Supercharge [gameplay mod | v3.0b 07/16/23 multiplayer fix]

[Tango]

cheers @Vorpal, I do really appreciate your (very) candid feedback! some thoughts and responses:

 

On 2/3/2020 at 8:19 AM, Vorpal said:

Screen shake, even a little bit, is horrible. (the only forgivable instance is for earthquakes in e.g. Hexen)

 

I can definitely understand not liking this aspect - I'll try to add a menu toggle for screenshake in the next update.

 

On 2/3/2020 at 8:19 AM, Vorpal said:

Multicolored pickup text is very distracting and difficult to read and overrides my preferred user color settings

 

what!!!! damn man I fucking love the color-coded messages haha. it feels much easier for me to understand at a glance what I just picked up when I run over a bundle of items. I know it's pretty subjective though. assuming you haven't already gone in and done this yourself, here's a wad that you can load after supercharge.pk3 that'll remove all the color-coding from the messages: DOWNLOAD UNCOLORED MESSAGES ADDON

 

On 2/3/2020 at 8:19 AM, Vorpal said:

Reloading/clip mechanics in doom are bad, interruption and slowing down of the action, for only the sake of "realistic weapon feel".

 

I think you may be just noting how reloading in Doom feels to you, but I should clarify that's not my intent, nor was realism any driver for the implementation of the mechanic (but that's not to say I can't understand why one would hate reloading mechanics, because I understand the opinion even if I don't share it). reloading as a mechanic is something I was pretty neutral about before (ie when I played brutal doom many many years ago), but after playing a boat load of Overwatch and a handful of other modern shooters the last few years, I started to really enjoy the mechanic, and realized how much it can let you balance an otherwise overpowered weapon. when I started making Supercharge, I wanted the weapons to really feel impactful like they do when I'm playing i.e. Roadhog in Overwatch. and part of making the Doom shotgun, for example, feel impactful to me is making it not shoot so goddamn slow. but if it shoots too fast and has consistent damage all the time, it felt like I'd be getting good weapon-feel and just a generally very buff weapon, at least relative to the strength of the Doom bestiary that I didn't want to also buff too much. so reloading seemed like a good solution to me, because it still allowed for me to have moments of "this weapon doesn't feel like shit anymore" without feeling like my arsenal was overpowered, plus I just enjoy the extra meta-game.

 

at one point, I had added reloading to basically every weapon - including the rocket launcher and BFG - but that felt like it was crossing a line for me into unfun territory, at least relative to what my vision was for the mod overall. so I definitely understand not liking reloading, but I do enjoy the extra meta-game to an extent personally. all that said, it has crossed my mind before to add a toggle or alternative player class option for a reload-less arsenal, though if I were to implement that, I would definitely nerf the non-reloading versions of the weapons.

 

On 2/3/2020 at 8:19 AM, Vorpal said:

Custom sounds are pulled from all over, and have varying bitrates/qualities. While they sound good/appropriate on their own, when a lot is happening it sounds awful with how mismatched the quality level is.

 

I admit I've never really given this much of a second thought, but it makes a lot of sense to hear this. I don't know why I've never thought too hard about this - maybe I'm just inexperienced with audio to the point that I've not even bothered to mind it, but I'll try to be a bit more conscious of this. do you have any suggestions for polishing this up? would bringing everything "down" to the level of the lowest quality sounds do it? or is it more nuanced than that?

 

sound is probably the aspect of doom modding that I'm most... morally lukewarm? about. nabbing sprites and stuff is pretty common practice within the community, especially because so much custom spritework out there is explicitly allowed to be reused and modified, but sounds aren't quite the same. it seems pretty standard for doom mods to just rip sounds from other games and call it a day, which is basically what supercharge has indirectly done (by using sounds from other doom gameplay mods). I don't really like that fact, but at the same time here I am doing the same thing anyway because really I just want to make a mod that lets me play doom the way I want to play it, whether or not I'm individually capable of making all the assets for said mod myself.

 

anyway though, I'd be very open to suggestions on how to make the sound feel more polished and consistent, if you or anyone else has any!

 

On 2/3/2020 at 8:19 AM, Vorpal said:

I like vanilla's HUD and hate the split HUD, also can't seem to get Lippeth's to work to judge that.

