Scripted marines?

[Apothem]

What are scripted marines exactly? i've noticed them being mentioned here in the forums a lot but im still unsure about what they do and how to use them.

[cyber-menace]

Just think of them as another marine except as an enemy (You can have him help you with certain Thing_Hate commands). It's a Zdoom only thing and if your editor has them all (I've only seen Deepsea with ALL of the marines so I added them to Doom Builder) and you can specify what weapon they have either with scripting or by using a thing with that weapon. They're easy to use once you figure out the things you can do with them. I think Ultimate Doomer and Enjay can give you all the information you'd ever need with Scripted Marines so what not ask them.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Basically they're monsters that look like you. The default one has no weapon, but there are 11 armed ones as well (all player weapons plus ZDoom's railgun). You can recolour them, set their speed and health among other properties, use them in cutscenes, get them to help you (all through scripting) or simply let them fight you.

If you want to use them, make sure your editor has them in it's config stuff (I had to put them in WadAuthor myself) and just play around with them and you'll find a use for them.

[Enjay]

To be fair, I'd have to say that "scripted marines" is a bit of a misleading name - albeit it's the one everyone uses for them. As the other people posting have said, they are really only monsters that don't count towards the kill total, look like the player and either have attacks that simulate the normal player weapons or no attack.

You don't even have to "script" them at all to use them, but the cool effects used by people with the marines are usually the result of scripting. However, much of the scripting you can do with the marines can equally be done with any other monster too.

Note the simulated weapons are just that. These marines are not bots. If you change the player weapons using dehacked, the marines' weapons do not change.

For info, here's the various marine edit numbers and descriptions from the DeePsea ZdoomHexen opt file:

9100 "Scripted Marine w/Nothing"
9101 "Scripted Marine w/ Fist"
9102 "Scripted Marine w/ Berserk Fist"
9103 "Scripted Marine w/ Chainsaw"
9104 "Scripted Marine w/ Pistol"
9105 "Scripted Marine w/ Shotgun"
9106 "Scripted Marine w/ Super Shotgun"
9107 "Scripted Marine w/ Chaingun"
9108 "Scripted Marine w/ Rocket Launcher"
9109 "Scripted Marine w/ Plasma Rifle"
9110 "Scripted Marine w/ Railgun"
9111 "Scripted Marine w/ BFG 9000"

[Cyb]

well that's no entirely true, if you change a weapon's PROJECTILE, then it will be shot by the marine. For instance in massm2 I made the rocket into those green energy balls (uh, arachnotron plasma with a diff sound heh) and the rocket marines fired those instead of rockets.

Of course that makes perfect sense and is how it should be, but it's good to know that your options are somewhat more open with scripted marines in that respect.

[Enjay]

DOH!

Yes of course (gives self a slap) I've done similar myself.

So, to clarify: If a marine's weapon fires a projectile, then the projectile can be modified, but the "weapon" itself cannot.

eg, if you modify the BFG to fire rockets, the BFG marine will still fire BFG shots even though the player's BFG does not. If you modify the BFG shot thing to behave like a rocket, the player and the BFG Marine will both fire projectiles that behave like rockets.

eg2, if you modify the plasma gun to fire twice as fast, the Plasma Marine will still fire at the old rate even though the player now fires faster. If you double the plasma bullet damage, the player and the Plasma Marine will both fire double damage projectiles.

[Cyb]

now you've got it old bean! (whatever that means)

[NiGHTMARE]

The Ultimate DooMer said:

Basically they're monsters that look like you.

That isn't really true, because you can give them their own skins.

Create a dummy thing with DECORATE to load the sprite:

SpriteXYZZ
{
Sprite XYZZ
Frames "A"
}

Then to make a marine use the sprite XYZZ instead of PLAY, use this command in a script:

SetMarineSprite (marine-tid, "SpriteXYZZ");

Note that you specify the name of the actor you created in DECORATE and not the sprite.

[Apothem]

What about modifying a rocket to behave like a tracer?

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Nope.