Comments - Cosmic_Sea

A bunch more stuff I've made notes of. This new version's kicking ***! Don't take these lists of as implying anything contrary.

Gameplay related / general:
• When running out of ammo with minigun or machine gun, you always auto-switch to SMG regardless if there's pistol ammo left or not. Doesn't happen with assault rifle, with that you keep hearing a 'click'. (but if you *do* have pistol ammo left, pistol(s), but no SMG(s), you instead auto-switch to chainsaw when running out ammo on minigun/MG)
• Bug regarding SMG: have two, equip one -> drop weapon -> switches to dual wielded SMGs -> drop weapon -> no more SMGs to drop, auto-switches to chainsaw.
• (not sure if intentional or not) Boxes of shotgun shells always get picked up in full, wasting ammo if near max when done so (cf. bullet & rocket boxes where you only pick as much as you can).
• Next/prev. weapon commands don't work when holding akimbo weapons -> needs to switch to single weapon first.
• Can't chop launchers off charred mancubus corpses. (or are the weapons intended to be burnt up beyond useable condition?)
• Sometimes when exiting a tank you end up inside the tank model, continually taking damage as if under crusher until you move out.
• Running over some enemy corpses with a tank causes them to just shoot upward quite a way and drop back down as opposed to being crushed or just run over. (I've noticed this happening with at least Hell Knight & Baron corpses so far)
• You can stop over curb when driving a tank just fine, but exiting a tank while it's on a curb (or similar terrain feature) causes the tank to slide along the ground until it reaches a flat spot.
• Very dense blood spatters on walls cause quite significant FPS drop when moving close to them. Same with the dense blood shower effects for dying enemies. (granted, my computer's nowhere brand new anymore, but I don't recall there being this heavy frame rate drops when getting close to dense spatters in previous versions)

Sound related:
• The sound of the burning barrel props is pretty loud, IMO. Turn it down a notch or two, pls.
• Bug: Unload rocket launcher > sound, then reload > no sound is played.
• Shotgun shell casings hitting water make the exact same sound as other objects and footsteps (I feel these could use being noticably quieter for being such smaller objects?)

Smaller stuff / nitpicks:
• Assault shotgun's sights don't make sense: the front sight is placed WAY lower than the rear one - when aimed down sights as it's aimed, the barrel would be pointing way up and off the target.
• No dedicate crouching sprites, just the player character squashing down (while it does its job, it looks a bit silly, IMO).
• Ammo drop menu still shows old style green hand grenade icon.
• The center 'dot' of rocket launcher & railgun scope isn't a perfect square, there being an extra 'clump' on bottom left corner
• Hand grenades seem noticably less effective now? Bring power up a slight bit?

Suggestions / requests:
• Make quick draw pistol command to work as toggle, switching between pistol and the weapon held previously.
• Assault rifle doesn't have a bolt racking / some other charging animation when reloading from empty - could be a nifty addition?
• Make the reload key NOT stop reloading of shotgun in the middle of it - switching to another weapon or aiming down sights should be enough to stop reloading midway if needed (it's way too easy to accidentally hit reload again when frantically reloading in a tough spot and ending up stopping reloading when you didn't mean to)
• Make it possible to choose between impact and timed grenades with the machine gun's underslung grenade launcher (dual wield/special action key, for example).

When opening the rar file after downloading, right? (as opposed to the download itself failing)
Make sure your archiving program is up to date. This could very well be caused by having an older version of Winrar (or whatever program you're using) that doesn't support the latest compression formats, and on not recognizing it, reporting the file as being corrupted.

A couple of more things...

• First of all, I think I need to retract my comment a bit on the minigun sound. I didn't formulate my thoughts quite properly. I don't necessarily feel it to be weak per se, but it's perhaps sounding a bit more machinery-like, rather than a gun firing. It could have more of that certain ripping (and tearing) quality to it, IMO.

• Flipping off monsters with the minigun equipped and secondary fire mode engaged, the barrel spinning sound stops momentarily (could be some sound engine limitation? I might have mentioned this before regarding a previous version?)
• The sound effect for unloading the plasma gun includes the "charge-up" sound as when reloading it, something which probably shouldn't be there?
• Reloading the shotgun from empty only loads in 8 shells, needing another reload action to top off the capacity to the full 9.

