Is it possible to create *very* crudely something like "They Live" and other questions

[poisonhead]

I'd like to pay homage as well as push my own vision but in general what I'd like to happen, if possible very gladly with Doom/Boom (de)hackery etc, that the levels would be occupied by civilians (don't need much AI, preferably they'd move around a bit but could be still) and only with special glasses (that would replace the goggles and btw I couldn't even find a sunglasses sprite - do I have to make one myself? no problem really) you'd see who are demons are who are not and when you shoot a demon, they'd attack you attack (and if possible other civilians and in my dreams the civilians would run away and also other demons would reveal themselves or pretend to be civilians). Hope you get my drift. I'd also want to place "subliminal" messages which can only be seen by the glasses and didn't someone do something like that with Boom some time ago? I couldn't comprehend it 100%.

 

I was thinking maybe dissecting Ghostbusters Doom might give me a starting point as it had civilians which turned to monsters when attacked but it has so much going on and I'm not familiar with it, I have limited time, resources and energy and would like to get something made so all help is _greatly_ appreciated.

 

BTW. I got the idea from an episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, I attached image (I wouldn't need anything this cool, you'd just need to have some way of detecting enemies with only glasses on, and also it'd be cool if shooting civilians would be punished.

 

Could this be done by Boom? I've got tons of vanilla resources and Boom is familiar to me but I _might_ think about jumping to ZDoom if no other way exists but could use even more help.

Edited October 20, 2023 by poisonhead : updated title

[Gez]

That all sounds very very complicated to attempt in Boom.

 

To some extent, you could use the light amp goggles to do the "monsters look like humans normally", with a colormap trick. Take a range of color (let's say green), and edit the COLORMAP so that it actually uses a copy of the flesh-color range in all but the top most line, the one corresponding to full brightness. Make your monsters use the same sprites as the humans, but translate their skin color to the green range. Make sure that nowhere in your level is the light level set to more than 240, so your monsters will look normal in regular lighting, but when picking up the light amps, their green skin is revealed.

 

For something more complex than that, such as having the monsters use completely different sprites when revealed, I'm afraid I don't see a way to implement that in vanilla, Boom, or even MBF.

 

If you move to GZDoom, then for the AI it becomes relatively simple to do as you can use the Strife AI to have enemies that just ignore you until they hear gunfire: https://zdoom.org/wiki/A_Look2 Thanks to the use of this function instead of regular A_Look, the Acolytes in Strife ignore you, despite being hostile, until you blow your cover by shooting. Then they wake up and chase you as normal.

 

And regular people can instead use https://zdoom.org/wiki/A_Wander so that they move around without chasing you. In fact you can probably use both A_Wander and A_Look2 on your enemies so that they move around like normal people (the Acolytes in Strife stand still until woken up, as they're guards) until they start chasing you.

[poisonhead]

22 hours ago, Gez said:

That all sounds very very complicated to attempt in Boom.

 

To some extent, you could use the light amp goggles to do the "monsters look like humans normally", with a colormap trick. Take a range of color (let's say green), and edit the COLORMAP so that it actually uses a copy of the flesh-color range in all but the top most line, the one corresponding to full brightness. Make your monsters use the same sprites as the humans, but translate their skin color to the green range. Make sure that nowhere in your level is the light level set to more than 240, so your monsters will look normal in regular lighting, but when picking up the light amps, their green skin is revealed.

 

For something more complex than that, such as having the monsters use completely different sprites when revealed, I'm afraid I don't see a way to implement that in vanilla, Boom, or even MBF.

 

If you move to GZDoom, then for the AI it becomes relatively simple to do as you can use the Strife AI to have enemies that just ignore you until they hear gunfire: https://zdoom.org/wiki/A_Look2 Thanks to the use of this function instead of regular A_Look, the Acolytes in Strife ignore you, despite being hostile, until you blow your cover by shooting. Then they wake up and chase you as normal.

 

And regular people can instead use https://zdoom.org/wiki/A_Wander so that they move around without chasing you. In fact you can probably use both A_Wander and A_Look2 on your enemies so that they move around like normal people (the Acolytes in Strife stand still until woken up, as they're guards) until they start chasing you.

 

Thank you a lot. Like I said in my very tired post I've never done anything for ZDoom let alone GZDoom and would be happy to even make this a short eastern eggy tribute part of the level with Boom and the solution you proposed sounds adequate enough (and I never tend to use the brightest light level in my maps). But even with your explaining and taking a look at:

I still don't completely get it. Could someone make an example of the easiest and crudest Boom compatible solution?

