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Lets Play DoomRL! For Graphics whores!

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Thats right. I gave jewgolds to the prestegious Chaosforge and removed from inventory the graphical beta. Which means I can finally do a LP of the game, like I tried to do a while back but couldn't get screenshots to work. Hopefully this doesn't kill my photobcuket account, since these pics are about 10 times bigger than the ones from my other LPs.

Edit: First play post moved to here so the red text shows up better on the darker background. Didn't realize it wasn't showing up very well.

I actually skipped the main title screen. It has modes and scoreboards and stuff. Also, it's slightly more graphical than the rest of the startup. One of the things being worked on.

Edit: Title screen: Chellenge and custom game are greyed out because you aren't permitted to have more than one game save at a time in DoomRL, for silly anticheaty reasons.
DoomRLb0006.png


DoomRLa0002.png

HNTR is the baseline difficulty, and I'm pretty confident I can show most, if not all of the special levels on it in a standard game. ITYTD is for pussies and doesn't even include all the special levels, and anything harder has a good chance of killing me before we even reach hell, even without being on a pistols only challenge or anything like that.

DoomRLa0003.png

We pick the badass class...

DoomRLa0004.png

And the badass trait. This trait isn't available at level 1 for other classes. Normally you'd need two levels of 'Tough as nails' first. This is a pretty major benefit. Scouts get Intuition, which is great too, but doesn't work properly with graphical mode yet, so we're playing a class I usually don't use. Technicians get extra info from computer maps, which also aren't working properly.

Text dump intro:
DoomRLa0005.png

DoomRLa0006.png


Err. Fuck. Missed a bunch of screens there. Will fix it later and add in the title screen.
DoomRLa0007.png


Gah, the screenshot of our starting position didn't work either. I missed a bunch of these early ones on the first level before I got greenscreen working properly.
DoomRLa0008.png

First enemy we encounter. The HUD is pretty self explanatory, aside from 'cautious' which we'll get to eventually.
DoomRLa0009.png

Fucker had a medkit! Both in fact. Not sure if this was just my bad luck or part of the improved AI.
DoomRLa0010.png

We take him out and work on the next guy in line.
DoomRLa0011.png

We can't dual wield the extra pistol, but we can prepare it in our offhand slot to save ourselves a bit of time if we need to reload.
DoomRLa0012.png

Equipment hud also pretty self explanatory.
DoomRLa0013.png

Stat screen. Note that accuracy +4 on the pistol doesn't translate to 4%. It's based on a roll weighted towards average rolls. So 1 point of accuracy might move you from 50% to 55%, or from 91% to 98%, depending on how much you already have. High accuracy is very good since it drops off at range pretty quickly. And having 98% accuracy at the edge of your sight is a huge advantage.
DoomRLa0014.png

DoomRLa0015.png

Behold the glorious bullet!
DoomRLa0016.png

Shotgun is a bit more glorious. The area it covers is actually even wider than that, but I only caught the end of the animation. Fortunately at this range we're only taking about 50% damage from it.
DoomRLa0017.png

This is like that thing DR was talking about earlier concerning reloading.
DoomRLa0018.png

Normally reloading a pistol takes a lot longer than a shotgun, we'd have gotten blasted here if we'd just reloaded.
DoomRLa0019.png

Holding shift lets us use a weapon's alternate fire if it has one; for pistols we get this aimed shot. It has a longer delay after we fire, but a considerable accuracy bonus. Useful for finishing enemies off, especially if they are carrying medkits or are alone.
DoomRLa0020.png

We reap the rewards of battle from the fallen sergeant.
DoomRLa0021.png

All weapons have a unique little message like that when you first acquire them. I'll try to get shots of all of them as we play.
DoomRLa0022.png

Shotgun blasts are pretty fuzzy, and let you do some mean bullshit like firing at this guy, when a direct pistol would hit the wall (though if you manually aim you can get him in the line of fire by aiming behind him.)
DoomRLa0023.png

Shotguns are very lethal at this range. Damage dropoff is about 7% per tile, and you can see the difference in damage dice compared to the pistol. Plus it never misses. Aside from the damage dropoff, it also takes double armor penalities and needs to be reloaded with every shot, but it's still very effective, especially against multiple enemies.
DoomRLa0024.png

This is reffered to as corner shooting. Our line of fire isn't actually blocked here, although the enemy's is. This works both ways- you can be shot by an enemy you can't see yet! Hopefully they fix the LoS mechanics some day and get rid of it, because it feels really gamey but is part of the difficulty at this point, so refraining isn't much of an option.
DoomRLa0025.png

We get a message and the floor description turns blue when all the enemies are dead. We head down the stairs.
DoomRLa0026.png

Starting next to an enemy like this is actually kind of lucky, since you get a free action or two before enemies are allowed to mvoe upon entering a level. Of course, if there are enough enemies you can't kill them with those actions, then you're fucked.
DoomRLa0027.png

I love the way gore actually splatters behind enemies when you shoot them. We grab the medkit here and move up a bit...
DoomRLa0028.png

You might have noticed this barrel in the previous screenshot. We noticed an enemy while moving to this position (last missed screen I think). Barrels are not just for show.
DoomRLa0029.png

The freed soul message pops up whenever an enemy dies off screen. It's helpful for counting deaths when you know how many enemies are in a room you're firing into blindly. Though for single enemies you can just listen for the sound. You know this game has sound and music right? It's awesome that way.
DoomRLa0030.png

Someone survived up here and we stupidly forgot to reload before moving upwards.
DoomRLa0031.png

We back up around this corner to reload, then wait...
DoomRLa0032.png

Sucker!
DoomRLa0033.png

Red stairs like this are stairs to a special bonus level. Levels with red stairs also have normal stairs, in case you don't want to do the level. The arena is actually pretty rough on a lot of challenges.
DoomRLa0034.png

This is a door. We'll go into a 6 hour lecture on the manifold possibilities of quantum door mechanics in a later update. Or I'm joking.
DoomRLa0035.png

