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Author Topic: Skulltag Arena  (Read 66739 times)

yaflhdztioxo

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Skulltag Arena
« on: May 06, 2010, 22:33 »
The skulltag arena discussion thread.  Current version is on the mod server.  Current changelog and sources are stored here: http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php/topic,6139.0.html.  This mod is released under the 'Do whatever the hell you want with it' license.

I am interested in bugs and suggestions as well as balance discussion, though if someone else wanted to take over for this mod's upkeep I'd be fine with that too. 
« Last Edit: March 17, 2013, 09:03 by yaflhdztioxo »
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Blahness

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #1 on: May 08, 2010, 04:54 »
How many waves are there?
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yaflhdztioxo

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #2 on: May 08, 2010, 07:27 »
infinite
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thelaptop

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #3 on: May 08, 2010, 21:20 »
Quote from: yaflhdztioxo on May 08, 2010, 07:27
infinite
Or until the level counter overflows and wraps around...
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yaflhdztioxo

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #4 on: March 12, 2011, 14:28 »
Updated for 0992 bump.  Manual install only until I figure out the new mod loader tool.
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Nameless

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2011, 06:02 »
My first thought when trying this out was that it wasn't particularly exciting ... I changed the difficulty to a slightly harder, but the first half a dozen or so rounds were trivial. Then cool stuff started to appear. Then the arena started to get cluttered. Then thing started getting hectic.

It was at this point that I realised this mod is awesome.

Well, I did notice one or two problems. For some reason the intermission countdowns never appeared for me, which might have helped. There were far too many powerups spawned to feel in danger from anything other than instakills, especially since you could locate them all after one computer map. (I didn't even pick any defensive traits and I felt this. Never needed to swap armour, either.) And IMHO the announcer and crowd got very old very quickly.

On the bright side, keeping the item count down was less tedious than I thought it might be (actually kinda fun); enemies often gathered the spare ammo for you to rocket, and there were enough barrel / enemy explosions that you only had to manually deal with it occasionally. The extra enemies were balanced well as they spawned, and extra items were fun. The HUD tweaks were nicely done and everything seemed to work well. It might have been fairer and sometimes tenser to clean up acid/lava only every 5th round instead of randomly, but eh.

I used a power dualgunner build with P3T2 pistols and a rage rune - I could immediately kill (or at least knock out of firing range) ANYTHING, but ran into problems when viles decided that my 'reload' key actually stood for 'respawn'. I still did okay up until round 25-30 or so, at which point I was inevitably instagibbed by two mancubi. I'll try again later with a more rounded build and maybe the hardest difficulty.

Oh yeah, one last thing. This happens when you quit straight away:

He killed 0 out of 0 hellspawn. (0%)
 This ass-kicking marine killed all of them!
:P
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Nameless

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2011, 06:07 »
Okay since writing that review I have actually played this through on the hardest mode and let me tell you that while this remains an awesome mod STOP PLAYING at round 25. You will have reached an effective god mode and wiping out hoard after hoard of vile-backed enemies is not worth the occasional boss ememy that you will literally kill before they act. Nuking doesn't even help that much. I'm sure the final boss would be amazing to fight, but it would be faster for you to learn lua and code the thing in yourself from scratch than it would be to actually fight long enough for it to spawn. I stopped at round 52 and all I got was this lousy error message!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Nerf the rewards, put that sucker in at round 25 and you have a game, this is just nonsense.
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ParaSait

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2011, 07:42 »
Nice work... but why didn't you use the real skulltag announcer voice? The one in the mod sounds like a retarded news announcer. :<

Oh, and lol @ Nameless' YAAM :P

EDIT: Minigun + agility mod + triggerhappy + RAEG rune = AAAAHAHAHAHAAA!
« Last Edit: March 13, 2011, 08:05 by Mrazerty »
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yaflhdztioxo

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #8 on: March 13, 2011, 09:09 »
Mrazerty: That is a Skulltag announcer.  96F.  It's personal preference I suppose, but you can disable him by removing the sound bindings or editing the Lua a little bit.  You can also change him to a more modern announcer if you care to rip the sounds, but I doubt anyone will care enough to.

