How to gib enemies with grenade.. dos/windows

[lgb3d]

Have You Ever Wanted multiple death scenes for enemies based upon the weapon used... For many of us that makes the game more interesting..



Perhaps the ability to Gib enemies with a grenade or explosion....

www.dropbox.com/s/1tkqm2qzbf8pks9/20220605_020045_001.mp4?dl=0

The engine comes equipped with the capability to have 4 different sets of graphics to demonstrate the demise of an enemy character.

1 knockout
2 shot with gun
3 goo gun
4 tear gas

A knockout is typically triggered with kicking.. but as well gas grenades triggered the exact same animation frames.. although the gas grenades a little different.. a invisible radius based upon the detonation location will cause enemies who wander in to it to be knocked out..

Shot by a gun, enemies have a few different frames to demonstrate a bloody death, and they do not come back to life.

Goo gun.. another set of graphics that have a definite end the enemy.. you can get creative with this or any of the four selections

Tear gas... a few more unique frames that demonstrate the enemy coughing in a loop, that begins when the enemy enters the radius of the blast.

The first three are simplistic modifications by altering the enemy vgr graphics with gcs paint.. although you could get further creative with guardscr.4th in your unique guard dir.. to apply different influences to each of the four of these outcomes,.. As well add extra frames in the animation of any of these.. by giving a new handle number to each additional graphic you create in gardef.txt.. then adding that image handle to solido.txt, when doing so the important thing is to keep track of the frame number the last number on each line update frame numbers accordingly after adding...


* Important* (if you add a couple new frames to solido.txt, subtract a few.. adding one frame it will appear everything works until you find a graphical glitch with a function you have not tested. I've discovered if I add a frame I need to subtract one somewhere else, I think the rule is to keep 32 frames. I cut "naked nap" and "hit guy" as thry are not used..)

then in guardscr.4th Ensure that the events "start" and "end" are coordinated with the new frame numbers...

But what I really want to talk about is modifying tear gas (and engaging the ability to place it with the gui)..

This First Step makes it easy to place tear gas in lieu of gas grenades, with the click of a mouse.

In "$rp9a" directory open your desired weapon directory. Open weapdef.txt, scrole to the botom.. the weapon fluid files are at the bottom.

Find 3608 fldexpt.txt & 3609 fldexpg.txt.. all that you are going to change as the four digit numbers. fldexpt.txt is the tear gas, you can mot place this with the mouse.. fldexpg.txt is gas grenaide, you can place this with the mouse.. swap the 4 digets.. now fldexpt.txt is 3609.. fldexpg is 08..

Now in the GUI when you select gas grenade it is going to place tear gas grenades... Now with the click of a mouse you are able to utilize the fourth set of death graphics for your guards..

Mission accomplished

..................


Next if you so desire to create a grenade that gibs the enemies..

First we need to modify the gas radius. Otherwise after the grenade has exploded, any guard who walks into that radius is going to self-destruct and Gib.

Open fldexpt.txt we want to modify this.

The top reads tear gas, this is the animation, each line is a frame.. the "-1" line is the end of the animation.

Beneath this there is another animation which will not function because it is posted as a comment, setting their as an example, this one is labeled grenade explosion.

On tear gas erase frame 6 through 12. All frames that have the handle # 2000, 2000 is an invisible frame with no graphic. Leave the "-1 line"...

(now once the grenade has detonated it is going to continue looping the graphic and the blast...

If we altered the graphics for the visable handle numbers, or utilized other graphics handle numbers... to the image of flames generating the animation of a burning fire, this could make a sweet fire bomb scenario. I will come back to that later.)

To complete that Gibb grenade... it needs to blast one time disappear and no longer have a blast radius affecting guards who were not present when it detonated.

To do so we are going to copy the last line from grenade explosion starting with "2 2000" and ending with "3" and place it as frame 6 on tear gas.. make sure not to coppy ";" that will foul us up..

Make sure the "-1" line and all of its zeros are still in place..

Mission complete you got a one time use grenade which is print to detonate kill and disappear no longer affecting anyone or anything else in the game...

..........

Now that the weapon is functioning correctly, we move on to the guard.

Open your unique guards directory and open guardsrc.4th with notepad.

Find function "caugh.flags"... the first number should be 5..

Replace 5 with a "0" = dead not coming back.. dead gone... and if you created your gib graphics saved them as gassed 1 and 2.. we are done..

I used three frames for my gib, so I needed to create a new graphic (as gassed only has 2 existing frames) put a new handle to identify the graphic in gardef.txt add handle # to solifo.txt in the segment that refers to coughing tear gas victum... and adjust guardsrc.4th to account for the modified frame numbers in solido.txt.. sounds epic but it's not especially when you're dealing with one or two additional graphics.

...

Okay so I told you we would talk about that fire bomb later... Here's that.

Fldexpt.txt.. we had deleted frame 6 to frame 12, leaving the last line "-1".. when we throw the grenade it just keeps looping the animation from the detonation.

