[NightFright]

After finally playing the mod and reaching the boss level in the normal/regular way, I can say the following after the applied code fixes:

- You would definitely have Scuba Gear and Protection Boots from a previous level.
- The helper actor removes the Scuba Gear reliably when entering the map.
- Brains now die properly when killing them, plus you always get a confirmation message and the boss screams.
- Stepping into slime is pretty much inevitable in this level due to the massive amount of slimers, so there would have been tons of chances to break the original brain killing process.
- There is no passage with water at all in this map, so using Scuba Gear for the process is the correct (and only) option.
- The only challenge that remains is to keep the boss inside of the arena without following you through one of the transporters, just like before. Just don't save right away after teleporting and see if he stays out. This preserves original gameplay mechanics.
- Boss seems to remain active and does not interrupt the brain destruction procedure.

So we can call the issue with this map officially fixed, with vanilla methods! Thanks a lot to Reaper_Man and ck3D for their valuable input! It will be surely mentioned in the Addon Compilation readme.

[Reaper_Man]

NightFright, on 19 December 2022 - 03:51 AM, said:

- Stepping into slime is pretty much inevitable in this level due to the massive amount of slimers, so there would have been tons of chances to break the original brain killing process.

This has me convinced the original effect was always broken, and taking Boot damage inadvertently advanced the sequence during testing and most player's gameplay. And that being careful or simply unlucky causes the soft lock. The code paths checking for Boot amounts don't make any sense unless it is being altered some additional way, and taking slime puddle damage would achieve that. It's therefore possible taking slime damage was actually intended and expected by the developers as part of the effect sequence.

In any case, glad to help!

[NightFright]

Maybe that's why they gave the player a higher GET_BOOTS amount than the original value to compensate. Anyway, I guess it simply couldn't work the way the code was written. Just wondering why nobody had the idea to use the SCUBA value instead. It's an indicator that this mod was made by several people and each of them knew too little about what the others were doing and how. Normally something like this would inevitably be noticed during thorough playtesting. I mean, theoretically there is a slim chance that you somehow manage to avoid taking any slime damage, but there is a passage with a narrow tunnel full of slimers. Good luck not creating a slime puddle there. Guess you could just run through, ignoring all the slimers or just deal with those that are facehugging you, but no sane player would do that since you take way too much damage.

Also, the lack of water in this level makes the Scuba Gear the ideal choice for this inventory trick to kill the brains. You even get some kind of info that it works since each reset makes the Scuba Gear appear with 0% in your inventory, which looks a bit odd but is absolutely fine since it's a harmless display glitch. I am still amazed about the entire boss killing mechanism in general since stuff like that is rarely done. Making the fight trickier by having to remove immortality from the boss first is definitely a feature of this mod that makes it stand out in comparison to most others, especially of its time.

[Aleks]

NightFright, on 19 December 2022 - 05:35 AM, said:

Maybe that's why they gave the player a higher GET_BOOTS amount than the original value to compensate. Anyway, I guess it simply couldn't work the way the code was written. Just wondering why nobody had the idea to use the SCUBA value instead. It's an indicator that this mod was made by several people and each of them knew too little about what the others were doing and how. Normally something like this would inevitably be noticed during thorough playtesting. I mean, theoretically there is a slim chance that you somehow manage to avoid taking any slime damage, but there is a passage with a narrow tunnel full of slimers. Good luck not creating a slime puddle there. Guess you could just run through, ignoring all the slimers or just deal with those that are facehugging you, but no sane player would do that since you take way too much damage.

Also, the lack of water in this level makes the Scuba Gear the ideal choice for this inventory trick to kill the brains. You even get some kind of info that it works since each reset makes the Scuba Gear appear with 0% in your inventory, which looks a bit odd but is absolutely fine since it's a harmless display glitch. I am still amazed about the entire boss killing mechanism in general since stuff like that is rarely done. Making the fight trickier by having to remove immortality from the boss first is definitely a feature of this mod that makes it stand out in comparison to most others, especially of its time.

I'm not entirely sure if in the DOS version, stepping into a slime would break this sequence. This is one of the TCs that I've played the most times, probably like 3-4 at least, both in DOS Duke and older EDuke versions, and I've never run into a sequence break there. I've noticed from the first time that there's something happening with boots when killing brains and so that was a good indicator of this being done properly, but I guess there's a very little chance I would never step in a slime. Probably there's some chance of this sequence breaking and soft-locking the player under some circumstances, but I guess it would only rarely happen and so the BDP team never noticed this.

Anyway, glad you managed to fix it and good job on it, from what you've written there, it seems like it should work perfectly as intended now. I hope we will see The Gates as part of the Duke Map/Dod of the Month Club sometime in 2023, it's a damn good TC.

[Reaper_Man]

I actually think NOT stepping in slime (only after killing a Brain) is what breaks the sequence. In addition to the boss falling asleep under some circumstances. The way I'm understanding the code that was posted is that, when the player kills a Brain it sets the BOOTS amount to 350. Meanwhile, the Boss is watching for this this amount, and if the BOOTS is any value other than 350 - IE you take slime damage - only then advances it's palette and displays the various quote messages and resets the BOOTS amount to 0. This is why it going asleep and/or never being awoken in the first place causes the sequence break - the Boss, not the Brain, is what advance's the Boss's state.

This also doesn't account for the player coming into the map with existing BOOTS amounts, which I think would automatically advance the boss's sequence when it wakes up as though you already killed a Brain. I also think is why the Brains did not delete themselves after being killed, due to misplaced brackets in the code.

Basically, the Brains set the BOOTS to 350 after being killed, the Boss checks for any value other than 350, and the only thing that accomplishes this is taking Boot damage from a slime puddle after having killed a brain. Taking slime damage closes the loop, but this seems like an oversight because it was fixed simply by fixing the brackets in the Brain's killit logic. The only question is if the devs knew this and expected / planned on the player taking slime damage as a part of the effect. Or if they didn't realize this bug existed and never encountered a soft lock because avoiding slime damage is apparently virtually impossible.

To test this you could load up the DOS version and, after killing a Brain, noclip around any slime puddles you might find. You could also test advancing the sequence without ever waking up the boss. You could also test loading into the level using cheats to give yourself full Boots first.

[NightFright]

That would explain why there are such excessive amounts of slimers everywhere, I think actually in pretty much every area where you have to kill a brain. It's like they want or even need you to step into slime in one way or another (crawling through a narrow duct full of them, surrounding a keycard with slimer eggs etc). In that case, this is rather something like "worked under DOS, but not any more".