 

I already made a sprite for the glasses like I said it could be a small crude eastern egg or something. I'd be happy with like still people sitting or standing in a bar or something and with glasses you'd see who to kill (it'd be enough to distinguish it easily from other people, I don't need it to be pretty), just something short and simple to liven up the map and pay a little tribute. I don't need the whole map to work on the same principle, just a small part of a map or a small separate map. I'd _really_ appreciate the help, I'm in a real difficult situation on borrowed time trying to make some kind of a map to accompany very messy texture pack that's taken a long time to put together (if I manage to stop the work before I die, I get stuck in graphics editor a bit too much but was thinking that if there was any hacky way [I could sacrifice a monster if it would help? I'd be happy with something like in beginning of Ghostbusters Doom if only I could use the glasses to detect monsters]).

 

If god forbids I survive and learn ZDoom maybe one day I could do something proper but right now I'd be so happy with the crudest solution that works with Boom (or at least PrBoom+ and most ports and don't require me to go too much out of my comfort zone now that I finally sorta get dehacked and stuff).

[Nihlith]

This is a little involved and I've never done it before but look at the artifacts on realm667. There's one that scares monsters away and one that changes the players player class for a limited time. 

There are scripts in Decorate and zscript that cause actors to behave differently when they are within a certain range or the player. If the behavior spawns another actor and stops the current actor, you get a magic trick where an in game entity behaves differently and has different properties under different circumstances because it's not actually the same thing, it just looks like it.

Write the code so that there is a usable inventory item, the glasses, that changes your class (this would also allow you to change your mugshot so super cool) 

Then make monster like entities without A_Chase in their code. Instead they have A_Wander and the friendly tag. Those are your civilians. Put tnt1 0 states between frames in the wander state where the class range checks for the glasses player class. When the aliens get close they turn into aliens and attack but when the civilians get close they flee. Read all the zscript tutorials you can find and get ready for some head to wall action. 

[poisonhead]

On 9/28/2023 at 6:58 PM, Gez said:

That all sounds very very complicated to attempt in Boom.

 

To some extent, you could use the light amp goggles to do the "monsters look like humans normally", with a colormap trick. Take a range of color (let's say green), and edit the COLORMAP so that it actually uses a copy of the flesh-color range in all but the top most line, the one corresponding to full brightness. Make your monsters use the same sprites as the humans, but translate their skin color to the green range. Make sure that nowhere in your level is the light level set to more than 240, so your monsters will look normal in regular lighting, but when picking up the light amps, their green skin is revealed.

 

For something more complex than that, such as having the monsters use completely different sprites when revealed, I'm afraid I don't see a way to implement that in vanilla, Boom, or even MBF.

 

So could someone help me with this or actually I'd just be happy with an ugly 1-2 color monster that could be seen _only_ through the glasses, would this be easier? Just wanna make some usage for the glasses sprite I spent 1-2 hours doing (besides always feeling goggles as pretty useless item) I already made and I had an idea of invisible monsters long before, could these be combined? I just don't "get" colormaps really, what do they do and how would I go about doing something like this without messing up colors of existing sprites and textures? I've never dealt with colormaps, been wanting to, and with some help I bet it might help me go forward in Doom mapping. I wanna "master" (get adequate) at Boom before going (G)ZDoom route and everything's been done to vanilla/Boom standards so far.

 

Sorry for rushing and several posts, I'm asking for the easiest/fastest solution (asap) 'cos I'm on borrowed time and would like to try to make this one small part of my map.

[Nihlith]

Download GIMP. It's free Photoshop. There's no quick way to do what you're describing but recoloring an image in GIMP is a snap. 

[JadingTsunami]

On 9/29/2023 at 9:28 AM, poisonhead said:

I still don't completely get it. Could someone make an example of the easiest and crudest Boom compatible solution? 

 

You should look at the map reference I gave in that thread; it's probably the simplest Boom solution to do what you want.

 

Replacing sprites is not easily doable (I can think of a Boom-compatible way, but it will be complicated), but you could very easily make the monsters appear "evil" (maybe with red eyes, or an evil marking that only appears when the "glasses" are worn).

 

Doom uses a fixed palette of colors. COLORMAP translates each palette entry into a different color. Normally this is lighter-to-darker, for lighting, but Boom allows you to specify your own translations.

 

Assuming you're using Doom's standard palette, what I suggest you do is make use of the few duplicated entries for this effect. That way an area that appears perfectly uniform under normal conditions can actually be comprised of two palette entries. When the special COLORMAP is applied, only one of the two will be remapped to something obvious (like bright red, orange, etc.).

 

Of course, if you are willing to "give up" an item with a custom palette translation like the Invulnerability Sphere, you can make the glasses a regular item and not a switch-based effect. This in fact would be vanilla-compatible too.

