[Project] Tristania 2

[Reactor]

You see? I told you, these features aren't that difficult at all. It's just very confusing, since people in this forum don't like to call stuff on their original "name", they speak too "technical".

If you agree, I'd show you the whole list. You tell me where to find the solution, and there - programming is done for good (I hope). Don't make me tell how extremely hard it was to put all these in EoD, I'm surely happy that it's easier in GZHexen, so less trouble is expected with that. You don't need to do anything, I collect all the information, and if the feature STILL refuses to work, then I might ask it again.

Oh yea...I'm done with the "Loading level" image. See for yourself! (the original is 1024×768)

[wildweasel]

You see? I told you, these features aren't that difficult at all. It's just very confusing, since people in this forum don't like to call stuff on their original "name", they speak too "technical".

Then ask in the Editing forum how to do something and I'm sure someone will try to teach you how to do it. You don't just sit around and mope that you can't do it and only tell people who ask what you actually want to do.

I must also add that there are few things more insulting, to me, than to be told that a tutorial, that I went through great pains to make readable and followable to the newbiest of newbs, does not work, without a valid reason why.

[Snarboo]

This is not true. As I said before, I've already created not just a mod, but a whole game. In fact, Tristania 2 will not be a mod either, it will be a TC. I've managed to complete Tristania3D because the DieHard Wolferz community had lots of useful forum topics about how and what to modify in the source code. I know, Tristania3D is not ZHexen engine, but the emphasis is not on the engine, it's on the method of working.

So what is it you're looking for exactly? If you're looking for tutorials, they're out there. If you want to understand how decorate or ACS works, there's the wiki. Need help for a specific feature? Ask on the Editing subforum.

Short of asking someone else to do the hard work for you, help us help you. Everything you need to know is right at your finger tips, you just have to be willing to search and ask for it.

I am dedicated enough in stuff which are I am experienced with. As I said before, most of the developer teams consists someone for graphics, someone for sounds&music, and someone for programming. Otherwise, there wouldn't be much of a Doom either, if you'd just think John Carmack can do everything in the game all alone.

This sort of thing works in a professional project because there's money involved to keep everyone interested. An enthusiast mod project doesn't have that. Why should someone work on your project for no pay and no glory? The simple answer is that they won't. While there are megawad projects with multiple authors, these work because it's not just one party asking everyone to do the work for them, it's a community effort. The theme is also generally reigned in rather than some ridiculous megaproject such as this one.

If you're going to pitch a community project, you need to be very energetic and willing to get your hands dirty. You have to earn trust before people are likely to help you.

I'm also aware that ZDoom/GZDoom is compatible with Hexen as well, I am talking about the game itself - Hexen. If there are no hitscan weapons programmed into Hexen, I can't work on their appearance and behaviour either. But since you said there ARE hitscan weapons in Hexen, this was pretty useful information.

There's nothing to program because it's already in the engine. If you had read some of the posts in the thread, you'd understand that. I'm not sure what's stopping you from working on their appearance or behavior, either. Don't you have a design document, or at least some assets to work with in the meantime?

About the features: I'm not talking about universal features here. I'm talking about features, which are NOT in most ZDoom/Hexen etc. mods. For example, weather effects (snowing, raining, fog), timed levels (when the ticker goes zero, it's game over for you without dying), certain wounded enemies could collect health restore items, various traps which'll kill the enemies once stepped upon, walking enemies as opposed to all enemies standing still, sniper scope for the Kruger, and so on. BTW,these are all EoD features. So,as you may see, there are VERY few common features, at least this is what I saw so far...

All of these features you describe are either doable via ACS or decorate, or are already built in. Again, if you would just read your own thread, you'd understand that. I'm sure if you do a search on the forums you can either find examples or a thread where someone asked for help with a similar feature.

I'm not asking anything special, or doing the work for me, if it's already written somewhere,and I only need to copypasta is. It worked at the DieHard Wolferz forums, so I don't see the reason why wouldn't it work once again.

This isn't the Die Hard Wolfers Forum, so it's unrealistic to just barge in and ask people if you can just copy and paste their work. That's really unprofessional and lazy.

Edit:

You see? I told you, these features aren't that difficult at all. It's just very confusing, since people in this forum don't like to call stuff on their original "name", they speak too "technical".

What do you expect people to call them? It's better to refer to something by its actual "technical" name then use a confusing term that may not mean the same thing to two different people. If you want to get anything done, you're going to have to become intimately familiar with the terminology. That's a simple fact of any technical or hobbyist community such as this one.

