[SUBMISSION] Slimethrower

After seeing the recent submission of a slime monster I was reminded of a weapon I made for a nuclear waste-themed mappack almost a decade ago. Work on the maps has long been abandoned but the weapon was mostly functional already. Back then I took Eriance's UTNTflamethrower and turned it into a simple slimethrower, somewhat inspired by the Bio-Rifle from Unreal.
Since the old gun doesn't meet my own standards anymore I decided to touch up the sprites a little, rewrite all the code in Zscript and add a secondary firemode. I think it's now good enough for a proper submission, but I let you be the judge.

Info:
Name: Slimethrower
Class: 6
Type: Projectile
Palette: Doom
Summon: Slimethrower
Ammo Type: Slime (Custom)
Altfire: Yes
Powered Mode: No
Brightmaps: Yes
Actor modification: No
ACS: No

Description:
The Slimethrower is a launcher-type weapon that shoots balls of acidic slime.
The primary firemode launches a burst of 10 slimeballs at high speed, but is rather inaccurate at a distance.
The secondary firemode charges up for 2 seconds, then launches a large heavy slimeball that inflicts massive damage
and explodes into many smaller balls on impact. All projectiles also deal a small amount of poison damage.
For safety reasons the charging action can be aborted at any time. Beware of splash damage!
Note: due to the projectiles being affected by gravity, auto-aim is disabled for this weapon.

Credits
Code: DeVloek
GLDefs: DeVloek
Sounds: Digital Extremes
Sprites: 3D Realms, Eriance
Sprite Edit: DeVloek
Idea Base: Unreal Bio-Rifle

Preview Sprite


Download link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FsGP0JFX_B6krCC8CZoneBscO6mjvz-h/view?usp=drive_link

I like this weapon a lot, it's really good!

The only comments are that the giant particle smoke looks a bit weird (especially if you use square particles!) and the HUD sprite is a bit rigid when firing. I don't think particles use much resources. so if you wanted you could use multiple small particles instead to make the vapour look a bit more natural?

Thanks! Not sure what you mean with giant particle smoke, the size looks appropriate to me, even with square particles (does anyone still use these or round paricles?). I made the particles smaller than the projectiles and decals, and they increase size only a little bit over time. Maybe it's a graphic setting that can make them bigger than intended? Here's what they look like on my end

But I will try your suggestion of multiple smaller particles and see how it looks.

And now that you mentioned it, firing the weapon does look a little bit rigid. Tbh it never occured to me, and weapon bobbing isn't even enabled. Maybe I could lower the sprite a few pixels while firing or something like that.

Also I'm gonna add floor decals for the projectile, not sure why I didn't think of that earlier ::

This thing is epic! I love the splash effects and how it explodes everywhere.

Great job!

thanks!

I did what Captain Toenail suggested and changed the smoke effect, looks much better indeed. Even square particles don't look to shabby now, they actually were kinda giant before ::

I also added the wall decal as a flatsprite for the ground, looks pretty cool.

Then I changed the projectile death sprites as they didn't look liquidy enough, I got some much better looking sprites now but unfortunately there is a weird bug. When a projectile hits the ground, for the last 2 of the 5 death frames the sprite pops out of the ground. Oddly enough this only happens for the small projectile, for the big all 5 frames stay centered on ground level although they both use the exact same sprites for the death frames just with a different scale.

I'm kinda lost and it's getting late, I'll try to fix this tomorrow and then upload the updated version.

Actually the solution was right in front of me, it was indeed the scale that caused the bug or whatever it is.
0.35 scale makes the last 2 frames to pop out of the ground, 0.36 does it only for the last frame, but 0.37 works for all frames. Weird but it's fixed now.

I updated the file on my google drive, enjoy!

btw @Captaintoenail I read your post again and it says HUD sprite which I somehow read over before, and now I'm confused :fear:
Are you talking about the sprite for the actual gun or that little sprite in the corner of the HUD?


edit: I found out the "bug" with the sprite popping up has to do with the Adjust Sprite Clipping option in GZdoom. At a scale of 0.5 or lower the death frame sprite pops out of the floor for the very 1st tic, then is adjusted, it just looks weird. At even lower scales the sprite may pop out for the full frame duration, as mentioned earlier. It only happens if the Sprite Clipping setting is Always or Smarter though. Never and Smart look fine, no matter the scale. I'll try to fix this by making a second set of death frames for projectiles that hit the floor instead of the wall.

Updated the file with the latest version.

Now the projectile splash sprites behave correctly when hitting the floor, regardless of sprite clipping settings.
Also added some weapon offsets to both fire modes, looks pretty cool.

Projectiles leave decals on floors even when they impact a tall wall or a ceiling

thanks, I missed that. Fixed, also cleaned up the code and removed some redundant lines.
File in the OP is up to date.

edit: btw, I still have a MAPINFO in my pk3, but it only contains DoomEdNums. Is that allowed for a submission? I couldn't find anything in the rules, only that defining weaponslots isn't allowed.

DeVloek wrote:

Actually the solution was right in front of me, it was indeed the scale that caused the bug
btw @Captaintoenail I read your post again and it says HUD sprite which I somehow read over before, and now I'm confused :fear:
Are you talking about the sprite for the actual gun or that little sprite in the corner of the HUD?
.

Yeah I meant the sprite of the actual gun. Sorry for not being clear. All the Doom weapons are flat so I tend to think of them as part of the HUD. Just a little recoil animation would add some extra oomph to the weapon.