13 Ugly Doom wad making questions

[Blackgaze]

Hi Doomworld.

Some months ago I wanted to start work on Doom Builder and finally make my own levels, which I've dreamed about doing since playing Doom in the mid 90s. I learnt how to use DOOM Builder and basic decorate (no scripting though, can't use it) and things were going fine.
But my wad was having problems as some of the monster ideas required heavy scripting to get them correct, and none of them worked but creating DECORATE loopholes.
So I want to give it another chance, as I don't want my wad to be another collection of maps lost in time, I want something unique to offer. But the only way I can do this, is to ask the big problems at once. And hopefully you can answer some of them, amazing if all. Thank you.

***Please note the lack of communication between wadders and little advanced tutorials makes getting these answers difficult other than here, so I've piled the questions together in one thread. If anyone would to like to help in general you are free to contact me and I will give my msn/steam***



1. using SLADE, I'm making custom graphics for my new monster. It appears fine in game, but it's not affected by the lights. A dark room would have it stand out, why is this?

2. I've notice a lot of wads have "colour changing" new monsters and I always find it difficult to do. I notice it involves GRAPHICS -> COLOUR REMAP, but I can only change one or a few pixels at a time, and this is a long tedious method and I know its incorrect.
I use to photoshop -> selection/gradient the colours, but the wrong Palette colours dont work ingame (at least for my side)
Does anyone have a tutorial/example to change monster colours?

3. The wad i'm working on has friendly monsters as allies, but I don't know how many monster groups you can have (say... 4 different species of monsters, 1 is friendly to you but they all attack each other, like FFA)

4. Also about monster groups. Can you limit what uses "Heal"?
Like if I wanted a medic to just HEAL humans and not demons? Or a demon that heals DEMONS but not humans?

5. Can a weapon have two actions instead of one (left/right mouse click etc)? I want a pistol/combat weapon in one selection.

6. What's the missile option to have "line" attacks like a laser or an electric zap?

7. Can monsters have the ability to SUICIDE EXPLOSION in melee range (like a kamikaze?

8. How does one change a teleport GREEN FLASH options? I like monsters to appear with different graphics/sounds etc.

9. Some missiles CREATES/SUMMONS monsters when hitting a collision (icon of sin etc), but can you limit a monster to only fire this once per game instead of general doom A.I?

10. What's another monster STATE that can allow it fire two shooting attacks (randomly/fixed timed?)

11. I've looked in the DOOM1/2 files via SLADE, but I can't see the option for multi-coloured DOOMGUYS. How do wadders access these graphics? I need the grey-coloured DOOMGUY for a project.

12. I've never used friendly monsters before, but what do they do when activated? Just randomly walk around like normal A.I bots, or can you find a way to "command" them?
Also are they activated when you enter the room (or still in stand/dance mode?)

13. I tried creating an A_SkullAttack (Lost Soul charge) attack on a ground unit as a ramming enemy. But everytime he did this, it just got stuck on the ground and wouldn't budge unless you entered a fixed position until it moves again. Has there ever been any successful charges for ground monsters? (not air, like lost soul)

***
Thanks for reading. I know this is a lot to ask, but if I want to enter the wadding world I need this big push, as I've tried too much to look into fixing a lot of these without outside help.
***

[Necromancer-AMV]

Blackgaze said:

2. I've notice a lot of wads have "colour changing" new monsters and I always find it difficult to do. I notice it involves GRAPHICS -> COLOUR REMAP, but I can only change one or a few pixels at a time, and this is a long tedious method and I know its incorrect.
I use to photoshop -> selection/gradient the colours, but the wrong Palette colours dont work ingame (at least for my side)
Does anyone have a tutorial/example to change monster colours?

[/B]Translation would be useful to you; you can use it to translate one color or a whole range to whatever you want, all without going to the trouble of editing them externally.

5. Can a weapon have two actions instead of one (left/right mouse click etc)? I want a pistol/combat weapon in one selection.

You most certainly can. A weapon's "Altfire" state will activate when the player uses the "secondary fire" key.

6. What's the missile option to have "line" attacks like a laser or an electric zap?

Rail attacks sound like what you're looking for.

7. Can monsters have the ability to SUICIDE EXPLOSION in melee range (like a kamikaze?

A combination of A_JumpIfCloser (monster checks for distance between it and its current target) and A_Explode (self-explanatory) can do that.

8. How does one change a teleport GREEN FLASH options? I like monsters to appear with different graphics/sounds etc.

If you want the teleport fog replaced across the board, you can add something like this to your Decorate lump:

ACTOR NewTeleFog replaces TeleportFog
{
(actor info goes here)
}

That would replaces every instance where teleport fog is spawned.