 

the issues you're having with HUDs have less to do with the reloading mechanics, but instead have to do with the fact that I renamed some of the ammo types (I had to because I replace the ammo pickups in supercharge), I think. if you go into any custom HUD mod and inside the SBARINFO lump, replace all instances of "Shell" with "TangoShell", it should work properly, I think, but lemme know if that doesn't do it. alternatively, here's a very quick additional wad to load after supercharge that reverts the split HUD to the vanilla one, but be warned that the automap HUD is still a little wonky in this because I don't know exactly how to fix it at the moment: DOWNLOAD VANILLA HUD ADDON

 

On 2/3/2020 at 8:19 AM, Vorpal said:

I like the idea of a rifle over doom's retarded chaingun, but mechanically I prefer vanilla's chaingun to this burstfire thing.

 

I can certainly understand the sentiment, and in fact in hindsight, I kind of wish I'd have added a more standard chaingun-like weapon instead of the AR, but the AR has grown on me a bit (especially with the tweaks to its animations that I made last update). the stunlock role loss was a conscious decision though, and the reason I implemented the burst fire. I find the vanilla chaingun very boring to use for that reason (along with the fact that it's quite weak), so I wanted a weapon that wouldn't allow the player to stunlock monsters like that. I did make the weapon a lot more powerful than the chaingun to compensate, as you note, but nonetheless I can understand the frustration. I'd love to explore adding a more chaingun-esque, non-burst weapon in slot 4 in a future update, though probably as an alternative to the AR to be used in custom maps, and not an outright replacement.

 

many thanks again Vorpal, I really do appreciate it :D

[Spectre01]

Regarding the Assault Rifle, I also like the mechanic and find taking out low-tiers with 3-shot bursts very satisfying. Additionally, it helps to differentiate itself from the rapid-fire Plasma Rifle, instead of the difference being just damage output and firing projectiles.

Edit: There is also a shake intensity option in GZDoom, which I myself have reduced to 0.1. So that can be adjusted for any mod with that effect.

 

Also, were explosive barrels given reduced explosion radius? They seem to not affect enemies as much as in vanilla.

Edited February 5, 2020 by Spectre01

[Vorpal]

20 minutes ago, Tango said:

would bringing everything "down" to the level of the lowest quality sounds do it? or is it more nuanced than that?

 

I'd say it's a low priority, all of my gripes are not enough to make me stop playing the mod (well I had to change the screen shaking haha). And it's not an elegant solution but yeah it's what I have done is my own personal sound mods - I'd just re-save a given audio file to whatever quality specs doom uses (which I forget offhand). That said it'd be a lot of work for supercharge without a batch way of doing it, so yeah low priority for something I concede not a lot of people will care about.

 

As much as I rail against stuff like reloading I dont expect you to change them. Just I feel in general that I'm being nudged to "duck and cover" gameplay as opposed to "I'm a racecar with guns" gameplay (e.g. I think there is also some player movement penalty during reloading? so you really cant be exposed during a reload). Regardless with your mod I've played doom more in the last month than in the last 2 years

[Tango]

31 minutes ago, Spectre01 said:

Also, were explosive barrels given reduced explosion radius? They seem to not affect enemies as much as in vanilla.

 

there shouldn't be! the redefined barrels use the same A_Explode function, with no arguments/customization, that the default barrel uses. the explosion also comes out on the same frame (frame 16), so they should be identical, outside of the fact that the new barrel has smooth sprites and has a pain sound when it's shot.

 

also that's great to know about that option in GZDoom for screenshake - I had no idea that existed! I also appreciate you sharing your thoughts re: the AR too Spectre01, and I'm glad to hear you enjoy the weapon :D

 

18 minutes ago, Vorpal said:

(e.g. I think there is also some player movement penalty during reloading? so you really cant be exposed during a reload)

 

nay, the player movement speed is unmodified throughout the mod, but I understand how easy it is to suspect things like this when you're dealing with a mod that changes things in slight ways haha. I will nonetheless still heavily consider adding a toggle for reloads in the future, because if I can make the mod more appealing to a wider audience in doing so, then why the hell not. really glad to hear you're enjoying things though Vorpal, and again I'm thankful for all the feedback!

[Vorpal]

Ah ok heh, I suspect it's a keyboard issue then when I hit "r" it's cancelling sprint somehow. Interesting to hear about a screenshake option in gzdoom, I've been using plain ol zdoom.

