[Danukem]

Shadow Reborn, on 18 April 2014 - 10:38 AM, said:

So where these monsters affected by the bug, spawning somewhere in the map after all or they simply failed to spawn completely? I never had progression problems in WOA so far, but I did see a lot of these spawning and disappearing monsters. I thought it was intended.

How exactly do the difficulties work now? What's changed?

Can't wait for the new version with the new enemy already but I got 1.60 beta 4 too.


UPDATE: I just finished WOA with version 1.6 b3. It was literally INSANE in Roch Island at the end! I noticed two things though:
The wave ends if the first Boss encountered dies even if I haven't killed all other monsters.
Regarding the second issue: the final wave is announced as over when all monsters around the second Boss are dead but not the Boss itself too.

I hope that your edit concerns b3 as you said and not the just uploaded b4, because b4 includes a fix that is supposed to address the ending problem you described.

Right now in b4 the difficulties are handled in a more simplified way. In Attrition, the difficulty of monster attributes increase in increments based on the player's score. For this update all I did was make the starting increment depend on the difficulty level -- so if you pick DIG for example the monsters will already be at the fifth increment at the start, and it will always stay 4 increments above what it would be if you chose LR. It sounds like a subtle change but I have found it gives much better results than what I had before.

As for the monster spawning bug, the monsters were not appearing at all. You would still end up fighting the same number of monsters, though, because other monsters would spawn until the player reached the wave quota.

[Shadow Reborn]

Trooper Dan, on 18 April 2014 - 12:11 PM, said:

I hope that your edit concerns b3 as you said and not the just uploaded b4, because b4 includes a fix that is supposed to address the ending problem you described.

Right now in b4 the difficulties are handled in a more simplified way. In Attrition, the difficulty of monster attributes increase in increments based on the player's score. For this update all I did was make the starting increment depend on the difficulty level -- so if you pick DIG for example the monsters will already be at the fifth increment at the start, and it will always stay 4 increments above what it would be if you chose LR. It sounds like a subtle change but I have found it gives much better results than what I had before.

As for the monster spawning bug, the monsters were not appearing at all. You would still end up fighting the same number of monsters, though, because other monsters would spawn until the player reached the wave quota.

Yes the "UPDATE" was for b3. I just installed b4 and noticed the increased difficulty and at start met with an EvilDuke in Come Get Some among the first monsters in Hollywood Holocaust. I specified this in my second edit but maybe it was too late.

Thanks for answering my questions, Dan!

[Danukem]

Yeah it's probably harder now. I think I'm going to rename the difficulties to avoid confusion. I'll get rid of "piece of cake" because no one should be using it anyway. So level 1 will be "Let's Rock", level 2 will be "Come Get Some", level 3 will be "Damn I'm Good" and level 4 will be "It's a Good Day to Die".

[Shadow Reborn]

Trooper Dan, on 18 April 2014 - 12:22 PM, said:

Yeah it's probably harder now. I think I'm going to rename the difficulties to avoid confusion. I'll get rid of "piece of cake" because no one should be using it anyway. So level 1 will be "Let's Rock", level 2 will be "Come Get Some", level 3 will be "Damn I'm Good" and level 4 will be "It's a Good Day to Die".

An excellent idea I must say! It is certainly harder and the difficulties should reflect this.

[HorribleBadGuy]

I keep having crashing issues

No matter what what game type I choose, or what difficulty I use, once the textures get to 85% loaded it will automatically close itself out every time

It also continuously fails to find, make, or save any config file, even if I go through and set the controls

[Danukem]

HorribleBadGuy, on 18 April 2014 - 03:32 PM, said:

I keep having crashing issues

No matter what what game type I choose, or what difficulty I use, once the textures get to 85% loaded it will automatically close itself out every time

It also continuously fails to find, make, or save any config file, even if I go through and set the controls

Sorry to hear that. I'll bet it is because Attrition now pre-caches all those hi-res explosion sprites created by Muelsa. It's quite a lot of data, but I did it to prevent in-game hitching. If you don't mind doing a little text editing, you can try this:

Open attrition/attcons and then open the file ATTGAME.CON in a text editor. Near the beginning of the file you will find this line

precache 6584 6775 1

Comment it out like this:

// precache 6584 6775 1

Now save it and try starting a new game. Hopefully your problem will go away. If not, please attach your eduke32.log file.

