Converting DeHachEd files to Decorate

[Alice Jameson]

Is there a good way to convert or translate dehacked files to decorate? It would be very helpful for this project I was thinking of working on.

[Enjay]

I am not aware of any quick way to do it but I have done it manually myself a few times and with quite extensive patches too. It doesn't take too long and it gives you the opportunity to think about the actors anew and possibly recreate them in a better, more inventive, more satisfying way than they were in the DEH patch.

[Xtyfe]

Dehacked is simple compared to decorate. If you know decorate you can replicate dehacked with ease.

[Graf Zahl]

Dehacked may be simple but it's also very messy because the end result might look like total chaos.

[Gez]

I once made ZDoom output the states and actors modified in Dehacked as DECORATE format. Problem is that while doing so, I apparently broke something in the dehacked system because in-game the dehacked actors were no longer behaving as before. So there was no way I could actually trust the code that it had outputted, given that it was generated from erroneous interpretations.

It's something I might revisit someday, but to be honest, probably not.


Also, dehacked is not simple at all. It's a mess of cross-referencing numbers and stuff spread all over the place with no easy way to connect each part of a same object together. I mean, something like SUPRWEPN.DEH is pretty simple if all it does is change the length of a few states, but look at the dehacked in Harmony or Batman Doom and tell me if it is simple for you to recreate the modified actors in DECORATE.

[TheDarkArchon]

Dehacked is simple compared to decorate. If you know decorate you can replicate dehacked with ease.

What? DeHackEd is a LOT more difficult to learn than DECORATE due to sheer amount of prerequisite and specific knowledge you need to do anything in DeHackEd. And good luck editing DeHackEd files outside DeHackEd/WhackED since doing so would require you to have, at a minimum, the things and sprites tables committed to memory.

[scalliano]

I remember for the Shuffle I recreated the DEHACKED behaviour of the Haymaker (that maulotaur boss from UAC Ultra) in DECORATE. That said, it was a pretty straightforward actor and I still don't fully understand how DEHACKED actually works. I just spotted the FatAttack entries and worked backwards from there. To be honest, though, your best bet is probably to just study how the actors behave in practice and interpret the DECORATE file accordingly.

[Gez]

ZDoom's dehsupp.txt file is a handy reference sheet.

[Xtyfe]

Dehacked is simple compared to decorate. If you know decorate you can replicate dehacked with ease.

What? DeHackEd is a LOT more difficult to learn than DECORATE due to sheer amount of prerequisite and specific knowledge you need to do anything in DeHackEd. And good luck editing DeHackEd files outside DeHackEd/WhackED since doing so would require you to have, at a minimum, the things and sprites tables committed to memory.

Well, yes i would agree editing dehacked in a text editor would be more difficult

[printz]

Also, dehacked is not simple at all. It's a mess of cross-referencing numbers and stuff spread all over the place with no easy way to connect each part of a same object together. I mean, something like SUPRWEPN.DEH is pretty simple if all it does is change the length of a few states, but look at the dehacked in Harmony or Batman Doom and tell me if it is simple for you to recreate the modified actors in DECORATE.

It's a piece of cake if you can open the DEH file in Dehacked or Whacked2.

[Enjay]

Yeah, the program itself is reasonably straight forward - especially if you are creating a patch. However, working backwards is much less straight forward. Even of you have the file open in DeHacked, flipping back and forth between things and frames and so on to unravel the changes that may have been made by an author trying to pull spare frames from all over the frame table to link them together can be quite time consuming.

When converting to DECORATE, I have found it more useful to think about what I want something to do and recreate it from scratch. However, if I want an attack state or something to be the same as in a DEH patch, I will step through it frame-by-frame to ensure that I know the exact duration (etc) required for the frames. However, usually as I do so I find little areas where a frame could do with being a bit longer, or a sound could be played at a slightly different place or where I could just do something better because of the additional flexibility of DECORATE and so on.