[Radar]

When defining a new sound in the con files, how does one define it to be usable with the M ambience effector?

[Mikko]

Give its bitfield a value of 2. Like this:
definesound SOMESOUND SOMESOUND.VOC 0 0 0 2 0

You also need to define the sound like this:
define SOMESOUND x where x is some unused number (which you'll use for the M sprite).

[DavoX]

I'm optimizing my map... does it make a difference to place the tile #1 on the walls that you can't see? or better yet, is there any texture or anything that I can use to make the maps run faster?

[Diaz]

Is it a Polymer map? If so, use cstat 2 (first level of transparency) for less "important" lights and cstat 514 (second level of transparency) for those that are even less important. That way we can play with the r_pr_maxlightpriority cvar to improve performance on slower machines.

Just remember that if a light touches an object (sprite, wall, etc) it will have to be rendered again. If five lights hit an object, it will have to be rendered five times. Prioritize lights based on that principle.

[DavoX]

No sorry I'm not using polymer.

[Gambini]

I don´t think there´s a difference. But just for the sake tidy polishment, I usually paint all invisible walls with that small blue texture.

[Diaz]

oh, I thought you were using polymer because I saw a video of you working on a polymer map somewhere. For software, I don't think there's much you can do once the map is mostly finished, other than try to reduce the number of different tiles used as much as you can and see where you may want to reduce vertex counts....

[ck3D]

just found out about yet another little mapping quirk i was not aware of until now (i love reporting such things here as i find out about them), overlords do not respect invisible blocked walls nor forcefields and will just run through them. i think they are the only enemy with such a behavior ? i guess that's how they were hard coded and it dates back to the original game ? i wonder if cycloids would do the same thing in a lo-tagged environment that lets them run around freely

[DavoX]

Would it be possible to make Respawn sprites respawn anything I want? like walls and such, let's say I have a flattened respawn with shade of 10 and pal of 2, it should respawn a wall with those properties. The possibilities are endless.

[Mikko]

If by "wall" you mean a flat sprite then yes, with code it can be done.

[Hendricks266]

ck3D, on 28 May 2013 - 06:58 AM, said:

i wonder if cycloids would do the same thing in a lo-tagged environment that lets them run around freely

Non-miniboss Cycloids have their own hard-coded stuff. See ST3.

[Fox]

ck3D, on 28 May 2013 - 06:58 AM, said:

overlords do not respect invisible blocked walls nor forcefields and will just run through them.

I did some testing and that doesn't seems to be true. And if that was true, shouldn't the Overlord fall off in space at E2L9?

Hendricks266, on 28 May 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

Non-miniboss Cycloids have their own hard-coded stuff. See ST3.

He knows that, he was wondering if the Cycloid Emperor could cross a blocked wall if the sector behind it also had a lo-tag of 3.

[ck3D]

Hendricks266, on 28 May 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

Non-miniboss Cycloids have their own hard-coded stuff. See ST3.

thank you, i already knew about lotag 3 though, that's why i was wondering if in a lotag 3 environment, cycloids would be able to bypass walls as well, but i was just thinking out loud more than anything, i do not have a special effect in mind that would require this type of behavior (I just noticed Fox beat me to it and I basically repeated his exact post. ah well)

Fox, on 28 May 2013 - 10:45 AM, said:

I did some testing and that doesn't seems to be true. And if that was true, shouldn't the Overlord fall off in space at E2L9?

interesting, then maybe it only happens in certain contexts, basically what i am doing in my current map is making spaceships that are hovering over certain bits of a city block, underneath the spaceships there are bottom doors from which bosses are hanging upside down and shooting at the player, the bosses are kept in mid-air and protected from the player's bullets by a set of different invisible sprites and blocked walls in order to make for a one-way attack (similar to the effect at the end of my latest map wide awake), out of curiosity i have tried it with all four bosses in order to see how they would react and which one would work the best, the overlord was the only one who would not stay in his blocked sector and just run through the blocked walls, mind you this has happened with different types of spaceship constructions with different sector sizes and such, all rebuilt from scratch everytime so it is not like i forgot to block one wall once. maybe the sector i was trying to keep them in was too small and they just glitched their way through the nearest wall upon activation, but then why doesn't any other boss do the same thing (maybe because the overlord is the only one whose first reaction upon awakening is to run toward the player ?), the actors of all four bosses have the same size properties right ?

