[NightFright]

Kinda epic bump, but hopefully justified:

Tried playing DNF2013 with EDuke32 r6717 and reached the place in the EDF headquarters where you have to blow up the shooting range dummy after the aliens attack the base (see Youtube video). However, the crack does not blow up when I shoot it with the RPG.

Can anybody confirm this?

[I know, the mod is supposed to be played with the supplied exe, but still, it'd be great to know what changed in EDuke32 behavior to break this.]

[Danukem]

I have just sent a message to Gambini about this, but I have not checked it myself. It's disturbing to think that a basic feature like blowing up a crack would be broken by an EDuke32 update -- AFAIK DNF 2013 did not have any special scripts that would have messed that up.

@NIghtFright: Did you try checking with the _included_ exe as well? It's a problem in any case, but we should be 100% sure that the copy you downloaded works with the older exe.

[Danukem]

Bump: EDuke32 bug confirmed. I downloaded DNF 2013 from Mod DB, tested it with the included exe and the crack works correctly. Then I subbed in exe revision 6715 and the crack cannot be destroyed. I'm not sure what else I can do.


EDIT: I found something that may be relevant. The crack sprite has a hitag of -12069. The actual number entered is 53467 but it overflows to negative. I wonder if that number is now outside of the allowable hitag range. Maybe it was all along, but a former EDuke32 bug let is slip past? I will try changing it to a more sane number to see what happens.

EDIT2

Problem Identified. The hitag 53467 is outside of the allowable range in recent revisions, but it worked back in 2013. I changed the tags to 3467 and the effect worked fine.

[NightFright]

I have identified the EDuke32 build that broke this. Every synthesis build up to r6580 (first build released in 2018) works, anything after that shows the bug. That means it just broke rather recently.

Changelog from r6581:

Quote

Revert the parts of r3159 corresponding to redefining lotag and hitag as unsigned, so that they are once again signed.

Any issues in Duke's code relating to misunderstanding these types are now restricted to Duke itself rather than changing the engine and potentially introducing new issues in all Build games.

Since I have played the whole mod including DLC with r6717, I can say this is the only problem I was able to find - however, a quite severe one.

[Hendricks266]

[eduke32] hendricks266 * r6722 2 files : Re-allow negative hitags on crack sprites.

[NightFright]

And it works again! Thanks a lot for this really fast fix! ^^

[VGA]

Wait, so you can use recent eduke32 builds even though the moddb description tells you not to?

[NightFright]

If you don't use a snapshot between r6581 and 6718 (or in other words: r6722 or newer), it is indeed possible. As stated above, I have just played through the whole mod including the DLC with new snapshots and only got stuck in edfbase.map (which is now fixed). The exe included with DNF2013 has been edited to have a nice launcher image that fits with the mod, though. Standard snapshots won't have that, ofc.

[NNC]

I'm not sure what's the point of these kind of updates, like fixing something that isn't broken. It's like the pal versions of monsters, many snapshots used the v1.3D version with doubled hit points on all monsters. Nobody asked for it, especially those mappers who made their maps with a different mind. Or like the versions where Enforcers were allowed to enter water sectors which is clearly wrong due to the enemy's athletic behaviour.

These efforts are meaningless and should be added to fix the performance issues or the neverending annoyances like the chaingun when it runs out of ammo. I'm pretty sure the more-than-once reported floor aligned, not block/hitscan tagged button problem is still there too.

[Danukem]

 VGA, on 06 March 2018 - 06:15 AM, said:

Wait, so you can use recent eduke32 builds even though the moddb description tells you not to?

That advice is included because it is well-known that newer builds sometimes break things. It's the safest way for the mod developer to avoid hearing about problems that they have no control over. However, newer builds really should work flawlessly. In this case, it's important for newer builds to work because DNF is still being developed, and the next release will include all of the old levels with updates, as well as new content. As the person who will be coding the scripts in the next release, I really don't wan to be stuck using a build of EDuke32 from 2013. It lacks a lot of features and improvements of the current build, like widescreen working properly.

[NightFright]

TBH I always use latest snapshot to run mods. That's also how we found the showstopper in one of the WGR2 maps and got it fixed by Hendricks.

I am glad you guys are still working on this and hope for more maps of similar quality than those that came with the 2013 release. The bike sequences were great but sometimes annoying because driving mistakes happened quite frequently in high-speed situations. And as remarkable as the "Born To Be Wild" bike level from the DLC was, it was a nightmare to get through. You were forced to drive fast during tunnel collapses and any mistake could be your last. If there are more vehicle sequences in the new version, they should be more enjoyable.

[Danukem]

I honestly don't know what will be new or different regarding the bike, other than a few bug fixes. I agree in general that when a first person shooter has segments featuring a completely different kind of gameplay, that those segments shouldn't be very frustrating, since that's not what the player signed up for.

[NightFright]

Well, it was only excessive in the DLC. The way the bike was used in the Forever campaign was pretty much OK. Maybe on the highway it got a bit hairy sometimes with the holes and obstacles, but at least it was a relatively straight track and you were allowed to go slower if needed. I am sure some lessons can be (and were) learned from that.

[NNC]

The main problem you couldn't do a 100% kill rate due to the highway battle. The same goes for the DLC map 2. Both are great maps, but Duke's kill count is there for a reason.

[Micky C]

 Nancsi, on 06 March 2018 - 10:19 AM, said:

I'm not sure what's the point of these kind of updates, like fixing something that isn't broken. It's like the pal versions of monsters, many snapshots used the v1.3D version with doubled hit points on all monsters. Nobody asked for it, especially those mappers who made their maps with a different mind. Or like the versions where Enforcers were allowed to enter water sectors which is clearly wrong due to the enemy's athletic behaviour.

