ZScript Discussion

[Beed28]

That's a shame. I was hoping to change hitscan attacks into projectile attacks without having to replace the monsters themselves (mostly for DeHackEd compatibility).

[ZZYZX]

By the way Graf you said that CustomSprite "is not used by anyone", but that's before it was zscriptified
Now it's basically a way to assign ARBITRARY graphic to an actor, from what I can see. Without it needing to be a sprite. Although not sure if such actor should derive from CustomSprite or setting picnum works everywhere.
In practice, this means that we can now (especially with my pull request) do an arbitrarily positioned clipped and postprocessed (using shader) cameratexture! HL2-like portals confirmed? Time to update portal gun mod.
Oh, also if I understand it correctly, we can now also use shaded cameratexture that refers to own actor and relates to player[consoleplayer].camera, in order to for example create air flickering near hot surfaces effect, or zoom stuff.

[Graf Zahl]

Customsprite had been able to do that for all those years it existed. I changed nothing about it. Its purpose has been to give it a texture number and use the Build texture with the given name as its sprite image. It's just that apparenly nobody ever did.

[ZZYZX]

Customsprite had been able to do that for all those years it existed.

Well multiple other features did not exist, namely shaders on cameratextures and proper flatsprites.

Also, any reason why this wouldn't work?

---

Code: Select all

class TestActor : CustomSprite
{
	Default
	{
		+NOBLOCKMAP
		+NOGRAVITY
        
        RenderStyle 'Normal';
	}
    
	States
	{
	Spawn:
		TNT1 A -1;
		Stop;
	}

    override void BeginPlay()
    {
        Super.BeginPlay();
        picnum = TexMan.CheckForTexture("PLAYA1", TexMan.Type_Any);    
        if (!picnum.Exists())
        {
            A_Log("failed");
            Destroy();
            return;
        }
    }
}

It spawns, but doesn't log anything (i.e. it's a success), but the sprite is not visible.
Does it explicitly check for Build type? If so, why?

[ZZYZX]

Changed to this

---

Code: Select all

class TestActor : Actor
{
	Default
	{
		+NOBLOCKMAP
		+NOGRAVITY
        
        RenderStyle 'Translucent';
	}
    
	States
	{
	Spawn:
		TNT1 A 1;
		loop;
	}

    override void BeginPlay()
    {
        Super.BeginPlay();
        A_Log(String.Format("picnum = %d", picnum));
        picnum = TexMan.CheckForTexture("M_DOOM", TexMan.Type_Any);    
        if (!picnum.Exists() || !picnum.IsValid())
        {
            A_Log("failed");
            Destroy();
            return;
        }
        A_Log("ok");
        A_Log(String.Format("picnum = %d", picnum));
    }
    
    override void Tick()
    {
        Super.Tick();
        A_Log(String.Format("picnum = %d", picnum));
    }
}

It logs "ok" after creation, and it logs picnum>=0 in both tick and beginplay.
According to GZDoom source code, whenever picnum is valid, it should be applied instead of sprite.
The picture is still not displayed though.

[Major Cooke]

Perhaps you need to define a spawn state. I tried doing something similar and assigning a sprite/frame using (post)beginplay via experimentation but it never gave me anything but a missing symbol.

[Graf Zahl]

Actually, for that you do not even need CustomSprite, you can inherit directly from Actor.
All CustomSprite does is setting picnum and a few renderflags from the args, it has nothing built in to display the sprite. Picnum works for any actor.

What I can't say is if I ever implemented handling for this in the GL renderer, because it's such an obscure feature.

[ZZYZX]

Hahahah! It works in software renderer. Apparently OpenGL renderer ignores picnum altogether. Bug confirmed? (if yes, I can try to go and understand what causes this and make a PR, as pretty much the only person that's interested)

[Graf Zahl]

Looks like picnum is never checked indeed.