We got crafty and created a few Graphics of Fire, utilizing the existing name and handles or creating new handle numbers then putting them in weapdef.txt and applying those to the fldexpt teargas segment...

So we throw a grenade after a detonates we see a fire animation any enemy who gets close to it, is going to be effected by it. That animation is not going away, it is going to continue looping and sending off its blast which will initiate the guards function "cough.start"

In this example since we are dealing with fire, the guard graphics for gassed 1&2&* vgr now should be his body burnt.. maybe a couple flames of fire and some smoke on his body as he collapses...

Hope you enjoy

[lgb3d]

I slept on it, and when I woke.. I thought of a more simplistic way of unlocking the 4th death animation for guard characters.. Where it will apply to any situation where an explosion occurs.

The key to unlocking this is the tear gas fluid animation table, and what its code/digits triggers..

So go to fldexpt.txt... copy the six frame animation sequence... we created in it in the prior tutorial.

Go to fldexpp.txt.. this document will read grenade explosion, this is the explosion that occurs and virtually every circumstance in the game. A grenade, a rocket a bomb ect..

Simply replace the animation table on fldexpp.txt with what you copied from our modified fldexpt.txt and your done..

No need to alter the 4 digit weapon fluid animation handles in weapdef.txt as i had prior described..

The only other modification you need is to place a "0" in cough.Flags.. so the enemy dies and is not waking back up. And as well make you unique death graphics to replace gassed 1&2.vgr

A cool part about doing it this way, it still leaves, fldexpg.txt and its original format and placeable with the GUI. So you still have a separate grenade type object that results in a knockout death animation. Perhaps it's a vial of chloroform, you throw... Or sure yeah knockout gas.

(A cool Discovery with this modification to fldexpp.txt that only applies to windows gcs v1.3 and above...

In your gext**.4th, where you make custom enemy scripting... There is an action that you can put in action words "blow_up_self".. this initiates the guard to transform into an explosion which utilizes the same fldexpp.txt..

So if for some reason your guard utilizes blow up self, any other guards who are nearby are going to Branch to their fourth set of death Graphics in my case gibbing..)

So yes for Doss or Windows users the second method I just described here is optimal. The only difference not modifying weapdef.txt. but modifying fldexpp.txt.. with the ingredients of fldexpt.txt..

Although I made this new discovery which is further simplistic than my prior example there is still relevant information as for modifying various text documents. So both of these post should be red to properly understand how to apply this trick.


So if you followed along now your guards will demonstrate a separate unique death sequence, anytime anything explodes. Bombs grenades Rockets, or even suicide bombers.

Thanks for reading

[lgb3d]

Okay a little further testing... Everything works except, doors.. my explosions no longer blast open the doors.

(The part of the fldexpt.txt explosion table we incorporated in fldexpp.txt.. is missing something, the shot fired or invisible blast. It is sending out an invisible blast of a different register.. or what not.. so on guards enemies excetera these explosions work to trigger the 4th death scene associated with cough function in enemy scripting...)

Here is the fix.. allowing at first the cough function to be triggered so enemies hit that fourth death animation, but followed by another normal blast that forces the door open.

As it sets now in "fldexpp.txt", the 8th collum reads (top to bottom)

260
-2
-2
-2
-2
-2
3

I believe the "-2" to be the trigger for cough function..

I changed mine to read

260
-2
0
0
0
0
3

Now all the enemies are first forced to the cough function creating the desired outcome of the 4th death sequence... and then the doors are hit with a standard explosion and will open, (.. if they are set to open on explosion) flawless..

.....

In regards to a prior topic expressed at the start of this tutorial the firebomb where this animation frame will Loop, best not employ that with fldexpp.txt as it will impact any are there explosion caused by a different device in the game...

But if by chance you did want to utilize the 4th death end animation with normal explosions, then modify the gas grenade so that it loops and uses flame graphics like a fire.. that is now doable, but the death sequence guards would demonstrate will be the KO function.

Yes in the guardscr.4th, you can set "KO.flag" function at 0.. so the guards do not come back to life and if they approach the fire they die.. but then that means if you were to use another knockout strike on them such as Ninja Kick they would die and not come back.

But if you're not interested in having a knockout Ninja Kick, you could modify the guard KO graphics to demonstrate them Catching Fire and collapsing... and you get four frames to complete that animation. So you should be able to make something visibly convincing.

The end result we just unlocked the fourth death sequence, discovering its triggered in weapon fluid txt documents...

Now that we have that we have four ways of being creative, and each of our guards can be customized to react to each four of those variables in their own unique ways.

Thanks for taking this ride with me.. I'm sure what I put out is not 100-percent straightforward as along the path of Discovery I experienced a few bumps in the road ...(trial and error) ...but if you read through this we went on that ride together... If I discover anything else on this topic I will surely share.

[lgb3d]

Demonstration of multiple deaths including gibbing enemy with grenade. Only death scene not included in this clip is the Ninja Kick KO. We know how that works

www.dropbox.com/s/cc0y8kuswfcjq04/20220605_020045_002_001.mp4?dl=0

[Saturdaynight]

Well detailed!

