WHOA, DO YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO READ ALL THAT SHIT?
Yes. 
Welcome to the Deathstrider dev blog, where I will unleash my inner 'tism, and discuss the reasoning behind changes and mod mechanics with the walls. I'd post trigger warnings, but we don't need warnings where we're going. We need God.
THE END IS NEAR
[2024-04-05]
Here we are. Almost two years of non-stop development, Deathstrider is finally close to being "finished". I say that in quotes because the thing with projects I actively play is that, well, there's always something to tweak. However, as far as big changes are concerned, I only have one last thing on my list before I can call it a day. It might be several months away, though, assuming everything goes according to plan.
So what does this mean for the mod's future? If reading the paragraph above scared you into thinking this mod is going to get abandoned, I have news for you. Deathstrider will never die. It is a passion project, one I hold close to my heart. Even if development slows down significantly, which is expected, I am not abandoning it for any reason. You will have to pry this mod out of my cold, dead hands. That means any bugs reported will be taken out back and shot. Requests for API extensions will be considered as well, although those are going to be heavily evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
As I have mentioned several times over the course of development, Deathstrider is the last mod I ever work on. It's undoubtedly the biggest project I have worked on thus far, and I've been working with this engine for a decade now. I've witnessed man-made horrors beyond my comprehension, dealt with people that made me consider the sociological benefits of saturated orbital bombardment, and made an ass of myself on more than one occasion. But I also got to meet some truly great people. People I dare call good friends to this day, many years later. It was one hell of a journey, that's for sure, and as with all journeys this one has to end too.
With that said and done, I believe this is the last blog post for this mod. The big upcoming change is a secret, so, naturally, I won't be talking about it here. Once DS is done properly, I will fully retreat into the sunset and finally go back to doing things in private. Just like old times. It's time to move on from this engine and game. Many other adventures await. I will face them alone, on my own terms. The thing about hobbies is that they are best enjoyed in private, without prying eyes or the infinite pressure from fans. Sometimes you just want to enjoy the silence.
Godspeed to everyone who supported this mod throughout its development, and godspeed to all the addon makers. Remember, thinking outside the box always pays off. Thank you for being a part of this.
FASTEST HAND IN THE WEST
[2024-01-23]
Reloading magazine weapons has always been a mechanic that was, theoretically, supposed to slow down the spammage of projectiles. In practice, all it accomplished was forcing the player to press R every couple of seconds. I'll be repeating myself when I say it's a mechanic completely devoid of any form of thinking. The player just presses R subconsciously at the first opportunity because it costs nothing to do so, and with the benefit of being able to do that while moving at 70km/h, it has virtually no drawbacks. But the thing that pissed me off is that it was just boring. There was no way to cancel the animations, meaning that reloads were guaranteed. For a tactical mod, being able to just rush a level was unacceptable, even if that had been the norm for a long time. So the key goal of this rework was to slow things down.
I'd been toying with the idea of giving the player more control over the weapon with regards to reloading. The very first idea I had was far too convoluted and wasn't too applicable. That was to have one hand be controlled so you would need to move to the lower left to grab a magazine then put it back where it belongs. Mostly inspired from VR. From a technical perspective that would have been an absolute nightmare to pull off in GZDoom. It would have required heavy A_Overlay usage, not to mention only weapons where your hand was visible would have made sense for that. That's not even getting into the details of animating the entire fucking thing. Nah. That wasn't gonna fly.
Take two. What if I forgo all that and just move the entire sprite? That's the iteration currently present in the mod. Surprisingly it wasn't even that hard to pull off. Most of the issues stemmed from having to readjust the animations due to A_SwayRotation using the sprite's center rather than the top center like it used to. At the very least everything is consistent now in that regard, thank fuck. This also means reload animations, the bane of my existence, are essentially obsolete, so everything between Reload and EndReload got nuked. That's probably like 1000 lines of code across all affected weapons. This was also a great opportunity to improve the reload sequence of several weapons and rid myself of old Offset-based animations like what the Dragonfire used.
