[Lord Misfit]

DeeperThought, on Apr 22 2010, 01:41 AM, said:

I thinking about getting rid of the autosave feature for the next release. Can anyone think of a good reason to keep it? If you forget to save, the worst thing that could happen is you would have to do the level over, since the player's stats are stored each time a level is completed.

Well, I did my own autosave thing for the next version of NR, but I made it that you can configure the save intervals [in minutes] and turn it on or off completely, just to have the option. I'm not sure if you'd want to program a menu option or something like that for Attrition, but I figure I'd throw around the idea. I actually think the autosave's not a bad idea. The only gripe [and this is with EDuke32 in general, not Attrition] is the limited number of save files and that it takes up one of 10 slots. I almost wish the save/autosave limit were more along the lines of how ZDoom has it.

Although Attrition might not be in as much need of this as NR might be in the future, since NR is planned out at such a large size in levels and such for final versions and since you can't restart most levels cold turkey in it like in most DN3D mods due to the "Death = Game Over/Restart Game fully" element I added in. >.>

[lostroamer]

I wouldn't mind there being an option to turn on and off autosave, but would you likely add an option to make enemies stronger in custom difficulty modes? Even on Come Get Some, I found myself just breezing through a few of the levels... though the overlord with the homing missiles proved to be really annoying in the end boss map I ran into him in.

[Headless_Horseman]

Autosave has to stay, IMHO, its' really handy in some spots. DT has onlyt to put in a "toggle" options for people that don't want it.
A personal request that I already submitted to DT is a simple way to put together your own "random maps" pack.

[lostroamer]

The Autosave toggle isn't actually my personal request, my personal request would be for a difficulty mode that makes monsters spawn in hordes kind of like Serious Sam/Painkiller. (What? I love blasting lots of monsters)

To make up for that, every monster gibs shortly after death like in Naferia's Reign.

[Kenny mckormick]

Just type


"ifrnd 128
spawn (Tile of the monster)
"

Somewhere in the code (When he shoot),i remember playing hour on a Deathmatch Map with some Monster,that can spawn another Randomly...That was funny...

[The Commander]

Kenny mckormick, on Apr 24 2010, 05:29 AM, said:

Just type


"ifrnd 128
spawn (Tile of the monster)
"

Somewhere in the code (When he shoot),i remember playing hour on a Deathmatch Map with some Monster,that can spawn another Randomly...That was funny...

Sure, if you want a MP game to go out of sync right away you could do that.

[Danukem]

There's something that I've been stuck on for days now, and I could use some help coming up with ideas (most likely from people who are already familiar with this mod, but anyone is welcome to contribute).

In addition to the individual weapon upgrades, I want there to be a new category of upgrade for overall weapon mastery. You would get the first of these upon getting 12 total experience levels. The levels could be distributed in any way: you could have 1 level in each of the 12 weapons, or have level 6 shotgun and two other weapons at level 3, etc. Then you would get another weapon mastery upgrade when your total weapon levels reach 24, and another at 36, 48, and maybe 60 (if I decide to go that high).

The problem is: what does the player get? I have a few ideas (one really good one and a few boring ones), but not enough ideas for all the weapon mastery upgrades. The new abilities (or whatever they turn out to be) don't necessarily have to be weapons related. But they shouldn't radically change the game, and should not make a huge difference to the player's effectiveness. They should be desirable and useful, but not overpowered. And they should not be specific to any particular weapon.

Any ideas?

I will not have a global rate of fire upgrade.

[Lunick]

Maybe the player can access a secret level?

I dont know of any other ideas sorry

[supergoofy]

I don't know if power regeneration for the laser pistol, or akimbo for the lazer pistol would be something good.

The ability to carry two different weapons at once (e.g shotgun with laser pistol), like in SMWGuns mod for GZDoom. The problem here will be that you need an art designer and maybe it is to complex to code.

Health regeneration? Maybe it is useless. With the last change you made, all health kits are used efficiently and none is lost.

A bonus ability to save slime babes and get weapons, ammo or other stuff and upgrades, would be a good idea.

