A_Jump equivalent in DED?

Sandstormer

So, I've been reading the DEW very extensively and following the tutorials. I have managed to successfully mod just about everything in the game, and writing DED files feel very natural to me. I had one question about DED, and that question is whether there is an equivalent to A_Jump. I've been scouring the internet, including the New Doom forums, but I have found no reference to such a thing in DED.

DaniJ

No, there is currently no equivalent to ZDoom's A_Jump action (which changes the current mobj state). No doubt there will be at some point, for mod compatibility purposes. However, we are looking to redesign this sort of thing using Doomsday Script in a future version.

Sandstormer

Ok, thanks DaniJ!

gary

Yeah, I been sticking with Brutal Doom for now and Doomsday seriously needs what appears to be used in here: http://zdoom.org/wiki/actor_states#States which seems related to BD. Hopefully it will be a feature and not just there for compatibility.

Vermil

Doomsday does have it's own mobj editing features. But Dday hasn't added additional options over Vanilla, to anywhere near the degree ZDoom has.

http://www.dengine.net/dew/index.php?title=Thing
http://www.dengine.net/dew/index.php?title=State

gary

Well, I have hope that someday it may. it would be the neatest thing in the world to combine that with Doomsday's lighting and future models. That would be a game changer and jaw dropping. In the near term, it could adopt Brutal Doom's superior sprite particle effects until a better model for particles comes out. Being able to use the Mancubus flame thrower and lighting monsters on fire is fun.

DaniJ

DECORATE is basically a superset of Doomsday's existing mobj editing features. They are fundamentally the same system, with a different syntax and a bunch of new action functions. We'll need to support this stuff for mod compatibility in any case. (With a translating parser, most likely).

However this mechanism could be superseded with a far more powerful solution, which leverages Doomsday Script to give the mod author complete freedom to change the behaviors however they see fit.

Vermil

Since DaniJ said it; Vanilla Doom's mobj editing features (well, Dehacked), Dday's mobj editing features, Decorate etc are largely a series of hardcoded actions and effects that modders can combine in various ways. Decorate simply features a massive amount more actions and effects than Dday or Vanilla Doom set's (i.e having, say, 100 pieces to mix and match versus 10).

DaniJ

gary wrote:

...Brutal Doom's superior sprite particle effects...

I suspect that it would be entirely possible to recreate many of those effects in Doomsday's dedicated particle system. As I understand it, ZDoom doesn't actually have a particle system at all - instead mod authors are required to use mobjs plus DECORATE and/or ACS scripting for this kind of effect (which is naturally more flexible but also significantly more demanding on the engine; every single particle is a discreet mobj, making a highly-optimized and user-configurable particle renderer rather difficult).

Sandstormer

I actually like the way that Doomsday is configured. It is quite easy to mod when you take the time to learn how it works, and it gives the modder plenty of options without going overboard or getting too crazy. I would like to see the engine grow in a streamlined and logical way, and not just add more things for the sake of adding more things. I prefer vanilla/classic Doom, so adding ZDoomisms is definitely not on my wishlist. I was just curious to see if there was DED equivalent of A_Jump, but I certainly don't need it, nor do I consider it a necessity. The engine gets the job done just fine for me as it is.

Vermil

Indeed, Doomsday's modding features are not as featureful as ZDoom (in some areas only slightly less, in some areas a lot), but they are a lot more flexible and consistent (if a bit more long winded to write).

gary

I went back and noticed I typed some words wrong. I meant 'near term' not 'future term'. Also 'comes out' not 'outcomes'. I went back and fixed that. I should have proofread better. I felt kind of embarrassed making such mistakes.

As for Doomsday: Well, as I said, I believe that with enough time, Doomsday could have all the features it has now combined with the huge variety of animations, ways of dying, player behavior, AI, and world behavior (destructible objects) in Brutal Doom as a toggle feature or something. That is what I mean in a more specific manner. That combined with Doomsday's user friendliness, launchers, models, lighting, addon compatibility, etc. Like the best of both worlds all on one screen at the same time but can be toggled on and off at will for those who want normal Doom behavior. I hear Doom 4 is going to be somewhat like that.

