chebmaster

Won't be uploading anything til the next week: this weekend, more FUN with the server awaits, replacing the PSU in an itty-bitty miditower packed impossibly with 11 HDDs (who said sardines? Sardines can take master classes from these hard drives), with cable layout as simple and elegant as Cthulhu's knotted beard. Let's say I use thin pliers to attach and detach sata cables in places too narrow for my fingers to fit. For now, improved the stunning algorithm: the cyberdemon now has limit, can be put into pain via headshots up to 8 times and stunned by power headshot up to 4 times (a shared pool). After that runs out, any potential flinch (from a headshot) or stun turns into a furious retaliation - i.e. the cyberdemon attacks with a fast six-pack instead of flinching. For the stock cyberdemon (5k hp) this happens just before he dies, a parting surprise of sorts. Imagine a situation where you stunlock the cyberdemon with your minigun (a common tactics) but as he is on his last legs (his last thousand of hp) he suddenly turns into an unflinching spam machine. FUN :D

http://chebmaster.com/downloads/chebskies/pre_Alpha_BD21.5che-20-06-2024-baron_and_stun.pk3 Baron, seems working (not done yet: slaughter optimizations and vanilla monsters mode are missing). Cyberdemon, a guaranteed stun from a power headshot - BUT, he immediately becomes unflinching until the end of retaliation. And retaliation after the stun is more likely furious than not (the special attack with 150% burst length and 150% fire rate). So you cannot stunlock him. Got this idea from Darkest Dungeon where anyone stunned gains a hefty stun resistance buff for three rounds. Baron gains permanent buff to fire rate even from one stun even when it does not cause him flying into rage. And obligatory power attack (triple shot) retaliation after the stun ends. Rage makes him even more spam-happy.

Thank you :) Now, NOT to try doing too many things at once. Did you know explosive barrels are friendly monsters that constantly aggro at any demons in sight? They reset their target after a few frames. If their target is a baron and is closer than 280 units they shoot him with a special invisible missile "CallingTheBaronAFaggot" -- which, with 100% pain chance, causes the baron to target that barrel. And if a baron hits a barrel in melee, it results in him grabbing that barrel and then using it as a missile. A very complex interconnected dance between barons and barrels, I must add. I never looked into this code before.

FYI: I got sidetracked again, irritated by my Duke of Hell mini-boss having no fatalities. So I got to frankensteining one up (cannot just re-use baron's because duke is 1.45 times bigger) P.S. Will change the cyberdemon to have a 100% stun chance from powerful headshots -- BUT he will always come out of that stun directly into his special attack (a more powerful barrage of 6 missiles, normally resulting from enraging him by showing him your middle finger). AND have that special attack not interruptable by pain.

Catch the proof-of-concept : http://chebmaster.com/downloads/chebskies/pre_Alpha_BD21.5che-19-06-2024-headshot_damage_profiles.pk3 VERY untested. The 5 different headsot profiles are switched from the "Brutal doom options" menu, there's a new submenu in it. For now, stunning only affects mancubi and cyberdemons and could only be done via SSG or railgun (a full shotgun damage is too low by design). Cyberdemons' stun is very brief (they are too chad to stun for long) and has only 33% chance. They bleed from their face but that is, in most cases, too brief to notice. Mancubi, may be hard to distinguish from a normal SSG hit -- they fall on their ass all the same. BUT, when that is caused by a headshot they sit on their ass twice as long and they bleed from their face. Will only really be really noticeable when I get to apply that to knights and barons. P.S. re-uploaded with the following fix: if even one ssg pellet touched mancubus' body (the main hitbox) he immediately and with 100% reliability went into a ssg pain - e.g. fallin on his ass, immediately becoming immune to pain for the duration of that animation. So when the stunning damage from the headshot arrived, the stun was ignored resulting in a normal brief falling on ass. Moved the immunity 8 tics away from the start of the normal ssg pain animation -- now headshot stunning works reliably. Mind that you have to inflict at least 125 damage in one tic (resulting in 250+ headshot damage), below that the stun does not activate.

Hmm... Hmmmmm... Easily doable :D Thank you, that's a great idea implementable with little coding! I am also thinking of adding a new setting into BD gameplay options, "headshot damage profile": BD21 default - like/the classic curve: minimum 20; double until 300; railgun capped at 600, cannot one-shot barons; max capped at 1200 flat double/railgun does 800, cannot one-shot barons; max capped at 1200 flat triple/super shotgun can one-shot mancubi; railgun does 1200, will one-shot barons; max capped at 1800 BD22-like/fixed amount per damage type;railgun does 1200, will one-shot barons -- this is the only option when running chebskies with bd22, to match my added monsters to all others.

