boss deaths

I have a feeling that this question has been asked before, but how do you make a monster death end a level? I'm thinking of having a boss monster for my work in progress.

what editor do you use?

right now I'm using wadauthor unregistered and I'm trying to learn xwe to supplement it.

If you're building for ZDoom, you can put the Exit_Normal special on the monster in question (from the thing properties box). If you're using Boom or vanilla, you'd have to use a certain monster on a certain level. (in which case we'd need to know what monster it is, and if it's DooM 1 or DooM 2)

actaully there's a def trigger in doom that cause the map to exit when it's run. the romero head uses it for it's death sequence.

So you can actually do this with dehacked?!? never realized

Erik said:

So you can actually do this with dehacked?!? never realized

Yup, code pointer 783, which I think corresponds to the BOOM mnemonic "BrainDie". Use that and when the frame it is allocated to plays - end of level.

very cool! thanks for the info Ebola and Enjay

A good fun way to use this is to allocate it to enemies that are not supposed to get killed. eg if you have a hostage rescue mod or are using NPC's in your game that are supposed to be your allies.

Give this code pointer to such characters as part of their death sequence. If they get killed, the level ends and moves on to the next level as if a normal exit line had been activated. If you make the proper level exit from the level a secret exit line type, then you can make it so the consequences of letting a hostage die are quite different from finding the end of the level and exiting.

In Zdoom, you can do some nice stuff with this in conjunction with a MAPINFO lump (different exit texts and end game types) but to be fair in Zdoom you don't actually need to use the dehacked code pointer because you could have the hostages execute a script on getting killed anyway.

I know this is a bit offtopic but can someone show me some info about the MAPINFO lump used by ZDoom? I need to know some stuff about it for my project.

If your answer is not here:

http://notgod.com/phorum/read.php?f=12&i=4257&t=4257

then you can just ask it there and someone (Nigel?) will answer you for sure!

And then of course there is the MAPINFO page of the manual

http://zdoom.notgod.com/reference/mapinfo.html

That's for Zdoom 1.22 but there hasn't been much added to MAPINFO since that version.

The entire (1.22) editing reference manual is available online

http://zdoom.notgod.com/reference/

And in a downloadable form from the Zdoom download page

http://zdoom.notgod.com/download.php

hey, that mapinfo lump stuff looks pretty cool. would it be possible to execute a script with the baron/cybie/spidey specials? I was also wondering about spawnable things and how they work. would it be possible to, say, kill a couple of barons and then have a cyberdemon spawn?

VileSlay said:

hey, that mapinfo lump stuff looks pretty cool. would it be possible to execute a script with the baron/cybie/spidey specials? I was also wondering about spawnable things and how they work. would it be possible to, say, kill a couple of barons and then have a cyberdemon spawn?

Yes to all the above. But MAPINFO isn't really needed to do any of it. ANY monster in Zdoom can have a special allocated to it (I know how to do it in DeePsea, but not other editors). The specials can be simple actions like open a door or raise a platform etc but you can also get it to execute a script and thereby do all sorts of complex things. In DeePsea, setting a special is easy. It's all menu driven in the thing editor. With the newer versions there is a "special" button, in slightly older versions there is a "Thing special" on the thing type menu.

And to be clear, I mean you can give any individual monster the special. This is not a blanket change like Dehacked would make to change all monsters of one type. If you have a level with 100 imps on it, you can make one of them the crucial one that needs to be killed to execute your special action, or you can set up scripts to be activated when all or even a select few monsters of one type are killed. Also, pick up items can be given specials that are activated when you collect them.

However, you're getting to the edge of what I can be helpful with. My scripting efforts are trial and error at best. We need the scripting gurus to take over now. :-)

VileSlay said:

hey, that mapinfo lump stuff looks pretty cool. would it be possible to execute a script with the baron/cybie/spidey specials? I was also wondering about spawnable things and how they work. would it be possible to, say, kill a couple of barons and then have a cyberdemon spawn?

I don't think you can use the tag 666 specials to run a script, as they're hard-coded into the game. But you can set up an equivalent by making a baron/cyber/spider run a script when killed. To spawn things, use Thing_Spawn (mapspot tag, thing type, facing angle) to teleport them in as normal, and Thing_SpawnNoFog to spawn them silently. The list of spawnable things is in the ZDoom reference section.

Dammit, I didn't even think about checking the editing manual thingo. Yay for stupidiness!

It can be done with Jdoom XGdata as well, simply create an "ltc_end_level" line type, with the "ltf_mobj_gone" flag (state the creature in the "Thing Type=" line.