Custom "Monster Gallery"

[Cutmanmike]

How about some way of making your own gallery of monsters when you finish the game? I'm guessing this would be in the MAPINFO. An example would be something like:

Code: Select all

Monstergallery Galleryname
{
Actors DoomImp,Cyberdemon,Korax,Impse,Archvile,Whatever
Picture BOSSBACK
Sound "weapons/shotgf"
Music D_BUNNY
}

Any thoughts on this? I get tired of seeing the old monsters get killed one by one at the end of a game and I thought it would be interesting to see some custom ones used in there.

[Graf Zahl]

It needs more than this. You have to specify which attack is to be played and the attack sounds as well.

[Shadelight]

I like the sound of this idea, I've been wanting a custom gallery. It would help for the majority of people who want their decorate monsters being showed off at the end.

[Enjay]

Obviously the built in cast-call is a bit odd too. When you modify monsters with dehacked, sometimes your changes reflect in the way the monster behaves during the cast-call and sometimes your changes get ignored. Sometimes making your changes has a completely odd or unwanted effect on the cast-call.

[Tormentor667]

Obviously the built in cast-call is a bit odd too. When you modify monsters with dehacked, sometimes your changes reflect in the way the monster behaves during the cast-call and sometimes your changes get ignored. Sometimes making your changes has a completely odd or unwanted effect on the cast-call.

That's true, just try BATMAN DOOM or HACX

[Anakin S.]

Tell me about it. How many times has that monster gallery been unable to continue due to a modified death sequence?

[Phobus]

Batman doom is the only example I've see nof it, but I get the point. We are in need of a casting-call changind system, though there's probably a very long and complex way to do it that I can think of:

You get the texture you want displayed at the end screen and make it a huge scripted animations thing showing all of the monsters that you want on there. It's stupid, and would take forever, but that's all I can think of right now...

[skadoomer]

Does the cast call ignore code pointers? There are some monsters which rely on a_jump functions, so i imagine that there attack sequences would become incredibly long durring this.

It needs more than this. You have to specify which attack is to be played and the attack sounds as well.

Isn't the attack sound retrieved from the Actor? Or could it be? If mapinfo is limited in specifying every attack it wants for every monster listed, would a flag in the monsters class help? Like a +Cast_AttackMelee or Cast_AttackRange?

[Bio Hazard]

Why not just script a cast call with ACS?
Well, actually, you would need a way to invoke actions from actors so I guess you can't (yet).

[Graf Zahl]

Isn't the attack sound retrieved from the Actor? Or could it be? If mapinfo is limited in specifying every attack it wants for every monster listed, would a flag in the monsters class help? Like a +Cast_AttackMelee or Cast_AttackRange?

No. Many of the used sounds are hard coded to code pointers so they have to be specified explicitly.

[Enjay]

Well, actually, you would need a way to invoke actions from actors so I guess you can't (yet).

Yes you can (sort of - in this case). It's very easy to simulate the look of the original castcall using hudmessages. Just "print" a few walking frames onto the screen followed by the attack frames, play the appropriate sound using ambientsound and move back to the start. I did it a while back with just a few monsters to establish the principle. It looked identical. For player activated deaths, just have the player in a tiny sector with a script line in front of them that activates a death animation series of hudmessages and moves on to the next monster. Script all your monsters and then return to the start. It didn't take up that much code at all, and someone who understands variables and ints could do it far more efficiently than me I suspect. Something for the ACS prefab database?

[Bio Hazard]

Just "print" a few walking frames onto the screen followed by the attack frames, play the appropriate sound using ambientsound and move back to the start.

... and that is why you are awesome.



...Why didn't I think of that?

[Phobus]

My idea actually sounds easy (as far as technicalities are concerned) but it's definitely not as flexible. Very clever

[Enjay]

...Why didn't I think of that?

Umm, I dunno. I was almost not going to post what I did because I though Bio Hazard, the credits and intermission meister, must have thought of this and already discounted it for some reason.

[Bio Hazard]

I must have been thinking of a cutscene with moving cameras and stuff when that came to mind. You know I like to make moving cameras for everything. Maybe that's why I thought it wouldn't work?

Yeah... that's it... Yeah...