Shadow Hog

Re: getting the sounds shifted over to accommodate Eternity: it appears I have it working. I'd never heard of "designated initializers" before this, but Visual Studio threw no errors, and one NULL check added to D_BuildBEXTables later, it works, as this (admittedly somewhat plain) video of the Half-Life VOX announcer counting from 200 to 0 every two seconds before you explode shows, so, sure: I suppose I should ask a follow-up question: what is a good offset for this? If I were to leave room for every Heretic, Hexen and Strife sound effect (including VOICES.WAD) as well (starting at 300, as Eternity currently has it), I'd have to set it to just under 1200 (which is where that video currently has it). That seems rather high for ports that would rather keep memory count low. FWIW, I don't know that I intend to add more than the 200 added sounds the video showcases (the "die" just being DSSKLDTH), if only because cutting together those VOX sounds in Audacity for the sake of making sure the slots are working is way too time-consuming. That said, I also don't want to completely write off the possibility for somebody else to do in the future, either. I also noticed Eternity had no entries for MINAT3, CHICPAI, CHICDTH, CHICACT, CHICPK1, CHICPK2, CHICPK3, RIPSLOP, BURN, GLOOP, HRNPOW, RAMPHIT, RAMRAIN, or LOBPOW from Heretic (but does have one for a nonexistent "NOWAY" sound - a clone of PLROOF I presume), though I have no idea if you guys care or not about that since I'm not certain how deep your Heretic implementation is at the moment. (This also isn't exactly material to the topic at hand, I suppose.)

Well, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. What a bizarre setup, then. Yes, that should be defaulted to follow-mode on.

It is on by default. And the option to disable it by pressing F on the automap is present in every source port ever (well, the ones that even support keyboards at least), because it is a feature straight from vanilla. Try it in Crispy, it'll happen there too.

Actually, gaps might be doable, comparing the sounds enum to the states enum. I could shift the new sounds to 512 or something- I'd kind of like the room to expand them, too, so...

Double post, but I suppose I should ask this now rather than get my head bitten off later: is DSFRExxx a good lump name for the added sound effects, or have we settled on some other standard already? I'm mostly just using that since it's what SRB2 used when it did its own DEHACKED equivalent's similar expansion a few years ago. I noticed the new sprites are SPxx, but I'm not sure if that's because they're "SPecial", or because they're of type "SPrite" or what. If it's the latter, maybe DSSNDxxx would be better (although I suspect the "DS" prefix is enough of a hint). FWIW I have a compile of PrBoom+UM that implements 140 new sounds (again, chosen to round the number of SFX slots up to a nice round 255). It's working well with my test case of the Half-Life VOX counting down every two seconds from 140. Kinda want to tweak it a bit more before releasing it though.

If it's anything like BEX, it's not really a new file extension, so much as a way to easily indicate to human readers what format DEHACKED file it is without them having to open it up and compare header numbers. The ports would only care about that header, and the launchers... well, okay, they might need to add one more file type, sure, but at the same time IIRC the launcher I occasionally used didn't even support DEH (you'd have to forcibly add it with "All Files (*.*)"), so no loss there. (At least, I think ZDL didn't. I'm going to have to check that now and suddenly learn I must eat crow, aren't I.)

I think the only flag I currently really want, one that I know both EE and GZDoom have something for, is a flag to make sight/deathsounds full-volume when played, a la Cyberdemon/Spider Mastermind/Oremor Nhoj.

You'd need to change a lot of pointers, whether to expand the size of the tables in-place or to move them outside their normal location to, say, the end of the executable's filesize, but I suppose it's doable, yes. It certainly would be awesome to be able to use a gameplay mod that uses all these extra states on a Pentium II running Windows 98SE in DOS Mode (or hell, a 486 running DOS 6.22), for sure, if more a huge novelty than anything practical. Re: number of sounds, doing some math, I think 140 is a good number - bumps the overall number of sounds to 255 (+ sfx_None), and should be plenty for most use cases (famous last words, a la the apocryphal "640K should be enough for anybody", but whatever, it's a start). Maybe I'll play with later...