Vermil

Doomsday's modding features can do much more than many think. Just there has basically only been 1-2 (an estimate) standard level mod's released (by which I mean one not built on a custom version of the engine) for Dday in the last 10 years or so.

Certainly, element's of Dday's modding features have only been partially functional during the rewrite, which may explain that to a degree, but nowday's they have almost been completely restored.

Sandstormer

gary wrote:

As for Doomsday: Well, as I said, I believe that with enough time, Doomsday could have all the features it has now combined with the huge variety of animations, ways of dying, player behavior, AI, and world behavior (destructible objects) in Brutal Doom as a toggle feature or something. That is what I mean in a more specific manner. That combined with Doomsday's user friendliness, launchers, models, lighting, addon compatibility, etc. Like the best of both worlds all on one screen at the same time but can be toggled on and off at will for those who want normal Doom behavior. I hear Doom 4 is going to be somewhat like that.

Well, technically, if you really wanted to do it, then you could achieve this by modding from source. It would require you to be intimately familiar with all of the nuances of Brutal Doom, and it would require you to be able to translate all of that on the source level. If Deng team were to go out of their way to translate this mod into the Doomsday engine, then what happens when BD has run its course and the next popular mod comes along? All of that work would have been for naught, and then there will be people begging Deng team to make Doomsday cater to the next flavor of the month, and the process repeats until Doomsday just becomes one big convoluted mess. I don't think that they should abandon their vision and go off on a tangent just to accommodate a single gameplay mod, especially considering the fact that the mod's popularity is on the wane even within the community of the source port that it was originally designed for. I think that something like this would be more of an individual project like Doom 64 TC. Someone could mod Doomsday from source and create Brutal Doomsday. I think that would be the most feasible solution.

Sandstormer

Vermil wrote:

Doomsday's modding features can do much more than many think. Just there has basically only been 1-2 (an estimate) standard level mod's released (by which I mean one not built on a custom version of the engine) for Dday in the last 10 years or so.

Exactly! I've managed to create extreme gore, add weather effects such as rain, add new enemies, add new weapons, create custom soundtracks, create custom skies, and create some new decorations. I've done all of that without even touching XG or 3D models. I think that there are plenty of things that a modder can do within the engine if they really want to. They can't get crazy like in ZDoom, but they do have the ability to create some really nice mods.

gary

Sandstormer wrote:

gary wrote:

As for Doomsday: Well, as I said, I believe that with enough time, Doomsday could have all the features it has now combined with the huge variety of animations, ways of dying, player behavior, AI, and world behavior (destructible objects) in Brutal Doom as a toggle feature or something. That is what I mean in a more specific manner. That combined with Doomsday's user friendliness, launchers, models, lighting, addon compatibility, etc. Like the best of both worlds all on one screen at the same time but can be toggled on and off at will for those who want normal Doom behavior. I hear Doom 4 is going to be somewhat like that.

Well, technically, if you really wanted to do it, then you could achieve this by modding from source. It would require you to be intimately familiar with all of the nuances of Brutal Doom, and it would require you to be able to translate all of that on the source level. If Deng team were to go out of their way to translate this mod into the Doomsday engine, then what happens when BD has run its course and the next popular mod comes along?.

If Brutal Doom stops, it makes no difference because Doomsday can improve upon the features. They would likely implement their own version of the features implemented in BD and just added it to models. But I'm not saying it will happen soon. But as things are, watching the monsters die in exactly the same way every time and always having the same behavior no matter what you shoot it with and the players actions being so limited is kind of boring after you experience BD. Also the fact that in BD, shooting different parts of the body causing more damage is more realistic. you can even light a tree on fire in BD with the plasma gun and destroy lights and make barrels go boom in such a fun manner. Also that rocket smoke and sound effect the way the explosions effects monsters is fun.