 

Oh one issue, that may be intentional but, when a weapon is totally empty it does the trigger click and won't autoswitch to another weapon. Just jarring to me as its expected Doom behavior, and in a slauighter situation I'm depending on it a bit ;-p

[Slipgate Tourist]

I'm playing the awesome Whispers of Satan with the latest version of the Supercharge mod.

 

 

[Vorpal]

Been tinkering with this the last few days, if anyone shares my criticisms they may find this interesting. This is a barebones "patch" pk3 containing only what I changed, still requires the main mod loaded prior to it. If you rather mods of it not be in this thread, I understand and will cease and desist ;-P

 

supercharge v2.2b by Tango, this patch then butchered by vorpal

goal is to slightly vanilla-fy the mod, as some things made the game less fun for me
*removed screen shakes wherever I found them
*removed instantaneous weapon swaps
*removed weapon select gun cocking noises
*weapons should autoswitch on empty, instead of spamming click noises(except rifle, not sure why, yet)
*removed most reload mechanics, except for the rifle
*rifle is fully automatic instead of burst fire, lowered clip size to 30 to compensate a bit
*pistol damage lowered, since it no longer needs to be reloaded
*single barrel shotgun shoots 6 frames slower, but still faster than vanilla

todo
*balance, removing most reload mechanics probably mucked with balance a lot
*accuracy on pistol and rifle is laserbeam accurate, probably should be randomized
*overhaul the pickup text to be monochrome
*revert plasma rifle sprites to vanilla or smoothdoom's MAYBE
*remove the added BFG sprites, rather have no animation than have hacky animation
*allow guns to be raised even if no ammo, have yet to figure out how to do that tho...!
*restore vanilla HUD?
*overhaul sounds to have a uniform bitrate? (am probably too lazy to do this)

 

supercharge_v2.2b_nillafied.zip

[Spectre01]

I've noticed that e1m8 becomes softlocked and the walls don't lower when both Barons are the regular variants on Ultra Violence. Seems to work fine when at least one Cyber-Baron variant is present on Ultra Randomized.

 

5 minutes ago, Vorpal said:

Speaking of monster issues, the pinkies at the RL trap in doom2 map13 don't teleport in for some reason

Can confirm. Those monster closets are very small and tend to break with multiple other mods which modify Pinkies. In vanilla, there is only enough maximum space for the Pinky to move half his hitbox over the teleport line.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Spectre01

[Vorpal]

Speaking of monster issues, the pinkies at the RL trap in doom2 map13 don't teleport in for some reason

[Tango]

1 hour ago, Vorpal said:

If you rather mods of it not be in this thread, I understand and will cease and desist ;-P

 

I encourage it! more than happy to have that stuff posted here. I'll try to get around to adding another section to the OP containing links to anything like this, so that it's easier to find too. thanks so much Vorpal :D I'm not sure if you missed it, but in my response to your original criticism post, I posted a download link to a monochrome version of the pickup messages, so you could pretty easily scratch that off your todo list (unless maybe there's something about the implementation that was broken or not what you were looking for).

 

to allow guns to be raised with no ammo, off the top of my head I think that's maybe what the +AMMOOPTIONAL (or w/e it is) weapon flag is for, but I could be sorely mistaken about that.

 

1 hour ago, Vorpal said:

Speaking of monster issues, the pinkies at the RL trap in doom2 map13 don't teleport in for some reason

 

that's really weird, thanks for reporting it (and @Spectre01 for confirming it). the size of the pinky hasn't changed at all in Supercharge, so I'm not sure why that'd be happening. I suppose maybe it could have something to do with the increased walkspeed of the monster? maybe its increased speed somehow means there are never tics where it's crossing the teleport line without running into some collision that prevents it from actually teleporting. no idea if that's possible or accurate though. but I will look into it!

 

1 hour ago, Spectre01 said:

I've noticed that e1m8 becomes softlocked and the walls don't lower when both Barons are the regular variants on Ultra Violence. Seems to work fine when at least one Cyber-Baron variant is present on Ultra Randomized.

 

whoops, thanks for reporting this! looks like I forgot to add A_BossDeath to all the death animations for the regular baron. this will be fixed in the next update!

