[Micky C]

There's been a problem with spotlights as far back as I can remember; they don't cast shadows for any sprites which are behind them. This means that if you had a spotlight facing downward, if you were standing on one side, you would have a Duke shadow, and if you walked across to the other side, your shadow suddenly disappears, and vice versa. Not to mention a room full of sprites would look strange with only some of the sprites casting shadows.

In the pic below, I've circled the spotlight in red, and indicated the direction it's pointing with a yellow arrow. All the sprites behind it, circled in the light blue, will not cast a shadow. It all depends on which way the SE is pointing. If you pointed it down, the sprites in the circle will cast a shadow and the sprites above the middle blue line won't. It does however cast shadows on all map geometry. It doesn't matter how big or what size the sprite/model is, it's whether it's location is behind the SE or not. Is this going to be fixed in the near future? I've explained it as best I could.

[Helixhorned]

TX, on 13 May 2011 - 06:05 PM, said:

Eh? r1500 is one of your commits and doesn't change anything in game land that I can see...

Oops, I meant 1450.

edit: this fixes it, but dunno if it breaks anything:

Index: source/actors.c
===================================================================
--- source/actors.c     (revision 1884)
+++ source/actors.c     (working copy)
@@ -3301,7 +3301,7 @@
                 break;
 
             case STAT_PROJECTILE:
-                if (sectlotag != 0) goto JBOLT;
+//                if (sectlotag != 0) goto JBOLT;
             case STAT_ACTOR:
                 if ((sprite[j].picnum == SHARK) || (sprite[j].picnum == COMMANDER) || (sprite[j].picnum == OCTABRAIN)
                         || ((sprite[j].picnum >= GREENSLIME) && (sprite[j].picnum <= GREENSLIME+7)))

[NY00123]

Looks like the place for the following hard(?) to spot issue...

If you try using one of these music packs with a user map other than E1L8.MAP, you'd hear that it's not working and plain MIDI is played back.
Apparently, if you load, say, a map named PLATINUM.MAP, then it'd look for PLATINUM.MID or PLATINUM.OGG first (probably the OGG beforehand), and if both are not found, it'd revert back to the "vanilla" E1L8 track, MIDI version, skipping the OGG one.

Some more relevant info: Say that you load DN3D as-is with no arguments (with the possible exception of the music pack), and then select E1L8 from the "User Maps" submenu. Then you'd hear the OGG track as expected. Now select some other map and you'd hear the MIDI. Select E1L8 again, and you'd still hear the MIDI.
On the other hand: Load a non-E1L8 user map from the beginning via command line arguments, and you'd hear the MIDI; Then select E1L8 from the menu, and you'd hear the MIDI again.

Now when I think about it... E1L9 to E1L11 may also be affected in similar manners.
Regarding these, there are two user maps, both named E1L9.MAP (yep...). Vanilla Duke behavior would be to use the E1L8 track (dethtoll) if these are loaded with "-map E1L9", and the E1L9 track (streets) if "/l9 /v1" is used ("-l9 -v1" for EDuke32).

Truly, interesting... guess there are wrong logics which can be fixed, although it's maybe more complicated than what one may think (especially for maps like the two "E1L9"s).

Well, that's it for now

[Hendricks266]

Honestly, I never understood why Hunter_rus implemented the music command using "ExLyy" syntax without a direct midi-->ogg specification.

[NY00123]

Well, checking out it a bit, I've spotted a mention of dethtoll.mid in the source for the case of failure.
A test I've done with a modified USER.CON file has then revealed what I've just guessed:

If, upon loading a user map other than E1L8.MAP, the game fails to locate a MID or OGG file of the same name as the map's, not only it loads a "vanilla" MID; It always loads dethtoll.mid.
So, even if you have a modified USER.CON with the track for E1L8 set to something other than dethtoll.mid, it'll still playback dethtoll.mid in this very specific case (which is hardcoded).
The alternate track defined in a modified USER.CON should be played back properly as long as you don't load a user map other than E1L8.MAP.

After looking a bit at the code, I'd say that it may take a little more to fix than what one may think... maybe not much, though.

[ReaperMan]

Anyone know whats going on here? The night vision goggles seem to sink into the map on E3L3 floodzone in software.

