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dsm

ZDoom: New creature definitions please

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I really damn hope that ZDoom will have the feature to create new creature definitions (allowing you to create entirely new monsters without scrapping ANY of the existing ones) sometime in the not-so-distant future.

Because in this respect, regardless of all ZDoom's other nifty features, it can make the port a pain if you want to do a wad with new enemies AND slopes, since you'll have to decide which of the old creatures you'd want to scrap.

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dsm said:

Because in this respect, regardless of all ZDoom's other nifty features, it can make the port a pain if you want to do a wad with new enemies AND slopes, since you'll have to decide which of the old creatures you'd want to scrap.

dsm, there's no specific issue with slopes, is there, as far as creating new enemies or not? I don't know how that could be.

At least we can now use the enemies from Heretic and Hexen in doom maps, alongside the doom creatures.

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Biffy said:

At least we can now use the enemies from Heretic and Hexen in doom maps, alongside the doom creatures.

We can? How?
The problem I was talking about is simple: If I wanted to do a wad which has levels with sloped surfaces AND new creatures, I would be in for a tough ride.
ZDoom is the only source port with sloped surfaces afaik, so that one's the one to use for that, BUT you can't create entirely new monsters - the only thing you can do is to take an existing monster, change its sprites and its attack values etc. - but I don't want to sacrifice the old enemies.

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I think I see...you are "stuck" with zdoom if you want slopes but right now zdoom does not allow all-new monsters.

The more recent unofficial zdoom versions support the spawnspot acs command, which can bring in the Heretic and Hexen stuff. It's not completely trivial, you need the monster sprites, sounds and some sndinfo entries in your pwad to make it work. Same for weapons.

Look at several threads. One in this forum about zdoom versions, and there was another in the editing forum I think, recently, about Heretic stuff in doom. Also, some discussion of spawnspot vs. the more-used thingspawn commands.

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dsm said:

I really damn hope that ZDoom will have the feature to create new creature definitions (allowing you to create entirely new monsters without scrapping ANY of the existing ones) sometime in the not-so-distant future.

Because in this respect, regardless of all ZDoom's other nifty features, it can make the port a pain if you want to do a wad with new enemies AND slopes, since you'll have to decide which of the old creatures you'd want to scrap.


Very True! The best thing would be Edges DDFs and Zdooms Everything else!!

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No way. There is not a chance in hell that something similar to DDF will make it into ZDoom.

DoomScript, according to Randy, will be more like UnrealScript. This is a good thing, because the way it is structured, it is similar to ACS (both are somewhat like C... somewhat), and if you can't work with ACS, then don't mod for ZDoom. It should fit perfectly.

But not effin' DDF. Looks sloppy as hell.

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Randy has made a step along the way with doomscript/being able to define monsters.

The next version of Zdoom will have the ability to define items. Not fully mobile, attacking monsters, but decoration items such as pillars, twitching bodies and pick ups.

To be clear, these are independant of dehacked and the regular doom items. They are additional items that you define, provide your own graphics for, allocate an edit number and place in your map where you see fit without upsetting anything else in doom.

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Enjay said:

Randy has made a step along the way with doomscript/being able to define monsters.

The next version of Zdoom will have the ability to define items. Not fully mobile, attacking monsters, but decoration items such as pillars, twitching bodies and pick ups.

To be clear, these are independant of dehacked and the regular doom items. They are additional items that you define, provide your own graphics for, allocate an edit number and place in your map where you see fit without upsetting anything else in doom.

Well, that's a start :-)
I hope new creature definitions will arrive in a later version (and hopefully not too far into the future).

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You can free up quite a few frames by giving all the power-ups (the armour, keys, invisibility, invunerability, etc) only one frame. Then use something like one of the duplicate decoration things (by duplicate decorations, I mean the ones with blocking and un-blocking versions) for the new monster.

You could also steal some frames from some of the decorations, e.g. the two tech lamps, the magic eye, the heart on a pillar etc. Then there's the torches, which can free up another 24 frames if you're willing to not use them. Oh, and how could I forget... there's also the Keen frames.

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NiGHTMARE said:

You can free up quite a few frames by giving all the power-ups (the armour, keys, invisibility, invunerability, etc) only one frame...


Indeed. That's something I've used quite a bit. And in Zdoom you can give the powerups the "floatbob" bit so that they will, um float and bob up and down like Heretic powerups. So despite loosing their frame animation they are still kind of animated.

And lets not forget the pain elemental's unused respawn sequence.

