MBF21 Specification v1.2 Release

[Blue Phoenix]

I want to give the chaingunnera a spinup and spindown delays.  I assumed the codepointer would have a 'is target alive' check because the 2 vanilla equivalents have it and A_JumpIfTargetInSight seems less useful without it.

 

here is my decohack code:

   states

    {
        missile:
            CPOS E 0 A_PlaySound ( sound "FRE000")
            CPOS EEE 10 A_FaceTarget
        refire:
            CPOS E 0 A_PlaySound ( sound "FRE002")
            CPOS FEFEFEF 2 Bright A_MonsterBulletAttack(8.0,4.0,2)//A_CPosAttack
            CPOS E 0 A_JumpIfTargetInSight(refire)  //A_CposRefire
            CPOS E 0 A_PlaySound ( sound "FRE001")
            CPOS E 30 A_FaceTarget
            CPOS E 0 A_JumpIfTargetInSight(missile)  //A_CposRefire
            goto see  //refire
    }

 

[Xaser]

Not sure if there's anything in the MBF21 toolkit that exactly applies here, but there's a partial solution by rearranging the states like this:

    {
        missile:
            CPOS E 0 A_PlaySound ( sound "FRE000")
            CPOS EEE 10 A_FaceTarget
        refire:
            CPOS E 0 A_PlaySound ( sound "FRE002")
            CPOS FEFEFEF 2 Bright A_MonsterBulletAttack(8.0,4.0,2)
            CPOS E 0 A_PlaySound ( sound "FRE001")
            CPOS E 0 A_CposRefire
            goto refire
    }

This will get you the wind-down sound (since FREE001 will immediately be stomped by FRE002 on refire), though not the animation -- better than nothing, hopefully.

 

Seems like a good use case for an eventual A_JumpIfTargetDead (or maybe A_JumpIfTargetHealthBelow), though.

[Blue Phoenix]

I came up with this:

    {
        spindown:
            CPOS E 0 A_RemoveFlags (TRANSLATION)
            CPOS E 0 A_PlaySound ( sound "FRE001")
            CPOS E 30 A_FaceTarget
        see:
            CPOS A 0 A_JumpIfFlagsSet(spindown, TRANSLATION)
            CPOS AABBCCDD 3 A_Chase
            loop
        missile:
            CPOS E 0 A_PlaySound ( sound "FRE000")
            CPOS EEE 10 A_FaceTarget
        refire:
            CPOS E 0 A_AddFlags (TRANSLATION)
            CPOS E 0 A_PlaySound ( sound "FRE002")
            CPOS FEFEFEF 2 Bright A_MonsterBulletAttack(8.0,4.0,2)
            CPOS E 0 A_CposRefire
            goto refire
    }

Seems to work (will add RemoveFlags into pain and death states).  Having one of those would make sense.

[Helm]

Hi! I'm enjoying playing around with MBF21! Thank you so much to the people working on this, it opens interesting new avenues for creativity.

That said, I've encountered a weird bug with the new death exit sectors. I've made a voodoo conveyor belt that triggers and scrolls a player1 dummy into a death exit sector. It works on my MAP01, but the same exact setup doesn't work on MAP04 and MAP05 of the same set. I've walked over the death exit sectors with the primary player1 (the one under direct control, meaning) and the sectors fire as intended, but the dummy scrolls over them without triggering them (I've followed them doing it with iddt in the automap). 

What's really strange is that it works on MAP01 as mentioned, but not on later maps. I've experimented with removing other player1s to see if it only works with two of them (as is on the first map) but it doesn't seem to be the case. I've deleted all player1s and tried to introduce them in the editor in different orders to see if it's a bug related to that but nothing seems to work. I'm at my wits end and therefore I'm filing this in. 

wad can be supplied via private message if anyone working on this wants to take a look at it directly. I'm using UDB 3.0.0.3794 (3ade523) and DSDADoom 0.2.1 currently.


EDIT: it doesn't work on MAP01 either, I was just replicating the behavior with death exits that the player walks on themselves elsewhere.

So that means I haven't been able to trigger a death exit with a voodoo doll. Is this the intended behavior for the feature?

Edited August 30, 2021 by Helm

[Red Recluse]

Necessery complevel 21mbf available in dsda-doom source port better than in prboom or glboom.

[T-117]

Sorry to have to ask this but so far I've been unable to find the answer on my own.  Where can I find the full spec of available action pointers for MBF21?  The MBF21 spec readme has a good many but it seems the listing there is not complete.  A_RandomJump is missing for example.  Does it support the all of the ZDoom Decorate Action Functions such that I can just use that as a reference?

[skillsaw]

Only the new action pointers introduced in MBF21 are documented in the spec.

 

A_RandomJump is from MBF originally; you can see information about it (and other action pointers that originated in MBF) in the MBF doc: https://soulsphere.org/projects/boomref/mbfedit.html#sec5

 

And of course, the vanilla code pointers (https://doomwiki.org/wiki/DeHackEd#Code_pointers) are available to use as well.

 

The full range of action pointers from ZDoom is not available.

[T-117]

Thanks so much.  That was very helpful!

