Decorate monsters (help)

[Vegeta]

I'm a n00b with the Zdoom "decorete" stuff, still I understand all about the frames and code pointers. My questions are:

-How to make a new monster that uses all the frames and code pointers of one of the existing ones, but with minor modifications? What I want to do is a new spider monster, that use all the Arachnotron's frames and walking code pointers, but with a diferent code pointer for the projectile frame, more health, with and height radious, probably diferent pain chance, and scale factor to make it bigger. Something similar with the Archvile.

Another question, how to use code pointers from Heretic/Hexen?

And yet another, is it posible to change the X Y coordinates of the spot where the projectiles are fired? If so, how to?

[Siggi]

Ok, lets see.

You'd probably want to inherit from the original Arachnotron, that way you won't have to define things that you wanted unchanged. Then you add the stuff you want changed. So...

The original Arachnotron look something like this

ACTOR Arachnotron 68
{
Health 500
Radius 64
Height 64
Mass 600
Speed 12
PainChance 128
MONSTER
+FLOORCLIP
SeeSound "baby/sight"
PainSound "baby/pain"
DeathSound "baby/death"
ActiveSound "baby/active"
States
   {
   Spawn:
       BSPI AB 10 A_Look
       Loop
   See:
       BSPI A 3 A_BabyMetal
       BSPI ABBCC 3 A_Chase
       BSPI D 3 A_BabyMetal
       BSPI DEEFF 3 A_Chase
       Loop
   Missile:
       BSPI A 20 BRIGHT A_FaceTarget
       BSPI G 4 BRIGHT A_BspiAttack
       BSPI H 4 BRIGHT
       BSPI H 1 BRIGHT A_SpidRefire
       Goto Missile+1
   Pain:
       BSPI I 3
       BSPI I 3 A_Pain
       Goto See
   Death:
       BSPI J 20 A_Scream
       BSPI K 7 A_NoBlocking
       BSPI LMNO 7
       BSPI P -1 A_BossDeath
       Stop
   Raise:
       BSPI PONMLKJ 5
       Goto See
   }
}

Now your Arachnotron (I'll call moddedArach) will be something like this

ACTOR moddedArach : Arachnotron
{
Health 600
Radius 74
Height 74
States
   {
   Missile:
       BSPI A 20 BRIGHT A_FaceTarget
       BSPI G 4 BRIGHT A_BruisAttack
       BSPI H 4 BRIGHT
       BSPI H 1 BRIGHT A_SpidRefire
       Goto Missile+1
   }
}

This arachnotron is exactly the same as the original except it uses the Baron attack, its got more health, has a larger radius and taller height.

As for Custom Missiles, they work with the following syntax.
A_CustomMissile (MissileName,Height,Xoffset,Angle)
MissileName will abviously be the name of the projectile (either one you have made or an existing one).
Height is the height from the mosters feet that the projectile will be shot from.
Xoffset is the distance from the middle of the moster that the projectile will fire from (in the wiki it says its for xy offset, but I've only seen it effect the x axis aka left & right).
Angle is the direction relative to the monster's facing angle in which to shoot the missile. (value from 0-359)

So if you replaced A_BruisAttack with A_CustomMissile ("PlasmaBall",5,15,180), then the moddedArach would fire Plasma Balls (the blue ones) out its ass... with a slight offset to the left.

Leaving the height, xoffset and angle at 0 will simply shoot from the dead centre of the monster.

The problem with the Arch-Vile is the resurrecting state is only implemented in the ZDoom community build, not the official version. Apart from that a custom Vile is pretty much done the same way.

What I've said may not be 100% accurate so...
Go here for more

edit: as for Code pointers from Heretic and Hexen. You can use these in decorate as if they were in Doom. Its only if you are using dehacked that you'd have a problem. Basically, don't use dehacked if you are doing this for ZDoom. Look on the wiki page I linked if you want a list of actor classes and the like.

[Vegeta]

Thanks a lot! Very clear. Some kick ass stuff can be done with this :-)
My idea is to make some new bosses scaling the Arachnotron and Archvile.

[Killer_of_Doom]

Normally they dont look that good when scaled bigger, It makes them more pixelated.