zdoomwarsiv1.5b.pk3

Overall:

-Redid HP Bars colors and their graphics so they're easier to see. Also made the refresh rate ten tics instead of one which ended up making the game use a lot less bandwith. Doing so made them drag a bit, but they would have done that anyway so it works out.

-Redid a lot of decorate and ACS to make it run a lot more smooth and to make the game less bandwith laden. The biggest decorate changes come from the removal of message sent items for the weapon summoners and the addition of idle states on HPBar units. The ACS Scripts have also been reorganized to occupy 100-145 instead of being scattered across time. 

-Implemented the colored classes. They take effect when there are two players of the same class so you can easily tell who is who. The colors are Red, Blue, Green, Yellow and Silver. 

-Compressed and downsized a lot of files which made the pk3 shrink from 30.9MB to about 15.5MB.

-Overall Bandwith usage is down by four times if not more in certain cases.

-Implemented a team mode with up to four teams being able to play at once.

-Made it so if you play the game with an unofficial faction, the game crashes.

-Redid all of the Hero Event images.

-Fixed the respawn bug relating to health regeneration.

-All Ghost units are now translucent so inexperienced players can tell what the ghost units are.

-Added more information on the Hud Message relating to a unit including their HP and if they can strike ghosts.

-Raised the two minute cooldown times to three. The reason behind this was because a lot of Strife, Virus and Heretic players were notorious for spamming heroes.

-Added a timer to overlap cooldown images to indicate how much time left until you may place the hero again.

-Attempted to fix the Obituaries. There are likely a few LMS obits that are still "harmless spell."

-Monsters now drop items! Depending on the class and their inherit abilities, certain monsters will have chances to drop items. For instance, Doom monsters have a chance to drop armor bonuses, Hexen monsters may drop Crystal Vials, Chex Slime Canisters, Heretic temporary invisibility, Virus temporary flight, and Strife Stamina Patches.

-Made new HUD as well. The old one is still accessable if you minimize the screen to standard resolution.

MapPack:

-This is still TBD.

-The wad has been converted into a .pk3. The size saved is about 8mb.

-The map pack can run independently again and does not require ZDWars to run anymore.

-Made 'Strife Keys List' toggle a 'Map List' image which shows a player the number and name of every map available along with the recommended minimum number of players for the map.

-Redid the map name introduction ACS to be a bit more clean. It also contains the information on the maps song if available.

Music Pack:

-All the files have been renamed to mirror their map names. IE: ZDWARS1 corresponds to ZDWARS1.

-The size has diminished from 83 to 75mb.

-All mp3s have been converted to .ogg

Balance changes:

Doom:

-Added a small counter to show the player how much armor they have left in their inventory.

-It now takes one Arch Vile to unlock a Cyberdemon. A lot of players were 'Cyber rushing' for the longest time to spam the Cyberdemon which threw off the balance of a game early on. The 45 hero mana from the Arch Vile really makes things more fair here.

-Dual Pain Elementals: Changed the cost to 42/14 from 40/14 and changed the retrofit price from 10 to 8. I think the retrofit raise price is obvious here. That is why the main price was changed as well.

-Zombiemen: Reduced their hp from 60 to 50.

-Cacodemon: Raised the projectile damage to (random(15,45)) from 5. The reason is because of the damage Wraith's balls and since the two units are similar, it makes things more fair.

-Spectres: Increased their cost to 7.

-Spider Mastermind: Raised their price to 75/70 from 70/60.

-Fixed soundbugs relating to the class. The pawn used to do Strife screams on death. 

Heretic:

-Fixed the bug that wouldn't allow Ophidians and Weredragons to ghost.

-Undead Ghost Knights: Added a translation from the green on their axe to red. This change was logical: why would they toss red axes if they hold green ones?

-Maulotaur: Gave them a chance after they drop below 2000 health to do the ground trail of pyre to essentially clear a path to get him out of melee jams.

-Barrage Weredragons: Nerfed their damage which did anywhere between 30-170hp (yikes!) to Damage ((2*random(10,17))). This makes them more tolerable for thier cost.

Hexen:

-Ettins: lowered their melee tics from 13 to 10.

