Duke Nukem: War of Attrition "Discussion thread for DT's War of Attrition mod"
#542 Posted 01 August 2011 - 01:49 PM
Mikko_Sandt, on 01 August 2011 - 01:16 PM, said:
Thanks for the review! It was fair and showed a good understanding of the mod. Your reviews are always well-written. There's really only one thing I would quibble with:
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I take issue with that because the pool of maps is well over 100, and you are only going to see about 15-20 of them per game. Not only that, but I have code in there which tries to prevent recently played maps from coming up again in the random selection. So theoretically, you should be able to complete three or four random episodes before seeing the same maps again. However, I think I will change the map skipping option so that the player can earn more map skips. I know that I usually want to skip more than the allotted amount when I play as well.
You also brought up a good point about high score mode: since the player can simply reload his last saved game when he dies, it seems kind of pointless, because you can keep getting a higher score from the same game. Well, that's true, but at least I prevent the same game from appearing in the high score list more than once (that is, if you reload a saved game, it erases the score that was put in the list from that game before). I thought about preventing the player from loading a saved game in high score mode, but the problem is that Duke 3D has too many cheap deaths. For example, it's still fairly common to get squished by opening a bathroom door (an infuriating way for a high score run to end!). Heh, the truth is, that once you know the mod and maps very well, every death feels like a cheap death, and I didn't want to anger players from blocking saved games.
Coincidentally, today is my birthday.
#543 Posted 01 August 2011 - 04:31 PM
DeeperThought, on 01 August 2011 - 01:49 PM, said:
I took a look at the directory and you seem to have added quite a bit there since the last time. Weren't the Roch, the Daikarin and the DC maps in their separate episodes at one point?
Still, if my playthrough represents any kind of an average in terms of length (and it likely does, as having 24 maps in a sample means the sample distribution should be pretty close to the distribution of the map total), an average player would still run into 4-6 maps he has already played. On top of this you have the maps (for those who visit sites like MSDN & DNR regularly this number may be quite high) that this average player would like to skip for whatever reason so you may end up in a situation where more than a third of the maps this player runs into are "undesirable".
Obviously, as you suggested, increasing the number of skips would get around this problem.
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Heh, yeah, when I was playing the War of Attrition mode this was actually my biggest concern, because I had gotten so far without dying. Still, I knew the whole time that I'd quit if I died because that's what I'd have preferred the game to do. Too bad there's really not much you can do to get rid of cheap deaths. They always inevitably remind you of the game's age.
#544 Posted 01 August 2011 - 04:53 PM
Mikko_Sandt, on 01 August 2011 - 04:31 PM, said:
Uh, I think Daikarin and a few other maps were put together as an episode at one point, yeah. I didn't mix Daikarin up with DC or Roch, though, since those wouldn't go together.
Mikko_Sandt, on 01 August 2011 - 04:31 PM, said:
That would be true if the map selection were completely random, but it isn't. There are gamevars that save which maps you have played before, even in previous games. So when you start a new game, it tries to avoid picking those. You should not see the same maps coming up again until you have played through almost all of the maps.
The system works like this. There are about 120 maps defined in the random epsides. There are 4 gamevars with 30 bits each storing which maps you have played in the past. When the game randomly picks a new map, it checks the selection against the bits in the saved gamevars to see if it has been played before. If it has, a new selection is made (otherwise it goes with the current selection and then sets the bit for that map in the gamevar for that episode to mark it as played). If it keeps coming up with maps that were already picked (like after a 1000 random selections or so, an unplayed map never comes up) then it decides that you have probably played almost all of the maps, and it resets the gamevars. Also, if you elect to skip a map, that map is considered played and is not supposed to come up again until the gamevars are cleared.
#545 Posted 01 August 2011 - 05:30 PM
#546 Posted 01 November 2011 - 09:43 PM
The list of changes is quite long, and there is lots of little stuff I left out. The biggest changes are:
- New big explosions by Muelsa
- Alt-fire modes for the pistol and shrinker
- several "new" maps
- 17 new Duke one liners
- Bug fixes, and rebalanced difficulty progression
Full change log:
#547 Posted 01 November 2011 - 11:17 PM
#548 Posted 02 November 2011 - 05:14 AM
#549 Posted 04 November 2011 - 07:46 AM
I played the high score challenge episode with skill 3(Come Get Some) and completed about 8 levels, then I noticed the kills count in eduke32's stat display changed to just a value, not XXX/XXX.
