ZBattleship

[JTE]

Wha? Screen? Hitscan weapons? I'm lost.
If you mean the weapons that instantly hit whatever you're aiming at (like the regular pistol), I made the dart board detect the square using the position of the particle passing through a set of linedefs in front of the dart board and that didn't work with the normal pistol which is why I made the pointer in the first place...

[Bio Hazard]

Yes. Hitscan is instant hit.

There should be a line activation type for getting shot at with hitscan, I've seen it used before
and by "screen" I meant the blue wall thing with the UAC logo in that map I posted.

[JTE]

Yes, I tried using the line activation "hit with a projectile" to detect shots originally... That was a disaster, as multiple triggers were hit at the same time (because the squares on the board were the triggers rather then the linedef in front of them)... Which was why I needed to have the projectile cross the linedef rather then hit it ... You can't detect the Z height of a hitscan projectile, after all, since the projectile never existed (or was destroied upon impact) and thus it always returns 0...

As for using the screen back there, well, the whole map is awefully small scale... But yeah, I get the idea.

[DoomRater]

Actually... a thought that could allow hitscans- custom monsters that run a script in their pain phase (the script would be the TID, encoded by multiplying the board letter by 10 each time you move over), and then heal themselves so you don't have to worry about healing them yourself. You could place these custom monsters right where you want them on the board.

I forgot if this was addressed, but why do you shoot your own ships?

[JTE]

The problem with hitscans was ONLY that if you hit a square, you might also hit all the squares under/above it as well, due to the hit detection going right through the really thin walls and such... So hitting the very very top square would hit the top half of that row and stuff. I wouldn't be too happy using invisible monsters and stuff either, the whole input system took long enough to make as it is...

What do you mean by "why do you shoot your own ships"? You never shoot your own ships; The cannonball that appears out of nowhere when yours goes through the grid to the other side of the board is where your opponent is fireing. I couldn't make the cannonball fire out of the wall or anything because that had a tendency to miss it's target if another ship was in the way and stuff like that, so I just had the ball drop straight down... It works.

Bear in mind this is meant to be played by two people in a network game (though ZDoom's netcode kinda sucks...) so if you add a bot, you can switch to their cam to see what's going on a little better. Or to see them die when you defeat them.

[DoomRater]

DECORATE is easy enough to use. Besides, I wouldn't make the monsters invisible- but I suppose that wouldn't be that hard to do.

Okay, I loaded up a singleplayer map and played against jasonbot and when I shot a square it would hit both my side and the opponent's side. I used GZDoom .21 for the test.

[JTE]

But does it do it in the same position? JasonBot shoots cannonballs too, you know.

Even though it's called "turn-based mode", it's more like "You both choose where you're gonna shoot, then you shoot at the same time", but it is immediate when fighting JasonBot because he takes only an instant to choose which random square he wants to fire at next.

[DoomRater]

EXACT same position.

[JTE]

I'm unsure why this would occur, though I've never tested the wad in GZDoom before...

[JTE]

Yay, I've figured out how to make skyboxes. I really should've done that rather then using a camera... It makes everything a lot easier to see, so the only reason to use a camera attached to a texture now is if you want it to look like a texture or if you want to limit what is being viewed...

[Nash]

I know you don't want to replace the current system because you said you spent a long time to make it, but I think setting up dummy DECORATE monsters to replace the linedef target grid is a good idea. Like DoomRater said, have the monsters activate scripts in their pain states.

Then you can use the regular Doom pistol instead of a projectile.

[JTE]

Sadly, I've been known to rarely finish the great things I make and update them even less afterwards. If I ever do somehow get around to updating ZBattleship, I will certainly consider replacing the dart board with a grid of monsters (invisible or otherwise), as well as replacing the camera with a skybox and adding a lot of detail to the control rooms.

The reason the control rooms are so undetailed right now is mostly because I really like the concept of being in a completely bare room and having the room create itself as you go. The board, screen, and switch all appear out of nowhere, then the switch disappears, then the board and the screen disappear, then water appears and starts to fill up the cabin, et cetera.

Sadly, that didn't work out too well with ZBattleship because of having so few things need to appear, it seems, so I must either add making useless things appear or simply make it look like more of a standard ship cabin...

Also, odd little note here, in making ZBattleship, I originally used direct ZSNES rips of the win and defeat music... Other then the requirement of another DLL file, it worked perfectly, even looping properly, which suprised me quite a bit... In the end I decided against keeping them in that format, though, because of that required DLL...

[DoomRater]

Most people have snesapu.dll on their hard drives already (I listen to SNES music) so it really is not that big a deal. In fact I think Randy should just package the dll with ZDoom and get it over with.