Although, I only played 7-8 games with the new 1.01 version of Attrition, and thus I'm not that experienced and haven't seen all weapon upgrades in action. (the higher levels)

[Danukem]

supergoofy, on Apr 24 2010, 01:14 AM, said:

I don't know if power regeneration for the laser pistol, or akimbo for the lazer pistol would be something good.

I'll consider power regen for the laser, but if I added it, it would be a laser specific upgrade, not an overall weapon mastery upgrade.
I think akimbo would be really weird with that weapon, especially when alt-firing. And again, that would be specific to that weapon.

supergoofy, on Apr 24 2010, 01:14 AM, said:

The ability to carry two different weapons at once (e.g shotgun with laser pistol), like in SMWGuns mod for GZDoom. The problem here will be that you need an art designer and maybe it is to complex to code.

I don't know how it works in that mod, but such a feature would entail a huge change to the game, with lots of new code and probably lots of fun bugs to be sorted out before it was done. I'm not even sure how the interface would work -- how does the player tell the game which two weapons he wants to hold? There's a lot of nastiness that would have to be dealt with to make it work. To start with, whatever it may show on the screen, as far as the internals of the game are concerned, the player only has one weapon at a time (unless I scrap all reliance on the hardcoded weapon system and start over from scratch). That means for every weapon that can be combined with a given weapon, it has to have some different code to simulate the effects of the additional weapon. This is made much harder by all the different things the weapons can do already; they each have seven different upgrades with various effects. And there are 12 weapons in the mod. Given the complexity that already exists, it would probably be at least an order of magnitude higher difficulty to add that feature to Attrition than it was to add it to SMWGuns.

In other words no.

supergoofy, on Apr 24 2010, 01:14 AM, said:

Health regeneration? Maybe it is useless. With the last change you made, all health kits are used efficiently and none is lost.

Also I don't like regeneration because it rewards the player for standing around and doing nothing. I wouldn't be opposed to damage reduction (natural armor?) though. I also thought about giving the player immunity to self-damage. But these are pretty boring ideas.

supergoofy, on Apr 24 2010, 01:14 AM, said:

A bonus ability to save slime babes and get weapons, ammo or other stuff and upgrades, would be a good idea.

This may sound strange coming from someone who has added a great deal of unrealistic stuff to his mods, but I have always resisted the idea of saving slime babes, because I feel that it's silly and would undermine the seriousness of the game (such as it is). It's not for nothing that they groan "kill me". I have always assumed that they were hosting baby aliens, and that the ability to remove said aliens without killing the babes was beyond the ability of modern medicine. I actually made baby newbeasts burst out of the slimed babes in DNWMD; something I might add to Attrition. Saving them is just not dark enough for Duke 3D in my opinion. I am more inclined to give points for killing them, on the grounds that it prevents more aliens from spawning.

EDIT: I do appreciate your suggestions, and obviously I don't have a lot of good ideas myself or I wouldn't have asked for help. The multi-weapon feature would be quite cool, but it's just too hard to do.

[Lunick]

I dont know how you could do it but maybe the weapon turns gold or something like that, maybe an alternate colour

[necroslut]

DeeperThought, on Apr 24 2010, 10:52 AM, said:

Also I don't like regeneration because it rewards the player for standing around and doing nothing. I wouldn't be opposed to damage reduction (natural armor?) though. I also thought about giving the player immunity to self-damage. But these are pretty boring ideas.

Then what about something similar to the Ego system in DNF, giving you a small amount of health for killing enemies (life leeching)?

[Danukem]

necroslut, on Apr 24 2010, 02:14 AM, said:

Then what about something similar to the Ego system in DNF, giving you a small amount of health for killing enemies (life leeching)?

Yeah, I know, but here's the problem. I already have leech as the last upgrade of each weapon. When a weapon gets to level 7, it gets a small amount of leech, and it keeps increasing until the weapon reaches level 9 (the highest attainable level). If I make leech into a weapon mastery ability instead of having it as an individual upgrade on the weapons, then I have to come up with a bunch of new individual upgrades on the weapons. But I was already out of ideas for the weapons, which is why I gave them leech in the first place. I suppose I could make the last three individual upgrades increase damage.