[Nash]

Now it's basically a way to assign ARBITRARY graphic to an actor, from what I can see.

This can almost be used to avoid the archaic 8-character sprite naming convention, except the problem is calculating the rotation angle and have it affect only the camera who's viewing it...

[ZZYZX]

It's will be broken with portals, because for doing it properly you have to calculate camera position during exact rendering step, not using playsim camera position/angles.
i.e. in portals camera is warped around, it's angle changed, etc. Will break.
Another use for my event system — preprocess the actor before rendering, say, set picnum or move around shadow actors so that they are always exactly behind the main actor
If for example we need that actor is drawn in a special way depending on where it is viewed from, OR FOR CUSTOM INTERPOLATION, since it's called on each frame.
Since portals and cameratextures are always using almost full rendering pipeline, it should be possible to move actors around before rendering something in a portal, without breaking BSP stuff.

This is probably what I'm going to do as a proof-of-concept implementation.

[Gez]

Customsprite had been able to do that for all those years it existed. I changed nothing about it. Its purpose has been to give it a texture number and use the Build texture with the given name as its sprite image. It's just that apparenly nobody ever did.

Documentation says arg1 can be used as the high byte and that doesn't seem to be true anymore.

Looking into the file's history, that was changed back in 2014. Well I don't think anybody ever used them with a number greater than 255 in a Hexen map, so I suppose the simplest is to update the documentation to remove the bit about arg1.

[Agentbromsnor]

UI

Soon.

networking

Never.

What should I be looking for there? Sorry, but I haven't followed any of the discussion up till now, so I don't have any idea about the context of what tackles this issue.

base_player.zs, function UpdateLegsAndBody, line 61. This code smooths player movements and compensates for whenever the player tries to move into an unreachable place.

I've looked over the code multiple times but I can't figure out how it all functions and how I can apply it to my game. Could you perhaps break it down for me so I can learn what to do? Thanks for your help.

[Ed the Bat]

No. Once a function is defined it cannot be changed. That would be far too dangerous because its injecting foreign code into existing classes without their knowledge.

Makes sense. Guess I'll keep doing the brute-force method for now.

[Nash]

It's will be broken with portals, because for doing it properly you have to calculate camera position during exact rendering step, not using playsim camera position/angles.
i.e. in portals camera is warped around, it's angle changed, etc. Will break.
Another use for my event system — preprocess the actor before rendering, say, set picnum or move around shadow actors so that they are always exactly behind the main actor :)
If for example we need that actor is drawn in a special way depending on where it is viewed from, OR FOR CUSTOM INTERPOLATION, since it's called on each frame.
Since portals and cameratextures are always using almost full rendering pipeline, it should be possible to move actors around before rendering something in a portal, without breaking BSP stuff.

This is probably what I'm going to do as a proof-of-concept implementation.

Your custom event idea sounds very promising. I've made a modular character system for my project, which naturally requires a TON of graphics. This is the atrocity I had to come up with to work with 8 letters for sprite frames...

Code: Select all

Player Part Documentation
-------------------------

SPRITE NAMING CONVENTION:

xxxyza

All parts' class names must be 3 words max.

xxx
----------
3-letter ID; the abbreviated name of the part. Please use UPPERCASE.

Eg:

CMB = Caucasian Male Body
UPF = Under Pants Female
WCB = Weapon Crowbar
SHM = Shirt Male
... etc etc etc

yz
----------
Animation ID. Can be A to Z, 0 to 9, and [ ^ ], giving each part a total of 1521
frames of animation. (26 + 10 + 3)². Please use lowercase.

a
----------
Direction/angle value. Follow standard ZDoom convention (see Angles, middle ring
at http://zdoom.org/wiki/Sprite for details).

... sometimes I wish I could just name the graphics "Caucasian male body-000-1.png". In the format: <long descriptive name of the body part>-<3-digit animation frame>-<angle>.png. Each critical part would be separated by a - delimiter.