These efforts are meaningless and should be added to fix the performance issues or the neverending annoyances like the chaingun when it runs out of ammo. I'm pretty sure the more-than-once reported floor aligned, not block/hitscan tagged button problem is still there too.

Most of the time a break like this happens, it’s because they were fixing/tweaking someone else, and it just happened to have a flow-on effect to other areas.

[Gambini]

And that´s the reason of why people should stick to the exe we provided with the mod. A new version will of course include a new eduke32 snapshot, but it will be the one we tested the mod with.

The 2013 version was stress-tested and released with the exe so comfortably provided in the package. While the crack bug was a good finding, I´m not interested on problems which happen after changing files on the mod, and it shouldn´t be advised on this thread to do so.

[Mere_Duke]

 Nancsi, on 06 March 2018 - 07:10 PM, said:

The main problem you couldn't do a 100% kill rate due to the highway battle. The same goes for the DLC map 2. Both are great maps, but Duke's kill count is there for a reason.

It's a well-known counter bug of Duke Nukem 3D. Long ago I've modified DNFGAME.CON/DLCGAME.CON for myself and got rid of most of the very annoying bugs. Played throught the mod twice, found no big problems with counters.

[Malgon]

I'm a bit behind the times here, but I finally got around to playing this all the way through (I did play the first couple of levels a while back, but never finished it for whatever reason). Playing on Come Get Some provided some difficulty as you had to be careful with ammo, and the medkits were quite limited, especially through the Anderson Mine level. I finished it in about 2 and a half hours. It was great to pick all the references up and also see the engine be pushed with regards to the scale of the levels and also things like the implementation of the motorcycle. I did have a minor issue with the needles on the motorcycle floating in mid-air (which I don't remember having the last time I played), and also a glitch with the colours when using software mode. Switching over to Opengl was fine for the rest of the game. All in all, great work by all involved!

P.s. The ending brought a chuckle with the sudden turn after the sombre tone!

[Danukem]

There was a patch which fixes the bike needle issue. I believe the patch is a separate download on Mod DB.

[Malgon]

Thanks Trooper Dan, I'll have to check it out.

[Mere_Duke]

 Malgon, on 14 March 2018 - 10:35 PM, said:

Thanks Trooper Dan, I'll have to check it out.

http://www.moddb.com...speedometer-fix

[Malgon]

Thanks Mere_Duke!

[Martin Howe]

I am really interested in playing this mod, but use Linux on a daily basis and don't really want to have to start my computer in Windows just to play a mod (no matter how awesome it is). I always build EDuke32 (and ZDoom, QZDoom, ECWolf, etc) from source for gaming.

From what I can see, the changes to EDuke32 are purely cosmetic, so given what has been said above about fixing regressions, presumably the latest build should at least run the mod? Have I understood this correctly or did I miss something (in which case please forgive me, it's a long thread)?

EDIT: Well it seems to work so far.

I never played the original DNF as it got slated for development hell and then many people said when it did happen it wasn't great. This looks promising so will crack on with it.

[NightFright]

Snapshots 6722 and newer should run this mod without showstoppers.

[Gambini]

You should build this snapshot then:

http://dukeworld.duk.../20130331-3634/

Eduke32 is constantly evolving and therefore values, features and other peculiarities we relied our mod on back then, may be broken, missing, or affected by new features.

I strongly recommend you to use the build on the link above, so you can get the most of the experience!

[Gambini]

 NightFright, on 18 March 2018 - 07:16 AM, said:

Snapshots 6722 and newer should run this mod without showstoppers.

As I said some posts ago, you should not advice to run this mod using a different build than the one we provided it with.

I know it may work and be playable. But I assure you that -as the person who built a large part of it- there´s a bunch of things that may alter or affect the original experience. So there´s no reason at all to rely on an untested newer version, because the one that comes with the mod runs perfectly on all systems.

[NightFright]

I am not recommending to play with a recent snapshot, just wrote that they will work. How well is a different topic.

Anyway, I guess once an updated version of the mod is released, it will be ok to use recent snapshots. Whenever that will be.

[Martin Howe]

Thanks guys. My gaming manage/launch scripts don't yet have the ability to use a custom .EXE file and I believe backward compatibility is a vital issue in gaming. However, in practical terms, I can see that as things stand it could be a problem. Building an old build is for another day though as I imagine the build environment might well be significantly different; will look into it later.

[Hendricks266]

 Gambini, on 18 March 2018 - 07:27 AM, said:

As I said some posts ago, you should not advice to run this mod using a different build than the one we provided it with.

I know it may work and be playable. But I assure you that -as the person who built a large part of it- there´s a bunch of things that may alter or affect the original experience. So there´s no reason at all to rely on an untested newer version, because the one that comes with the mod runs perfectly on all systems.

The future of EDuke32 depends on content made for it being accessible as possible. I agree that first time players should use the version it came with unless special needs arise. But experienced players should use the latest EDuke32 so problems can be identified and we can fix anything that is broken.

[Sanek]

 Hendricks266, on 18 March 2018 - 09:29 AM, said:

The future of EDuke32 depends on content made for it being accessible as possible. I agree that first time players should use the version it came with unless special needs arise. But experienced players should use the latest EDuke32 so problems can be identified and we can fix anything that is broken.

Why fix something that already works? And works perfectly fine.