9. Some missiles CREATES/SUMMONS monsters when hitting a collision (icon of sin etc), but can you limit a monster to only fire this once per game instead of general doom A.I?

This could be accomplished through an inventory hack. Basically, somewhere in the monster's attack state, you'd call A_GiveInventory, and have it give the monster an item. At the start of the attack state, you'd call A_JumpIfInventory and have it check for said item and if true (the monster is holding at least one) have it jump back to the See state for example.

10. What's another monster STATE that can allow it fire two shooting attacks (randomly/fixed timed?)

I'm not quite sure what you mean but if you want a monster to fire two things at once (or do anything else, really), you can use 0-tic length frames:

SPOS F 0 bright A_CustomBulletAttack(22.5, 0, 3, random(1,5)*3, "BulletPuff", 0, CBAF_NORANDOM)
SPOS F 10 bright A_CustomBulletAttack(22.5, 0, 3, random(1,5)*3, "BulletPuff", 0, CBAF_NORANDOM)

11. I've looked in the DOOM1/2 files via SLADE, but I can't see the option for multi-coloured DOOMGUYS. How do wadders access these graphics? I need the grey-coloured DOOMGUY for a project.

Translation could be used here, but you'll have to define those graphics in the TEXTURES lump and then have the player actor(s) use the new graphics.

13. I tried creating an A_SkullAttack (Lost Soul charge) attack on a ground unit as a ramming enemy. But everytime he did this, it just got stuck on the ground and wouldn't budge unless you entered a fixed position until it moves again. Has there ever been any successful charges for ground monsters? (not air, like lost soul)

the ACS specials ThrustThing and ThrustThingZ (which are available in Decorate as well as ACS scripting) can accomplish this. There are other options too, but keep in mind most of these make monsters kind of "dumb"; they can launch themselves off ledges that their AI would prevent them from going down under normal circumstances.

[Gez]

Blackgaze said:

1. using SLADE, I'm making custom graphics for my new monster. It appears fine in game, but it's not affected by the lights. A dark room would have it stand out, why is this?

Are you using custom DECORATE code for the new monster? If so, check the presence of the Bright keyword.

Blackgaze said:

2. I've notice a lot of wads have "colour changing" new monsters and I always find it difficult to do. I notice it involves GRAPHICS -> COLOUR REMAP, but I can only change one or a few pixels at a time, and this is a long tedious method and I know its incorrect.

You can select entire ranges (for both source and destination). Click on the first color in the palette range, then drag the mouse cursor to the last.

You can use the + and - buttons to add or remove translations, so that you can mix several in a single remap.

You can also experiment a bit with the other colour remap features, like remapping to color gradient or using a desaturated translation.

Blackgaze said:

3. The wad i'm working on has friendly monsters as allies, but I don't know how many monster groups you can have (say... 4 different species of monsters, 1 is friendly to you but they all attack each other, like FFA)

In ZDoom, monsters are either hostile or friendly. In deathmatch, monsters summoned (through special powerups like Hexen's Dark Minion) by one player will attack monsters summoned by other players, but that's all.

You can use Thing_Hate in scripts to make monsters attack other monsters, though.

Blackgaze said:

4. Also about monster groups. Can you limit what uses "Heal"?
Like if I wanted a medic to just HEAL humans and not demons? Or a demon that heals DEMONS but not humans?

No, the arch-vile behavior consists of looking for corpses in a stable (duration of -1) state and with a Raise state available. So anything that could be raised by the demon medic would also register on the human medic's radar, and vice-versa.

Blackgaze said:

5. Can a weapon have two actions instead of one (left/right mouse click etc)? I want a pistol/combat weapon in one selection.

ZDoom supports alt-fires.

Blackgaze said:

6. What's the missile option to have "line" attacks like a laser or an electric zap?

It's generally made through a railgun attack or a stream of projectiles.

Blackgaze said:

7. Can monsters have the ability to SUICIDE EXPLOSION in melee range (like a kamikaze?

Yes, in fact there is a suicide bomber in the Realm667 "Beastiary".

But this has existed since the early days of DeHackEd with people making hunting barrels that looked for the player and exploded when close.

Blackgaze said:

8. How does one change a teleport GREEN FLASH options? I like monsters to appear with different graphics/sounds etc.

If you want to use several different teleport effects on the same map, you can use Thing_Spawn (or Teleport_NoFog) effects to place the monster somewhere and spawn your teleport fog effect at the proper place in the same script.

Blackgaze said:

9. Some missiles CREATES/SUMMONS monsters when hitting a collision (icon of sin etc), but can you limit a monster to only fire this once per game instead of general doom A.I?

A lot of things are possible with advanced DECORATE coding, possibly supplemented with ACS.

