ZScript decal access

Post by **Nash** » Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:13 am

Hey, just quick query before I actually go suggesting something that won't be considered... any chance for ZScriptifying the decals? I can think of some cool changes I'd like to introduce to decals if such a thing were possible.

Post by **Enjay** » Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:45 am

I'm intrigued. you always come up with new and inventive stuff. What kind of "changes" do you have in mind?

Post by **Nash** » Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:53 am

Enjay wrote:I'm intrigued. you always come up with new and inventive stuff. What kind of "changes" do you have in mind?

Well these are just ideas, but I'm thinking of allowing actors to access decals, so that they can "smell" fresh blood. And especially if it's blood generated from the player, I would be able to assign the player pointer to a decal so that monsters know the blood was from the player.

Another idea I had was to dynamically be able to access a decal in-game to decide if I want to specifically remove it. Say for a dynamic overgrowth system or a weather system where I can place "icicle decals" on walls only during specific months in the game.

Although thinking about this now, now that you've had me explain my use case, I just remembered one important detail... generated decals (blood, bullet holes, explosions) are client-side so I can already imagine that one's going to get a big fat [No] to keep playsim and multiplyer compatibility.

As far as I know, for the second use case, decals pasted from the Decal actors are not tied to any player settings so that may still be a viable idea...

Kinsie · Post by **Kinsie** » Wed Aug 08, 2018 4:49 am

Nash wrote:Well these are just ideas, but I'm thinking of allowing actors to access decals, so that they can "smell" fresh blood. And especially if it's blood generated from the player, I would be able to assign the player pointer to a decal so that monsters know the blood was from the player.

The original Half-Life had a "smells" system, but it was tied to actors instead of decals (probably for the reasons you specified) and was largely underutilized outside of some NPC barks and some AI behaviours on a single monster.

Honestly, it kind of falls into the trap of "cool effect that pleases the programmer and looks great on the back of the box, but the player rarely if ever sees or notices the results since it typically involves actors doing stuff out of their sight". This doesn't mean it can't be made to work, but you'll need to do a lot of work to convince the player that they're being stalked based on their blood-musk and not because they shot a gun three rooms back or got glimpsed through a window.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Wed Aug 08, 2018 4:56 am

The decals are supposed to be a lightweight renderer effect. The playsim doesn't know anything about them for good reasons.

Post by **Enjay** » Wed Aug 08, 2018 5:22 am

Kinsie wrote:Honestly, it kind of falls into the trap of "cool effect that pleases the programmer and looks great on the back of the box, but the player rarely if ever sees or notices the results since it typically involves actors doing stuff out of their sight". This doesn't mean it can't be made to work, but you'll need to do a lot of work to convince the player that they're being stalked based on their blood-musk and not because they shot a gun three rooms back or got glimpsed through a window.

An absolute case in point right there. I played the hell out of Half-life back in the day and I didn't know this was a thing.

Cool ideas though Nash (as ever).

ZDoom