Including the dog sounds, DSSECRET and whatever "sfx_gibdth" is, but excluding "sfx_none", 115. But again, not 1250, I was thinking 1000 as an absolute upper limit (so you could fully define 5 unique sounds for almost every object, but would otherwise have to share some or omit them, as with decoration objects) and something like 128-512 as a more practical amount. I also remembered that some sounds could he randomized in vanilla, but those instances were hardcoded. However, requesting anything genuine about that is waaaaay out of scope of this conversation, so I'mm'l let that that sleeping dog lie for now. And yeah, we can continue this elsewhere.

So to be clear, if I wanted to add extra sounds to this new definition so we could make the most of the new mobjs/states (or just wanted to back port that one ZDoom mod that gave all the vanilla monsters unique hurt sounds IDK I'm not a cop), I'd need to make changes to/pull requests for Doom Retro, Crispy Doom, PrBoom+/um and WhackEd4 at the very least, correct? Not that I'm sure how many. If we have 250 mobj definitions then it'd take 1250 sounds to ensure each and every one has a unique sound for each of the five possible soundtypes (see, active, attack, pain, and death), but I'd probably cap it at 1000 new sounds (DSFRE000-DSFRE999) at most. (I mean we could get cute and use hex instead, giving us DSFRE000-DSFREFFF for a total of 4096 new sounds, but that's way overkill, even if "frefff" is fun to say.)

Maybe DEHACK++? :V Though really, given BEX files don't get a special lump name but still work, there probably is a way to indicate that the DEHACKED revision is a more-advanced one inside the file itself; it'd be better to just advance that one a notch. Also echoing Da Werecat's comment on sounds; that's a limitation I ran into as well. Got by for my purposes by overriding the dog sounds, but beyond that there's maybe one sound to work with...

I suppose this is an impertinent question, but is a Beta 3 or final release coming anytime soon? I had noticed the most recent version of my map isn't in the most recent release... Presumably Beta 2 came out before I put it out.

Ooh, I like the sound of this. Has WhackEd been updated to support these new sprites/states?

You could make the stock sound anything - silence, a quick sound effect composed in FamiTracker, DSOOF pitched and timed to mimic the Old Spice whistle jingle, IDC. Just so long as the change doesn't mean my DSSECRET replacement in Fork in the Road has suddenly broken, I'm fine.

Also the Saturn's architecture relies heavily on intercommunication between multiple such processors, so you'd not only have to OC or replace all of those, but make sure they sync up at appropriate times, or else end up in data races or worse.

Well the "why" is because Yamaha wanted it to be, but that's also why Creative et al chose it for an upgrade to the OPL2 everyone had been using since the AdLib - it was backwards compatible. That way, any existing software that made use of it would still work, while new software could use the OPL3's improved features like 4-op instruments. I've heard tell of an OPL4 as well, but I'm not sure which (if any) PC sound cards it made it on to. I think it did hit at least one. If I recall correctly, that one is BC with both prior OPLs but adds the ability to handle PCM (or DPCM or DAC or IDEFK) samples natively to it? Which would have been nice had any software used it for, say, drums instead of relying on FM percussion (which is cute but not especially convincing), if perhaps redundant to the Sound Blaster's entire raison d'être (adding PCM on top of the AdLib's FM synth, making the latter redundant and giving Creative the lion's share of the market).

I'm pretty sure, from prior experimentation, that GZDoom will read ZMAPINFO over UMAPINFO if it's present, so you don't really need to worry about that.