Blackgaze said:

10. What's another monster STATE that can allow it fire two shooting attacks (randomly/fixed timed?)

Again, that's easily done with advanced DECORATE work.

Blackgaze said:

11. I've looked in the DOOM1/2 files via SLADE, but I can't see the option for multi-coloured DOOMGUYS. How do wadders access these graphics? I need the grey-coloured DOOMGUY for a project.

They use built-in translations.

Blackgaze said:

12. I've never used friendly monsters before, but what do they do when activated? Just randomly walk around like normal A.I bots, or can you find a way to "command" them?
Also are they activated when you enter the room (or still in stand/dance mode?)

IIRC, they need to see an active enemy to activate. Though a player can hurt them a bit to wake them up, too.

No player control unless you are an ACS wizard.

Blackgaze said:

13. I tried creating an A_SkullAttack (Lost Soul charge) attack on a ground unit as a ramming enemy. But everytime he did this, it just got stuck on the ground and wouldn't budge unless you entered a fixed position until it moves again. Has there ever been any successful charges for ground monsters? (not air, like lost soul)

Yes, some custom ZDoom monsters charge on the ground (usually they are pinky demon variants). Also, the Heretic Maulotaur.

[Blackgaze]

Thanks for the replies, I was worried this thread wasn't getting anywhere.

1. Ah "Bright", of course. How silly of me. I try this out in a second,but I'm sure it work.

2. Two ideas here. Might need a bit of practice, but this seems a lot easier than what I was doing before. I DO put effort into my work, but not if its a stressful unnecessary method.

3. That's a shame. I could use a bit more info what friendly monsters can do (like do they attack or hostiles on sight, do they need to be activated?) but hopefully this is durable.
While it's not important now, can a "summoned" monster be treated as creating by a player while NOT actually summoning it (like auto spawning?)

4. Well that changes a part, which is a shame. Although I can't advanced script, can HEAL be remade to do detailed filters?

5. Excellent. This was optional, but it makes the project more fun!

6. Excellent, this I would've like to have, and i'm happy to have it.

7. Great, this helps both projects i'm working on. I'm sure it was obvious it could be done.

8. Not too clear how to do this, but shouldn't be too hard with what you've told me now.

9. Optional. But while I've never used inventory before (never needed it) this would be nice to have and saves a gameplay hassle.

10. Necromancer. I meant a choice of two attacks when firing, not firing two types of missiles at once. Like a soldier can switch between a gun or grenade (etc)
This is optional, thankfully. But I don't want to go advanced if I can't handle it alone.

11. Again, I have a look into this. Since a grey DOOMGUY is already a player skin, I thought it be in the files somewhere. But if just a toggle changes the colour, then that might be ok too.

12. That's ok, friendly monsters are a big part to one of my projects, and I just needed to know they're limitation for map design wise.

13. I never player any of the games using the DOOM engine (other than DOOM1/2 of course) so I wouldn't know what other features can do other than by name. I look into those options.

Ok thanks very much. My biggest problems were the graphics lighting and the friendly monster behaviour (need a bit more clearing up, but I will experiment with it too).

[Gez]

A monster with multiple attacks is quite easy. For example, suppose you want a soldier to attack with a sniper rifle if its target is quite far, a grenade launcher for average distances, and an assault rifle for closer combat (doesn't want to throw point-blank grenades), you'll do something like this:

Missile:
   SOLD I 0 A_JumpIfCloser(164, "RifleAttack")
   SOLD I 0 A_JumpIfCloser(640, "GrenadeAttack")
   // Fall through to SniperAttack since far enough from target
SniperAttack:
   <insert attack code here>
   Goto See
GrenadeAttack:
   <insert attack code here>
   Goto See
RifleAttack:
   <insert attack code here>
   SOLD L 6 A_CPosRefire
   Loop

[Blackgaze]

Ok I just tested friendly monsters and it almost works like a charm.

They act just as I wanted, and to my surprise they follow you (like a monster hunting you), which helps for my cause.
It would be nice if I could inactive them (they move about too much, but its works)

The only thing I don't like it is that they start "active". I could cure this by putting them in an invisible box and drop it when you enter the scene, but is there an easier way to prevent this?

A couple of other questions while i'm here.

1. I know how to make animated textures, and to create a background. But some wads I've played (like lavaworlds) has these giant 3D backgrounds, acting like a skybox. Do you know how these are created?

2. Can you change a monster's turn speed? Like if I wanted to create a heavy tank that doesn't turn around really quickly?

Otherwise all good. I'm really happy over these answers, I'm surprised I overlooked the "bright" on question 1.

[Blackgaze]

Can anyone answer these last two questions please?