Nameless:  I think all arena mods get boring after a while.  But you should have been given the option to fight the boss by level 50.  **edit** there was a bug and he was on lvl55 **/edit** Vile spawn rates have been reduced in response to your complaint (I agree; viles suck) and your crash is fixed (Quit?  I've... never considered that)  I'll tweak enemy spawns a little more to make the harder enemies more likely to appear, then upload.

**double edit** I've heard your cries for speed and difficulty, and delivered!  It's a bit more beta than normal this time around, but a new version is up and it makes the difficulty levels important.  Blood demons and chaingunners on wave one!  Double-Shotgunners by wave two!  Screw that, I'm going back to playing it on easy.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2011, 12:53 by yaflhdztioxo »
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Nameless

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #9 on: March 13, 2011, 23:46 »
Well, the first few rounds are certainly more interesting now. :) They feel roughly on par with the normal Hell Arena in terms of difficulty and strategy, although whether you initially snag a ranged weapon or get killed by a single blood demon is more or less dumb luck. After that it's good ol' corner shooting and abusing central enemy movement. The intermission length is well timed; I usually had just enough turns to make a dash for the loot and back off before the next round. Former majors were consistently pathetic; the level layout makes it very rare for them to surprise you in close range, so they just functioned as weaker sargents. Spectres could maybe use a damage buff, they're pretty inconsequential as is. Former specialists are VERY powerful; 6d6 rockets out of nowhere hurt. ;_;

The rate of powerups feels about right now - I was often low on health and sneaking / madly dashing around pillars to get a precious small health globe. Rage rune is still overpowered compared to the others. I played a couple of different builds on "much harder" that didn't make it beyond round 12, but they were my own carelessness and the difficulty felt good up to that point.
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fidsah

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #10 on: March 14, 2011, 00:34 »
Around round 25 of 0951, I had a round where 9/8 enemies spawned, including uber Karmak. I shot him in the face a little bit, and it ended as a victory. Is this supposed to happen? Mortem spoilered.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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thelaptop

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #11 on: March 14, 2011, 00:41 »
That's related to the condition that JC is not supposed to be spawned under normal circumstance.  I have raised this as a possibility before, and the emphatic answer was equivalent to saying that "JC should never be spawned as a non-game winning situation".
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yaflhdztioxo

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #12 on: March 14, 2011, 05:52 »
9/8 is acceptable.  It happens when enemies are generated outside of level generation, and I couldn't catch that if I wanted to.  UJC is a special case; I just don't count him because it's funnier that way.

Personally I like the haste rune the best.  Regeneration is also very nice, but less useful once the enemies start being able to one shot you.  Rage is pure offensive; I suck too much to not have any defense.  I'm proudest of prosperity, the lowest rune; it was a bitch to code.

Okay, today's takeaway: rate of health and enemies is apparently okay, SSGs are still kinda stupid since there are fewer corners to be surprised by (fixing that will require b2's AI), spectres could use a buff (are you ever surprised by them Nameless?  It'd be nice if I could disable auto-targeting them)

BTW, former specialists only have 3+1 rockets.  After that they're harmless, and you can keep them alive and organize the level.

There are two things I'm thinking about now: the computer map, which I'm thinking should maybe be an automatic award after round 5, and item generation in general.  I haven't sat down to decipher how the difficulty affects item gen, or if it does at all, and as is I'm not sure the fancy weapons will spawn consistently before lvl 25.  Ideally I'd like for a railgun to be almost guaranteed--they're too damn useful against viles--and for at least one of the BFGs to spawn before JC.  But I don't want to cheat the system for that.  I'd also like to hack my way around traits messing with stats while under rune effects; it tends to always be to the player's benefit, but it's very noticeable with a time freeze since a range value exception occurs and all of a sudden your movements take no time :)
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Angles of death

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #13 on: March 15, 2011, 02:37 »
How do I use this?
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UnderAPaleGreySky

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Re: Skulltag Arena
« Reply #14 on: March 15, 2011, 03:44 »
While a quick look at the wiki would tell you, I'll give you a slightly easier way.

Extract the mod, then place the entire skulltag_arena folder into your sandbox folder. Then download this .bat and place it in your main DoomRL folder. Running the file SHOULD let you play the mod; if not, I probably screwed up somewhere. :P
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