The "How do I..." Thread

[Gez]

Logical names can be as long and weird as you want, but lump names are limited to eight characters.

So you can have something like this:
BFG9000_is_now_fully_charged BFGCHRGD
BFGG A 0 A_PlaySound("BFG9000_is_now_fully_charged", 0)

[Enjay]

Logical names can be as long and weird as you want, but lump names are limited to eight characters.

Is that even the case when using a PK3? I know some lump names can be longer (e.g. model related stuff) but I think most stuff needs to be <9 characters. Pretty sure textures must be <9 characters anyway (perhaps because of the map format not supporting >8 characters on a sidedef?).

[Marrub]

I've run into the filename problem far too many times. Sounds need to be 8 characters max.
Even in a pk3/pk7. It's a dumb limitation, and I'm not even sure why it's still there.

[Gez]

I know music names can be longer than 8 characters if you include the full path to them. E.g., "changemus music/some_long_music_name.mp3" will work. This also lets you place music outside of the music folder by the way.

Maybe it's the same with sounds. I haven't tried.

[edward850]

It's a dumb limitation, and I'm not even sure why it's still there.

Because that's how the resource management is designed, and nobody is yet to achieve 95548245 unique filenames in 1 WAD yet, so nobody is in a hurry to change it.

[Marrub]

95548245 unique filenames in 1 WAD

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[edward850]

I made a miscalculation. It's 118,030,184 (A-Z, 0-9, [ ] - _ \ and nulls). Or if we include lower case letters, 7,392,009,767, which is greater than the number of lumps a single WAD can actually address.

[Gez]

if we include lower case letters

We don't because the archive code is case-insensitive. (Unless you use the SRB2 engine I guess.)

[Endless123]

Once more i need your help guys.

Is there any ways to use the crosshair to identify monsters/actors ? Like if an Imp is under the crosshair a HUD message could say "Imp - 150HP" or something like that. The best example of what i mean is Doom 3 crosshair showing the name of NPC's

Here what i mean

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Is it possible to done something similar in zdoom?

[Blue Shadow]

It's possible, though I have no idea how it's all set up.

Kyle873's Doom RPG mod has that feature. You may want to ask him how he's done it.

[Endless123]

Thanks for the link, i've played his mod a bit ... this guy is a genius to say the least, really fun mod to play. i'll browse a bit through the files to see if i could find a clue about how to do what i mentioned in my previous post.

I'll send him a pm if don't figure it out. Which is a high probability i'd say

Thanks again

[Scripten]

Anyone know why the obituary comes up as "Player killed himself." when using the following ACS? I've tried a number of different standard damage types, to no avail. If it's any use, the script is called from the player's pain state and is a global ACS script with no parameters.

Code: Select all

  if (HP_Head <= 0) {
    HP_Head = 0;
    Thing_Damage2(0, 100, "Fire");
  }

[edward850]

Because only the physical act of being damaged has a source and inflictor, ACS isn't designed for damage ownership, and Thing_Damage2 uses the TID as the source regardless. Here's a rundown of what's happening:

• Mobj A is hit by Source B from Inflictor C.
• Health is detracted from Mobj A.
• Mobj A is still alive.
• Mobj A is put into its pain state.
• At this point, Source B and Inflictor C have nothing to do with Mobj A anymore.
• ZDoom cycles through tics.
• Mobj A executes a script from its pain state.
• Script D is run, with Mobj A as its activator.
• Script D runs Thing_Damage2, with Mobj A as its source. This would happen regardless of who ran the script, and the TID itself the source (0 being the script activator).
• Mobj A dies, itself as the source. This is of course a suicide.

[Scripten]

Damn, that's what I figured was happening. That's a shame. I'll have to try some other solutions. Many thanks.

[foul_owl]

Real easy one:

Brutal doom has a bunch of extra guns, like the rail gun and the bfg10k. How do I add those as weapon pickups to a map that I make? Using eureka for my map editor. In the same vein, how do I add monsters downloaded from realm667 to the maps that I make? (Not using brutal doom with extra monsters because I'm fairly certain that brutal doom won't work in that case.)

Thanks!