Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20180827202615/@comment-3547390-20191025123241

Hope is usually the last thing in various things. After all, it is what dies last. Regardless, it eventually dies without some catalyst.

Definitely not good to have such a gauntlet to get through, but you are right that it is better to only have it once a year. Especially since you get quite a few vacations coming up. Not getting any help definitely isn't fun; I understand that scenario very well. My job is very much individualized, people rely on me to get it done, and so I don't have anyone I can turn to if I can't figure it out. Oh, I can try forums, but usually I find I end up banging my head from the communication issues more than actually getting anything done. No, things usually get figured out by me thinking of all the possibilities and coming up with the best solution. But, since I have a couple different directions for my job, I tend to get other requests thrown at me. And of course it is hard to think in the first place when you are stuck in a room with a bunch of loud people such as a senile old man and a guy who yells on the phone all day if not yelling to talk to his coworkers. I can barely handle reality. My life is easy, outside of the noise level, and yet that is one thing that is absolute torment for me.

Correct, E1M7 pretty much functions the same outside of the shower at the end. The most notable thing is just how brutal the whole ordeal can be, surviving E1M1 can definitely be a challenge even if you know the level due to the dice rolls being bound to throw at least a couple Shamblers at you while providing you with little ammo. Speaking of which, the levels can definitely become much quicker with a Rocket Launcher, while being painful if the dice just keep giving you the same gun (since you can only pick up one anyway) and that gun just being a Double-Barrelled Shotgun. The Sniper Rifle is still a part of the default inventory, but long term plans are to make it one of the randomized weapons you can pick up (right now it feels like the Super Nailgun or Nailgun are bad luck rolls since you already have a weapon that can take Nails). The main thing needed is just a good model, so far I haven't actually run across many weapon models (especially with world models) that work outside of DOS Quake. I really like the inclusion of the Laser Gun, it works pretty well as a low tier opponent remover, especially Enforcers. Its slow fire rate makes it less practical against more powerful opponents however; it can be a great tool for ammo conservation.

Weird things that can occur with randomization? Well, as mentioned, bounding boxes are a thing. There are spots, especially in particular areas such as the Green Armor doorway in E1M1, where an enemy might get stuck. Areas with walls that slide aside, such as the Nailgun area of E1M1, also come with the consequence that enemies with bigger bounding boxes might cause the wall to get stuck and not open. In the case that it continually tries to open, such as the one in E1M1, it will eventually open after the enemy dies from continual pain from their bounding box be hit. Possibly the biggest offender and issue I found was in one custom level with a small round elevator; the enemy was a Vore and the elevator couldn't naturally lower. You could still eventually get it to lower by continually triggering the elevator, but the amount of times you would need to trigger the elevator would be quite the large number.

The Psionic Slug can be painful as well, it cannot be stunned and thus charging it is pretty much suicide, so being stuck with just an Axe against one can be interesting. As might be expected based on how bad 5 in a map were, Snakemen fill you with dread since you know that will take some health to survive, especially since their bullets can bounce off walls. The Hell Scrag is an absolute nightmare depending on the situation; the start of E1M4 where it was tested was actually a lot easier to dodge than some of the scenarios I have run into running this thing. Nothing like losing most of your health upon opening a door due to just how painful it can be. Spiders aren't too bad, especially since their poison mechanics don't exist, but they can be diversions and definitely take quite a few shells to kill. Needless to say, the custom opponents add a lot to the experience, each having their own reason for making your life that much harder.

Implementation of both definitely come with their own challenges. It is far harder to get the opponent working in the game than getting it to be part of the randomizer. Weapons essentially require entity defining that involves a lot of creating its own functions. Monsters on the other hand can have a lot of frames which must be matched up or else you will see a lot of weird motions; the Psionic Slug I tried designing once had an extra death frame which in turn resulted in the animation going haywire. I can now say I have essentially designed monsters and weapons from scratch, doing every step of the process, but I definitely cannot say it is an easy procedure. Hopefully I can be good enough to implement all closed source things as needed, it surprised me how well both the Laser Gun and the Psionic Slug turned out. Both feel like their respective versions in the closed source modifications, with of course the enhancements provided by the 20+ mods the server is mixing together.