[Gez]

GZHexen

I'm going to harp on this until it goes away. It's GZDoom. Even if you play Hexen with it, it's still GZDoom. There is no such thing as GZHexen.

The Doomsday Engine uses separate executables, so you have jDoom, jHeretic and jHexen. Chocolate Doom uses different executable, so you have chocolate-doom, chodolate-heretic, chocolate-hexen, and chocolate-strife.

ZDoom is one engine to play them all. There is "Doom" in the name but it could have been ZFlubalapo for all it matters. It doesn't stop being ZDoom just because you're not playing Doom with it.

[XutaWoo]

Y'know.

I wonder, if it was called GZDoom, GZHeretic, GZHexen, etc, what would we do about Skulltag?

presumably keep it the same because gzetc is pretty dumb in this situation

[Reactor]

I call it GZHexen, because it's shorter than writing "Hexen with GZDoom engine".

Then ask in the Editing forum how to do something and I'm sure someone will try to teach you how to do it. You don't just sit around and mope that you can't do it and only tell people who ask what you actually want to do.

OK, I will. I thought the project's own topic is the place where these should be discussed, but in this case, I'll ask about the features there.

The main problem is, most of the topics I came across are written in the same technical language I've already seen, and it's impossible to understand for a newbie. Here is an example:


Proper human language: Enemies collect health restore items

Nwqpxzpwcqiyuqs language: ACS DynaStrings for SBARINFO


Really. ACS DynaStrings for SBARINFO, that explains everything! Why is it better to use this terminology every time, even if it's completely unnecessary? You don't say "I'm putting this picture on the second vertex of the left sidedef of my room". Get my point?

I hope, wildweasel,that your tutorials are written in proper everyday language

This sort of thing works in a professional project because there's money involved to keep everyone interested. An enthusiast mod project doesn't have that. Why should someone work on your project for no pay and no glory? The simple answer is that they won't. While there are megawad projects with multiple authors, these work because it's not just one party asking everyone to do the work for them, it's a community effort. The theme is also generally reigned in rather than some ridiculous megaproject such as this one.

I can name quite a few professional projects where wasn't even a nickel involved. A LOT of free indie games, which have surprisingly good quality. And it's a million times harder than modding or TC-ing. And who said there won't be any glory? You really think I'd erase everyone else's name off the credits?
Interesting your viewpoint is. In this project forum, I came across quite a few topics, where more than one person was involved with creating the game. Now, either there are great amounts of megawad projects, or you're lying. I just showed you the most obvious one. Besides, if these features are written somewhere how to bring them to life, I will not ask anyone to do the work for me. If you say this project is ridiculous, then go ahead, and make something really fantastic, which isn't an umpteenth Doom-clone with different levels. I'm waiting.

This isn't the Die Hard Wolfers Forum, so it's unrealistic to just barge in and ask people if you can just copy and paste their work. That's really unprofessional and lazy.

Thanks, I already figured it out. At DieHard Wolfers, I could actually even understand some stuff written in the coding topics, and they were helpful too. It was not unprofessional and lazy, it had a purpose. If the copypasta method worked at EoD engine, so it does here when the feature remains unchanged along the whole game.

[Gez]

I call it GZHexen, because it's shorter than writing "Hexen with GZDoom engine".

Given your mod is a TC, does it matter that it's Hexen? No! If it were a Hexen mod that reasoning might apply, but here it doesn't.


Maybe you should say GZTristania?

Then ask in the Editing forum how to do something and I'm sure someone will try to teach you how to do it. You don't just sit around and mope that you can't do it and only tell people who ask what you actually want to do.

OK, I will. I thought the project's own topic is the place where these should be discussed, but in this case, I'll ask about the features there.

The main problem is, most of the topics I came across are written in the same technical language I've already seen, and it's impossible to understand for a newbie. Here is an example:


Proper human language: Enemies collect health restore items

Nwqpxzpwcqiyuqs language: ACS DynaStrings for SBARINFO

Your strawman argument went fishing in the Closed Feature Suggestion forum for a rejected thread. We're talking about the editing forum. You really shouldn't confuse both.

Examples of threads in the editing forum:
Globally altering how fast things decelerate in Doom
Disable running?
Question concerning FONTDEF

Is that Nwqpxzpwcqiyuqs language? Two of these examples are non-jargony phrases, the last only use jargon to ask a question about a specific feature.