[lgb3d]

I'm still making discoveries about the weapon system..

........

I discovered the trigger for the "cough" function in enemy scripting.. is actually defined by the seventh column in a weapon fld.txt using a unique number for delay...

Some delay numbers will cause the engine to look to the next column to identify what frame to Branch in the animation..(as discribed in the fld.txt for machine gun speaking of the shot guns fld as example)

But some delay numbers apparently trigger different types of invisible blast inthe 3d world..(not defined in machine gun fld.txt)

Perhaps Pie in the Sky Team was not giving us all the answers because they wanted to see who could figure it out. It was easily achievable it was possible but they gave us just enough directions to figure it out if you looked close enough.

So

I noticed my guard gib Animation starting at the very first frame of an explosion animation.

So I moved the digits that represented the delay in the explosion that trigger "cough", to occur one frame before the climax of the explosion...

Now it looks like the timing and two events are working together well.

When I have these "fld***.txt" polished I should probley make them available for users to apply to there projects.

.......

So now I know what delay to put in the 7th column for a "KO" or a "cough" enemy animation trigger... . But is there potentially some wild number I can put in the seventh column has a delay that would result in the "goo" trigger?

KO is defined in weapons.txt as "9"
Death is defined in weapons.txt as "0"
Goo is defined in weapons.txt as "4"
But no cough there..

So I guess I need to discover what's the difference between the delay # for "ko" and 9 are..

Then test with delay # for "cough" untill i can get a weapons.txt number that triggers the same animation without projectile..

At that point I will know the equation and be able to revurse weapons.txt goo =4, to a delay # that can trigger goo function with a projectile..

I do not know this to be possible some of these variables might be locked in stone within the engine. But I do definitely want to experiment

......


Another education I recently got with these weapons fluid files....

"Fluidmg.txt" is the only place you can find instructions for the weapon animations. But the instructions leave much to be desired.

It explains the third column is where the trigger mechanism and how it functions is stored. It gives example using negative numbers.. "-1 fire weapon" "-3 throw grenade" although there's missing numbers oh, some of which we can find in other fluid files to fill in some blanks.

Looking at "fldrock.txt".. i discovered "-9" is for rocket.

So -3 spawns a grenade with predetermined physics and handle number into the 3D World. - 9 spawns a rocket with predetermined physics as well as handle number into the 3D World...

So yes I could make a rocket launcher that could initiate a KO or cough function.. but regardless the projectile handle will be the same.

Stating this because I recall in late releases of the GCS engine for Windows they gave the user the ability to use almost any handle as a projectile as well the ability to modify the projectile physics... So I'm trying to wrap my brain around if it is possible for the user to modify this in the original windows or dos release...

Probably not doable, as these physics and accompanying handle numbers quite potentially are predetermined in the engine... if it is possible my goal would be to make multiple types of grenades. Example... A grenade that gibbs the enemies, and a fire bomb which sets the enemy's on fire. I can make both results happen, but as things set now both actions would be initiated by the same graphic. Only distinguishable by the inventory item you pick up and the explosion animation... A little frustrating I don't have option of the meat I put Between the Bun..

If I do discover it I will definitely let everybody know.

As well when I do come to a proper understanding of all the variables with the fluid file animation tables, I will definitely make a instruction txt that will surpass the basic instructions found in "fluidmg.txt"..

What a labor of love

[lgb3d]

I know all the words I strung together in this tutorial might make it a little difficult to understand. My tutorial might send others on that adventure of trial and error

For those of us who want to Simply cut and paste, this link will download the FLD text I created which was demonstrated in the videos of this tutorial.

www.dropbox.com/s/c12ey76t1gjrgmh/fldexpp.txt?dl=0

This is the text file I created that replaces the standard explosion this will cause all of your enemies to utilize the fourth death sequence.. aka cough flag.. anytime a typical explosion occurs in the game whether it be a grenade a bomb a rocket any explosion utilizing fldexpp.txt from your weapons directory

Modifying the graphics and scr4th for your enemy is on you

And this will leave gas grenades and tear gas grenades open for other applications

[schizoid26]

Thanks buddy

[schizoid26]

This may be a problem with version 1.13, but there is no caugh.flags in my guardsrc.4th file.

[lgb3d]

Aug 30, 2022 19:12:02 GMT -5 schizoid26 said:

This may be a problem with version 1.13, but there is no caugh.flags in my guardsrc.4th file.

Happy we discovered how to get this to work in Dos..

Here's a video showing the next step as described and explored above the "fire bomb"

youtu.be/TrNRx3gqnlc

In this video you will see aspects from other recent tutorials I have made..

should turn some heads

[lgb3d]

The following link will take you to another thread where I explain and walk you through the steps to utilize this technique in the Dos engine.. fyi.. this technique works much better in the dos engine than it does the original Windows release.

gcsarchive.proboards.com/thread/60/kick-when