Starving Rat

As an Item:
Name: Starving Rat's Soul
Type: Morph
Palette: Hexen
Summon: DeadSRat
Use Type: Inventory
Duration: 60 seconds
Brightmaps: None
Actor Modifications: None
ACS: None

As an Enemy:
Name: The Starving Rat
Difficulty: Very East
Connections: Small Rat
Summon: Starvingrat
Melee: Yes
Distance: No
Type: Animal
Brightmaps: None
Actor Modification: None
ACS: None

Description: A rat that is so hungry it glows red with rage. It is said that if you should ever eat one of these enraged rats you will turn into one yourself.

Credits:
Decorate: Ghastly_dragon, Tormentor667, TheDoomedArchvile
Sprites: Raven Software, Neoworm
Sounds: FreeSounds
Idea Base: Icon of the Raven Variants



Nibble here to download: The Starving Rat

Huh, this is an interesting item.

One thing I noticed while fighting imps is that their projectiles seem to fly over the player's head most of the time, making them basically harmless unless they use melee attacks. Should the projectiles be aimed toward a different part of the second player so they hit more often?

Only other minor thing is that the description mentions that the duration is 60 seconds, but I didn't actually change back until the rat player was killed. Is that intended?

I noticed the projectile's spotty hit ratio as well, but I decided to leave it as is for now to see if maybe it should be something to change. The idea is that, for both the squirrel and the rat, that the player is so small they would be able to sneak past most everything and not be spotted as easily. I can change the player pawn's height a few tics to make it a little more likely to be hit at the very least if that seems better?

That is also why, unfortunately, the player pawn is slightly translucent because I don't know how to lessen the aggro to monsters without giving the player the invisibility functions while still being completely visible. With the Icon of the Raven's setting I felt it was a little too high for something that is this small.

As for the item duration I timed it and I was reverted back to normal after a full minute. However, after a little more testing I did find that when the time does run out and the player is in a spot that a regular sized player would not be able to fit I stayed morphed. (In this case I used to stalagmite wall in level one of Hexen blocking access to the silver key and stood in between two of them) Were you in a place that a normal player would not have been able to fit inside?

I actually just tested this with the Shrink Sphere and the same issue happens.

I did some more testing in ZDoom 2.8.1 and GZDoom 3.1.0. The item itself seems to work alright in ZDoom. Some of the monsters miss while you're up close to them, but can still hit you from afar, so it might be okay. There were some cases where if I died as the rat, I wouldn't turn back into the Doom Guy again, but I guess that might be because I was too close to something. Not sure if there's any way to fix that.

In GZDoom, I found that holding down the fire button on the mouse while getting killed as a rat causes the game to crash.

Edit: Thinking about it now, I think the crash is possibly related to not having enough space to spawn back into the Doom Guy more than the fire button.

There were some cases where if I died as the rat, I wouldn't turn back into the Doom Guy again, but I guess that might be because I was too close to something. Not sure if there's any way to fix that.

Yeah, I'm guessing it's the same issue with it simply not changing back if the player doesn't have enough room to transform back as a regular player. I'm also not sure if it can be fixed since MagicWazard mentioned in the Magic Squirrel discussion that the engine should wait about two seconds and try again if it doesn't work, which makes me think this is an engine bug? Though you mentioned it worked just fine in Zdoom?

Additionally, I haven't experienced any crashes when I was initially testing this item. Though if there's anything to take from the already present, assumed, engine bug that doesn't allow the player to transform back if they don't have enough room to do so, I'm assuming it's another engine bug that may be some kind of combination of being shot and the whole 'eeeerr not enough room!' bug.

doomedarchviledemon wrote: MagicWazard mentioned in the Magic Squirrel discussion that the engine should wait about two seconds and try again if it doesn't work, which makes me think this is an engine bug?

This indeed was a bug, which got fixed in GZDoom 3.3.0. This bug had been there ever since the morph powerup was first implemented in ZDoom.

Edit: Regarding the crash, the issue is in RatPlayer (line 131):

If unmorphing fails (maybe there's not enough space), the player dies, and as a rat. At the end of RatPlayer's Death state sequence, the player object is removed from the game which is a massive problem and is the cause of the "crash" (it's a VM abort, not a crash). So you need to make it stay after death.

I have updated the Starving Rat. Complete with optimized sprites and fixing the crashing issue that occurs. The item is working as intended now! If there is any more feedback or issues I overlooked please feel free to share.

If you get killed in an area with enough space, you morph back to normal with full health. Is this intended? Because that's a good way to cheese the game if you're in trouble.
Also, use Powerup.Mode Opaque if you want to be rendered properly.

Updated

Changed the powerup mode to opaque. I have no idea if that was an option back then either but hey, good to know now! I also changed it so the player stays dead when killed by an enemy as the rat. Another minor change was switching the Pulse light to a Point light and organized the code a bit.

Added.