Monster log

[Lycaon]

I had this idea while thinking of stuff to put in Doom Happens, that I could make some sort of ingame menu using the strife log system that works like this: Every time you kill a type of monster for the first time (and there are gonna be a lot of custom monsters), It would be added into a "monster log" that you can go through at any time. this would contain a list with different categories (human, zombie, imp, noble, boss, misc, etc) and a picture of the A sprite of the monster as well as some general info and extra notes added by the protagonist for each monster of the list.

Additionally, I would like to make it so that as you accumulate different items of the same category, you get passive bonus damage against all monsters from that category (by killing diferent kind of imps, you "learn" how to fight imps).

I think all of this would add some nice meta-game aspect to the project, since some monsters are rare or unique and are in secrets, making this a sort of collectionable feature that would also help to remediate the fact that i'm using so many different monsters, making the whole thing more solid.

I don't know how hard this would be, I'm thinking that it's probably harder to make the visual HUD than the coding itself, but then again, i've never worked with strife features before, so I wouldn't really know how to do this at all. Is there any wad that has a similar system so that I can take reference? I would appretiate any help I can get with this, since now this idea is stuck in my head and I really wanna pull it off.

thanks!

[scifista42]

How do you imagine viewing and browsing such a log? Some kind of menu inside the game? Possible to activate any time the player wants to, just press a key on the keyboard and it will pause the game and access the log, until you press the key again? Still, how to browse it?

It should be theoretically possible to implement in ACS via HudMessages printing custom graphics + dummy inventory management + maybe some hacks about freezing the player in place. It won't be exactly easy or fast to implement, but it's not beyond the borders of sanity either. However, there might be easier and cleaner ways to do this that I'm unaware about.

The log itself - I mean the ability to automatically keep track of monster info, without necessarily allowing the player to view it - should be doable relatively simply: Make each of your custom monster's death animation to give a dummy inventory to the monster's killer. For example, a dying Dark Imp will give an inventory called "i_have_killed_dark_imp" to the player. The inventory would be defined in DECORATE as:

actor i_have_killed_dark_imp : inventory {
  inventory.maxamount 1
  +INVENTORY.UNDROPPABLE
}

This way, each player will always keep dummy items in his hidden inventory that will keep track about monster types he has ever killed.

The viewing/browsing interface still needs to be implemented somehow.

[Lycaon]

I imagined the actual monster count could be done like that, it's the whole graphic interface i have no idea how to do.

Yes, the first post wasn't very clear about what I have in mind, sometimes it's hard for me to be specific in English when it comes to technical stuff so I end up assuming people will figure out somehow, sorry about this lazyness.

First of all, I'm making this in Hexen format. I imagined I could use a custom button to pop up a visual interface that doesn't stop the player from moving, so that you can evade something if there was a roaming monster you were unaware of. The graphic itself would use a small amount of Alpha so that the player isn't blinded completely, and and the actual list would be navigable via movement keys (asdw) and the default interact button to select a category (although this could bring problems when standing in front of a linedef with a switch, I don't really know how this would work out). Perhaps a "back" key could be used, but it might be easier if i just make it a menu option in the bottom of each list. There would be basically 2 areas in the layout: a rectangular list of options in the left, and a square to the right that has all the actual info and a monster picture. Nothing too fancy, I'd settle for that.

[scifista42]

I've just remembered a wad that implemented an ingame menu navigable by movement keys. It was Mortal Kombat Doom. Another one with a vaguely similar gimmick was Pogostick, but that wasn't a menu, just unusual player controls. Feel free to look into them.

[Lycaon]

Great, will look into that as soon as i'm back in town. Once again, thank you very much!