-Swamp Stalkers: Nerfed the damage levels from doing around 20-90 to a fixed 14-30.

-Wraiths: Changed their melee from the native Hexen version which allowed Wraiths to drain a units health and increase theirs beyond their normal level of 330. To remedy this, made the melee damage 14,18 otherwise they would have needed a large price hike. Used Cacodemons to gauge their damage.

-Bishops: They now shoot a constant 4 shots. Damage has been adjusted accordingly. This was implemented due to astronomical lag levels caused by their attacks.

-Fixed the Heresiarch attacks being at full volume. 

Strife:

-Rebel/Acolyte Shots: Lowered the damage levels from 14 to a random value between 5 to 9.5. The balance and change is based off the damage Zombiemen and Shotgunners do. Their levels now properly equate out to about 1.5-2 Zombiemen instead of a solid 2.-3.5.

-Stalkers: Reduced their HP from 150 to 120.

-Sentinels: Cost increased from 7/1 to 8/1. The main reason was because of the fact that they do fire nonstop.

-Reavers: Their shot took off around 30-60hp to players. To fix this, I gave the player a resistance to the shots so they take half damage.

-Templars: Raised the price from 14/6 to 16/6. The reason is because they now are more balanced in terms of cost to Chaos Serpents.

-Sniper Templars: Raised the price from 18/7 to 32/8; lowered their projectile damage from (120) to (90). The reason for the change is pretty apparent, but I'll just say that they were grossly overpowered for their cost. They now are balanced in relation to the Rail Revenant.

-The Inquisitor: Restored the ability to fly. Also raised the cost to 80/75 from 80/70 as a result.

-The Entity: It shoots more often and has a Sigil 3 based attack, and the segments are more likely to spawn now. It also costs 100/80 because of said changes.

-Pawn: Added the falling noise native to the StrifeGuy and added the 'XDeath' state.

-Bug: When using the number to select weapons, the Sniper Templar wouldn't reappear after being cycled through once.

Chex:

-Chex now has decals for their slimeballs! They actually look pretty great.

-The Player Pawns chance to spawn a spore now has a flemslime added to it as well and the Chexwarrior also gets immunity from environmental damage. 

-Common Flemoids: Changed their melee damage from random(4, 8) to random(4, 7) on the upgraded flemoids.

-Bipedals: Lowered their melee damage from (random(8,15) to 5 and slowed their attack rate by 4 tics.

-Larva: They now do a constant 7 damage from 7,12.

-Cyclops: Raised their melee damage from random(6,14) to random(7,14) and increased their cost to 6 mana.

Bugs:

Meteors not in sight of enemies would crash the game. Fixed by adding an idle state to meteors and altering the decorate a bit.

Virus:

-Greater Prisms: Raised their A_Jump to do the spread shot from 128 to 100.

-Turrets: Gave them all Painchances from 64-56 depending on the upgrade levels and they now all cost 1 hero mana. The reasoning behind this was due to a common tactic of spamming turrets followed by heroes. The players should be penalized by a hero mana so this will not happen anymore. As for painchance, they fired nonstop and for that price that is a pretty outrageous feature.

-Viruses: Raised their VirusShot projectile from (random(42,52)) to a steady (55).

-Prisms: Their attack state is now 16 tics raised from 8. May adjust the shot damage at a later date if this isn't enough.

-Meshwalkers: Lowered the 3rd upgrade hp amount 1750 to 1650. It makes the unit more constant compared to the 1st upgrade and Meshwalkers became virtually indestructable when double upgraded.

-Felix: The 'Alpha Strike' attack HP has been raised from 1000 to 1125 to be exactly 1/4 of their hp.

Bugs:

The pawn would make the Doom Marine's landing sounds if the player hit the ground from a certain height. This has been corrected.

Future Features and Scrapped Concepts:

-4 games modes that are completely unique from the original counterparts: CTF, One-Flag CTF, Domination, and Invasion.

-Wanted to give Bishops a Melee attack like in Hexen, but I do not posess the knowledge required to make it exactly like in hexen.

There are likely a few more things, but I can't for the life of me remember the subtile changes and things I've scrapped.

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