Homing missles via a DEH - Is it possible?

[Apothem]

Here's something to get ya thinking:
Is it possible to turn the rockets from the rocket launcher into homing missles?
I initally tried changing what it fired from rockets to tracers, and that didnt work.
i have no idea how to get this working, but i know its possible, well its got to be. and the projectile fired doesnt exactly have to be a rocket, it can be a revenant tracer with the skin of a rocket or something like that.

[Vegeta]

Only in Edge, but I have no idea how to do it.

The other source ports, and vanilla DOOM can't do that with player attacks.

[Ichor]

Many people have tried this using Dehacked, and so far, I don't believe any were successful.

[Apothem]

and neither have i, its just that- i can get the porjectiles to be exchanged, i just cant initiate the stupid homing mechanism on the tracers!

[Erik]

You won't succeed. A few generations of .deh users have tried and none succeeded. The main fact that makes it impossible is that every enemy has a 'target'. This target is what the homing missile will track. The player has no such target and thus it will fail to work no matter what you do.

[sargebaldy]

Are you sure? I could have sworn Nami was talking about homing a few days ago and Scuba said he knew a way to do it. But I can't find it in my logs so it either happened when I was at home or I just imagined it.

[Mordeth]

You can't make homing missiles for the player with Dehacked. Some ports do make this possible via their advanced editing options (DDF, EDF).

[Apothem]

yea i agree with Erik, thats the exact problem ive encountered- i cant get the player to 'lock on' to a target in order to fire, but this is only for dm, so its only between players. Would that make any difference? and secondly, since we are talking about dehacked, does the user have to download the DEH in order to connect to a server that is just useing a deh and no other wads?

[Cyb]

Eternity recently added the ability for players to use homing missiles, though I'm not quite sure what you have to do to use them. I'm sure it's well documented tho. Thats useless if you want to DM however, since Eternity has no netcode :P

ZDoom also allows you to use monster code pointers on player weapons, so you could make the rocket launcher shoot revenant missiles. However there are drawbacks. For instance you'll actually behave like a monster and fire at the most recent 'target' (which I believe is the monster that hurt you first) and you have no control over when you fire the missiles (at least I don't think so, I haven't tested this out for myself, but I know it works).

[Apothem]

Did that, didnt work lol. after you kill the first monster, your target doesnt reset, however it was amusing to set the fire to chase and realize that your guy is running around through the level based on the verteces since there are no path nodes to follow when using the 'chase' weap.

[GameArena]

The player will never have a target, therefor no method will allow for player homing missiles through dehacked. In fact the normal revenant rocket shouldn't even fire because the functions returns NULL if there is no target.

[Apothem]

so i guess useing a bex would make no difference, it'd still be impossible...

[deathbringer]

There was a mod called Spice ZDOOM once which let you play as the monsters, and if you where the revenant you could have homing missiles, (they only homed if you fired while an enemy was in your crosshair) but that was probably done by re-programming the exe file, not using dehacked XD

Hm, in Allhell.wad they did manage to give rockets the 'bullet smoke' trail, but they where still non homing

To make a homing missile in DDF (and maybe EDF, but that probably uses 'C-like' coding rather than the simple and easy DDF style) make add SMOKING_TRACER to the ATTACK_SPECIAL section (okay, it doesnt have to be all in capitals XD), then add RANDOM_TRACER to the INERT frames (ie, what the projectile uses when it is flying), and also you need to give it a PUFF object, just use PUFF if you dont want anything fancy

[Nanami]

sargebaldy said:

Are you sure? I could have sworn Nami was talking about homing a few days ago and Scuba said he knew a way to do it. But I can't find it in my logs so it either happened when I was at home or I just imagined it.

I was playing with it, and I THOUGHT it was working because I saw the smoke trails on the rockets. I was wrong though -- they always went straight.

Cyb said:

ZDoom also allows you to use monster code pointers on player weapons, so you could make the rocket launcher shoot revenant missiles. However there are drawbacks. For instance you'll actually behave like a monster and fire at the most recent 'target' (which I believe is the monster that hurt you first) and you have no control over when you fire the missiles (at least I don't think so, I haven't tested this out for myself, but I know it works).

Close.

1) You can't shoot until someone hits you and they become your "target."
2) You will always aim at your target. Even if they're behind a wall, you'll jerk to face them when firing. Even if they're DEAD, you'll still shoot at them. The only way to change targets is to take damage.
3) You don't use up any ammo.

[Ichor]

I do see one way to make a homing missile using ZDoom. Replace the rocket with a Bloodscourge shot. However, it rips through all enemies, so you'd have to remove that flag. It's also a great deal faster than a Revenant rocket and maybe even a normal rocket.

[Scuba Steve]

sargebaldy said:

Are you sure? I could have sworn Nami was talking about homing a few days ago and Scuba said he knew a way to do it. But I can't find it in my logs so it either happened when I was at home or I just imagined it.

I what?

[Nanami]

Sarge is making up stuff and trying to make people count on us so that we may ultimately fail the community and be cast out.

[Apothem]

bloodscourge shot? is that from hexen? and you can slow down a projectile and change all of its properties so those problems you listed shouldnt be a problem...

[Nanami]

The only way you can use the bloodscourge projectile is using the actual bloodscourge, which you can't modify in any way shape or form except for the sprites.

[Quasar]

Here's a small but heavily commented example of how to make a player homing missile attack in EDF. Everything behind //'s is a comment; the actual code isn't much. This uses Eternity's parameterized FirePlayerMissile codepointer.

// EDF File for Eternity Engine v3.31 Public Beta 4 or later
// Changes the pistol into a homing missile shooter

stdinclude("root.edf")

// Edit S_PISTOL2 frame to make it call the FirePlayerMissile
// codepointer. The first argument specifies the thing type to
// fire, and the second argument enables homing if it is set
// to a value other than zero.  The missile fired must also use
// a homing maintenance pointer in its flying frame, though,
// otherwise it won't home.

framedelta
{
   name = S_PISTOL2
   action = FirePlayerMissile      // This is a parameterized codeptr
   args = { thing:RocketShot, 1 }  // These are the parameters
}

// Edit the RocketShot's frame to use a homing missile maintenance
// codepointer -- The GenTracer pointer allows DOOM-style homing
// but without the weirdness of the Revenant's pointer (ie, no
// smoke or randomly not homing).

framedelta
{
   name = S_ROCKET
   action = GenTracer
}

// Edit the RocketShot thing to allow proper homing if a missile is
// reflected by a reflective enemy.  This isn't strictly necessary
// since no objects in the normal game are reflective, but I do it
// for completeness.

thingdelta
{
   name = RocketShot
   flags2 = SEEKERMISSILE|NOCROSS
}

[Nanami]

Wow. 2 lines of code with 367 lines of comment. Nice!

[Quasar]

Well, it's a tutorial/example EDF, so I figure there should be lots of comments to clarify everything :P

[Vegeta]

How can I do to use Heretic/Hexen codepointers in Zdoom (i.e make an Arch-vile fire Menelkir's Blood Scourge fireballs). Is there a list with all of them?

[Nanami]

You can't use Hexen or Heretic codepointers in ZDoom.

[RjY]

DIY does player homing missiles as a cheat code but the guy had to add a couple of extra functions to make it work

[PumpkinSmasher]

Sounds cool, but way to complicated.