As always, the news of this change wasn't received well. Expectations were reserved and generally low. I admit the first iteration of the concrete implementation was shoddy, but that's always the case with first implementations. A couple of good ideas later and some polishing, I can safely say the guns feel exactly as satisfying as I had hoped from the start, and gameplay was slowed down to far more acceptable levels. Ironically, you can now do insanely fast reloads while still moving, but that also means you accept all those dropped mags on the floor. Which means if you drop your mags in the middle of a populated arena, you're fucked. The player needs to think now. As far as I'm concerned, that goal's been accomplished through interconnecting mechanics.
That's another sore spot in the mod kicked out of the way to great success. Come to think of it, there isn't much left. Nothing big to do. It's mostly down to more polishing and miscellaneous stuff that doesn't affect gameplay, yet nevertheless makes people go "god damn this mod goes deep."
DEATHSTRIDER REMASTERED: PART DEUX
[2023-11-26]
I can't even count the number of brain cells I lost trying to come up with the new lore. At one point it became so frustrating that I was ready to trash the entire project in the event I couldn't figure out one specific entry. Since the lore plays a major role in why the mod is even interesting to me personally, that was downright unacceptable.
Solomon and Wraith fell in exactly where they needed to be lore-wise. This paves the way for much more realistic interactions as Wraith's presence on the ship lets people show the human side of themselves to another human rather than some ancient being who can't even begin to comprehend their meaningless problems. Solomon in particular now actually feels like an infinitely powerful entity rather than a literal skeleton with split personality disorder. The fragments part wasn't as clever as I thought it'd be. The whole ancient civilization, Deathstrider backstory, and megastructures in spooky solar systems went out the window. It didn't tie in any way into the new story. It can easily be assumed that new Solomon built the Deathstrider himself and that's the end of it.
Time & Magic also got reworked to be far more central, although Time's lore suffered as a result. I had to make him more shut-in and less "O, He of Much Wisdom", as he previously kept correcting Solomon all the time, making the latter seem like a bumbling retard. That's not a good way to write a protagonist. Magic isn't just a supporting character anymore. She is literally a supporting character now. That sentence will make sense if you read the lore.
AceCorp is finally great again. Why would a "company" that deals in morally questionable tech be a well-known corporation? Well it ain't. Not anymore. Welcome to pirate territory. Now get the fuck out.
Managed to fix Visse's lore. The interaction is far more realistic. Even if it leaves some things to be desired, it's still a massive improvement over the previous "literally every vampire fanfic ever" version.
Anastasia & Lilith's lore still has a couple of holes, but Magic's words have far more weight so the entire thing is more believable now. Let's leave it at that.
The Black fucking Death. The entire mod nearly died thanks to this bitch. I "rewrote" her lore, got lowkey mocked for it (I don't disagree with the point), then got increasingly frustrated as I attempted to come up with something at least just as good as the old one. Needed to distance myself from people and take some time to think in peace. Took me about a day or two to come up with something that, surprisingly, maybe even tops the old crusty backstory. It also allows for better environmental storytelling. Due to the fundamental changes the Black Death underwent, the Executioner got "dulled" in some ways. It no longer speaks to you. It does not react to your touch. But, trust me, you'll wish it did.
DEATHSTRIDER REMASTERED
[2023-11-04]
Everything in WHO WHAT WHERE WHY is wrong.
Now that that's out of the way, time to explain why.
I've grown increasingly disappointed and unfulfilled with where the story and some of the characters were going over the course of development. More so now that Wraith is an official character. Over the coming weeks I'll be rewriting or otherwise reworking almost the entirety of the existing lore, plus adding things I ought to have added long ago. If you're one of the single digit number of people who cares about lore, disregard all previous knowledge of the characters and setting after the update. But for now, let's go over everything and what's different between now and then:
Solomon
Prior to Wraith's introduction, Solomon's character wasn't as bad because there was nobody to contrast him. I'll just quote myself from the group chat to save on time:
Now that Wraith plays a part, I find it difficult to see a difference between a 30-something year old space shitposter and a 900000000 year old skeleton mage. Focusing more on Wraith would let me keep that light-hearted feel while making Solomon feel much more enigmatic. Because he'd essentially be a secondary character. When you put less emphasis on mysterious characters, they remain that - mysterious. You can't have that if you make everything about them.
