It's been one hell of a year since the last article got posted. I got my Master's degree, started working as a full-time instructor, began gender reassignment, went through a slough of personal life stuff both good and bad, and clocked over 50 days in VRChat.
But you're not here for all of that. You're here for DOOM! So what's been going on with Hot and Bothered? Quite a lot actually. With an extended break taken from the mod, I came back to it with fresh a perspective and lots of ideas. Let's talk about those, shall we?
Option Presets
AT the top of Enhanced GFX and Gameplay Mutators, you'll find buttons that set everything according to a set of parameters. Think of these as serving suggestions.
Jukebox
Inside Gameplay Mutators, there's now a Jukebox menu that gives the add-on section a reason to exist when Bolognese, Weapon Wheel, and Damnums aren't present. It's what you think it is; a music picker! Put Annihilation Nation in your load order and you can select those tracks too.
Weapon Queue
Many Ratchet & Clank games allow you to cycle through your most recent weapons. I managed to make that work in the mod! The quick slots and main gun options are still there.
Zurkon 2.0!
Mr. Zurkon has gotten a complete overhaul. New attack, new sprite, and rerecorded voice lines courtesy of DoctorPups.
New Scheme for Healing
Everything is percentage-based. From smallest to largest, items give 2, 3, 10, 20, 30, 45, and 100% health. Only the last three give any XP, so there's no 2% XP on supplements, but they also don't count toward the item total.
New Scheme for Ammo
It's all fixed amounts now. Increasing your ammo capacity doesn't mean you get more ammo from capsules. Ammo caps have been largely decreased, with the Arbiter and Hoverbomb Gun getting an increase so they're more useful. The refill you get from Amm-O-Matics now scales with difficulty, from 5x all the way down to none at all. Ammo capsules never count toward the item total now.
Kill Counter
The mod now tracks the total number of dead monsters across a whole campaign. You can toggle the display in Enhanced GFX where all the other HUD stuff is.
New Scalars
It's not just monster health and damage anymore. You can tweak monster speed, as well as ammo and health received from pickups.
Turret Monsters
With X-grade spawns (which now include Annihilation Nation's monsters) come these little bastards replacing furniture objects just to throw you for a loop. They don't count toward the monster total, so if you need to avoid them, it won't hurt your chances of getting 100% kills.
Elemental Affinities
I can't really do all the wacky elemental effects from Deadlocked in a way that's balanced and sensible in GZDoom, but this is a second-best option. Monster pain chances are influenced by what elements they're weak or strong to. When New Game+ hits, these affinities affect damage. Oh yeah...
New Game+
What's a Ratchet & Clank experience without Challenge Mode? This can now be accessed outside of Annihilation Nation. Just load the patch corresponding to your game and, upon finishing the last level, you'll go to a trophy room to activate NG+ and press a switch to return to the first level. Patches for Doom 1 will also take you from the end of one episode to the start of the next with all of your stuff. You'll find one for both Inferno and Thy Flesh Consumed.
What Else?
A whole host of quality of life changes and rebalancing have been done. The mod is now overall harder but more fair, and the game doesn't randomly explode and corrupt saves anymore.
I haven't forgotten the maps! Those are still very much on the to-do list, but I'm going to need help for that. I have design documentation written up for them, but I don't have the time to do it on my own. If anyone's interested in chipping in, reach out to me here, or you can find me on Twitter (Scarlet_Mango).
That about covers it. The plan for releases is to have 3.0 out sometime in the coming months. If all goes according to plan, subsequent updates will add maps and patches, as well as further improve the game balance and address any bugs that arise.
If you have ideas, feel free to send them my way! I've been asked about a shop mechanic for bolts by everyone and their goldfish, and that's still off the table, but any other ideas are welcome.
Ah great, so the saves just crashing will be fixed that I have commented. And I Finally will no longer have to worry about a one-shot run anymore when this comes around too.
Did also feel like their needed to be some ammo related balancing, health as well. But eh, I never was sure if either was intended that way.
Especially a shop would be nice and some sort of way to use the excess bolts when you pile oh so many of them. I would have tried to come up with an idea for the extra resources that you could spend, but I would not sure where I would go with for a shop concept if you get where I would be going. :P
There is a use for the excess bolts as a matter of fact. If you collect them with a maxed-out weapon, they go into a pool that's given to the next weapon you equip. You take a loss, akin to the Gadgetron PDA's shipping charges, but it ensures you put some of those extra bolts to use. That only accounts for the weapon XP bolts though; not sure what to do about the Nanotech ones.
The shop isn't a bad idea. The problem is that bolts are glorified XP items and the mod has been fine-tuned over the last three years for this. Bringing in a shop mechanic would uproot all of that.