DOOM: Knee Deep in D20. (Development Progress and Q&A)

[Thomased22]

I know I said I'd save making a topic for this for when the game was vaguely feature complete, but it's been a bit and I just wanna keep yall updated. 

Notably: Yes, I did get those 20$. Yes, there are new shotgun shell types now. They are attached. Only a minor rework of a couple things was required. The new shells are pretty cool, a good and worthy addition to the game. The buckshot shell was the original, normal shell of course.

As well as this, the tier 3 perks, the last thing standing between you and this game, as well as me and additional free time, is coming along at a healthy pace. Idk if I mentioned this earlier, but the gimmick with tier 3 perks is that when you get one tier 3, you lock yourself out of another, related tier 3. So for example, usually weapon types have two perks to choose from. And you only can have one. But instead, there's only one Pistol and SMG perk, and they conflict. So you have to choose which of the two pistol caliber using weapon classes you like more. I'm thinking a similar dynamic for the ARs, where you have to pick between the new space age rifle perk, and old world rifle perk. Which, in the vanilla version of the game, just means the ZM66 Vs Liberator. But with modded weapons the perks will have more wide reaching effects. I and even my friends plan on making weapon packs. They want to add dedicated swords and other such niche things. I will probably ask the dev of peppergrinder if I can make a pack that adds peppergrinder weapons. Though likely just the ones that would work without me having to add more bullet types. That can be a volume 2. Anyone who wants to make a design doc sized mod to add a universal bullet crafting machine and all of the bullet library bullets, be my guest. I have plans for the official expansion packs/mods/whatever you wanna call em. And they do not include such endevors. Though TBH I'm tempted to do .50 OMG myself lol.

 

As well as this a doc that explains how all of the combat works in one place called "The Space Marine's Guidebook to Combat", written by an in universe character, is happening. By suggestion from a friend. It's a good idea to have such a thing as to minimize doc hopping. 

 

Anyhow besides those updates and my scheming, I wanna know yall's thoughts. Any questions, feedback, or ect is highly welcome. There's been quite a drought of such things lol. If you have friends that might be interested in smth like this, direct them here as well. I'm sure we'd both appreciate it.

Edited August 12, 2023 by Thomased22
Slight punctuation correction.

[Thomased22]

I'll either edit the main post with each major update to progress, or make a new post when the game is finally feature complete and reaches version 0.5. Either way consider this a development progress/Q&A thread for the game.

If you aren't familiar with my introducing myself post, to make a long story short, I wanted to play a doom themed Table top with my friends, I didn't want to deal with any of the table top systems that are supposed to help you make your own homebrew essentially, so I just made a game from scratch. Which I decided I could do, because I've been making game design docs for games I can't actually make for almost 5 years now. So hey, finally making one that actually might result in something sounded like a good thing. It's been going pretty well ever since. Aside from my laptop shitting itself and dying. (My new PC is goated though).

You know shit is funky when the path of least resistance is making a game from scratch. Thankfully that's like my favorite shit to do. Lmao.

[Thomased22]

Tier 3 perks are the final thing standing between the game being feature complete for a 0.5 release. And the progress is going pretty fast. Nearly done with the ultraviolence tier 3s. There are 5 categories. Survivability, Speed and Weight management, Ultraviolence (buffs on gibbing, powerup related stuff, misc stuff, melee stuff (speed also has some good melee stuff, because speed and melee damage are tied together), and etc.), Weapon Handling (universal weapon utility abilities/buffs, weapon class specific buffs, etc. This one has the most perks cause for all 3 tiers I wanted at least one perk per major weapon type. Likely going to be the biggest challenge when it comes to tier 3s.) And finally Utility & Teamwork. Which is relatively self explanatory, misc utilities, and teamwork abilities. 

Those are the names of the categories in tier 1 and is essentially how they are classified. But they have different names for their tier 2 and 3 equivalents for flavor and whatnot.

Tier 2: 
Staying Alive
Speed & Aggression (funny blops 2 reference)
Rip & Tear (duh)
Weapon Expertise
Synergy Tactics

Tier 3:
Strength Of Will
Speed & Slaughter
Vicious & Obscene
Weapon Mastery
Martyrandry (A combination of Martyr and husbandry, as in growing plants or caring for animals and stuff like that. Sounds more clever in my head and out loud than on paper lol)

Any questions about perks? There's far too many to list given that there's at least 51 tier 1s, more than 25 tier 2s, and soon to be a couple dozen tier 3s. But I'm willing to take questions.

[Thomased22]

Friend bought me cookie clicker and therefore gets one thing of his choice in the game. Which will almost certainly be swords. Tbh there's two types of swords I think I can reasonably implement, a thin, light, weird futuristic, huge razor blades welded together into a big rectangle sword, and of course a laser sword. A guy named poteto in the hideous discord was gonna make a system shock laser rapier, and it was going to do BFG stuff on hit. But it's not come out yet. I'm really interested in a weapon like that so making a weird BFG laser sword is something I will be doing if he asks for swords lol. But no more than 2 swords, a normal one and a funky one.