[Danukem]

Where are the goggles supposed to be located? Normally, when an item sprite is on the surface of water, it is invisible.

[ReaperMan]

There is a pair there, but the problem is that in software you can see them when its a voxel.

[Hendricks266]

NY00123, on 15 February 2012 - 08:53 AM, said:

So, even if you have a modified USER.CON with the track for E1L8 set to something other than dethtoll.mid, it'll still playback dethtoll.mid in this very specific case (which is hardcoded).

That is not good. Unfortunately we can't hardcode looking for dethtoll.ogg since usually it is in a location like highres/music/dethtoll.ogg, but we can add another attempt to load E1L8's music. In addition, I could add a third parameter to "music 0" which overrides a default E1L8 definition for user maps while adding a little bit of freedom to a longer Episode 1.

ReaperMan, on 15 February 2012 - 03:00 PM, said:

Anyone know whats going on here? The night vision goggles seem to sink into the map on E3L3 floodzone in software.

Could you post a screenshot in the same location with r_voxels 0?

[Fox]

Hendricks266, on 15 February 2012 - 07:46 PM, said:

In addition, I could add a third parameter to "music 0" which overrides a default E1L8 definition for user maps while adding a little bit of freedom to a longer Episode 1.

I believe that whole E1L8 thing should be removed. I don't see why we still need to load the User Map in episode 0 level 7, I would prefer it would be load as Episode -1 level 0 or something like that.

[Hendricks266]

I took a look at the code for music filename handling today and it is NOT pretty. It is a spaghetti weave of confusing stuff. Ideally I would rather rip it out and replace it with something more sensible and moddable, based independently of episodes and levels for better modding possibilities, but it would be the biggest thing I've ever undertaken (not saying much) and I would probably end up with a system using music ID numbers like there are sound ID numbers. Then, that reminds me how much having sequential numbers of sprites/sounds/quotes sucks for mixing and matching various packs and mods together compared to something like Doom's four-letter strings and how replacing it would require modification of most of the lines of code in the game.

If I really muster up the courage I could do something with the five empty string spaces following the intro, briefing, and "loading" songs (the last of which I just discovered today and in fact works when specified from defs, but following grabbag and briefing on the "music 0" line apparently did nothing (?)) but I don't know how exactly I would arrange it. Probably one could be a new "usermap" token only specifiable from def, and the other could be the landing for mapname-based song discoveries if one does not exist already.

[Helixhorned]

Hendricks266, on 10 March 2012 - 10:42 PM, said:

Then, that reminds me how much having sequential numbers of sprites/sounds/quotes sucks for mixing and matching various packs and mods together compared to something like Doom's four-letter strings and how replacing it would require modification of most of the lines of code in the game.

Apart from gaining the ability to name stuff by nasty four-letter words, I don't find Doom's mechanism very pretty either. What would be nice to have is some kind of relocation mechanism that transparently shifts related indices (e.g. tilenums in loaded maps and in the code) by a constant offset.

[RichardStorm]

I think actual music system is good, but it becomes a bit tricky when setting a boss fighting music, or an intro/outro and other motion sequences. I think to a system which declares other musics not related to any map or episode, and then played replacing the main map theme when CONs ask it.
Moreover, expecially with cinematics, it would be great that musics stop end resume when entering the menu or help screen for example, or giving this function to normal sounds, as it happens in Doom, if someone would use sfx instead of game music for the same purpose.

[Danukem]

RichardStorm, on 11 March 2012 - 07:04 AM, said:

I think actual music system is good, but it becomes a bit tricky when setting a boss fighting music, or an intro/outro and other motion sequences. I think to a very useful system which declare other musics not related to any map or episode, and then played replacing the main map theme when CONs ask it. Moreover, expecially with cinematics, would be great music stops when entering the menu or help screen for example.

+1

It's not cool that music currently has to be defined for specific maps in specific episodes. It forces us to do weird things like declare episodes that aren't really playable just so we can have more tracks.. And something that makes mid-level transitions awkward is that there is no built-in way to detect which music is playing. Once you change music using starttrack, there is no record of what happened unless you make your own CON var to coincide with it.

[RichardStorm]

I edited the previous post a bit, excuse me.