What does this mean? It means the mod is now focused on Wraith. Don't misunderstand, Solomon is very much still a major (and playable) character, but he is no longer in the spotlight. Turns out making an ancient being more relatable and human really ruins the prospect of making them truly interesting because it makes them unrealistic. Coupled with his emotional personality, it makes less than no sense that an entity such as Death would experience negative feelings like anger, impatience, sadness, and so on. But, if for some reason, he were to experience any of these, it'd be one for the history books, making the event much more impactful. The way he speaks is another important aspect that needs reworking. Right now some of the dialogue makes Solomon look like a colossal fucking loser.
Wraith
You know who the best star fighter in the fleet is?
Probably not this guy. There's very little information on Wraith as it stands, and even what's already there is subject to change, particularly because it's affected by the big rewrite Solomon is going through. Overall Wraith would be what Solomon was originally meant to be, only it makes a whole lot more sense given that he's human. Not much to say here other than he's about to start playing a more central role in his interactions with people.
Kel V'Zash and the Deathstrider
The concept of the megastructure, the ancient civilization, and the Deathstrider is only one question away from collapsing on itself. How in the god damned fuck did Solomon end up there? And that's just one thing. Plenty more issues with that begin to bust out of the woodwork once you unlock the appropriate lore. There are far bigger problems that directly contradict what I said in the previous blog post, particularly the part pertaining dead civilizations. This section of the lore is one of the few ones getting a total makeover.
Time & Magic
For better or worse, these are the only two entities that I'm actually happy with, and the only ones to act their age. There will be some changes to Time's lore. Possibly even to Magic's, but only because of Solomon.
AceCorp
I stand behind every word I said that I don't like AceCorp's direction. We need to go back to simpler times, when AceCorp was just a bunch of nerds in a toolshed. I have a clue on how to make this faction seem less like a soulless megacorporation, and that's by not making it a corporation in the first place. It also bothers me that I decided to wrap everything in bubblewrap, like everything having a killswitch, EXCEPT for Solomon's battlesuit which SUPER CONVENIENTLY doesn't have one. HMMMMMMMMMMM. Yeah, no, that's going to need reimagining. Not to mention with Solomon's new personality, why in ten hells would he give a fifth of a fuck about AceCorp possibly going corrupt, much less ever utilize that killswitch?
The Black Death
Don't get me started on her... That lore has already been rewritten. I can't say much without spoiling, so I'll only say the interaction between Solomon and her is one of the primary reasons for me starting this massive undertaking. The progression felt like ass, the whole connection between the characters felt like ass, it just sucked, okay?
Void Eye
Yep. This one too.
Anastasia
I mostly don't mind Anastasia's lore, but I'd still try to reimagine some of it. Mostly not liking how Solomon has no reason to save her, yet does. Magic's convincing words aside, that is.
Visse
Ah yes, the lone hero climbs Mount Doom and kills thousands of demons and seduces the succubus, and they lived happily ever after. What a load of shit. What retard came up with this? Into the trash it goes.
WHAT THE HELL AM I CASTING
[2023-10-25]
Ah. Magic. The one thing worth playing non-F&S characters for, unless you decided to be a goody two-shoes. Since the start, spellcasting's had this problem of all the fun stuff being locked behind evil alignment. Due to the nature of those spells, the player tends to cast them repeatedly, watching that alignment bar move to the left at the speed of light. And then there are the good spells. Every time I do a good playthrough (which is almost every time), only one thought loops inside my head: HOLY SHIT THIS IS BORING! And it's not hard to see why. Shield is one spell that you have to stop and re-cast every couple of minutes. Same with Revitalization. And Haste. And all the other duration/effect-based crap. So every few minutes I'd find myself going over the same combination of spells over and over and over again. That HAD to change. Not to mention the fact that if you wanted to stay neutral, you had to waste precious mana(spheres) to periodically cast good-aligned spells even if you didn't actually need them. Or limit your evil spell usage. Both of these suck a metric ton of ass.
Enter Diablo. I was always a fan of insta-casting in that game. The cooldowns from Diablo III not so much, but they do help balance otherwise bullshit OP spells like Voidstorm without necessitating a grand cost. Since I was already fucking with spells, I decided to take it a step further and decouple spellcasting from the player entirely. Everything magic has been moved to an Arcanum component, meaning any custom actor could be adapted to become a spellcaster with minor and relatively painless work. AI not included. You're on your own there.
