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#649 Deathmatch weapon placement in 2 player co-op game
Running Doom Legacy version 1.47.2 on a raspberry pi 3 running RetroPie (built on raspbian stretch lite). Game works great overall. However, when I setup a co-op 2 player split-screen match, the weapon placements are setup like a deathmatch. First level in doom there is a rocket launcher and chaingun. These weapons do not appear in a single player game and should not appear in co-op mode either. I cannot find a setting to turn off the extra weapons so I believe this to be a bug.
I am getting the same problem. I know I have played coop before without this problem, but all recent versions show the same action.
I am assuming a command line like.
I shall put this to the front of the work queue.
The coop and deathmath play options have needed some improvement for some time.
It may be that I just cannot remember how to start it correctly, which is a problem with the
menus that we need to fix.
First thing I looked at the doom2 map with an editor. Those items are marked as being present for both Deathmatch and for Coop. There is nothing I can do in DoomLegacy if the map is going to do that. Choose a better map for playing Coop.
Plutonia seems to do the same thing, but provides extra tough monsters.
There are many downloadable IWAD that provide a sane Coop play.
I think the menu still needs improvement, so I am leaving this report open.
Started work on this, but it is stalled due to the menu fixes that I have come up with not looking that significantly better than the previous mess.
Hey guys, I don't think it's a bug, but instead a default behaviour in the game.
I've done the following steps in order to reproduce this behaviour in vanilla Doom:
The result of those steps is two DOSBox instances connected to each other through local network, thus succesfully creating a multiplayer game in vanilla Doom. Take a look at the screenshot below:
With one of the players, I looked at the window to see the open field with the green slug lake. You can see a Rocket Launcher in there, even when there's no such weapon in single player. And although I haven't checked if the Chaingun is in the map, I guess we can safely assume that those extra weapons in the map are shown not only on deathmatch, but in cooperative games as well.
Last edit: Leonardo Montenegro 2019-07-22
Look at the wad with any Doom Wad editor and you will see all the items and how they are marked for single player, coop, and deathmatch.
The EUREKA editor shows on this map that area with a rocket launcher, box of rockets, 3 boxes of shotgun shells, that are marked as DEATHMATCH, COOP.
I am currently working on the coop/deathmatch menu item, trying something more normal this time, so I don't have to rewrite large parts of DoomLegacy.
I noticed some new options in the "Coop/Deathmatch" menu item, when testing some new features from the latest SVN commits.
Previously, there were only four options: 0 (Coop), 1, 2, 3. I know that the option 0 is the same as "-cooperative" command-line parameter, which starts a cooperative game. Option 1 is the same as the "-deathmatch", which starts a deathmatch with weapons staying after picked up, but no item respawning. Option 2 is the same as the "-altdeath" command-line parameter, which starts a deathmatch game with weapons disappearing when picked up, but all items now respawns a few seconds after they're picked up. And option 3 is a mix of options 1 and 2: weapons staying and items respawns.
Now, instead of four, there's nine options:
Can you clarify about the rules of each game mode? I can probably give you some useful suggestions on this.
DoomLegacy 1.47.3 is a development version, not released code.
The documentation for all those modes will get done before the release of 1.47.4.
I put some notes in the code, and in my log in logs/WDJlog.txt.
There isn't a fix for this issue. If the map is going to generate a strange COOP placement, I cannot fix that.
However, some of the original ID wads are painful to play using COOP due to very strong monsters used. That might work with 4 good players, but is not tunable for
using COOP for introduce the game to new players.
COOP_60 and COOP_80 allow the COOP monster strength to be reduced.
COOP_SP_MAP allows COOP play on the single player map, which is usually the most optimum play.
DM and COOP use the menu selections for respawning, instead of encoding respawning in the selection.
This improves the DEATHMATH and COOP menu selections to be more useful for all players,
not only the ones who memorized what DM 1,2,3 were.
This is about about as much as I can do.
For strange coop weapon / item placements, indeed there's no fix for that. However, the scenario mentioned by Quicksilver7837 isn't strange. It occurs exactly this way even on vanilla Doom, as I showed in the test done via Dosbox with IPX enabled.