[SleepyVelvet]

I'm not sure if this is where to vent about this nor if it's even in the scope of MBF21's mission statement in the first place whether MBF21's ship has sailed or not (v1.4 Oct 2021), but I'd love to see something like the following.  More exit trigger flexibility, and triggers that pass state between maps:

 

    -W1 Exit Level to Map X

    -W1 Apply Sector Properties to Similarly Tagged in Next Map

 

or better yet, an extension of the generalized line effects that are already there from Boom, like

    -W1 Floor Lower to Lowest Ceiling (but applied to next map, either on or before start)

 

The ability to do better hub maps, and inter map-to-map control in general, would be pretty cool for a Boom/MBF like port.

 

^{And while we're at it:}

    ^{-W1 Autosave Game.}

[Redead-ITA]

4 hours ago, NoisyVelvet said:

I'm not sure if this is where to vent about this nor if it's even in the scope of MBF21's mission statement in the first place whether MBF21's ship has sailed or not (v1.4 Oct 2021), but I'd love to see something like the following.  More exit trigger flexibility, and triggers that pass state between maps:

 

    -W1 Exit Level to Map X

    -W1 Apply Sector Properties to Similarly Tagged in Next Map

 

or better yet, an extension of the generalized line effects that are already there from Boom, like

    -W1 Floor Lower to Lowest Ceiling (but applied to next map, either on or before start)

 

The ability to do better hub maps, and inter map-to-map control in general, would be pretty cool for a Boom/MBF like port.

 

^{And while we're at it:}

    ^{-W1 Autosave Game.}

While i do understand you want to do hexen with guns (who wouldn't to be honest.) i feel like that is threating into zdoom territory a little.

The W1 Exit level to MAPXX is already technically covered by Umapinfo, and while i understand what you are offering here is more of a warp, it is still a pain to code and would have been already done in zdoom on a much bigger level.

Meanwhile Line actions that affect OTHER maps are kind of an iffy deal In my opinion, especially with Community projects, potentially it might be required for the player to know what has triggered before hand, or alternatively, Make it require a specific file for it to function.

 

W1 Autosave isn't a bad thing but people would probably like it more if they would save themselves, And also because most of the sourceports that aren't zdoom related require the player to write/select a save to be the quicksave slot, so that has to be accounted for.

 

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Redead-ITA
better wording

[Bauul]

I agree this is probably drifting too much into Hexen / ZDoom territory.  One of the main features of MBF21 is that it remains compatible with the demo recording that's important to the many sourceports that adopted it.  I'm not even sure that the demo format has capacity to store global and world variables, and thus levels impacted by them might instantly desync.

 

12 minutes ago, Redead-ITA said:

Meanwhile Line actions that affect OTHER maps are kind of an iffy deal In my opinion, especially with Community projects, potentially it might be required for the player to know what has triggered before hand, or alternatively, Make it require a specific file for it to function.

 

Line actions affecting other maps aren't in of themselves anything controversial.  Plenty of ZDoom projects utilize them, as does Hexen.  It's just probably not within the scope of MBF21.

 

[SleepyVelvet]

Thanks.

 

I've never dealt with Hexen before.  All I know is it's a game, as well as a map format.  Looking at it a bit:  I was excited to see "15: Autosave" in UDoomBuilder, as well as Chocolate Doom supporting "Hexen", but it looks like a lot of actions are ZDoom only and not even in base Hexen according to a Doomwiki table of features.  Though it does have, more importantly, "74: Teleport to Map (at position ...)", and that's all you'd ever need as long as it also has something as powerful as Boom conveyorbelts-and-voodoo-dolls to go along with it.  I'd shamelessly cram a billion tiny exit lines on a voodoo-belt for each permutation of things that I want to do, as long as it gets the job done.

 

Either way though, PrBoom+/DSDA-Doom don't even touch Hexen format.  It looks like its own animal.

 

 

UMAPINFO doesn't look like it really cuts it either, you only get 2 exits and no way of passing state:

next = "nextmap"            ; Specifies the map the regular exit leads to. In Doom 1 this may cross episodes.
nextsecret = "nextmap"        ; Specifies the map the secret exit leads to. In Doom 1 this may cross episodes.

Though, this parameter piqued my interest...

nointermission = true/false ; Currently only working for levels that end the game: When true skips the 'level finished' screen.

It probably doesn't/wouldn't work this way: but imagine sending a player to another map in the same way a silent teleporter does.  As long as you could also tweak the next map's starting state, you could just Rube-Goldberg-Machine them to whatever map you want (via a series of control maps).  Jank, but heh.

 

 

Per my initial feature desires:  Demo format doesn't change, just a couple pieces of source code overhead here and there (and only affects maps that use the new actions anyways).  It wouldn't be as easy and inline of a change as, lets say, making a death sector "just kill the player, lol", but not too crazy of a stretch, I imagine.  -  And you get a LOT out of it.

 

Though keep in mind, I'm also being the "ideas guy" of source ports right now.  I also don't know what various source port authors inherited nor which corners they painted themselves into wrt coding, and it's been a year since MBF21 (v1.4) apparently.  Maybe I should poke my nose into the code for fun one of these days.  "I'll just make my own Boom styled source port, with blackjack and hookers inter-map control sectors"

[NiGHTMARE]

Hexen (and ZDoom) has ACS scripting, which is a lot more powerful than voodoo dolls + conveyors. ZDoom is Boom compatible, so voodoo conveyors are still supported too.

Edited October 22, 2022 by NiGHTMARE