[Shadow Reborn]

I'll leave this to Dan. He knows better but I've been playing with the latest version of Attrition and had no crashes.

I have a request Dan, if it is possible: I noticed that if you don't allocate any perk points and you end up having 20, the perk menu is called and you have to choose an upgrade. It is a good idea to remind the player that he has perk points but it is an inconvenience that the point is allocated on a perk as soon as I click it. I am often found fighting baddies, then comes the needed weapon upgrade in order to have 20 perk points and the menu is called while I am still clicking "Fire" so it automatically chooses the middle perk for me (No Self Damage) leaving me no other choice or a way to undo it. I suggest you add a "Yes" or "No" prompt when a perk is clicked so this inconvenience will no longer happen. Can this be done without being too much bother?

Cheers!

[Danukem]

Shadow Reborn, on 18 April 2014 - 03:53 PM, said:

I'll leave this to Dan. He knows better but I've been playing with the latest version of Attrition and had no crashes.

I have a request Dan, if it is possible: I noticed that if you don't allocate any perk points and you end up having 20, the perk menu is called and you have to choose an upgrade. It is a good idea to remind the player that he has perk points but it is an inconvenience that the point is allocated on a perk as soon as I click it. I am often found fighting baddies, then comes the needed weapon upgrade in order to have 20 perk points and the menu is called while I am still clicking "Fire" so it automatically chooses the middle perk for me (No Self Damage) leaving me no other choice or a way to undo it. I suggest you add a "Yes" or "No" prompt when a perk is clicked so this inconvenience will no longer happen. Can this be done without being too much bother?

Cheers!

Admittedly I was being lazy there. Since there is nothing that costs more than 20 points I figured it would be ok to force the player to buy something if he hasn't yet and there are 20 points in reserve, so I just make the menu come up and not go away until the player does.

Anyway, yeah I'll do something about the problem. A confirmation would work, as would adding a short delay before you can make a purchase (easy), or allowing the player to sell back his perks and choose different ones.

[HorribleBadGuy]

Trooper Dan, on 18 April 2014 - 03:44 PM, said:

Sorry to hear that. I'll bet it is because Attrition now pre-caches all those hi-res explosion sprites created by Muelsa. It's quite a lot of data, but I did it to prevent in-game hitching. If you don't mind doing a little text editing, you can try this:

Open attrition/attcons and then open the file ATTGAME.CON in a text editor. Near the beginning of the file you will find this line

precache 6584 6775 1

Comment it out like this:

// precache 6584 6775 1

Now save it and try starting a new game. Hopefully your problem will go away. If not, please attach your eduke32.log file.

Thanks, that fixed it right up

[Danukem]

HorribleBadGuy, on 18 April 2014 - 04:18 PM, said:

Thanks, that fixed it right up

Try using a nuke though and see if it crashes.

[Shadow Reborn]

Trooper Dan, on 18 April 2014 - 04:08 PM, said:

Admittedly I was being lazy there. Since there is nothing that costs more than 20 points I figured it would be ok to force the player to buy something if he hasn't yet and there are 20 points in reserve, so I just make the menu come up and not go away until the player does.

Anyway, yeah I'll do something about the problem. A confirmation would work, as would adding a short delay before you can make a purchase (easy), or allowing the player to sell back his perks and choose different ones.

Great to hear that! The delay will make sure a perk can't be clicked by mistake while still firing at smth.. A confirmation makes it feel more professional and the possibility to sell back wouldn't hurt either. However, the sell back should only work until you close the menu so the player can't exchange perks at any time. All 3 of these changes would make a welcome addition.

