Gothic those are great, I'd say they are definitely ready for the Armory.

Also the slowdown with the lazer gun was completely my fault you can ignore that - I had the rendermode on Vulkan - It seems to slow down the game every time a projectile weapon fires.

DeVloek I love the Nuker, it feels really powerful! A neat touch would be it if the beep changed tone as the fire mode increased


I have attached what I've done so far with the Insanity Rifle. It is a bit of a weird one. There's new graphics for it and a new overheating mechanism. Not sure about this one - it's essentially just 4 plasma guns welded together which is a bit boring. The original was 6!

Wow, nice job converting a joke weapon into something decent. Is there a way to make the cooldown "ammo" unobtainable with cheats like idfa or give all? That's something that always bothered me with weapons with cooldowns.

I was thinking, since we give feedback to each other in this thread, making submission threads would be redundant, so would you guys be ok if I directly upload your finished works from here to the Armory?

In the meantime, here's a preview sprite for the Molotov Cocktail:

The Molotov looks like a good improvement over the original, nice work

"I was thinking, since we give feedback to each other in this thread, making submission threads would be redundant, so would you guys be ok if I directly upload your finished works from here to the Armory?"

If that's the case, I will post the Insane Plasma Array here. It's a simple weapon so I retained Zandro compatibiltiy for this one.

Details:

"A neat touch would be it if the beep changed tone as the fire mode increased "
Did that, plus some other things:

• improved decals
• improved brightmaps
• improved overlays and flash
• added smoke emission (particles for now, was thinking about making it an overlay)
• added kickback and recoil (well, at least the Zdoom interpretations of these terms)
• more tweaks and fixes

Todo:
I noticed the big projectile acting weird when aiming at the floor. Before it explodes, the projectile kinda floats along the floor for a short time. This is noticable with powerlevel 1 and 2, but with powerlevel 3 the opposite happens and the projectile is pulled in and explodes when it reaches a certain distance to the floor. Doesn't bother me that much but I'd really like to know why this even happens so I'm gonna invest some more time in fixing this before the official release.

"would you guys be ok if I directly upload your finished works from here to the Armory?"
Sure. Once I'm done I'll put it in a zip file and post the link here.

I hope to find some time tomorrow or during the weekend to look at the latest edits from you guys. Judging from the preview sprite, the molotov cocktail looks much better than the original. The insanity rifle kinda gives me 80s 3D glasses vibes, including the headache But I guess the color scheme is quite fitting given the name of the gun.



edit: I wasn't able to pinpoint the projectile's odd behavior near floors, let alone fix it. Also some things I tried with the overlay lights didn't work out as planned (pixel shifts again), but I'm still happy with how the weapon turned out.

One more thing, since you can switch powerlevels I changed the class in the info file from 7 to 5-7, that should be appropriate. So if nothing else comes up, this is gonna be it. Here's the zip file you can use for the upload.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10OzJ0v-5dixHXtZo6ayK3rOqbiXYPsrr/view?usp=sharing

OK here's some feedback on some recent weapons from this thread:

IPA:

• Info text says the summon name is InsanePlasmaArray but it's actually InsanityRifle
• The clanking engine cooldown noise is a neat idea, but it plays after every single shot in full length. I think it would be nice if the sound was shortened depending on how long you kept firing. You could achieve this with A_Startsound's startTime parameter.
• This is more of a personal preference I guess, but the overheat selfdamage after only 8 shots is too much of a downside for me. So maybe either amp up the weapon damage, allow more shots before overheating or get rid of the selfdamage altogether (I'd prefer the latter).
• Is there another way to display the cooldown counter? Not a fan of the % "ammo" display, especially when there's already tons of different ammotypes from other weapons in a mod.
• One more minor nitpick, imo the projectile's dynamic light better fits the sprite color with a slightly increased blue value (from 0.2 to 0.3)

btw the headache I got wasn't induced by the weapon sprites, turns out I caught the flu

Pipebomb

• My only concern is how it bounces off walls and monsters, the bounce is too strong and makes the weapon kinda unreliable. Maybe I'd even go as far as further reducing the WallbounceFactor when it hits a monster. Not sure if it's possible in Decorate to reduce it on the fly when it has hit a monster as opposed to a wall though.
• One more suggestion, have you thought about limiting the bounces via the BounceCount property? IIRC, in DN3D the pipebomb only bounced 4 or 5 times before coming to a standstill.

Gasblower:

• The one issue with this weapon is how the gas clouds become totally invisible inside dark sectors, even if there's a bright sector behind as a backdrop. I can only think of 2 solutions to this issue. 1. set Renderstyle to Translucent and Alpha to 0.5 or something like that, but the downside is the clouds won't look as good anymore, and 2. make all gas sprites fullbright but that doesn't look right in dark sectors either. Either way, it won't look good under certain conditions

Dustblower:

• The new "air" sprite looks great, my only nitpick here is how the projectile causes constant pain on the target. Technically it's just wind and should be relatively painless?

LazerRifle

• Nothing to complain about there, it's good to go imo.

" Is there a way to make the cooldown "ammo" unobtainable with cheats like idfa or give all?"

According to some old threads on ZDoom forums, including a spawn state with nonexistant frames should do it. I have no idea if that is still the case. You still get the ammo with Give All, I think it's one of those things Graf doesn't want to change.


