Getting Strife in ZDoom closer to original?

[Graf Zahl]

That's not surprising because the feature was broken. The autousehealth skill flag that is necessary for Raven was never set.

The items behave as follows:

Small Raven item: only gets activated when flagged in the skill settings and player would die from inflicted damage
Large Raven item: only gets activated when flagged in the skill settings or in deathmatch and player would die from inflicted damage
Strife item: Gets activated when player's health drops below 50 and only adds health until it's above 50 again. If health drops below 0 player will die regardless of how many items are in the inventory.

[Enjay]

Thanks for the info. I don't suppose you'd consider a fourth method? One that combines the Raven ability to stop you dying if you have health items in your inventory with the Strife ability to start activating at a threshold above zero?

Zdoom item: Gets activated when player's health drops below 50 and only adds health until it's above 50 again. Also gets activated when flagged in the skill settings and player would die from inflicted damage.

Also, being able to set the threshold to something other than 50 would be nice (probably in the skill definition)?

[Graf Zahl]

Thanks for the info. I don't suppose you'd consider a fourth method? One that combines the Raven ability to stop you dying if you have health items in your inventory with the Strife ability to start activating at a threshold above zero?

Zdoom item: Gets activated when player's health drops below 50 and only adds health until it's above 50 again. Also gets activated when flagged in the skill settings and player would die from inflicted damage.

Also, being able to set the threshold to something other than 50 would be nice (probably in the skill definition)?

Should be doable.

[Crowley]

Next item I noticed: Vanilla Strife shows a message saying "Entering <map>" when you enter a new map. I can't find anything in ZDoom's options currently that might enable this. The map names that are displayed seem to directly correspond to what the map screen says after "area #:".

[Graf Zahl]

... and this is unlikely to be added. ZDoom is *NOT* Strife.exe!

[Crowley]

Fair enough. From my minimal programming experience it seemed like a simple matter to set a message to be displayed whenever a new map is opened. I guess not in this case. I apologize for my assumptions.

[Graf Zahl]

It's not about simple or complicated but more about usefulness. I'm more interested in things that are useful than emulating something else to the letter.

[Crowley]

Very well. I shall look into this matter on my own then. And maybe I'll find something about how to get the corpses to behave more like the original as well.

[Macil]

I think it would be useful to be able to have the new map message like Strife. Maybe it could be added as a mapinfo property, so that it could be enabled for Strife easily and it would allow mods to use it simply.

[Crowley]

Yeah, I think there is something to be said about flavor and clarity of map loading messages, especially in games that use a hub system like Strife and Hexen.

Now, I hate to sound like I am nagging, but is there any way to alter how long corpses are around in Strife? I found about the corpse queue in the wiki, but that deals with the amount of corpses as variable and not time, as Strife does. At least setting the queue size to -1 doesn't stop the corpses from disappearing.

[Macil]

The code controlling how long until they disappear, and what exactly happens when they die is all in the (X)Death sate(s) of their DECORATE code in the zdoom.pk3 file.

[Gez]

I think it would be useful to be able to have the new map message like Strife. Maybe it could be added as a mapinfo property, so that it could be enabled for Strife easily and it would allow mods to use it simply.

I wouldn't want the "entering map" screen forced for my mods though.

Obviously, if such a feature were ever implemented, it wouldn't be a blanket thing. After all, it's from Strife, so presumably it would be "restricted" to Strife by making it some hub flag in mapinfo, for example.

If this was ever implemented I'd even add a menu option to turn it off.

[Crowley]

The code controlling how long until they disappear, and what exactly happens when they die is all in the (X)Death sate(s) of their DECORATE code in the zdoom.pk3 file.

Thank you, this is exactly the kind of information I was looking for. All right, looks like at the end of the Death code is the duration of the corpses in frames. And now to find the code to switch the corpse with a more decomposed one.

[Gez]

You just need to add another state with a different sprite corresponding to that "decomposed" look. Just copy the previous line, paste it, and change the four letters of the sprite code...

[Crowley]

Yeah, I just figured that out myself. I borrowed a line with the gibs timer from XDeath and put the after the corpse timer in Death. Now just to go through all actor types and repeat where applicable. Vootie!

edit: If I read this right, many of the anonymous good guys have their corpses set not to disappear. Nice detail. Oddly the peasants already have the corpse-to-gibs transition in their code, while the acolytes did not. Actually the acolytes seem to be the only one who had it missing in the first place. Makes me wonder...