And I checked my savegame, it said I'm playing skill 4...WTH? Did the game just changed the skill setting because I got more score or something else?
(I was noticed this because I feel the game become so hard and some powerful/tough monsters appeared when I playing level 9 and got about 500000 score point...and then I noticed the skill level changed to skill 4 without any message or something...so weird...)
Also, the Auto saving do nothing at all, I did fresh install of WoA 1.40...I never got an auto-saved savegame after I played some hours of high score challenge episode......
(EDIT: Is any possible ways to change the skill level in game? I don't like play skill 4 for some reasons... )
This post has been edited by Player Lin: 04 November 2011 - 07:48 AM
#550 Posted 04 November 2011 - 07:57 AM
Player Lin, on 04 November 2011 - 07:46 AM, said:
I played the high score challenge episode with skill 3(Come Get Some) and completed about 8 levels, then I noticed the kills count in eduke32's stat display changed to just a value, not XXX/XXX.
And I checked my savegame, it said I'm playing skill 4...WTH? Did the game just changed the skill setting because I got more score or something else?
(I was noticed this because I feel the game become so hard and some powerful/tough monsters appeared when I playing level 9 and got about 500000 score point...and then I noticed the skill level changed to skill 4 without any message or something...so weird...)
Also, the Auto saving do nothing at all, I did fresh install of WoA 1.40...I never got an auto-saved savegame after I played some hours of high score challenge episode......
(EDIT: Is any possible ways to change the skill level in game? I don't like play skill 4 for some reasons... )
I got tired of hearing from obsessive players who would get ridiculous scores in high score mode. It is supposed to be the hardest mode, so now I forced it to skill level 4. That's actually more fair, because now it is possible to directly compare scores (it's meaningless to compare scores from games at different skill levels). I also disabled autosave when in high score mode. You really aren't supposed to be saving at all in that mode, it's more suspenseful that way and it's kind of cheating to load a saved game from a high score challenge after you die with the knowledge of what monster is around the corner and then be able to continue your score. I can't disable regular saving (nor would I want to) but with autosave off at least saving in high score mode is not officially sanctioned. Of course it's not cheating to use a saved game in high score mode because you have to stop playing to go to work or something
#551 Posted 04 November 2011 - 08:29 AM
DeeperThought, on 04 November 2011 - 07:57 AM, said:
Hmm, I understand, forcing player do not saving their game is too ridiculous, I know this mode was designed for real challenge and it's damn hard. I can accept them and auto-saving disabled in that mode.
(At least we have regular saving, if it get disable, I may pissed off. )
OK, I was just to hope doing some fullmap cheat for that(to finding secrets easily and focus on fighting monsters) but looks like I cannot do that because the 'fairness' of this mode. whatever, I just silly.
#552 Posted 04 November 2011 - 08:49 AM
(20:17:06) UmErOooh: lol
(20:17:22) ReverendTerminX: heh what happened?
(20:18:46) UmErOooh: Ok so I was playing war on attrition mode, got to the tower, turned on god mode for shits and giggles just to see the level. Picked up the shotty, went through the teleporter right where I start, and realized I could not shoot. So I was like huh, maybe if I grab some other weapon, grabbed the shrink ray, and it displayed all the animations at once for the gun, and still did nothing, I could quick kick though, so I did that, and it got stuck
(20:19:19) UmErOooh: then, I grabbed the devestator, and pressed fire again for shits and giggles, and boom, I'm shooting the chaingun from the miniboss, but with 100% more bullets, and no ammo
(20:19:37) UmErOooh: then, I can shoot my weapon I have equipped, on top of it shooting the bullets, which never stop
(20:19:43) ReverendTerminX: that's pretty fucked
(20:19:47) UmErOooh: I finally had to quit because the game was lagging so bad lol
(20:19:56) UmErOooh: all in all I was rather amused
(20:20:06) ReverendTerminX: was it the new version he posted a couple days ago or an older one?
