Pain Elemental question [decorate]

[Darkforce002]

Im trying to get the custom A_painAttack option to work
but every time I try that; Skulltag, Zdoom, and GZdoom say:

Script error, "Ele.pk3:decorate.txt" line 9:
Sprite names must be exactly 4 characters

ACTOR BaronEle : PainElemental
{
	States
	{
	Missile:
		PAIN D 5 A_FaceTarget
		PAIN E 5 A_FaceTarget
		PAIN F 4 BRIGHT A_FaceTarget
		PAIN F 1 BRIGHT A_PainAttack ["Baronball"]
		Goto See
	}
}

[Gez]

You need to use parentheses, not square brackets.

[printz]

True, but brackets are much easier to type than parentheses!

[Phml]

On AZERTY keyboards parentheses are one keystroke and brackets two. The only sensical choice is obvious: everyone should just adopt french as the international language!

[Darkforce002]

that worked instead of "A_PainAttack ["Baronball"]", I used "A_PainAttack(Baronball)" (without the quotes) which seems a bit misleading if you looked at the ZDoom Wiki which says "A_PainAttack [(String type)]", and for some odd reason the baron ball that the Pain elemental fires sometimes sticks to walls, floors, and ceilings :confused: .

[Rayziik]

The brackets signify if a parameter is optional, whereas if you used the A_PainAttack by itself without an actor to shoot, it would by default spawn a lost soul.

EDIT: Also, you're using a bad function for spawning projectiles, A_PainAttack is meant to spawn another monster, and when it does the actor it spawns calls A_SkullAttack. Since the BaronBall is already a projectile, the A_SkullAttack function might cause it to have some undefined behavior. Try using A_CustomMissile instead.

[Darkforce002]

Rayzik said:

EDIT: Also, you're using a bad function for spawning projectiles, A_PainAttack is meant to spawn another monster, and when it does the actor it spawns calls A_SkullAttack. Since the BaronBall is already a projectile, the A_SkullAttack function might cause it to have some undefined behavior. Try using A_CustomMissile instead.

I know that I was just testing the a_painattack function for a mod (the monster won't be using baronball or any non-monster projectile.)

[Gez]

Rayzik said:

The brackets signify if a parameter is optional, whereas if you used the A_PainAttack by itself without an actor to shoot, it would by default spawn a lost soul.

Exactly. The brackets mean you can use A_PainAttack by its lonesome, or A_PainAttack("someactor"). Likewise, some of the functions have optional parameters and non-optional ones. So it could look like this:
A_DoSomething(param1, param2[, param3[, param4]])

That means that it can be either:
A_DoSomething(param1, param2)
or:
A_DoSomething(param1, param2, param3)
or:
A_DoSomething(param1, param2, param3, param4)