Switch that summons rocket

Hi, I want PrBoom compatible way to summon rocket on some position, going under some angle when crossing a line/ switching a switch. It would be cool to have traps like that or immobile rocket launchers that you could use :D

Hell Ground replaces the Evil Eye with a "monster" that is essentially a revenant rocket.



It's sort of like a monster in that it follows the player via Chase and, then, with the Skelmissile action, it "attacks". The frame after its attack is zero, so that it ceases to exist. (The borrowed frames are from Commander Keen.)

So you can create something similar that behaves the way you want it to, and simulate the summoning effect by using a teleporter (maybe silent) or by opening a small closet, etc. This one happens to move quite slowly, and it's also a shootable thing with 70 HP.

Nice but that will replace a monster on some slot, is there anything what would not replace any original content? Like acs script?

Nah, it replaces the Evil Eye and uses some Commander Keen frames. It doesn't even count towards kill %. If you want to keep the Commander Keen and the SS Nazi frames for something else, there are a few unused frames that can be used.

HG's rocket uses multiple Look and Chase frames to convincingly animate it hovering around, but if your rocket attacks immediately, then the Evil Eye's frames alone (917-920) will be more than enough.

NinjaLiquidator said:

is there anything what would not replace any original content?

No.

I recommend replacing the blocking hanging bodies, they're useless anyway, given that each of them has a non-blocking counterpart thing, and with infinitely tall actors, it's not desirable for objects hanging from the ceiling to be blocking, because they would block players and monsters trying to pass below them.

NinjaLiquidator said:

Like acs script?

ACS is ZDoom specific, PrBoom-plus doesn't support it, or any other scripting language, besides DEHACKED, in which you can only replace existing types of game objects, not add new types.

NinjaLiquidator said:

Nice but that will replace a monster on some slot, is there anything what would not replace any original content? Like acs script?

Nothing PrBoom-compatible, no. For scripts you'll need ZDoom, Eternity, Vavoom, Legacy, or a derivative of one of these ports.

That said if you simulate spawning a rocket by letting a rocket-looking monster teleport, you can get away with replacing those MBF actors nobody uses anyway. It'll be compatible with PrBoom+ and it'll work as well as it can be expected to.

Wouldnt be better an invisible rocket spawner that would "die" after summoning one rocket? Then less items would be replaced. Only thing I dont know is how the rocket direction would be controlled then ...

NinjaLiquidator said:

Wouldnt be better

That depends on the exact scenario you have in mind.

NinjaLiquidator said:

an invisible rocket spawner that would "die" after summoning one rocket?

That's easy to do, just make the spawner's attack animation continue by a state "0" after the rocket is spawned.

NinjaLiquidator said:

Then less items would be replaced.

No, they wouldn't. Or how so?

NinjaLiquidator said:

Only thing I dont know is how the rocket direction would be controlled then ...

It just fires towards its target, which is supposed to be the player.

scifista42: Is there any possibility for it to have different target than player? Is it possible to make a special type of object: rocket that goes exactly to north and nowhere else?

It is possible to make another object that explodes and damages the rocket spawner, so that the rocket spawner would target the other object and fire a rocket towards it. With a clever level design or a gimmicky combination of DEHACKED flags, you might be able to make the rocket miss the target object and continue flying in the same direction in which it was fired, potentially wherever you want, determined only by relative positions of the spawner and the target objects.

Or the easy solution, if this is essential to the map: use ZDoom. I frankly don't even think if what you're aiming for is really that possible in Boom or vanilla - maybe somewhat of an approximation of it, but as far as a "press a button, instantly shoot a projectile from one point towards another point, repeatable" dealio goes, your best bet is to use target a port that has actual features design for that.

I mean, you technically can do this both easily and in vanilla, but that would require making a vanilla Hexen map. Which would definitely be far more logistically difficult to convert to than ZDoom's UDMF.

scifista42: Maybe better idea - can I set some object to become a rocket when it will become 'dead'? 'Alive' would be invisible object that does nothing. Then second object that explodes, placed on the north close to first one, would explode and destroy it, and 'dead' would become a rocket, that would go north? :D Sure that the price would be that action would become 'once' and not 'repeatable', but Im ok with it.

Arctangent: Everybody plays in PrBoom so that will cause me to lost majority of players. Also, no beast would UV Max my maps, cause speedrunners go only for PrBoom. Also, I dont want to be part of Zdoom projects, only Boom projects. Zdoom projects are generally worse quality and they just dont feel like Doom anymore with all that special stuff like angled flats.

NinjaLiquidator said:

scifista42: Maybe better idea - can I set some object to become a rocket when it will become 'dead'? 'Alive' would be invisible object that does nothing. Then second object that explodes, placed on the north close to first one, would explode and destroy it, and 'dead' would become a rocket, that would go north? :D Sure that the price would be that action would become 'once' and not 'repeatable', but Im ok with it.

You say "become a rocket", but I guess you mean "fire a rocket and remove itself". The latter can be done. The rocket needs to be fired as a projectile, the only DEHACKED function that can spawn a rocket as a projectile is CyberAttack, and this function always fires the rocket into a direction of the caller's target. Anyway, it would better fire the rocket upon entering pain state than upon dying (because I think a dying object immediately loses its target), or even see state, which could be repeatable.

If you dont require the Boss Spawner you can make it shoot rockets instead of cubes (well, make cubes look like rockets and explode instead of spawn monsters). Benefit is it will shoot at the Boss spawn point things so you can be very specific where it shoots(and make its final state go to zero to only shoot once). Downside is you can only use one per map since it will attempt to shoot to any spawn points located in the map.