How to spawn monsters with the "Ambush Players" property?

[mxrgan]

So for my map, I wanna spawn some enemies in one room after the player picks up a key in another room, but When the monsters are spawned, they are already alerted and go towards the player as soon as the spawn. And im using ACS scripts to spawn the monsters. Is there a way to assign the monsters an "Ambush Players" property as they spawn?

 

EDIT: I mean that I want the monsters to stay in place as they spawn, some of you just didnt get the memo, my bad.

Edited October 17, 2020 by BucketHoodie
I seriously miscommunicated my thing.

[ReX]

I vaguely recall someone else asking this question, but I don't remember what the solution is. Meanwhile, I double checked the ZDooM wiki for SpawnSpot and Thing_Spawn, the 2 common ways to spawn an actor. Neither of them allows spawning something with the ambush flag set.

 

A hacky alternative is to spawn the enemies within a sector with sound-blocking linedefs (bitset 0x0044). Remember to use 2 sets of such linedefs, with one set completely enclosing the other. In this way, the enemy will be spawned behind a "sound wall", and will only be alerted when the player becomes visible.

[Aurelius]

Is there a reason you're not simply setting the monsters in a closet outside the playable area and then use TeleportOther to bring them in? Giving them the ambush flag should prevent them from moving until you get there.

[Kappes Buur]

10 hours ago, BucketHoodie said:

So for my map, I wanna spawn some enemies in one room after the player picks up a key in another room, but When the monsters are spawned, they are already alerted and go towards the player as soon as the spawn. And im using ACS scripts to spawn the monsters. Is there a way to assign the monsters an "Ambush Players" property as they spawn?

 

https://zdoom.org/wiki/Actor_flags

BEHAVIOR - Ambush

[magicsofa]

The ambush flag makes it so that they stay in place until they see the player, that's not what you want. If the player is the activator of the script, you can use Thing_Hate(tid, 0, 4) where tid is the id of the monster

[mxrgan]

7 hours ago, magicsofa said:

The ambush flag makes it so that they stay in place until they see the player, that's not what you want. 

I know what that is and I want it, I accidentally miscommunicated somethings..

[ReX]

5 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Is there a reason you're not simply setting the monsters in a closet outside the playable area and then use TeleportOther to bring them in? Giving them the ambush flag should prevent them from moving until you get there.

Yes, this is a better way of doing things than using sound-blocking linedefs in a mod that uses ZDooM features.

[Mordeth]

Using the default ACS spawning scripts results in monsters that do not have the ambush flag set. Better do what Aurelius suggested: put your extra monsters in a dummy box somewhere and give them the ambush/deaf flag and a TID and use SetActorPosition or somesuch to move the extra monsters from the box to the desired area.