(20:20:16) UmErOooh: new one he had just posted
(20:20:31) UmErOooh: I'm like a homeless dude on a ham sammich when it comes to attrition
(20:20:38) ReverendTerminX: hahaha
What an odd sounding bug.
#553 Posted 04 November 2011 - 02:08 PM
My only theory (and this is a long shot) is that he was dead when he entered god mode. In that case the player's dead_flag is still set, IIRC, so he would be considered dead for some purposes like ifp palive checks. In the player code there is some weapon handling routines that check whether the player is alive and some that do not...
#554 Posted 05 November 2011 - 04:25 AM
In early version of WoA, I even got some map glitched out in WG BOSS map after using nukes to killed a lot of monsters, it also nuked my savegame with unknown reasons. :\
This post has been edited by Player Lin: 05 November 2011 - 04:32 AM
#555 Posted 05 November 2011 - 07:05 AM
#556 Posted 12 November 2011 - 05:22 AM
Just a couple of bits and bobs regarding WOA.
1: I've been basically rescoring Duke 3D from scratch and wondered if you wanted dibs on it for WOA? I'm about halfway through the game, done half of episode 1, most of 2 and 3 and two songs for episode 4. I could also do some replacements for the other midi files in Attrition as well, so you have your very own specifically created soundtrack. It's an ongoing thing and I've been kind of writing the music as a love letter to the original game. It'll probably take a month or two to finish, but I'm proud of some of the tracks so far and thought they'd fit the more intense, explosive action of Attrition's Original Levels modes rather well. Not sure about replacing those Mark Pattinson oggs because they don't half rock, but if you'd like, I can try. Obviously, I'll have to get you some demos ready and of course, if you do agree to use the music and want to suggest changes, styles, etc, I can try to accomodate.
2: I've run into an issue with the latest version of WOA regarding the nuke. Any time I used it and was looking directly at it, the game would instantly quit to desktop. I'm pretty sure it's a problem my end (using a fairly old graphics card, Nvidea 8400 GS or something) and by simply removing Muelsa's explosion animation from the game files I've got it working again, so no worry.
3: I've noticed in the last few releases, some of the music designations have changed or don't play at all. Of Pigs and Men doesn't play any music, Doom City now plays one of the Ogg files from Attrition mode and so on. Just pointing it out, I've no idea once again if it's just me or if that was an intentional change.
Those last two points are total nitpicks, Attrition has just grown and grown so much over the last year and it's an amazing undertaking. Keep it up!
#557 Posted 12 November 2011 - 08:11 AM
2: Those explosions use a lot of memory. That's why, in the .bat file that starts the mod, I included the line -cachesize 131072 That fixed it for me, but I guess not for everyone. Check your eduke32.log and make sure that the cache size really is being increased to that amount. It's a shame that you had to dump them because they are great animations.
3: It sounds like the music defs are not in sync with the level defs. When you have 32 levels defined per episode and the music defs are just big lists of files that have to be matched up in a certain order to correspond to the levels, it's easy for mistakes to happen, especially when maps are shuffled around or replaced. I'll look into it.
#558 Posted 12 November 2011 - 08:49 AM
DeeperThought, on 12 November 2011 - 08:11 AM, said:
That was the original intention actually. I've written the songs so they could easily be grouped into 4 episodes of the original game, all 4 having certain recurring motifs unique to that specific episode. That way, somebody could pick an episode of music to fit their mod/map/project. I guess with the random user levels in Attrition drawing from the same pool of tunes, it would probably be a little awkward having a rousing space battle tune crop up during a quiet, scary sewer level or something.
And regarding the music slippage in point 3, considering the sheer number of levels and variables you're working with I admire the amount of organisation a project like this takes.
Er, yeah. I'll keep working on the music, look out for a general music thread at some point I guess, if I can figure out where to appropriately post it. Thanks for the time.
#559 Posted 12 November 2011 - 09:22 AM
(An AMD A64 X2 3600+ with OC-ed 8600GT just isn't enough for those awesomeness... :\)
But sometimes, it works fine... I can see its full animations running with many monsters, fps is just low but playable.
