Force pistol start at level start

Is this possible? I think being able to do this would create some very interesting level sets.

yes. But for Vanilla to be like this, it requires previous exit level trickery.

Heh, or just a bunch of Map01 WADs with a text file saying in what order to play them.

How about a ZDoom script?

myk said:

Heh, or just a bunch of Map01 WADs with a text file saying in what order to play them.

DING DING DING

myk said:

Heh, or just a bunch of Map01 WADs with a text file saying in what order to play them.

In vanilla, you could even automate this by including a .bat file, and adding a dummy MAP02 to each WAD containing invalid texture names.  After each MAP01, the program would halt with an exception, returning control to the batch file.

Hmm, how about a ZDoom script?

Because all maps should be for ZDoom.

Well, say if I am making a ZDoom wad and I want to force a pistol start?

I'm not sure but this kind of script should make it:

script 50 (open)
{
ClearInventory();
GiveInventory("Fist", 1);
GiveInventory("Pistol", 1);
GiveInventory("Clip", 50);
}

That clears your inventory completely and gives you your fists, one pistol and 50 ammo.

http://zdoom.org/wiki/Inventory There's more information related to Inventory-stuff.

Ok, how about health 100% and armor 0%?

Eric Vaughn said:

Ok, how about health 100% and armor 0%?

wait... isn't that the default? I'd look under inventory again

Xeriphas1994 said:

In vanilla, you could even automate this by including a .bat file, and adding a dummy MAP02 to each WAD containing invalid texture names.  After each MAP01, the program would halt with an exception, returning control to the batch file.

Nice. I like this idea. But it kinda means you can't give anything out at the end of a level. one of the fun things about doom is finding a secret near the end or a box of rockets to get you ready for the next map.

Each "episode" of Scythe 2 has a setup at the end of it to force a pistol start on the next map, without using any Boom or ZDoom tricks. It makes use of the John Romero head (possibly with some dehacked as well, I'm not sure). You should be able to use it even if you're mapping for Doom 1, since all the Doom 2 monsters' behavior is in Doom 1.9, as long as you include the necessary sprites.

esselfortium said:

Each "episode" of Scythe 2 has a setup at the end of it to force a pistol start on the next map, without using any Boom or ZDoom tricks. It makes use of the John Romero head (possibly with some dehacked as well, I'm not sure). You should be able to use it even if you're mapping for Doom 1, since all the Doom 2 monsters' behavior is in Doom 1.9, as long as you include the necessary sprites.

Scythe did this too, there's a sector type that exits the level when your health is below 20 and does damage. (Used for the ending of episode 1) Just make the player die in that sector somehow and the level should exit.

Yeah, but you don't enter the next map with 100% health and 50 bullets. Scythe 2, afaik, crushes a ton of John Romero heads around a voodoo doll, so the explosions that get summoned by them kill you and then their end-level codepointer is triggered a few tics later.

MasterOFDeath said:

Scythe did this too, there's a sector type that exits the level when your health is below 20 and does damage. (Used for the ending of episode 1) Just make the player die in that sector somehow and the level should exit.

I thought that this sector type restored you to your second-last health value (ie. the health you had before 0%) and put you on the next level with all your current weapons and ammo. I could be wrong though!

One of the Scythe 2 episode endings forces the player to kill himself with rocket splash damage so that his corpse can slide over an exit line.

Most episodes in Scythe 2 end when the player telefrags a barrel in a room full of barrels and a Romero head. Dehacked is not required for this to work. Essel is overthinking this.

Edit: Nevermind, I just looked through some of Scythe 2 and the Romero-head-based exits have some variation to their exact mechanics. The map 10 exit works with the simple telefrag.

From what I remember, it was any amount of health that was 11% or below would end the level.

Telefragging a John Romero head on top of a bunch of barrels will kill you, and John Romero, thus ending the level. If it is for Doom 1, you maybe able to make a sector outside the level thats very small made of lines that exit the level, then teleport ontop of barrels that will blow you across the exit lines so that you will be dead once you cross the lines, and start the next map at a pistol start. This would have to include a lot of testing to make sure the player actually dies before he crosses the lines, or that he actually passes the lines.

JohnnyRancid said:

From what I remember, it was any amount of health that was 11% or below would end the level.

Telefragging a John Romero head on top of a bunch of barrels will kill you, and John Romero, thus ending the level. If it is for Doom 1, you maybe able to make a sector outside the level thats very small made of lines that exit the level, then teleport ontop of barrels that will blow you across the exit lines so that you will be dead once you cross the lines, and start the next map at a pistol start. This would have to include a lot of testing to make sure the player actually dies before he crosses the lines, or that he actually passes the lines.

While the barrel is exploding, the player is frozen in place, like the moment of paralysis caused by telefragging anything else. I'm not sure that there's any setup that could guarantee that the player would die before crossing an exit line but would regain the ability to move before dying completely.

Again, you can use the John Romero head in Doom 1 wads, as long as you include the necessary sprites and sounds.

