Reminder there is a ZDoom Wars 2 Discord, linked in bio! Join up for access to the demo! When UZDoom 5.0 is out, there’s a channel for setting up games! Be a part of the balancing process!

Reminder there is a ZDoom Wars 2 Discord, linked in bio! Join up for access to the demo! When UZDoom 5.0 is out, there’s a channel for setting up games! Be a part of the balancing process!

I just imagined disciples saying "yes daddy" in their rotten voices and I blame you for that. You monster.

Happy Father’s Day to D’Sparil, who has so many fucking summons when specced up, my god

Just to be clear I’m using all the wonderful translations developed by the coders for ZDoom Wars 1 that came after me. It’s just that they’re written in a different format than ZScript expects AND I have to set up scripts to make the translations AND modify the monsters to pick the right one. Sheesh

Hexen’s monster color changing is done! God this is tedious.

Parts of it are still in use in ZDoom Wars 2!

“Nobody told me about id” is probably my favorite Bobby Prince track. Rather than taking the obvious tact of a rock song for fighting a cyborg rocket demon, it embraces the way you fight said cyberdemon: You dance. So the time signature and swing of the song is waltz-like! youtu.be/5DkYNbSp7Y4?...

Correction: Apparently he died on the 16th and it only got reported yesterday.

Still reeling. Bobby Prince died yesterday. Doom wouldn’t be nearly the same without him, not to mention all his other achievements. Absolute legend. We’ll never forget you.

This one was under-appreciated

Reminder the demo updated last night!

Really happy with how things are shaping up. Can’t wait to be able to test in a representative environment. Also did some early work on the ZDW Birthday video I’ll be doing. It’s gonna be quite a bit different from any video project I’ve done. Learning experience! You’ll see!

Demo update 1.05 is OUT Snag it from the link in the Discord! Big ticket items are auto lose at 0 capture points, and monster colors changing depending on player number! discord.gg/QQJveWSk2C

Of note: Crucible and Greater Crucible for ZDW1 were made by my brother. I know Greater Crucible was a really popular one.

Heretic’s monsters now all have their color sets programmed in. 4 more Factions to go!

I think people are going to be surprised by how much more intense ZDW2 is compared to the first one. It’s fast, and demanding, and you churn through monsters like crazy. Massive turn over rates, very fast resource generation once you get rolling. It’s gonna be wild.

I tried to go for the most asymmetry possible in the game design, I really did. I think players will click with one Faction and main them more often than switching between. I really think each faction will have diehards. Can’t wait to see what people end up loving the most. I bet Ettins🧵

And with that, for the first time, I have outran my to-do list for standard dev. That means more monster color work, more work on stuff for ZDW’s birthday, etc. I got plenty to do, trust me. I’ll try and update the demo this weekend now that FFA’s are feature complete.

OKAY! Now, once you’ve first taken a point, dipping down to 0 points makes your screen red and a message says “Recapture a Point!” Don’t do it within 60 seconds? You explode. No delaying the inevitable! Or at least it’s much harder.

The entirety of Doom is set up! I am supporting a max of 6 players (3v3 coming in the future!). Anything beyond that and there end up being too many capture points, players take up territory in ZDW2, and it just gets too messy. Valley only accommodates 4 players in ZDW2, for example.

Got a system for each player having different colored monsters. Thank god the devs that followed me on ZDW1 made translations for everybody. Anyway, big QOL addition! Will take a minute to implement but you can expect it in the next demo, of course.

There, only errors are 4 things in ZForms I have no idea how to fix. So, ya know, my job here is done.

Got some boring ass stuff done, slowly reducing the amount of errors that show up in UZDoom’s launcher at game start. You know, that kinda’ thing. Gib code is from 2008, original Nashgore shit. Had some old flags in it.

For those who don’t know, my brother passed away at the end of February. We had been working on ZDoom Wars 2 together. Before he got sick he was going to code the Orders and Capture Points and HUD. One of our last conversations was me telling him all my plans so he’d know before he died. I miss him.