[Fox]

Yes, all bosses have the same width. Also all of the bosses except the Alien Queen run towards the player on sight.

[ck3D]

then if it has no rational explanation, my problem was probably an oddity of some sort i am not knowledgeable enough about the game to understand. still weird i managed to replicate it several times, i am 100% sure it was not a mapping flaw on my end, so i still wonder what caused that. i will experiment more and see if i can find out anything, just for the sake of overcoming my own ignorance.

[LAW]

Is it possible to force an actor to follow the LOCATORS sprite in the Recon Car's manner?

[Diaz]

Yes, but you would have to code it.... you'd need to scan for locators in a determined sector, get their sprite ID's, then make your actor face them and move horizontally in their direction.

[fgsfds]

Is it possible to make a sound continue playing after submerging?

[Mark]

How do I disable the knuckle cracking animation and sound in the game?

[Hendricks266]

onevent EVENT_GAME
    ifactor APLAYER
        setplayer[THISACTOR].knuckle_incs 0
endevent

[Mblackwell]

Hendricks266, on 01 June 2013 - 08:55 PM, said:

onevent EVENT_GAME
    ifactor APLAYER
        setplayer[THISACTOR].knuckle_incs 0
endevent

Or from the APLAYER actor if you don't need mutators.

[Mark]

Sorry MB, you went beyond my knowledge level. I copied and pasted the code to the third line of my GAME.CON file, right after the first 2 lines for "include DEFS.CON and USER.CON" It works fine. Is that the best place to put it?

[pmw]

Can I end episode without the boss monster?
I have now 65535 sector as end of my episode in last map. But when I finish that last map, game continues to secret level (which has bigger ID-number in USER.CON than latest real map).

Do I really need a boss to finish my episode?

[Forge]

have you tried defining in the Con the secret level to a lower level number than the last map?

[pmw]

No I havent. I was just thinking, do I really need con coding for this. Maybe I need then, erm

[Fox]

Yes, you need a boss to finish the episode.

[RichardStorm]

You could put an actor in your sector which triggers "endofgame" when you step in that sector:

actor ENDGAMEACTOR
cstat 32768
 ifvarvare sprite[player[THISACTOR].i].sectnum  sprite[THISACTOR].sectnum
  { endofgame 30    // change 30 as you prefer, this is frame number after which the game ends
    // add effects or quotes if you like
    killit }
enda 

I just tested it and it works perfectly.

[pmw]

RichardStorm, on 06 June 2013 - 03:31 AM, said:

You could put an actor in your sector which triggers "endofgame" when you step in that sector:

actor ENDGAMEACTOR
cstat 32768
 ifvarvare sprite[player[THISACTOR].i].sectnum  sprite[THISACTOR].sectnum
  { endofgame 30    // change 30 as you prefer, this is frame number after which the game ends
    // add effects or quotes if you like
    killit }
enda 

I just tested it and it works perfectly.

I could try this. In fact, there's also even more simpler solution for this.

definelevelname 0 7 pmw8.map 19:00 13:50 KAUPINRANTA
definelevelname 0 8 null.map XX:XX XX:XX finish
definelevelname 0 9 pmw10.map 14:48 07:00 KOSKEN KORVA

pmw8.map is last real map of my episode. pmw10.map is secret level. So, game _should_ end in pmw8.map.
When I put nonexistent map between this, example; null.map, game ends. Game can't find null.map file and game ends... It's pretty nasty way to end a game, but it works.

[Radar]

Simple question: is there a function in Mapster that will set the floor height of selected sectors to a desired value?

[Fox]

Press F7 in a sector.