower is awesome, takes some getting use to, the new LAZ Device sounds complex (and the old is a 9000 Clone), the Tome of Power is like doubling your arsenal at the expense of having to learn how to use said new arsenal (still, nerf the tomed hellstaff, becuase lol 2 cells for a cyberdemon), the wraithverge... okay, so that does take no skill, but you nerfed it, so it's not quite the BFG-class clearer it once was. BJ's involves bouncing projectiles everywhere, Duke's is weak enough it doesn't need it to require skill to use (though even still, IMO, I would buff it.), Marathon's is impossible to use (I keep killing myself due to self damage dammit, please get rid of that, because my fully charged suicide isn't a practical survival strat), but Rangers? Quadrupling the damage is just as powerful as any BFG, and it takes ZERO skill to get used to (assuming that you already know how to use ranger otherwise) and super lava nails+quad damage=zero skill killing cyberdemons in 2 seconds, while cluster grenades/rockets+quad damage=zero skill horde killing.

EDIT: So, what's been completed for 0.28 as of so far (not to be annoying, but I like having progress reports every once in a while)?

[Dusk]

BJ's involves bouncing projectiles everywhere

The bouncing projectiles aren't anything skill-requiring, that phase is the clearing bit, the skill involved is actually timing and placement of the shot since the initial projectile has very minimal range so you can't just point and shoot. It can get you killed very easily in certain circumstances.. especially in invasion servers where there's a lot of monsters + lag is a factor.

[Cruduxy]

Duke's is weak enough it doesn't need it to require skill to use (though even still, IMO, I would buff it.)

Duke's is my favorite in DM it kills very quickly without a delay and nearly 0 chance to dodge it since its a spam fest..

[TerminusEst13]

EDIT: So, what's been completed for 0.28 as of so far (not to be annoying, but I like having progress reports every once in a while)?

FROM 0.27 TO 0.28
========================
- The realm of Strife has opened up to the Wheel!
Strife is perhaps the strangest of all the iwads, with the biggest differences in gameplay along with HeXen. Strife focused more on stealth and developing a budding plot, taking part in a rebellion against a tyrannic order hoping to squash all free will. Fight, for the Front and Freedom! Move out!
NOTE: We did not fix Strife co-op. Strife co-op is still completely broken, and therefore is still bound to single player.

