"Our Hero" during Cast Call

[Ed the Bat]

I've noticed that, during the cast call at the end of Doom II (and other games that use it), when "Our Hero" appears at the end, it will conform to the original Vanilla animations. That is to say, even if I was playing with a custom character class, it will still call the same animation frames that it would have by default, even if those aren't the frames used in this class' standard animations. It will also ignore properties such as Scale. What I'm seeing isn't the class I played as, but rather the "DoomPlayer" class using sprites from the class I played. And in most cases, it looks incorrect and downright nasty. In fact, the only method I've seen for changing this animation is to modify the player with DeHackEd -- the animation will conform to those changes. But that's still not a solution to what I'm aiming for.

I've even tried using MAPINFO to change the Intermission Doom2Cast to call other player classes instead of DoomPlayer, but I saw no change.

Is there something I'm doing incorrectly? Is there even a way to have it display the actual player's class?

[Graf Zahl]

Post your MAPINFO, then someone might tell you. The rest you described is just an inevitable limitation of the engine's inner workings. The class is DoomPlayer, after all, and if you use another, incompatible player class, it logically won't match if you replace the PLAY sprites.

[Ed the Bat]

Hmm... either some of my information is outdated or I was simply mistaken. Now I'm finding that the animations are being honored properly if I specify the playerclass explicitly. I quickly drummed up a custom player and had the intermission explicitly call this class.

Code: Select all • Expand view

ACTOR TheFatGuy : PlayerPawn
{
   Scale .25
   Speed 1
   Health 100
   Radius 16
   Height 56
   Mass 100
   PainChance 255
   Player.DisplayName "Lardo"
   Player.StartItem "Pistol"
   Player.StartItem "Fist"
   Player.StartItem "Clip", 50
   Player.WeaponSlot 1, Fist, Chainsaw
   Player.WeaponSlot 2, Pistol
   Player.WeaponSlot 3, Shotgun, SuperShotgun
   Player.WeaponSlot 4, Chaingun
   Player.WeaponSlot 5, RocketLauncher
   Player.WeaponSlot 6, PlasmaRifle
   Player.WeaponSlot 7, BFG9000
   States
   {
   Spawn:
      FATT AB 15
      Loop
   See:
      FATT ABCDEF 8
      Loop
   Missile:
      FATT G 20
   Melee:
      FATT H 10 BRIGHT
      FATT I 5
      FATT G 6
      Goto Spawn
   Pain:
      FATT J 3
      FATT J 3 A_Pain
      Goto Spawn
   Death:
      FATT K 6
      FATT L 6 A_Scream
      FATT M 6 A_NoBlocking
      FATT NOPQRS 6
      FATT T -1
      Stop
   }
}


I set it to use the Mancubus sprites, including their animations (his walk goes ABCDEF, as opposed to the Marine's ABCD, and the frames run for 8 tics instead of 4). I left most other things identical to a standard playerclass for the sake of simplicity.

My MAPINFO includes only a rewrite of the Doom II Cast Call, like so:

Code: Select all • Expand view

Intermission Doom2Cast
{
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "Zombieman"
      CastName = "$CC_ZOMBIE"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"grunt/attack"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "ShotgunGuy"
      CastName = "$CC_SHOTGUN"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"shotguy/attack"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "ChaingunGuy"
      CastName = "$CC_HEAVY"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"chainguy/attack"
      AttackSound = "Missile",2,"chainguy/attack"
      AttackSound = "Missile",3,"chainguy/attack"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "DoomImp"
      CastName = "$CC_IMP"
      AttackSound = "Missile",2,"imp/attack"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "Demon"
      CastName = "$CC_DEMON"
      AttackSound = "Melee",1,"demon/melee"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "LostSoul"
      CastName = "$CC_LOST"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"skull/melee"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "Cacodemon"
      CastName = "$CC_CACO"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"caco/attack"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "HellKnight"
      CastName = "$CC_HELL"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"baron/attack"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "BaronOfHell"
      CastName = "$CC_BARON"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"baron/attack"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "Arachnotron"
      CastName = "$CC_ARACH"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"baby/attack"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "PainElemental"
      CastName = "$CC_PAIN"
      AttackSound = "Missile",2,"skull/melee"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "Revenant"
      CastName = "$CC_REVEN"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"skeleton/attack"
      AttackSound = "Melee",1,"skeleton/swing"
      AttackSound = "Melee",3,"skeleton/melee"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "Fatso"
      CastName = "$CC_MANCU"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"fatso/attack"
      AttackSound = "Missile",4,"fatso/attack"
      AttackSound = "Missile",7,"fatso/attack"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "Archvile"
      CastName = "$CC_ARCH"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"vile/start"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "SpiderMastermind"
      CastName = "$CC_SPIDER"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"spider/attack"
      AttackSound = "Missile",2,"spider/attack"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "Cyberdemon"
      CastName = "$CC_CYBER"
      AttackSound = "Missile",1,"weapons/rocklf"
      AttackSound = "Missile",3,"weapons/rocklf"
      AttackSound = "Missile",5,"weapons/rocklf"
   }
   Cast
   {
      CastClass = "TheFatGuy"
      CastName = "This fat thing"
      AttackSound = "Missile", 0, "weapons/sshotf"
   }
   Link = Doom2Cast   // restart cast call
}


The only change is that I changed "DoomPlayer" to my new character. When done like this, the only error I'm seeing is that when he comes up in the cast call he's not at .25 scale like he is in the game. His walk is still correct, though (six frames, ABCDEF, at 8 tics each).

However, if I were to forego the MAPINFO, thus running with the default cast call (therefore, have "DoomPlayer" called), what I see is a character using the sprites of the guy I played as (So, Lardo's sprites), but at the animation of DoomPlayer (ABCD, 4 tics each), and once again not scaled to .25. If I had given him his own SoundClass, those sound effects would play instead of the Marine's voice.

I did not alter the PLAY sprites at all, so it must not be using those for this thing I'm seeing.

[Graf Zahl]

Sounds like the skin code is getting in the way. Try giving your player the +NOSKIN flag.
Scaling is not implemented for the cast call though.

[Ed the Bat]

Adding +NOSKIN didn't help. Though it seems to me that's not the problem; as I understand it, that flag prevents skins from being applied to Lardo, but it seems more like the engine is trying to use him AS a skin for DoomPlayer. I would think DoomPlayer is the one who would need the flag added for this to have an effect, meaning I'd have to break open the ZDoom resources and change it there, which is something I never want to have to do.

As for scaling, I can understand. I'll test it out later but I've already begun thinking that I can use TEXTURES to make the sprites themselves smaller without trying to scale the actor itself.

Personally, what I would really love is to be able to set the cast call to dynamically choose and display whatever playerclass was being played as, so everyone in the game would see 'himself' at the end. But I imagine that's a separate issue entirely, and likely not possible at this time.

[Ed the Bat]

I just tried editing my version of ZDoom.pk3 and giving DoomPlayer the +NOSKIN flag. It still didn't change things, so there must be more at work than I know.

Of course, even if this DID fix it, changing the internal classes like that would undoubtedly break a lot of other things, meaning it's definitely not a viable solution to the issue.