Easiest way of making a looping sound with dehacked for Boom?

[frustratio]

Sorry for a stupid question from a stupid person but I've made ambient sound effects by making things with just two look-states that play their alert sound when they see the player and they work fine but now I'm in need of looping sound and can't afford to sacrifice crusher sound (which is the easiest way to loop a sound). So how to create a thing in dehacked that plays a sound over and over? (and without seeing the player _if_ possible but I can work around this). It doesn't even have to loop smoothly, pseudorandomness would be even preferable.

 

Please help me continue making my virtual hell :)

Edited August 4 by frustratio

[frustratio]

I sacrificed arachnotron and tried making a thing with two spawn state actions: look and babymetal. ATM it plays the sound truly on loop. I'm trying to find a way to make some silence between playings (I'd like it to be played every few seconds if any kind of randomization isn't possible). Even though I give it ridiculously high frame times the sound is still looped. How can I fix this?

 

Another question: I have translucent glass door that the player or enemy cannot cross but gunfire still travels, how can I make it bulletproof? I've heard about invisible sector but how do I make one?

[Aurelius]

Simplest way to create ambient sounds using DeHackEd is to set a thing to spawn into a single state loop that constantly calls A_Pain, then setting the desired ambient sound as the pain sound for that thing. You can use the duration of the state to determine how often to play the sound, either to create a smooth(ish) loop or a periodically playing sound.

 

In Boom, you can create the door as you normally would, then use "fake sector" action 242 on it to make it invisible.

Edited August 4 by Aurelius : Removed non-Boom related suggestions.

[frustratio]

4 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Simplest way to create ambient sounds using DeHackEd is to set a thing to spawn into a single state loop that constantly calls A_Pain, then setting the desired ambient sound as the pain sound for that thing. You can use the duration of the state to determine how often to play the sound, either to create a smooth(ish) loop or a periodically playing sound.

 

In Boom, you can create the door as you normally would, then use "fake sector" action 242 on it to make it invisible.

 

Thanks!

 

But for some reason the duration doesn't seem to matter in my babymetal case (using ZDoom to test my map after finding out several seriously broken textures in PrBoom+, maybe it doesn't like custom sized and large textures?) but I'll try your approach next time. Luckily I was able to insert silence into the sound sample (and make it rather long as it's 8000hz) so it works and as an added bonus babymetal seems to be full volume all the time. Fits my purpose.

 

I'll have to look into 242. It's not an actual door but image of glass door and window presented in three middle textures each one pixel apart (two of them showing the frames and third one's translucent glass between them). Hope I made sense (english isn't my native tongue). If anyone can explain (think of me as a retarded child) how to turn that into bulleproof I'd be ecstatic.

 

And a new question. I'd like player to open a door, then be killed and pushed through, then to the next level. What's the easiest or the best way to do so with Boom limits? I was thinking invisible dehacked monster that would both push him in and kill him. What's the easiest way of doing so or maybe there's better solutions? If only conveyor belts could be switch activated, they can't, can they?

[Stabbey]

39 minutes ago, frustratio said:

And a new question. I'd like player to open a door, then be killed and pushed through, then to the next level. What's the easiest or the best way to do so with Boom limits? I was thinking invisible dehacked monster that would both push him in and kill him. What's the easiest way of doing so or maybe there's better solutions? If only conveyor belts could be switch activated, they can't, can they?

 

Don't bother with a dehacked monster.

 

I don't know if conveyor belts can be switch activated, but you can still use them for this effect.

 

You have a voodoo doll (a Player 1 start place BEFORE your actual player 1 start) in a small conveyor belt room, usually 56 units high. The player is blocked in by a small section of ceiling set to 55 units. Your door or whatever trigger will raise that ceiling and allow the player to move.

 

Some lines will be placed on the conveyor belt and the doll will cross and trigger them. In this case, the first line opens the door. Then you probably want another closet with a crusher which will blow up some barrels. Some of the barrels will go through teleports to behind the player to fling them forward, while other barrels blow up a Romero Head to end the map.

[Aurelius]

3 hours ago, frustratio said:

And a new question. I'd like player to open a door, then be killed and pushed through, then to the next level. What's the easiest or the best way to do so with Boom limits? I was thinking invisible dehacked monster that would both push him in and kill him. What's the easiest way of doing so or maybe there's better solutions? If only conveyor belts could be switch activated, they can't, can they?

My solution is slightly different to Stabbey's. I'd use

• accelerative scrollers to do the pushing 
• a voodoo doll to telefrag another voodoo doll to kill the player
• the door action itself to release the voodoo doll rather than have the voodoo doll open the door, so there's no delay in the door opening
• a walkover line to exit the map

Telefragging the Romero head is an option that might in some cases be better to end the level, because a walkover exit line can theoretically be skipped. But you might want to make a custom DeHackEd thing that calls A_BrainDie on death, if you don't want the classic Romero scream on exit.

 

Here's a quick test map showcasing both action 242 and the death exit mechanism you described.

 

Some things to note:

• If the player is on top of multiple scrolling sectors at once, the effects add up. This causes some funky acceleration and deceleration near the door, which you can't really avoid without having one long contiguous sector (and therefore, no door).
• If the accelerative scroller behavior (action 216) feels cryptic, I recommend reading the Boom reference, using "216" as a search parameter to find the correct section. It explains how the final speed is calculated. Alternatively you could download the BOOMEDIT.wad, which has some nice examples of the different effects you can achieve in Boom format, including all the scroller stuff.

[frustratio]

Big thank you for elaborate answers! I gotta check out Aurelius' wad later today. I couldn't figure out how to use 242 by myself without it messing up ceilings so ATM I have invisible sector in the door. I also remembered that I have an "Exploder" dehacked thingy so I could use it to hurt/kill the player. I had completely forgot it and that teleports exist :D

 

New problem/challenge: I have a big wall of techy stuff, there's 4 lights, like two on top of each other, presented with two mid textures. I think it might not be possible to require player to shoot 'em all? That'd be what I was after but shooting two would be enough (to reveal a hidden opening by lowering or raising a floor). I couldn't get it to work even when setting it so that one mid texture would be enough. Are there any restrictions to G-action besides there being very few of them? Hope I'm making sense, I'm really tired....

 

Also weird request, anybody know flats with cigarette butts? How about animated smoke textures? (like cigarette/weed smoke) What about other alcohol/drug stuff? (with the exception of few weed related things I've seen.) I've made a syringe, pills, whiskey bottle, animated bong etc but they're not the best quality and I could use more. Trying to convey a bit of this real life misery into my Doom project.... and also what about translucent windows, are there good textures for them or maybe tips how to make one? I've noticed that blue doesn't really work (f*cks up colors, probably because of the limited palette) and many old school sprites with streaks don't look good.

PS. Also I have this problem that I'm using PSP 7.04 for graphics, it doesn't seem to recognize the transparent layer of PNG files (or I'm stupid), the transparent layer is black. Do I have other options besides using XWE to rip midtexture etc graphics from wads?

[magicsofa]

You could make shootable switches sort-of on top of each other by recessing (or extruding) one of them into the wall, giving you two separate lines to work with. But I would definitely test this with mouselook OFF if it is possible to play the rest of the map without it, I have a feeling that auto-aim would fail to aim at the switch that is farther away. To fix this you would probably have to move them so that they are not vertically aligned.

[Stabbey]

One issue with having two G lines which are on top of each other is that a shot which passes through one will usually pass through the other. This can be good if they're doing different actions, but otherwise, you may as well just use one line.