Item/monster creation/implementation questions.

[Moshman]

Hi,

First I'd like to explain the project:

I am creating a single player episode and I have a lot of plans in store for it.

There are a few things I want to implement.

There will be a couple of new weapons in the game. Balanced weapons of course. The first will be a hand held shotgun. It is rather primitive and will be found early. It will have a wide spread with a little more pellets than in the standard shotgun, but the pellet damage will be significantly lower. Also the reload time will be the same of that of the super shotgun.

The second new weapon will be a plasma pistol using cells. Damage will be lower by a couple points to the rifle as well as the firing rate will be that of the regular pistol.

There will be new powerups. A yellow armor that will give 50 armor, and a red armor that will give 300 armor. There will be others as well.

I will also be using monsters from the Beastiary monster assortment. I will modify some of these monsters slightly to balance them with my maps. I will also create some of my own. I will create "mini-bosses" which will be faster and stronger versions of other monsters. It will be necessary to kill them because they will drops keys, open doors to secret passages and so on.

The maps will give the player significant challenges. Such challenges are puzzle solving, ammo conservation and using the environment to their advantage. Instead of pitting the player against hundreds of enemies, instead the player will have to play smart against fewer enemies. Cannon fodding will only lead to failure. There will be points where ammo is scarce and will have to rely on ammo dropped secret passages with ammo caches, and using the environment to kill enemies.

I will include a back story that will be told in the form of in-game messages.

Now, a few questions.

1. I want to make a small energy cell that will only give 3 ammo. These will be more present when the player comes across the plasma pistol. They will be found on the ground and also dropped by plasma rifle wielding zombies. I also want to implement other ammo items as well. I also want to make scrap ammunition that can be salvaged from monsters like the spider mastermind. Is it possible to create a third ammo apart from the two energy cell packs that are already present? If so how? I have looked at the ZDoom wiki at the decorates of the ammos of the original items, and I see no indication on how to associate an ammo with the cell ammo type.

2. Is there a way to implement custom monsters in Doom Builder 2 directly, or must I manually type the number in and not be able to see the actual monster in 3d mode?

3. Like I said in the first post about making scrap ammunition. How would I go about modifying the original monsters who normally do not drop items to drop an item?

4.A little off-topic, but where may I find some good tutorials on how to use ZDoom features? And how can I implement these ZDoom features in Doom Builder 2?

Thanks a lot. =8]

[CodeImp]

Moshman said:

2.[/b]Is there a way to implement custom monsters in Doom Builder 2 directly, or must I manually type the number in and not be able to see the actual monster in 3d mode?

If you are using DECORATE, then DB2 will detect it and your new monsters/items/stuff will be among the things in the list. If you want to put them in a specific category, use //$Category blaa in your actor structure.

Moshman said:

4.[/b]A little off-topic, but where may I find some good tutorials on how to use ZDoom features? And how can I implement these ZDoom features in Doom Builder 2?

If you know what the features are then you can use them. Although the current version of DB2 does not display ZDoom features in Visual Mode, you can make and edit all that is possible.

[Moshman]

Wow, the man himself answered my DB2 questions! Thanks a lot!
One more question though, it's a follow-up of #4; how can I get ZDoom specific sector effects and 'things' into the editor? Same as the monsters? And if so how do I do it? Is there a file I need to point to?

That's two down, two to go. =8]

[CodeImp]

No, you just select the "ZDoom (Doom in Hexen Format)" game configuration and the editor will give you all the things and linedef types you can use with ZDoom. If you want to be really adventurous, you use the "ZDoom (Doom in UDMF Format)" game configuration. It is a new format that the latest ZDoom (2.3.0) currently supports, it will make editing a whole lot easier because many features that would otherwise require scripting or placing special things can now just be edited with custom properties on the map elements themselves.

But DB2 is not officially released yet, you should not use it :P

[GreyGhost]

Moshman said:

1. Is it possible to create a third ammo apart from the two energy cell packs that are already present? If so how?

Yes. It's a matter of defining an ammo-type that's based on an existing type - the ammo-type association (cell) is on the first line. The following example appears on-screen as a skinny energy cell and adds 3 to your cell-count when picked up.

ACTOR Recharge : cell 8501
{
  Inventory.PickupMessage "Picked up a Recharge cell"
  Inventory.Amount 3
  Xscale 0.25
  States
  {
  Spawn:
  CELL A -1
  LOOP
  }
}

3. How would I go about modifying the original monsters who normally do not drop items to drop an item?

Modifying the monsters is fairly straightforward - create a partial definition containing only the properties you want to add/change, in this case it's the dropitem property. The Imp in this example drops a 3-shot recharge for the PlasmaPistol.

actor DoomImp2 : DoomImp replaces DoomImp
{
  dropitem Recharge 256 3
  states
  {
  }
}

Hope this helps.

[Gez]

If you create a new actor that derives directly from Ammo, it's a new ammo type. If you create a new actor that derives from an existing ammo type, including one you just created, then it belongs to the same ammo type. That's why CellPack derives from Cell, which itself derives from Ammo.


As for redefining monsters, if you do not change the states, you don't need to put the States group at all. Greyghost's code can be simplified to just this:

ACTOR Recharge : Cell 8501
{
  Inventory.PickupMessage "Picked up a Recharge cell"
  Inventory.Amount 3
  Xscale 0.25
}

actor DoomImp2 : DoomImp replaces DoomImp { dropitem Recharge 256 3 }

(Yeah, it works perfectly fine on a single line.)

[GreyGhost]

No States group - I'll make a note of that for next time.

[Moshman]

Hey, thanks a lot guys, I really appreciate the help! =8]
You guys seem to have a good community here. I've been to other fourms and they treat new people nasty, not with the kindness I've been shown thus far. I think I will stick around these parts

I'm a highly experienced mapper, but in UnrealEd and Q3Radiant. So I am not used to these older 2.5d engines, thanks for bearing with me.

I will be sure to post my work in progress as I go along. =8]

[Gez]

Since you're mapping for ZDoom, don't forget the ZDoom wiki. It is being actively maintained and updated and already contains practically all the info one needs to mod for ZDoom.