Another barrel. Our health is kind of low though, so we refrain from going all blasty on it, in case there are healthpacks near it.
DoomRLa0036.png

Of course, an enemy is near it. Our shotgun would blow up the fuel barrel, so we opt for plan B:
DoomRLa0037.png

We back up and switch to our pistol (which is empty because we stupidly enver reloaded it earlier)
DoomRLa0038.png

and commence operation 'attack the darkness'
DoomRLa0039.png

Operation is successful! The darkness screams in agony. You have an automatic 50% miss chance against unseen targets, but they won't fireback, so it's a good plan if you have the ammo to spare.
DoomRLa0040.png

We blindly fire our shotgun around these corners in case enemies are down the hall in either direction, and listen for sounds of pain. No dice though.
DoomRLa0041.png

More corner shooting. Takes a while to get used to when you can can't get free shots off this way. Even worse is that it's assymetrical for some stupid reason.
DoomRLa0042.png

Precious health at last!
DoomRLa0043.png

DoomRLa0044.png

More precious health, and a lever. We grab the health in case the lever does something bad.
DoomRLa0045.png

Like that for example. We should have pushed the barrels away from us. Intuition trait would have warned us about the lever if we had it.
DoomRLa0046.png

Lots of enemies are actually weaker in melee than at range. The difference for imps is pretty minor, but the difference between a former human punching you or hitting you with a chaingun or shotgun from a step away is pretty big. We opt for firing our weapons in melee range, since we're not retarded.
DoomRLa0047.png

That imp is dead and this is just a bug because of the order of events here, with time freezing as we level up. Note the knockback though. Another trait of shotguns, sometimes good and sometimes bad.
DoomRLa0048.png

I pick this trait because... you'll find out later.
DoomRLa0049.png

we find the new type of powerup in .9.9.5
DoomRLa0050.png

Obvious effect is obvious. Hopefully enemies don't magically return fire at shit they shouldn't be able to see when you hit them like they used to when using the trait that has this effect.
DoomRLa0051.png

We take a look at our inventory to double check that we can handle the arena before heading down the stairs of badassery.
DoomRLa0052.png

either way I like it!" "And so do the crowds!" Suddenly you hear screams everywhere! "Blood! blood! BLOOD!" The voice booms again, "Kill all enemies and I shall reward thee!"

Ironically the arena is the most text heavy part of the game. Go figure.
DoomRLa0053.png

We spot an enemy and I erroneously assume it's a cacodemon and bolt for cover.
DoomRLa0054.png

Turns out they're just lost souls- speedy melee enemies with almost no hp and no armor. Shotgun is perfect for handling them.
DoomRLa0055.png

We try firing into the darkness but the AI is too smart of that apparently.
DoomRLa0056.png

This works just as well however.
DoomRLa0057.png

Demons are melee enemies too. Not quite as fast as lost souls, they're still twice as fast as us, and these guys have significant hp and some armor. Still, knockback and close range shotgun blasts make them easy prey.
DoomRLa0058.png

Our first cacodemon. We're rather out of position here. I dash up and to the left to take some cover and kite him around the wall.
DoomRLa0059.png

determination." You hear screams everywhere! "More blood! More BLOOD!" The voice continues, I can now let you go free, or you may try to complete the challenge!" "Do you want to continue the fight?" [y/n]


Our answer is obvious. If we asked to leave however, he would indeed let us go without spawning any more enemies.



The voice booms, "I like it! Let the show go on!" You hear screams everywhere! "More blood! More BLOOD!"
DoomRLa0062.png

DoomRLa0063.png

There's also the option of just running away down the stairs while enemies remain, even though we said we'd fight. But we're a baddass son of a bitch!
DoomRLa0064.png

In fact, now we're a son of a bitch twice over. I grabbed the same trait with our third level.
DoomRLa0065.png


everywhere! "More blood! More BLOOD!" "I can let you go now, and give you a small reward, or you can choose to fight the final challenge!" "Do you want to continue the fight?" [y/n]

The small reward is awfully pathetic- a bit of ammo and maybe a medkit. If you've come this far, you should continue the fight, even if you intend to run away before finishing it.


DoomRLa0066.png

Because THIS baby is the reward we came here for.
DoomRLa0067.png

Alternate fire for the chaingun (and other rapidfire weapons) is 'chainfire'. As long as you use it consecutively each turn, you fire at 2/3rds the normal rate (I think) on the first turn, then 100%, then from the third turn onwards you fire 50% more shots per turn. There are also some other effects, like being able to walk the chainfire between multiple targets, and interaction with at least one trait.
DoomRLa0068.png

DoomRLa0069.png

Being hit by 4 chaingun bullets in a single round is bad for one's health. Especially if each bullet is doing 1d6+2 damage.
DoomRLa0070.png


for you would make a formiddable warrior!" "I grant you the title of Hell's Arena Champion!" "And a promise is a promise... search the arena again..."

:smug:

DoomRLa0071.png

This screenshot shows one of the things that still needs to be tweaked with the graphics: areas outside your vision are REALLY dark. Knowing the structure of the map you've revealed so far is pretty damned important, especially on higher difficulties and with certain traits or weapons.

Aside from that, we finally found some armor. Blue armor reduces the damage from all enemies by 2 per hit (until it gets damaged enough to lose effectiveness), along with slowing us down a bit and giving us slight resistance to fire damage.
DoomRLa0072.png

Like say, when aiming explosive ordinance for example.
DoomRLa0073.png

:yeah:
DoomRLa0074.png

Supercharge is especially handy for us, sicne we won't lose any of it until we get damaged thanks to our badass trait.
DoomRLa0001.png

Only like, 30+ more levels to go.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
10 times bigger?
You uploading bmps or something?

PNGs. They're really tiny files for a 16 bit game like the on the sega genesis, since they compress all the simple jagged edges and low colour count really well. JPGs might be a bit smaller for something like this, but they'd blur the fuck out of everything, especially after photobucket was through with them.
 

