Resurrecting monsters

[purist]

Can anyone point me in the direction of any custom monsters that can resurrect like the arch-vile?

Ideally, I'm looking for one that has lower HP and either a weaker attack or no attack at all.

It would basically be of little threat itself, the point of the monster being to kill it before it resurrects deadlier monsters.

[Grazza]

Wheel of Time has one. It looks like a health potion, but can move slowly around. It is "killed" by being picked up. You can see a number of them in map05, near the map's exit.

It replaces the Technical Column (Thing 99; ID# 48).

[purist]

Thanks Grazza, but it's not really what I'm looking for.

Looking at Realm667 and the monster resource packs there's dozen variations on the Imp and Cacodemon but hardly anything with the Arch-Vile respawn properties.

Strange really, since it's one of the more unique and interesting behaviours in Doom.

Maybe one day I'll try making one myself.

[EarthQuake]

Using DeHackEd, you can create a monster of your own (replacing some thing in the game, obviously) and give it the VileChase codepointers instead of the Chase codepointers which is used by everything else. That's the only difference between Archviles and other monsters that allows them to resurrect stuff.

Or, if you want, you can download some decorate monster and use the same codepointer as opposed to the A_Chase ones.

[purist]

I think my best bet would be to download a decorate monster that fits the bill and add the Vile_Chase codepointer to the lump. I could do some re-colouring or basic sprite modification to make it distinct but I wouldn't dare to try anything more eloborate.

In my mind it would be a small, low mass, floating creature. Around 50-100HP, with either no attack or melee only. Something like the Heretic imp.

[deathbringer]

You could make a shrunk, recoloured cacodemon (yourself, using an image editing program). Then basically just copy the DECORATE code for the Demon, make it no gravity and give it vilechase codepointers on it's walking frames, and tweak the health, size and speed to your liking. And there, you've made your very own monster yourself, none of thise "tell me where to find..." BS needed

[scwiba]

This can be done in DeHackEd? I looked into doing something similar but gave up because I thought it wouldn't work. There's no actual "resurrect state" in WhackEd2, like there are attack or death states, so I thought the only way the Doom engine knew what state to jump to was that it was hard-coded to go straight to state #266 for any Thing in the process of resurrecting. Meaning you could have more than one monster that could revive the dead, but they'd all look like the Arch-Vile while doing it.

[deathbringer]

I think there might be a "walk-ressurect" codepointer. NEVER jump to states to make things happen (unless it's dying), before i knew about codepointers i tried making a rocket-shooting soldier by having him jump to the cyberdemon's firing frame just to shoot a rocket, but they turned into cybderdemons permenantly! There's lists of code pointers around, which should help.

[scwiba]

deathbringer said:

I think there might be a "walk-ressurect" codepointer. NEVER jump to states to make things happen (unless it's dying), before i knew about codepointers i tried making a rocket-shooting soldier by having him jump to the cyberdemon's firing frame just to shoot a rocket, but they turned into cybderdemons permenantly! There's lists of code pointers around, which should help.

Right -- I understand that. The "walk-resurrect" codepointer is VileChase, but what I'm asking is how you determine which state a monster goes to while raising another dead monster. For the Arch-Vile, it's #266, which plays through Vile[, Vile\, and Vile], then back to the walking states. However, in the list of states in WhackEd for the Arch-Vile, 266 is nowhere to be found. So I don't understand how you could make it anything other than 266 for another creature that could also resurrect.

I've tested this with imps, making all of their walking states VileChase rather than Chase, and they do resurrect monsters, but in doing so, become Arch-Viles. I don't see any way to fix this, since there's no "Resurrecting state" to be edited.

[EarthQuake]

Oh right. Yeah, never figured that out. :P

[purist]

I edited the DECORATE lump for a FireWyvern replacing A_Chase for A_VileChase. Now the Wyvern can resurrect the dead but it looks like a Arch Vile whilst doing it. When it attacks or dies it goes back to it's original states (What Ryathaen said basically).

Is there any way around this using DECORATE? I can only think of replacing the Arch Vile's resurrect frames but I don't want to do that.

[Tamashii]

in tormentor's monster bestiary check out page 5. the Wraith.

[printz]

purist said:

Now the Wyvern can resurrect the dead but it looks like a Arch Vile whilst doing it.

Use a "heal:" state label. I don't understand at all why resurrect = heal here, when normally the former is INFINITELY more powerful than healing.

[Death-Destiny]

I do not believe that Boom-based DeHackEd has a way around the issue of creating a new ressurection enemy other than replacing the arch-vile itself. However, DECORATE has the capacity to add as many new enemies as you like, defining them to be any way you chose. DECORATE does not work on the same give-and-take basis as DeHackEd.

Here's a good reference as to what DECORATE can do, with a good number of examples and pretty good explanations: http://zdoom.org/w/index.php?title=DECORATE

[myk]

Death-Destiny said:
I do not believe that Boom-based DeHackEd has a way around the issue of creating a new ressurection enemy other than replacing the arch-vile itself.

More or less, as what purist explained happens. The only way to do it in Doom (or Boom) would be to make another monster that also looks like the arch-vile, which is kind of silly.

[purist]

Thanks EarthQuake, printz. I've got my Wyvern working as I wanted it to now.

[Haloless0320]

I ran into the same problem with the Nazi Medic on my wad...such a pain in the ass.And me running XWE on vista didnt help either.