SMOOTH DOOM [UPDATE 4/14/20]

[Jaxxoon R]

That footstep mod is real nice, but it doesn't play well with Droplets blood simulation. Oh...

[rampancy]

I know I just made a post suggesting things to add, so this is a bit contradictory...

Why does the mod alter level textures? Sure it isn't going to be compatible with the tens of wads that have custom monsters and weapons, but there are probably hundreds of wads with custom textures.

Maybe a textures and flats free version?

[Reisal]

Footsteps are incredibly distracting and do not fit Doom at all.

[Jaxxoon R]

They're actually pretty well implemented. They're hardly noticeable most of the time unless it's really quiet, and vary depending on how fast you run.

[Gifty]

The footstep thing has been brought up enough times that I would consider adding them IF, and only if, I could find a way to make it toggleable. This is probably going to be another one of those things where I have to wait until someone spells it out for me, because I'm shit at ACS. :P

Oh, and regarding the rifle, it's something I've considered several times. I think I'll do it once I find sprites that I really like.

[rampancy]

Best rifle sprite sheet I've seen for the task IMHO:

http://i.imgur.com/MLmFMiV.png

Thread here:

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=30390&start=195

If you like it, great!

[mouldy]

This is a pretty impressive project. Some of the animations have a bit of a benny hill vibe though, I can't tell if its just because I'm used to the old frame rate that it looks speeded up.

I don't know how possible this would be, but I think some of the walk cycles could be improved if you varied the duration of the frames, so that the foot-falls last longer than the inbetween movements.

[rampancy]

I wanted to let you know that there is a weird bug with one of the Plutonia textures. If you go to the start area of Plutonia map02 you will see the walls flashing between the intended texture and the blue and red "energy" texture. I don't know the textures proper name off hand but all you have to do is load the map and you will see it.

[VGA]

rampancy said:

Best rifle sprite sheet I've seen for the task IMHO:

http://i.imgur.com/MLmFMiV.png

Thread here:

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=30390&start=195

If you like it, great!

Why would Smooth Doom add a new weapon? Isn't this mod's goal to enhance the visuals of vanilla but leaving the gameplay intact?

[Gifty]

To clarify, I was considering the rifle just as an optional reskin for the pistol.

[Sir Swerving]

Will there be a zandronum compatible version sometime in the future?

[Gifty]

No plans currently, no.

edit: update with an important fix!
-new pinky gib animation (sprites: chickenlegz)
-added toggleable rifle (sprites: Mike12)
-slight improvement to shotgun cocking animation
-better solution for making casings disappear in water
-solved the case of the missing monsters (massive thanks to BlueShadow)
-improved imp death 2

[Gifty]

Update! It's got a slew of new Doom64 weapons to play with, and I've temporarily disabled the rifle until I can implement it more sensibly. I also smoothed out some decoration props which were erroneously omitted from a previous release.

-smooth evileye
-smooth floatingskull
-added Doom64 pistol (sprites: JoeyTD) (weapon settings are now a "revolving door" instead of a toggle)
-added Doom64 SSG (sprites: Cage)
-added Doom64 Chaingun (sprites: OSJ)
-added two extra frames to classic bullet puff (sprites: Cage?)
-small tweaks to imp death 1
-completely redid Cacodemon death
-greatly improved animation for Doom64 Rocket Launcher
-removed rifle until I figure some things out
-fixed Mastermind footstep frequency

[rampancy]

Was reading the thread over at zdoom specifically re the rifle.

What is difficult about this is deciding how do you tinker with the weapon drops to balance it out? Do the enemies still drop the same guns or do they now take more damage or what? I've been blazing trails in my mind along these lines in my spare time for a while trying to figure out what works...

Maybe the best thing is to create a second mod that can be run parallel to Smooth Doom, that is a weapon mod. That is probably the only way to please people.

This kind of balancing stuff gets complicated fast if you are dumb like me.

IRL the pistol would be much weaker and less accurate even firing the same ammo, and a mini gun could never fire quick, accurate at range two shot bursts, and would burn through ammo much faster than it does in the game. In Doom though it's more about trying to preserve the balance while still bringing something fresh, and that is probably one of the most challenging things and also the most fun to think about IMO.

[Reisal]

I think you might want to split the weapon module from the monsters, so people can use their own weapon mod if they want as well.

[Gifty]

rampancy said:

Was reading the thread over at zdoom specifically re the rifle

Usually how I like to take these things is to see what everyone has done in the past and proceed from there, and there's plenty of precedent for the "rifle drop" concept. My main sticking point is determining how exactly the rifle would be an improvement, making sure it fits snugly into the arsenal, and also making it graphically consistent with the other stuff, both in style and quality.