Hirato

Purse-Owner
Patron
Joined
Oct 16, 2010
Messages
3,935
Location
Australia
Codex 2012 Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong
In theory an image that tiles the same smaller graphic down and across would compress quite well too..
The colour palette doesn't seem incredibly expansive, so you can probably get away with using an "indexed" colour encoding if filesize really is an issue...
But when they're between 30 and 150 KB a piece, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Besides, there's always window borders and an alpha channel you can trim out for a sizable saving on each image.

....

KILL!!! BLOOD! MORE BLOOD!
:mob:
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
I think the lighting gradient is killing whatever benefit the tiles might provide. But it's not like it's some crazy 1600x900 3d images either.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
That looks very cool, I'll wait for the finished version (or perhaps a more stable beta) to check the game. How hard is it? Does it force you to play with the ironman difficulty?
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Ironman is forced, but difficulty is very flexible. Getting a barebones win on the easiest difficulty is quite easy; easier than any other roguelike by far. Standard games on normal difficulty are still pretty easy by roguelike standards, and I could practically guarantee a win if I avoid the more dangerous areas. Challenge games (which have the normal difficulty as the minimum) are where things start to pick up in difficulty, and the hardest challenges on the hardest settings are nigh impossible.
 

Monstrous Bat

Cipher
Joined
Dec 30, 2011
Messages
638
Ahhhh, this game... My best character killed himself with BFG10K and I never played again. Never really understood how the LOS work in this game, maybe I should try it again some day.

Judging by your trait choice it seems like you are going for Ammochain. Did the author nerf it even further in this version?
 

Crooked Bee

(no longer) a wide-wandering bee
Patron
Joined
Jan 27, 2010
Messages
15,048
Location
In quarantine
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire MCA Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Moar!

Also, so there are no attributes in the traditional sense? Only HP, traits and weapon/armour? Are the fire rate, reload rate, accuracy, etc., only equipment-dependent, or are they level-dependent as well? And do you get to pick a trait on every level-up?
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Fuck I just deleted half the stuff I wrote. Curse you computerized device for doing what I told you to!

Anyways, it's update time. That is, it is time to murder shit and blow shit up. And I'm all out of neither of those things.

DoomRLb0001.png

This floor is a cakewalk. We find a lever here that provides healing... but our health is well beyond maximum already. Healing levers are distinct from healing powerups in that they aren't consumed unless they actually heal you for all they're worth. A lever can top you off multiple times if you're only slihgtly injured. However, unlike powerups, levers never put you above 100%.

we also find this cute little power up:
DoomRLb0002.png

DoomRLb0003.png

:yeah:

^ shades are reducing our vision.
DoomRLb0004.png

We also find a tracking map. As you can see above, this reveals enemy positions, items, powerups, and terrain that we can't currently see. As you can also (not) see above, the lighting makes it way too fucking dark to see the terrain or distinguish enemies well, and our vision is still limited to what fits in the window on tiles, rather than the whole level view you get in ASCII mode. For these reasons, we are playing a badass Marine, instead of the Scout or Technician, who largely rely on the overall map view for tactical and strategic advantages.
DoomRLb0005.png


Our berserk wears off before we even take any damage. The power of the chaingun is too much for these peons.

Soon, after much ass-kicking, we find some kickass new boots:
DoomRLb0007.png

But our inventory is full of :decline: so we can't pick them up. We drop one of our useless pistols to make room.
DoomRLb0008.png

Boots do nifty things like adjust movement speed and protect you from knockback. The inventory screen can show exact item details:
DoomRLb0009.png

We uneventfully reach level 4 and begin exploring it. We once again meet our dear friend Door:
DoomRLb0010.png

However, suspecting that our friend Door is harboring jews demons, we choose to 'open' our friend with a blast from our chaingun.
DoomRLb0011.png

Friend Door did not survive, and the room proved to be devoid of life already. We will not forget your noble sacrifice, comrade. :salute:

We decide to pull the lever in this room because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
DoomRLb0012.png

It summoned friends! And by friends I mean enemies who will attack us. But we get a couple free seconds just like when we move down stairs, so these friends serve only to deliver to us xp and ammo.

This is one of the reasons wearing boots is good: they reduce damage taken whilst strolling through pools of acid. Of course, it's generally better to simply not walk through acid. Our crappy steel boots only reduce the damage by a single point (We have 50 max hp, so 1 damage = 2% health, acid does ~ 5 points iirc.) and provide no elemental resistance to acid.
DoomRLb0013.png

DoomRLb0014.png

Acid from strewn on the floor, acid can also be found in lovely barrels, as pictured above. Shooting said barrel results in an explosion like fuel barrels provide.
DoomRLb0015.png

...except it does acid damage, and spreads acid over the explosion radius. The explosion is also a bit smaller. Additionally, acid damage is particularly effective at destroying walls (or it seems to be anyways), unlike fire damage.
DoomRLb0016.png

A picture of what the tracking map (red thing) looks like, as well as a teleporter. The teleporter moves you to a randomly placed fixed location on the map. We have no incentive to use this one.
DoomRLb0017.png

we grab this berserk pack before heading down the set of red stairs on this level.
DoomRLb0018.png

DoomRLb0019.png

Prepare yourself!

Our friend from the arena seems to have taken a liking to us. This actually changes this level layout: it'd be different (and easier) if we hadn't finished the arena completely.
Aside from making things look grimdark, being berserked provides massive (75% I think) resistance to all types of damage, from enemies or floors. This should help us deal with the enemies on this special level without losing health too quickly.

