Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20180827202615/@comment-3547390-20191105010658

Oh, I am definitely feeling better by this time, though my throat is a bit sore from singing with guitar. Did some recording during the weekend at least.

That sounds very odd, especially for me, who cannot really relate to others and thus feels distanced to everyone.

It existed in one of the numerous Laser Gun modifications and stood out as a sort of unique little detail. I recently did a map that just happened to jog my memory to its existence, so I decided it would be great to add that unique property to the Laser Gun. It works quite nice, requiring the player to use different guns based on situations, sort of like the Shambler and explosions.

Yes, it perhaps makes a bit more sense, but it is also somewhat uncommunicative to the player. When you fire a projectile at an opponent, you want to know you hit it. A lack of responsiveness leads to a sort of blandness, you remember my rant with Hexen after all. Blood is the universal indicator of pain and demonstrates an enemy is getting injured, so removing that just makes things feel off. You wonder if you are even doing anything, especially with enemies rarely getting stunned on nightmare and thus showing other signs of pain. From tests with it off, of which I had plenty since I couldn't get it working, I can say firsthand that not having some effect can be really bothersome. In fact, it works against the whole Knights reflecting thing, since it makes it look like everything is almost universally ineffective.

Maybe another effect could work in its place, a sort of heat emission or something (steam?), but in the absence of knowing just how to do such things (is it a graphical sprite? I am not even sure how to modify Quake's few sprites) and not finding any mods about it we will be sticking to blood for the moment. So therefore I got blood working.

The other day Minion tested out the server a bit. We got some new software that pretty much works just like Hamachi but is far less limited, especially in the number of users, which was a concern since I was pretty much running out of room with just a couple people. Plus I get more control over certain functions now. It is called Radmin VPN. It seemed things went well, the randomness is very effective indeed, it can get quite brutal.

Minion suggested having companion based modifications, but my stance on that is against having them. They could be a gimmick perhaps to mess with, but not something on the server itself, especially since it would nerf challenge and also feel less entertaining. I am about gameplay where you are in control, you are the one fighting the opponent, so having some bots that you can make kill everything just feels very cheap. I recall Armagon doing something with one of the powerups and the nature of that could work fine since it is a temporary effect and logical powerup, but definitely not something I would want in normal gameplay.

Another weird idea I had was to make variants of opponents. Just like the Hell Scrag is much like a regular Scrag, we could have more powerful variants of normal foes, or perhaps weaker alternatives as well. This would provide a good use for the custom skins as well. I already remade the Psionic Slug and these would have the benefit of being mostly copy-past jobs while adding a lot more variety to the randomizer.

The problem with the aforementioned is that the Hell Scrag / Scrag situation is more like what DOE eventually offers. They may be of the same family, but you can tell they are different and they feel different. I am not sure what interesting properties I could add to the various custom opponents, the easiest would probably be to change around projectile look and appearance, plus health and damage. That could work, it did for Barons vs Hell Knight after all, but the problem is that it feels lacking. Custom sounds could be interesting, but something I could try doing. The main issue I see though is just that it would feel lacking; it almost feels like these custom enemies would need a unique property to be worth including. The Hell Scrag behaves different enough to feel like its own entity, but what could I do in most cases? Of course I can come up with creative ideas, but the problem is implementation feels more limited, since I wouldn't even know how to begin on half of the ideas I have.

For example, we could take the regular Ogre and bring it back, making Shrek into its own custom opponent. Change damage levels and health a bit. But what could even be done to its behavior that would make it feel like a worthwhile addition? Thus where I hit my wall. Grenades that don't bounce, but instead have a wider explosion radius? And what of the chainsaw attack, what could even be done with melee weaponry when the mesh clearly has a chainsaw? Shrek already has custom sounds, onion projectiles, and looks different. But you can tell it is an Ogre because it behaves like one. And I am not sure what I could do that would be in the realm of possibility, but also makes it feel different. Anything I think of just sounds redundant, as opposed to the Hell Scrag which fit as a "mini-boss that made you dread the sight of a Scrag".

One thing I can do with this? Make the "Hell" type of each enemy be a sort of almost OP nightmare whereby things are taken to their logical conclusion. Very little in the way of weaknesses, absolutely evil in their heavily augmented strengths. They pretty much are intended to be the high end challenge, focusing more on keeping similar attacks but just making them far more lethal. The Hell Scrag fits into all of this quite well. I also got the perfect skin for the "Fire Demon", which basically will be the Hell equivalent of the Fiend. The plan is to make it REALLY fast when it jumps (I don't think I can control normal movement since they all behave the same in walk speed if you notice, but I can control that acceleration when jumping. Plus, if you can get it to stop jumping, then you should have some solace. That basically will be the trick to this guy, while at the same time knowing you can't really bait it with melee without a lot more risk), combined with single hit kills on even its normal melee attack. I tested all of this on a normal Fiend in DOSBox on a laggy computer; it seemed to be quite evil. Just need to redo the changes and make it a separate entity, plus I will try to add the weird sound style that is similar to the Hell Scrag. So, yeah, Hell Monsters. Evil concept, but makes the server all the more brutal and unpredictable.

EDIT: Remember when I was having issues with getting the Laser Gun properties to function right and questioned if it was due to hitting some limit? Now I can confirm there is indeed some limit I am hitting, trying to add the additional bit of code needed causes the compiler to go haywire. So the lesson here is.. there is indeed a limit and I have found my way to it. Well, that stinks. Just when I was getting into building up everything as well. Maybe some more modern compiler could fix this issue, but the best one I have from 1996 is just not enough. Well, if you were curious about the endgame of the server, we are at it.

I can trim a bit of the fat off some things since they just are impulses to display information that is pretty much always set to a certain setting on the server. But yeah, sadly the dream of adding 3000+ enemies to a random generator is not really a possibility. At least trimming this down allows me to compile the newer code with the Blazing Fiend.

I think I can possibly extend things by using a different version of the compiler. I based a lot on file size at the time as I didn't know what the difference otherwise was, I imagine they must actually be attuned to various limits. So I just assumed the biggest had to have the most for a reason. By adding a bit of pointless additional code, I can hit the wall, then I can test some compilers I have sitting around. After all, the one I apparently have was the one included with the source code, and I could swear I saw some "extended" version. When my compiler is timestamped July, I imagine getting an October based one would be better. It might not be a massive difference, but extra room is extra room, and might be the difference between having a couple more features. It would really help if ANY of this was documented, but I am pretty much working blind here.