[SUBMISSION] Dual Barrel Laser Rifle

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Dual Barrel Laser Rifle
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Information:
Name: Dual Barrel Laser Rifle
Class: 6 (I guess?.. being a plasma weapon.. or 4 based on power to rate of fire)
Type: Projectile
Palette: png palleted
Summon: DualLaser
Ammo Type: Cells
Altfire: No
Powered Mode: No
Added States: No

Credits:
Submitted: BadMojo
Decorate: BadMojo
GLDefs: BadMojo
Sounds: BadMojo
Sprites: BadMojo
Idea Base: A mod for quake called "Pain", had a dual laser gun, also a single laser gun, which was the sound idea base for the firing sound.
ACS: No

Description:
Light weight, accurate, fast projectile, dual firing laser rifle.




Download
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0zinmc2ypvm1ofy/DUALLASERv7.1.zip?dl=0

Overall, it's really solid, and the sprites are nice. I'm a little torn on its damage output capabilities, though. I can stand 100 feet away from a Hell Knight, and kill him in 9 shots (18 cells) with no misses. The Plasma Gun can get the job done a little bit quicker, but it also has the chance to waste more ammo on missed shots due to the slower projectiles. This thing doesn't really miss at all if your crosshair is on the target.

Also, speaking of projectile speed, since the projectile has a speed of 180, it should inherit from FastProjectile. "Normal" projectiles start to have really dodgy collision detection if the speed gets too high. For an example, stand right next to a wall, and shoot it; you'll often find that no decals are left. I also find that vertical auto-aim seems to aim too low, but that might also be fixed if you inherit from FastProjectile.

In short, I like this a lot, but I'm not 100% sure about the balance. I'm thinking it needs just a touch of recoil to counteract the speed of the projectiles. Otherwise, you can snipe even most of the toughest enemies to death from a safe distance with no recourse.

I'm a little torn on its damage output capabilities

Don't worry, thats what the feedback is for.. I shall give it more power and a bit of spread to compensate the over the top accuracy

Also, speaking of projectile speed, since the projectile has a speed of 180, it should inherit from FastProjectile.

Thanks for the tip, I was gonna ask about that as I did notice that very issue, it shall be fixed for v5

In short, I like this a lot, but I'm not 100% sure about the balance. I'm thinking it needs just a touch of recoil to counteract the speed of the projectiles. Otherwise, you can snipe even most of the toughest enemies to death from a safe distance with no recourse.

Yea, I do struggle a bit with balancing my weapons... but again, that's what the feedback is for




Update:


Update2:

BadMojo wrote:

Don't worry, thats what the feedback is for.. I shall give it more power and a bit of spread to compensate the over the top accuracy

I haven't tested the revision, but I'd suggest adding a "hold" state which has the spread, and keeping the single-shot "fire" state about as accurate as it was. Then, add a "ReFire" state that's long enough that you can't just rapidly tap the fire button to circumvent the recoil in the "hold" state. That way, it's still accurate for single-shot sniping, but the accuracy can't be abused.

BadMojo wrote: Yea, I do struggle a bit with balancing my weapons... but again, that's what the feedback is for

If it makes you feel any better, I once balanced an entire game. (Rage: Mutant Bash TV, if you're curious. It's a long story, so I won't go into it here.)

BadMojo wrote: Don't worry, thats what the feedback is for.. I shall give it more power and a bit of spread to compensate the over the top accuracy

I haven't tested the revision, but I'd suggest adding a "hold" state which has the spread, and keeping the single-shot "fire" state about as accurate as it was. Then, add a "ReFire" state that's long enough that you can't just rapidly tap the fire button to circumvent the recoil in the "hold" state. That way, it's still accurate for single-shot sniping, but the accuracy can't be abused.

BadMojo wrote: Yea, I do struggle a bit with balancing my weapons... but again, that's what the feedback is for

If it makes you feel any better, I once balanced an entire game. (Rage: Mutant Bash TV, if you're curious. It's a long story, so I won't go into it here.)