 

as a general aside, I'm planning to update Supercharge soon (this week) with an update to buff the pistol clip size from 6 to 8, along with the baron bossdeath fix, so stay tuned for that

[Vorpal]

10 hours ago, Tango said:

I'm not sure if you missed it, but in my response to your original criticism post, I posted a download link to a monochrome version of the pickup messages

 

Thanks for actually paying attention, because I wasn't. Will check it out and incorporate it to my little patch when I get non-lazy

 

Regarding the pinkie issue on d2m13, I'd rather they retain their increased speed instead of teleporting from janky 1993 monster closets, if indeed speed is the issue.

[Spectre01]

6 hours ago, Vorpal said:

Regarding the pinkie issue on d2m13, I'd rather they retain their increased speed instead of teleporting from janky 1993 monster closets, if indeed speed is the issue.

 

Agreed. map13 was the only case where I couldn't get 100% kills in Doom 2 with Supercharge. I don't think it's worth stressing over a single Pinky trap not triggering.

[Tango]

just released v2.3; OP has been updated. quick summary:

 

• buffed the pistol clip size from 6 to 8, but lowered its firing rate by 1 frame. unless you were mashing the fire key at the speed of light though, you won't notice the difference, I think. many thanks to @RonnieJamesDiner for bugging me to make this change since before the dawn of the jurassic era
• added weapon switch sounds for the fists, rocket launcher, plasma gun, and bfg
• modified the channels used for some of the weapon sounds, to hopefully prevent obvious sound overlapping. thanks @SiMpLeToNiUm for the suggestion and fix!
• added some terrain actors and sprites that are specific to OTEX, but aren't actually defined in the TERRAIN lump, but could be easily enabled in the future

I might be forgetting something, but I think that's it otherwise. in the next update, I plan to find a replacement for the current spider mastermind projectile wall death sound, and in some update after that, add proper dynamic light projectiles. thanks so much to everyone that's been playing and providing feedback :D

 

also, yall should go check out QuickCharge by @6DB, it's a pretty great Supercharge-based weapons-only mod!!

Edited February 20, 2020 by Tango

[Spectre01]

Cool patch. Hopefully the Lost Soul HP buff I mentioned earlier is still on the table. Right now they die to a measly 30 damage punch with no Berserk. :(

[RonnieJamesDiner]

1 hour ago, Tango said:

buffed the pistol clip size from 6 to 8

 

You know... you pray for these moments, but... you just never know. Hats off to you, sir. And to be clear it's been since the dawn of the Triassic period, actually...

Edited February 20, 2020 by RonnieJamesDiner

[Tango]

24 minutes ago, Spectre01 said:

Cool patch. Hopefully the Lost Soul HP buff I mentioned earlier is still on the table. Right now they die to a measly 30 damage punch with no Berserk. :(

 

yes! just not till after mapwich, is the plan. I think a good chunk of folks are have some very PE/lost soul heavy fights, so I would be concerned about making any hp changes there, as I don't want to force people to rebalance :(

[Spectre01]

I just had the epiphany that I could adjust that value myself! Any specific HP you were thinking of, @Tango? I doubled it from 30 to 60 to match the N64/PSX Lost Soul HP.

[Tango]

18 minutes ago, Spectre01 said:

I just had the epiphany that I could adjust that value myself! Any specific HP you were thinking of, @Tango? I doubled it from 30 to 60 to match the N64/PSX Lost Soul HP.

 

hmm good question! I haven't thought too hard about a specific number yet,  but yeah, I'm guessing I'll end up going with 60

[Spectre01]

It's also a nice number because it hits the sweet spot of 3 bullets or 2 plasma projectiles from the newly buffed Plasma Rifle. It was a really good move to increase the damage from 28 to 30, because before it would often feel the same as using the Assault Rifle on weaker enemies.

[Tango]

sometime in the next few days I intend to release v2.4. the biggest update in v2.4 will be some new BFG sprites/sounds (BFG behavior is virtually unchanged), among other little things like a menu option for weapon screenshake, a menu option to replace the AR with a (slightly faster) chaingun for more vanilla-minded folks, and possibly proper GLDEFS for projectiles (maybe). here's a very quick video of the new BFG stuff in action:

 

 

Edited March 21, 2020 by Tango

[boris]

1 hour ago, Tango said:

menu option for weapon screenshake

 

Awesome!