DoomRLb0021.png

Of course, this place is called the chained court for a reason.
DoomRLb0022.png

Picking up the chainsaw would grant us berserk status if we didn't have it already, as is, it simply extends it. Let the service to ARMOK begin!
DoomRLb0023.png

Another bonus of berserking: double melee damage. 8d6 is rather a lot. We run around cutting down pathetic enemies for fun, but all too soon our berserk wears off, though not before we gain a level:
DoomRLb0024.png

We acquire this lovely trait just in time, and switch to our chaingun. Note that we've lost barely any health, despite wading through tons of enemy fire. Between our blue armor and berserking, enemies just didn't pose much threat:
DoomRLb0025.png

While continuing west on this rather open level, one of our foes refuses to stay dead:
DoomRLb0026.png

We continue pumping rounds into him and moving forward during the brief periods he stays dead until something else shows up:
DoomRLb0027.png

It's our talkative friend. We begin chainfiring at him after dispatching the former human once more.
DoomRLb0028.png

With our new trait, our chainfire now fires 4/5/7 rounds per turn, which hurts like a bitch, even on the rather well armored Arena Master. Unfortunately, it drains our ammo quickly too, and chainguns reload very slowly.
DoomRLb0029.png

DoomRLb0030.png

Our armor is taking a beating as well, and is now only reducing damage by one point at a time, hence the 1/2.
DoomRLb0031.png

Between the grunts being revived and the arena master, our health drops fast. The master uses a powerful fire attack that can't be dodged and deals a flat amount of damage rather than a roll. Fortunately he's rather slow and wastes a lot of turns moving or raising former humans from the corpses we leave behind. If we used rockets, we could chunk the corpses to prevent their revival, but we'd also blow up the items and honestly I'd prefer him reviving enemies.
DoomRLb0032.png

We just barely managed to take him out without resorting to healing items. He leaves us with a trophy.
DoomRLb0033.png

We stash it and go about mopping up the leftovers in the level. The shiny blue object below us is an agility mod. Among other things, it can do this:
DoomRLb0034.png

We use it on our chaingun, boosting our accuracy by +2. This bumps us up from 62% at point blank, to 84%. Changes around the middle are easiest to make, while changes at the extremes are much smaller. Another two points would bring us to 95%. Note that at the edge of our vision we have a -3 penalty from distance, bringing us down to just 50% hit chance, and it would have been a measely 26% chance without the agility mod.
DoomRLb0035.png

This is another standard level, but we get a special message at the start of it. There are many such messages. This one gives us a hint as to what sort of lever spawned in this level. Abusing this knowledge, we grab the powerups and throw the switch, resulting in:
DoomRLb0036.png

Totally open level where we outrange enemies with powerful weaponry?
:kfc:
DoomRLb0037.png

Apparently the vision buff can wear off, like berserk does. Oh well, we wiped nearly everyone out anyways. Next time I get the buff I'll have to remember to check if it gives an accuracy buff as well. Would be in theme. We mop up the level and go to floor 6:
DoomRLb0038.png

This message indicates the level type. This is an especially claustrophobic and mazelike layout. The object near us is an ammo container:
DoomRLb0039.png

It can be used in one of two ways; either as an item to dump the ammo into our inventory (saving precious space until we need it) or we can equip it in lieu of a second weapon, and reload directly from the ammo pack, saving even more precious space. IIRC it makes reloading faster too, when used that way.

We find an indistinct dark grey blob:
DoomRLb0040.png

This shall replace our old shotgun. We're not really geared for using shotguns, but even so, the combat shotgun is a very nice weapon. It holds 5 rounds instead of one. You need to pump the gun between shots, but it's much faster than reloading, and is done automatically if you move between shots. Actual reloading is a tad slower however.
DoomRLb0041.png

We find another powerup before leaving, an armorshard:
DoomRLb0042.png

This patches up our damage armor and boots. Quite handy.
DoomRLb0043.png

Two separate messages here. The first refers to the level type again. This is a 'cave' level, it's mostly open with lots of rough edges, and filled with a single enemy type. They can be quite dangerous...
DoomRLb0044.png

We decide to try out the gift left to us by our chatty demon friend:
DoomRLb0045.png

It blasts everything in line of sight with the same attack he used. Unfortunately, in the last patch, this attack changed damage types, making the staff completely ineffective here. Lost souls are nearly immune to fire damage. Also note that our status changed from 'cautious' to 'tired'. I'll explain this later in this update. Suffice to say, the staff is reusable, but not consecutively. You can see some shiny items blow us here. The red thing east of the shotgun shells is a power mod. We'll use that in the next update, probably.
DoomRLb0046.png

Why hello thar.
DoomRLb0047.png

Like we didn't already? :smug:

We drop down the next set of red stairs and enter 'The Wall'. As you might guess, this level involves a rather large wall:
DoomRLb0048.png

The wall doesn't have a door, so we make one with our rocket launcher. Note that you probably won't have a rocket launcher yet if you didn't pick one up from winning the arena. Though there are other ways to get over the wall. Also, you can see another graphical bug there, with the rocket continuing past the explosion.
DoomRLb0049.png

Alas, I forgot to take many screenshots here, or a couple of them failed, I'm not sure which. As you can see, we lost a fuckton of health and our armor was completely destroyed, but we were victorious in the end. And our reward is a worthy one:
DoomRLb0050.png

This is why we couldn't simply hang around far away from the wall lobbing rockets westward. We'd have destroyed everything. The two glowy items are very useful. The backpack lets us hold 40% more ammo in each slot, and the missile launcher is an exotic version of the rocketlauncher. You can see it's stats here:
DoomRLb0051.png

1s is the standard time unit, what a normal marine takes to move one tile when unencumbered, or to fire most weapons. So it fires faster, is insanely accurate, and holds a clip of 4 rockets at once. It reloads rockets one at a time and has a slightly smaller explosive radius, making it much mroe useful as a weapon, as opposd to the rocket launcher, which takes too lnog to fire repeatedly and tends to hit things you'd rather it didn't.

The exit stairs take us straight to another special level, thanks to the level structure rework:
DoomRLb0052.png

Luckily we start in a safe room with lots of nice consumables. We're also standing on top of red armor, which kicks ass. We prep ourselves and equip our new fangled destruction device.
DoomRLb0053.png

Blasting open friend door might have been a good idea, but I was fairly sure I knew what was coming (though it's much earlier than before) and didn't want to either switch from a missile launcher or destroy a possible choke point in case I was wrong.
DoomRLb0054.png

:hmmm: This cannot possibly be as easy as it looks. We can hear demons hissing all around us. We fire a rocket at a shady looking wall:

DoomRLb0055.png

But no dice. We continue walking forward, when suddenly (reasons to not hold down arrows keys!)
DoomRLb0056.png

:rage:

A missile launcher is completely useless in this situation. Actually, everything we have is completely useless in this situation. Though the old version of the Arena Master Staff would have wiped out every one of those lost souls.