While reworking the HUD to accomodate some of the changes, I came across a UI design issue. THE BARS DON'T FUCKING MATCH AAAAAAAAAAAA! What this means is that it was impossible to have the same number of blocks in both Arcanum and the HUD without major reworks to either. I tried every single pixel combination imaginable. That's when I decided it was time for a new mana system. This ended up being an improvement over the previous one as it allowed balancing spells not only by raw cost, but also by cooldown. The latter forces the player to not rely on a single spell but instead cycle them while waiting for another to finish.
In the end, I am satisfied with the result. With magic reworked to be infinitely more interesting and balanced alignment-wise, the mod is one step closer to being perfect. It's one page I can safely turn and move onto the next flawed feature in need of redesigning.
BURNOUT
[2023-07-27]
Or alternatively, How To Kill Your Own Work. I have to admit, I don't really play the mod anymore. It's not fun. At first I blamed it on the mechanics not being interesting. After idly thinking about it for a while and talking to the folks on Steam, I came to the conclusion that it's not the mod. It's me. Having worked on this project for over an entire year almost non-stop, real burnout has finally taken hold of me. The alternative title is because it is too easy to mistake your burnout for bad mechanics and attempt to fix a problem where none exists, thus creating one out of thin air.
As such, I think it's time to put Deathstrider on life support. At the time of this post, there are only a few "pending" things. One is the lore for Icarus Innovations. I consider this high priority. The other is the lore for the three followers. I actually have the lore for Freylis and Balthazar on my phone, but something about it feels off. It needs more polish. Polish I am not in the state of mind to give it. The creativity well has dried up for the time being. The third one is an altfire for the Gungnir because the one thing this mod is missing is a BFG-like weapon. Sure, we got nuclear 35mm rounds, but we need something different that you can fire from closer up. I won't reveal more details as I am still designing it.
Unfortunately, I am afraid to say the followers' lore will likely not make it in. For now. As it is, I cannot stand to play the mod, much less churn out anything remotely interesting for it. Once Icarus Innovations's lore and the Gungnir thing get in, hopefully this weekend, I will be putting Deathstrider on ice with regards to anything that isn't a direct feature request or a bug. I don't want to say I'm moving on, but I need to take a long, hard break from this mod before I inevitably begin correcting problems that aren't there, slowly taking steps backwards and running the mod into the ground. I'm aware I've said I'd be icing Deathstrider multiple times in the past, but I really can't take this anymore. I am genuinely tired of this mod. It's time to stop and do something else for a couple of months. Relax, the mod isn't dead. I have not given it permission to die.
WHO WHAT WHERE WHY
[2023-05-19]
It's time to ramble about the individual elements that make up the mod and the thoughts behind them. I am going to sperg out and possibly pat myself on the back, and you can't stop me. Things listed are in no particular order.
Solomon
We've seen all kinds of protagonists. We've seen badass commandos (Trailblazer), we've seen funny magical dragons (Guncaster), we've even seen interdimensional mercenaries (Bullet-Eye). That doesn't even begin to scrape the surface of the protagonist list Doom modders have come up with. But, when you think about it, no one's really thought about playing as Death. At least to my knowledge. Fun fact: I didn't come up with the name "Solomon". Pillowblaster did. Initially, Solomon was just a lich mugshot for an HDest skin. I never planned for him to become the Reaper. Once I began working on DS, one of the first problems that I had to solve was who the protagonist would be. Took me less than a minute to figure it out.
About a month has passed between the previous paragraph and this one, and I'm happy it has, because my vision for the world of Deathstrider has somewhat changed. Initially, Solomon was supposed to be this carefree lolareyouserious character. But that felt a bit... weak. It made it difficult to establish an emotional connection with the protagonist. As the Deathstrider universe changed and overall became somewhat darker, I felt that Solomon needed to change as well. Nowadays I imagine him as a stoic character with sharp wit, having a strong sense of self-awareness and duty, as seen in some of the lore. If I were to put an alignment on him, I'd say he's somewhere around Neutral Good, which explains the spell mechanics.
Honestly, I feel like a lot of people skimp on making their protagonists likeable. Look, fellas, a strong independent protag, regardless of sex, means fuck all if they have the personality of a pet rock and never go out of their way to do "out of character" things (example: Solomon petting Eddie). Ironically enough, it makes the player character feel like an NPC, because they feel too rigid in their personality. That's why I wanted to go beyond superficial characteristics for Solomon. Sure, he's a super cheesy stereotype as far as "edgy" characters go. I mean, he's the Grim Reaper, technically. To offset all that cheese, I felt that I had to make him feel more human. Less speshul. Dare I say relatable. Someone who you, as the player behind the screen, could possibly look up to. So when you stop and think about the lore, the world of Deathstrider, Solomon's role in it, you can feel that you're not just a faceless hero simply following an objective marker.
