*** The "ask a miscellaneous editing question" thread ***

scifista42 said:

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Ribbiks said:

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Thanks guys.

How can I make a bridge in vanilla or Boom that can be passed over and under? It's okay if it looks awful.

Here's an illustration (in Boom):

http://www.mediafire.com/download/tkvu6340xdna93b/3dbridgetest.wad

1) We start out with a floor raised 128 mu, functioning as our bridge, without any lower textures.

2) We use "Create Fake Floor and Ceiling" so that this floor is drawn at ground level and no HOMs appear.

3) Linedef triggers are used to quickly raise the invisible floor to bridge level when the player moves to an area where it can be crossed, and to quickly lower the floor to ground level when the player should be able to pass under it. (This breaks in multiplayer.) Use distant dummy sectors to keep the workings of the bridge silent.

4) Midtextures on "floating lines" act as the surface of the bridge.


Mine looks horrible.

http://i.imgur.com/IF9uKYG.png
http://i.imgur.com/tPHyA7S.png

New Question:

Is there an ACS Script to disable an actor from using a projectile?

My plan to very temporarily force a monster to melee a target for a triggered event. I tried searching the Wiki and have no found much luck except for increase melee range in APROP_MeleeRange.

I can only think of this workaround: You can spawn a Patrol Point on top of the intended target, and use Thing_SetGoal to send the monster to walk towards the patrol point (do not set its target yet). The script must keep running and constantly checking distance between the monster and the intended target (you can compute it via GetActorX and GetActorY), and when the monster walks close enough to the target that the distance is shorter than the monster's melee range, then you can use Thing_Hate to make the monster attack the target. Since the monster will be within melee range, it should naturally choose melee attack.

scifista42 said:

I can only think of this workaround: You can spawn a Patrol Point on top of the intended target, and use Thing_SetGoal to send the monster to walk towards the patrol point (do not set its target yet). The script must keep running and constantly checking distance between the monster and the intended target (you can compute it via GetActorX and GetActorY), and when the monster walks close enough to the target that the distance is shorter than the monster's melee range, then you can use Thing_Hate to make the monster attack the target. Since the monster will be within melee range, it should naturally choose melee attack.

Thanks for the advise. Unfortunately it may not work out thanks to Brutal Doom. The purpose of this event is for a BaronOfHell to rip a friendly marine in half. The fatality doesn't perform on the scripted marines but does to the active Marines you can release in BD.

Unfortunately Thing_Hate does not seem to register when it comes to the Marines the kill animations applies to. What I have done is simply stuck them both in a closed off room close together in melee range. Both are Dormant until the door to them is opened (using the door script executes) they activate, the Baron's melee range is increased, the Marine's health drops to 5%, his speed also reduced significalty and both are set to Thing_Hate. But as you know, Thing_Hate is futile in this case.

What I believe goes wrong is that the Baron doesn't react until he takes pain. Sadly the Marine's melee hits don't cause pain very easily. This enables the Marine to run around in circles *just* enough (even in a small closed off room) to cause the Baron to start throwing projectiles despite my scripts telling him he can melee even further. Another issue that can happen, although this is much much rarer, is the marine failing to cause pain long enough for the slow animated opening door to finish and the player has the opportunity to shoot the Baron and take the attention away from the ally Marine.

So what could fix it all is simply switching the Baron's projectiles off for about 5 seconds tops :P

Chezza said:

The fatality doesn't perform on the scripted marines but does to the active Marines you can release in BD.

That's probably because scripted marines are not a Brutal Doom specific class, they are not programmed to be ever fatalitied, and so they never will be. If that's the case, you would have to use the BD ally marine in place of the default scripted marine.

Is there any port with better dynamic light functionality than ZDoom? Is it possible to implement more flexible lighting via GZDoom shaders? It would be a lot of fun to work directional lighting and dynamic shadows into some doom maps.

Chezza said:

Thanks for the advise. Unfortunately it may not work out thanks to Brutal Doom. The purpose of this event is for a BaronOfHell to rip a friendly marine in half. The fatality doesn't perform on the scripted marines but does to the active Marines you can release in BD.

Unfortunately Thing_Hate does not seem to register when it comes to the Marines the kill animations applies to. What I have done is simply stuck them both in a closed off room close together in melee range. Both are Dormant until the door to them is opened (using the door script executes) they activate, the Baron's melee range is increased, the Marine's health drops to 5%, his speed also reduced significalty and both are set to Thing_Hate. But as you know, Thing_Hate is futile in this case.

What I believe goes wrong is that the Baron doesn't react until he takes pain. Sadly the Marine's melee hits don't cause pain very easily. This enables the Marine to run around in circles *just* enough (even in a small closed off room) to cause the Baron to start throwing projectiles despite my scripts telling him he can melee even further. Another issue that can happen, although this is much much rarer, is the marine failing to cause pain long enough for the slow animated opening door to finish and the player has the opportunity to shoot the Baron and take the attention away from the ally Marine.

So what could fix it all is simply switching the Baron's projectiles off for about 5 seconds tops :P

Try creating a baron that doesn't have projectile attacks via DECORATE or whatever.

rdwpa said:

Try creating a baron that doesn't have projectile attacks via DECORATE or whatever.

