Comments - drygnfyre

Was watching a vid of the upcoming PB 3.0, and noticed the new excavator grenade launcher seems to have an alternate fire consisting of sticky grenades? Assuming those can be remotely detonated, that might make an adequate replacement for the (current) explosive grenade launcher.

Beyond that, really like the cosmetic changes made to the heavy machine gun! Also seems an upgrade is planned for the standard plasma gun? What about the plasma gun Mk2?

I've still got some old version of PB that has the two grenade launchers. Frankly, why can't this burrowing grenade launcher just be its own weapon entirely, between the other two?

If nothing else, I'll use the mutator. The thing is that I'm not sure either this new grenade launcher or the advanced one can really replace the more straightforward explosive grenade launcher.

Thanks for the info. Shame about the HGL, it's one of the best weapons to use, IMO. I especially like the acid grenades. I would hope a toggle can get added to allow for the usage of either weapon.

I haven't been following this project for some time, but I see some big updates are planned! I've got a few questions that are about gameplay which I might have asked before...

1) Demon Tech Rifle: What is the difference between the infernal (red) ammo and caustic (green) ammo? Other than a color change, they seem identical. The guide that I have doesn't make any note of their differences.

2) I see there are plans to allow the heavy machine gun to fire nails instead of bullets. How will that work? Will their now be a separate ammo category for nails?

3) The original grenade launcher is going to be replaced with one that fires burrowing grenades? Sounds interesting, but maybe offer the option to use the original grenade launcher if desired? Seems there are pros and cons to each implementation.

It seems to be. I actually prefer that to the current carbine sprite. Is there a mutator/option to use the older sprite?

I thought I recall reading at one point the carbine was going to get a sprite redesign? Did this already happen? For some reason, the current sprite makes it look like Doomguy is holding a brick.

Good, nice that limit was removed. For the HMG, if it's going to use up multiple bullets per round, then I would only have the overheating behavior occur with the ammo belt. If using an ammo box, there won't be any overheating for balance purposes. I think using multiple ammo + overheating on the belt-fed mode would help add a bit more risk to the HMG and differentiate it more from the minigun. (I've generally used the HMG more in long-range combat, and minigun in melee combat).

What I was saying is it might be better balance if the minigun did not overheat at all, like it currently does, while keeping in the overheating mechanic on belt-fed HMG. As you pointed out, it has a reduction in firing rate, but is far more accurate, which to me, ultimately makes it an all-around superior weapon (certainly in terms of practicality). Your idea of having the HMG consume more ammo per round might be good, too. Although using up, say 3-4 bullets per round in addition to overheating, might be a bit too much. I'm more or less fine with the HMG the way it is, I just think there should be a bit more done to setup scenarios where you would definitely want to use the minigun over it, for example.

As for the hellish rifle penalty, again, I haven't played PB in some time. I recall in an earlier version, you needed at least 50 runes to move from infernal to caustic runes (which were then consumed). If this limit has been removed, that is good news. As for possession, I'm sure it does have its uses, I guess it's very much a situational thing. But I'm still in favor of replacing the shrinking ray with something else.

Rockets are splash damage, grenades are area-of-effect damage, correct?

If a rocket catches three enemies in its blast radius, the closest enemy would get, say 66% of the total damage, the other two around 16%? Whereas with a grenade, all three would take around 33% of the total damage?

If that's correct, what is the balance? Do rockets have a higher damage cap compared to grenades? I know rockets are usable at long-range compared to grenades.

So I was reading some comments many pages back regarding the hellish rifle...

I agree with the idea that the caustic ammo should use up two per round (similar to, say, the revolver), but be stronger than the infernal ammo and have a secondary effect, such as acid. Effectively making them a high-speed, ranged acid grenade. The way I understand it, the hellish rifle is a rare, overpowered weapon anyway, and it already costs 50 ammo to switch to caustic, so why not?