Kel V'Zash, the Deathstrider, Omicron-82
So the ship's story is kind of interesting. I greatly enjoyed playing Freelancer and its Discovery Mod. I love the concept of precursor civilizations. I wanted something like this for Deathstrider. Mystery is good as it makes you ask questions. The more questions the lore answers, the more questions you want to ask. Alas, it's a thin line between answering ALL of the questions and leaving the player with nothing. Thing is, however, when you say "this civilization is gone", you close the book, meaning any further questions would be pointless in practice as it's obvious they won't get answered, especially stuff like "are they still here?", and if they're no longer here, why does anything else related to said civilization even matter? Well, the Kel V'Zash may be gone. ...But then who made the archive megastructure and massive fucking star disappear? Forget that, what is their goal even? If the Deathstrider was meant to protect the archive, why did it let Solomon in?
Maybe one day I will expand upon that. I have some good ideas, but I need to refine them.
Another thing inspired by Freelancer's Discovery mod is the system, Omicron-82. I don't recall if the system still exists in the mod, but back when it did it was a badlands system with exactly one faction occupying it: the Phantoms. Little information about them, always hostile, fuckhuge base in the center of the (dark) system, advanced weaponry that melts your ship within seconds, and so on. It made me shit bricks, so I immediately associate that name with the unknown, DANGER DANGER DANGER and that intensifying sense in the back on my head that I really need to get the fuck outta there.
Time & Magic
Although I haven't read many Pratchett books, I was nevertheless inspired by them. Anyone who has read his works probably immediately though of Discworld's Death character when reading Time's lore, what with the whole allcaps thing. Yes, the inspiration is correct. The atmosphere in the Discworld series inspired most of the mod's original atmosphere what with all the humorous item lores and such. That will not change. I very much would like to keep things dark but not too dark. Some tongue-in-cheek humour definitely lightens things up. As for Time and Magic, I felt that having two completely contrasting entities central to the whole story was appropriate in the semi-fantasy world of Deathstrider. And just because it felt like it'd have made things better, I decided to make the two very close. Time cares very much about Magic and vice versa. So much that it was mainly his idea to enlist your help when things began to get out of hand.
AceCorp
The more lore I write about AceCorp, the more my dislike for where it's going grows. When AceCorp Engineering started out, it was supposed to be this company completely comprised of nerds. Even its slogan was "for the hell of it". I'd compare it to Black Mesa, but unlike that one there are no masters behind it. The engineers are their own gods. For a while, that worked. But as AceCorp expanded and it started manufacturing more dangerous technology, I began feeling like I was just doing UAC 2: Electric Boogaloo. I recently watched Robocop and noticed a concerning amount of similarities between ACE and OCP with the whole "AceCorp Engineering produces everything". Sadly, I don't think there's much to be done about it. The main difference I suppose is that AceCorp isn't despotic. They have zero interest in personal profit because they don't need profit. ACE's goal is to advance humanity even at the risk of complete annihilation through abuse of dangerous time manipulation technologies. The company itself is not really responsible for how people use its technology, though. And if things go to shit, there's always the killswitch. Besides, with former WizCom Thomas Rykland - the hero of Avernus - currently in charge, I'm sure the company is in good hands.
The Black Death
Oh yeah, we're going to talk about this bitch. This cunt right here. This massive fucking dipshit.
Originally she was meant to just be the soul/voice of the Executioner, with only minimal backstory of her existing, merely to provide some context. I never intended for this character to become part of the deep lore. But since I can't shut the fuck up about vampires, and my brain certainly won't stop coming up with ideas for her in particular, a lore expansion was only inevitable.
