Creating a simple decoration

From Eternity Wiki
Revision as of 03:27, 21 April 2009 by Esselfortium (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigationJump to search

Creating a simple decoration in EDF is a relatively basic task. In this tutorial, we will define a simple floor lamp.

For the sake of simplicity, we will (for now) assume that this lamp is using one of the sprites that already exists within Doom.wad, to create a stylish Cacodemon lamp decoration. We can change that later.

To start, create a text lump named EDFROOT in your lump editor of choice. Later on, you can learn to use includes to better organize your definitions, but for our purposes we can just put everything directly into EDFROOT.

thingtype CacoLamp
{
   doomednum = 30000                        // This is the thing number used to place the
                                            // object in a map.

   radius = 32                              // The radius and height set the physical size
   height = 56                              // of the object, for collision detection.

   basictype = SolidDecor                   // The SolidDecor basictype sets the "Solid"
                                            // flag for the thing.
                                            // You could alternatively set this flag directly,
                                            // by replacing this line with "cflags = SOLID".

   spawnstate = CACOLAMP_A                  // This sets the lamp's spawn state to the frame
                                            // "CACOLAMP_A", which is a name I arbitrarily
                                            // picked and could have been anything else
                                            // (as long as no spaces are used in its name).
}

frame CACOLAMP_A   { cmp = "HEAD|D|T|-1" }  // This defines the frame itself, as a Compressed
                                            // Frame Definition:

                                            // HEAD is the sprite name, and D is the sprite
                                            // frame.

                                            // T specifies that this frame will be drawn
                                            // with full brightness (fullbright).
                                            // (Replacing T with either F or * will leave the
                                            // fullbright field at its default of "off".)

                                            // -1 is the duration of this frame in tics,
                                            // with "-1" meaning forever.

Now, you can either create a map and place thingtype 30000 in it, or just open your wad in Eternity and enter "summon CacoLamp" into the console. You should now see your very own domesticated Cacodemon floor lamp!


Let's say, though, that we feel this Cacodemon lamp is just not interesting enough yet and want to make it animate. Leaving the thingtype definition alone, we can modify its frames to put it into a looping animation sequence. I've added a commented header line at the top, for clarity. The spacing is just for the sake of matching up the commented header with the fields, and is not actually necessary to the code.

                       // Sprite | Frame | Bright | Duration | Action | Next Frame
frame CACOLAMP_A   { cmp = "HEAD |     A |      * |        6 |      * |      @next" }
frame CACOLAMP_B   { cmp = "HEAD |     B |      * |        6 |      * |      @next" }
frame CACOLAMP_C   { cmp = "HEAD |     C |      T |        6 |      * |      @next" }
frame CACOLAMP_D   { cmp = "HEAD |     D |      T |       12 |      * |      @next" }
frame CACOLAMP_E   { cmp = "HEAD |     C |      T |        6 |      * |      @next" }
frame CACOLAMP_F   { cmp = "HEAD |     B |      * |        6 |      * | CACOLAMP_A" }

This frame sequence will cause our CacoLamp to cycle through its sprite frames A through D and back again, looping back to the original frame, CACOLAMP_A, when it's done.