So assuming I do that, here's what I have so far:

Weapon mastery 1: fast weapon switching (this is cooler than it sounds...not going to explain yet)
Weapon mastery 2: improved death rage
Weapon mastery 3: leech
Weapon mastery 4: ?? (NOT increased damage or stun or anything else that the individual weapon upgrades already give)

[necroslut]

DeeperThought, on Apr 24 2010, 11:23 AM, said:

Yeah, I know, but here's the problem. I already have leech as the last upgrade of each weapon. When a weapon gets to level 7, it gets a small amount of leech, and it keeps increasing until the weapon reaches level 9 (the highest attainable level). If I make leech into a weapon mastery ability instead of having it as an individual upgrade on the weapons, then I have to come up with a bunch of new individual upgrades on the weapons. But I was already out of ideas for the weapons, which is why I gave them leech in the first place. I suppose I could make the last three individual upgrades increase damage.

I didn't know that, sorry.

[supergoofy]

Idea for the freezer: Full body possession. For example, you freeze a pigcop and then Duke is transferred in pigcop's body, taking total control and then as a pigcop he can bypass enemies or kill them

Upgrade for shotgun: Dual shot at once.

[necroslut]

I guess there already is a freezer upgrade with permanent freeze/petrifying.

[quiksteven]

What upgrades can you get for the weapons? if we know these then at least we can avoid suggestions close to those.

(sorry if ive missed this in the topic)

what about more melee attacks? would be more interesting if you were limited on ammo and had to knife the alien scum instead!

[Danukem]

I am looking for ideas for global upgrades which are not specific to any weapon (like increased damage on all weapons, faster weapon switching, etc). I explained that in post #157 The specific weapon upgrades are listed in the documentation included with the mod, but I didn't bother listing them here because it's not relevant.

other replies:
-full body possession is a stealth game type of power, and this mod is the opposite of that
-dual shotguns won't work with the existing shotgun art; in gameplay terms, it would effectively double the firing rate of the shotgun. But that niche is already filled by the devastator's shotgun mode
-the freezer in Attrition can freeze monsters for a very long time if you keep shooting them with it, although there is no upgrade for that specifically
-I think the karate kicks are enough melee attacks. It's very rare to have no ammo anyway.

[supergoofy]

I didn't mean dual shotguns. I talked about one shotgun, but with one shot two shells are fired together (thus doing 1.5x-3x damage - that depends on the distance).

But if this is covered by the devastator shotgun mode then that's ok


And you have right about body possession. But still this would be a good idea for a future mod that will use stealth and strategic methods of playing.

[quiksteven]

Increased jump? you don't always have a jetpack so could work.

what about xray goggles!? see the enemies thru walls, kinda heat vision i guess?

im just throwing ideas out as i think of them...

[quiksteven]

sprint mode without the use of steroids? i cant hit anything when i use that anyway lol

[Danukem]

I am currently beta testing Attrition version 1.02

The only difference from 1.01 is the CONs, which you can get here if you want to test:

http://fissile.duke4...ion/attcons.rar

You must have version 1.01 installed first.

Here are the changes:

Duke Nukem:  Attrition 1.02
-fixed atomichealth so it can add up to 2X max normal health, as intended
-fixed a bug related to piercing bullets; HOPEFULLY this fixes those rare "random" player squishes
-protector drones (newbeasts) can now be shrunk by the player if the shrinker is level 6 or higher
-slightly reduced chance of nukes dropping, and added small chance of monsters dropping boots (boots can protect against fire damage and they get used up by it, so there needs to be more boots in Attrition than in vanilla Duke)
-weapons do extra damage at higher levels, instead of leech
-added piercing upgrade to pistol to replace the extra damage upgrade at level 4
-added shrapnel upgrade to chaingun to replace the extra damage upgrade at level 3
-weapon switching has been "nerfed" at game start.  It is no longer possible to switch weapons while a weapon is firing, and you cannot interrupt a weapon switch to switch again.  However, fast weapon switching is now an upgrade, and after the upgrade it is even faster than default EDuke32 switching.