- The Security Officer was suffering pretty badly in PvP, especially in regards to the Fusion Pistol, SPNKR, and Assault Rifle. The Assault Rifle's damage in PvP has been buffed, as has the Fusion Pistol and Spanker. The Fusion Pistol's blasts are also wider to hit people more easily with it, and the SPNKR's explosive radius increased from 160 to 192.
- The primary and secondary fire of the Security Officer's Assault Rifle are now independent of each other!
- Same with the Marathon 2 alien weapon! Actually that was done in 0.27, but we forgot to mention it. Whoops.
- Some of the ACS has been repositioned and readjusted for easier organization.
- The start-up console no longer tells you about samsara_sogravity, but rather samsara_nocustomgravity.
- The BFG and LAZ Device, with sv_bfgfreeaim off, now support Spread.
- Ranger now no longer has Corvus' wimpy death sound in Heretic.
- Ranger's Grenade Launcher's Grenades now properly go up and down lifts.
- Weapon III drops by Riot Shotgunners now properly respect Ranger and give him the Grenade Launcher.
- The Weapon III drops by Riot Shotgunners now have caught up with the conversion to ACS-based weapon giving.
- Ranger now gets some Lava Nail and Multi Rocket ammo in Last Man Standing.
- They are called "Multi Rockets", not "Cluster Rockets". All instances of "Cluster Rockets" have been renamed to "Multi Rockets".
- The Multi-Rocket Launcher's width of fire has been tightened up to match its spread in Dissolution of Eternity.
- Quadded multi-rockets were getting quadded twice over, dealing 16x damage. Uh. Whoops. This has been fixed.
- The Dissolution of Eternity ammo was making things hell to balance, and have been brutally cut in effectiveness. The maximum capacity has been fractioned, multi-rocket impact damage and explosive radius reduced, lava nail is now 150% damage rather than double damage.
- The Thunderbolt's visuals have been slightly tweaked to be less obtrusive on the screen.
- Duke Nukem now has his proper Explosive Shotgun ready sprite, thanks to Warhawk!
- Ranger is now as tall as Doomguy is. Previously he was just a wee bit shorter.
- The GLDefs have been moved to their own folder for easier organization/additions.
- Ranger now has GLDefs! Only two more to go...
- Ranger's Double Shotgun has a slightly wider spread with slightly less damage, to better match Quake.
- samsara_hexenjump has instead been changed to samsara_jumpmod. Turns out HeXen wasn't the only iwad that required different jumping rules--so did Strife! Use 9 for HeXen and -8 for Strife.
- The Prosperity Rune now properly pauses Ranger's degeneration.
- The Death Wyvern no longer vigorously and passionately humps the first Ettin it sees on spawn.
- For ZDoom, Duke Nukem now has his proper weaponbobs. The only thing different is that the bobspeed doesn't depend on Duke's movespeed.
- Tweaked a few obituaries to be colored properly, and rephrased Ranger's Super Lava Nail obituary to be less awkward.
- Korax and Snotfolus are no longer stupidly weak to ripping weapons.
- The Marathon 2 Alien Weapon no longer jerks and stutters while firing.
- The Blue Skull no longer crashes the game at rare opportunities.
- The Quad Damage's function has been tweaked. It loses its Quake 2 inventory hold thing when in DM, functioning more like Quake. In Last Man Standing, it no longer activates on spawn.
- The Flemoid Maximus is now a proper boss in Chex Quest, and now has proper compatibility--splatters and all.
- The DM tipboxes weren't showing before, for some reason. Now they show properly.
- Doomguy/Ranger no longer sound like a dubbed anime boy when puzzfail.
- The Security Officer's SPNKR and Wave Motion Cannon now has different levels of raise and lowering. What does this mean? You no longer have to lower all the way from the top again if you only slightly scrolled through it!
- Corvus' Tome of Power was not buffing the damage of the Ethereal Crossbow or Hellstaff. This has been rectified.
- The Hellstaff was easily one of Corvus' more pathetic weapons, useful only when Tomed--and even then, doing insane amounts of damage on bosses! Its damage has been increased to be more reminiscent of a Plasma Rifle, buffed from 3-24 to 3-35, and bosses now only take 1/5th damage from its Tomed rain, as it was in Heretic.
- There is now an abridged changelog in-game for people who ask "What's new?" with every single release. Type "changelog" in the console to see it, and "changelogoff" to get rid of it.
- Ranger has an option for sine-based recoil instead of parabola-based recoil. If you know what the hell that means, type samsara_cl_sinerecoil 1 to turn it on, and 0 to turn it off.
- Team LMS fullscreen HUD now shows the team scores rather than personal score.
- The SO's Alien Weapons now properrly displaayy ammmmmo in the thethe fulfuulffscfr rr eeee ee e x0eee
- Due to popular demand, the LAZ Device is no longer a direct copy of the BFG9000. It is now its own weapon, taking inspiration from old DEHACKED replications of the BFG--rather than spraying tracers, instead it delivers a lingering explosion over a very large area. Oh and it also shields you if you hold the button down. Neat!
- The Skulltag monsters now have much, much, MUCH better translations! Add onto that, the Hectebus and Dark Imp now have their own attacks back! Thanks to Repo Man for the EXCELLENT coloring jobs!
- B.J.'s Rocket Launcher, Spear of Destiny, SO's TOZT, and Wave Motion Cannon no longer rip bosses, even if they don't have the +DONTRIP flag.
- BlackFish has slaved long and hard underphotoshop, and now the HUDs support widescreen! Everyone give him a hand!
- BlackFish has also provided graphical tweaks for various weapons to make them more widescreen friendly--Timon's Axe, the Hammer of Retribution, and Duke's RPG are now widescreen friendly! Thanks, man!
- The Dissolution of Eternity ammo has been tweaked in how it's used. Alt fire now swaps from ammo type to ammo type, rather than fires it right away. This should be more like Quake, where you had to manually select the weapon, and should give Ranger in DM a little bit of a pause as he goes from weapon to weapon.
- Parias' damage values have been tweaked for DM. Timon's Axe ignores armor, the Serpent Staff's individual bolts have been buffed from 4-20 to 5-25, the Hammer of Retribution was increased from 64 to 98, and the Firestorm's range has been slightly decreased.
- All characters now have "IsSamsaraClass" as an inventory item, and additional ACS checks to see if they're actually a Samsara class. This means Samsara-specific scripts will not target non-Samsara classes, and scripts in add-ons can be made specifically to target non-Samsara classes.
- Parias' Serpent Staff should no longer randomly drain him back to 100 health.
- HeXen's Dark Servant has been switched from a Megasphere to a variant of Strife's Beacon.
- In singleplayer and DM, Corvus' maceballs were flying without any gravity. This has been fixed.
- Included the samsara_banwolfmove cvar--if an admin desires, B.J.'s Retro Movement can now be banned from play.
- Corvus' Tomed Maceballs have the proper Bounce sound.
- Chex Warrior for some reason was continuing to get people stuck on spawn in DM or LMS. On Spawn, he is unsolid for a few seconds, then becomes solid a second or two later.

[Catastrophe]

You won me at Timon's Axe.

[-Jes-]

Is Ranger's ammo switching supposed to alert monsters?
Just saiyan..

Also, super nail remembers ammotype across switch

[TerminusEst13]

Fixed, thanks.

[Untitled]

You know, with all of that finished, you could just release 0.28 right now.
Note: make sure the dragon claw has +NOBOSSRIP.

[TerminusEst13]

No, we...really can't. There's still lots of last minute testing, as well as double-checking to make sure new things didn't break or commits didn't go through, and fixing the stuff that inevitably did break and didn't go through.

That being said, we are hoping to release sometime soon. Very soon. Like, either tomorrow or Saturday soon.