[Tango]

version 2.4 has arrived! OP has been updated. this version does not include projectile dynamic lights, but I'm hoping to make another update in the next week or two with those. however, this update does have a bunch of other cool stuff:
 

• new BFG sounds and modified sprites! the BFG was the last weapon in the arsenal that felt pretty mediocre to fire to me, so some sprite and sound changes were overdue imo. I think it feels much better now, but let me know what you think! I would like to make improvements to the sprites in the future (namely, to make the charge up animation look cooler with some better green light animations)
• added a menu toggle for weapon screen shake. this is on by default, but turning it off will disable screenshake for all weapons
• added a menu toggle to switch the AR out for a buffed chaingun (the chaingun is the same one from Minicharge, in terms of firing speed). this is kind of a weird, one-off option to have, but sometimes I just want to use a good chaingun gosh dang it. the Assault Rifle is still the default weapon drop for slot 4 though
• re-added a menu toggle option to make monster-fired rockets beep, which was removed after Paradise. off by default
• buffed the Diabolist's MaxTargetRange from 896 to 2048, so it can target the player from much further away now

 

I may have missed a thing or two, but that's all the big items!

[Spectre01]

Great update as usual @Tango! Now I can play Doom Eternal as I wait for those sweet dynamic lights! ;)

[Tango]

On 3/25/2020 at 3:54 PM, Spectre01 said:

Great update as usual @Tango! Now I can play Doom Eternal as I wait for those sweet dynamic lights! ;)

 

I hope you're almost done with Eternal, because you won't have to wait for long!!!

 

@Sapfiar is an absolute angel and has, totally unsolicited, done all of the GLDEFS for me! so I will post another update hopefully today or tomorrow that has all the dynamic lights. till then, here's a gif of the new lights in action (alongside the excellent Vanilla Essence mod by Pixel Eater):

 

 

 

^{also yes I am working on updating Paradise to use the latest Supercharge (and be Zandro/multiplayer compatible)}

Edited March 28, 2020 by Tango

[Tango]

OP has been updated with v2.5. here's a rough changelog:

 

• fixed launch issues with Zandronum; 2.5 should work properly with Zandro again now
• added dynamic lights for monsters and weapons and projectiles, thanks entirely to hard work done by @Sapfiar :D I did none of these lights myself, it was all him
• fixed the Chaingun firing sprites so that the muzzle flash is properly fullbright now

Edited March 28, 2020 by Tango

[DoomSoul]

This is a fantastic mod, congratulations!
Could you add an option to augment max vfx effects?
Will you add any sound and visual effect when you punch on a wall?

[Cardboard Marty]

Heya! I really love this mod, great stuff! I noticed something with the shotgun where the frames are a little out of order, thus causing the pumping animation to look a bit odd. I first noticed this in Paradise but it seems like it's been carried over.

 

You can fix it by changing line #57 in the shotgun's DECORATE from:

SHTG GJ 1

to

SHTG GF 1

 

Other than that, I love the feel of this whole project, amazing work and I can't wait to see what else you come up with next!

Edited March 31, 2020 by Cardboard Marty

[Tango]

35 minutes ago, DoomSoul said:

This is a fantastic mod, congratulations!

 

thanks :D would you be able to expand on what you mean by "augment max vfx effects"? do you mean just add more vfx in general? I'll look into adding something for wall punching though, that's a great idea!

 

23 minutes ago, Cardboard Marty said:

Heya! I really love this mod, great stuff! I noticed something with the shotgun where the frames are a little out of order, thus causing the pumping animation to look a bit odd. I first noticed this in Paradise but it seems like it's been carried over. 

 

you are a wizard Marty, thanks so much for this fix (and for the kind words) :D I'll make this fix for the next update!

[DoomSoul]

Sorry, my english is very bad. I mean to augment the 10000 limit of vfx effects (to 20000, 30000? I don't know the performance impact), I think casings and gore effects disappear too early.

[Tango]

5 hours ago, DoomSoul said:

Sorry, my english is very bad. I mean to augment the 10000 limit of vfx effects (to 20000, 30000? I don't know the performance impact), I think casings and gore effects disappear too early.

 

not at all mate, your english is quite fantastic! i see what you mean though. yeah thats a good call, i can increase those limits in the next version. that option is actually just a proxy for the corpsequeuesize console option in zdoom. i cant remember off the top of my head if the console command is sv_corpsequeuesize or cl_corpsequeuesize, but one of those two is already something you can set to any number you want in the console. i just added that supercharge menu option, with those specific limited number options, for convenience since i think many folks dont know about corpsequeuesize. but yeah i will definitely add some higher limit options for supercharge, thanks for the suggestion mate :D