Cacodemons not active in cages

[audiodef]

I have several cages meant to hold cacodemons (one demon per cage). These cages have walls that come down to the floor when the player enters a certain room.

My problem is this: the cage itself needs to be impassable, but when the linedefs are impassable, the cacodemons simply sit at the bottom of their cage pits, non-responsive. If I make the linedefs not impassable, the demons are active but of course go right through the cage bars.

Here's a screenshot. Note cacodemon just sitting there after the sector surrounding the cage has been lowered by a linedef walkover.

[Jodwin]

Hard to tell without seeing the actual map, but sounds like the cacos are stuck on the impassable lines.

[audiodef]

I made these cages larger. The cacos now move around and are alerted when the player fires. They don't have much room horizontally, but they are moving and shooting at the player. They're not moving vertically, though. If I have to make these cages much bigger, I have to rethink the entire map. If a caco can move and react horizontally, should it not also be moving vertically?

[40oz]

I was gonna suggest (since the cage is circular) to make every other line impassible.

[ArmouredBlood]

I think flying units only move vertically when they need to stay in the player's sight range or go over/under sectors to reach the player. If you want the cacos to move up and down, you could have 2 linedefs joined to dummy sectors scripted to raise/lower the floor and lower/raise the ceiling in such a way that the caco is consistently rising/falling but doesn't get crushed. Getting the timing right could take a bit.

[Gez]

Wait, do you want the cacos to get out of the cage, or just to be active within the cage?

If you want them to be at a certain height, you can always cheat with some self-referencing trick to keep them seemingly floating. Look at Doomsday of UAC for examples of how it's done.

[Searcher]

Block them in their cages with monster block lines, block the player with impassable lines. I am not really clear about if you are blocking players from going into or monsters from getting out.

Be sure they have room to move or they won't move up and down.

[audiodef]

It's both to keep monsters in and the player out. It looks like this is just a limitation on the way the caco sprite is programmed. But thanks for the neat ideas! I've set these cages up so that they're above instead of below ground level, so the caco can turn and shoot at the player.