Old School Method to Limit Lost Soul's Flight Length?

[Syfo-Dyas]

Is there an old Bex/Deh method to limit how far the Lost Soul flies? I have created a new enemy using the Lost Soul's Code Pointer to attack.

The enemy is bound to the ground and is able to leap up onto large ledges which is great, but there is no limit to how high he can leap. As long as he is in attack mode he will keep flying till he hits the player or a wall or what ever. If I can cut his flight short that would be perfect otherwise the enemy acts like Superman which will not do at all.


Also, is there a way to disable the light that is constantly with the Lost Soul sprites? Or to assign it to different enemies?

Thankx again oh masters of all things DOOM.

[Xtyfe]

The lost souls attack is looped continually, not sure if you can get around that in dehacked, but you certainly could with decorate. Just remove its loop at the end of the attack state and having it go on for as many ticks as you wanted before going back to its see state. As far as the light you describe, the lost soul is rendered full bright at all times, again not sure if you can do anything with that in dehacked, but removing the bright keyword from its frames in decorate will do the trick

[Syfo-Dyas]

Bummer...

...alright time for me to jump on the "bring Decorate to Odamex" band wagon.

[Boingo_the_Clown]

If you can steal some frames from objects and monsters that don't need them (i.e. if you are working in DooM 1 and don't need the monsters from DooM 2, or if you are not using the archville and don't need the resurrection frames for your monsters) you can use these frames for the lost soul. If you manage to scrape together 30 or so you can use those frames to repeat the lost soul attack animation and then have the last frame go back to the normal movement frame. It is kind of a brute force method of doing it, but I think it would work.

[Syfo-Dyas]

Boingo!

Wasn't it you who was working on a Flame Thrower weapon for Legacy years ago?

As for trading up frames...

...I'll be looking into this as I go on. DeHacked and Bex are not intimidating me nearly as much as they used to last time I touched them. I'm getting a clearer idea of how things work, and I know with the sprite base I am injecting into my project (Alien Breed 3D), that I will have plenty of frames to spare as I have sources images that don't face any direction but forward, backwards, and side to side. All I got to do is figure out how to take those frames that present the character facing an angle, and apply them to something else.

As for the light issue, I think I'll just swap the frames out with another enemy with robotic sprites. A lit up robot in the dark would not seem so out of place. Of course if used a glow worm, that would work as well.

[disposable_username2]

that I will have plenty of frames to spare as I have sources images that don't face any direction but forward, backwards, and side to side. All I got to do is figure out how to take those frames that present the character facing an angle, and apply them to something else.

You don't. A state (Dehacked calls them "frames") defines the four-character sprite name and one-character frame index, and the renderer displays the appropriate rotation.

[Boingo_the_Clown]

Boingo!

Wasn't it you who was working on a Flame Thrower weapon for Legacy years ago?

Yes it was, and it sure looked sweet. It was for an enemy marine in DeiM that replaced the sergeant. I simply used a high rate of projectile fire and had the monster check its line of sight to know when to stop firing. The sprites were repainted baron fireballs, which overlapped nicely, blurring the individual sprites together so they appeared as a single stream. I only used two frames with the timing set so that the range was limited. Of course this meant the marine could not be used in an open area or the player could simply stand out of range and shoot him in complete leisure.

I use the same technique for the flying robed Hittler decoys in DeiMWolf v0.9.2 for GZDooM, except the fireballs do not have a limited range. I do not think the effect looks quite as good as what I had in DeiM, because the public domain fireball sprites I used do not blend together as well at angles other than the front, so it is easy to see the individual fireballs. It is very similar to what I did in DeiM though.

http://www.doomlegends.com/deimwolf/ if you want to give it a try. Just level jump to E3M9 to get fried.

DeiMWolf is an unfinished project and is still in a very crude state. It must be run in GZDooM (not ZDooM), because all the work for it was originally done for Legacy. The maps are all in Legacy format and it still uses (gasp!) fragglescript.

[Syfo-Dyas]

Still kicking it old school hugh? That is awesome!

I found the character. Very tantalizing effect! I'm glad to see him in action at long last!!!
Now for some reason I seem to recall images on NewDOOM feature enemies with HazMat looking suits, or am I remembering wrong?

