randomized monsters/pickups acs experiment

[gggmork]

Here's an unfinished experiment intended to be a slaughterfest where the goal is maybe to get the highest kill count (instead of reaching an exit). Monsters and pickups are randomized each play to focus on gameplay rather than memorization. This shows the jist (you probably got the gist that I meant gist instead of jist..) of it but its untuned and the current map uses all the same textures (and probably doesn't have enough cover from vile attacks and stuff).

tested w/ zdoom 2.5.0 only:
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/24386202/gpRespawn.wad

[ArmouredBlood]

got up to 272 kills. Perhaps make berserk packs not automatically switch to fist when picked up? really messes up the flow to randomly run over one and get stuck with the fist when you need the bfg, though I think there's probably an option to disable this in gzdoom ... gives a bit of an unfair advantage though. Regardless this is a pretty cool idea, I'd make a map if you were interested in doing the acs mumbo-jumbo, but I've got tons of other stuff I should be doing ... like sleeping -.-

[Phml]

I didn't enjoy this much. Fighting monsters endlessly like that doesn't seem to have much of a point. It might work better with "real" architecture, distinctive landmarks, as well as some way to keep score even through deaths - like some script that would display on top your time and kills as well as save your best time and highest number of kills (could assign a point value to each monster too so zombiemen aren't worth as much as cybies).

[gggmork]

Its not that fun right now but I think it has the potential to be fun. I just like to spam unfinished stuff, so I can get precious comments to inflate my e penis.
I made the code fit into my lazy 'copy paste' architecture.. so I can make one smallish single area with maybe 10 monster warp locations and 10 separate pickup (health/ammo) warp locations, then copy paste the area and all tags, doing '++100' to each set of tags so the code can distinguish them. Its a quick lazy way to make a big complex area out of a small one.
Each monster warp location can flag on or off whichever monster (so a giant mastermind only appears in large areas and demons don't appear on sniping ledges etc). And the code is probably weird and retarded because I'm retarded. For example I think nested arrays all have to be the same length (unlike python), so I packed 0's on the end of some of them.
The rate the monsters come in can increase over time like tetris or something, and the proportion of each warping thing can be changed relative to the others (or turned off).
I want to add some sort of points like that but acs can be tricky, like I didn't really see a way to +1 to a variable if the player specifically is the one that kills something (or maybe I should count infighting towards the players points).

[Gez]

You can do that easily. Use the score property (APROP_Score in ACS). For rewarding players with monster kills, made DECORATE variants of the monsters so that, in their Death state, they use A_GiveToTarget to give a score item to the player. Killed actors automatically target their killers, so it'll work. Several mods use this system already.

[gggmork]

Ah, thanks.

[Phml]

like tetris

Making monsters appear from a high ceiling (floating in air) and slowly lower down while rotating like tetris blocks until they hit the ground (being invulnerable up until that part) and then start attacking might just change it from boring to awesome.

[TimeOfDeath]

That was real cool (those moving floors in your other recent wad were cool too). I like the map layout too. Yeah!

[ArmouredBlood]

Phml said:

Making monsters appear from a high ceiling (floating in air) and slowly lower down while rotating like tetris blocks until they hit the ground (being invulnerable up until that part) and then start attacking might just change it from boring to awesome.

Low gravity + script that turns monsters + dormant until z axis hits 0 = win?