Meant to post this like a week ago but got distracted by a ton of other things. Regardless, after watching Dragonfly play through my map, I've made a v3. Changes: General toning down of some fights a bit (mostly Barons->HKs). The central gauntlet got a ton: The central gauntlet to raise the bridge now only has 36 monsters teleport in instead of 64. The southeast teleport exit is actually used now, it somehow wasn't before. There's only one Pain Elemental on UV now instead of somewhere between 3-5 (I forget) in v2 Cacodemon count has also been scaled back a smidgen. Adds more ammo and armor in general. 3D bridge is more decorated on the inside's walls. (It's just some SUPPORTx textures breaking up the bricks, nothing earth-shattering.) Switch puzzle: Added a Berserk to the start. The blood floors that you're not supposed to even get out to now really don't hurt you; apparently they still did in v2. Added arrows after you activate the switch in the center to make it clearer (hopefully) which direction to go. Made the hints placed around the map to the solution somewhat more blatant. Changed the Health Bonuses for one secret in UV to a Megasphere (and in so doing moved the health that was there onto the water where it should've been to begin with). I'm keeping the "piss filter" at the start in UV with the Armor Bonuses tho; I specifically wanted to give them less than a full Green Armor there and that's the only way I can think of to do it. Does mean it's the only instance of it now, though.

Jimmy confirmed in Dragonfly's Wednesday Isolation stream that it was, indeed, intentional when I prodded him about it; the stated reason being that these were all designed for pistol start, and continuous play might destroy the intended balance. I can respect that, but I do kinda wish there was an option to turn it off even if the default remains keeping it on.

It's Boom-compatible, so neither. My map appears to be correct. I apparently forgot to make the blood floor not-damaging when I changed the texture, but whatever, you're not really supposed to ever get out there anyway (though it is possible), so I'm gonna leave it.

Not super necessary, but I made an update to my map (currently MAP28 of Strain 1). This changes the nukage hurtfloor in the switch gauntlet into non-hurting blood, as I thought it looked nicer (also you'd have to do some very specific things in order to even wind up out there, but there are teleporters to take you back up just in case). More importantly, if for some godforsaken reason you're playing in co-op by your lonesome so you can respawn when you die without resetting the map's state (which I wouldn't recommend anyway, this mapset was specifically not co-op), I added a trigger to lower the "3D floor" to its outdoor state to the starting cave, so you don't render the map unwinnable if you die after the floor was raised (as it'd block the only path into the fortress).

I think the largest number I've seen is DUMP3 with a whopping 73 (+6 maps that weren't quality enough and were relegated to "secret" instead, so really 79). This is approaching that for sure.

Well I ended up failing the "speedmap" part of the equation, but nevertheless, I've made a map. Map Name: The Underground Tower MIDI: "Floghorn" by Lee Jackson Build Time: 3... days... <_< I understand if that's disqualifying (I might be disappointed, but I'll understand), but I liked the opportunity to do a no-co-op map so much I got perhaps a bit carried away. EDIT: Screens (click to enlarge): Also made a very minor edit - changed the lighting of one sector, when I discovered that -cl9 fixed a bug I was having in PrBoom+ where changing the ceiling brightness affected Things in that ceiling's sector. That was an MBF "feature", but -cl9 targets Boom compatibility (so, pre-MBF), and Boom works as I expected it should - it only changes the ceiling, not anything else. URL is the same as it was before. I don't think I'll be making further changes unless something critical comes up.

I will admit I see the appeal of having a mostly-vanilla experience that just happens to let you jump on enemies' heads, given vanilla Hexen and vanilla Strife both had that, but I'm inclined to agree that given PrBoom+'s heavy focus on demo compatibility, it's not worth the hassle at present, if ever.

I mean, for the mass market it's probably impractical; I'm just a weirdo who likes running old games on old computers (or even new games made for old computers, which this isn't, yet sort of is), and thus I was wondering how it could hypothetically work (ignoring that I've explicitly gotten it working already as a PWAD with a hacked EXE; the question posed was running it as an IWAD). Realistically Chocolate(-slash-variants, like Crispy) or PrBoom would be better choices for the masses.