Anyhow as a treat, here's the item doc for yall. Good news, all perks except for tier 3 weapon perks are done and dusted. Once those are done and whatever nonsense (lovingly) my friend wants is added, version 0.5 will be official.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vnjxUlO4malp5CwFtMbwNRMxqbWbcl5I_X_M_LWfC9Q/edit?usp=sharing

Any questions?

[Thomased22]

[Thomased22]

News:

Slightly adjusted the lore of two of the shotgun shell types.

Compromise on friend's sword shenanigans is being reached.

Other progress is slow. 

[Thomased22]

Due to IRL shenanigans and whatnot progress has nigh nonexistent but I think in the coming days I will be able to return to the kitchen. Gotta finish those darn perks!

[Thomased22]

The two "swords" of the game have been added. One of which getting the Knife's old level 1 perk. Knife's new level 1 prof perk lets you throw melee weapons. I finally caved in lmao.

That should be the end of the weapon roster, for vanilla weapons. There'll be one more weapon added to the item doc later as an example of a modded weapon. Which is honorary vanilla, it's a weapon my friend made up for his character. It fills a good niche. 

First weapon mod will likely be me making an adaptation of the classic hideous weapon pack, hexadoken's pack. Which basically just adds a shitton of bolt action weapons for many of the calibers of bullet, vanilla and modded. Just so I can make a "Final Boss" joke lol. I think I have perms to make an adaptation of peppergrinder, but I'd have to ask again later to be sure. That's also a lot of weapons so it's an endeavor I'm saving for later.


The art for this weapon, since it's an entirely OC weapon. It's basically meant to be a sword with a similar color pallet to the ZM66. While also having in world practicality, and reasons to exist lol. It's pretty smexy looking if you ask me. Shoutouts to my friend and co designer, who also made that honorary vanilla weapon that'll be the example modded weapon I mentioned.


The second and final "sword" is that aforementioned weapon based off of Potebloke's unfinished system shock laser rapier mod for hideous.
To clarify, "low grade argent" is the green and red plasma the BFG9000 fires, which in hideous lore I've interoperated to be some sort of frag enhanced plasma. At least that's what's implied to me lol.
 

We're getting back to work for real now lol.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Thomased22
Oopsies, doubled up on that first image somehow.

[Thomased22]

It seems like a steady stream of people are coming in to look at the docs. If that's you, I'd be grateful if you took some time to give me thoughts. 

Idk if it's legal here to advertise discord servers, but tbh I've been thinking of making one for this game for a bit now. Just to gather people who are interested, maybe then people can make parties of people to play lol. Would yall be interested in that? Do let me know.

[Thomased22]

The weapon categories with larger weapon variety (like pistols and smgs, ARs and manual action rifles, etc) have tier 3 perks where you have to spec into one of them, but lose out on the other. Working on the rifle perks atm. These perks are designed with custom weapon packs in mind lol. 

[Thomased22]

Once I'm done with perks that combat doc is the last thing standing between me and making that real post to get the game out publicly. Might move it over to a big boy doom related stuff forum. Where more people will see it. Still gonna keep news for unfinished updates to the game and expansion packs I develop here though. We're getting there!

[openroadracer]

Just out of curiosity, what would a recently retired rifle like the M14 or HK G3 or such fall? Modern, classic, or neither?

[Thomased22]

5 hours ago, openroadracer said:

Just out of curiosity, what would a recently retired rifle like the M14 or HK G3 or such fall? Modern, classic, or neither?

Good question. And thanks for asking btw. This would depend on how you'd choose to add them in if you made a weapon pack.

How I'd handle them is how the hideous modding community tends to. Which is based off of vanilla hideous weapon philosophy. Make fictionalized, exaggerated versions of the guns, and exemplify their strengths and weaknesses. The ZM66 and 4mm round is supposed to be a flanderized take on NATO weapons and .556, same with 7mm to an extent though that's less based on any one thing I'd say.

Mind you that hideous and doom in general are meant to take place vaguely in the future. Even if Doom's weapon roster isn't reflective of that till the tail end lol.

From there, you can either say "this weapon is still made, and used by militaries/militias", and therefore it'd be modern. So lets say you made the M14 chambered in 4mm that Volt makes, as a budget rifle option for civies. That's modern for example.

Or, if you wanted to make an adaptation of the G3, given that it's made by HK and HK existed in hideous as "Heckler and Mok", which was bought out just for their shotguns by the UAC, and their rifles were already a limited release as is, you could make a G3 that's an in between of the liberator and the boss. With semi auto only, but more punch than the full length lib. And maybe some other weird quirk. That's for sure vintage. 