We opt for plan B:
DoomRLb0057.png

Note our significantly more yellow status. Aside from an obvious speed boost (though our armor is hampering that somewhat) it gives us a large evasion boost too. The lost souls are still significantly faster than us, but we can at least avoid being surrounded. We bolt back to our friend Door.
DoomRLb0058.png

We use a quick key to pull out our combat shotgun. Like in FPSes of olde, we can swap to weapons in our inventory by hitting the correct number key. This is just as quick as if it were in the prepared slot. It has a couple limitations though: you can't cycle through the same type of weapon (So it's still useful to, for example, have a second loaded copy of your first weapon in your prep slot, especially for things like chainguns or shotguns or rocket launcher that take a while to reload) and it only works on default weapons, though they can be modded. So our chaingun can be grabbed this way, but not our missile launcher.

However, we opt for not the chaingun, but the shotgun. Why? Lost souls have heavy resistance to standard bullets. It'd actually take quite a few rounds to kill these bastards, and a lot of time. Shotguns however, deal shrapnel damage, which is normally weaker due to armor, but here does full damage. Also, shotguns can do this:
DoomRLb0059.png

A normal shotgun would have a wider firing spread. Compared with the standard shotgun blast, combat shotguns do a bit less damage (one less d3), have a narrower field, but have a longer maximum range and less dropoff over distance (5% per tile instead of 7%.)

A combination of firing and backing up quickly annihilates the lost souls and earns us another level without us having to use a medkit:
DoomRLb0060.png

DoomRLb0061.png

Note that traits like this stack additively in DoomRL; if we had 4 levels of this, reloading would only take 20% of the normal amount of time, instead of some weird fugly number you get by doing mathemagics with multiplication and stuffies.

We grab the other large health orb and finish off the caco demons that couldn't follow us so quickly:
DoomRLb0062.png

Note our status is back to cautious: after running wears off we become tired, but any healing item or powerup restores us, as does going down stairs (and maybe gaining a level, I forget.)
DoomRLb0063.png

Another choke point here if we'd kept running. Of course, I'd rather be in the room with the healing items.
DoomRLb0064.png

More open areas. More demonic howling.
DoomRLb0065.png

Time for the big gun. To do some work.
DoomRLb0066.png

^ Unfinished graphics. I approach the wall rather than cheesily spam rockets through it.
DoomRLb0067.png

I'm so very surprised.
DoomRLb0068.png

A challenger appears!

DoomRLb0069.png

More graphical buggery. The enemy gets knocked back before the explosion occurs. As you can see, rockets knockshit back a lot.
DoomRLb0070.png

A second enemy. They're called bruiser brothers. I'd describe how they fight, but all they got a chance to do here was get blasted backwards by accurate rocketfire. Because of the angle I could often hit both with on blast, and because of the quick firing and reloading speed (remember we have the relader skill, so reloading is under a second now, as is firing) they never do anything but dance for us.
DoomRLb0071.png

Our armor didn't even drop below 50%. :smug:
DoomRLb0072.png

Yeah this seems like a good idea. *step*
DoomRLb0073.png

DoomRLb0074.png

Did someone call for a baddass shitwrecking machine?
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Moar!

Also, so there are no attributes in the traditional sense? Only HP, traits and weapon/armour? Are the fire rate, reload rate, accuracy, etc., only equipment-dependent, or are they level-dependent as well? And do you get to pick a trait on every level-up?
Sort of. Hp, Traits (many of which simply affect other attributes, but many of which do unique shit like trigger happy), firing/reloading/moving speeds, accuracy, and damage resistance (% resistance, as opposed to armor.) Level doesn't affect any of that directly. Every level you get one trait (if I didn't show a levelup it's because I picked up a second level of something we already had), and aside from equipment, stats can be modified temporarily by a few other things, like running or certain powerups/items. But the vast bulk of your statistics are determined by traits + equipment, yes. Though traits change things a LOT, which makes the 'level doesn't affect stats' statement kind of misleading. Ironman trait, for example, increases max HP by 10., a 20% boost the first time you take it. Eageleye increases accuracy with all attacks by +3, which can more than double your hit rate under some circumstances. Hellrunner gives movespeed boosts and combined with other things, you can end up moving 4 times a second quite easily. Etc. Items can also be modified, as you see a hint of in the last update. Hopefully we'll find some rare items in the next update too, which can have radical stat changes, like the Missile launcher compared to the rocket launcher.
You've missed the chaingun message.
:rpgcodex:
Yeah, sorry about that. Screenshots are still giving me some trouble. I'll try to remember to show it off if I do another run. I'll probably do at least one to show off one of the challenge modes, and I'll definitely be grabbing the chaingun in the one I have in mind.

It's hard deciding when to take screenshots. I feel like I'm taking too many as is, but I don't want to leave out pictures of any new stuff, even if it feels pretty trivial.
 

Heresiarch

Prophet
Joined
Mar 8, 2008
Messages
1,451
I've played DoomRL for a loooong time, and have always been waiting for the graphical version. From the looks of it, it's great! Though a few tiles can get some extra improvement (like: the floors of the caves should use something like the dirt tile of Doom).