Also, I recently came across a video that showed off how ungodly powerful the triple minigun is. I had no idea it stuns every enemy in the game, including the super cyber-demon. Wow... I would expect it's a pretty rare upgrade for balance, because the only thing holding it back is how fast it burns through bullets (roughly 9 per tic/second, it would seem).

It's been a long while since I last played PB, so some random thoughts...

1) Like the new grenade launcher skin. Never liked the look of the old skin, the new one is much nicer and I really like that new sound effect.

2) I still get a graphical glitch with the heavy plasma rifle (M2). When the weapon is tilted (after any given number of rounds), that little spinning icon changes from the current design to the old design. Seems a newer animation file is missing here.

3) As it presently stands, I see no reason to ever use caustic ammo over infernal, because of what I posted above. At the moment, there seems to be little, if any, distinction between the two. I also don't find either weapon special very useful. Possession sounds cool, but it's almost always easier to just kill enemies. Same with shrinking them. What if instead, one could simply dual-wield?

4) On the subject of the HMG, I like the new skin that is a WIP. However, my main issue with this weapon is that it still almost entirely obsoletes the minigun. Thus, I think a nice trade-off would be that the HMG can overheat, while the minigun cannot. The HMG is slightly slower but much more accurate, and thus overuse can lead to overheating. Whereas the minigun is much faster and has horrible accuracy, but can be used infinitely. To me, that's a nice way to bring better balance between the two and further drive home their differences. (I also at one point thought about perhaps having the HMG use shells instead of bullets, as most real-life auto cannons do, but that might make the weapon extremely OP).

Regarding the latest update...

1) While some of the weapons have been redesigned, they seem to have the older look when reloading and/or switching out. The M2 Plasma Rifle, for example, briefly switches to the old style when you swap it out for another weapon.

2) I prefer the new design and sound of the M1 Grenade Launcher, but prefer the older designs of the M2 Plasma Rifle and the freezing gun.

There was a glitch with the old HMG behavior where it wouldn't always plays the revving noise after reloading, and you had to toggle the behavior off and on again to get it to work.

Yeah, that's true, although I'm fine with the slight firing delay as a good tradeoff. The two bullets per tap is the only change I'd make regarding the actual mechanics of the weapon.

Otherwise, I'm really liking Traditional Mode, and all the other weapons appear to work just like they did in Doom. Of course, I tend to miss a lot of the additional weapons, but that's why we've got different modes.

For #2, it is very minor, but it's how "traditional" Doom did things. And the thing is that tapping the fire button allowed both bullets to be perfectly accurate. This gave it a clear accuracy advantage over the pistol, which only fired one bullet per tap.

Traditional Mode is pretty fun. Couple minor issues, though...

1) When you pick up the mini-gun, the message says "GOTGATLINGGUN." Might want to have it say either "Got a Gattling Gun" or "Got the Mini-Gun," whatever terminology you prefer.

2) The Gattling/mini-gun only fires a single bullet when the fire button is tapped. But traditional Doom fires off two bullets per tap, so shouldn't Traditional Mode emulate this?

Oh, not bad. Has an even more hi-tech/tactical look to it with the vents.

If you're ever planning any other sprites touch-ups/redos, one I think could look a bit better is the grenade launcher. (Not that it's bad or anything). I always think it looks a bit like the pistol (except during the reload animation).

No, no, I'm not suggesting more ammo types at all. (I mean, on paper, yes, but not in practice). What I was saying is right now, you have to collect rocket boxes and grenade kits. I'm suggesting replacing both of those with just a generic "explosive kit" that provides the same number of rockets, grenades, etc. For shells, it could (again, on paper) provide all the various shells that exist, even though in pratice, a shell is a shell.

If anything, I was trying to reduce the amount of ammo pickups in games.

What about changing up the ammo collections just a bit to something like this?

Small explosive kit: provides rockets, and grenades (all types)... +2 of each, could replace rocket pickups.

Large explosive kit: provides rockets, and grenades (all types)... +5 of each, could replace box of rockets.