But before I explain more about Miss Genocide here, I need to talk vampires. Hey, I warned you. But no, we're not talking about the Twilight kind. Frankly, we're not talking about the Blade kind either. Nor the True Blood kind. For better or worse, my archetype for these night prowlers stems from Underworld. But only partially. It's really a combination of sources. I liked the whole portrayal of vampires in Underworld, where they had their own society, relatively disconnected from the humans, with their own problems and rivals. They also had a lot of elegance, I give 'em that. Aristocratic motherfuckers. Ok, that's all well and good, but WE NEED MORE POWER. Despite the elegance, I also like my vampires intimidating and dangerous. So I decided to make the Black Death a bloodthirsty warrior, in every sense of the word, and make her responsible for the deadliest event in human history. Kinda metal, innit?
Still, that was kind of mediocre. As time passed and ideas rolled in my head, I figured that, given Solomon's age, surely they would have met, right? Well yes. The two definitely know each other. Them meeting was most certainly not a coincidence. I'm not going to say more because it'd be spoilers, as the Black Death lore needs to be unlocked and has 3 chapters, but I'll just say that she is perhaps the secondary antagonist in the universe's lore, after the demons, and even that is debatable.
All in all I absolutely love this character for reasons that should be obvious by now. However, expanding her lore further would have to be done carefully. Things are getting DEEP.
Avernus
That place gets mentioned a lot in the lore. What is it? Where is it? It's the capital city of the human dominion in space. The main purpose of this location is to provide a background for some the mod's elements and be a central "conflict" that a large portion of humanity dealt with at some point. Terrorists had the capital under siege for some unexplained reason, probably with the intent of taking it over.
The inspiration for the name, among other things, comes from Shogo, which has a city with the same name. There's really not much to talk about when it comes to Avernus. There is no deep meaning behind it.
Void Eye
Even though I was never much of a blur user back when I played HDest, I nevertheless felt that the Precious added some contrasting flavor to the mod. I needed something like this for DS. Ironically enough, the Eye didn't appear in the mod until much later. It was planned to be added early on, but it never materialized because I had set out to make the artifact so stupid powerful and scary that I shot a bit too high and missed the mark. I had no ideas. Eventually, it kinda hit me one day: what if it appeared from rifts? Okay, that's half the solution. Now what about the effect? Well... I never figured that part out. So I went with the first thing that came to mind: time freezing. Thing is, I'm kind of glad I did because A) it ended up just as powerful as I'd hoped, and B) it fit the lore perfectly.
For the visual effects, I wanted to make it look creepy. Something that when you see it you'd go "I don't like the way it's looking at me". It had to feel menacing and evil. Sucking out light, pulling you in, and evaporating your blood all seemed evil enough. And let's not forget about the tendrils.
Pandora's Box
The box wasn't supposed to be as scary as I ended up making it. Somehow I'm more creeped out by that thing than I am of the Void Eye. I came up with the lore in like twenty seconds. First thing that ran through my mind was "this doesn't make any fucking sense whatsoever". It was perfect. It was... CHAOS.
It's an artifact with exactly zero information on it. The fact that the only thing you know for certain is that you need to dispose of it immediately adds to that feeling "bad things are going to happen". As far as I'm concerned, I did a great job with it, even if somewhat by accident.
Funny thing is, though, I came up with an idea on how to expand the box's lore as I wrote this paragraph and tie it to DEEP LORE better. We'll see where I go with that one eventually.
CONTRACT TERMINATED
[2023-04-13]
This entry was supposed to come out over a week ago, but I got sidetracked playing Cosmoteer. Space game fun. Anyway, missions.
I am going to go on a hunch and presume you have played either Skyrim or Fallout 4. If you have, then you probably know the issues first-hand. I am talking about the radiant quests. In DS, contracts were supposed to be a way to make a quick buck and make things somewhat more interesting, but instead they ended up being "ANOTHER SETTLEMENT NEEDS YOUR HELP", only even more linear. Bounty contracts were things you were meant to do anyway, only you got paid for it now. Slowly my reaction to receiving a contract notification went from "ooooh money" to "oh fuck off, this shit again" They weren't even challenging to begin with, just... boring.