Quicksilver7837's scenario basically says that it'd be interesting to have a option for creating multiplayer coop games with the same weapon placement as single player, regardless of which skill the user has chosen. It's exactly what COOP_SP_MAP does.
Another solution would be simply reducing skill. If you change it from "Ultra-Violence" to "Hey, Not Too Rough". That would reduce the quantity of monsters in the map, thus making it easier for new players.
Isn't that kinda redundant with some skill levels? Take a look:
https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Skill_level#Doom.2C_Doom_II_and_Final_Doom_skill_levels
If you choose skill "I'm too young to die", players will take half normal damage. So, basically monster strength are already reduced in 50%. What would happen if user creates a multiplayer game with that skill, and then set game mode to COOP_80? Monster strength will be reduced in 50%, 80% or both?
Besides that, monster strength reduction only happens on the easiest skill level, and it's fixed in 50% by default. So, having an option for customizing monster strength reduction percentage, on other skill levels besides "I'm too young to die", is interesting. You could add it as a new option, inside "Game Options" menus.
Just read the notes in your log. So, DM and COOP will basically create a deathmatch / cooperative, by using the respawn settings in the game options menu.
However, let's take a look in those two scenarios below:
Looking by this angle, DM and DM_BOTH are redundant, since user could simply change those options after creating a game. The same applies for COOP and COOP_WEAPONS. Having those options would create confusion and pollute the menus with unnecessary info.
Besides, naming them simply by DM or COOP may be unleading. I haven't understood what those options does, until I've read them in your log. If those options are to be included anyway, then at least their names should be changed to something more detailable.
Indeed. And I have a new suggestion for deathmatch type: DM_ALLWEAPONS.
This option will create a deathmatch game with the same weapon placement as the highest skill level, regardless of which skill level user has chosen.
That'll be particularly useful on deathmatches with bots. Some maps only shows higher weapons such as plasma gun and bfg9000 if you choose skill "Ultra-Violence". But that skill would make the bots too hard to beat. And if you reduce skill to "Hey, not too rough", bot difficulty will be more balanced, but you won't get higher weapons.
So, if you choose Skill 2 and DM_ALLWEAPONS, you'll be able to customize bot skill, and at the same time you'll get higher weapons in those maps.
Last edit: Leonardo Montenegro 2019-08-26
You should realize that I have been doing this for over 20 years and know the skill levels pretty well.
The skill levels only work if the map developer was kind enough to implement them in the wad, and in this case they did not. Many maps do not give COOP any thought at all. It has been a continual problem.
The COOP_60 and COOP_80 modes look for overly strong monsters for the map level, and when one is found they substitute a more normal monster from a table. This will replace the Cyberdemon with a Knight or Lord. It overrides the wad developers laziness, which skill level adjustments cannot do.
The original deathmatch selections were from the command line and the 1, 2, 3 numbers are traditional. The menus were added later and are replacing command line switches as the preferred interface. The option menu for respawn is the preferred interface. The deathmatch 1, 2, 3 equivalents are only being kept for people who are used to knowing them that way.
Any improvements to respawning such as another control, will appear in the options menu for respawning. Those settings are saved in the config.
The historical deathmatch selections are just conviences and do not compare in capability and may get removed eventually.
Bot skill problems are a bot control issue, not a deathmatch skill issue.
The skill level selects the items on the map, and should not be confused with using it for other things.
The names are constrained to be short because of limited space in the menu for some screen sizes and font sizes. For many menu selections, it is the docs that will explain what each selection does. I have not done the docs yet.
Release of 1.47.4 is now planned for end of Sept, so I cannot add more work right now.
I am cutting off work on many things in order to get this released now.
Last edit: Wesley Johnson 2019-08-28
Closing: The original problem is not fixable, it is a wad issue.
Some Coop menu selections have been provided to make it easier to deal with maps like this.
Of course there are many possibilities, and there may be changes in Coop support in the future. I can only implement one solution for now, and that will be the one that seems to be the most adaptable to the most needs. For now, this needs to be tested (possibly for a few years).