Great LP, plz moar. BTW, does all the monsters now have the ascii art when you [l]ook -> [m]ore of them (the Archvile and Mancubus don't have them afaik)?
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Search the arena again. It's just hinting the player that a bunch of items spawned after you killed the last enemy. Otherwise you might walk out without finding the rocket launcher or supercharge globe or armor and just figure the chaingun was your reward.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Time for episode 2:
DoomRLc0001.png

As much fun as it would be to obliterate a lousy lost soul with a missile launcher, we go with the more conservative approach and use our chaingun instead. Mostly to avoid blowing up potentially useful shit. Rockets aren't actually all that scarce.
DoomRLc0002.png

A hell knight! We actually murdered a lot of these at the Wall, where I neglected to take tons of screenshots. Hellknights are basically beefier cacodemons. They hit harder, both at range and in melee, they have more armor, and more hp. Not so many hp that they can survive for long against an agility modded chaingun in the hands of a triggerhappy son of a bitch though.
DoomRLc0003.png

Barrels of napalm, like barrels of acid, are barrels. They probably have other traits in common too, but we'll get to that some other time.
DoomRLc0004.png

Bastard found a large medkit and used it! Actually, I think this particular guy used two of the damned things. We're not exactly hurting for medkits right now anyways, but it's still annoying to see such valuable things go to waste.
DoomRLc0005.png

We pick up the technical modpack. I'll explain what it can do later, we'll be getting more modpacks shortly.
DoomRLc0006.png

The rest of the level goes smoothly like we expected, though our armor is taking a beating and is now only as effective as blue armor (with a larger movement penalty). But who cares when there are stylish green boots to be had!
DoomRLc0007.png

Aside from blocking an extra point of damage compared to our current boots, these offer more knockback resistance (which isn't actually that useful, honestly) and 25% acid resistance for our feet. So we probably only take 2 points of acid damage per step now. Which hopefully won't ever be relevant, because even 2hp per step is still quite a waste.
DoomRLc0008.png

The next floor is a warehouse level (though that isn't what the message is for). Warehouse levels have these solid crate blocks in them, and are separated into a few large rooms.
DoomRLc0009.png

The enemies are still little more than swiss cheese before our weaponry. We can easily cut down two of them with a single burst:
DoomRLc0010.png

The wooden crates to our right are actually easily destroyed like doors. We could carve into them with our chaingun if we wanted, but there's not much point, honestly.
DoomRLc0011.png

After seeing a bit more combat, our red armor has deteriorated to near useless levels. We remove it, both to regain movement speed and to preserve it. Red armor isn't super rare, but it's nice to always have some on hand if you have the room to spare. We can patch it up with armor spheres later.
DoomRLc0012.png

Finally we find one of these things.
DoomRLc0013.png

We grab the phase device. These are extremely valuable, on par with large medkits. They're one shot items that teleport you randomly within the current level. The tactical value of such a thing is self evident.
DoomRLc0014.png

Ah, just the level I've been waiting for.
DoomRLc0015.png

And just the message I've been waiting for too!
DoomRLc0016.png

With the old AI, we could stand here and unload ammo down this hallway and wipe out half the level before seeing it. The new AI isn't quite as dumb though, and we only get a few free kills.
DoomRLc0017.png

The first couple rooms aren't very special, just some former humans with ammo stockpiles:
DoomRLc0018.png

We grab all this, our chaingun is going to be hungry tonight.
DoomRLc0019.png

These fuckers are dangerous. Arachnotrons are very fast. I tried to get a screenshot of their weapons fire instead of taking cover like a smart boy, and paid some health and armor for it.
DoomRLc0020.png

Still, they aren't very well armored, so our chaingun cuts the bastard down before too long.
DoomRLc0021.png

We take out a second one too before needing to heal:
DoomRLc0022.png

DoomRLc0023.png

Cha-ching! We pick up another level of reloader. We're now shaving an entire second off of the reload time on our chaingun. Also, that firey looking shit on the ground? Thats fire. Or lava to be precise. It hurts even more than acid. Bathing is not advised.
DoomRLc0024.png

More ammo stores (a good reason not to use rockets on this level, made more ironic by the plethora of rockets in this room) and some more mods. We'll grab them later.
DoomRLc0025.png

THIS is the room we came here for. Remember the last time we got a purple limned weapon? Thats right, motherfucknig CHAINSAW. Weapons in DoomRL belong to one of 3 classes; normal ones are white (no aura), purple ones are exotics. Exotics are rarer than normal weapons by a lot, but you can theoretically find multiple copies of them. Also, you can mod exotics. This can make them some of the best weapons in the game, for a reason we'll display shortly.
DoomRLc0026.png

So what is this exotic? Goddamned plasma shotgun. If that sounds insanely powerful, thats because it is. We'll talk more about it in a bit.

So if purple items kick this much ass, wtf are green items? Uniques. Even rarer, and you'll only find a single copy on your entire run. Also, they cannot be modified. This unique is a pistol.
DoomRLc0027.png

Not the best unique pistol, but still a damned good one. The damage and clip alone are fucking impressive. Though a brilliant codexer might ask 'Shouldn't it be better than that? I mean, your chaingun does more damage when fired, even if it eats ammo faster.' Well, true. But weapons have more stats than damage and clip size, don't they?
DoomRLc0028.png

So the plasma shotgun uses 3 ammo per shot. This is a pretty decent deal all things considered. Unlike a normal shotgun, or combat shotgun, it doesn't need to be reloaded or even pumped between shots. You can just go to fucking town 10 times in a row. Also, although the Alt reload is 'full', it actually reloads to full with normal reload anyways. So you can reload all 10 shots in just 1.5 seconds (0.9 for us.)
DoomRLc0029.png

In the right hands, this gun is monstrously dangerous. Alas, those hands are not ours. For us, it is merely impressively so. Note the +5 accuracy; thats a pretty big deal. Another thing worth mentioning, is that knockback in DoomRL is based on damage taken. This gun can actually knock targets back a step on a good roll. Especially with our two 'Son of a Bitch' trait picks. Of course, what really ought to catch your eye is the alt. reload. Firemode?
DoomRLc0030.png

Firemode!
DoomRLc0031.png

Alt reload cycles between these three firing modes, giving up 2 accuracy and some damage each time for some extra shots per squeeze of the trigger. On burst and auto mode it also benefits from our triggerhappy trait:
DoomRLc0032.png

Boom! Indeed. This actually pumps out more damage than our chaingun, though it's less accurate and has a pitifully small clip for firing that much ammo at once.
DoomRLc0033.png