I just remembered another (very small) issue I noticed. Every time a BOSS (meaning end of chapter one) dies, the message: "We're gonna fry your ass Nukem" appears. My guess is that it happens due to the level being forced to end like the devs ended the "Red Light District" level. I say this because I don't remember this message coming up when a BOSS died in the original. There would have been a delay and the level along with the episode would have ended.

[HorribleBadGuy]

Trooper Dan, on 18 April 2014 - 04:19 PM, said:

Try using a nuke though and see if it crashes.

Tried using it a couple of times with both Eduke32 and LeoD Eduke64, and both resulted in crashes (however Eduke64 had about 80% crash rate, the rest of the time it would get really janky lock-up but didn't crash)

[Danukem]

Shadow Reborn, on 18 April 2014 - 05:08 PM, said:

I just remembered another (very small) issue I noticed. Every time a BOSS (meaning end of chapter one) dies, the message: "We're gonna fry your ass Nukem" appears. My guess is that it happens due to the level being forced to end like the devs ended the "Red Light District" level.

Yes that's correct -- I wanted bosses to end levels but not end the game and it was the easiest way (laziness once again).

HorribleBadGuy, on 18 April 2014 - 06:50 PM, said:

Tried using it a couple of times with both Eduke32 and LeoD Eduke64, and both resulted in crashes (however Eduke64 had about 80% crash rate, the rest of the time it would get really janky lock-up but didn't crash)

I think this is going to be a problem on a lot of systems, so I have made a fix. For future versions, all those 512x512 explosion textures will be downsized to 256x256. This will reduce load time and hopefully prevent the crashing. I have tested it and there is almost no visual difference. To try this now, download this file, and unzip the folder it contains to replace the one in Attrition. The folder is located in attrition/ATTRITION_RESOURCES/GRAPHICS/new_explosions/

If that doesn't help enough, you can downsize them to 128x128, but I'm pretty sure they will start to look pixelated at that point.

[Shadow Reborn]

Trooper Dan, on 18 April 2014 - 07:25 PM, said:

Yes that's correct -- I wanted bosses to end levels but not end the game and it was the easiest way (laziness once again).

Oh, well I was just curious. Will you fix it? It's no big deal anyway.

[Shadow Reborn]

I found an issue with weapon switching. I believe this happens due to the two new weapons that were introduced.

If I mouse-scroll up to the Shock Cannon (dunno about Flamer) and then select another weapon by using the number keys (2-9) the game always switches to the laser pistol instead of the weapon corresponding to the number that I pressed. If I press the desired number again the weapon switches correctly.

There was another issue here too but I couldn't narrow it down. In some cases, if I pressed a number key to select a weapon several times in a row it scrolled up the weapons just like the mouse-wheel does, instead of switching to the desired weapon. I think it might be tied to the Shock Cannon or Flamer. Not sure about this second one.

Regards,
Reborn

[Danukem]

Shadow Reborn, on 19 April 2014 - 05:28 PM, said:

I found an issue with weapon switching. I believe this happens due to the two new weapons that were introduced.

If I mouse-scroll up to the Shock Cannon (dunno about Flamer) and then select another weapon by using the number keys (2-9) the game always switches to the laser pistol instead of the weapon corresponding to the number that I pressed. If I press the desired number again the weapon switches correctly.

There was another issue here too but I couldn't narrow it down. In some cases, if I pressed a number key to select a weapon several times in a row it scrolled up the weapons just like the mouse-wheel does, instead of switching to the desired weapon. I think it might be tied to the Shock Cannon or Flamer. Not sure about this second one.

Regards,
Reborn

Thanks for the bug report. I think I have fixed the issues on my end now. There's a variable I use as flag when the player selects next or previous weapon, and this helps ensure the right weapon is selected (needed because of the new weapons). But in some cases that flag was not getting reset. The result was that the game would think you were selecting next or previous weapon even though you were actually using the number keys.