I'm also not sure if it should be a chance drop; this is how other mods have done it, but it doesn't really make sense to me when all other zombies have a 100% weapon drop rate.

Glaice said:

I think you might want to split the weapon module from the monsters, so people can use their own weapon mod if they want as well.

That's sort of the intended purpose of the monsters-only version. Granted, it strips out more than just the weapons, but I prefer a one-size-fits-all lite version to hosting a half-dozen variants.

[rampancy]

I know brutal doom is a hot topic for debate, but this is probably why Sgt.. Mark said "f it" and just spawned the player with the rifle. Anything else creates a domino effect gameplay wise. Then you will have the "you are ruining the core gameplay" people upset and it isn't a complaint without merit so idk what is best.

My plan, if I ever get around to it, is to create my mod in a series of modules that work together and separately to get the most players and the highest compatibility. IE one wad for weapons, one for monsters, one for graphical effects, etc. I am a real whore for a perfect doom setup, and the various incompatibilities with the huge wad library available makes retrofitting an all inclusive new mod pretty much impossible. Being able to pick and choose what loads at startup is of paramount significance to me at this time.

[Gifty]

OK, the rifle thing has reached a conclusion. It's not a skin anymore, it's become an optional mutator wherein zombies will drop something a little better than the pistol. Again, optional; nothing's mandatory. Building off of IcyFreezy's work, I also added the option for black gloves on all the weapons.

-improved BFG firing animation (sprites: ItsNatureToDie)
-added optional "zombieman drops rifle" mutator (based on ItsNatureToDie's rifle)
-added option for black player gloves
-small tweak to Doom64 SSG animation
-removed alternate berserk sprite
-all Xdeaths now play the gib sound

[Jaxxoon R]

Excellent! I will view at once!

Edit: Ooh... There's a certain charm to the D64 weapons that makes me really prefer them to the originals. They're just so much more professional looking, especially after you've gotten to them.

Makes me wish KEX had DECORATE/ACS support.

[Gifty]

I do like the fact that the Doom64 weapons don't have any of that nasty artifacting from the digitization process that the originals do.

In other news, I held off as long as I could, but I finally decided to split the smooth textures into a separate archive because they were just a compatibility headache. You can find the textures in the OP under a new "friends of Smooth Doom" header. That's the only change for this update.

[cardboard42]

Thanks for doing that, now I don't have to maintain my own textureless version!

[Gifty]

Hi, hello, how are you! I've been away for a while, but there's an update today!

-several "dead marine" decorations replaced with official ID sprites
-classic and variant Zombiemen now have all 8 rotations
-improved Zombieman death animation
-improved plasma rifle firing animation
-new caco death (based on sprites by Permanoob)
-option for marine helmet-style armor bonus
-fixed Doom64 pistol having PC muzzle flash
-reorganized options menu again

[SyntherAugustus]

Nice. However I noticed a bunch of new errors.

http://i.imgur.com/F1F2BVZ.jpg

[Gifty]

Yeah, I've started keeping markers in the sprite folders so I can quickly sort through different animation sets; it doesn't really affect anything, Zdoom just doesn't like the lump format so it spits out an error. Going to see if I can fix it in the next update.

[Reisal]

Nice, smooth full rotation zombie animations! However, I'm too lazy to implement them into my RDND mod, which I finished not long ago.

[Gifty]

Practically all you gotta do is CTRL+C CTRL+V the extra sprites over. :P

(I still haven't done the shotgunner, though)

[Jaxxoon R]

I had to stop using this mod because it made monsters not follow their patrol points for some reason. Imps, Spectres, Demons, and Shotgunners don't move at all (and are invisible while dormant. Every other monsters has trouble following their patrols but at least they head in the right direction. I first noticed this while testing Map02 of Deem, btw.

[Cupboard]

Looks really awesome, I like the compilation of all the new sprites and monster variants.

[DooM_RO]

This is one of the very few mods that are absolutely essential for me. It's just the right amount of modernization, just perfect. After playing with Smooth Doom I simply can't go back to the stock sprites, Smooth Doom makes them look old which is very rare in a Doom mod. Sure, there are plenty of very good enhancement mods but very few of them have had this effect.

I think it should become part of the Zdoom options.

[Reisal]

Gifty said:

Practically all you gotta do is CTRL+C CTRL+V the extra sprites over. :P

(I still haven't done the shotgunner, though)

Still kinda lazy :P What about the extra DECORATE code for smooth frames, that I would have to tweak so it's not too fast or slow too.

I'll wait for the shotgunner to be done but it's most likely will remain for private use since I already have 3 versions of RDND on /idgames/ (1.11, 1.2 and 1.5b)