We keep both weapons, even though we're not specialized for either. Since we lack the room now, we drop our chaingun to grab these mods.
DoomRLc0034.png

The agility mod we shove into our boots, granting us a 10% reduction int he time it takes to move. Very handy. The other, 'bulk' mod, we use on a chaingun we pick up off a dead enemy. Why not use it on our current chaingun? Under normal circumstances, items can only hold one mod. Mods also can't be removed, or even destroyed, once put into a weapon.
DoomRLc0035.png

There are exceptions to these rules though, and 'assemblies' are one of them. Combing certain mods on certain items (Don't worry, you can get blueprints in game that carry over between games, aside from finding them out through dumb luck) changes them in unique and special ways. One bulk mod on a weapon merely increases the clip size by 30%. Useful, but using two bulk mods on a chaingun turns it into a 'gatling gun.'
DoomRLc0036.png

It bears the same description as a chaingun, and can be loaded with a quickey still. But, the damage die gets an extra side, it fires two extra shots at a time (would be a godsend for someone without triggerhappy traits) and it takes a bit longer to reload. Note the ammo capacity is the same as the chaingun with one bulk mod; some stats DO carry over to assemblies, so for some weapons, changing the order of the mods can change the assembly's stats. For example, an assembly using both power and bulk mods will either do more damage or have a larger clip, depending on the order the mods are used in The last mod used in an assembly causes the assembly rather than having it's normal effect.
DoomRLc0037.png

By the way, plasma shotguns don't do shrapnel damage any more. They do plasma. And plasma damage, like fire and acid damage, can do something other damage types cannot:
DoomRLc0038.png

:yeah:
Honestly, we could probably ditch our missile launcher at this point, since we no longer even need it to take out walls. But we'll hang on to it for tactical value. It's still 6d6 damage in an area accurately at long range after all.
DoomRLc0039.png

Levers in special levles tend to do special things. This one is no exception.
DoomRLc0040.png

We encounter this friendly bloke on our way back to the stairs. Since he doesn't actually have line of sight with us from his postion (though we do with him) he continually tries to move towards us.
DoomRLc0041.png

We, of course, continually fire a plasma shotgun into his face, knocking him back and out of sight. Eventually this destroys the wall granting us cover.
DoomRLc0042.png

Moving into a better position though, he teleports away!
DoomRLc0043.png

We take cover and try to repeat the trick, but he teleports to the other side. Actually, this works just as well for us.
DoomRLc0044.png

We let him get to melee range after blowing up more of the wall, to ensure maximum damage per turn. We don't want him teleporting out of our sight, the Shambler regenerates quite quickly.
DoomRLc0045.png

He's also quite armored, but plasma damage is not shrapnel damage. In fact, it pierces armor even better than normal damage, ignoring half the target's armor. But who gives a fuck about that. Didn't you read the message? There's a lab cache!
DoomRLc0046.png

Oh hell yes. But what could a mod possibly do that would warrant it being a unique item?
DoomRLc0047.png

Well, that. We pop it onto our red armor we were carrying around. Indestructible 4 strength armor is pretty awesome.
DoomRLc0048.png

Of course, indestructible specially assembled armor would be even better. :troll:
DoomRLc0049.png

So, yeah, go ahead and drool over that for a bit. Mod order doesn't actually matter in this case, plate armor always has these stats. The mvoespeed penalty is obviously a bitch, but with 8 armor, we're nigh indestructible anyways, our armor IS indestructible, and we're pretty much immune to knockback (though 8 armor makes being knocked back pretty unlikely to begin with, since it's damage based.) The fire resist is standard for red armor and icing on our cake.
DoomRLc0050.png

Our stats with red armor. 1.53 seconds per move. Ouch. Still, with the boots it's not as bad as it could have been, and we're totally knockback immune.
DoomRLc0051.png

Our movespeed with the much much lighter blue armor is just under a second, the penalty and bonus cancel eachother out almost perfectly.
DoomRLc0052.png

We throw another power mod on our blue armor so we have some mobile armor to use while exploring, to avoid getting caught in bad positions. Power mods double the strength of armor, or add an extra side to damage dice. I think for boots it's knockback reduction? Would be a total waste for boots at any rate.
DoomRLc0053.png

The message we get before the entrance message is one for exiting a special level. They can change depending on whether the level was cleared properly or not. I think I caught the other ones too but never mentioned them.
DoomRLc0054.png

We get caught a bit out of position here and activate running to get back to cover.
DoomRLc0055.png

Aside from normal evasion we'd get just by standing still, running perpendicular to an enemy's shot gives us a 'dodge' chance. various things improve this chance, including running. You can effectively avoid fire very safely by using it properly in a lot of situations. Though with red armor we'd have been screwed trying this, sicne the enemy would likely get a double turn on us and fire again after our dodging move was over.
DoomRLc0056.png

We took out the Caco with the plasma shotgun, but it took a lot longer than we expected. 7d3 is nice, but it's not THAT nice against a single target, especially if it isn't up against a wall and is firing back at you from close range. Our plate armor still mitigated most of the damage though. But we decide to pull out the gatling gun and just clear the level out tank style, now that we know the enemies are cacodemons.
DoomRLc0057.png

Here are the descriptions for technical and bulk mods, along with our current inventory. As you can seee, we're doing pretty damned well, though we've chewed through both of our ammo boxes of 10mm ammo (500 rounds!) so we can't be quite as spam happy with it as we have been before. Especially since the minigun isn't as accurate and fires mroe rounds, it'll waste a lot more ammo.
DoomRLc0058.png

Bulk mods do all sorts of nifty things, depending on what you're using them on.
DoomRLc0059.png

The meaning of both these messages is pretty obvious. We're pretty damned lucky this update to find so many unique items (recall that the chainsaw didn't trigger this message.)
DoomRLc0060.png

A sweet find.
DoomRLc0061.png

This shotgun fires the same way as the plasma shotgun, but operates on normal ammo. It'd actually be worth taking if we had any traits to support shotguns well at all. Alas, we do not, so this goes to waste. We leave it behind, in fact. And before you try to tear my balls off, it didn't have a special pickup message. Not all exotics or uniques do. The grammaton didn't either. (Though the plasma shotgun did.)
DoomRLc0062.png

