The "How do I..." Thread

[NeuralStunner]

Why the hell does it interpret 'goto Scale' like 'goto super::scale'?

This isn't the problem. The child actor doesn't have a "Scale" state, so the jump goes to the aprent's. There it's told Goto Spawn, so it goes to the Spawn state. Goto is absolute, I.E. always jumps within the current state table (unless told a parent class). The wiki does not describe this well at all. (But then, I'm not sure if I did either.)

Also, you could do away with the state jump altogether:

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TNT1 A 0 A_SetScale(0.3 + (Random(1,5) * 0.2))

You can use a Random directly in the scale value, and you also don't have to specify both scale parameters if they're the same.

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

^ I ran into this problem too and there were some really good technical answers but I kind of forget what they were and was just advised to use A_Jump with 255 chance instead.

Also for the Scale state you can use the #### # sprite names, it will use whatever sprite that came before it.

Hmm... that's interesting. I'll try to check it out.

[TheBadHustlex]

I need help with LANGUAGE.

I tried to replace the "you need the [somekey]"-messages that are displayed when you try to open a locked door without having the key. I defined them in the language-lump of my project:

---

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PD_BLUEC = "Damn. Blue Key Needed.";
PD_REDC = "Red Key? Why the hell do I need that one now?";
PD_YELLOWC = "Yellow Key required. Hate that color.";
PD_BLUES = "Looks like they want the Cyan Key.";
PD_REDS = "Don't wanna search for the green key...";
PD_YELLOWS = "Where the hell do I find a Purple Key?";

However, the vanilla messages are still displayed.

[NeuralStunner]

A_Jump with 255 chance

[wiki=A_Jump]256[/wiki], unless you want a small chance of it imploding.

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

This isn't the problem. The child actor doesn't have a "Scale" state, so the jump goes to the aprent's. There it's told Goto Spawn, so it goes to the Spawn state. Goto is absolute, I.E. always jumps within the current state table (unless told a parent class). The wiki does not describe this well at all. (But then, I'm not sure if I did either.)

Well, that's new. So unless I'm defining an object that enters specific states for external reasons (like a monster's death state), I have to redefine all of them, otherwise goto will send to the parent.

Also, you could do away with the state jump altogether:

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TNT1 A 0 A_SetScale(0.3 + (Random(1,5) * 0.2))

You can use a Random directly in the scale value, and you also don't have to specify both scale parameters if they're the same.

Oh, I know about random. It's just that originally I only had 2 size variations and it seemed enough but then I decided to add some smoothness and I kinda forgot that I can use random and some arithmetics for that. Or maybe I tried using random(0.01,0.05) and it didn't work back then... Also I didn't know you can use only one number to set XY scale, I thought it only worked for X and Y separately.

A_Jump with 255 chance

[wiki=A_Jump]256[/wiki], unless you want a small chance of it imploding.

I actually had questioned that sometimes. I mean, from 0 to 256 means having 257 possible values. Doesn't seem entirely right.

[DoomKrakken]

Actually you can't do "A_Jump(0,"Whatever")"... because then it'll never jump. What's the point of giving it a jump chance of 0?

[Gez]

I actually had questioned that sometimes. I mean, from 0 to 256 means having 257 possible values. Doesn't seem entirely right.

That's the thing, the random value will be from 0 to 255 exclusively, not from 0 to 256. A_Jump will jump if the result is lesser than the value you gave it. 255 is lesser than 256. 255 is not lesser than 255. So if you roll 255, then with a value of 255 there's no jump, and with a value of 256 there's a jump.

You can use 257, 300, or 168000 too if you want, they'll be safe values as well.

Actually you can't do "A_Jump(0,"Whatever")"... because then it'll never jump. What's the point of giving it a jump chance of 0?

Disabling a jump without deleting it? So that you may debug some other behavior or whatever? I guess it's an alternative to commenting things out; and also it doesn't force you to change state offsets everywhere contrarily to commenting out state lines (but you shouldn't use state offsets anyway).

[jpalomo]

I need help with LANGUAGE.

I tried to replace the "you need the [somekey]"-messages that are displayed when you try to open a locked door without having the key. I defined them in the language-lump of my project:

---

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PD_BLUEC = "Damn. Blue Key Needed.";
PD_REDC = "Red Key? Why the hell do I need that one now?";
PD_YELLOWC = "Yellow Key required. Hate that color.";
PD_BLUES = "Looks like they want the Cyan Key.";
PD_REDS = "Don't wanna search for the green key...";
PD_YELLOWS = "Where the hell do I find a Purple Key?";

However, the vanilla messages are still displayed.

Did you remember to replace the strings for [wiki=LOCKDEFS]RemoteMessage[/wiki]? You can check the LOCKDEFS file in zdoom.pk3 for the string names. Did you also provide a language code at the start of the LANGUAGE file?

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[enu default]

[edward850]

A_Jump with 255 chance

[wiki=A_Jump]256[/wiki], unless you want a small chance of it imploding.

As an additional fun fact, painchance works by the same rules, and the player's default painchance is 255, not 256.

[Cansteam]

How do I determine how many tics a floor or ceiling lower/raise by value will take?
For example, how fast would
floor_raisebyvalue(17,30,144);
take?

[edward850]

(Distance) / (Speed / 8). Which all needs to be handled in fixed point, thus your exact formulae is;

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fixeddiv((144<<16),fixeddiv((30<<16),8.0))>>16

To return the approximated value in tics. It's not guaranteed to be exact (that exact calculation is 38.4 tics, and you cannot have .4 of a tic), it's a horrible waste of calculation time, and it also isn't even going to be correct if something interrupts the movement.

Basically, don't even think about doing it that way and just let ACS do it for you in a way that's 100% accurate, 100% of the time.

[Gez]

You can optimize that to ((144<<19) / 30)>>16 if you need this value for something else than waiting until it's complete, but yeah, use [wiki]TagWait[/wiki].

[Cansteam]

so it would be
floor_raisebyvalue(17,30,144);
tagwait(17);
?

[Gez]

Yes.

[edward850]

That is indeed correct as it shows you on that wiki page you hopefully looked at, yes.