[RichardStorm]

Oh sure i think also to music systems like in Serious Sam (i don't remember other games by now) where different tracks (from soft to badass) are perfectly timed and played when encountering enemies and then killed them all. This would be a pain in the ass to create and make it work.

Now i don't remember good, but when i tried to manipulate starttrack and game musics i encountered difficulties by setting additional volumes without maps, and i was forced to add an empty episode...

EDIT: Wait... we are talking about this in "problems that could be fixed with a few minutes of effort"... d'oh !

[LSDNinja]

RichardStorm, on 11 March 2012 - 07:17 AM, said:

Oh sure i think also to music systems like in Serious Sam (i don't remember other games by now) where different tracks (from soft to badass) are perfectly timed and played when encountering enemies and then killed them all. This would be a pain in the ass to create and make it work.

Now i don't remember good, but when i tried to manipulate starttrack and game musics i encountered difficulties by setting additional volumes without maps, and i was forced to add an empty episode...

EDIT: Wait... we are talking about this in "problems that could be fixed with a few minutes of effort"... d'oh !

FreeSpace has a system like that, but you're right that it's a pain to implement not just on the code side, but when it comes to the actual tracks. The tracks have to be composed in a certain way (ISTR something about ending on an upbeat, but it's been ages since I read that document) to facilitate easy transitions and you have to set them up in groups of 7 or something iirc to line up with various events (friendlies arriving, hostiles arriving, hostiles clear, etc). Set up right it's great, but it's not something you can really do unless you're willing to compose your own stuff so no one bothers with it instead playing sounds on loop or timed to cutscenes or whatever.

[RichardStorm]

No no, i was only remembering and suggesting a nice system, not asking for its creation. However i think it could be possible simply getting elapsed time from 00:00 and starting other tracks from the same point.

[MusicallyInspired]

All I really want is to set loop points (based on samples) via CON or even right in the DEF.

[Danukem]

MusicallyInspired, on 11 March 2012 - 11:54 AM, said:

All I really want is to set loop points (based on samples) via CON or even right in the DEF.

What do you mean? It's always been possible to play looping sounds and music.

[Hendricks266]

He means the standard in VG where you have your music format contain information to loop back at the end of the song to a point usually shortly after the actual intro so that it is seamless. The Duke MIDIs actually have this built in but there is no way currently to define this for OGG, or MIDI from outside the file itself.

[MusicallyInspired]

What Hendricks said. Hence the term "loop points". And "samples" as in the number of samples in a waveform. A much more accurate pinpointing method than minutes and seconds.

[TerminX]

Bumping this thread.

Simple (5-15 min) bug fix or feature requests, go!

[LeoD]

TerminX, on 23 October 2012 - 10:38 AM, said:

Simple (5-15 min) bug fix or feature requests, go!

LeoD, on 22 October 2012 - 09:13 AM, said:

Couldn't EDuke32 simply act on VOCs like on user map MIDs in terms of preferring an OGG with the same basename if available?

Maybe it's that easy, maybe it's not...

[TerminX]

Doesn't it already do that?

[LeoD]

TerminX, on 23 October 2012 - 12:51 PM, said:

Doesn't it already do that?

Unfortunately not.

[TerminX]

The source code disagrees. Maybe someone broke the relevant functionality at some point...

[Gambini]

I still have that sound bug pendient. I know I said I was going to record a video but then I remembered that my sound card doesnt support "what you hear" recording. So I should put the mic next to the speakers and the volume considerably loud to hide all the shouts, nags and barks that poblate my soundscape.

[Gambini]

http://www.livestrea...41-8374679795d0

Ok sorry for the quality, in case you want to skip it, I discovered one more thing: The ambient sounds dont play when you load your game from the menu, pressing F9 (quickload) doesnt seem to affect the sound at all.

EDIT: You may want to skip the first 1.50 minutes of video
So, here are the conditions for ambient sounds to not play on loaded games:

At the moment of saving, the ambient sound was audible, but at the same time another non looped sound was being played (i.e a gunshot).
The savegame has to be loaded from the menu, and not a quickload.

This may sound as a very specific situation, but actually happens a lot of times.

[TerminX]

But how is that a "paper cut"? I told you previously that I tried to reproduce it and it simply does not occur here.