[Fox]

 Mikko_Sandt, on 07 March 2013 - 04:43 AM, said:

Maybe at one point, but I'm guessing they intentionally left it the way it is for the final product, deciding that it's better that you can't shrink them.

That seems very unlikely. The bug is not actually directed at the Battlelord, but to all monsters which first tile is too tall (which also affect the blast damage for all enemies). And they could have easily have added a better solution in the CON, among all the work they put to make it so that the Battlelord Sentry can be shrunk but the boss at the end of the episode not. And they also increased Shrinker blast radius in the Atomic Edition, which seems like a poor attempt to fix this bug.

[Spirrwell]

 Fox, on 05 March 2013 - 11:16 AM, said:

Basically what happens is that the auto-aim seeks for the middle of the Battlelord Sentry, although the actor actually "exists" beetween his feet. Because the Shrinker radius explosion is too small (680 units) it is not big enough to reach the feet of an actor as tall as the Battlelord.

To fix this problem it would require the radius explosion to be based on the middle of an enemy instead of the feet, which would also increase the damage of all other weapons with a radius explosion...

Well seeing as this silly discussion has gotten as far as it has, does this apply to all enemies? How about the other Dukes in multiplayer? I prefer aiming for the feet anyhow, but if that's the case I'll use pipebombs more often!

[Fox]

Yes, it apply to all enemies, but not for the player. A player has his own sets of coordinates separated from the sprite.

[Jimmy]

Knowing Replogle, he probably just fucked up the code and never bothered to fix it.

[Fox]

It's not like the code is messed up, it's just not very good. In Doom, the radius explosion is supposedly calculated from the "border" of an entity, while in Duke it is from the sprite source (located beetween the feet). As a result, in Duke 3D the larger the enemy the less damage it takes from explosives.

[Jimmy]

I was referring more to the Battle Lord than radius explosions, but yes, in general Replogle was just a very sloppy programmer. The only reason I hold him to any esteem is because of the CON system.

[Radar]

Dude, don't be hatin' on Replogle. That guy practically invented Duke Nukem as a character.



Apparently, right after Duke Nukem 3D was released he moved to Thailand and opened a PVC piping business. He had no clue whether it would work out for him; guy's got balls.

[Jimmy]

I'm not hating on him, but if you know anything about programming, you would swear the guy was smoking crack when he wrote some of this shit.

[NNC]

I think it's an intentional addition, and that's because you can't shrink everything in the game. You can't shrink for example the Big Battlelord which is only a palette away from his smaller brothers. You can't shrink mechanical enemies or newbeasts as well. You can't shrink the Mini Queen. This means the shrinking ability of the Mini Battlelord is just coded to the game for real, and it's not just a lazy side effect. I also think this was planned as a gimmicky easter egg, just like the Tank's destruction button or the Liztroop's occassional resurrection. Since the guys made this game for auto aim playing, this shrinking ability is very hard to figure out, and it's never safe or easy to use it even if you know how to do it.

In short, it's good in the way it works in the game. An interesting side note that newbeast can shrink the minibosses easier from behind, which means the minibosses' rear parts are just as vulnerable as their feet.

The poster who said the tank's destruction button takes out it's challenge must be smoking something. Sometimes it's a lot harder to get into their back, push the button without taking any harm, and run like hell away to take more... there are many occassions when the tanks are easier to be destroyed with explosives.

[Fox]

 Nancsi, on 20 March 2013 - 07:37 AM, said:

I think it's an intentional addition, and that's because you can't shrink everything in the game. You can't shrink for example the Big Battlelord which is only a palette away from his smaller brothers. You can't shrink mechanical enemies or newbeasts as well. You can't shrink the Mini Queen.

All of these are present in the CON, unlike the Battlelord Sentry case which is a idiosyncrasy of the projectile behavior.

 Nancsi, on 20 March 2013 - 07:37 AM, said:

This means the shrinking ability of the Mini Battlelord is just coded to the game for real, and it's not just a lazy side effect.

