Reaction Time under DHE

[Grimm]

What, exactly, does the reaction time under DeHackEd do? I read the docs, but they didn't help much. I've messed with the values b ut they don't seem to do anything.

[deathbringer]

I think its supposed to be the time from when a monster see's a player to the time it starts to chase and attack the player, but ive played round with the values in both dehacked and ddf and neither seem to make any difference no matter what the number is

[Graf Zahl]

deathbringer said:

I think its supposed to be the time from when a monster see's a player to the time it starts to chase and attack the player, but ive played round with the values in both dehacked and ddf and neither seem to make any difference no matter what the number is

What values have you tried? It is measured in 1/35 of a second so small differences probably don't matter.

[Grimm]

It's usually 8. I halved it to 4 and put one of 'em at 7 as well, but neither seemed to do anything. I guess it's mainly for making enemies slower.

[Graf Zahl]

Grimm said:

It's usually 8. I halved it to 4 and put one of 'em at 7 as well, but neither seemed to do anything. I guess it's mainly for making enemies slower.

You'll never notice the difference between 7 and 8. Even 4 and 8 is barely noticable. If you increase the value you might see a delay in a monster's reaction but mostly this value is totally useless.

[RjY]

Okay, I'm looking as usual in the PrBoom source, and as far as I can see, reaction time is used in two ways.

Firstly, when the player teleports, his reaction time is set to 18 in p_telept.c. Then the movement routines in p_user.c won't let him move until those 18 tics are over (about half a second has passed)

Secondly, it is used in p_enemy.c to prevent a monster from shooting at the player for a short time after sighting him and waking up (it doesn't affect movement, the monster starts moving immediately as far as I can tell)

This delay can be set in dehacked patches and the most common default value is 8, which is about a quarter of a second (it's measured in tics, which is doom source code slang for a thirty-fifth of a second, as I'm sure most people know; so you're not going to see a noticeable variation just by changing its value by a small number)

Having said that, in p_inter.c there is a line that sets it to zero if the monster is shot, so that it reacts instantly to taking damage.

Search the relevant files for the string "reactiontime"

PS 50th post, and about bloody time too, heh

[Fredrik]

This gave me an idea for a boss: you have a couple of seconds to take him down while he can't shoot, or he'll unleashes hell and you'll be out.

[Cyb]

neat, I never knew that

[Grazza]

Presumably -fast or -skill 5 drastically reduces this variable - maybe to zero? If it does just lop it right down to zero, that might foul up Fredrik's boss idea on those skill levels.

[Graf Zahl]

Grazza said:

Presumably -fast or -skill 5 drastically reduces this variable - maybe to zero? If it does just lop it right down to zero, that might foul up Fredrik's boss idea on those skill levels.

In -fast reactiontime is completely ignored - as in 'set to zero'.

[Linguica]

You know, that would make for an interesting trick for Dehackers -- set a monster's time to 99999999 and it won't ever attack the player for a long long time, unless it gets hurt. So you could make a level full of monsters that will notice you and follow you, but won't actually start attacking you until you shoot at them first.