Enforcing settings on your doom modification

[CommanderZ]

What about crosshairs?

Some mods (like mine, another one could be MSX) implement their own crosshair logic and having the original crosshair enabled not only looks horrible, but it may actually give the player an advantage (very large one in competitive game modes).

[Graf Zahl]

Crosshairs are definitely a subject that needs changing. Unfortunately I don't really have a good idea how to do it.

[Sarah]

Aesthetic effects are none of the author's business lol.

I believe that is what authors do isn't it? I like Enjay's suggestion of a configuration map. In fact, Riven, which is in no way Doom related, had a screen just after starting a new game that would allow you to tweak your monitor settings based on a displayed image or two. Very effective. I'll probably have to do something like that with a configuration map in my project. Darkness is a theme in the game which without several monitors to test on can and probably will be a bit overbearing at times.

Another option to actually editing a user .ini, which I agree is wrong, would be to produce a project as a stand-alone game. That means replacing the iwad with a faked one, and sending the game out with a copy of the needed engine. Mine for instance is GZDoom for OpenGL and all of its options. I run the game files into the engine with a batch file. Works like a charm and makes it easy to move from one machine to the next. I can admit that this might be annoying because then you have multiple copies of an engine on your hard drive, each with different settings, but my aim is an audience larger than just this community.

Now disabling or forcing certain things like jumping and crouching should always be an authors option but still be able to be reset by the player. My project relies on crouching in many, many, places to get around and disabling that(although I don't understand why anyone would do that on the user end) would render the game unplayable. Dynamic lighting is the main source of lighting since it looks a bit more natural. 3D floors are everywhere. Losing any of those things would make the game unplayable. Now the obvious argument is: "How do I expect older machines to be able to play a game so full of that stuff?" My answer is, I don't. Pick your battles and make your games how you want them is how I see it. Commercial game companies don't look to make their latest title run on 10 year old equipment. They look to utilize new technology. Like I can really expect Bethesda to give a damn that I tried to run Oblivion on an Intel915 that can't handle Shader Model 2. So I upgraded.

Anyway, authors would be wise to map with the default settings in mind. It makes for more of a game that has some room to tweak settings up and down as players needs are met without losing much in aesthetics.

[Enjay]

Crosshairs are definitely a subject that needs changing. Unfortunately I don't really have a good idea how to do it.

How many ways to change the crosshair via a mod are there? I think there is only A_SetCrosshair and there is the crosshairforce CVAR to optionally override it (and it's on the menu too, so it's easy). I don't see what additional flexibility/robustness is required. ie modders can change the crosshair (and tell players that they have done so in their text file) and players can say "no thank you". Anything else that I can think of seems to be "sledgehammer to crack a nut" territory.

[Sarah]

He he, forgive me, I clearly stuck my nose in at the wrong time. I was a bit ticked off by Printz little comment there. I should stay out of topics like this...

Although, is the crosshair forced to be the same for every weapon? To be clear, it would be neat to have a specific, custom crosshair for individual weapons and maybe none for melee weapons(swords, knives, fists, ect...). I also remember the crosshairs in Call of Duty reacted to player movement to signal how good your aim would be. Might be neat to see something like that too.

[printz]

Crosshairs are definitely a subject that needs changing. Unfortunately I don't really have a good idea how to do it.

How many ways to change the crosshair via a mod are there?

[wiki]IMGZ[/wiki] Imigeez.

[CommanderZ]

Although, is the crosshair forced to be the same for every weapon? To be clear, it would be neat to have a specific, custom crosshair for individual weapons and maybe none for melee weapons(swords, knives, fists, ect...). I also remember the crosshairs in Call of Duty reacted to player movement to signal how good your aim would be. Might be neat to see something like that too.

This is already possible witch ACS (I have such crosshair in RGH) - as is pretty much any other crosshair related feature I can think of. There are only two issues:

- As said earlier, it is not possible to reliably disable the "native" crosshair in (GZ)ZDoom (Skulltag of course has ConsoleCommand for this).
- Animated crosshair requires delay(1) loop, which is a pain, because it has to be clientside - and any required information (such as actor properties and inventory information) has to be manually delivered to the clientside script (this is more of a Skulltag-related concern, though).

So the only feature truly needed is ability to completely disable the native crosshair, anything else can be emulated, however extended support for more advanced features would possibly simplify coding of more advanced crosshairs and bring improved performance (but honestly, I can't imagine API which would offer enough features to make sense, and it most likely wouldn't be able to fix the clientside problem with Skulltag anyways, even if it was backported to ST).

[Enjay]

Your weapons could be coded to reomve the crosshair in their DECORATE if you want to disable the crosshair. This won't remove it for players who have set things to override crosshair changing but that's as it should be IMO.

Printz quite correctly points out the other way to disable crosshairs - replace the graphics. Of course, to my mind that's a brute force method that robs the player of the option of keeping their crosshairs and it also wouldn't affect those who use their own additional crosshairs (like I sometimes do).

[Kinsie]

ZDoom could do something like the Source engine where the user can either use a "default" crosshair that is specific to the weapon you're holding, or force a favored one no matter what like the current system. That'd be nice and relatively intuitive... so I'm not holding my breath.

[cq75]

Briefly back to enforcing settings, you could do what I do, in ACS

Code: Select all

Script 1 OPEN
{
ConsoleCommand("sv_nojump true");
}

etc.

Also, thanks very much for mentioning GetCVar, that just added more functionality to my mod! I never knew that existed. User configurable DMFlag switches are now possible for my duel hub.

[Gez]

It's so great that ZDoom will never support the ConsoleCommand function!

[cq75]

heh, I'm glad that Skulltag does, though; it allows me to have some maps that allow jumping and some maps that don't, on a server that runs 24/7.

EDIT - also, it could be a good idea to make a NO JUMPING sign at the start of your mod so that people know that they shouldn't jump if they want the full experience.

[printz]

WTF, jumping is sanctioned by MAPINFO, no need for automatic dmflag editing like that!

It's so great that ZDoom will never support the ConsoleCommand function!

Correct. Supporting such a feature would lead to malware wads that affect your files adversely. The Doom scene has been open and clean so far which is good.

[Nash]

There's a whitelist system behind ST's ConsoleCommand(), it's not like anyone can do anything dirty with it if they wanted to.

[InsanityBringer]

ZDoom could do something like the Source engine where the user can either use a "default" crosshair that is specific to the weapon you're holding, or force a favored one no matter what like the current system. That'd be nice and relatively intuitive... so I'm not holding my breath.

I believe ZDoom already does this. Use [wiki]A_SetCrosshair[/wiki] to do it. There's also a crosshairforce cvar which makes your crosshair setting override whatever the weapon wants.