[Shadow Reborn]

Trooper Dan, on 19 April 2014 - 08:12 PM, said:

Thanks for the bug report. I think I have fixed the issues on my end now. There's a variable I use as flag when the player selects next or previous weapon, and this helps ensure the right weapon is selected (needed because of the new weapons). But in some cases that flag was not getting reset. The result was that the game would think you were selecting next or previous weapon even though you were actually using the number keys.

Glad to hear you got to the bottom of it! Thanks for sharing some technical details too.

[Shadow Reborn]

A quick question:
Are the mini-bosses(Overlord, Alien Princess, Battlelord and Cycloid) supposed to drain your health when you're standing right next to them when they're shrunk or is it a small bug? I tried to squish a mini-Overlord and he drained my health until he actually got squished. I'm not sure about the other mini-bosses though.
Cheers!

[Danukem]

Shadow Reborn, on 20 April 2014 - 03:07 PM, said:

A quick question:
Are the mini-bosses(Overlord, Alien Princess, Battlelord and Cycloid) supposed to drain your health when you're standing right next to them when they're shrunk or is it a small bug? I tried to squish a mini-Overlord and he drained my health until he actually got squished. I'm not sure about the other mini-bosses though.
Cheers!

That's a bug. I'll fix it.

EDIT: Just checked the code and it looks like damage is already turned off when the boss is shrunk...weird. Oh well, I find it.

[Shadow Reborn]

Trooper Dan, on 20 April 2014 - 03:48 PM, said:

That's a bug. I'll fix it.

EDIT: Just checked the code and it looks like damage is already turned off when the boss is shrunk...weird. Oh well, I find it.

Yeah I thought so. Oh well, you'll crack it open.

I am playing through the Original Levels episode right now and I noticed that in long episodes (such as this one) ammo for the two new initial weapons tends to get more and more scarce as there are less and less CyberImps and Liztroops. These guys seem to be kinda the only ones that drop special ammo for Shock Cannon and Flamer. Maybe there are more, you know best. Bottomline, the Shock Cannon that I have chosen at the episode start is a bit underused since I don't have enough ammo for it. Is this intended? The Shock Cannon or Flamer to generally have less ammo available?

[Danukem]

Shadow Reborn, on 20 April 2014 - 04:22 PM, said:

Yeah I thought so. Oh well, you'll crack it open.

I am playing through the Original Levels episode right now and I noticed that in long episodes (such as this one) ammo for the two new initial weapons tends to get more and more scarce as there are less and less CyberImps and Liztroops. These guys seem to be kinda the only ones that drop special ammo for Shock Cannon and Flamer. Maybe there are more, you know best. Bottomline, the Shock Cannon that I have chosen at the episode start is a bit underused since I don't have enough ammo for it. Is this intended? The Shock Cannon or Flamer to generally have less ammo available?

It wasn't intended. I assumed that liztroops (and hence cyberimps, which randomly replace them about 12% of the time) were plentiful enough throughout the game to ensure a steady stream of ammo for those weapons.

I have gone ahead and made it so that pigcops and enforcers can also drop the ammo. But I anticipate that this will make the expander overpowered if the player chooses it as a starting weapon, since it levels up so quickly (I made it do that because there is hardly any ammo for it). So I increased XP needed to level up the expander.

[Shadow Reborn]

Trooper Dan, on 20 April 2014 - 05:42 PM, said:

It wasn't intended. I assumed that liztroops (and hence cyberimps, which randomly replace them about 12% of the time) were plentiful enough throughout the game to ensure a steady stream of ammo for those weapons.

I have gone ahead and made it so that pigcops and enforcers can also drop the ammo. But I anticipate that this will make the expander overpowered if the player chooses it as a starting weapon, since it levels up so quickly (I made it do that because there is hardly any ammo for it). So I increased XP needed to level up the expander.