No, it is an unintended behavior. I already explained that it is because the Battlelord sprite is too big (meaning that it's also caused by the .art files).

Another reason is because of how the projectiles work, and because the Shrinker does zero of damage, it never returns true for direct impact and depends on the explosion range. To fix the problem with the Battlelord Sentry you can either increase the explosion radius a little, or change the damage to 1.

 Nancsi, on 20 March 2013 - 07:37 AM, said:

An interesting side note that newbeast can shrink the minibosses easier from behind, which means the minibosses' rear parts are just as vulnerable as their feet.

No, it has nothing to do with the angle it hits. It's just because the Protector Drone is aiming at the player, so it hits a lower part of the Battlelord Sentry.

[NNC]

Maybe it's an auto aim problem, but it doesn't matter. I just like how this works in reality: you can shrink them, but it's very hard to figure the way out (for an average Joe at least). These little things made Duke 3D so cool and timeless.

Btw. the game is all about rock-paper-scissors. The Octabrains are ridiculously irrelevant against a single devastator shot (was that a bug actually), the Commander is useless against the shrinker, the pistol is very effective against turrets, and the more often than not useless expander is overpowered against slimer eggs.

[Fox]

How is the Octabrain being killed by a single RPG / Devastator rocket a bug?

[NNC]

 Fox, on 20 March 2013 - 09:48 AM, said:

How is the Octabrain being killed by a single RPG / Devastator rocket a bug?

I don't know, just it's strange. The enemy is rather strong, a single Dev. shot is pretty weak, not enough to kill a single liztroop. It feels a gimmicky addition to the gameplay.

[Danukem]

 Player Lin, on 06 March 2013 - 03:07 AM, said:

......I always think I needed to deal some amounts of damage on battlelord and able to shrink him......

I have coded some of my mods to work that way (e.g. Attrition), so that the shrinker has a certain amount of power, and if the enemy has more hit points than that it doesn't work. I wonder if that's why you got that impression.

[Fox]

It's not like hit points would effectively nerf the Shrinker. If you can shrink an Commander with a single shot, it would take 2-3 shots to take one Battlelord...

[Danukem]

 Fox, on 20 March 2013 - 11:48 AM, said:

It's not like hit points would effectively nerf the Shrinker. If you can shrink an Commander with a single shot, it would take 2-3 shots to take one Battlelord...

I don't mean to derail the thread by replying to this, but, that's not the way I coded it. The shrinker does very little actual damage itself. When it hits, it shrinks the monster only if its strength is below a certain number. So you can shoot the battlelord many times and it won't shrink him, unless he has been weakened by other weapons first.

[De-M-oN]

And this would've been the best solution for the original game ..

And I even wonder why they didnt code it this way.

[Hendricks266]

 Fox, on 20 March 2013 - 09:48 AM, said:

How is the Octabrain being killed by a single RPG / Devastator rocket a bug?

state checkoctahitstate
  ifwasweapon SHRINKSPARK
  {
    sound ACTOR_SHRINKING
    ai AIOCTASHRUNK
  }
  else
  {
    ifdead
    {
      ifwasweapon FREEZEBLAST
      {
        sound SOMETHINGFROZE
        spritepal 1
        move 0
        action AOCTAFROZEN
        strength 0
        break
      }

      addkills 1
      ifwasweapon RPG
      {
        sound SQUISHED
        state standard_jibs
        killit
      }
      else
        ifwasweapon RADIUSEXPLOSION
      {
        sound SQUISHED
        state standard_jibs
        killit
      }
      else
        ifwasweapon GROWSPARK
      {
        cstat 0
        sound ACTOR_GROWING
        ai AIOCTAGROW
        break
      }
      else
      {
        state rf
        ai AIOCTADYING
      }
      sound OCTA_DYING
    }
    else
    {
      ifwasweapon RPG // This causes the RPG to be a one-hit kill.
      {
        sound OCTA_DYING
        addkills 1
        state standard_jibs
        killit
      }
      else
        ifwasweapon GROWSPARK
          sound EXPANDERHIT

      sound OCTA_PAIN
      spawn BLOOD
      ifrnd 64
        ai AIOCTAHIT
    }
  }
  state random_wall_jibs
ends

[Player Lin]

 Trooper Dan, on 20 March 2013 - 11:24 AM, said:

I have coded some of my mods to work that way (e.g. Attrition), so that the shrinker has a certain amount of power, and if the enemy has more hit points than that it doesn't work. I wonder if that's why you got that impression.

