Icon of Sin problems

[ReX]

Has anybody else had this problem? The Icon of Sin is in the final area of the level (obviously). The area is connected through doorways, halls, etc. to the start area. Sometimes, the Icon of Sin wakes up when the player enters the level at the start area, even though there is no line of sight, several closed doors in between, and even when the player has made no sound. In the early stages of developing the level, when the start area was not even connected to the Icon of Sin area, it would wake up when the level started up. Weird.

The effect of this is that (1) the player knows that the Icon is the End Boss (which screws up the suspense), (2) the irritating sound of the enemies flying out and being spawned continues throughout the level, and (3) there's a huge pile of dead enemies at the spawn-spots (because new enemies spawn at the spots before the old enemies have moved away). Also, I'm not sure if this will slow down the level by causing too many things to be generated (ZDooM even crashed on me once, but this was while I was running around trying to finish off the Icon).

I set it up so that the Boss Shooters and the Boss Head would be dormant (and activated later in the level). It doesn't help, as they apparently cannot be made dormant. Why does the Icon sometimes wake up even when the player is not heard and not in sight?

[geekmarine]

Well, I'm no programming expert, and I haven't even looked at the source code, but I suspect that the reason the Icon of Sin awakens even when it can't see or here you is because in Doom 2, it's hidden behind a wall which forces you to kill it with the rocket launcher, and so in order to work properly, it was given the superhuman ability to see through walls. I'm just guessing, though, so somebody say something if they know I'm wrong.

[Guest cacoman]

it can probly see threw side defs /any side def regardless of impossiple flag/ thats y at the begining it cant be active but when you teleport to the big room it can see you and start the monster spawning. well thats my idea of it

[stphrz]

Are you using ZDoom by any chance? Are you using Wadauthor with the built in nodes builder? If you are, that's where your problem lies. On the level I'm working on, I've got other types of monsters waking up on me when there is no way in hell they can see me. Try building the nodes with BSP or some other stand alone nodes builder. Failing that, maybe manipulating the reject table manually might do the trick.

[ReX]

Yup. As a matter of fact I am using ZDooM/WadAuthor with the built-in nodes builder. I'll give it a shot with BSP. As far as manipulating the reject table, I don't want to mess with it, as I don't have a clue about how it should be done. Thanks anyway.

Someone in the ZDoom forum suggested that the Boss Shooters could be teleported in just as the player enters the final area. (Of course, as the Boss Shooter can't move, the only way to bring it in would be to use the thing-spawn feature of ZDooM.) That might work.