Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Will She Ever Stop?

Sure. But as I mentioned in a recent post, there was still something slightly not right in my upgrade mod. As I said in that same post, I'm also a bit of a perfectionist; I take pride in my mods and if I'm going to share one with the public it's going to work right and not make me look foolish, dammit!

The problems that were nagging at me were that the Hellstorm Archon's death animation didn't seem to be "wrapping up" properly and also that it seemed like I had never seen the Belphegor despite the fact that I was certain I had added him to the spawning list properly.

As it turns out, these problems were one in the same. Though I had already renamed a shitload of sprites in an attempt to prevent this sort of thing from happening, I had overlooked one such issue: these two monsters had sprites with the same names. I had actually encountered the Belphegor several times while playing but didn't even realize it because both monsters are of the "Baron" variety, use similar sounds and attacks and the Belphegor's sprites were being overridden by the Hellstorm Archon's sprites. The only thing that tipped me off to the problem was that faulty death animation, which was being caused by the Belphegor using the Archon's death sprites.

Well, the issue is fixed now. I sincerely hope that I haven't missed anything else, but who knows? I'm still playing through Plutonia with the mod and am keeping my eyes peeled for issues.

As always, the DL links in the blog sidebar will be for the latest versions:

HERCULINE'S DOOM UPGRADE

Without Music

With PSX Music

Unlike with previous updates, those of you currently playing with the mod (I know there's at least one of you) should be able to overwrite the old file with the new one and continue playing without having to start over. Nothing has been removed or added this time around so the game should still think you're using the same file. As I recommend with anything to do with computers, however, you should probably first make a backup of the old file someplace just to be safe.

As for everything else in the mod, I'm still quite satisfied with it. I really see no reason to add any new monsters or weapons; each class of monsters has approximately ten different variations (give or take one or two) and each type of weapon (except the melee weapons) has no less than two different versions. The only other minor change I've made in this version is how much ammo the Devastator consumes. Originally it only used a single charge, but that seemed too low considering the damage it does so I increased it to five. That still seems kind of low, but I wanted to maintain balance without getting too far away from the original intentions of the Devastator's creator despite the fact that the original Devastator wasn't even an energy weapon (I changed it to make it match the Devastator Zombies). Despite the still arguably low ammo consumption, hopefully an even balance will still be maintained by the fact that the weapon is among the rare ones that are only dropped by randomly-spawning enemies (I'm half-way through Plutonia and I still haven't been able to pick one up).

Oh, and as surprising as this may sound, DoomWorld actually did replace the old version of the mod in the Archives with the newer version. In the blog sidebar it will continue to be labeled as the old version simply because, while it is a newer version containing my UltraSphere, Railgun Sentry bots and the like, it does not contain the two small changes mentioned in this post. I'm not going to send yet another version to them; I'll just let the most recent versions remain exclusive downloads here as sort of a perk for folks who actually visit the blog and let me know what they think of the mod.

So there you have it. Until next time, watch out for those invisible monsters!

3 comments:

  1. You did what to the Devistator? Aww man...I just got that thing today playing Evilution. And I died five times trying to kill the bastard that had it! I admit, the usage of only one cell for that much power seemed a wee bit low to me, but it is what gives that thing such a high "giggle factor".

    And yes, I said "died". I'm actually trying not to be such a "Heratic" by using the only cheat code available to me: God Mode. Learning how to actually play just sucks ;)

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  2. What? You mean you're actually letting the monsters do damage to you now?

    My, how quickly you have grown... XD

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  3. You really think so? Might have something to do with all the rain we've gotten around here in the last couple of weeks...

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