Future of BYOC Post v2.0

Future of BYOC after v2.0

We've been taking a month or two long break after the latest update, but there's some future goals we got.

We want to make smaller and more frequent updates to keep things fresh & manageable by gradually adding new classes & features.

Here's some of our General goals and extra goals for BYOC in the future.

General goals

• Fixing bugs

Self explanatory, fix any bugs we can. Thank you for reporting them when given the chance. However, bugs that only happen online with sane looking code are the biggest hurdle. Looking at you, Stupid Rat Jelly projectiles.

• Gzdoom Version

V2.0 for Gzdoom will come, eventually.  The updates for this version will still be less frequent. The Zandronum version always takes precedence.

• New Classes

We got so many of them, but we've always had ideas floating around or classes being developed between version releases. Having versions drop more often should help with getting them out to everyone sooner.

• Addon Classes

Thanks to Binary, additive SBARINFO elements are coming soon to both Zandronum 3.2 and GzDoom, making addon classes a possibility with no limitations.

When the feature rolls out on Zandronum 3.2's next beta build (or release) we'll look into having an example addon class that teaches people how to add a character into the mod's custom select menu, be able to use BYOC's weapon & ammo pickups, use other general BYOC functions, have unique HUD elements, etc

• Internal changes to Alternate Classes

Having secret skins trigger new classes through our custom menu is cute, but it's hard to maintain. It will sometimes break online as well if your connection is bad. And it's ultimately hard to change in single player. 

These will be changed to work as a regular class making it easier to work with, but you'll still be able to select them the same way through the character select menu. This will be important for multi weapon alt classes going forward.

• Skin dependent projectiles & summons

A new feature is rolling out in Zandronum 3.2, supporting custom properties for skins. This can be used by BYOC to allow for custom actors to be used instead. The prime suspect is PTG and his piglets, who could be altered by a skin which requests for them to be changed into more appropriate miniature versions of themselves. 

For custom weapons, those would better off being part of an addon class rather than a custom skin property, but we'll see about this in the future.

Extra goals

• More rooms for the Test Map

It's cute having these rooms that show more about the characters in BYOC, but our bandwidth is admittedly low and we're better off adding gameplay stuff instead.

Might be cool getting external help to create rooms for the more well known characters, but we'd hold our breath about this for now.

• New menu(s)

Unfortunately, we know some people don't play on widescreen, so all our menus have been limited because of it, but that might change in the future for some well deserved extra space.

Also, we're looking into changing the look on the menus that show information better and with more flair, compared to the currently ones I made with the Web Dev for Business experience.

• Cosmetics submissions

The way cosmetics are handled means it's unfortunately hard to add more cosmetics without modifying many files, which for us means it might be worth looking at accepting some fan submissions.

On the one hand, some of us think it'd be nice to allow for people to submit cool stuff to add, but we'd reserve the right to accept or deny these, which might create unecessary points of contention.