I thought about that, but chances are the new Baron won't count as an activator to the kill move. I'm making the assumption the BD modification is likely to be very specific to a monster I.D. which the Wad itself chooses what can implement the fatalities, not the assets themselves.

Also another minor problem with that is how the Baron will lose its projectiles when it fights the player.

Oh well, I suspected if there was a solution to this unique little challenge of mine I would of found it by now. I will just have to keep messing with the creature placement to decrease the failure rate.

Brutal Doom is not magical, neither is DECORATE. It's certainly possible to create a BD Baron modification without a projectile attack and not interferring with the original BD Baron or any other monster class and without side effects.

As for losing the projectile attack when fighting the player - you can simply remove the modified Baron right after the cutscene and immediately place a standard Baron in his place.

Perhaps that's something I should experiment with. A unique Baron with no Projectiles may be a fun challenge if I close the door behind the player.

I have yet another new question. I'm using GZDoom Builder, I have a limited viewing range which can be a nuisance when working in large rooms. Is there a way to increase my view distance within the editor?

*Edit* Nevermind, I should of looked at Preferences first.

Quick question: I downloaded Doom Builder 2, since I wanted to try out building Doom maps again (after about 20 years), but I'm having a problem. I am unable to move anything by right-clicking. This is what both the video tutorial and the downloaded tutorial say I should do, but nothing moves and I just get the preferences window to pop up. Do I have some setting on that locks everything? It doesn't matter if I select stuff first and then try to move, or the other way around...

Hmm. Try holding the mouse button down and dragging, rather than clicking and releasing.

That's what I'm doing, which makes me wonder if some options is checked somewhere... No matter if I click once or click and drag, I just get the preference window up. When I click and drag, it doesn't pop up until I release the button.

Designing good, challenging fights is the aspect of level design that interests me most, and one thing I'd like to do is experiment with custom monsters. The stock D2 bestiary has some room for non-redundant custom monsters: a mid-tier flying monster quite a bit stronger than the caco (in attack strength/style, not necessarily HP) but not a "boss"; a versatile ultra-fast-projectile mid-tier monster that can play the immediate threat role and can work as a turret or a seeder of infighting chaos, sort of like Valiant's HK replacement and super manc; a mid-tier splash damage monster that can be a menace in claustrophobic spaces (replacing the spiderdemon to avoid the hilarity of suicidal rocket zombies); just to name a few.

This should be a natural avenue of exploration for many -- there are a lot of fresh new scenarios you can build around good custom monsters. But custom monster use seems quite rare, and a significant percent of it is made up by gratuitous "Hey let's haphazardly stuff custom monsters in this map just because we know how to use them!" sort of deals.

psydome said:

That's what I'm doing, which makes me wonder if some options is checked somewhere... No matter if I click once or click and drag, I just get the preference window up. When I click and drag, it doesn't pop up until I release the button.

Try changing the edit button from right click to a key that isn't used elsewhere.

I'm considering using multiple texture resources in an upcoming WIP. Let's say one of them includes a COLORMAP lump along with its textures, and the other has nothing but textures. More specifically, they are arch_tx and pk1 from this thread.

Right now this is the only error I'm getting: http://i.imgur.com/XGFQNIZ.png. So I'm assuming I'll be able to use these together without much difficulty, as long as I steer clear of the "ROCK35".

Are there any circumstances where integration might be less smooth, even when one of the texture packs doesn't necessitate drastic palette changes -- say if I wanted to use arch_tx and cc4-tex together, which both have their own COLORMAP lumps? Any common technical errors to avoid?

1. Is there a standard for how far from the playable area a control sector should be?

2. Name a good example of a zip/pk3 where libraries, Decorate, includes, etc. are used. The map authors and final compiler really knew what they were doing.

1. Not at all. Only take into consideration that the further it is, the more it will "zoom out" default automap view, whether you wish it or not.
2. KDIZD, Ultimate Simplicity, Brutal Doom, Doom Expanded.

Thank you, scifista42.

I have a question regarding Slade, modifying custom resources such as Monsters.

Lately I have been having a couple issues with one monster in particular, the "Hell-Smith" by Tormentor and Eriance (sprites by Raven Software) available in Realm667. This monster, although flagged with +BOSS in Decorate is very sensitive to pain. Every chaingun bullet puts him in his pain state, although he has a reasonable tolerance against rockets and plasma shots.

So I did a little research, found the references to vanilla doom's monsters pain chance and decided to make the Hells Smith's Pain Chance the same as the Spider Mastermind or Cyberdemon. But to no avail. So I tried various values from low numbers to very high. None seems to make a difference. So now I'm under the impression something in his coding is overriding its pain chance values. But what? I thought being a +Boss in the fight place it would significantly lower its Pain Chance by default. I do know I am successfully editing and saving the file, I managed to 2x scale the monster and its projectiles in addition to modify its sounds.

I'm running it with Brutal Doom v19 which may or may not be responsible for this. Anyone have any ideas what it's so damn sensitive to the chaingun regardless of the pain chance I give it?