[Boingo_the_Clown]

You remember correctly. DeiMWolf is a recreation of Wolfenstein 3D and was originally supposed to be a single level easter egg in DeiM (hence the name), but ended up becoming a project of its own. DeiM on the other hand has long been shelved, and never saw an actual release. The character you saw was a marine wearing a flame retardant suit and was stop motion animated with a three inch tall action figure. The motion was a little jerky, but pretty good overall. Using DEHackEd I was able to change the character's walk cycle from the normal four frame walk cycle (AABBCCDD) to an eight frame walk cycle (ABCDEFGH), as well as other tricks.

If Odamex does not support DECORATE, then it is good to fall back on old and reliable DEHackED, and if it does not support advanced features, then there are plenty of old tricks that work in vanilla DooM that should also work in most of the ports.

[Syfo-Dyas]

Let me get this straight, you said "stop motion". Do you mean to say that you took a camera and took photos of a doll and converted him over to sprites?

I have Blue Screen gear and everything here (for my Amiga), but things have been so hectic I have not had the opportunity to set things up proper and begin experiments like that.


Also, I remember back in the NewDOOM days that you were the guy who was always paving new ground in regards to Deh. Glad to see you are still about and tinkering with things. Old habits die hard hugh?

[Boingo_the_Clown]

I did indeed say "stop motion". I drilled a hole in the poor figure's ass, inserted a wire and stuck the other end of the wire into a hole in a piece of wood on a lazy susan. I then painstakingly moved the little guy and rotated the lazy susan to get the different views. The camera was borrowed.

(I should point out that most of the original DooM monsters were done using stop motion.http://www.giantbomb.com/doom/62-156/al ... 1-1702115/ )

My biggest hack editing accomplishment was figuring out how to hack into the Heretic tables in Legacy. Legacy does not have DECORATE, and the limited number of things and frames was driving me insane. Then I accidentally found where the Heretic tables were in Legacy 1.42 and with the help of Toxic Fluff I was able to figure out how to get the Heretic monsters to appear in DooM, then figure out how to hack the tables to make use of the Heretic things and frames, and to use the Heretic code pointers. If you try to load the DEHACKED lump in earlier versions of DeiMWolf or T.U.C.Q. into the original DEHackEd program you will crash it because of all the non-standard hack editing. It all had to be done by hand.

If you look at the different thing types in the DeiMWolf or T.U.C.Q. DECORATE lumps you will often come across things with ID numbers of 6000 or more. That is an artifact of the Heretic hack editing. I had to change the IDs of the Heretic things in order for them to appear in DooM mode and I did it by adding 6000 to the existing ID numbers.

[Syfo-Dyas]

Oh! A few screen shots I'd not seen before! More for my collection!

I knew ID had sculpted models and took photos of them, which has what has always inspired me to try it out some day myself. In fact I finally got around to reading the book: Masters if DOOM. Wonderful story, only wish it could have been longer.
Now I want to see old school DOOM adapted over to work with these new 3D Head sets that Carmack is all gung-ho about.

Anyhow, I remember back when you were messing around with the Heretic bits. That inspired me to create the 3 Way Shot for the Bow Caster in my old Star Wars Legacy project which is still lying in pieces on my hard drive from since 2001. In fact I have recently been going through all the maps I'd been working on over the years for my Star Wars project and are reshaping them to use in my Alien Breed tribute instead. Star Wars is too sacred a thing, maybe later.

Toxic was always a huge help back in the day, I still have a lot of his demonstration maps and Fraggle Scripts that he e-mailed to me back in the day to help me learn some of Legacy's more advanced features. Man I miss those days, Legacy was not without it's faults, but very promising a project none the less.

I remember that there was a Table list for the Heretic features being worked on way back in the day, is that still around? That is one thing I meant to try with Odamex, but I remember nothing about any of those old Heretic experiments I was trying with Legacy back then and have not found those particular bits of my old experiments in my archives yet... I'm messy.

[Boingo_the_Clown]

I highly doubt any of the Heretic hack editing that was done in Legacy will work in Odamex, unless Odamex hides its Heretic tables below the DooM tables like Legacy does. Even if it does, it is doubtful the tables will line up the way they do in Legacy 1.42.

[Syfo-Dyas]

I thought about that and what you had said after I made my post.

I've not touched this stuff in a while, is there a table ZDOOM in that case?

[Enjay]

ZDoom has a lump called [wiki]DEHSUPP[/wiki]. For a while it was possible (but never officially supported) to modify this to allow access to non-Doom code pointers and frames. As you can see from the wiki page, this is no longer possible (for good reasons). HHE has never been supported in ZDoom.