(BTW, in the readme html of WoA, the version log of 1.30 said the nuke energy drops was give you 5%, but now it give 10% for every drop, I noticed it's very easy to get 300% max...but maybe just my good luck. :3)
EDIT : I also noticed a small problem about ART in WoA... In Mikko's Earth Base, it originally using its modified tiles014.art for some computer messages display, but due DukeDC also using the same tiles file and tiles slots, cause the Earth Base one display DukeDC tiles and results very funny and weird, even though it won't broke the gameplay at all, just confusing because those computers were display some message texts but just weird textures now.
This post has been edited by Player Lin: 12 November 2011 - 10:10 AM
#560 Posted 12 November 2011 - 12:42 PM
Player Lin, on 12 November 2011 - 09:22 AM, said:
(An AMD A64 X2 3600+ with OC-ed 8600GT just isn't enough for those awesomeness... :\)
But sometimes, it works fine... I can see its full animations running with many monsters, fps is just low but playable.
The lag isn't random. There is a lot of lag the first time you use a nuke. After that, it is much better.
Player Lin, on 12 November 2011 - 09:22 AM, said:
They give 10% now, but they should only drop half as often as before. But there are still plenty of them at higher levels due to more powerful monsters dropping more stuff. It is VERY difficult to balance a mod like this.
#561 Posted 06 February 2012 - 10:52 AM
#562 Posted 06 February 2012 - 11:27 AM
Jack, on 06 February 2012 - 10:52 AM, said:
I don't know what is causing the death rage bug, but since you cannot take damage during death rage, all you have to do is wait until it is over before using your medkit and the bug shouldn't cause you any problem.
The other bug has to do with monsters getting teleported to a different location. That is not supposed to happen when they first spawn, but sometimes it does in some maps. The monsters are still in the map and you can still find them and finish the level.
#563 Posted 10 March 2012 - 05:40 PM
attrition/attcons/ATTUSER.CON:462: warning: number greater than INT32_MAX converted to a negative one. attrition/attcons/ATTMON.CON:224: warning: number greater than INT32_MAX converted to a negative one. attrition/attcons/ATTMON.CON:224: warning: number greater than INT32_MAX converted to a negative one. attrition/attcons/ATTMON.CON:224: warning: number greater than INT32_MAX converted to a negative one. attrition/attcons/ATTMON.CON:224: warning: number greater than INT32_MAX converted to a negative one. attrition/attcons/ATTMON.CON: In state `motionblur': attrition/attcons/ATTMON.CON:2275: warning: symbol `motionblur' already used for game variable.
Now for Imperium...
This post has been edited by LeoD: 10 March 2012 - 05:41 PM
#564 Posted 10 March 2012 - 06:10 PM
#565 Posted 12 April 2012 - 08:12 AM
1. When monster is loosing health (by "wound" ability) and Freezer is selected, he gets frozen just before his HP reaches 0, even if he wasn't shot by freezer itself
2. When player is holding expander upgraded with "clone" ability, all enemies shot by any expand ray gets cloned, even if ray itself was a friendly-fire from Evil Duke, not player
3. RPG is 2D even when HRP is loaded. This probably is related to the update Dan made to RPG scripts some time ago. He updated it for the newest RPG, but this one is only provided by Polymer HRP. I use Polymost HRP 5.1.302.
Suggestions for futher releases:
1. Change the limit of "Level abortions" from 5 to 1 + 1 per 100 000 points. This makes more sense cuz:
-when you start the game there is a slight probability the level would be too hard for not upgraded Duke, or simply player will be unable to finish it for some reason
-as the game progresses the chance of levels repeating increase. I mean: not only the repeating of levels in single gameplay (there are about 100 levels total so it's not a big prob) but from other gameplayes. The player may be simply bored in this case, so why not let him skip level is the's score is big enough (the bigger the score the longer the gameplay)?
2. Add "radar" like the one showing nearest enemy in "War of attrition" mode. The radar would display nearest wall crack, switch, key card or level exit button for easier level progression. Probably should be disabled by default, but turned on in "Attrition menu".
I also have some ideas for some DukePlus-Attrition hybrid. The thing is to add new gameplay elements which are both cool and less "arcade". Will share if Dan's interested.
#566 Posted 12 April 2012 - 08:26 AM
Zaero, on 12 April 2012 - 08:12 AM, said:
I don't use the HRP with Attrition myself, and when I do use the HRP it is the Polymer version, so I never would have noticed this.