Before I try editing the USER.CON, around 2003-2004, I played a lot of classic user maps(both 1.3d and 1.5) with DOS Duke3D. And I noticed I always had shrinker left when I ran out of ammo in most user levels, and always encountered the "mini-battlelords" without any ammo but shitload of shrinker ammo for some reasons... Try shoot them with my shrinker but it just didn't worked at all and then got killed.

After so many time to got killed by those mini battlelords, I still tried to shooting them with my useless shrinker, and then...suddenly, I got one of mini-battlelord shrinked after I shoot him with my 48 pistol ammo and 1-3 shrinker shot... I have no idea why it happens back then.

And, after that, I tried do more tests on it, just shoot mini-battlelord with other weapons and then use shrinker, but weirdly, they sure got shrinked after some shot of shrinker, about 90-95% chance I can got them to shrink when I hurt them first with other weapons. So I starting to guess it worked after I hurt them first, and I don't really know about why...
(I know shrinker does 0 damage and basically, it totally useless to hurt them.)

When I starting to edited my USER.CON, try increased the damage value of shrinker shoot, and I noticed now they always got shrinked but I still didn't know why too...

Until I saw this thread and yes, I still have no idea at now......

[Danukem]

 Hendricks266, on 20 March 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

    else
    {
      ifwasweapon RPG // This causes the RPG to be a one-hit kill.
      {
        sound OCTA_DYING
        addkills 1
        state standard_jibs
        killit
      }

So is it a bug or is it working as intended? Maybe Octabrains are supposed to have a special weakness for rockets.

[De-M-oN]

 Trooper Dan, on 21 March 2013 - 07:54 AM, said:

So is it a bug or is it working as intended? Maybe Octabrains are supposed to have a special weakness for rockets.

I think its intentional

As already said the turrets are weak against pistol and so every enemy seems to have a specific weakness like Nancsi already mentioned.

Quote

And, after that, I tried do more tests on it, just shoot mini-battlelord with other weapons and then use shrinker, but weirdly, they sure got shrinked after some shot of shrinker, about 90-95% chance I can got them to shrink when I hurt them first with other weapons. So I starting to guess it worked after I hurt them first, and I don't really know about why...
(I know shrinker does 0 damage and basically, it totally useless to hurt them.)

When I starting to edited my USER.CON, try increased the damage value of shrinker shoot, and I noticed now they always got shrinked but I still didn't know why too...

hmmm ok thats interesting

[Fox]

 Player Lin, on 21 March 2013 - 06:14 AM, said:

When I starting to edited my USER.CON, try increased the damage value of shrinker shoot, and I noticed now they always got shrinked but I still didn't know why too...

Until I saw this thread and yes, I still have no idea at now......

I just explained that if the Shrinker does one or more of damage it returns true for direct impact.

 Trooper Dan, on 21 March 2013 - 07:54 AM, said:

So is it a bug or is it working as intended? Maybe Octabrains are supposed to have a special weakness for rockets.

It is intended, it's was just written so they are killed in a single hit by RPG and its derivatives.

[Danukem]

 De-M-oN, on 21 March 2013 - 08:20 AM, said:

As already said the turrets are weak against pistol and so every enemy seems to have a specific weakness like Nancsi already mentioned.

I missed that discussion, but turrets aren't actually weak against pistols, it just seems that way because the pistol has hardcoded auto-aim (any enemy under the cursor automatically gets hit) and turrets are small targets. So the pistol is in fact the best weapon to use against turrets, but it doesn't do extra damage against them.

[Fox]

The Expander is better.