Editing challenges you've overcome

[The Ultimate DooMer]

The +PAINLESS flag on the projectile would be better than +NOPAIN on all the monsters. And yeah, inheriting from MageWandMissile and replacing it's sprites would've worked too...although sometime in the last few months, custom trails were added to FastProjectile-based actors (via MissileType) meaning it's no longer neccessary to do that.

[ThatOneZDoomer]

The +PAINLESS flag on the projectile would be better than +NOPAIN on all the monsters. And yeah, inheriting from MageWandMissile and replacing it's sprites would've worked too...although sometime in the last few months, custom trails were added to FastProjectile-based actors (via MissileType) meaning it's no longer neccessary to do that.

I guess I meant to say I used +PAINLESS on the projectile itself since it would have saved me a lot of trouble and I mixed the two up. +NOPAIN on the monsters would have messed up other weapons causing pain. It did got annoying to set PainChance.Beam 0 (or something) on all the monsters. I also did PainChance.Stun 255 on all the monsters prior to the +FORCEPAIN flag. I even hijacked Enjay's sonic grenade way of stunning. MissileType sure helped in creating a better looking beam. I know the Plasma Beam from the Realm667 Armory inherited from the Hexen projectiles to create a laser beam and that's where I first learned about FastProjectile after checking the code out and seeing MageWandMissile inherit from it. Now if only there were a way to better control the damage on FastProjectile rippers aside from setting really low damage values, especially since the damage seems to very depending on the monster's size.

[Recurracy]

Something I'm still tinkering with:
Making a projectile spawn tiny trail actors which stay until the projectile enters the Death state.

[Ryan Cordell]

Something I'm still tinkering with:
Making a projectile spawn tiny trail actors which stay until the projectile enters the Death state.

A_SpawnItemEx (or anything that allows children) and A_KillChildren in the death state?

[Gez]

Won't work. The children/master/sibling relationships only work for monsters. Projectiles aren't monsters.

[Ryan Cordell]

That's one of the problems I had to go through when I wanted that relationship with other actors.. :/

[NeuralStunner]

That's one of the problems I had to go through when I wanted that relationship with other actors.. :/

And everyone knows the average Hollywood marriage is probably doomed.

Suppose the projectile could fire off short-range, zero-damage, no-pain [wiki]A_CustomBulletAttack[/wiki]s? The puff could be the trail actor, while the +PUFFGETSOWNER flag should make the "puffs" target the projectile. You could use [wiki]A_JumpIfInTargetInventory[/wiki] to check for a dummy inventory item (or lack thereof) in the projectile, as a signal to terminate. I don't know for certain if this would work, of course... But I have accomplished some cool things with +PUFFGETSOWNER.

[Xaser]

I suppose this is the part where I bring up reloading weapons. I was so elated to figure out a (now-hilariously-obsolete) way of doing so that I built a whole wad around it! Mostly because I had to, though. Props to Mr. DoomRater for taking the idea and making it truly usable.

Lots of little things in Psychic also stick out: the ability to freely mix-and-match primary and secondary fires (plus the menu system) were worthy challenges, not to mention having to learn almost all of SBARINFO overnight to debug and hack up Zero's status bar code (:P). Probably its greatest achievement of all is actually not my doing, but Kate's, mainly deciphering and modifying the (bloody insane) menu 'code' to work flawlessly in multiplayer. Oh, but that's not in the current release, is it?

Mapping-wise: The TcA Demo is quite possibly my most favoritest thing I've ever done, not really from a technical standpoint, but from a "holy crap how did he manage to make that funny?" point of view. Making the Matrix and Hitler effects was no walk in the park, though, earning it a spot on this list.

I.C.T.O.A.N. deserves a mention at least for the fact that it proved that I could make a serious map. Sorta. And while we're on that topic, I do admit I actually learned a LOT of ACS and acquired plenty of odd skills during the making of Lost SOulsphere, particularly the Gold Edition (featuring the Nuclear Demon, the very first DECORATE anything I did, ever). I wonder what a Platinum Edition would be like...

Lost Episode was interesting because the task at hand was to take a group of somewhat-randomly-compiled maps and try and unify them with a central theme. Depending on who you ask, I either succeeded brilliantly or failed horribly. Both are quite legitimate viewpoints.

Sector was a breakthrough less in a technical sense but more as a test of patience. I very nearly got burned out writing all those hundreds of lines of sector properties down by hand.