I have uploaded two versions with correctly displaying headboxes: before cyberdemon conversion and after. there is a question: in BD21, the headshot damage is not *exactly* double, it is a lookup table with some rather strange edge cases: 1..4 -> 20 5..9 -> 10 10 -> 20 11..12 -> 22 13 -> 26 14 -> 28 15 -> 30 16..19 -> 32 20..24 -> 40 25..49 -> 50 50..74 -> 100 75..99 -> 150 100..115 -> 200 116..124 -> 234 125..149 -> 250 150..174 -> 300 175..199 -> 350 200..224 -> 400 225..249 -> 450 250..274 -> 500 275..299 -> 550 300..499 -> 600 500..2299 -> 1200 2300+ -> no damage, headbox fails and disappears for ever resulting in a broken dullahan monster (but nothing in the game can inflict that much damage) As you can see, railgun headshot does 600, not 800. If you ever manage a hit for 500 or more (but with what?), the damage suddenly ramps up to 1200... And stays there, capped to 1200. And, I am unsure: should I preserve this behavior as part of the BD21 charm I want to preserve, or replace it with simple doubled damage (very simple, one line of code) or, better use a hybrid approach: use "2 * damage on the headbox" for the range of 1..299 but for 600+ preserve the two-caps behavior of the lookup table What do you think? P.S. My bad, there is a leftover code from BD20b and the damage for 1..4 is 20. Seems like a conversion bug to me. P.P.S. The same lookup table from BD20b looks more fascinating: 0..7 -> 20 8..11 -> 25 12..24 -> 35 // a very non-linear beginning 25..49 -> 50 // then the same discretized more-or-less 2x 50..74 -> 100 75..99 -> 150 100..115 -> 200 116..124 -> 234 125..149 -> 250 150..174 -> 300 175..199 -> 350 200..224 -> 400 225..249 -> 450 250..274 -> 500 275..399 -> 550 // a wide range capped at 550 400+ -> 1200 //railgun headshot is death P.P.P.S BD19.1 used a completely different system with thresholds for different damage types and headshots conveying that damage type. For the minigun, it was 0..34 -> 70 35+ -> 150 And, BD22 is back to something akin used in 19.1 but even more extreme: fixed values for various damage types completely disregarding the actual damage inflicted. I am not sure I like that approach. At least, railgun headshot is 1200 again.

After reviewing the *actual* headbox situation, without bias introduced by my former incorrect visualization, I conclude: Zombies, shotgunners, changunners and knights will do for the time being, relegate reworking their heads to the next update. Barons really have misaligned headboxes -- will fix. Revenants and archviles move too frakkin' fast, the existing headboxes are just inadequate for the task (unless you spawn them every two tics, which is simply not viable) -- will fix. Imps, mancubi and cyberdemons -- already done. Cacoes, arachnotrons, ancient arachnotrons, masterminds, pain elementals, lost souls, aracnorbs, EDAY final boss -- do not have, pass. Volcabi - haven't tested yet. A rare monster, I only use him in the final bosses' minion lists on higher difficulties. Juggernauts - haven't looked into their code yet. Suspect they do not have. Belphegors - probably will have to fix. EDAY-only monsters (dukes, mummies) - will have to, especially as dukes are derived from barons and thus require complex dances around BD22 compatibility. EDAY great bosses - do not have. Should I add?

Classes inheriting from HeadshotTarget*** and then only changing the radius and height. My visualization worked by displaying sprite that matches in size the original HeadshotTargetBase (radius 7, height 18). With actor CybersHitBox: HeadshotTarget8 { Radius 24 Height 44 damagefactor "Explosive", 0.7 +DONTRIP } it failed because it inherits its states, and sprite with its size, from HeadshotTargetBase - and displays headbox incorrectly. I will fix that with scaling the sprite for each such headbox, like actor CybersHitBox: HeadshotTarget8 { Radius 24 Height 44 damagefactor "Explosive", 0.7 +DONTRIP //for debugging XScale 3.43 YScale 2.44 } to display the correct proportions. P.S. And we can also see that cyberdemon only takes 140% damage from a rocket to the face, as opposed to 200% from other damage types.

Aha! My debugging visualization was not taking *derivative* headboxes into account, and those can vary in size! Will upload a corrected version showing the *real* state of affairs later this day.

Progress report: while many maps are adapted, only the actually play tested ones count -- and I only tested up to and including map 13, which makes it 14 out of 40. Because, ridiculously, I am still encountering bugs! Like minor HOM cracks in the ground (I strongly suspect these were smoothed over by Zandronum 3.0 I was testing it in the previous time - a normal doom behavior of rendering far side's flat instead of a missing wall texture -- this is how the ambushing monster pits are made, after all). But it seems Zandronum 3.1 only renders actual monster pits that way - i.e. all the walls of a sector must have no texture for the effect to work. But sometimes, it's more serious stuff. For example, the surprise crates in map 13 are set up incorrectly (was like that from the beginning, the cause is their trigger is duplicated twice for some reason making the monster closets open twice, which result in a tiny but deep slit in the ground -- which monsters avoid considering it a sheer cliff and never come out). Also, the GZDoom Builder (bugfix) did not draw textured automap in the automap highlight mode, which resulted in me managing that side blindly in the dark, and missing a lot of stuff that should not be visible on the textured automap. Like some secrets, for example: the lines are hidden, but the textured sectors are not. UDB lets me see it all and fix it all. P.S. Also, at a closer look at the code, too many imp deaths leave a corpse that is not considered a corpse as far as archviles are concerned -- resulting in much less raising than should be. Will be fixed as well. P.P.S. My bad, 15 out of 40 because I had already playtested map 312

Face, meet palm. Forgot to start apache2 after turning the server on. Should work now.

The state of slaughtermap affairs so far: the big daddy runs at 10 fps, which is not survivable... (fyi: Okuplok is a slaughtermap with over 23 thousand monsters)

P.S. Was caused by insufficient power. Brought it back up by disconnecting another disk with trash I won't miss, will fix at a later date by installing a new PSU.

In six hours, SMART parameter Seek_Error_Rate dropped from full nearly to the failure threshold. I am taking my server down before the disk registers self a s failed. Either it is dead or has insufficient power.