The "How do I..." Thread

[ZZYZX]

Give it a tag. Then do ThingCountName("actorclass", 0)-ThingCountName("actorclass", tag).

[Ed the Bat]

Now why didn't I think of that.
Thanks a lot!

[adamaH_oriH]

How do I make the bossbrain invunerable to Lightning? whenever it shoots the lightning attack (the overlord (R667)'s lightning attack), it gets damaged by it. is it Damagefactor?

[DoomKrakken]

Now, I know that this isn't much of a "How Do I..." question, but if I have a Ripper Projectile that deals 25 damage and five Ripper Projectiles that spawn together (as though it were one projectile) dealing 5 damage each, are the five Ripper Projectiles going to deal more damage to an actor than the one Ripper Projectile that deals 25 damage, or vice versa, or will it be equal?

How do I make the bossbrain invunerable to Lightning? whenever it shoots the lightning attack (the overlord (R667)'s lightning attack), it gets damaged by it. is it Damagefactor?

Yup. Your code should look like this:

Code: Select all

        DamageFactor Lightning, 0.0

Could I see your code for your Boss Brain and its attacks? There could be something else at play that causes your Boss Brain to get damaged from its own attacks, so it may be unnecessary for you to to give it a 0 Damage Factor for "Lightning" damage...

[DoomCommander 1706]

How do i replace a sky texture and animate it?

[LogicalFallacy]

Replacing a sky texture is done in MAPINFO. I believe if you want an animated sky texture, you need to define it in ANIMDEFS.

[Gamer With Dignity]

Anyone got any tips for audio optimization? I want to use custom music in my campaign that originates from high quality wav and mp3 files, and I'd rather not have them balloon the crap out of my filesize if I can avoid it. I use Audacity to edit audio but I don't know very much about quality vs filesize.

Use MIDIs.

[DoomCommander 1706]

Replacing a sky texture is done in MAPINFO. I believe if you want an animated sky texture, you need to define it in ANIMDEFS.

Can You give me an example?

[LogicalFallacy]

Can You give me an example?

So for a map I'm working on now, I've got this in my MAPINFO lump:

Code: Select all

map OUT01 "The Garden Gates"
{
	music = "OCCULT"
	sky1 = "BSKY_3"
	next = EndTitle
}

BSKY_3 is the lump name for the texture I have as the sky.
For the animated sky, do you want it scrolling or cycling through several images? A scrolling sky is done simply by adding the scroll speed to the sky definition, so mine would become something like

Code: Select all

map OUT01 "The Garden Gates"
{
	music = "OCCULT"
	sky1 = "BSKY_3",2.0
	next = EndTitle
}

If you want it to cycle through several images, you probably want something like this:

Code: Select all

texture MSKY_01 range MSKY_04 tics 4

in your ANIMDEFS lump, with your sky set as MSKY_01 in MAPINFO. I don't know if that actually works though, as I've never tried it.

[DoomKrakken]

Anyone got any tips for audio optimization? I want to use custom music in my campaign that originates from high quality wav and mp3 files, and I'd rather not have them balloon the crap out of my filesize if I can avoid it. I use Audacity to edit audio but I don't know very much about quality vs filesize.

Use MIDIs.

It's highly suggested to use the .ogg format, as .ogg files are the ideal sound format for video games.

Cool perk: .ogg files have a smaller size than their .mp3/.wav counterparts. So, in essence, converting said sound files to .ogg will shrink their size.

[TheBadHustlex]

It really depends on your taste. Midi's can be very beautiful, too. But don't mix .ogg and midi up. It can get inconsistant very easily.

[DoomKrakken]

Would you mind explaining that further? I'm afraid I don't understand...

Also, here's a question...

How do I make an actor do something before it dies, regardless of how it dies? I'm working with monsters that have a large list of special death animations, and I don't want to have to copy and paste this one bit of code over and over again:

Code: Select all

        "####" "#" 0 A_JumpIfInTargetInventory("Mana",0,2)
        "####" "#" 0 A_DropItem("MinorManaPod",-1,54)

It would be nice if the monster could drop whatever item I wanted it to drop, and then die however it was supposed to die.

(Yes, I'm working with Guncaster. No, this isn't anything official.)

[TheBadHustlex]

Would you mind explaining that further? I'm afraid I don't understand...

Midi has a very distinct sound, if you ask me. It sounds more retro, and it actually is smaller than most ogg-files.

[InsanityBringer]

MIDI files are basically just a set of notes for playback by a synthesizer. The quality of them and what they sound like is entirely dependent on the synthesizer (and for some synths, the input files like soundfonts, etc) used to play them back. OGG files are larger because they actually define a precise sound, rather than a series of instructions which can be interpreted in different ways.

[DoomKrakken]

That's understandable.

I know that MIDI is synth-music... but I thought the guy wanted to use the actual music, rather than MIDI.