**Second Question**

The Hell Smith and Monsters like UACBOT do an incredible amount of damage with their explosives. I wanted to lower that but it doesn't seem to make much of an effect. I looked at their decorate file and what I believe are their explosive projectiles do something like 30 damage but in game it does so much more, some one shot killing if you don't have more than 100 health and armour.

Is this possibly at fault of Brutal Doom or is there more to the code than I understand?

1. PainChance number determines the probability of entering Pain state whenever the monster is hit. The strength of the hit doesn't matter at all - it can be a chaingun bullet, or it can be an incredibly powerful custom projectile, the probability will be the same. Given the chaingun's rapid fire, pain chance can be triggered more easily than if you use for example a rocket. PainChance 0 means zero probability, PainChance 256 means 100% probability, and numbers between them will give probability according to this formula: "probability = PainChance / 256". BOSS flag doesn't influence pain chance.

2. The Damage property of a projectile is normally being multiplied by a random number between 1 and 8 when inflicting damage to an actual target. So, if Damage = 30, the real damage will range from 30 to 240. This randomization can be disabled if you put the number into normal brackets, like this: Damage (30). Also, any instance of A_Explode (or similar function) will inflict additional splash damage, see if you can find it among death states of the projectile.

3. Why don't you disable Brutal Doom at least temporarily while testing DECORATE codes not designed for it? That way you can find out for sure. Nevertheless, I don't think BD would influence custom monsters in this case. But I'm not absolutely sure.

scifista42 said:

1. PainChance number determines the probability of entering Pain state whenever the monster is hit. The strength of the hit doesn't matter at all - it can be a chaingun bullet, or it can be an incredibly powerful custom projectile, the probability will be the same. Given the chaingun's rapid fire, pain chance can be triggered more easily than if you use for example a rocket. PainChance 0 means zero probability, PainChance 256 means 100% probability, and numbers between them will give probability according to this formula: "probability = PainChance / 256". BOSS flag doesn't influence pain chance.

2. The Damage property of a projectile is normally being multiplied by a random number between 1 and 8 when inflicting damage to an actual target. So, if Damage = 30, the real damage will range from 30 to 240. This randomization can be disabled if you put the number into normal brackets, like this: Damage (30). Also, any instance of A_Explode (or similar function) will inflict additional splash damage, see if you can find it among death states of the projectile.

3. Why don't you disable Brutal Doom at least temporarily while testing DECORATE codes not designed for it? That way you can find out for sure. Nevertheless, I don't think BD would influence custom monsters in this case. But I'm not absolutely sure.

Regarding the first issue I guess I ought to try a 0 Pain Chance to test my suspicions. I will also try values between 1 to 256, thanks for the information there.

The second issue: Brackets makes the damage static? Awesome! You're a legend mate! This will come in handy for sure.

Finally your third point is logical. I will test it without BD. Thank your for your help, it's really appreciated.

iirc I remember the Hellsmith has max pain chance to "counter" any damage done to it, becoming invincible while doing so. It was made for a specific arena where you couldn't just plink away from it and avoid its counterattack.

So, unless you're planning on changing the Pain state entirely, it would probably be wiser to use it more suited to its design regardless of if you change its pain chance or not.

Yup it's confirmed. Brutal Doom (v19 at least) overrides Monster's pain chance for particular weapons. The Chainsaw and Minigun can render 1v1 Boss Battles near useless if the player is aware how.

In regards to the custom monster's damage, I finally found how the high damage is produced thanks to searching for A_Explode. What was confusing is how he had one projectile breaking into various others with their own stats. But after reading through it carefully I finally understood how it worked. Now the explosives are a bit more manageable.

Are Build Engine-like "floor decals" possible in G/ZDoom? If so, can they be placed into a map with a thing? I'm pretty sure I've seen them in some wad a while ago, but not sure if I was just seeing things.

Is it possible to re-enable head-bobbing in demos that remove it -- safely, as in with no de-syncs?

129thVisplane said:

Are Build Engine-like "floor decals" possible in G/ZDoom? If so, can they be placed into a map with a thing? I'm pretty sure I've seen them in some wad a while ago, but not sure if I was just seeing things.

I think the only way to get anything that lies flat on the floor like in a Build game is to use voxels. You can make all the voxel actors you want iirc.

rdwpa said:

Is it possible to re-enable head-bobbing in demos that remove it -- safely, as in with no de-syncs?

It should be, AFAIK it's purely a visual effect that doesn't use RNG. The config variable responsible for head bobbing is "player_bobbing". I don't know if -config parameter with a custom config that changed only this variable would work. There might be a better solution, but I don't know.

I think I'll start a thread in the Demos section. I tried a lot of config stuff, and it seems like I can alter basic things like the view, but the bobbing settings in the original demo override whatever I do.

--

Let's say I want to do the following things:

1) Use the Afrit.

2) Reduce the Lost Soul's HP a bit and replace the sprite with the one used in Valiant.

What steps would I need to take (with a Boom-format map)? I poked around in Whacked but the process to make modifications like this doesn't seem intuitive.