Bugs, oddities, minor gripes & personal opinions (May 18th 2019 V21 release, played on GZDoom 3.4.1)
-----------------------------------
Sound-related:
• There's something wonky going on with stereo imaging: sound effects seem to pan fully to the side when only slightly turning away from the source. This wasn't there in previous versions, and I'm sure it's not the source port either - I've tried earlier versions with the exact same GZDoom version. It's like there's less "steps" in the sounds' potential left-right placement.
• With footsteps enabled, when walking on liquids the step sounds seem to originate from *behind* the player, as if you had someone following you right on you tail.
• Still the same minigun sound as on the previous v.21 beta I tried (Dec 21st 2017)? That sounds flat-out WEAK. No oomph, no feeling of power, no "**** YEAH!" feeling when holding down the trigger. Replace, pls. Some of the previous versions had fantastic minigun sounds.
• Sounds like explosions seem to get muffled quite (too) fast as the distance from the source increases?
• BFG explosion sounds a bit weird to me. Sort of "demonic"? I liked the old(er) straight-up plasma explosion sound better.
• Something weird going on with hand grenades that explode in mid-air: the 'nade explodes, but then it makes a *second* loud sound when the resulting smoke trail(?) hits the ground. Where wouldn't be anything left over of a grenade to make that sort of sound. (cf. no such thing there with the grenade launcher)
• Explosions in general seems to sound quieter overall than before. Instead of standing out, now they instead sort of just blend in with the rest. Bring back the violence to the things that go boom, this isn't COD or something where everything sounds cutesy and polite. ;)
• Is it just me, or is there sometimes zombieman yell sound snipped mixed in with explosion sounds? (grenades especially)

Gameplay-related:
• Motorcycle handling is a bit janky and "digital", when turning it "snaps" into different angles of turning. Would it be possible to make this work smoother?
• Shotgun fires faster when aiming down sights than when not. Seems a bit counter-intuitive?
• Chainsaw "pulls into" targets too much, making sawing weapons off non-blown-up Mancubus and Revenant corpses a real pain in the *** when you don't stay on the job but instead get pulled past the corpse, so you need multiple sawings to remove even one of Mancubus' cannons.
• Add the option of switching between new and old Zombieman sounds.
• Bring back the dual fire button shooting for dual-wielded assault rifles and plasma guns! That was so much fun in previous versions and neatly conveyed the idea of actually firing two weapons at the same time
• Make it possible to fire the plasma gun's secondary fire mode's charged up shotgun blast manually before reaching the full charge of 10 cells by letting go of the sec. fire button to fire off a lesser charge.
• What's with the revenant cannons' secondary fire? Missiles that circle the player? Useless. Please, just bring back the good old homing & non-homing fire modes!
• I feel that when aiming down sights and reloading, aiming down sights should be resumed. Perhaps add as a toggleable option at least?

Minor nitpicks & notes:
• Iron sights _very_ slightly misaligned on shotgun and assault rifle.
• Not all weapons are present at the Weapons Testing Map, necessitating the use of cheat codes. Not an issue though, except for weapons which you can't dual wield in the map because there's only one present and IDKFA doesn't seem to give a second one of: MP40, pistol, SMG.
• Railgun making explosions when fired into pretty much everything, even inert stuff like the ground? If it's a kinetic projectile propelled at hyper-sonic speeds, there's nothing to explode there in the round itself.
• Why change the hand grenade icon & sprite? What was wrong with ye olde iconic green Mk.2 pineapple design? The new black one works just fine, but to me they're just somehow a bit too modern and generic looking.

Really nice work! These look awesome and work nicely.
...Except for the machine gun, unfortunately.
EDIT: Oh, nevermind. I found your earlier comment reply saying that KMQuake2 doesn't supprot transparency. Bummer. :|
Guess I'll need to make a copy of the weapon pack without the machine gun and use the MG included in the kmquake2_models_090227 model pack I'm using.

Edit 2: This is odd. The MG-less copy of the pack I made (rename to .zip, extract, remove MG folder, re-pack & rename) doesn't seem to want to work.

