Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development,rec.games.roguelike.misc (
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quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
[DoomRL Shotguns]
>This was discussed before. I actually am in the point that I have no
>freaking idea what to do ;-)
I thought I'd step back and write something about this. There's a summary
proposal at the end.
First of all, what real guns are like. If you know that, skip ahead a bit.
There are probably some terminology errors, and I don't care. I'm only
going to talk about the kinds of gun in Doom.
Most real guns have a magazine full of bullets or shells (henceforth
always "bullet" for simplicity), and a "chamber", an area where a single
bullet can be held ready for firing. The mechanism which transfers bullets
from the magazine to the chamber is the "action".
[An exception is a revolver, where the chamber is whichever hole in the
magazine has rotated into position. But we don't care about that.]
A semi-automatic action is arranged such that when a bullet is fired, a
fresh one is loaded into the chamber - by gas pressure from the fired
round, typically - without human intervention, but the trigger must be
released and pulled again to fire again.
An automatic action will also load a fresh bullet every time one is fired
without human intervention; but will fire this fresh round if the user
continues to pull the trigger without releasing it.
Confusingly, pistols with semi-automatic actions are generally referred to
as "automatics". I will avoid that usage.
Both types of gun will tend to have a mechanical method, manually
operated, for loading the first bullet after the user inserts a fresh
magazine. This is probably part of the "reload" action in DoomRL.
Pump-action shotguns have an slide mounted under the barrel. This slide
loads a fresh shell into the chamber; it is operated by the user. It's
essentially similar to the mechanical method for loading the first bullet
on a semi-automatic or automatic gun. Also, shotguns like the single
shotgun in Doom have a magazine built into the gun, not a separate clip;
this makes it less fiddly, but forces the user to insert shells into it
rather than just putting in a fresh clip - rather like a guy with a big
bag of bullets but only one clip for his pistol would have to do.
Breech-loading guns have no magazine; after each firing the user opens up
the barrel and puts a fresh bullet in. A breech-loading gun might have
multiple barrels, which could be fired and reloaded together or
independently.
Now, about Doom. Doom never models magazines; every gun is belt-fed all
the ammo directly from the ammo butler. (DoomRL does model magazines).
Doom's chaingun is an automatic action; the pump-action shotgun has a
pump-action action (duh); the double shotgun is a 2-barreled
breech-loader. The pistol is an oddity. It can be fired repeatedly by
holding down Fire, like every gun, but I would argue that it is
semi-automatic from the rate of fire; the doomguy is releasing the trigger
even if the player is not.
Now we're down to DoomRL. I think an important question is what the role
of shotguns in DoomRL should be. Is the shotgun expected to be an early
weapon, discarded after you find the chaingun, or is it expected to be a
useful weapon all game with the right traits? The trouble is, it can't do
both.
I don't know how the damage penalty for spread at range affects shotgun
damage compared to missing with any other gun, but it seems likely to me
that DoomRL shotguns don't do enough damage. A chaingun burst does 5d6,
average 17.5; a shotgun a mere 4d4, average 10 - and the chaingun can
continue firing for longer than the proposed 4-magazine shotgun let alone
the current 1-shot. Sure, monster armour enters the picture; but so does
Son of a Bitch. Even the pistol does nearly as much damage as the shotgun,
and can sustain fire for longer.
In Doom, letting off the double shotgun up a pinkbeast's nostrils kills it
every time. I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to be true in
DoomRL (at point-blank range, as in Doom).
I propose the following; add a third shotgun. The shotgun sergeants carry
is the existing 1-shot affair, described as "a shotgun"; it's supposedly a
breech-loading 1-barrel shotgun. This is a weapon that's better than the
pistol, but obviously worse than the chaingun or the proposed submachine
gun. Maybe give it a modest damage boost.
Keep the double shotgun as is, but boost the damage. (Note that the same
ammo already does different damage in different guns - pistol vs chaingun
in DoomRL, shotgun vs. double shotgun in Doom). If you _do_ have the
opportunity to alternate between close-range attacks and reloading in
cover, the double shotgun should be the best weapon. It is in Doom, and
that's not exactly easy to arrange.
As a pickup that occurs before the chaingun and double SG, but maybe after
the submachine gun, add a multi-shot magazine single shotgun. I still like
the "move to ready a fresh shell" idea. I know Kornel doesn't, so I'll
tell you why; as it is, if this shotgun can fire on multiple successive
turns and then reload, it's hard to differentiate it from the chaingun.
One gun will just clearly be better, and you'll use that as long as you
have ammo for it. This works with the plasma rifle, because although it is
always better than the chaingun, there isn't enough ammo to use it all the
time - and you get it so late on it doesn't dominate the game.
Hence if we want this shotgun (described as a "pump-action shotgun") to be
genuinely different from the chaingun, it's got to do something else. I'm
definitely warming to 'r' loading one shell into the magazine, to give
long nervous reloading intervals and an incentive to carry two shotguns
for inventory management joy.
Precisely what I propose is this;
This weapon is to do more damage in one turn than the chaingun, but less
during sustained fire-and-reload. Hence if you can use the move-dodging or
cover to your advantage, it's a better weapon; but if you can't, and just
want to crank out damage as fast as possible, it's worse. Of course this
does demand that the odds on move-dodging are good enough to make it
worthwhile!
The gun has about 5 shells in. Really this should be about enough to
deal with one tomato, but any more and you're in trouble. This is total
capacity; magazine and chamber alike.
Design decision; the end result of pressing 'r' should _always_ be a round
in the chamber, and maybe some rounds in the magzine. People expect that
when you press 'r' a gun is ready to fire. Let's not disappoint them.
Also, this means you can't be in the position where the magazine is full,
the chamber is empty, and 'r' refuses to do anything; and _this_ helps the
internal implementation be just a single integer "number of shells in gun"
and a flag "shell readied?".
When you fire the gun, the total number of shells in it is decremented,
and the "shell readied" flag is unset.
When you move while wielding the gun, if the "shell readied" flag is
unset, it is set. "You pump a shell into the shotgun."
When you press 'r';
If the "shell readied" flag is set, increase the number of shells in the
gun by one if it is not at the limit. "You reload the shotgun with a
shotgun shell". This reload should probably be quicker than reloading the
other guns, since you'll have to do it a lot - but after all, 5 lots of it
could still take a while.
If there are no shots in the gun, don't check the "shell readied" flag.
(We should still unset it when unloading a shotgun). Increase the number
of shells in the shotgun by 1, and set the "shell readied" flag. "You
reload the shotgun and prepare to fire." This should maybe be a bit
slower than the reload above.
Otherwise, there are shots in the gun, but the "shell readied" flag is not
set. Set it. "You pump a shell into the shotgun." This should again be a
quick reload - this gun is better than the breech-loader even when you
don't have room to maneuver. Optionally, if this is the first time this
case has come up during the game, print "You may also do this just by
moving."
Monsters with this gun simply fire off shells at a slightly faster rate
than the plain shotgun. They don't fiddle the "shell readied" flag, for
simplicity.
I know this isn't the most straightforward thing to implement, but I do
think it's the way to keep shotguns useful for most of the game, and give
them a flavour that is distinct from chainguns and in keeping with Doom's
shotguns.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is First Monday, February.
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