Remixing Tentacle Barrier mod from Realm667.

[chikokevo]

Hello, guys!

So I found some interesting sprites in Realm667. One of those was this Tentacle Barrier, and I instantly fell in love with it (Finde it here - https://www.realm667.com/en/downloads/prop-stop/354-tentacle-barrier?category_access=1)

 

So i downloaded it, started deconstructing it, and made my own approach to it. Mostly it is decorate scripting matter.

So while the process isnt that hard, It took me months to figure out this scripthing method on my own.

So here is my tentacles remix (LOOL) - 

 

P.S. my accent is dumb

 

1.

So first of all, I downloaded & extracted sprites, I opened those up in Photoshop, and aligned sprite sizes, gave a constant name to those, saved all..

Then I horizontally inverted those and made additional set. So for original oriented sprites I use 'O' in the sprite name and for horizontally inverted I used 'I' in sprite name. (this will be important later). So then I added those to the game and modified Offsets, pretty simple stuff so far.

 

2. CODING preparation TIME. So in this step, I cleaned out everything I did not need from original code, just for the purpose of this video, I tried to keep everything as close to original version as possible. So in this video, I made more of my tentacle actors with different animated order of sprites, creating bit more dynamics to each actor. At this stage each actor variation had its own spawn ID for testing purposes.

 

3. So since in doom we have limited number of spawn IDs (even thought there are literally thousands of usable ID's), I still want to do it as efficient as possible.

So up to now I have been working with original sprites, which I named those with 'O'. So since I have 14 actors, but I want to have 1 spawn ID, which covers all of them, it is time to use RandomSpawner command, and add all of the 14 actors under it, which will cover my requirement for 1 spawn ID for all.

 

 

Right, so at this point, I just wrote a Decorate script, It has 14 different actors, with same name template & and all of those are under 1 random spawner, which is covered by 1 spawn ID.. Right from the beginning, I was thinking it tactically, so I named my tentacle actors "TentacleBarrierOriginal" With Sprite name "TENO *". I did this for a reason. While it keeps on looking better and better, I still feel like it is quite boring.

 

So to make things interesting, I have copied my current decorate, and in the new copy I "Find -> Replace All". Thanks to me using standardized text on each chunck of code, I can safely do that under full control. So I replaced "Original" to "Inverted" &  "TENO" to "TENI", hence "O" and "I" (it also covers spawners) in my code, which I have mentioned in the first step. So now I have identical code script whic covers those sprites which have been horizontally flipped in the beginning. 

 

So now I have combined these two decorate codes, and now I have two random spawners, one for original sprites and one for inverted. So I made a new random spawner, and added first two spawners under it and added spawn ID on this new spawner, so from my vantage point I see kind of a pyramid right now. SO right now what I have is  28 different actors, under 1 spwan ID, and everytime it spawns it will always be kind of unique dynamics.

 

4. Post processing & mastering. I have played around with frequency of animations, see which looks better for me. I also scaled those down abit, to increase resolution a bit more (they were touching 128px high ceiling). I also modified offsets of my sprites. And I also overridden display information with //$Category & //$Title.

 

So now I have a code, fully wokring, no errors, warnings or conflicts.

I am planning to release a filler episode of this, which will cover sound FX of this, it will be different actor with different spawn ID, but also similar to this, i'll code it so everytime it spawns, It gives off different dynamics.

 

Guys. your feedback is very important to me, please do leave a comment and tell me what you think... Thanks :)

Edited May 6 by chikokevo

[Kan3]

These are pretty nice decorations to have around in certain maps!

 

A couple of points:

1. I believe that having the tentacles being "venomous" would be better than just being completely passive things: what do you think?
2. Why not making a single actor, instead of 28, that will animate randomly with A_Jump functions? You could even make their size to be random and the inverted sprite too within a single actor, without the need of a random spawner. You could even add arguments to that to let the mapper choose the size of the tentacle, if inverted etc inside the map editor.

[chikokevo]

5 hours ago, Kan3 said:

These are pretty nice decorations to have around in certain maps!

 

A couple of points:

1. I believe that having the tentacles being "venomous" would be better than just being completely passive things: what do you think?
2. Why not making a single actor, instead of 28, that will animate randomly with A_Jump functions? You could even make their size to be random and the inverted sprite too within a single actor, without the need of a random spawner. You could even add arguments to that to let the mapper choose the size of the tentacle, if inverted etc inside the map editor.

 

 

1. Not really sure how to do venom attribute, other than actor being monster with explosive Meelee...

2. I really try to avoid A_jump. IDK why but sometimes it jsut wont work for me... The line there is pretty simple, but OMG how much I hate it lol

[Kan3]

4 hours ago, chikokevo said:

 

 

1. Not really sure how to do venom attribute, other than actor being monster with explosive Meelee...

2. I really try to avoid A_jump. IDK why but sometimes it jsut wont work for me... The line there is pretty simple, but OMG how much I hate it lol

1. With the PoisonDamage property and such with a puff or projectile that the tentacle could shoot only in a very short distance for example
2. Poor Jump functions ahahah, but I get it

[chikokevo]

On 8/27/2023 at 11:28 PM, Kan3 said:

1. With the PoisonDamage property and such with a puff or projectile that the tentacle could shoot only in a very short distance for example
2. Poor Jump functions ahahah, but I get it

 

Are you refering to this? https://zdoom.org/wiki/Poison

[Kan3]

3 hours ago, chikokevo said:

 

Are you refering to this? https://zdoom.org/wiki/Poison

exactly