One of my favorite Ults is the Felix’s Siege Mode: its attacks become CRAZY powerful, but the Felix can only turn slowly until the effect ends. It’s slick. Ties in with the Virus Tier 5 defensive structure, which does the same thing (it also happens to be the top half of the Felix)

To be clear I’m not focused on a release date, but rather what I’m going to do FOR the eventual release date, and it’s gonna rule

Putting together release date plans, among other things. Also got things plotted out for ZDoom Wars 1’s birthday! That’ll take some doing.

Getting some really cool work done while a wonderful community member prototypes a real HUD. Imagine that! I’ve always got stuff to tinker with even as my immediate objectives tick down in number. I can’t wait for UZDoom 5.0. Got real testing to do before I start releasing more demo content.

Didn’t get to coding the autolose condition this last weekend, but I’ve got a 3 day weekend coming so I promise to get that done and update the demo with it, though I’m not sure anyone’s run up the demo and tried a game since another guy and I found out the original cap point code was incomplete.

Got a very important custom Displate today.

So I pretty much did the optimization that needed doing. Biggest CPU criminal was the Wendigo’s Blizzard Ability, which coughed up like 10 things every 3 tics for several seconds. If nothing else, for fuck’s sake that needed to be particles. Actually Sidhe Candle also put out like 50 explosions!

More progress on (stuff), but most importantly I finished season 4 of Babylon 5 and it ruled. Dunno what I’m gonna do when I finish the series!

Optimization is going well. I’ve done all the standard Units, now to tend to the Heroes tomorrow. Really happy with how much more efficient this will be. Gore is still hefty, but I used NO particles in the original and it ran, so hey.

Side note all my breath attacks are just invisible, wide projectiles that damage each entity they pass through once. Not actually a cone, and not a circular AOE. It affects a column of foes out to a set distance. The visual element is just that: for looks. Predictable, and thus easy to balance.

Combined with monsters having limited ranges, I’m hoping this will counteract server strain enough to make up for the fact that resource accumulation is faster than the original once you’ve got a couple points, and prices are lower. There’s a lot more to spend money on, though (upgrades, tiers).

Figuring out particles. Pretty damn useful! Plague effects are now particles, trails for Revenant and Arachnotron upgrades, etc. will be working through the roster swapping e’m in. Never did this in the original game. If particles were an option at that time it would have saved a lot of servers!

Haven’t done an intro post in a while! Follow this account for updates and join the Discord linked in the bio! It’s a really cool game and there’s a small demo available through the Discord! Watch a demonstration here: youtu.be/dyoxkSX7hkU?...

Finally doing some optimization. The gore system has a lot of physics based stuff for bouncing chunks and all, but the trail effects are now particles. Blowing up a huge mass of enemies still causes things to hitch, but much less than before where it was like a solid 5 seconds. Now it’s like 2?

I’ve got ANIMDEFS and TEXTURES open, I’ve got the wiki in a window. Particles WILL be happening!

This weekend I promise to begin on optimizing the effects. I’ve been putting it off because it’s boring and I dun wanna. I will also implement a mechanic where, once you have attained a point, going down to zero points starts a countdown. If you don’t get another point in time, you die.

Gotta make Ults pierce invulnerability (removing a really depressing possible outcome, especially since Hexen’s Tier 1 ability provides invulnerability), and code in an auto loss if you dip back down to 0 capture points. There’ll be a stressful countdown and everything!

Working on something cool. I can’t tell you about it, just that it’s cool, sorry I promise to do effect optimization this weekend!

Most of this is gonna be blood trails. Most effects with fancy particles are rare (a Hero Talent or something), but blood is omnipresent. If I could assign sounds to projectiles I’d really go ham, but alas

I promise to actually start optimizing the effects this weekend, it just requires me to learn some new stuff to set up the particles. Ughhhhhh

It’s gonna be fun and cool

I figured it out

Coming up on ZDoom Wars 1’s birthday (July 9). I gotta do something special! I don’t know what, but I gotta!

If you foolishly haven’t played it, @kevansevans.bsky.social ‘s “You Broke Me” is a triumph of Doom modding and storytelling. He also wrote the Orders for ZDoom Wars 2, a much lesser but very fun achievement!

Also I extemporaneously spoke about the Hero Tournament and looking ahead. youtu.be/u8sVs6ahnPA?...