Yes, with the console command "summon brutalsmg"

Oh yeah, one-shotting Spider Masterminds is *little* bit OP... :D

Just noticed this while playing the *November 5* test build (just came back to see the latest one having been released):

Bug: even with shootable rocket ammo option turned off, rocket boxes still explode when shot at. (individual rocket ammo doesn't)

Oh, seems I can't edit my comment anymore. Well, here's a couple of other bugs I just came across:
- Flashlight toggling sound doesn't play (or is inaudible?) while minigun is being pre-spun, plus it causes a very brief pause in the minigun spin sound
- Burnt Mancubus corpses can't be sawn/blown up with to get their launchers
- when out of shotgun ammo and with only one shell in the Super Shotgun, it doesn't fire that one round with the primary fire button.

Feature suggestion:
- When reloading from sights/scope view (single SMG, SGm AR, RL, RG), make have return to then sight/scope mode after reloading is finished

BUGS(?):
- It's possible to cancel SSG reload by quickly switching to another weapon right after shooting (not possible on other guns)
- some enemy projectiles (e.g. Mancubus flames) occasionally show a box around them when vieweed in UV scope (RL & RG): S17.postimg.org (I'm using the default Zandronum that comes with the BD package)
- Shotgun doesn't produce sparks when firing with iron sights (not an issue per se, IMO, as I'd remove the sparking altogether from the SG)

Awesome work, as always! Seems like v21 will be totally worth the wait!
That automatic level enhancement feature sure puts a lot of new life into those city environment levels. Very neat!

As it's a public beta, I'd presume questions, feedback, suggestions, and requests are welcome. These I've noted playing the first release v21 beta with the included Zandronum and Doom 2 iWad. Here goes:

Is there any way to change the size of the custom HUD?

New style NV goggles are a GREAT improvement! Lights up the view without any obnoxious effects.

The new axe is awesome! Any plans to a secondary fire? Horizontal swing would be cool, for instance.

New chainsaw feels like a little bit of a downgrade compare that in v20, which had 3 attacks (continuous thrust, horizontal swing, and vertical swing when performed when jumping)

Black rectangle in level start fade-ins. (yes, I know, it's been mentioned many times already)

Add option to disable footstep sounds. (in addition to the alternative of from removing those sound files altogether from the mod pk3 file manually)
- 'landing from jump' sound is always the same, whether jumping or going down the lowest step
I quite like the new pistols and SMGs, but their separate ammo pool makes it easier to run out of both pistol *and* rifle ammo. Could you consider an optional setting for keeping the pistols and SMG, while having them use the same rifle ammo as the AR/minigun/MG?

Dual wielding:
- add option to integrate DW's weapons into the weapon list so they can be cycled along with the rest
- go back to old style shooting where primary and secondary fire shoots each gun
- DW pistols don't shoot continuously when fire button held down (cf. single pistol)

Minigun's rate of fire way too high, IMO. Hardly any recoil, either, at least considering the RoF. I liked v20's RoF and recoil better.

Machine gun:
- it's quite inaccurate right from the first shot. Seems a bit odd, I feel it could benefit from initial shots being a little more accurate, while of course at the same time kept from stepping on the assault rifle's territory (which is accurate with single shots and short bursts, but has small mags and lower rate of fire to compensate)
- Have you planned, or done so already, to experiment with box magazines for the machine gun? Say, 100 rounds per box, reloading time about the same as with the assault shotgun, same rate of fire, first shots a bit more accurate.
- Can you add some kind of an indicator to tell if the underslung grenade launcher is loaded or not? Currently there's no way to tell if you don't remember.

Plasmagun:
- the shotgun-style secondary fire is clumsy and rarely useful, as you can easily run into trouble while waiting for the shot to charge up --> make it work so that you hold down the secondary fire button to charge (up to the maximum of 10 cells) and release to fire, and you can let go and fire at any point during the charge- up to shoot a less powerful (less shots too?) charge.
- any plans on bringing back the old style sprite as an option? It would also be awesome to see the flamethrower-like secondary fire again!