Fucker! Who is that and why did we just get hit 5 times?
DoomRLc0063.png

It's a commando and he hit us 5 times because he has an autofire weapon and we're slow as fuck in this armor, and he shot us before we saw him. We moved next to him though, and filled him with holes from point blank range while he mindlessly tried to punch us to death. Protip: Punches do not inflict much damage against plate armor.
DoomRLc0064.png

Though this gun managed to hurt a bit, since it's plasma rounds cut through half our armor. Still, the armor probably saved us a ton of injury here, and believe it or not, unless we get really lucky, we're now holding the most powerful gun we're going to hold until the end of the game. Plasma rifles are scary! It has the stats of our minigun, does plasma damage, and it's not even modded yet!
DoomRLc0065.png

We try to exhaust or 10mm ammo first though, since our energy cells are not unlimited.
DoomRLc0066.png

A Baron of Hell! We encoutnered a couple of these at the Wall too. Remember the Hell Knights? Good. Forget about them. These hit harder, both at range and in melee, have more hp and armor. Also, they deal acid damage, which would melt our armor real fucking quick if it had durability. Hell knights do plasma damage, which you think would be better, since it ignores a chunk of armor (acid does not.) Of course, if these guys did plasma damage, they wouldn't be immune to the splash damage from their own ranged attacks (every demonic ranged attack except arachnotrons is an explosion btw, from imps on up), which Barons are, since they're immune to acid. They can walk through pools of it just fine.
DoomRLc0067.png

Fuck him though! We have a chainsaw and armor like a god damned battleship. Lets mano y mano this bastard.
DoomRLc0068.png

Fuck! He's not dead yet. And a friend of his showed up. As the messages indicate, we're missing about half our attacks. Between that and a plasma ball launching bastard, we decide to pop a medkit and make some tactical manoeuvres.
DoomRLc0069.png

No wonder the fucker was holding out against out chainsaw! Between his own natural armor and whatever the fuck he was wearing that just dropped, he was probably more armored than we were! And he certainly has a higher max hp.
DoomRLc0070.png

This isn't an item that dropped randomly from an enemy btw. That does not happen. That fucker grabbed this off the ground and put it on. It's the reason I personally consider hell barons the most dangerous enemies in the game, when encountered on a random level. On special levels they won't have armor, but red or even blue armor makes them nigh invincible against most weaponry, never mind crazy shit like this stuff! And you don't get any hint that they';re wearing it, aside from them seeming to have a million hp or your damage rolls seeming really bad. Imagine if we'd been trying to us that Assault shotgun we just found! 6 armor from the item, +3-4 base (I forget what they have exactly) doubled vs shrapnel damage... even a perfect roll on all seven dice still only does 1 point of damage! We'd eek out 3 thanks to son of a bitch with a roll that'd probably never happen before we expended all the shotgun shells in the game. Otherwise we'd just be doing 1 each shot.
DoomRLc0071.png

Rather than risk having the armor get destroyed by the splash from this hell knight, we lure him up here and take him out. No chainsaw for this fucker.
DoomRLc0072.png

8 rounds of plasma to the face.
DoomRLc0073.png

We have to fire a second time to kill him, wasting some shots. He melee's us once, but the plate armor reduces whatever he rolled to a measely 1 damage. So what the fuck did we just nearly die for?
DoomRLc0074.png

If those stats seem too good to be true, and you're thinking equipping this already thrashed armor is a bad idea...
DoomRLc0075.png

You're fucking wrong! Note our health and the armor's durability before and after equipping it.
DoomRLc0076.png

This badass armor drains our health to repair itself, at a rate of 1 hp per turn for 2 durability. Though it won't drain us to death. Between that fact, the fact that it gives us a movespeed BONUS, and the crazy ass 6 armor it has, this is probably the best unique armor in the game we could have found on this run. It's so good we replace our plate armor with it, and probably won't bother taking it off unless it's about to be destroyed.
DoomRLc0077.png

This little toy was also sitting around. It's just a standard weapon. does 18d3 damage per shot seem like a lot? Congratulations! You're not brain dead, it is. However, keep in mind that it's suffering double armor penalty for being shrapnel, and double again for firing 2 separate times. Aside from that, it has an even wider field of fire than the normal shotgun, and a sharper damage dropoff (10% per tile, and mind you, these dropoffs start at tile 1, shotguns can't actually deal 100% damage, ever.)
DoomRLc0078.png

Stats with the armor of awesome equipped are impressive. We can probably outrun demons and maybe even lost souls while running now. We grab (pointlessly) a supercharge globe left on the level before heading down the red stairs to meet this place:
DoomRLc0079.png

Messages are important folks. Though, on this difficulty with our setup, literal running will not be necessary. But our allotted time on this level is not unlimited.
DoomRLc0080.png

The first section is filled with pathetic grunts. We take them all out with our plasma shotgun. A normal shotgun probably would have been nicer to save ammo (or even the chainsaw, honestly.)
DoomRLc0081.png

We're actually forced to blast this door open, it can't be opened normally. We daintily skip across the lava to grab the supercharge and blast our way in deeper.
DoomRLc0082.png

Not an ideal formation to oppose a plasma shotgun guys. I am dissapoint.
DoomRLc0083.png

Oh, thats much better. :incline:
DoomRLc0084.png

We encounter a lot of hell knights and demons, and it takes a toll on our health and ammo. In fact, our reserve ammo is gone, and we're down to just what is left in our guns. Things are looknig grim...
DoomRLc0085.png

:troll:

We still have like, 20 rockets too btw. We take out one last demon before busting into the final room.
DoomRLc0086.png

Why hello thar!
DoomRLc0087.png

:yeah:

Next update: We break the game over our fucking knee.
 

Heresiarch

Prophet
Joined
Mar 8, 2008
Messages
1,451
Ooooh I can't wait for the final release of it. Moarplz
 

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