Still, I think my greatest mapping moment of all time has got to be the day I made Serenity Now for 32in24-6. It was not until then that I realized that I could actually make levels from scratch that did not suck.

[/EGO_OFF]

[Cutmanmike]

This isn't a "Your greatest success stories" thread, Xaser. I was hoping for more things like, getting around awful limitations with no new features coming out to help you

Last night I was having a damn annoying problem with deep water. I wanted to ditch the Doom swimmable water system in favour of megaman-esque one. I did this by putting sector action things in the water sectors combined with ACS_Execute to give the player a custominventory that turns the LOWGRAVITY flag on or off depending on if he's leaving or entering the pool. It seemed to work find until I noticed that sometimes, when jumping into the pool and straight out again it wouldn't detect him coming out. I tried everything, and I mean everything to work around this but it seemed like I'd come across some bizarre bug.

So I gave in on that and just had a repeatable script check the Z height of the player plus what flat he was on to check whether he's entering or leaving the pool. Undesirable but for now, it works fine.

[Nash]

I'll do you one better, have an example.

Information about the "effect" is in the SCRIPTS lump.

http://www.mediafire.com/?zuzmwjwmmzq

Ah, so you were abusing HOMs. Too bad it doesn't work in the software renderer...

I've kinda came up with something better in the past, but is very resolution dependant: constantly print a fading HUD message and use a camera texture of the player's view as the message's font.

It'll also be super slow in the software renderer because you're dealing with overlapping layers of translucent full screen HUD messages...

[Cutmanmike]

Okay here's one I'm proud of.

Basically in my Megaman mod I wanted Protoman's shield to be an item that you can use, giving you a shield to block projectiles. Of course I could just give the player a REFLECTIVE flag or whatever and call it a day but I wanted it to be a bit more precise. This shield will be attatched to the player, slightly to the left and block any projectiles that hit it, and the player can still be harmed. It also has to work for multiple players. So how did I do it?

Okay so first you get the powerup, which is a custom inventory. You use this inventory and it spawns an actor with the MISSILE flag (so it targets the shooter). This actor is invisible and interacts with nothing, and dies if the player is dead. The actor constantly calls A_GiveTargetInventory to give the player another CustomInventory. This second CustomInventory uses A_SpawnEx to spawn the shield infront of the player, which vanishes after 2 tics giving the illusion that the shield is actually attached to you (for both you and other players).

BUT then I wanted the shield to die. Right now it dies after 20 hits. Going back to the original CustomInventory, it also gives the player a dummy inventory item which can count up to 21. When the shield is hit, it enters it's Death state which uses A_GiveTargetInventory to give the player more of the dummy inventory. The actor that is constantly calling A_GiveTargetInventory also has A_JumpIfInTargetInventory to check if the player has 21 of the dummy inventory item, which it then dies if so. Viola!

Now the only problem is that I have a few weapons that can hit the shield fired FROM the player, which isn't good.

[Gez]

Can you play with the spawnoffset to make it spawn on the other side of the shield? spawnofs_horiz in [wiki]A_FireCustomMissile[/wiki], yoffset in [wiki]A_SpawnItemEx[/wiki].

[Ghastly]

When I started making the Strogg Infiltrator for Q:NA. Three AI modes that it cycles through randomly based on its situation. Took an entire afternoon, had to rewrite it twice, and ended up 90 lines of decorate for the AI-switching alone.

Was totally worth it. I've been meaning to make a new zombie that uses it, and Beastiary it.

[Cutmanmike]

Can you play with the spawnoffset to make it spawn on the other side of the shield? spawnofs_horiz in [wiki]A_FireCustomMissile[/wiki], yoffset in [wiki]A_SpawnItemEx[/wiki].

Well, not really as I'm already using a spawnofs_horiz as the gun is sideways. The weapon I'm talking about is a 3 way shot. I could adjust the angle but you can still fire and quickly turn your shield INTO the projectile. I might just make some weapons go straight through shields I guess.

[Zippy]

Well, not really as I'm already using a spawnofs_horiz as the gun is sideways. The weapon I'm talking about is a 3 way shot. I could adjust the angle but you can still fire and quickly turn your shield INTO the projectile. I might just make some weapons go straight through shields I guess.

Try having the projectiles very briefly start no clipped or whatever. You'll have to see if this presents quirky scenarios of its own (pass through players who are point blank, etc.) but if the sizes of everything line up with some luck it might work.