And so, enter missions. Well, missions and events, to be precise, as I decided that not all of them would give money. Most of them do affect alignment, however. In order to expand the already limited boundaries of what I could do, I had to step over the "fairness" line. Missions are intended to be punishing, dare I say even bullshit at times, particularly the Tiberium one (aka Trollberium, for a reason). I try to follow a couple of guidelines when designing missions (listed from most important to least important):
- Have at least 1 victory condition;
- Give positive alignment for completing them and negative for ignoring them;
- Have long-term or permanent effects for either outcome. Which one it is depends on whether or not you encounter the same mission again;
- Require either some form of exploration or interaction with the world;
- Make things more difficult for the player so ignoring is not as trivial;
Although balanced, missions can potentially be impossibly unfair due to circumstances beyond my control. It's not possible to account for every single map quirk or galaxy brain gimmick mappers come up with, although for the most part they should work fine. This is why they are optional. I decided very early on not to make them part of core gameplay, only intending for them to add to the gameplay. With that in mind, merchant artifacts will possibly see several patches rebalancing the amount of money they give, as right now they are the only way to make money, barring certain addons (see Zhs2's addon webpage; link in the addons page).
Despite being an overall improvement, missions are still on the edge of being feature creep, and I would consider them such if not for the fact that they somehow fit into the universe of Deathstrider conceptually. Ironically, that's what I thought about contracts as well. Trust me, it will totally work this time.
AMMO-B-GONE
[2023-03-04]
So recently I implemented a rather controversial change - the removal of ammo. As with pretty much every feature put out there, the sound of it clenched many an asshole. Over 120 commits later in about a week, the change got merged from the experimental branch into master. So far it has been well-received. It was a really rough start, with several people claiming they don't like the sound of it or having concerns about balance, which lead to a notable degree of discouragement at first. Some of the concerns were valid, such as exploration taking a hit (did not happen) or me balancing it for slaughterwads (did not happen either), while other concerns were purely based on hypothetical scenarios. In my experience, reality almost never matches the expectations when it comes to development. Very few things I announced when first starting work on the experimental branch lived through to see the merge. Some things got thrown out, others got reworked extensively. It's impossible to give objective feedback on something that doesn't yet exist, much less something you have not played.
"Okay, but why?", you may ask. Let me tell you why. Deathstrider claims to be a tactical gameplay mod. That is, quite frankly, BALDERDASH. For a long time now I have struggled to apply any tactics or strategic planning. In fact, that is the primary reason why I played only slaughtershit with it. Because that was the only scenario in which I had to strategize in order to not get clapped out of the timeline. It leaned too much on the power fantasy than the tactics. By MAP06 I used to have most of my gear set up, so the rest of the mapset usually went by in the most boring way imaginable. Not to mention the hoarding. Don't get me started on the hoarding. Every single run I ended with 400 kg worth of ammo on me and 299.97 kg in the supply pod. Every single time. And usually I'd just drop the mapset by MAP20 because it simply got too boring. Balance was thoroughly fucked. And that's because it's hard to balance RNG. The spawners also didn't help me much because almost every energy weapon spawn was a Fenris. Well thanks, but I already have one. The shotgun spawns were also useless as I usually already had an upgraded Mortis or Vengeance, making the weapon spawns just extra ammo. However, changing the spawn rates was out of the question because either that meant spawning nothing, potentially screwing over the player early in the game, or shifting the weapons in favor of even more powerful weapons. That's for the weapon spawns. Those got replaced with artifacts that you can cash in at the merchant. Ammo, on the other hand, got completely nuked. Half of the problem with ammo is that some maps just love spamming you with stuff like rocket boxes or batteries, and more often than not it was ammo you could not even utilize to begin with.
That said, the purpose of this change was to give players full control over their loadout instead of having to rely on RNJesus to bless them with a good spawn and stop screwing them over with bad spawns, and additionally to force some form of progression instead of lucking out and finding a Gungnir on MAP02, trivializing the rest of the boss encounters. This had an interesting side effect, however. Due to the removal of ammo, the player began facing empty secret sectors. Now that's a bummer. Forcing items to spawn in those sectors was out of the question because A) it's kind of convoluted to implement and B) defeats the purpose of the entire change. So I had a different idea. Enter Reaper Shards. They are every hardcore player's best friend. Shards spawn in empty secret sectors and upon activation act as a checkpoint. Should you die, you will respawn in place of a random shard, removing it in the process. This allows people to do hardcore runs with a limited safety net. We've all died to bullshit circumstances. This aims to help with that. Hey, maybe you just forgot to save.
All in all, I am happy with this change. It had the results I was hoping for and people also seem to like these new mechanics. I will continue improving the weak spots as I find more.