TERRAIN question

I have a question related to the TERRAIN lump. I figured that I'd try something a little fancier with the WAD I'm working on, and add some splash sounds for water, toxic waste, and the like. That part works fine, but I've discovered an annoying side-effect. It seems that the sound is also triggered when any projectile happens to hit the surface of the liquid in question. Running around with the SSG can be particularly annoying due to the pellet spread. Seems that four or five always seem to hit the surface of the liquid and trigger the splash sound at 4x the regular volume.

My question is this: can I restrict the sound to only play when the player hits the surface of a liquid?

Thanks in advance.

You can not restrict it to the player only. But if you change the mass of the puff spawned by the shotgun to less than 10 a smaller splash will be used. You can set that one so that it to be invisible and making no sound with the keywords starting with 'small'.

there is also the +dontsplash flag for any projectiles you define through DECORATE.

Hmm... that sounds workable, but how exactly would I go about that? I'm still rather inexperienced with DooM editing. I understand the basics of DECORATE, and how to create slightly altered versions of objects and monsters using inheritance. Is that how you're suggesting I change the mass? If so, how would I get the SSG (and other weapons) to use the modified bulletpuffs, instead of the regular ones? That bit is a little beyond me.

Same applies to the solution using the +dontsplash flag. I understand what you're saying, just not quite how to apply it.

What version of Zdoom are you using? I ask because the bulletpuff actor has already had its mass reduced to <10 and already makes the smaller splash for any terrain that you have defined.

And here's an example of how to put the dontsplash flag on an actor and have it replace an existing actor. This will create an actor that copies all its setting from the normal blue plasma actor, adds the dontsplash flag and then replaces the original in the game:

actor PlasmaBall_2 : PlasmaBall replaces PlasmaBall
{
+DONTSPLASH
}

The same principle can be used to define a new mass for an item:

actor PlasmaBall_2 : PlasmaBall replaces PlasmaBall
{
Mass 5
}

That will make the plasma ball make a small splash instead of the big one.

The only additional thing is that you will need to define your actors as generators of decals if you still want them to make marks on walls.

Aha, that solution works quite nicely, thanks.

I have one last question on this subject. It seems that the little specs of blood spawned when a monster is hit by a hitscan weapon are also causing noise as they fall into a liquid. I've looked all around on the wiki, and for the life of me, I can't find what they're called. Can anyone tell me?

I'm using ZDoom version 2.1.7.366. I haven't checked for updates in a while, so it wouldn't surprise me if there is a newer version.

I think the blood actor is simply called Blood.

The version of Zdoom you are running is the most recent official release but there are far more up-to-date SVN releases available from the Zdoom site. There are even rumours of a "before the end of 2007" official release.

I just checked and blood splats and bullet puffs are already set to a low mass in the version you are using so you should be able to set your terrains up with silent small splashes without altering those actors and effectively silence them when they hit terrain defined floors.

Enjay said:

... but there are far more up-to-date SVN releases available from the Zdoom site. ...

just a small intervention, if I may. The SVNs can be reached from the ZDOOM WIKI mainpage

http://208.78.96.242/wiki/Main_Page

just below 'Welcome to the ZDoom Wiki'

Enjay said:

... There are even rumours of a "before the end of 2007" official release. ...

That would be welcomed indeed. :-)

Alrighty, it's fixed now. Thanks for your help.