PROGRESS!

That's right... I'm not even going to dare say it's finished; look at where that's gotten me in the past...

However, I will say that I've accomplished a couple of my goals today... with a little help.

StimPacks and SuperStims now appear to be working exactly the way I want them to, taking into account that with the LifeSphere power-up it's now possible to have 300 health.

Unfortunately, my attempts to do the same with the ArmorShards just don't seem to be working though I have no idea why since they should be able to use exactly the same code. Furthermore, at the moment they don't seem to be working at all. Thus I'm not releasing another version until I get that detail ironed out.

As can be seen in the screenshots here, I've also succeeded in (within reason) increasing DoomGuy's ammo carrying capacity. My thanks to NeuralStunner at the ZDoom Forums for pointing me toward the easy way to accomplish this after I'd wracked my brain over it for most of the day.

The original caps were:

Pre-backpack                                                        Post-backpack

Bullets               200                                               400
Shells                100                                               200
Rockets            50                                                 100
Cells                 300                                               600

My new caps are:

Pre-backpack                                                        Post-backpack

Bullets               300                                               600

Shells                150                                               300

Rockets            75                                                 150

Cells                 450                                               900

These felt like the natural and reasonable progression to me, rather than simply doubling the default post-backpack limits which I felt would have been superfluous. If one would be able to gather and not expend 800 bullets, 400 shells, 200 rockets and 1200 cells in any given map then in my opinion the map's designer has made it too easy.

Which brings me to my next discovery of the day...

While my randomizers should generally make most maps slightly more difficult, there will of course always be exceptions. The checks and balances I've set in place to help keep more difficult maps from becoming impossible to complete have one major drawback: they can potentially make maps that are already easy into maps that are ridiculously easy. As you can see from my health and armor scores in these screenshots, while playing through the first map of the Raven series by Tim Wilits and Theresa Chasar on the default difficulty I really had no trouble keeping my marine healthy. But as I mentioned in my review of these maps, in this one in particular the authors placed like a dozen sets of armor throughout the level. I can't be responsible for authors who have designed their maps for beginners, nor can I be responsible for authors who make maps with 500 CyberDemons. My mod is designed to work well with the average map, and that's really all I can do.

Anyway...

I'd still like to figure out how to keep us from picking up and consequently wasting the SoulSphere if our health is already 200 (or more), but so far my attempts at that have not been successful and I won't let that stop me from making a final release if I can't figure it out. But I do really need to get those ArmorShards working, so that's where progress is standing still at the moment.