Quite possibly, one could put a "W1 - Crusher start with slow damage" linedef 1 pixal in front of the teleport linedef. The player will teleport to a room full of barrels and the crusher will kill them for you. Then the author just needs to make the room is small enough so the player can't move until their corpse is being blown under like a 32 height sector that is the exit like map25 of Scythe2... or something =S

esselfortium said:

Again, you can use the John Romero head in Doom 1 wads, as long as you include the necessary sprites and sounds.

Well how about that. It makes sense, as Doom 1 and 2 run on the same engine, but I still never knew this was possible. I just made a fake revenant in a 2-sector Doom 1 wad by copying resources and it works perfectly.

Of course, that's technically resource theft from an iwad. But we do that all the time anyway. Could I rampantly misuse this fact for a wad of my own and get away with it? Suppose you wanted a vanilla-compatible wad but with Doom 2 monsters and a built-in episode structure.

ZDoom allows you to load any thing from any game into any game, but isn't the original Doom1/2 engine hardcoded to remove things with Doom2 ID numbers, other than the Megasphere (since things like Dehacked couldn't change the ID number), when it knows you are running Doom1?

Whoops, I shouldn't have tested in ZDoom then...

Creaphis said:

Well how about that. It makes sense, as Doom 1 and 2 run on the same engine, but I still never knew this was possible. I just made a fake revenant in a 2-sector Doom 1 wad by copying resources and it works perfectly.

Of course, that's technically resource theft from an iwad. But we do that all the time anyway. Could I rampantly misuse this fact for a wad of my own and get away with it? Suppose you wanted a vanilla-compatible wad but with Doom 2 monsters and a built-in episode structure.

You could always use the Soul Harvester sprites from KDiZD, as it was essentially made to be a Doom1-friendly version of the Revenant.

The only thing you really can't do in a Doom 1 wad that you can in Doom 2 is use the super shotgun, unless you replace the chainsaw or something. The extra weapon slot for it just isn't available in Doom 1, afaik :(

And Vermil, I'm fairly certain that as long as you provide all of the necessary sprites and sounds, you can use any Doom 2 monsters or items in Doom 1. It's all in the executable, and there's no reason I can think of why they'd specifically add in code to prevent them from being accessible. Dehacked allows you to change things' ID numbers, anyway.

Also, barrels under crushers are not reliable! Due to an oddity in the Doom source, there's a random chance (this random number will be different depending on the number of things in the map, and whether or not they've woken up and actually done stuff) of the barrels just being turned to gibs, and not exploding at all. Even if you've got a ton of them. For KDiKDiZD's barrel multi-triggers I worked around this by making a Dehacked thing that loops A_Explode and put a door between it and a normal barrel. When the door is opened, the A_Explode thing sets off a chain reaction with the barrel. I imagine a similar setup could be used with barrels set up to kill a voodoo doll and push its corpse through an exit line, though the Romero head technique from Scythe 2 would probably be easier. :P

I haven't tried a Romero head, but these are my results with putting revenant resources into a Doom 1 pwad...

ZDoom: Runs perfectly, revenant is present.

Chocolate Doom: Crashes on an invalid sprite frame error (there may be something wrong with the pwad - I'm not good with vanilla pwad restrictions)

PrBoom on default settings: Level loads, there is no revenant at all.

Here's the script from Eternal Doom IV map11:

#include "zcommon.acs"

script 1 OPEN

{
	ACS_Execute (2, 0, 0, 0, 0);				//Starts Script 2 when player enters level
	ACS_Execute (3, 0, 0, 0, 0);				//Starts Script 3 when player enters level
}


//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Script 2: Restores player's health to 100 if required	//
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

script 2 ENTER

{
	if(GetActorProperty (0, APROP_Health) < 100)
	HealThing (100); 
}

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Script 3: Strips player's weapons & ammo					//
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

script 3 (void)
{
	TakeInventory ("Chainsaw", 1);
	TakeInventory ("Shotgun", 1);
	TakeInventory ("SuperShotgun", 1);
	TakeInventory ("Chaingun", 1);
	TakeInventory ("RocketLauncher", 1);
	TakeInventory ("PlasmaRifle", 1);
	TakeInventory ("BFG9000", 1);
	TakeInventory ("Backpack", 1);

	TakeInventory ("Clip", 999);
	TakeInventory ("Shell", 999);
	TakeInventory ("RocketAmmo", 999);
	TakeInventory ("Cell", 999);
	TakeInventory ("Armor", 999);

	GiveInventory ("Pistol", 1);
	GiveInventory ("Clip", 30);

	print (s:"WARNING!!");
	Delay(70);
	print (s:"\cc Your weapons, ammo, and armor have been removed!");
	Delay(70);
}

Creaphis said:

I haven't tried a Romero head, but these are my results with putting revenant resources into a Doom 1 pwad...

ZDoom: Runs perfectly, revenant is present.

Chocolate Doom: Crashes on an invalid sprite frame error (there may be something wrong with the pwad - I'm not good with vanilla pwad restrictions)

PrBoom on default settings: Level loads, there is no revenant at all.

Be sure you use -merge to load the wad with Chocolate Doom, as this emulates merging it into the iwad with DeuSF (as was necessary with the vanilla exe).

Cool! That works, and... there's still no revenant here!

Weird. I dunno then :(