I doubt there'd be any weapons that'd fall into neither. But maybe I'm not thinking of edge cases.

Just like college though, you don't have to worry about what you spec into till you're far into the process lmao. These are tier 3 perks which require you unlock a tier 2 perk (which requires maxing 2 tier ones), and two extra tier 1 perks on top of that. It's mid to late game stuff, depending on whether you bum rush for it or not.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Thomased22
Bleh, 1 AM brain fixes.

[Thomased22]

Sniper tier 3s are in. These were kind of harder to do than expected? "Focused Shot" is a mechanic detailed in the main doc where the manual action accuracy equation is detailed. This was a mechanic suggested by my co-designer to make getting crits easier when you haven't leveled up your skills with a manual action yet. So if you went for high running speed, you can still hit crits while moving. That was the best I could do for precision, since we added that mechanic. Which is fine tbh lol. Still a strong ability since the requirement for focused shot is not moving at all normally. 

[Thomased22]

I feel far more clever than I think I am for this one.

[Thomased22]

I think that's actually the final perk? I think? Maybe? I'm turning my attention to the combat doc now. 

[Thomased22]

I'm working on the combat overview doc right now. I think once it's done I can make that big 0.5 release I wanted to make. I will be accompanying it with a discord server dedicated to the game. As well as a thread in a more general location where I can announce big updates, release expansion packs/mods/whatever you'd like to call them, and link to the main discord. Major stuff, unlike this thread which will remain an active development thread. Both for the main game and the official mods/expansions I plan on making.

Anyhow, anyone willing to toss name ideas for the game? I don't want a generic edgy name, but the current name is too far in the direction opposite to that. I've yet to come up with anything better though.

 

Thanks to everyone for keeping an eye on this thread and the good bunch of you I saw looking at the docs lol. Stay tuned. I'm gonna post the combat doc when it's done. And then eventually after that, once I know everything is complete, be making that aforementioned release thread and discord server lol. 

[Thomased22]

Name I reached with my friend and co designer last night while sleep deprived was "Doom: Hell's A Party" which I think is tonally and wit wise in the right direction. But I'm not toooo sure about it. If nothing better comes I'll prolly just wait till 1.0 to change the name lol. 

What do you guys think? Lets make this simple, if you like the name, give this post a reaction. 

[openroadracer]

No.

Name it "DooM: Thy Dice Consumed".

[Thomased22]

1 hour ago, openroadracer said:

No.

Name it "DooM: Thy Dice Consumed".

I'll show people this suggestion, see what people think lol.

[Thomased22]

1 hour ago, Thomased22 said:

I'll show people this suggestion, see what people think lol.

It seems like I'm the only person amongst the people who I work on this with who particularly likes this one.

[Thomased22]

A submission from the Zdoom equivalent to this forum seems to be more popular. "Knee Deep in D20". I'm heavily considering moving "Hell's A Party" to the position of "Tagline" and making "Knee Deep in D20" the real subtitle lol. Just have to negotiate it with my co designer friend. 

[Thomased22]

Unless something miraculous happens and a better name appears, we're gonna go with "Knee Deep in D20". I just gotta go update the docs with the name lol.

As well as this I've gotten to work on the discord server. Functionally it's just about set up.

Tonight I'll hopefully get even more done on the combat doc as well.

I won't change the name of this thread I don't think.

"Release date" is drawing near. I plan to make a video for the occasion, which will require scripting and editing and whatnot. So I'd still say we're a week off or so. But I'll likely link the server here early once the combat doc is done lol.

[Thomased22]

Mostly devised by my friend and co designer. 

[Thomased22]

Combat doc is done. Tbh significantly less work than expected. And with that I think the game is pretty much ready to be played.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P_0xDmheCi_xOZxWaL0uYtzcu2kK6-p-dotHw1VqytA/edit?usp=sharing

On top of that, I'll pass yall the discord link early. We're lacking an icon and other such things but it is pretty much set up.
https://discord.gg/e6DcbKtmCc

Gotta make that video for it now, as well as an outro for my videos. Which I already have planned. The scripting and editing for the video specifically for this game though? Hardly. We're still a week or so off from a real release lmao.

Come join the server if you wanna hang out and suggest stuff lol.

[Thomased22]

Server icon by Lightman68. It's pretty fire.

[Thomased22]

Got that youtube outro done. It's not perfect. Youtube has arbitrary ass rules for endcard stuff. So I had to remake the image a couple times. But other than that it's good enough for me lmao.

With that I can begin real work on the video for the TTRPG. You guys will be first seeing it when I post it alongside the big release post. Prolly in doom general. 

Edited August 14, 2023 by Thomased22
unfinished thought

[Thomased22]

The script for the video is going well. I think it'll be done by the end of this week. 

[Thomased22]

Video script is in fact done. Beginning shenanigans now. 

[Thomased22]

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