[Mikko Pekkola]

I found something interesting on the RTCM - Build engine & Game Resource website: It's the "Freezethrower into the Flamethrower".

I've managed to try it out myself, but i really don't know anything about editing the CON files, except i know something about editing the USER CON file.

I need a little advice in here to turn Freezethrower into the Flamethrower

any idea? or does anyone have any idea about how to make freezethrower to work like a plasma gun in LameDuke?

It's the Plasma gun as it appears in this screenshot

[dnskill]

Well, from what I know about the original Flamethrower is that it shot a different projectile that instead of freezing the enemies, made them darker in color and larger (though the larger part could just be unfinished code) it also would leave the message "Cook 'em good!" when you used it. There's ways of making it a flamethrower, but to look like one, there's some things you need to use (I'll find the resources soon). I think if someone were to make a flamethrower, then it should make small fire sprites appear around the enemies, make them in a darker color as well, and have their behavior slightly different. Maybe I could give it a whirl.

Also, that plasma gun was never the Flamethrower, that was the original Chaingun. The Flamethrower looked like the Freezethrower, only slightly different, so slight it's barely noticeable. I found a screen shot that even shows what the gun looked like when it was fired, so give me a few and I could have the art work for you.

[Mikko Pekkola]

Yeah, i know.



So, here is the weapon as it appears in the screenshot and which is called the Flamethrower

[dnskill]

Yes, Cage made the Freezethrower look like that, but he didn't add the fire part of the firing animation shown here on the top photo with the Battlelord:

[Jimmy]

I'd disregard that tutorial on RTCM. It is severely outdated, and only applies if you want to stick under 1.5 coding limitations.

[dnskill]

I don't think there's any new ones out there though.

[Mikko Pekkola]

New ones? What's that?

[dnskill]

New ones as in new tutorials.

[Hendricks266]

Fun fact: A lost weapon, either the Flamethrower or Laser Gun, is present and usable in v0.99 thanks to a bug. Edit USER.CON so that all weapons, 2-6 (up to the pipebomb) have only 1 ammo for a max. Enter the cheat code to get everything. Expend the ammo on the shareware guns, and the registered guns will come up through the auto weapon switch. As far as I can tell, the shrinker and tripbomb have no functional changes, and the Devastator (and the expander of course) was not conceived or implemented.

It's good they removed it because the weapon sucks.

[Jimmy]

Modifying the old weapons is so easy now, it really doesn't require a tutorial (unless you know nothing about coding.) It would be nice if someone wrote a tutorial on writing completely new weapons, however. Check out the EDuke32 wiki and get yourself familiarized with simple stuff.

[dnskill]

The flamethrower would not have sucked if they had did it right.

[Hendricks266]

Captain Awesome, on 17 May 2012 - 03:09 PM, said:

Modifying the old weapons is so easy now, it really doesn't require a tutorial (unless you know nothing about coding.) It would be nice if someone wrote a tutorial on writing completely new weapons, however. Check out the EDuke32 wiki and get yourself familiarized with simple stuff.

I think I'll do that this weekend but hopefully it can be a community collaboration because I don't have the best track record modifying weapon functionality.

[Mikko Pekkola]

Concerning about the CON files: for v1.3D GAME.CON File one thing, which is possible to make Freezethrower into the Flamethrower is, that you insert { spawn EXPLOSION2 spawn BURNING2 } next to the "ifwasweapon FREEZEBLAST"

I wonder if it is possible to do so for the Atomic version of GAME.CON file

what'd you think?

[dnskill]

Blood Weapons TC. That has the spray can w/zippo and the Telsa Cannon. If someone can use the con files as a base, they could make a Flamethrower and a Laser Cannon. Though I still think that the enemies should just turn darker (almost black) with fire around them and die that way too, and for Laser Cannon, they should just disintegrate like in DN64. The Flamethrower would not work in water, and the Laser Cannon would shock (like the electrical outlets) the player while in water. I could try and do this myself, the only problems I know I'll run into is the burning/disintegrating enemy portions.

[Mikko Pekkola]

Oh yeah, The Spray can and The Tesla Cannon in Blood.

And also, The Flamethrower or Laser Cannon would exactly have been nice in Duke 3D
and so would be the Plasma gun, which is the Original Chaingun Cannon.

Anyway, i tried out myself by editing the GAME.CON File by inserting the "spawn EXPLOSION2 spawn FIRE2" in, where's reading "ifwasweapon FREEZEBLAST" in the DOS Atomic version of Duke 3D, i get some error messages and then i noticed, that it only works on v1.3D version of Duke 3D.

Still wondering if it is possible to do this thing in Atomic Duke or not

[Jimmy]

Having an enemy spawn an explosion and fire after being hit/killed by the freezeblast is completely possible. My best guess is that you've done something wrong. Like I said, I have no idea why you would want to work under the limitations of 1.3 or 1.5 coding. EDuke32 will allow you to create a much better flamethrower effect, you'll just have to work your way up to it. CON coding requires time, effort, and baby steps. You won't be coding weapons until you can code a basic breakable prop, and so on and so forth.

[Mikko Pekkola]

That's because i'm interested in things like "CON Files coding" and such

[Jimmy]

Eh, what? I'm guessing you're thinking that EDuke32 doesn't have CONs? That's untrue, EDuke32 has advanced CON coding capabilities. It'd be silly to use anything else at this point, and I'm a hard-line old schooler.

[dnskill]

Again, I'll try it out myself, but I'm not saying it's going to be done anytime soon.

[MrFlibble]

BTW, was the original flamethrower weapon going to work like it does in Powerslave?

