(deh) making zombie/trooper smarter?

i'm creating a new flavour of former human for my next map based on the zombie/trooper, the problem i'm having is that he's a bit, well, dumb. it takes about 5 minutes from him seeing you to deciding to attack, they just wander around. this is fairly normal behaviour for the zombies but is there a way to make them attack more often? like inserting a "face enemy" frame in the walk anim or something?

The dumbiness is hard-coded into Doom. afaik, all you can do with deh is make the monsters faster.

Imagine.

[Demon]
IQ = 200

Yeah that'd be fun.

What about the "Reaction Time" setting? To this day I'm not clear on what this does... maybe it could be what he's looking for.

Can't you do something like that with Zdoom's DECORATE lump?

Scuba Steve said:

What about the "Reaction Time" setting? To this day I'm not clear on what this does... maybe it could be what he's looking for.

Make a DEH where you set the Cyberdemon's reaction time REALLY high, like 9999999. Then go find one and don't shoot at it. Then shoot at it.

the ss nazi seems a lot more eager to shoot the player i might have a go with that instead

cycloid said:

the ss nazi seems a lot more eager to shoot the player i might have a go with that instead

That's only because his attack is repeating. The AI behind it is the same.

Infinite Ammunition said:

Can't you do something like that with Zdoom's DECORATE lump?

you can make new monsters, but that's where it ends, the 'AI' (if you want to call it that, it's really just a pretty simple search algo) used by the new monsters is the same ie:

1) am I awake? if no goto 1);
2) can I see the player? if no, walk towards him and goto 2);
3) am I in melee range and do I have a melee attack?, if yes melee the player, otherwise goto 4;
4) if I have a fireball attack, shoot the fireball and goto 2;

Cyb said:

you can make new monsters, but that's where it ends, the 'AI' (if you want to call it that, it's really just a pretty simple search algo) used by the new monsters is the same ie:

1) am I awake? if no goto 1);
2) can I see the player? if no, walk towards him and goto 2);
3) am I in melee range and do I have a melee attack?, if yes melee the player, otherwise goto 4;
4) if I have a fireball attack, shoot the fireball and goto 2;

You can get a little more variation out of 3) and 4) but 1) and 2) are limited to exactly that.