New:  weapon mastery abilities are obtained for the total number of accumulated weapon levels.  In ( ) is the number of total levels you need for the listed upgrade.
(12) fast weapon switching
(24) increased nuke power*
(36) leech on all weapons
(48) ultimate nuke power*

*nuke levels no longer increase from score

EDIT: More changes

-adjusted point values for monsters to prevent player from leveling up too fast
-increased XP needed for some levels of tripbombs and expander
-delayed introduction of some monster types to ease difficulty in early levels
-fixed a bug where cloned monsters could get squished at the moment of cloning

[Ryan Cordell]

Very rare to have no ammo? I stumbled upon THAT quite oftenly! (EDIT: Well, one level started out rather rough. Think it's the one revolving around the subway system, a level that appears in the first random episode)
Also, can WG End Boss level be tweaked or something? The way it ends makes all the upgrades completely useless since it doesn't go to the next level. :/

Also, this is probably more of an EDuke32 bug, but it becomes nigh impossible to play once noticeable lag kicks in (IE, spamming the Incendiary RPG upgrade) - the mouse becomes flat out useless (except for the buttons), since I can't aim.

[Headless_Horseman]

Still on the same bug : I experienced it again (Attrition V1.1) but now I can safely say that is linked to the cannonball ammunition fired by commanders, as DT suspected.
It doesn't happens everytime there's a commander with the cannonball, but whenever it happens he's there.

[Danukem]

Headless_Horseman, on Apr 27 2010, 12:15 PM, said:

Still on the same bug : I experienced it again (Attrition V1.1) but now I can safely say that is linked to the cannonball ammunition fired by commanders, as DT suspected.
It doesn't happens everytime there's a commander with the cannonball, but whenever it happens he's there.

I have some code for preventing the cannonball from hitting the sky, where it checks to see if it's close to and moving towards a parallax ceiling, and if so deletes itself without an explosion. The code came from DukePlus, and was necessary because in that mod the player can control cannons and shoot them into the sky. Anyway, that code is always the last thing that shows up in the log right before the virtual machine error crash. I went ahead and removed the code for Attrition, because I doubt the player will even notice if a cannonball occasional blows up on the sky. Hopefully that will fix it.

[Forge]

Global upgrade suggestions.

Speed loading
Seeker rounds. Kinda like auto aim except it shoots around corners.
teleporting like a trooper
spit acid like an enforcer
electrical shock attack like the queen

[Danukem]

Forge, on Apr 27 2010, 08:06 PM, said:

Global upgrade suggestions.

Speed loading
Seeker rounds. Kinda like auto aim except it shoots around corners.
teleporting like a trooper
spit acid like an enforcer
electrical shock attack like the queen

There is a seeker round upgrade for the devastator (rarely seen, unfortunately, because the weapon doesn't appear in enough maps), but I don't want that mod on other weapons. I have various reasons for rejecting your other suggestions, which I won't bore you with, EXCEPT I like your idea of the cloaking power! That could be really useful and fun, especially in the first part of a random mission where you don't have weapons yet. But now I have to figure out how it would be controlled and balanced. The next release is already finished, however, so it will have to wait for version 1.03 or later.

[supergoofy]

And as before the new Attrition 1.02 link is:
http://www.moddb.com...ads/start/23171

[Ryan Cordell]

I'm not sure a hundred percent if this is where it should go, but there's a certain enemy (a red recolored Assault Commander, I think?) that always manages to crash EDuke32 upon firing. The only thing "different" with the Attrition folder is that I put the SVN checkout'd folder of the Polymer HRP in so I'd be able to play it with all the sweet graphics, although I find myself using Polymost now due to the horrid mouse problem whenever lag occurs.
Otherwise, it's an incredibly fun mod once you can get past the rough beginning!

Using Attrition with the v1.02 patch.

 eduke32.log (4.06K)
Number of downloads: 402

[Danukem]

Ryan Cordell, on Apr 28 2010, 07:40 AM, said:

Using Attrition with the v1.02 patch.

No, you aren't. The file sizes don't match, and the log shows a line of code that I removed (the one that I think was causing the crash). Either you were playing a saved game that was started before you got 1.02, or supergoofy's link is wrong (doubtful), or you didn't do a clean install. Do a clean install and start a new game.

I'm pretty sure that supergoofy's link is correct, but just to make sure, open the documentation from that download and verify that it has the changelog for 1.02