If Doomsday used it as a mod and not a feature on top of what they already got, then it wouldn't work with the models and have a modeled version of pieces flying everywhere and stuff. It would just be a port.

BTW, I'm not saying Doomsday would need to change their normal gameplay. I said they could work on BD-like gameplay too and it would be toggled on and off (maybe in a launcher) like an addon that would work with their models. Toggled off and you would have normal Doomsday play. It could be as simple as turning on and off an option, just like you can turn on and off auto aim or jump mode. If another major mod comes along, maybe they could make another addon based on it that incorporated its features and made compatible with their models. I never said they should abandon their version. these would be toggled addons that would work on the models and if they could edit the models to allow that behavior if toggled on.

I think we agree on the most part but we just word it differently.

DaniJ

We have no plans to incorporate anything like Brutal Doom into Doomsday. Brutal Doom is a gameplay mod. We can ultimately support it in the same way that ZDoom does, by implementing support for DECORATE, ACS in Doom and any other ZDoom specific features it needs. If the user wishes to play they can simply load Brutal Doom, just like they would any other mod. This sort of thing (enhanced AI) should *not* be merged into the engine itself for precisely the reasons Sandstormer outlined.

Sandstormer

gary wrote:

if Brutal Doom stops, it makes no difference because Doomsday can improve upon the features. They would likely implement their own version of the features implemented in BD and just added it to models. But I'm not saying it will happen soon. But as things are, watching the monsters die in exactly the same way every time and always having the same behavior no matter what you shoot it with and the players actions being so limited is kind of boring after you experience BD. Also the fact that in BD, shooting different parts of the body causing more damage is more realistic. you can even light a tree on fire in BD with the plasma gun and destroy lights and make barrels go boom in such a fun manner. Also that rocket smoke and sound effect the way the explosions effects monsters is fun.

The goal of the Doomsday engine is not to improve upon Brutal Doom's features. Doomsday has its own feature set that is constantly being improved and expanded. The special effects in BD are impressive, but again, Doomsday has its own special effects and not many people actually care about whether a plasma shot or mancubus fire shot can set a tree on fire. Brutal Doom had its heyday, and now a lot of people are returning to time-proven classic Doom. The people who want to play Brutal Doom just keep a Z-family source port on hand for that. I don't think that there is enough of a push within any community, let alone the Doomsday community, to make such a pursuit worthwhile. I think that if there was, then someone would've already merged Doomsday with Brutal Doom by modding from source.

If Doomsday used it as a mod and not a feature on top of what they already got, then it wouldn't work with the models and have a modeled version of pieces flying everywhere and stuff. It would just be a port.

Well, yeah - It's not an original Doomsday mod, it comes from ZDoom. It's going to be a port no matter what, as it was not originally created by using Doomsday features.

BTW, I'm not saying Doomsday would need to change their normal gameplay. I said they could work on BD-like gameplay too and it would be toggled on and off (maybe in a launcher) like an addon that would work with their models. Toggled off and you would have normal Doomsday play. It could be as simple as turning on and off an option, just like you can turn on and off auto aim or jump mode. If another major mod comes along, maybe they could make another addon based on it that incorporated its features and made compatible with their models. I never said they should abandon their version. these would be toggled addons that would work on the models and if they could edit the models to allow that behavior if toggled on.

I think we agree on the most part but we just word it differently.

It would take a lot of work to implement that into Doomsday. It is not as simple as just adding everything from Brutal Doom and making it switchable in the options menu. How would it affect the rest of the engine? What new bugs would it present? Brutal Doom itself is really buggy and hacky to begin with, so that would be even more work to fix those bugs, as well. Then there is the fact that not many people really care about Brutal Doom enough to make it worthwhile to do all of this work. The ZDoom community is not even all that interested in Brutal Doom anymore, and Brutal Doom is a ZDoom-specific gameplay mod. It just wouldn't be prudent from a design and/or work flow standpoint. Deng team is a small dev team with limited time and resources on their hands. They do have jobs and families to tend to. Their dev time would be better spent on things like rolling out 1.15, working on Doomsday Script, and working on Oculus Rift.