Railgun:
- electricity animation stops playing while firing
- shot seems to originate from too high (more like player's eye level than from the gun itself)
- why does the railgun make fire/explosions on impact on everything? Feels out of place, IMO.
- when scoped in and reloading, you need to scope in again manually (same with the rocket launcher)

When running out of ammo on minigun, BFG or hand grenades (slot 9 wep.), you switch to the axe if you have it, or if not, the pistol(s). Other guns don't switch to anything when running out of ammo. (Could be a Zandronum setting thing?)

Bring back the non-homing secondary fire for Revenant rocket launchers, please. Revenants can fire non-homing, so why couldn't you?

Mancubus flamethrower's primary fire mode is a step back from v20, IMO. Uses a bunch of ammo with a single press of fire button. (or was this exactly what was tweaked in the quickfix?)

Add option to revert to old style zombieman sounds (not a fan of the newer more "demonic" versions).

New grenade and barrel explosion sounds feel a bit weak, IMO, especially from a distance. The previous sounds were nice and 'violent', with a proper boom to them. Now in v21b, they're reduced to little poofs when heard from anything but a close distance.

"Impaled marine" set pieces (one of those "containers" that drop health and armor pickups) don't gib like other destroyable torture victims (not an issue per se, but seems out of line when the other get totally gibbed)

Multiple overlapping blood decals on walls cause noticable slowdown when viewed up close.

Blood decals can still completely cover up buttons and switches - can be a real issue on maps you're not familiar with.

The new "screen zooms in" style of recoil feels and looks a bit odd and jarring with some guns (e.g. DW pistols and assault rifles)

A DIGITAL CYBER DEMON!

Download this a while ago and recently finished it. Stellar work! All those little additions flow really well into the original's design and atmosphere. And the new laser gun is just awesome! Very satisfying to fry up hordes of imps and zombiemen with.

In case updates are in plans, here's some ideas, suggestions and critique I wrote down while playing:
- can't interrupt shotgun reloading by firing (cf. regular BD)
- can't reload single barrel of SSG (cf. regular BD)
- add option to disable rocket launcher's arcing projectile tracjectory in tactical mode?
- add option to disable stamina system in tactical mode? It would be nice to have a "regular brutal doom" mode as well.
- add option to disable rocket launcher's arcing trajectory in tactical mode?
- add (more) weapon equipping (not pickup, but when switched) sounds? (even straight from BD)
- add option to turn off unmaker's howling noise (gets old fast)
- plans to implement handgrenades?
- idea regarding stamina: have berserker pack to have some sort of stamina boost? (e.g. lower consumption/faster recovery)
- sprinting head bobbing is a bit distracting (sort of up & down pecking movement)
- color of keyd doors not always shown on map (probably a Zanondrum feature?
- health pickups (flask) are always picked up, even when at full 200 health (the same as in original D64?)
- weapons are always picked up, even when at full ammo, wasting that pickup (the same as in original D64?)
- nightmare imps and those fireball-spewing two-headed hell bear thing don't seem to be able to walk up and down stairs
- quite a few enemies make the same "alerted" demon growl sound when roaming around

Also, someone please adapt the Doom Metal vol.4 music pack for this thing! (no, I don't consider doom 64's ambient hum as proper Doom music) I presume that couldn't be too hard to adapt.

Thanks for the confirmation. I had a feeling it was likely a false positive as Avast didn't find anything on the exe when scanning the zip nor while in its virus chest.
Where exactly is the further info in the FAQ? I can't seem to find it, and I'd be interested in the details.

Anyway, the new version seems great so far! I ended up just extracting boa_c2.pk3 from the standalone download and grabbing gzdoom from its website to get BOA up and running. Replaying episode 1 at the moment to not miss any of the updated content.

Just downloaded the new version, but trying to run it, Avast threw up a "threat blocked" prompt about having detected and blocked FileRepMetagen [Malware] in process boa_c2.exe.

I found this seird, as on both scanning the zip file prior to extracting *and* scanning the exe while now in Avast's virus chest after it picked it up, Avast gives an all-clear. I feel this could just be a false positive, but how would it find and block something on trying to run it, and not on scanning it before and afterwards?

Anyone else had this happen? What's your take on this, Tormentor?