Anyway, DECORATE is super simple. Really. Just start with the basics and work your way up. Start by defining a few trees and columns and other purely decorative items. The only knowledge you'll need for them will be:

• Editor number (the optional value after the actor's name)
• Height (basically, use the same as the sprite's)
• Radius (basically, use half the sprite's width)
• +SOLID (put that line if you want the object to be a solid obstacle, don't put it if you want the player and monster to walk through it)
• +SPAWNCEILING +NOGRAVITY (use that line if you want the object to be hanging from the ceiling like a chandelier for example

That's it for the flags and properties. Then the sprite. All you need to know if the naming convention (four-character identifier, 1-character frame, 1-character rotation), so your tree sprite will be called something like TREEA0 to mean it's the TREE sprite on the A frame and from all angles.

In the DECORATE code, you'll want to declare that this way: identifier, then frame, then duration. Use -1 for infinite duration if your sprite isn't animated. So:
TREE A -1

The complete code will look like this:

Code: Select all • Expand view

Actor TristaniaTree 1337
{
   Height 80
   Radius 24
   +SOLID
   States
   {
   Spawn:
      TREE A -1
      Stop
   }
}

Gee, that was super-hard.

[Reactor]

Well, the "ACS DynaStrings for SBARINFO" was just an example from the many other. Most of the jargon is really nearly impossible to understand. I mean...if I'm looking for a feature - say: "Enemies can pick up health restore items" - I simply can't locate it because the way it is written. So this is the main problem :S I hope if I show the features list, you can "decode" into GZDoom-language what is supposed to be done.

I shall try to get familiarized with the "decoratedshit", however, I don't see where can I define, for example, that a bottle of absinthe gives +25% health. If you don't create the code the way the program would understand, it'll crash...

Sure simple objects aren't that hard, I was not referring to this. I was referring to more complex features, for example, adding a scrollable text at the beginning of certain levels, or at the ending of the game.

[Nash]

Dude, stop whining FFS and learn it yourself. It's not that hard. I am an audio engineer and music producer by profession, and even I managed to figure out how to code things like this, this and this and this.

[Bouncy]

Even basic initiative on your part should've made this unnecessary. No offense.

[XutaWoo]

I shall try to get familiarized with the "decoratedshit", however, I don't see where can I define, for example, that a bottle of absinthe gives +25% health. If you don't create the code the way the program would understand, it'll crash...

Good thing you have an object to copy the code from and just replace values! Or, hell, just have the engine take the stuff from it and just replace what you want changed. Making items that give an amount of health different from that are as easy as changing one value in the actor definition.

Sure simple objects aren't that hard, I was not referring to this. I was referring to more complex features, for example, adding a scrollable text at the beginning of certain levels, or at the ending of the game.

Well, you have a point there. Scrolling text is hard as hell. But then again, that's only one method of displaying lots of text, and it requires a ton of tweaking to make sure it's not too fast or not too slow. But this is why you adapt to the engine; some engines just weren't designed for stuff like that, so you opt to do something different with the same function. Displaying plain text is easy, just something like Print(s:"Text.") with the s: to represent the stuff after it as text. Making more customized text is harder, but with proper pacing of learning it's one of the easiest things to do in ACS.

[Reactor]

OK OK Bouncy, Xuta You certainly got a point. I've already copypasta'd out some stuff which "mite" be useful indeed. Then, I bet, adding explosive barrels + behaviour in Hexen is also that easy. Or the hitscan weapons.

Now I'm looking for the sniper scope addition to certain weapons (Kruger and PAMR). So far I didn't find it, but maybe...

Scrolling text. Well, yes. This is one tough feature, I'm not sure I shall find this one. Lemme show you how it was solved in Tristania3D (EoD engine):



In Tristania3D, there were small bits of the story between levels (at level 7, level 12, level 21, level 25, and each of the secret levels). I bet this wouldn't be impossible in GZDoom-Hexen. If the scrollable text itself isn't working, perhaps adding multiple pictures with text on them should do the trick.

[XutaWoo]

Oh well yeah you can adjust the amount of pages for the Help! screen on the menu. Or concoct something like that in ACS with a lot less difficulty than scrolling text.

[Reactor]

Perfect!!! I wasn't really on "scrolling" rather than "pageing". It's just important that between some levels, there should be these "read this" blocks. I know, many people don't like long stories, but still...

[ibm5155]

One question, but why are you going to use a loading screen?