I don't remember why Attrition includes any defs for the RPG model, although I'm sure there was some reason for it. Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to have it choose the right model depending on whether you are using Polymer or Polymost. I consider Polymer to be the true official version of the HRP, so if I have to go with one I will leave it as it is.
Here is what you can do. Open att_hrp.def and go to the block of code that looks like this:
// RPG (2544) model "/sprites/fhighresirstperson/2544_rpg.md3" { scale 4 skin { pal 0 surface 0 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/2544_rpg.png" } normal { pal 0 surface 0 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/2544_rpg_n.png" } specular { pal 0 surface 0 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/2544_rpg_s.png" } skin { pal 0 surface 1 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/duke_hand_d.png" specpower 5 specfactor 0.5 } normal { pal 0 surface 1 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/duke_hand_n.png" } specular { pal 0 surface 1 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/duke_hand_s.png" } skin { pal 0 surface 2 file "highres/common/transp.png" } glow { pal 0 surface 2 file "highres/common/transp.png" } frame { name "frame_1" tile 6228 } skin { pal 0 surface 2 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/muzzle_flash_01.png" } glow { pal 0 surface 2 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/muzzle_flash_01.png" } frame { name "frame_1" tile0 6229 tile1 6230 } hud { tile0 6228 tile1 6230 xadd 2 yadd 4 zadd -0.5 angadd -64 fov 250 } }
Replace that with the def code for the RPG from the Polymost HRP and that should fix it for you. Then you can save the file as "att_hrp_polymost.bat"
#567 Posted 12 April 2012 - 08:39 AM
// RPG (2544) model "highres/sprites/firstperson/2544_rpg.md3" { scale 1.9 skin { pal 0 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/2544_rpg.png" } frame { name "idle" tile 2544 } hud { tile 2544 xadd 0.1 yadd 1.15 zadd -0.68 angadd -12 } frame { name "idle" tile0 2545 tile1 2546 } }
Unfortunately RPG is still 2D.. Maybe it's possible to update the HRP itself with the newer RPG? Will it work with polymost?
This post has been edited by Zaero: 12 April 2012 - 09:10 AM
#568 Posted 12 April 2012 - 08:46 AM
#569 Posted 12 April 2012 - 09:44 AM
// RPG (2544) model "highres/sprites/firstperson/2544_rpg.md3" { scale 4 skin { pal 0 surface 0 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/2544_rpg.png" } normal { pal 0 surface 0 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/2544_rpg_n.png" } specular { pal 0 surface 0 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/2544_rpg_s.png" } skin { pal 0 surface 1 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/duke_hand_d.png" specpower 5 specfactor 0.5 } normal { pal 0 surface 1 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/duke_hand_n.png" } specular { pal 0 surface 1 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/duke_hand_s.png" } skin { pal 0 surface 2 file "highres/common/transp.png" } glow { pal 0 surface 2 file "highres/common/transp.png" } frame { name "frame_1" tile 2544 } skin { pal 0 surface 2 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/muzzle_flash_01.png" } glow { pal 0 surface 2 file "highres/sprites/firstperson/muzzle_flash_01.png" } frame { name "frame_1" tile0 2545 tile1 2546 } hud { tile0 2544 tile1 2546 xadd 0.1 yadd 1.15 zadd -0.68 angadd -12 fov 250 } }
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It's becouse I'm not familiar with this technical mumbo-jumbo and wasn't sure where the RPG def ends (there was a "shell" model definition futher, which got me confused - Is it shogun shell or some sort of mortar shell (RPG rocket maybe).
#570 Posted 12 April 2012 - 11:23 AM
You want to replace the defs for the Polymer RPG hud model with the defs for the Polymost RPG hud model, while making sure that it is on tile numbers 6228-6230 (like the Polymer one in att_hrp.bat). I have not actually looked at the Polymost defs, and I don't understand why it has entries for "normal" and "specular" since Polymost does not support those features.
Another thing you could do to make it work is comment out the hud code in ATTHUD.CON that makes it use tiles 6228-6230 instead of the regular RPG tiles. That's all I have to say about it, sorry.