The "How do I..." Thread

[Graf Zahl]

It's not finding the strings in the LANGUAGE lump; so it's probably in there that the problem is.

It can be something as dumb as a missing quote mark on a previous line...

It's something as dumb as missing a semicolon at the end of each line. The parser will treat that as concatenation between the two lines so most of the strings will never be defined.

[_mental_]

What does the error "Could not malloc [number] bytes" mean...? The game crashes and gets it on a death-state of one of my monsters.

This must be reported to Bugs subforum with a sample .wad/.pk3 to reproduce the crash.

[Gez]

You're running out of memory. Post your code, you must have a runaway loop in it or something like that.

[TheBadHustlex]

I found out that it wasn't actually the death-state, but an actor that gets spawned during the death of a monster.
Here it is.

---

Code: Select all

actor Diamondshard: Inventory
{
  scale 0.3
  inventory.maxamount 9999
  inventory.amount 1
  inventory.pickupsound "misc/shardpicker"
  +COUNTITEM
  +INVENTORY.INVBAR
  inventory.icon "I_SSDI"
  inventory.pickupmessage "Got a diamond shard!"
  Tag "diamond shard"
  states
  {
  Spawn:
    DSHQ C 1 bright
    loop
  }
}

[comet1337]

try changing the spawn state to

Code: Select all

spawn:
    dshq c -1 bright
    wait

[TheBadHustlex]

Nope. Still crashes.
Strangely, it works when you don't name it "Diamondshard". I called it "Diamondshard1" now, and it perfectly works. I have no clue what this is. Maybe there is a malfunctioning actor quirking around in the game's files also called "Diamondshard".

Anyway, thanks for your help.

[comet1337]

on an unrelated note: is there a way to change an actor's flags with ACS directly?
or do i have to do the workaround of giving items that change the flags

[DoomKrakken]

Not at all sure if it's possible... or necessary, for that matter...

Maybe you could provide an example of why this would be necessary, instead of using DECORATE?

[comet1337]

my armor pickups absorb 100% of taken damage, so you wouldn't take a scratch from chaingunners, but the walls behind you would be painted red
so i'd use an ACS script to check when the player has armor and give them the NOBLOOD flag, when they don't, remove the flag
atleast i couldn't find anything in the wiki

well, time for hackety hack hacks
i mean, it would make sense to have an ACS function to change flags, since decorate has one

[DoomKrakken]

I would think it'd be easier to use a simple [wiki]A_JumpIfArmorType[/wiki] function to do this. Put it under the pain state, have it jump to a state where the player spurts no blood from pain (I think)...

[Rowsol]

What would I rename a music file to overwrite the main menu music in doom 2?

Ok, I guess I got lucky. I kept renaming it until D_DM2TTL worked. 3rd time's a charm they say.

Well, nevermind. It works, but when I load NOVA 2 after it, NOVA doesn't overwrite it. I basically want the custom music to be overwritten by a wad that has it's own.

Is mp3 preferred to ogg or something. Same file names in each wad but the mp3 is always played regardless of load order.

[Rowsol]

I did look on the wiki. I look on it every day. Don't be an ass.

[Zanieon]

Looks like you forgot to check here then, see titlemusic.

[Gez]

I found out that it wasn't actually the death-state, but an actor that gets spawned during the death of a monster.

That's what I expected; but the cause of the crash isn't in this spawned actor's coding; it's in the spawner actor's coding. My hypothesis is that you have an infinite loop going on during which this actor is spawned, so ZDoom starts spawning an infinite amount of diamondshards, and since your RAM isn't infinite eventually you run out of memory to allocate for one more.

Post your code.

[edward850]

What would I rename a music file to overwrite the main menu music in doom 2?

Ok, I guess I got lucky. I kept renaming it until D_DM2TTL worked. 3rd time's a charm they say.

I did look on the wiki. I look on it every day. Don't be an ass.

Maybe not the right wiki.

Well, nevermind. It works, but when I load NOVA 2 after it, NOVA doesn't overwrite it. I basically want the custom music to be overwritten by a wad that has it's own.

Is mp3 preferred to ogg or something. Same file names in each wad but the mp3 is always played regardless of load order.

OGG is preferred, and licensed music certainly isn't (you need to actually have permission for the music you use). Furthermore, your theory about the load order is nonsense. The last lump defined is the first one found, and thus the one used. The only reason why your MP3s are being found is because they exist later. This is likely the problem you're having with NOVAII, also.