Starting without a pistol? (fist only?)

[DJShrimpy]

How can I make it so that when the game starts, you are only left with your fists? Is there any way to take out the pistol?

[Revenant]

I don't know, but you can use Dehacked to make the player start with no bullets (which makes their starting weapon the fist, IIRC)

[Kristian Ronge]

IIRC, even with a .deh-patch that removes all bullets, the player starts with the pistol, though any attempt to fire will immediately change weapons to fist of course.

[DJShrimpy]

That sounds good enough for me. Just one question: how the hell do I do that? O_o

[Grazza]

In dehacked.exe:
Click on "F4 Misc"
Change the "Initial Bullets" setting to 0
Click on "Save", and give it whatever name you prefer (e.g. nobullet.deh)

You will then have a file called nobullet.deh that looks like this in a text editor:

Patch File for DeHackEd v3.0

# Note: Use the pound sign ('#') to start comment lines.

Doom version = 19
Patch format = 6


Misc 0
Initial Bullets = 0

And you do indeed start holding a pistol (you get that in STRAIN and AOTW too). If in your wad you don't want the player ever to get a pistol, then I suppose you could change the pistol graphics to a fist if you decide it really bothers you.

[hawkwind]

Interestingly, using gzdoom you start STRAIN with the fists.

[myk]

hawkwind said:
Interestingly, using gzdoom you start STRAIN with the fists.

That might be related to the feature where you can't switch to weapons you have no ammo for. It's a good thing they made it optional in ZDaemon, but apparently it's still hardcoded in other ZDoom engines (or else I couldn't find the setting).

[Graf Zahl]

It is still hard coded. And yes, it really should be changed. It's annoying.

[The Nutcracker]

I think the easiest way to make the player start without a pistol is, if your wad is for zdoom or gzdoom, in some script marke OPEN put in:

Clearinventory();
Giveinventory("Fist", 1);

If you do not want to do that or cannot because you are not using that port, you can always add a key cofiguration lump and put in a slot for each weapon and for the pistol put in a weapon that is not in the wad and you do not have graphics for. It should look like this:

Weapons section -Insert whatever you want here-

setslot 1 Fist Chainsaw
setslot 2 CWeapWraithverge
setslot 3 Shotgun Supershotgun
setslot 4 Chaingun
setslot 5 Rocketlauncher
setslot 6 PlasmaRifle
setslot 7 BFG9000



Please note you must include ALL of it, not just the part about slot 2.

This is telling it to put in the weapon Wraithverge as the pistol. Since Wraithverge is from hexen, and your wad is not set up to read from hexen, doom will simply take out the pistol entirly.

If for some reason you want to keep the pistol, then you must choose a weapon (I recomend the chainsaw) to take out.

Then, using dehacked, change it to the pistol. Since you do not start with the chainsaw, you will not start with the pistol. Note you will have to change the chainsaw graphics and modify some sounds, but that should not be any trouble. However, you will need a keyconf lump also for this, only it should look lke this this time:

setslot 1 Fist
setslot 2 Chainsaw
setslot 3 Shotgun Supershotgun
setslot 4 Chaingun
setslot 5 Rocketlauncher
setslot 6 PlasmaRifle
setslot 7 BFG9000

If you do not know haw to change the chainsaw into a pistol, add in a dehacked lump and use this code in it (after the doom version and patch stuff):

Frame 70
Duration = 0
Next = 71

Frame 71
Duration = 10

[Codepter]
Frame 70 = FirePistol
Frame 71 = NULL

Note you can also edit the chainsaw (now pistol) this way, if you should want to do so.

[Vegeta]

Perhaps you'd like to introduce more melee combat before the player find a gun, you could replace the pistol with the kick sprites (I saw these sprites in the 10 years of DOOM section, I may be wrong by I think Eternity or Trinity is the wad with them).

[myk]

Vegeta said:
I may be wrong by I think Eternity or Trinity is the wad with them.

It's from the TiC wads.

[Kirby]

Well, if you use ZDoom, you could just make a script that just clears the players inventory and gives them the fists back right at the start of the level.

[jobro]

The Nutcracker said:

I think the easiest way to make the player start without a pistol is, if your wad is for zdoom or gzdoom, in some script marke OPEN put in:

Clearinventory();
Giveinventory("Fist", 1);

Nice trick, will try this!

The Nutcracker said:

If you do not want to do that or cannot because you are not using that port, you can always add a key cofiguration lump and put in a slot for each weapon and for the pistol put in a weapon that is not in the wad and you do not have graphics for. It should look like this:

Weapons section -Insert whatever you want here-

setslot 1 Fist Chainsaw
setslot 2 CWeapWraithverge
setslot 3 Shotgun Supershotgun
setslot 4 Chaingun
setslot 5 Rocketlauncher
setslot 6 PlasmaRifle
setslot 7 BFG9000



Please note you must include ALL of it, not just the part about slot 2.

This is telling it to put in the weapon Wraithverge as the pistol. Since Wraithverge is from hexen, and your wad is not set up to read from hexen, doom will simply take out the pistol entirly.

If for some reason you want to keep the pistol, then you must choose a weapon (I recomend the chainsaw) to take out.

Then, using dehacked, change it to the pistol. Since you do not start with the chainsaw, you will not start with the pistol. Note you will have to change the chainsaw graphics and modify some sounds, but that should not be any trouble. However, you will need a keyconf lump also for this, only it should look lke this this time:

setslot 1 Fist
setslot 2 Chainsaw
setslot 3 Shotgun Supershotgun
setslot 4 Chaingun
setslot 5 Rocketlauncher
setslot 6 PlasmaRifle
setslot 7 BFG9000

If you do not know haw to change the chainsaw into a pistol, add in a dehacked lump and use this code in it (after the doom version and patch stuff):

Frame 70
Duration = 0
Next = 71

Frame 71
Duration = 10

[Codepter]
Frame 70 = FirePistol
Frame 71 = NULL

Note you can also edit the chainsaw (now pistol) this way, if you should want to do so.

Hands down for the Nutcracker! Will definitly try both these tricks.

[The Nutcracker]

I had said that you can use a script for starting with a pistol, but it DOES NOT WORK IN ALL SITUATIONS! I learned that you can add in scripts as lumps that are read by all maps, regardless of configuration. If you were to use the script I described in that case, you would end up with losing all weapons but the fist at the start of all levels. Not only is this undisirable, but whoever plays the wad would obiously get mad as hell for losing all weapons after every level. To avoid this, use this revised code:

TakeInventory("Pistol", 1);


Please note that this will not remove the 50 bullets unless you use dehacked