[2.8pre-362] Heretic gargolyes and fire gargs should infight

[plums]

Like the title says, these two different gargoyles should be able to fight with each other. Tested with chocolate-heretic and heretic-plus. Attached is a simple wad with a setup to encourage infighting. Plays on E1M1.

A regular gargoyle should never infight with another regular gargoyle, but I'm pretty sure they don't currently. (It's a little hard to get them to charge into one another to see.)

[Graf Zahl]

Yes, it's well known. ZDoom considers both the same species due to the way they are defined.

[Blue Shadow]

A regular gargoyle should never infight with another regular gargoyle, but I'm pretty sure they don't currently. (It's a little hard to get them to charge into one another to see.)

Why don't they, by the way? I mean, they A_SkullAttack their targets just like lost souls do, but they don't get damaged and they don't infight when they accidentally hit each other.

[Graf Zahl]

The gargoyles do not do damage with their charge attacks. They only use it to move into an attacking position faster.

[Blue Shadow]

*huge facepalm*

Oh yeah, that was stupid of me. I forgot that they don't do damage when charging, to begin with...

[Zhs2]

This makes me wonder if Golems and NitroGolems should also be capable of infighting.

[NeuralStunner]

The gargoyles do not do damage with their charge attacks. They only use it to move into an attacking position faster.

Amusing: In vanilla, they'd still trigger a pain sound on impacting the player. You can avoid damage but still go "ouch".

[Ed the Bat]

Yes, it's well known. ZDoom considers both the same species due to the way they are defined.

It can be easily fixed by giving the fire gargoyle a new "species" property.

[Gez]

Thing is, the last time this popped up it was decided the ZDoom behavior was more logical and made more sense, so it was deemed a [won't change].

[plums]

Yes, it's well known. ZDoom considers both the same species due to the way they are defined.

Thing is, the last time this popped up it was decided the ZDoom behavior was more logical and made more sense, so it was deemed a [won't change].

Understood, sorry for the duplicate.

This makes me wonder if Golems and NitroGolems should also be capable of infighting.

They do in fact infight in Vanilla.

[_mental_]

It can be easily fixed by giving the fire gargoyle a new "species" property.

To do so HereticImpLeader class must not be derived from HereticImp class in Decorate definitions. The same for golems/nitrogolems and their ghosted versions. So lots of stuff must be copy-pasted.
An alternative solution is to add special case for the mentioned three classes to AActor::GetSpecies() function. Kind of a dirty hack though.

[Gez]

Nah, the species property will bypass inheritance, so there is no need to copy/paste stuff. See Hexen's chaos serpents, Demon1 and Demon2 retain their inheritance link but are no longer the same species.

[_mental_]

Nah, the species property will bypass inheritance, so there is no need to copy/paste stuff.

Indeed, an addition of a single line like below to the corresponding actor solves the problem.

Code: Select all

Species "HereticImpLeader"

However I found no way to control this behavior by user yet.

[Blzut3]

For reference here's a link to the last thread I can find on the issue: http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21967

Personally I'm in the camp that accuracy should be preserved where reasonable (like in this case where we already have the means to restore the behavior). Certainly anyone wanting the more logical behaviors could just load a mod?

[Graf Zahl]

The last time this got rejected the species property did not exist yet. Now that it exists there's no reason to restore the original behavior.