Making more monsters drop ammo for the starting weapons is a good idea but I see a small problem too. If one doesn't choose the Shrinker/Expander at start then he will have a very hard time trying to level it up when he gets it or an Evil Duke drops it later in game if the experience requirement is increased. I think it would be better to allow the user to choose only the Shrinker at start without the Expander (if it is possible) and leave the experience requirement as it is (no increasing). The ammo drops for the starting weapons should definitely be increased in any case.

[MetHy]

So, since I was told by somebody else that some of my maps were included in this mod without even asking me, I decided to give it a try...

And well, I don't know what's going on but using the redkey card in the slot in Sex City (in the back control room with the 2 slots and the buttons) was particulary hard (I thought it didn't even work for a few seconds) while it doesn't make a problem at all at all in the original episode. I hope this has nothing to do with smaller size slots because there are some in Submerged Zone as well... There was the corpse of a cyber imp lying in front of it but I don't know if it's linked.

[Danukem]

MetHy, on 21 April 2014 - 06:17 AM, said:

So, since I was told by somebody else that some of my maps were included in this mod without even asking me, I decided to give it a try...

Let's address that first, because I don't want any misunderstandings or bad feelings. Including tons of maps from various map authors has been an integral part of this mod from its inception. If you read the beginning of this thread, you'll see that it's sort of the whole point of the mod, and I have done it for years without complaint. If I tried to contact map authors and get their permission, the mod would not exist. I do not alter the maps (except in a very few cases where there was a blatent bug which could be fixed without making any visual change), and I try to include txt files that came with them. In the case of MM, there are credits in the Attrition documentation. Because of the limitations of the scripting system, the user maps have to be included as part of the mod. The map names have to be included in the CON files, and it won't run unless those maps are present in the directory.

MetHy, on 21 April 2014 - 06:17 AM, said:

And well, I don't know what's going on but using the redkey card in the slot in Sex City (in the back control room with the 2 slots and the buttons) was particulary hard (I thought it didn't even work for a few seconds) while it doesn't make a problem at all at all in the original episode. I hope this has nothing to do with smaller size slots because there are some in Submerged Zone as well... There was the corpse of a cyber imp lying in front of it but I don't know if it's linked.

I have never had a problem with using that slot, and I'm pretty sure that others have played it with this mod without trouble. It's possible that the body was an issue, though. Bodies are hitscannable in this mod, so maybe it was blocking the hitscan needed for the card slot. You can shoot bodies with bullets or any other weapon, and they will be destroyed after several shots (even kicks will jib them after several hits) so its not something that could make the player stuck.

[MetHy]

I understand not asking mappers that are unreachable but I'm right here.

I also believe that running that episode with a gameplay mod is the antithesis of the whole point of that episode, a tribute of classic Duke3D.... But since Mikko doesn't mind, and MRCK and Merljin probably don't either (or should I say "wouldn't" ? because at this point I hope they are aware of it either) I'll resign myself to it.

It's like the HRP, you can't prevent people to play with maps with it even though it's clearly stated it's not supported. Speaking of that, your mod has a batch file to run with the HRP even though the readme of MM says HRP is not supported, but at this point, that's the least of my worries.

[Forge]

MetHy, on 22 April 2014 - 02:27 AM, said:

I understand not asking mappers that are unreachable but I'm right here.

I also believe that running that episode with a gameplay mod is the antithesis of the whole point of that episode, a tribute of classic Duke3D

Speaking of that, your mod has a batch file to run with the HRP even though the readme of MM says HRP is not supported, but at this point, that's the least of my worries.

That'd kind of be like trying to hunt down all the mappers in a CBP to ask permission to use it. Active community members or not, it'd be a bit unreasonable.

Besides, shouldn't you be concentrating on putting together the current mini-episode CBP instead of playing this? Dan needs another project to add to his mod so it can be played with non-traditional rules and HRP.

