Resurrectable but unrespawnable monsters

[Terra-jin]

Hello, it's been a while since I've posted here. I have a feature suggestion I've been experimenting with for some time now.

It's about allowing monsters to be resurrected yet keeping them from respawning. The reason for this is that I want to create a remotely fair version of Nightmare, in which only some monsters can respawn. Some monsters can respawn and be resurrected and some can do neither - I've been able to create these latter types by setting their ending death frame in a loop, thereby tricking the engine into thinking the monster is "busy dying" all the time. This feature originally existed to prevent Arch-Viles from resurrecting monsters who haven't finished dying. With this trick, you can make monsters stay dead while still keeping them in for monster count. I've done the same for shredded or squished monsters, allowing you to kill monsters permanently in NM mode.

Now, I've tried to create a monster that can be resurrected by Arch-Viles yet keep it unable to respawn. However, the trick above also cancels out resurrection. If you remove the MONSTER property of the monster, the same results apply. So, is there a way that this can be done, and if not, can it be implemented? Perhaps it's possible to implement a respawn flag or property?

Many thanks,

Terra-jin.

[Enjay]

The way to do this would be to define new skills using the relatively new skill defining ability in mapinfo. You can redefine the nightmare skill to not allow respawning. That would affect all monsters though, not just a select few.

[Daniel]

An easier way is adding a flag like +NOSKILLRESPAWN, I think.

[MDenham]

The way to do this would be to define new skills using the relatively new skill defining ability in mapinfo. You can redefine the nightmare skill to not allow respawning. That would affect all monsters though, not just a select few.

This, combined with working things in pretty much the exact reverse fashion as Terra's doing (you make copies that do automatically respawn), would probably solve things.

[Graf Zahl]

An easier way is adding a flag like +NOSKILLRESPAWN, I think.

... and its counterpart: ALWAYSRESPAWN.

[XutaWoo]

An easier way is adding a flag like +NOSKILLRESPAWN, I think.

... and its counterpart: ALWAYSRESPAWN.

Seconding both of them.

[Graf Zahl]

Flags ALWAYSRESPAWN and NEVERRESPAWN have been added.

[Terra-jin]

Thank you very much