But as Ultraviolet said, once there is a released version of Zdoom with the user definable decorations, then all the existing Doom decorations could easily be defined in a DECORATE lump thereby freeing up all the original decoration item frames and their item slots in dehacked too. So that would leave even more frames and things to play around with via dehacked until DoomScript is done.

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From the Resurrect frame of Pain elemental, to SS Nazi and Keen to Boss spawn animations, there are lots of free space to use!

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Being unfamiliar with the Doom engine...why hasn't someone been able to raise the frame limit?

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Draconio said:

You could always replace the Nazi. I mean, you aren't planning on using him, were you?

Yeah, but that's only *one* enemy - what if I wanted at least five new enemies?

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Ultraviolet said:

Nigel: Why didn't I hear about this on the ZDoom phorums? I read/post there regularly (as Faint... hi Nigel, Nick!)


So the faint blue afterglimmer has turned violet eh? Hi Faint, um Ultraviolet. Did you ever see the Brit TV show called Ultraviolet (about vampires)? Typical semi-low buget, low drama, quite subtle British TV. I thought it was a good series though. It just sprung to mind when I saw your name.

Anyway, the subject in question came up in an e-mail, and it's not in the released versions of Zdoom, so I figured there was little point in going into it on the phorum, but seeing as how it was relevant here...

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There is no "frame limit," its just that frames are stored in a static array in the executable in the original DOOM way of doing things. You can't add elements to a static array at run-time, unfortunately.

The only way to remove this static nature is to move the frames into data and load them at startup. That allows an arbitrary number of frames to be defined.

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Quasar said:

There is no "frame limit,"...


That makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up. I guess for practical puposes, the number of frames are a "limit" but the limit is there because of the way things are set up in the compiled EXE and how they are hacked using dehacked, and not as a tied in limit of the engine as such, right?

I presume things like DDF work by moving the frames into data as you describe, as indeed would Randy's new user defined decoration items for Zdoom.

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Nigel: Actually, I did see some of that movie. It was too long with too many parts, so I didn't bother watching all of it, I had things to do.

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Enjay said:

Did you ever see the Brit TV show called Ultraviolet (about vampires)? Typical semi-low buget, low drama, quite subtle British TV. I thought it was a good series though


Ultraviolet was cool. Shame they never made a second series. Apparently an american company brought the rights and have made an american version. I shudder to think what thats like!

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Enjay said:

I presume things like DDF work by moving the frames into data as you describe, as indeed would Randy's new user defined decoration items for Zdoom.


And soon to include EDF for Eternity! ^_^

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Quasar said:

And soon to include EDF for Eternity! ^_^


Interesting - I look forward to it.

Russel_P said:

Ultraviolet was cool. Shame they never made a second series. Apparently an american company brought the rights and have made an american version. I shudder to think what thats like!


Yeah I was hoping for a second series too. Not sure where they would have taken it, but I liked the show (I have them on DVD). As I said, nice and understated. I thought they were going to throw it all away one episode and show that the vampires weren't all that bad, but it turned around beutifully and they were once again shown to be the sleezy corrupters that the program had them pegged as. They definately have the Sadim touch (opposite to the Midas touch - instead of everything you touch turning to gold, it turns to shit instead).

I loved the part where the priest was tempted by the vampires, but eventually made his peace and rejected them.

"Thank you for your interest, I'm already spoken for" Then he fires a bunch of carbon bullets into the vamp. Nice!

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dsm said:

We can? How?
The problem I was talking about is simple: If I wanted to do a wad which has levels with sloped surfaces AND new creatures, I would be in for a tough ride.
ZDoom is the only source port with sloped surfaces afaik, so that one's the one to use for that, BUT you can't create entirely new monsters - the only thing you can do is to take an existing monster, change its sprites and its attack values etc. - but I don't want to sacrifice the old enemies.


I agree, why must we sacrifice the classic monsters? why?, why??!

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Hey DSM! You could always replace an artifact like a tree or something with the sprites of something like the marine and then you can change the colors, or use the other ideas of changing unused frames from other sprites. and give it all the stuff it needs to be alive.

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What would be really cool is if you could define new weapons and not have to dick around with dehacked to make new weapons effects....

One thing i am wondering, is how skulltag could add new weapons without comprimising the normal ones.

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use vavoom for your level. It's capable of sloping,
and all the stuff EDGE can do. And all the rest of
the zdoom stuff. So there you go!

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Quast said:

One thing i am wondering, is how skulltag could add new weapons without comprimising the normal ones.

Codeine (Sorry, dislexia. I meant Coding.)

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