[DECORATE] Questions

[Reisal]

I am doing a little cut/paste on altering Oblige to place custom ZDoom DECORATE monsters but trying to figure out which number to add into the "id" field when I want to put in the Archon of Hell:

ACTOR ArchonOfHell : BaronOfHell 30104
{ 
SpawnID 174

Which one should I use, 30104 or 174?

[Edward850]

SpawnID is limited to values up to 255, and is used for spawning actors with Thing_Spawn and Thing_Projectile. If you don't plan on using these, you don't need a SpawnID.

[Reisal]

So it's 30104 :)

Thanks for clearing it up.

[Reisal]

Another dumb DECORATE question, what does the colon do in this example?

ACTOR Cybruiser : BaronOfHell 30128

Does this tell ZDoom that they are in the same family as the Baron and Hell Knight?

Execution could not continue.

Script error, "DECORATE" line 317:
"actor" is an unknown actor property

Line 317 is:

ACTOR ArchonOfHell : BaronOfHell 30104

[Enjay]

Looks like your previous actor definition might not be closed off properly.

[WH-Wilou84]

Mr. Chris said:

Another dumb DECORATE question, what does the colon do in this example?

ACTOR Cybruiser : BaronOfHell 30128

Does this tell ZDoom that they are in the same family as the Baron and Hell Knight?

This tells ZDoom that all of Cybruiser's default properties will "heritate" from the Baron of Hell's.
For instance, if you don't set Cybruiser's Health value to some number, ZDoom will take Baron's Health value as Cybruiser's one.

It's a bit like the concept of inheritance in computer sciences, if that helps.

Note : this doesn't mean that the Cybruiser won't be able to infight with the Baron of Hell.

[Reisal]

I was doing cut/paste into one bigass DECORATE lump but when I simply extracted the decorate files to TXT and dropped them into a PK3 file, all seems to load up normally in Skulltag.

[Captain Toenail]

If you want to replace an existing monster, using the same thingid can cause problems, using the replace function is much more useful and not buggy, e.g.

ACTOR ArchonOfHell : BaronOfHell replaces BaronOfHell

[Reisal]

I'm not looking to replace the Baron with the Archon, I am wondering what the colon between those words does.

With the Plasma Zombie, I have not seen him attack other plasma zombies who hit him with the projectile. How would I make an exception for infighting for him?

[Edward850]

The colon is used for actor inheritance, so your making a copy of the baron of hell, and editing him under a new name (while not replacing the old one, unless stated otherwise).
http://zdoom.org/wiki/Using_inheritance

Your plasma zombie isn't fighting others because infighting can only occur between two different actor types, or enemy's that use hitscan attacks (therefore, standard zombies are an exception).

Please, further questions should be answered via you reading the wiki is much faster and makes you seem much less lazy (the results are also much faster then asking on a forum): http://zdoom.org/wiki/

[Pure Hellspawn]

Mr. Chris said:

I'm not looking to replace the Baron with the Archon, I am wondering what the colon between those words does.

With the Plasma Zombie, I have not seen him attack other plasma zombies who hit him with the projectile. How would I make an exception for infighting for him?

The colon means inheritance.

For example, if you make this:

ACTOR HealthyBaronOfHell : BaronOfHell 30104
{
health 6000
}

you can spawn a baron of hell with 6000 hits instead of the usual 1000.

[Reisal]

So if it's

ACTOR HealthyBaronOfHell 30188

It counts as a new actor I presume?

*goes to ZDoom wiki*

[Pure Hellspawn]

Mr. Chris said:

So if it's

ACTOR HealthyBaronOfHell 30188

It counts as a new actor I presume?

*goes to ZDoom wiki*

Yes it does.

[Gez]

Infight only happens when monster hurt each other. Projectiles (but not hitscans or melee attacks) from a monster in one family will not hurt other monsters from the same family; with one important caveat: explosions. Monsters will be hurt by splash damage, even from a monster of the same species. (They won't receive the projectile's normal damage, but they will get the splash damage and this will hurt them, triggering infighting.) This can be avoided if they are immune to splash damage, though (the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind, for example, are both immune to splash damage).