Monster's railgun

[Vegeta]

How can I do to make a monster fire a railgun blast?
I tried using MonsterRail in the frame that I want to use, but it didn't work.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Well, the only things I can think of are that somehow you didn't include the patch in the wad (eg. pressing 'cancel' by mistake when saving it), you didn't have the .bex extension on the file you loaded into the wad (.deh won't work, as it's a bex codepointer), there's a mistake somewhere else in the patch (it is quite complex if you're new to bex editing) or you're not using ZDoom.

(no offence of course, but not everyone knows these things)

BTW, can you put up a copy of your patch so we can see for ourselves?

[Cyb]

you need to attach monsterrail to a specific frame and set the monster's missile damage in order to set the damage the rail will cause, otherwise it won't do any damage

[Nanami]

Something like this is what you're looking for:

[CODEPTR]
Frame 185 = A_MonsterRail

Thing 2 (Trooper)
Missile damage = 10

[The Ultimate DooMer]

It's not, the A_ is not needed:

Thing 137 (Monster)

Missile damage = 100

[CODEPTR]
FRAME 726 = FaceTarget
FRAME 727 = MonsterRail
FRAME 728 = FaceTarget

This will make the monster point at you, fire the shot (a damage of 100 equals that of the player and scripted marine railguns) and stay facing you for a short while after the shot.

(obviously, substitute my frame/thing numbers with yours)

[Vegeta]

Heh, I tried to do it in a deh patch, now I see.

I just wanted to see how a spidermastermaind would look with an automatic railgun (with low missile damage of course).

[Nanami]

The Ultimate DooMer said:

It's not, the A_ is not needed:

Thing 137 (Monster)

Missile damage = 100

[CODEPTR]
FRAME 726 = FaceTarget
FRAME 727 = MonsterRail
FRAME 728 = FaceTarget

My version works just fine, I took it directly from a patch I made that makes all the guns and all the monsters shoot railguns.

[Cyb]

a_monsterrail is the internal name of the code pointer (all code pointers have a_ as a prefix) and when zdoom parses the code pointers of a dehacked patch it appends a_ to the beginning (for purposes of altering the doom actor) if it's not already there, so there's no difference

[Nanami]

And the "FaceTarget" pointers are redundant. They don't need to be there.

[Cyb]

if it's rapid fire they aren't. If you remove the face target pointers from a chaingunner (for example) he'll start off firing at you, but if you strafe around him he'll continue to fire in your original direction as if you had never moved

[Nanami]

Hm. No... in my patch I don't use FaceTarget at all, and the chaingunners and arachnotrons always face me when they shoot.

[Enjay]

That'll be because you still have the original face pointers in place.

If you only replace the fire pointer for those enemies, then you haven't touched the face pointer and it will still work correctly.

If you are making up a new fire sequence, then you will have to ensure a face pointer is part of it.

[Nanami]

Yes, of course, but in both examples we were just replacing firing frames, weren't we? At least I was... I didn't check to see what frames UD replaced.

[Enjay]

I was just trying to clarify things a little. I don't know if UD's example was an actual one, or just something done to illustrate the point. If it is a genuine one, then it will be part of something bigger because the frames concerned are the SS Nazi wait and first walk frames.

So you were just replacing the firing frames, The Ultimate Doomer was constructing his own firing sequence.