For the record, I don't have anything against Brutal Doom, per se. I just don't think that an entire source port should be changed just to cater to a single gameplay mod that is no longer highly regarded even within its own parent source port.

gary

I didn't realize BD was that unpopular (I only started playing it a few months ago for the 1st time and I played Doomsday for many years since 2006) and I'm sure it would be hard to implement if they did that. Maybe Doomsday will have their own unique effects that are better than BD someday, I guess. I am interested in the end result of DD and how it will look far into the future, hoping DD will keep on going far into the future.

Hopefully the Deng team can get more members to join the higher ranks. Doomsday is popular and good stuff, but only 2 people working on the engine, I think. With its popularity, you would expect many more people joining Skyjake and Dani as coders at the top. Maybe more will join someday. I know their are others who do the non-engine stuff, like KuriKai with textures, and I think Vermil does stuff and seems to be an expert. Also several model makers, including Tea Monster and Kuri does it too. I'm sure there are more I know nothing about.

I am no coder or modeler. I know it is very difficult. I took an HTML college class way back in 2003 and I could do that, but the segment we did in JavaScript seemed too difficult for me; of course JavaScript was only briefly used in that class. I'm sure your coding is ever more difficult and probably a hell of a lot of trial and error and testing.

Sandstormer

gary wrote:

I didn't realize BD was that unpopular (I only started playing it a few months ago for the 1st time and I played Doomsday for many years since 2006) and I'm sure it would be hard to implement if they did that. Maybe Doomsday will have their own unique effects that are better than BD someday, I guess. I am interested in the end result of DD and how it will look far into the future, hoping DD will keep on going far into the future.

Well, it's more like, Brutal Doom was extremely popular at one point, but it has run its course and now the community is moving on from it. The author is still active, but the mod itself is in the process of fading into the background. I think the Sperglord edition is the only one that anyone really pays much attention to in earnest, and that is because the author of that one has thrown out a lot of things that led to Brutal Doom being so buggy and unbalanced. Brutal Doom itself started out as just Classic Doom with extreme gore, which is entirely achievable with Doomsday. The author got carried away and he put in iron sights, reloading, barrel rolls, the mighty boot from Duke Nukem 3D, one-liners, finishing moves, and other things that have nothing to do with Doom whatsoever. It was awesome when the mod first came out, but after the novelty factor wore off, it became really annoying, and everybody started noticing the bugs and the fact that it actually broke the core gameplay instead of enhancing it.

Hopefully the Deng team can get more members to join the higher ranks. Doomsday is popular and good stuff, but only 2 people working on the engine, I think. With its popularity, you would expect many more people joining Skyjake and Dani as coders at the top. Maybe more will join someday. I know their are others who do the non-engine stuff, like KuriKai with textures, and I think Vermil does stuff and seems to be an expert. Also several model makers, including Tea Monster and Kuri does it too. I'm sure there are more I know nothing about.

It is a testament to the talent and intelligence of the team that they can build such an amazing source port with only a few members. They probably wouldn't mind the extra help if qualified people asked to help and they shared the same vision as the team.

I am no coder or modeler. I know it is very difficult. I took an HTML college class way back in 2003 and I could do that, but the segment we did in JavaScript seemed too difficult for me; of course JavaScript was only briefly used in that class. I'm sure your coding is ever more difficult and probably a hell of a lot of trial and error and testing.

It's difficult, but accessible. It just takes a lot of study and patience, but you could figure it out. If you ever wanted to look more deeply into this area, then I would suggest following a few basic C++ tutorials and/or reading books on the subject to get familiar with it. Writing DED's is a good practice, too. Sure, it is not exactly source level stuff like what the team is working on, but it teaches you basic programming logic while building good habits like proper structure and flow control B-) .