Ok, well before you test out any of the new revisions... I need help getting the random spread for each barrel to be the same.. if that makes sense.

So basically, A_FireCustomMissile is called twice, and my goal is to set both "angles" to the same random number. But obviously when you would do A_FireCustomMissile("D_Laser", random(-2, 2)... etc twice, that means calling random twice, therefore getting 2 random numbers... but i want those numbers to be the same.

So my initial solution to this was to create a user variable and store a random number in that... so then after every refire it would call random once, store it in user_rand and use that for setting the angle for each barrel... But thats not working, and im sure it has something to do the player inheritance and some other type of wizardry that im probably not supposed to be doing anyway and theres probably a much easier way that should have been in my face the whole time.... WWMWD?!?!

Edit: Nevermind.... I improvised.. ill upload v5.2 in a minute.. scrap 5.0 and 5.1, well figure out damage ratios on 5.2.

Ok, so I checked out the newest version. Here's my feedback:

*I see you're inheriting from FastProjectile now, but for some reason, the projectiles still fail to leave scorch marks when fired at point-blank or at certain extreme angles. I wonder if it's an engine bug. Maybe BlueShadow has some insight.

*The ReFire frame has no duration. Instead of... I'd use... ...because currently, it's easy to circumvent the "Hold" recoil by tapping the fire key repeatedly, and you barely lose any rate of fire (you only get 1/7th of a second's worth of delay between shots versus holding the button, and keep your accuracy). Using my method, you'd get nearly 1/2 a second's worth of added delay between shots versus holding the button.

*Speaking of "Hold", I see that it has a 127 out of 256 chance of jumping to Hold2 through Hold5. You realize this basically means that Hold has a 50% chance of being the state that is fallen into, whereas Hold2 through Hold5 only have a 12.5% chance each of getting jumped to. Maybe this was intentional, but considering "Hold"'s attack function has no recoil, it doesn't seem like the best way to go, as it's the one that's called most often. I think what you should do is make a "Hold" state that doesn't actually fire, but instead contains an A_Jump with 256 chance of jumping to "Hold1" (which replicates "Hold"'s attack function) through "Hold5"--that way, each "HoldX" state has an equal chance to get called.

Ok cool I will make the changes as soon as I can.

You realize this basically means that Hold has a 50% chance of being the state that is fallen into, whereas Hold2 through Hold5 only have a 12.5% chance each of getting jumped to.

Nope I didn't realize, I fail miserably at math... my brain literally looks like a dead cacodemon... I was hoping Id either ace it by putting in somewhere close to half a chance for everything or fail miserably and have you correct my madness you get a thank you for the help on that one


Edit: V6 is up now, but i have a weird bug on my end where ill type IDFA and it will play the firing sound quietly once in the background... im not sure why its doing that, let me know if it does the same on your end.

BadMojo wrote: Edit: V6 is up now, but i have a weird bug on my end where ill type IDFA and it will play the firing sound quietly once in the background... im not sure why its doing that, let me know if it does the same on your end.

It happens to me, too, but it also plays the same sound when you summon the weapon and pick it up. I noticed that before, but I assumed it was intentional until you brought up the IDFA issue. Offhand, I'm not sure why this is happening. I've pored over the code, and I don't see any obvious reason for this.

Also, I notice that the firing sound can override or drown out the impact sound. You might need to put "$limit soundname" explicitly to 0 to avoid this.

Alright, v7 is up now

I implemented $limit on the death sound of the projectile, which fixed the sound issues, but I still cant figure out why the firing sound plays when idfa.. I might try re-archiving everything just in case its a corrupt zip or something weird... seems to be a common issue with me

Also, regarding the sound, I corrected the firing sound playing twice.... no it wasn't originally intentional to have it play twice when firing, I thought it was ok for a while but it wasn't what I wanted it to sound like.. so its back to normal now.

I also added gldefs to the explosion aswell.