Did I really say "ready by June"?

I meant July. Srsly.
Still on my list of things to do (in order of importance):

1) Finish intermission coding/drawing pictures
2) Redo the weapon sprites
3) Redo Trixieling sprites
4) Redo Rarisprites
5) Find a weapon sound for the tripleshot

So lazy...

Promised Open Beta 2 sometime this month almost done kindof.

Maps are pretty much done. They just need some new texturing, but for a beta, it's ready.

Monsters need some work. I didn't do the Trixieling sprites, I didn't do the Rarisprites, and the Pain Elemental's sprites are recolors of the fluffy ponies. Yeah. I'm that lazy. But it gets better: I didn't feel like doing the attack sprites for all five rotations, so they have a 0, indicating that they'll always appear like that no matter which way it's actually facing (kindof like the SS in Doom II. Except my game doesn't allow infighting).

Random tangent: As I was thinking about spriting (and how much I dislike it), the idea occurred to me that I could have Colgate as the Revenant. She can bash you with her toothbrush or fling toothpaste at you. That's a fun idea. Too bad it'll prolly not get done for a while... ah well. I'm pretty sure I can recolor and reexport the Fake-ra sprites fairly easily.

Anyway... I promised it this month, and I still have two more days to finish spriting, drawing, and coding the intermissions. I think I can do it.

Today I woke up and thought...

...you know, I should make a triple shotgun. Then the double shotgun can be normal and found more easily.

Yeah. It'll be the secret weapon you need all three weapon pieces to get.

I think I like that idea.

Feeling like a codemonkey--and I love it!

So as my last post indicated, I lost all my zdoom.pk3 modifications when I downloaded the new version of zdoom. But, since I really enjoyed the altfire (grenade toss) of the rocket launcher and the shorter reload time of the super shotgun, I decided I would try and recreate those modifications, but only using the .wad file. This required a lot of research.

But it was well worth it. I've been feeling inspired. Though I got no spriting or drawing done, I got plenty of other stuff done. Of note:

Levels have been modified, adding a few more decorations (if you're modding, I have found some good stuff on realm667.com)

Strings have been retyped, and I added a few more quit messages (I love these. So much.)

I created Rarity as a new class, so now it will always say Rarity instead of ChexWarrior.

Weapons names have been changed (so now you don't have to remember the Chex Quest names. Instead of  "summon phasingzorcher", you can just type in "summon flamethrower").

Level names, episode names, and difficulty level names have been updated. Mainly because I learned that they don't require graphics but can be created through text in mapinfo.

Behemoths (revenants) now have normal flemoid behavior--their attacks do not hurt each other (and thus will not spark infighting. Suckas!). Trixielings (chaingun guys) are now immune to slime damage, as well, but their bullets can still inflict damage (so remember that for E1M7).

The game now bobs ever so slightly when you're standing still.

I've also discovered that you can have different pain sounds depending on how hurt you are.

But the best thing is, it's basically now a pwad for Chex Quest 3. This means that you can play it on any source port that can play Chex Quest, not just zdoom. You want to play on gzdoom? Skulltag? Zandronum? Any other childport of zdoom? Not a problem. Does your port accept DECORATE and ACS? Then you can play.

These are probably little things, but I'm excited about them. And now you know I'm not dead.

There's also something else I found. There's an option for a level difficulty that's like Heaven or Hell from the Devil May Cry series. Everything--including you--dies in one hit. I'm not sure if anyone would play this... but they might. Should I put it in?

Also, I still need ideas on what to use for weapons instead of that long black bar.

Updates... updates everywhere. Also regression but that's fine too

So Randy updated zdoom about a week ago, but slowpoke me just now downloaded it.

Good news--everything still works fine.

Bad news--when I unzipped it, I replaced the zdoom.pk3 file. Now that might not mean much to you, but it means that I lost most of the text strings *(addendum: Fixed and tested all text strings) AND the ability to just play straight raridoom (now the engine thinks it's a PWAD for chex3, not an IWAD). This brings up another problem I've foreseen--someone trying to play this wad in something other than zdoom. Some people prefer Zandronum, or even Vavoom for their dooming needs. That's cool, except I dunno if it'll play on those ports automatically. I would like it to, but I don't know if it will. *(addendum: So far, it looks like zdoom will play it straight with the modified pk3, but for other engines you might have to download Chex Quest 3 and play it as a mod)

So the project is a little behind. That's not including the fact that I still need to
1) sprite the pain elementals
2) finish the updated trixieling sprites
3) finish the Rarity sprites
4) draw the intermission pictures
5) code in the intermission pictures
6) make sure that everything I changed in zdoom.pk3 gets modified in rarity.wad
7) update the coverart (so far just a sketch) and other information slides
8) figure out what the heck to do about the weapons because I hate the long black bar thingy
...dang, I'm behind.

But since I hate being the bearer of bad news, here's some good news to balance it out.

I've been making some of the levels look prettier, and I think it really adds to the game. Jadwick made me a map (and it is a real challenge!) and it inspired me to add more little things. I know my mapmaking skills are not on his level yet, but I'm feeling proud of them.

Also! This part I think is really cool. When you're in a FPS, there are a few questions that flow through your mind. 1) Where is more ammo? and 2) What is this thing and how long until it dies?!?

I can't answer number one. But I can answer number two. I've bound the S key (for scanning haha I'm so clever!) to a pointer that brings back what you're looking at, how much health it started with, and how much health it has now.

Also notice the improved mugshots, and the skybox that actually looks somewhat like a skybox now.
Oh gosh looking back open beta 1 embarrasses me...

So yeah. That's about it for now.

No door here...

So I hopped on youtube this morning, wondering if there was anything good on.

There was.

There was this.



xXSoundspeedXx did a let's play of Open Beta 1. He crashed and burned on Map 3, but other than that (actually, including that, as he's quite a funny guy even when he's dying) it was quite amusing.

Also those freaking awful mugshots can't believe I released those what was I thinking

Open Beta 2 will drop sometime this month, with more enemies and (somewhat) less crappily-textured maps!