Shell kit: provides buckshot, slugs, dragon's breath, and any other theoretical shells for super shotgun... +4 of each, replaces the 4 shotgun shells

Super shell kit: same as above, but +20 of each, replaces the box of shells

The two energy cells sizes could provide two kinds of ammo: regular cells for the plasma weapons and freezer, large cells for the BFGs, rail gun and black hole generator.

I think the biggest issue right now is that there's often not a lot of grenade ammo.

Oh, I think the shotgun looks pretty good right now. Don't change it up too much :p

I like the triple-barreled mini-gun a lot. Only issue is the bullet ammo cache is very small once you realize how fast the weapon eats through it. But it was stated that the ammo pools will likely get an increase, so that will help a lot.

Hmm... Not bad. Not a big fan of the sprite, though. And I'd still like to have a sawed-off version. But that's totally minor things that can be adjusted once the mechanics are in place.

Hey, if a long-barreled quad-shotgun is an upgrade option, that's great. More choice for everyone. I probably wouldn't use it, though.

Just to clarify, when we're talking about explosive shells, are we effectively talking about something that would an equivalent to the grenade launcher's high explosive grenades? Because if so, then the grenade launcher would be almost completely useless, except for its thumping utility and fragmentation grenades.

Maybe explosive shells could be the inverse of grenades, and more similar to rockets: much higher direct damage, while the splash damage is a bit less.

The engine does register higher raw firepower, right? It would still recognize that 20 pellets twice over is still 2× the usual firepower, I assume. I didn't know that recoil and spread would be handed differently in relation to a single, quad-barrel shotgun.

I'll have to watch a Complex Doom video to see how the quad-shotgun would work. I just feel like in most instances, it would probably be overkill, or it would be so slow to fire and reload that you're better off just spamming the auto shotgun.

What could make both weapons viable (sawed-off and any potential upgrade), would be if the shells itself simply had higher damage in general. Normally, pellets do anywhere from 5-15 damage points, why not give those two weapons pellets that can do something like 15-45 damage points? Just make it a complete glass cannon weapon, so to speak.

I have plenty of empty web space if painkiller needs a place to host anything (or even wanted to do this).

If the engine is only registering two hits, isn't that a glitch? Seems like it should be registering 40 pellets being released...

Maybe the super shotgun could go the way of the carbine: replace dual-wielding entirely with selectable shell types (buckshot, explosive). Then the optional long-barreled super shotgun (better accuracy) or quad-barrel (more firepower) could be the upgrade.

I only want a long-barreled super shotgun if it's an optional upgrade, like how you can toggle between triple-barreled mini-gun and standard mini-gun. I like the sawed-off shotgun because you have more spread at melee, so you can hit more enemies :D

Explosive shells sound really neat, and they could be unique to the sawed-off shotgun. Or maybe even let an upgrade make use of slugs (i.e. the weapon itself doesn't change), so you can get some massive power at more reliable distances.

I'm one of the few who doesn't really like the idea of a quad shotgun, not to mention the dual-wielding seems to give you four barrels, anyway.

Yeah, I do prefer how the chainsaw looks in Brutal Doom. If nothing else, I'd love the PB mechanics (slashing and sawing attacks), but with the PB sprites.

Another idea...

What about allowing the chainsaw to be upgraded to the double-toothed variant from Doom 64? It functions identically, but looks different and does double damage.

Like a shelled version of the high explosive grenades? That could be neat. Maybe even make it exclusive to the sawed-off.

Also, what about the possibility of allowing slug and dragon's breath shells to work with the sawed-off? It's been noted by some others that the latest changes to the pump shotgun (the aforementioned shell upgrades) and auto shotgun (drum magazine upgrade) have largely made the sawed-off's usefulness tail off later in episodes, and I'd agree. So without changing any mechanics of the weapon itself, just give it the ability to fire very powerful, albeit very inaccurate, slugs or dragon's breath.

Or would that not really do anything for its usefulness? (One thing I do NOT want is a long-barreled super shotgun, I like the idea of dealing with a short-barreled weapon and its inherent quirks and issues).