Question about DECORATE related question

[jdagenet]

When modifying a monster, weapon, decoration, etc the Zdoom Wiki say's that you should use something called "Inheritance" because if you don't, it will cause problem's but I have been adding a DECORATE lump in my wad with my actor in it that I want to modify for a long time and I have never had any problem's with my wad's. Should I keep doing my method of modifying actor's or should I use "Inheritance" and what is "Inheritance"?, I looked at the Zdoom Wiki about it but I didn't fully understand it.

[Gez]

You have a question about a question? I question that.





Anyway. The thing about inheritance is if you want to modify standard actors. There were just too many people who went at it in completely wrong-headed ways, so we had to insist a little.

If you define your own custom brand-new actors, you can feel free to modify them directly.


(And please learn how to use apostrophes correctly. You don't use them for plural and you don't use them for conjugating verbs.)

[jdagenet]

So it's my choice if I want to use Inheritance or not if it's not a custom monster/weapon?

[Gez]

Let's say you want to make the shotgun guy more trigger happy -> it's a standard actor, you can't modify it, so use inheritance to make a variant and replace it with the variant.

Now let's say you have your custom "mephistodemon" or whatever and you want to change something about it. Since it's not a standard actor, you should edit it directly. Creating clones of it would just make your mod harder to maintain.


The thing is simply that you cannot modify directly the standard components of the game. You can replace them, you can create variants, etc., but you can't edit them directly because they're standard. (It's pretty much the same reason you shouldn't edit the IWAD.)

Anything that's not a standard part of the game is free to modify directly since it's already an integral part of your mod.

[Zom-B]

Gez, I don't really get what you're trying to say.

---

Basically, inheritance means you start with an existing actor, and add or override properties. If you have made an actor from scratch, you can still inherit an existing actor, but it probably wouldn't do anything, as everything is overridden anyway. That's why they push people to always use inheritance, as it can only bring good things.

Inheritance is like this:

actor MDoomImp : DoomImp

If you want to replace an actor instead of adding it, use the 'replaces' keyword, like this:

actor MDoomImpBall : DoomImpBall replaces DoomImpBall

[Gez]

Zom-B said:

Gez, I don't really get what you're trying to say.

Alright. The for dummy version with pictures.

You want to change two monsters: the imp and the flesh spawn.

The imp:


The flesh spawn:


Can you tell me the difference between those two? No, it's not that one is brown and the other pink. Okay, the answer is that the imp is a STANDARD actor. It's part of the game. It's there and immutable.

You want to change the imp? You can't change the imp. Don't even try. You've got to work around that by making an imp clone (through inheritance) and modifying that imp clone.

You want to change the flesh spawn? Well, it's a custom monster. Its code isn't part of the game. It's part of your mod. You can change it directly. In fact, you should change it directly. If you start changing it by making clones and editing the clones, you'll just end up with a mess.


Anything that's in your mod can be edited directly by yourself, since it's your mod. Anything that's not in your mod cannot be edited directly, since it's not in your mod.

What's so hard to understand about it?

[Zom-B]

afaik you CAN edit the imp. You create a clone and replace the imp with your clone. nothing is changed in the doom code but you still se a different imp:

actor MDoomImp : DoomImp replaces DoomImp

[GreyGhost]

I think Gez has already covered that. It's not the imp you're editing, it's a clone which has inherited the imp's attributes.

[jdagenet]

What's so hard to understand about it?

Look im not trying act like a dummy here but what I don't understand is that I have been modifying the original monster, through DECORATE for about a year now and I never had any problem's with it and now your telling me that "Don't even try it" I just don't get why I need to use Inheritance. (Lol nice video and I can handle the truth it's just that I don't understand the truth)