The Monster Spawn Sources...

About halfway through a Doom II level I'm trying to make, you will come down some stairs and into a small, square room. There will be a monster spawn source in the corner of the room, which will project monsters into a small cage in the center of the room. The idea is that if you don't kill the present monster fast enough, another one will come and telefrag it. If you do, the next monster will simply replace it.

It sounds like an okay concept to me. But my question is: Is it such a good idea? Seeing that the spawner will be constantly running no matter where you are in the map, and seeing that there's still quite a bit more to go in the level, how many dead bodies can Doom handle before it starts getting really messed up?

Should be able to actually handle plenty, but it will not draw more than 64 sprites without a limit-removing port. You might want to increase the interval between spawns via dehacked as well (the frame number is 786)

Thanks. Then it should be okay, just as long as the game "decides" not to show the dead bodies instead of not showing the live monster.

CtrlAltDestroy said:

Thanks. Then it should be okay, just as long as the game "decides" not to show the dead bodies instead of not showing the live monster.

I warn you though, it does seem to be pretty random as to what blinks in and out.

(player returns to room)

Hey! The monsters in the cage are all gone! ...what the? Where's that yellow fire coming from?!? Ahhhhh!*KABOOM*

...I think I'll put it towards the end of the level then.

I'm not so sure that monsters can telefrag each other (except maybe spawning cubes). They may have changed it in ZDoom though.

CtrlAltDestroy said:

(player returns to room)

Hey! The monsters in the cage are all gone! ...what the? Where's that yellow fire coming from?!? Ahhhhh!*KABOOM*

...I think I'll put it towards the end of the level then.

Yeah, it's probably the best idea. I failed to explicitly mention though, the 64 sprite limit is only in effect when there is more than 64 sprites onscreen, so if you placed the cage so that there isn't much else in view it should work alright. Are you making the level for vanilla Doom2?

Ichor said:

I'm not so sure that monsters can telefrag each other (except maybe spawning cubes). They may have changed it in ZDoom though.

That's the idea. The spawning cubes easially telefrag monsters they land on. The monster in the cage has just about nowhere to go, so it has to get hit by the next cube.

Uh, Excuse me, but i have a lil problem and i thought it fit to post it inthis thread, since it was started and all...

But when i make a spawner, the cubes do not want to seem to wana kill the guys it lands on, so it jsut spawns in them, thus making the monsters helpless to do anything.

Why dose this happen...?
i know i have a spawn spotm and a spawner, and evin the boss brain.
but it still happenes, could you give me any help?

also, once i got this weird error (legacy) missle_s_nodetest, or somthing like that. any idea whats that about?

It's only on map30 where they telefrag. On any other map, they occupy the same place as any monster that is on the spawn-spot, resulting in them all being alive, but stuck together and immobile.

Oh, well thats weird. I made the map for level 30, and i got that error, also, it still spawned them overtop of eachother...

Maybe you're using a port that disables this feature, or one that has it as a compatibility option (and it is turned off).

Allright, so if thats the case, how (and/or) where would i go to change that?