Actor Overlays

[Nomekop]

I figured it would be nice if it were possible to have an actor overlay another actor: These actors would be limited to decorative graphics, but it would allow for preforming things such as:

[*]Sonic style shields.
[*]Hats.
[*]Small, decorative color changes: for example, a visor on the player, railgun color, Slime color for Chex Quest based modifications.
[*]Lock on Targeting Reticle.

Note that I don't currently believe this can be done, as if you set the position of a decorative graphic to the same as the actor, there may rise the issue of layering, which cannot be fixed in multiplayer. Also, graphics may also trail behind in certain cases. This has been preformed in SRB2, with the Action A_OverlayThink, so it probably is possible to pull off in ZDoom.

[NeuralStunner]

[wiki]A_Warp[/wiki] is capable of this to a certain extent, including interpolation. There's no guarantee which sprite will render in front of the other, of course. (No idea how it does with player prediction, either.)

[Major Cooke]

Which is why he suggested this from the first place, probably to hide it like player trails spawned similarly from speed powerups.

[edward850]

(No idea how it does with player prediction, either.)

It doesn't, put simply. It'll just lag seemingly behind you. But then so do speed trails when you can see them.
It terms of multiplayer prediction, any actor specific control is not a solution, as that would still require displacing them independently from each session. The overlay would need to be part of the intended actors own frame management, and that's not going to happen for awhile.

[NeuralStunner]

It doesn't, put simply. It'll just lag seemingly behind you.

That's what I was afraid of. Seems like it could also be trouble when one wants to make multi-actor player characters. (Though I suppose if every visible piece is being warped to the PlayerPawn, it'll just make the composite character lag behind the predicted spot as a whole. I'm not sure what this would do to gameplay.)

[edward850]

With A_Warp, even in singleplayer, it would obstruct the camera. The camera actor is marked as hidden specifically when in first person for the renderer, otherwise you'd have the problem of constantly seeing what is projecting the camera (whether it you or the coop-spy or a camera change to a health-potion, etc).