[poisonhead]

Editing images etc isn't a problem as I know Doom palette painfully well (and I'm _still_ using XWE as I just got Slade running on this OLD faulty computer and don't know _anything_ about it) and I remember fighting with GIMP's user interface long time ago. I use PSP 7.00 (got CD for 7.04 but no serials etc). PSP7 doesn't certainly have the best tools for repalettization but it's the tool I like. I've spent hundreds of hours manually adjusting colors, fixing things etc. I was wondering if there are there any online (or simple downloadable) free programs that have CIEDE2000 etc so I could use it to to palettize my images? (from 24bit to Doom colours, instead of using PSP7's older algorithm). Otherwise I can make do with PSP 7.00. Anyway I still don't 100% "get" colormaps. I was thinking could it be somehow possible to sacrifice the two colors that XWE uses for transparency and somehow make them visible? I haven't seen them used for anything else. I've been gathering textures, flats, sprites etc for 1-2 years and feel like it's time to focus on mapping and cleaning up the WAD (are there any tools that are faster and better to go through textures to see if there are duplicates etc? I know there are, by name (which I think UDB can warn me about), but whatabout comparing textures to each other? I guess there isn't a tool that'd detect same textures with different names?

 

Anyway going back to my original subject I'd be real happy with crude monster using just 1-2 colors, black and grey would be nice but I wouldn't mind if it was pink or purple, as long as it's seen only with the glasses. What's the easiest Boom way of doing this? I wouldn't mind sacrificing invulnerability or any other powerup or monster, I've already sacrificed a few monsters etc and done sprite, sound etc replacements.

 

Just wish my head worked better, I don't sleep enough, I've got learning problems, _stress_, substance abuse etc. If only there were some quick way of doing this? I already dreamed of an invisible enemy, now if I could use my glasses sprite to see them it'd be swell (maybe even better than crappy They Live tribute). I have to try to re-watch and re-read tutorials but would _greatly_ appreciate any help. I generally don't want to make people do my work for me but if somebody could whip up a simple example you'd be greatly credited :) Anyway thanks for all the help so far even though I'm too broken minded to understand it all.

[JadingTsunami]

BOOMEDIT.WAD contains a simple example of custom COLORMAPs. In addition to what's been suggested so far, I suggest you download and study the map; the colormap section is marked and has a silver appearance with an "Evil Eye" decoration in the center of the room.

[poisonhead]

I can assign color maps to sectors but my damaged tired more-or-less-constantly-intoxicated brain still has trouble getting the concept of how would I go on about making a monster that could only be seen with the glasses if it even is possible? I wouldn't mind hackyness. And if totally invisible monster isn't possible I wouldn't mind using a few dark pixels and maybe render fuzzy but I'd like it to be practically impossible to see without glasses, especially in the dark.

 

I also got a new thing. I base most of my textures of photographs I've taken with various effects and rotating mirror etc, and I've been working two days on a texture which ended up as an "evil map" and I replaced the computer map sprite with it (still have to rename it in dehacked) but I'd _really_ like it have some side effects when Doomguy resorts to evil sorcery to see the map layout - is there anything I can do to the thing(s) with dehacked etc or will I have to resort to Boom level hackery? (make stuff happen with conveyor belts etc if player passes a sidedef when walking to the evil map)

 

Also regarding "power ups" and "armor" (drugs of different kinds), is there anything to be done to make the player feel any side effects? (except doing things with level editing like making a voodoo doll take slowly damage if player walks to a certain powerup but this is tedious). Also coming back to colormaps, which are the ways I can activate them? Is there a walkover sidedef to make it/them change? Whatabout a powerup? Also has anybody done or does anyone wanna take a quick try to make some psychedelic (as much as is possible) or otherwise very interesting colormap that could crudely simulate a drug? If possible I'd like a one that wouldn't affect weapons too much, a few weird pixels here and there is ok but I don't want them to end up a total mess. So how would I go about making one?

 

I'd really settle for very little, don't need anything to be totally convincing or perfect and willing to sacrifice any power up, almost any monster, weapon or whatever to have a little fun while building up my skills with Boom before maybe taking up ZDoom if I survive my very difficult situation, may need a long "vacation", really hoping to release something little as I've been working forever with textures (a bit shame that some are designed for the weird pixel ration and some not and my skills are less crappy than before).