For some reason, I used to have an impression that flamethrowers generally did not fare well in 2.5D FPS games of the era, but apparently quite a few titles had this weapon after all (Alien Trilogy, Strife, Powerslave to name a few). Pity they apparently did not re-implement the original flamethrower code in NAM.

[Jimmy]

The original flamethrower didn't work well at all, that's why it eventually got morphed into the freezer. (It was originally supposed to be a space-age chainsaw, but I'm not sure they ever put it in the game that way.) NAM's flamethrower isn't based off of Duke's old flamethrower at all, and frankly they would have been stupid to do so. It sucks. (Not to say NAM's is particularly good either, because it's not.)

Best flamethrower of the era is Blood's, hands down. And it's easy to see why a lot of games had poor implementations, Blood's flame thrower takes up a LOT of art, and it probably has a shit pile of code along with it.

[zykov eddy]

Wow, I remember the NAM flamethrower, it was horrible.

[dnskill]

The NAM flamethrower was like Doom's plasma gun, only terrible artwork and overall bad weapon. Powerslave, well I'm not sure since I still have yet to beat it, and don't play the PC version really, so there may be a difference between ports (there's already a difference between engine).

[Come On And Slam]

The PC version of Powerslave is godawful, in my opinion...The flamethrower makes a very painful noise when it collides with walls, too. Which happens a lot because the controls are so horrible, and YOU CAN'T STRAFE.

[Fox]

Hendricks266, on 17 May 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

It's good they removed it because the weapon sucks.

The Freezethrower isn't such a powerfull weapon either. But I guess the burning effect they had in mind was beyond the engine at the time.

[Hendricks266]

The way the weapon works in v0.99 is basically another ripper.

[Mikko Pekkola]

I was talking about DOS verion of Duke 3D Atomic and i wasn't thinking, that EDuke32 doesn't have CONs.

[dnskill]

Eduke32 has CONs. You can paste the CON files from the DOS version (as long as they're the con files for the GRP version you use), and edit them as you wish, and EDuke32 will use those instead of their internal ones, unless you screwed something up so bad the game won't run.

[MrFlibble]

Captain Awesome, on 19 May 2012 - 10:18 AM, said:

NAM's flamethrower isn't based off of Duke's old flamethrower at all, and frankly they would have been stupid to do so. It sucks.

Well, the Powerslave flamethrower is functional, although it's rather ineffective for its short range and the speed at which it eats ammo. I thought that it could share similarities with the flamethrower in the early Duke3D code, since Powerslave uses an earlier version of the Build engine. The Powerslave version would probably still be better than the actual NAM flamethrower I guess.

natsirT95, on 19 May 2012 - 05:09 PM, said:

The NAM flamethrower was like Doom's plasma gun, only terrible artwork and overall bad weapon. Powerslave, well I'm not sure since I still have yet to beat it, and don't play the PC version really, so there may be a difference between ports (there's already a difference between engine).

There's a video playthrough of PC Powerslave on YouTube, so you can take a look there. Otherwise the flamethrower is in the first level of the demo, so you can check it out quite easily if you don't own the game.

As for NAM, one can only wonder why they didn't do much to alter the weapons, considering how the work to enhance Duke3D's version of the Build engine for NAM and WW2GI effectively resulted in EDuke. I'd say that the conversion of shrinker/expander into a grenade launcher/sniper rifle combo is especially deplorable, as it is my understanding that at the point when NAM was in production Shadow Warrior with its grenade launcher was already available (I think there's some art from SW used in NAM, even). IIRC, the flamethrower is a replacement of the Devastator, and it fires a short-range fireball type projectile with an AOE that sets everything on fire. These replacements were okay in Platoon, which is a TC restricted by the original game after all, but here they had the opportunity to play around with the code but did not use it to its full potential. Hey, I think that for the grenade launcher, they could have used the Battlelord's bouncing grenade projectile, even, no need for external code from Shadow Warrior.

[OpenMaw]

MrFlibble, on 23 May 2012 - 10:34 AM, said:

Well, the Powerslave flamethrower is functional, although it's rather ineffective for its short range and the speed at which it eats ammo. I thought that it could share similarities with the flamethrower in the early Duke3D code, since Powerslave uses an earlier version of the Build engine. The Powerslave version would probably still be better than the actual NAM flamethrower I guess.


There's a video playthrough of PC Powerslave on YouTube, so you can take a look there. Otherwise the flamethrower is in the first level of the demo, so you can check it out quite easily if you don't own the game.

As for NAM, one can only wonder why they didn't do much to alter the weapons, considering how the work to enhance Duke3D's version of the Build engine for NAM and WW2GI effectively resulted in EDuke. I'd say that the conversion of shrinker/expander into a grenade launcher/sniper rifle combo is especially deplorable, as it is my understanding that at the point when NAM was in production Shadow Warrior with its grenade launcher was already available (I think there's some art from SW used in NAM, even). IIRC, the flamethrower is a replacement of the Devastator, and it fires a short-range fireball type projectile with an AOE that sets everything on fire. These replacements were okay in Platoon, which is a TC restricted by the original game after all, but here they had the opportunity to play around with the code but did not use it to its full potential. Hey, I think that for the grenade launcher, they could have used the Battlelord's bouncing grenade projectile, even, no need for external code from Shadow Warrior.

It's been awhile since I played NAM, but I coulda swore the Flamethrower replaced the freezer ray.

Knife
M16
Shotgun
M60
Grenade Launcher/Sniper
Rocket Launcher
Grenades
Trip Wires
Rocket Shots
Flamethrower

Right?