[Shadow Reborn]

MetHy, to be honest, I understand part of your frustration. However, Dan did not modify the maps he added in Attrition and he included the original .txt files of the authors. For me at least, it was a perfect opportunity to play a lot of user made maps. Furthermore, I recently played the whole Metropolitan Mayhem episode without Attrition and then with Attrition and the experience was almost the same (pleasant). It was just a bit harder in Attrition. No bugs or inconveniences.
Lastly, Dan always suggested that Attrition should be played without the HRP. He allows the HRP of course, for people who like it and don't care about the possible visual glitches it may cause.

Peace!

[Danukem]

MetHy, on 22 April 2014 - 02:27 AM, said:

I also believe that running that episode with a gameplay mod is the antithesis of the whole point of that episode, a tribute of classic Duke3D....

I have played it without gameplay mods and I enjoyed it a lot that way. I'm pretty sure that players know that by using this mod they are changing the experience they would have with the maps. I guess I could add a paragraph in the readme explaining that the included maps were not designed with this mod in mind and that players may want to play them with the unmodified game.

Keep in mind I have been making this type of mod for 8 years now (as well as other mods that only use maps made specifically for them). Also keep in mind that using gameplay mods with classic maps has been part of Duke 3D since 1996. The only difference is that I actually distribute the maps with the mod, but as I've explained in my previous post I can't avoid that.

MetHy, on 22 April 2014 - 02:27 AM, said:

It's like the HRP, you can't prevent people to play with maps with it even though it's clearly stated it's not supported. Speaking of that, your mod has a batch file to run with the HRP even though the readme of MM says HRP is not supported, but at this point, that's the least of my worries.

I don't use the HRP myself but I provide at least partial support for it for those who want to use it. The .bat is there so that people can use it with the maps that are compatible with it (not MM, although if they did use the HRP with MM it would not be a crime). Your apparent desire to "prevent people to play" maps in unintended ways is misplaced, in my opinion.

[MetHy]

Trooper Dan, on 22 April 2014 - 07:57 AM, said:

Your apparent desire to "prevent people to play" maps in unintended ways is misplaced, in my opinion.

Wow. This takes the cake. It's MISPLACED from me to care about how the maps I carefully crafted are played?

This is as if I took your mod, made some changes to it that go against the whole point of your mod, and told you it's misplaced to care about it.

Edit : And really I don't care about people using gameplay mods for maps not intended for it. What I care about is someone taking my map, ruin their gameplay without even telling me, and then go on claiming "that's how it's always been" or saying "that's how people, not me, just people, like to play the game and somehow [i]you[/i ]have a problem with that" and concluding by saying it's misplaced for me to care what happens to my maps.

Edit 2 : btw the maps can stay. Unless of course after all this you decide to take them out but that's be unfair to the other people involved in the MM episode who probably don't mind. Like you said, "people know it's not the intended way", well I'd say MOST people will know or realize it and that's enough to convince me (even if I do believe some people will download this mod without having heard of the MM episode before, but they might assume....)

[Danukem]

MetHy, on 22 April 2014 - 08:19 AM, said:

Wow. This takes the cake. It's MISPLACED from me to care about how the maps I carefully crafted are played?

This is as if I took your mod, made some changes to it that go against the whole point of your mod, and told you it's misplaced to care about it.

I understand what you are saying MetHy but there's a distinction that I believe is important. In your example you would be changing my mod. But I haven't changed your maps at all. Yes, the gameplay will be altered when played with Attrition, but the maps themselves are exactly the same.

And here's a little irony for you. People actually have changed my mods in ways that I wouldn't have done. I recall a guy who made his own version of Attrition a while back, with some altered code, different sounds/graphics etc. and I only found out by stumbling on movies of it on youtube. Some of the stuff he did was buggy, too. But I wasn't upset, I just asked him for a copy and took a look at it, decided I didnt want to use any of his changes and moved on. The only thing that slightly bothered me was that someone would think it was his mod, but in the end I didn't worry about it.