 

PS. Are there any tips or tricks to "de-mirrorize" image? So many of my raw resources for textures are perfectly mirrored and as experienced it may take days to half-successfully do it by shuffling thousands of pixels by hand. I don't need perfect results, if only there was something to give me a start, like slightly warp the image, maybe add a little noise and something. With todays AI's that can generate 4k assets from words, are there any auto-demirrorizers? (even random pixel shuffleler might sometimes save a lot of work)

 

Sorry for such a long post, I have trouble writing shortly. I thank for all the previous answers, hope to truly "get" colormaps so that I could utilize them for the purposes I'm envisioning and wondering how I would go even trying, maybe separate the most important colors to weapons, keep them and fuck with the rest perating trying to generate a quasipsychedelic one? Any tips how to easily do that and other things I've talked about? Also is possible to convert a palette to a colormap? (if such a thing makes any sense, parts of colormaps still go over my head :/)

[Stabbey]

Light Amplification goggles sets everything to maximum brightness. In Doom, that corresponds to brightness level 240-255.

 

The topmost row on the attached image is the maximum brightness level, so any "revealed only with goggles" monsters could ONLY use colors from the topmost row for the revealed parts.

 

You could certainly make monsters which were entirely invisible to see, just replace all the sprites for moving with pure transparency, leaving only sprites for the pain and death states (an presumably the attack frames as well, otherwise players would REALLY hate you). They'd be obnoxious to fight, especially with a rocket launcher, but it's possible. However, doing that for monsters you could only see with the goggles.

 

What you want to do involves fiddling with the palette of the game at a level you don't seem comfortable doing, and frankly, neither am I. Changing the palette will affect everything which uses it, not just specific monsters. Many existing textures and such will look quite wrong. The "easy" way would be to switch to a port which better supports special powerups, scripting and custom sprites. I do not believe that there is an "easy" way to do what you want in Boom. Boom is a more advanced than vanilla and its support of conveyor belts can make it easier to make things which seem like scripts, but it is still lacking in the features and special trickery which you want to do.

 

I suggest you either switch your target port to one which would make it easier to do in a different way, or shelve this special glasses idea until you're comfortable with doing it.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Stabbey

[poisonhead]

I feel that there's a very slight language barrier as well, I'm not native english.

 

Anyway, I had a new idea, possibly stupid (and most likely at least partially somehow done in some context) that what if the glasses were weapons? My logic is that if I make an invisible enemy that the ghost-detector (name tbd) would shoot without causing damage but making the enemy flash? If such enemy were merely collection of black pixels or sheer invicibility, how would they light up? I was thinking this for a while when waiting for the bus to come and trying to compile good-enough-to-start-mapping resource pack (~44-45MB of vanilla compatible textures and few sprites and sounds I've done, should surely be enough for a map or ten xD).

 

Someone once tried to explain here how to make a wider skies with XWE but I didn't quite get it. Are there better tutorials? I've got 512px ja 1024px skies besides regular 256px skies. Also can I make longer skies using sky transfer and would that still require making a custom patch or would it accept longer textures (256px>) than normal?

 

Sorry for being so stupid. Any more help would be greatly appreciated and thanks for every answer.

 

BTW. Are there any Finnish communities or Doomers who'd maybe like to chat? I'm pretty lonely and using mother tongue would be easier regarding some things. (little afraid to even ask as I now there are a few truly legendary Doomers from this goddamned country that I greatly look up to)

[poisonhead]

Could anyone help me with this? I'm sorry to ask again and beg but could someone help me to do either powerup or a weapon that would enable me to make a monster that can only be seen with the glasses? I've gotten a bit better idea of colormaps but still don't completely understand them in this regard and am lost. I would even settle for a sector lightning trick (make the spot where glasses are have a linedef to enable colormap to show player the otherwise invisible monsters). Maybe with two colormaps? If I'd take the most unnecessary colors/light levels out in the room where the glasses are and then have linedef change to a colormap where the invisible monsters could be seen? But I still _really_ don't know how to do this, to have invisible monster that'd only be seen with item, weapon or in certain sector. Could anyone be so wonderful to provide me the crudest example or try explaining it like to a retarted child?

 

One other thing I was thinking that are there ways of doing some kind of (even semi) randomization in Boom? I was thinking one partial and bad way would be to create monster closets where it would be up to player's sounds and position etc to let monsters roam in a small space where they might or might not cross a linedef that would trigger the "random" event. I'm pretty sure there might be better solutions?

 

Two more stupid questions, what are the bare essential Dehacked function(s) to make a thing walk toward the player? And I forgot what are the bare essentials for (reasonably) reliable invisible ambient sound thingy? (so that it'd make a sound when seeing or hearing a player). I've sacrificed a few monsters and been thinking of using them for ambient sounds and maybe something weird.

 

BIG thanks to all answers and BIGGEST for ones that'd help me accomplish this. I'm trying to finish something of WIP version of my texture pack and start actually mapping but would like to have the glasses have some use and a few ambient sounds from sacrificed monsters etc things.