Difficulty settings in UDMFmapping format ...

[Kyka]

Yeah, just a quick question about UDMF map format difficulty settings. Now I look at the Thing settings tab, and where there used to be flags for "Easy", "Medium" and "Hard", there is now "Skill 1, Skill 2, Skill 3, Skill 4, and Skill 5". Now I am assuming this means that you can now have different monsters on ITYTD and HNTR, or in UV or Nightmare, which is cool, and I get that. (At least I am assuming this is what these 5 skills represent, one for each of Doom's 5 actual skill levels. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.)

Now I also notice that in the Right side of the tab, there is a "Skill 6", "Skill 7", and a "Skill 8" flag that can be set. What do these flags mean?

Also, I notice that monsters can be set to be possibly "friendly", or "ally". (Or even both...) What is the difference between these two sets of behaviors?

Thanks guys. :)

[Gez]

ZDoom lets you define custom skills, and you can have up to 8 skill levels this way. So 6, 7 and 8 are for that. Most probably, you will just not bother with them, but the option is there in case you want to.


Friendly monsters are supposed to use MBF friendly behavior. Ally monsters are supposed to use Strife ally behavior. In practice, though, ZDoom does not implement MBF's friendly AI routines so instead you'll get Strife ally in both cases. For more precise details, see here.

[Guest]

So when I created this thread, I said to myself, "I bet Gez answers this post." And sure enough... :)

Thanks heaps Gez for answering my nubby questions. Your input is much appreciated. Cheers.

[Graf Zahl]

Gez said:

ZDoom lets you define custom skills, and you can have up to 8 skill levels this way. So 6, 7 and 8 are for that.

Correction: You can have 16 skill levels. 8 was just a limitation of the old menu system which couldn't display menus with more than 8 options.