"IPA:

Info text says the summon name is InsanePlasmaArray but it's actually InsanityRifle
The clanking engine cooldown noise is a neat idea, but it plays after every single shot in full length. I think it would be nice if the sound was shortened depending on how long you kept firing. You could achieve this with A_Startsound's startTime parameter.
This is more of a personal preference I guess, but the overheat selfdamage after only 8 shots is too much of a downside for me. So maybe either amp up the weapon damage, allow more shots before overheating or get rid of the selfdamage altogether (I'd prefer the latter).
Is there another way to display the cooldown counter? Not a fan of the % "ammo" display, especially when there's already tons of different ammotypes from other weapons in a mod.
One more minor nitpick, imo the projectile's dynamic light better fits the sprite color with a slightly increased blue value (from 0.2 to 0.3)

btw the headache I got wasn't induced by the weapon sprites, turns out I caught the flu "


That's some great feedback DeVloek, I will see what can be done. I was trying to go for a colorshift green/purple paint effect on the weapon like a sports car. It does look a little odd from a distance

About the ThermoNuker:

When you say "floating along the floor", do you mean the projectile moving a little to the front when impacting the floor?

This seems to be a thing with vanilla projectiles as well.
I find the sound of the ThermoNukeSpray impact pretty loud, you should reduce the volume to 0.45 or 0.5.
In software renderer, there's a little gap in the lower part of the HUD sprite. This also happens with some of the vanilla weapons:

You should lower the sprite offsets a little to avoid it.
EDIT: Also a software renderer problem: the particles show as regular particles instead of sprites.
Since the weapon takes away your ammunition with A_TakeInventory, you should add a check for infinite ammo powerups/cheats:

if(!CountInv("PowerInfiniteAmmo"))
{
if(!GetCVar("sv_infiniteammo"))
{
A_TakeInventory("Hydrogen", ammousage);
}
}

And don't forget to clear the overlays in the Deselect state.

Thanks for the feedback Gothic.

"do you mean the projectile moving a little to the front when impacting the floor?
This seems to be a thing with vanilla projectiles as well."
Yeah that's what I mean. I've never noticed this behavior until now, neither with custom nor with vanilla projectiles.
This only seems to happen in Hardware renderer mode.

"I find the sound of the ThermoNukeSpray impact pretty loud, you should reduce the volume to 0.45 or 0.5."
For me personally the loud impact is quite fitting and one reason why the weapon feels so powerful, but I reduced the volume anyway as it can get a bit too loud when several impacts happen at the same time.

"In software renderer, there's a little gap in the lower part of the HUD sprite. This also happens with some of the vanilla weapons:
You should lower the sprite offsets a little to avoid it."

I cannot reproduce this, and tbh I never heard of this bug(?) before, are you sure it's not only on your end? A quick google search gave no results.
In any case, I lowered the offset by 1 pixel, hopefully that'll fix it.

"Also a software renderer problem: the particles show as regular particles instead of sprites."
I didn't think about that and I noticed the particle color is off, so I changed it to better match the smoke sprite's color, looks okay to me now. Ofc I could fix this by turning the smoke into an overlay but I'm not very eager to do that at this point tbh

"And don't forget to clear the overlays in the Deselect state."
The way I set up the overlays it shouldn't be necessary, unless you found a situation where the overlays stay on screen?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10OzJ0v-5dixHXtZo6ayK3rOqbiXYPsrr/view?usp=sharing

"are you sure it's not only on your end?"
It happens if you switch to software renderer. Try the Super Shotgun for example.
Seems to be a problem in GZDoom only, other ports don't have this problem.

"unless you found a situation where the overlays stay on screen?"
Yep, still there:

Custom overlays don't clear themselves when you die.

I made some changes to my weapons addressing the feedback given.

Pipebomb:

• I reduced the WallBounceFactor all the way down to 0.1. I didn't notice how little the original Duke Pipebombs bounced on walls.
• I didn't reduce the BounceCount, but I made it so its speed scales down a little more on its Spawn state, which does reduce the bouncing a bit.
• I forgot to reduce the pipebomb's Radius and Height which I raised while testing its Death state.

Gas Blower:

• I changed the sprites for the gas cloud so the color fits with the rest of the green tones. I also changed the Renderstyle to Translucent, reduced the Alpha to 0.25 and made it fullbright. Hopefully it can be seen in dark and full bright sectors.

I've also been working on the Molotov Cocktails:

The foundation is done, but there is still much work to do. I need to make brightmaps, GLDEFS, and a version with Doom hands. I also want to make a charging attack like with the Pipebomb, and a self damaging mechanic if you hold it for too long, similar to what happens with the TNT and Spray Can in Blood.
I'm working on a water check mechanic but I'm having trouble with it. Basically I want the weapon to immediately switch out to another weapon if you're in the middle of the Fire/Hold states. I tried using jumping to the Deselect state if the water level was above 2 but that didn't work, then I tried using A_SelectWeapon("Fist",SWF_SELECTPRIORITY) to switch to the Fist, but doing so would not force the attack sequence to abort. Then I tried switching to a random actor that can't be selected (like "DoomWeapon"), and does exactly what I want to do, but doesn't switch to another weapon, instead it goes back to its Ready state. If anybody knows a solution for this, I'd be very thankful, doesn't matter if I have to switch to Zscript.

"It happens if you switch to software renderer. Try the Super Shotgun for example.
Seems to be a problem in GZDoom only, other ports don't have this problem."

The SSG looks fine on my end, both in 1920x1080 fullscreen and windowed. I've played with software renderer before and never seen this gap on any weapon. *shrug*


"Custom overlays don't clear themselves when you die."
my bad, it didn't occur to me to test the weapon without death cam on... Fixed.


As for your underwater problem, try this:
I tested this with the Tazer I just started working on. I'm calling this at the start of the Fire state which in my case is a very short loop, so the fist is selected almost immediately after jumping into the water. For the molotov cocktail you might need to call it more often during the Fire/Hold state.

btw I noticed that monsters walking visibly outside the fire will be damaged too. I guess the explosion radius in the fireburn state is larger than the sprite.