Wirehead Studios

Well, one thing I noticed while playing as the doom class (being a long time hardcore avid doomer myself) is when you pick up weapons, you get the minimal amount of ammo, like you would in Doom Single Player. The thing is, today, most if not all doom servers have a flag called double ammo, which makes say the BFG ammo 80 instead of 40 on a pickup. Seeing as this is Multiplayer oriented, I thought i'd post this suggestion. It might go well with the other classes too, and on certain maps where ammo is in little or no supply. :rules:

At this point, I don't think Doom needs another boost ;]
If it turns out that adjustments made for the next version (including the effects of the animation framework) result in a too weak or constantly running out of ammo, this might be a nice thing to keep in mind.

... DooM class should have pickups tagged so that when you pick one up, you know what it is. Sometimes i just forget what certain boxes are, especially if i start playing Earth as well, but that might just be me... Q3 as that feature though, even on GEN  O_o ...

The item pickup print messages were lost when the user interface was converted over to a Team Arena style menu system.  I've just not gotten around to re-introducing them.

As for the "double ammo" pickups, this stems from setting the difficulty to "nightmare" for multiplayer servers.  I opted to stick closer to the "hardcore" level for the most part.  The exception right now is the rocket launcher, which gives 5 on pickup instead of 2 since just about everyone else's (except Arena) does the same.  I really can't see doubling Doom's ammo pickups at present, considering how much damage he can deal out.

Is it only me that i see doom shells box/ammo on mapa is more than enough compare to other classes  :huh:

Kingu:  If you're using "simple items" it can get a bit confusing because the icons are kind of generic.  Also, sometimes you run over stuff and don't get a clear look at what you just picked up, especially if the room is dark or your settings prevent it from being rendered really nice.  There's nothing wrong with a few messages to let you know.  I know I appreciate them in every FPS game that has them.  :thumb:

I was thinking about ammo count per shell box, for doom pickup. :)
 When i pickup shotgun and 1 box of shells i feel that i have more than enought to kill
 And i don't feel this with strogg specialy.

 I would reduce shells per box to mayby 12, it don't look right to my if you take shotgun and 2 boxes of shells and you get almost half of max shotgun ammo, most powerful of shotguns.

The problem is that I have the ammo counts just as they were in the old games.  You're asking me to start seriously tinkering around with ammo pickups based on weapon damage, not based on the original games.  I really don't like playing with ammo counts as a balance factor.  For the record, a box of shells in Doom gave you 20 shells, and you get 8 for picking up the gun.  In Q2, you got 10 for the gun, and 10 for the box of shells.  That's how I did it in Gen.  Now, that's 20 shells for Doom in "Ultra Violence" mode.  If I went with DD_133's request, you realize it would be 40 plus 16 for the gun?  Also, 50 shells is not Doom's max.  100 is the max.  I set all the ammo capacities for Doom, Strogg, and Slipgate as if they had their backpacks since there is no level-based item present.  Now before anyone complains about that, check the max ammo amounts for the Arena Gladiators, and keep in mind you could only get 99 bullets in Wolfenstein and the max weapon was a single gatling gun.  Since Gen's gameplay is so fast, I saw no reason to punish players with running out of ammo too often because they can't carry any more.  I know how it sucks to be toting that axe around in the middle of a rocket battle.

Part of Gen's gameplay (and any shooter) involves knowing which gun to use at what moment, and what your ammo count is.  If you're Strogg, you have a variety of weapons so relying on only one gun is going to cost you.  Know your weapons, and know when to switch.  If you're Doom, you have fewer weapons, weaker armor, and you have to get up close to really inflict any damage.  Strogg's SSG is the second most powerful in the game, but it's also not his staple weapon.  It's a close-range gun good for wearing down lesser armed opponents, or finishing off a nearly dead one.  Doom's SSG is a point blank kill cannon.  If you're Strogg and you want to take someone out who's heavily armed, especially a tanked up Doomer, relying on close range SSG shots is suicide.  You'll get 3 rockets up your nose or a face full of plasma before you can finish the job.  You need to take advantage of Strogg's range and use the railgun and chaingun to wear him down before the Doomer can get in close enough to use his weapons.

May by my english, not good enough, but i wrote "half of max ammo"
 Generaly it sounded, convincing enought.
 But still it is a normal/balanced game type, not oldschool.
  And if i remember  q1 had two types of rocket pickups 5 and 10, in gen is only 5, that was balance as i see, same with change rail from rocketlauncher to super nailgun.
 Arena shotgun use 1 shell per shot so 10 shells is 10 shots, not 5 like other classes, if i remember it has 200 max shells.
 Wolf had 99 ammo so you changed it to 300, to be useful.
 And another it i remember doom had some small shells pickup, beside box of shells.

I see your point, but i almost never run out of shells with doom.

This is where it gets into the complexities of how the game is set up.  Not all items are present within Q3 that can properly translate into small and large ammo pickups.  We went with what's best balanced.  Giving Slipgate a rocket launcher for the railgun was tried earlier on.  It was a huge problem, making Slipgaters far too powerful.  We opted to change the weapon pickup to the Super Nailgun because it solved two problems - it took the extra rocket pickup away (as well as a THIRD source of rockets, considering he gets them for both rocket AND grenade boxes, rail slug boxes made for three) and it gave him more nailgun ammo, which was always in short supply.  Slipgaters favor the rockets a lot, but their ammo pickups are in line with Earth and Doom since both also share the grenade launcher pickup so there's really no problem there.  Strogg's pickups are in line with Q2, but he does not share grenade and rocket ammo, so again you have to be more careful in your weapon choice and not rely on the same gun all the time.  Giving Slipgate a 10 rocket pickup would, again, bring back the "never see a Slipgater without a backpack full of 100 rockets" problem we had when the railgun was shared, which translates into someone ELSE getting 100 rockets if the Slipgater gets fragged.  Backpacks are fun, but turning Slipgaters constantly into walking rocket factories would be a detriment overall to the gameplay.

Some smaller ammo pickups were left out for balance reasons as well, and for technical reasons.  There is only one kind of shotgun ammo box in Q3.  Therefore, we had to choose which shell pickup to go with for each class.  Earth doesn't have a shotgun, so it was a no brainer to give him bullets.  Slipgate does not rely on lead hardly at all, and spawns with 25 shells already, so the normal shell pickup was fine.  Strogg only had one kind of shell ammo pickup.  Doom, on the other hand, does rely on the shotgun a great deal.  Giving him 4 measly shells would mean you'd run out of ammo constantly.  If there was an additional item we could use for the smaller shells then I'd add that in, but we have to work with what we've got.  As for actual play, there are plenty of games I run out of shells because I use the shotgun a lot, and other people run over ammo boxes quite often.  Picking up the Combat Shotgun only yields 4 shots from those 8 shells, so running over the gun when you get low only gives you a small amount and is of minimal help.  Arena's weapons were basically not changed for ammo useage (except the BFG) because of Home Turf rules - basically we leave Arena alone for the most part.  Arena tends to be ammo heavy with mediocre damage compared to the other classes, railgun and gauntlet not withstanding.

While this may not be "Old School" mode at present, there's no reason to not put as much old school into it as we can.  We can't do full damage on some of the weapons, but ammo counts and useage should really be left alone where possible for consistency's sake.  Our guiding light has been to keep things as close to the originals as possible FIRST, and THEN balance things out.  We tried it the other way and it really felt and played bad compared to later versions.  .99a and .99b suffered from this problem.  Once we got to .99c and onward, the gameplay started to feel much more solid.  That's the formula I'm sticking to.

Ok i'm convinced.  :thumb: