[Hendricks266]

Fox, on 05 February 2018 - 06:02 AM, said:

There's used to be a performance gain, but that's no longer the case.

It's still there, but it was always unimportant and is nothing that can't be fixed with a more advanced parser.

[Danukem]

A lot of that new stuff was only available in mapster script, but I guess it was quietly added to CON.

[Danukem]

Fox, on 05 February 2018 - 06:02 AM, said:

- You can use structure members as variables. For example spawnvar sprite[].hitag. Note that sprite is used instead of get/setactor.

This is not a universally true statement. If I substitute a struct member in the place where a command normally outputs to a var, I get an error (at least for some commands). For example:

getangletotarget sprite[].ang

Can anyone explain the exact situations in which one can use structs in the place of vars?

[Fox]

Indeed you cannot use values that set a variable on structures.

[Mere_Duke]

Fox, on 05 February 2018 - 06:02 AM, said:

- It's not necessary to differentiate between commands like setvar and setvarvar anymore. There's used to be a performance gain, but that's no longer the case. Use the command that can read gamevars.

You mean that whenever I have to write "setvar patemp1 128", I may use "setvarvar patemp1 128" instead? Does this work the same way with the and/or/mul/etcvar commands?

Fox, on 05 February 2018 - 06:02 AM, said:

- The local actor, player or player distance can be set using vm_actor / vm_player / vm_distance. The value of THISACTOR usually equals vm_actor, but player[THISACTOR] equals vm_player. Commands like ifpdistl use vm_distance to determine the condition. Note that vm_distance is not always set by the game for performance reasons.

How should I use vm_actor/vm_player/vm_distance? Compiler doesn't recognize if I replace "player[THISACTOR]" with "vm_player". What exactly is a vm_* thing? Gamevar? Abbreviation? Structure? Structure pointer?
The list of other abbreviations is very useful, thanks a lot! It saved much of time

[Hendricks266]

Fox, on 05 February 2018 - 06:02 AM, said:

- The local actor, player or player distance can be set using vm_actor / vm_player / vm_distance. The value of THISCTOR usually equals vm_actor, but player[THISACTOR] equals vm_player. Commands like ifpdistl use vm_distance to determine the condition. Note that vm_distance is not always set by the game for performance reasons.

This is far too advanced to be useful to beginners.

[Mere_Duke]

I need a little advice again.
When I shoot a projectile with "shoot" command (eshoot FIRELASER, for example), or spawn a sprite with "spawn" command (spawn SHOTGUNSHELL, for example), I need to change the RETURN's spawn coordinates. I tried some ways: via RETURN reference (setactor[RETURN].x ...), in EVENT_SPAWN/EVENT_EGS, etc. It works, but I absolutely can't avoid that the sprite/projectile spawns for a frame (or two) in the default position, then "jumps" to the position I set it to. I assume that comes from the fact that the game manages to draw the sprite after it was created but before I changed its position. Are there any ways to preset spawn coordinates before the spawn, or where should I change them after they were set to defaults, but before sprite is ready to be drawn?
Thx in advance.

[Danukem]

Mere_Duke, on 09 February 2018 - 05:50 AM, said:

I need a little advice again.
When I shoot a projectile with "shoot" command (eshoot FIRELASER, for example), or spawn a sprite with "spawn" command (spawn SHOTGUNSHELL, for example), I need to change the RETURN's spawn coordinates. I tried some ways: via RETURN reference (setactor[RETURN].x ...), in EVENT_SPAWN/EVENT_EGS, etc. It works, but I absolutely can't avoid that the sprite/projectile spawns for a frame (or two) in the default position, then "jumps" to the position I set it to. I assume that comes from the fact that the game manages to draw the sprite after it was created but before I changed its position. Are there any ways to preset spawn coordinates before the spawn, or where should I change them after they were set to defaults, but before sprite is ready to be drawn?
Thx in advance.

Change the coordinates of the actor who is firing the projectile instead. Then, after firing, immediately (in the same block of code) change them back to the actor's original position. Since no time has actually passed, this will have no negative impacts.

[Fox]

Mere_Duke, on 09 February 2018 - 05:50 AM, said:

I assume that comes from the fact that the game manages to draw the sprite after it was created but before I changed its position.

No, EVENT_EGS happens before the sprite is drawn. The game stores the old coordinates the previous coordinates of the object in the htbposx / htbposy / htbposz structures so the movement is interpolated (the game runs at 30 frames per second, but is drawn at 120 frames per second).

This is actually a problem with the original game, the most obvious case being the Overlord firing rockets.

[Danukem]

Fox, on 09 February 2018 - 10:00 PM, said:

No, EVENT_EGS happens before the sprite is drawn. The game stores the old coordinates the previous coordinates of the object in the htbposx / htbposy / htbposz structures

So you could just write to those in addition to changing the sprite's coords and that would solve the problem without moving the shooter. Good to know.

[Mere_Duke]

htbpos+ works just fine (I thought it is undefined at that moment right after eshoot has been called and has no effect), as well as the moving an actor instead of its projectile.
The problem is solved. Thank you, kind people.

[RPD Guy]

Someone knows?
For APLAYER we have "spritebridge" and "sbs" properties. The other actors don't have these.
How can I know if a actor is standing upon an "spritebridge"?

[Mark]

Could using Findnearactor be of any help? http://wiki.eduke32....i/Findnearactor

Make the spritebridge an actor and when your actor is within a certain distance in x,y,z plane do something.

[Danukem]

You want to use this:

http://wiki.eduke32.com/wiki/Getzrange

It's the same function called internally to check for stuff below when a sprite uses the fall command. One potential downside: since we know that sometimes actors will fall right through a sprite bridge when they have a downward momentum (this can be seen on jumping enemies) it's reasonable to wonder if getzrange will fail to detect the sprite bridge under similar circumstances.

[Sanek]

Is there some easy way (or at least already-documented one) to attach a single-hit death sequence to a brand new actor?
Suppose I use the code for that Bee enemy from Candymania as a starting point.

[Hendricks266]

Use ifhitweapon without ifstrength.

[Fox]

RPD Guy, on 12 February 2018 - 10:59 AM, said:

Someone knows?
For APLAYER we have "spritebridge" and "sbs" properties. The other actors don't have these.
How can I know if a actor is standing upon an "spritebridge"?

Try the htmovflag.

[Danukem]

Fox, on 15 February 2018 - 09:37 AM, said:

Try the htmovflag.

I'm pretty sure I gave the correct answer on the last page. htmovflag detects collisions but not whether you are standing on something.

[Mere_Duke]

Does anyone know how to change damage of a hitscan-type default projectiles?
For FIRELASER, its

eshoot FIRELASER
seta[RETURN].extra %value%

But how to aplly this for the SHOTSPARK1 or SHOTGUN?

P.S. I know I can use

shoot SHOTGUN
shoot SHOTGUN
shoot SHOTGUN
...

but I want to avoid that, and, besides, I don't want to define new projectile.

[Danukem]

Mere_Duke, on 17 February 2018 - 09:11 AM, said:

Does anyone know how to change damage of a hitscan-type default projectiles?
For FIRELASER, its

eshoot FIRELASER
seta[RETURN].extra %value%

But how to aplly this for the SHOTSPARK1 or SHOTGUN?

You don't. You could change the damage by editing the damage amounts in USER.CON, but that will change it for every time they are used.

Mere_Duke, on 17 February 2018 - 09:11 AM, said:

P.S. I know I can use

shoot SHOTGUN
shoot SHOTGUN
shoot SHOTGUN
...

but I want to avoid that, and, besides, I don't want to define new projectile.

Defining a projectile is very easy and it is the correct solution. For hitscan, you don't even need a tile with art on it to define it on.

There is a hackish solution, though, if you are really determined to make this more difficult than necessary. If you know the sprite ID of what you are shooting at, you can check its htowner and htextra right after shooting at it in the same block of code; if the owner is the actor who just fired and htextra is > 0, assume that's because you just shot it and increase htextra to the value you want.

[Mere_Duke]

Oh yeah, htextra is a good solution. Thx. It allows not only to change, say, bullet damage, but to add a random component to it, and a distance-based component too (for a shotgun-like weapons). And I've realised just now that I want to know how the default shotgun damage code works as well
Also I can't find a word about how to translate *.con actor move velocity (move WALK 200 for example) into "build units per tic" value.

[Mere_Duke]

And thx for the "change actor's position" hack, it really helps, for example, to spawn debris or blood at the exact point of his body.

[Danukem]

Mere_Duke, on 18 February 2018 - 08:28 AM, said:

And thx for the "change actor's position" hack, it really helps, for example, to spawn debris or blood at the exact point of his body.

Another very useful thing to know is how to use the SHOTSPARK1 actor. By reading its htg_t members, you can find out exactly what sprite or texture any hitscan projectile is hitting, and use that information to spawn appropriate effect sprites or take other actions right at the location and time of the impact.

[Mere_Duke]

Yes, htg_t is very useful array for projectiles, but why in wiki it is mentioned "usage discouraged" for actors? How it is possible to get the current frame offset of actor another way?
PS I need to execute a specific code on a specific action frame, I coded it with flags, but wonder if there is a better way.
"geta[].htg_t 3 TEMP" seems breaking code if combined with "ifcount - resetcount", actor starts to walk with negative velocity

[Danukem]

Mere_Duke, on 18 February 2018 - 04:39 PM, said:

Yes, htg_t is very useful array for projectiles, but why in wiki it is mentioned "usage discouraged" for actors? How it is possible to get the current frame offset of actor another way?
PS I need to execute a specific code on a specific action frame, I coded it with flags, but wonder if there is a better way.
"geta[].htg_t 3 TEMP" seems breaking code if combined with "ifcount - resetcount", actor starts to walk with negative velocity

You should be able to track the frame of animation with the good old ifactioncount command.

[Mere_Duke]

Yep, I did it with flag to control that desired code will execute once because "ifcationcount %value%" duration depends on action speed value and almost always more than one tic; everything I put inside will be executed many times, so I need to have flag to restrict redundant state calls.
There is an easy solution if you need to do smth at every 3rd animation frame:

ifactioncount 3
{
	resetactioncount
	state dosomething
}

But in my case, there are 7 frames in the action, and I need to execute that state at the 3 and the 6 frames

This code

ifcount 12
{
  resetcount
  geta[].htg_t 3 TEMP6
  ife TEMP6 3
    state stepsnd
  ife TEMP6 6
    state stepsnd
}

failed to work, and probably because it's "unreliable".
So there is only weird flag solution left, and works perfect.
But I always try to improve the code and make it more "universal".

[Mere_Duke]

Hmm, it works now like this, like I wanted it to be implemented, w/o flags and redundant checks:

  ifactioncount 1
  {
    resetactioncount
    geta[].htg_t 3 TEMP4
    ife TEMP4 3
      sound GARGAN_STEP
    ife TEMP4 6
      sound GARGAN_STEP
  }

But I still want to know why no one uses actors' "htg_t" (I haven't found "htg_t" usage for actors in AMCTC, Attrition and other mods files), and why wiki recommends to avoid "htg_t" of actors.

[Mere_Duke]

Another problem: When enemy actor is falling from a high distance, it makes a "squish" sound. How could I remove that sound, and why it is happening? I coded falling behavior, and when actor is falling to the water, it resets its action to a default one (not dying from water), but when it dies after from, say, a bullet, it plays "squish" sound anyways. Probably, the old falling data left anywhere, but idk where to search for.
I need either to completely reset actor data to a default state, if possible, or remove that annoying sound.
Ofc I can do a { spawn MYENEMY killit } to simulate a resetting, but it's not optimal way. And I can try and catch SQUISHED sound in EVENT_SOUND, but I think it's a bad idea too.
Thanks in advance!

[Mark]

I don't know if you tried this already or not. Its possible that if the actor never reaches "terminal velocity" it won't trigger the squish sound. If its only usable for the Aplayer actor, then never mind.
http://wiki.eduke32....r_falling_death

[Danukem]

Sounds fishy. I don't recall the hardcoded squish sound working that way. Are you saying that if not for your code, it would make the squish sound when falling on a tagged water sector?