[Untitled]

So, I tried playing Hexen with Samsara. blue mana pickups now give 15 of ammo 1 and 2 (30 of ammo 1 if you're BJ or Parias).
You might notice that with BJ, you only get 30 ammo 1. BJ should get ~45-50 ammo 1 since ammo 2 is supposed to convert at a 2.5:1 ratio to ammo 1 if your playing him. I also don't think it was wise to make it so you get the same amount of ammo 1 and 2, since ammo 2 is usually stronger for each one ammo (one shell is not equal to one bullet), and we already have a shell-dependency playing doom. We don't need another playing Hexen. Also, getting the hexen everything ammo has the exact same problem: weighing all the ammos as the same.
Note: Speaking of ammo: Parias needs moar out of ammo 2 and ammo 3 pickups. B.J. needs more ammo from weapon pickups so he can play zombie-fests as they're intended (i.e. mowing down zombies without ammo worries). Also, in terms of Ranger's weapons Cell problem (not being able to use them) I thought of something we could do:
Lets use the ammo 4 small pickup as the example (go to ammo.dec, go to ammo 4 small pickup):

Code: Select all

actor Ammo4Small : CustomInventory replaces Cell// replaces Cell
{
    Inventory.PickupMessage "Picked up 20 rounds of Ammo 4."
    Inventory.PickupSound "ammo/plasmasmall"
    States
    {
      Spawn:
        AMSM D 20
        AMSM D 20 BRIGHT
        loop

      Pickup:
	    TNT1 A 0 A_JumpIfInventory("QuakeClass", 1, "PickupQuake")
        TNT1 A 0 A_JumpIfInventory("Cell", 0, "PickupFail")
        TNT1 A 0 A_JumpIfInventory("MarathonClass", 0, "PickupMarathon")
        TNT1 A 0 A_GiveInventory("Cell", 20)
        stop
[...]
      PickupQuake:
        TNT1 A 0 A_JumpIfInventory("Thunderbolt", 1, "PickupQuake1")
        TNT1 A 0 A_JumpIfInventory("Laser Cannon", 1, "PickupQuake1")
        TNT1 A 0 A_JumpIfInventory("Nailgun", 1, "PickupQuake2")
        TNT1 A 0 A_JumpIfInventory("Super Nailgun", 1, "PickupQuake2")
      PickupQuake1:
        TNT1 A 0 A_JumpIfInventory("Cell", 0, "PickupFail")
        TNT1 A 1 A_GiveInventory("Cell", 20)
        stop
      PickupQuake2:
        TNT1 A 0 A_JumpIfInventory("Clip", 0, "PickupFail")
        TNT1 A 0 A_GiveInventory("Clip", 20)
        TNT1 A 1 A_GiveInventory("LavaNails", 5)
        stop

I know this looks inconvenient, but it theoretically solves the quake ammo problems.

[Ijon Tichy]

I don't like that idea. Not just because it's making ammo magically transform depending on what weapons you have, but also because Ranger already gets a lot more damage output out of clips (to say nothing of rockets). In DM and crap, where it doesn't matter how much you get out of it per ammo pickup if you can't deal it quickly, that's passable. In coop, where ammo scrouging happens awfully often, that's a Pretty Big Deal.

Ranger not being able to use Cells isn't a huge deal, anyway. Unless there's more compelling reasons to mess around with ammo, it's staying as it is.

[Empyre]

Maybe you already have it this way, but if Ranger can't use cells, make it so he can't pick them up.

[Ijon Tichy]

Why? The only scenario where that would be at all beneficial is in a coop/survival server with sv_itemrespawn off. Every other case, it's just irritating.

[Empyre]

Irritating is reason enough.

[dekw]

The current decorate implementation of the serpent staff is still, um, buggy, although maybe (hopefully) it's just me. By which I mean, the solution you posted (that said needs testing).

For one... it simply cannot bring you above 100 health at the moment, which would be the major issues. Secondary issues include: not being able to melee arachnotrons or larger things with very much consistency at all (is JumpIfCloserThan checking for the actor's center? Idk), and there being a distinct lack of the serpent staff's puff on melee.

Hopefully I just implemented the decorate wrong, but if not, well, these are the issues.

Also, @Empyre: he meant your suggestion would be irritating, not the lack of it.

EDIT: you can also now melee barrels with it, which for whatever reason you previously couldn't. This was worth noting because I have no life, and therefore anything is worth noting.

[TerminusEst13]

Fixed, fixed, and fixed, thank you.

Draining souls from barrels probably won't be fixed because that's hilarious.

[TerminusEst13]

And 0.28 is released!

We really wrestled all our way through this, as problems with morale, computers, the engine, and even each other popped up at every turn--but here it finally is! Thank you all for your patience, and please enjoy the oddest iwad of the idtech1 batch.
Or don't, if it's not your cup of tea! Strife support may be the biggest feature in this build, even though it's pretty much guaranteed it's not perfect, but there's still a HUGE changelog with all sorts of new and interesting stuff to go through! Bug fixes, balance tweaks, new features, new cvars, and all sorts of interesting things.

As always, thank you all for playing. Your patience, feedback, and interest is always appreciated.