[TheDragonLiner]

Oh YES I managed to open it with WinRAR, tis' my only zipfile opening equivalent it never failed me to this day, I didn't know DAT files could be opened this way, I thought it was some sort of CON equivalent but like a folder the CON file goes in to make things work ^^


BTW I haven't thanked you guies for helping me (and some other people it seems) with that 8th level problem ... now I DO

[Hendricks266]

thedrawliner, on 30 September 2014 - 06:15 AM, said:

I didn't know DAT files could be opened this way,

There is no such thing as a "DAT File", only files with a .dat extension in some custom, arbitrary format. In this case, we renamed a zip file to .dat to help obfuscate attempts to cheat. NightFright just spilled the beans.

[TheDragonLiner]

Realy ?

Well on my end the only interest I have in flying through a mod's file is MUSIC, it's only thing I seek when going through folders, GRP files, and such ...
I knew we could give a file any extension possible but since .dat files are pretty common in DN3D mods I believed it was "an official" extension for Data and such ...
I don't suck at informatics but there was no way I could have guessed that it was a strategy to prevent cheating and yet I don't see how you could cheat in the dat files O_o Maybe something like changing a "user.con" or an xml in order to bestow ourselves with 999 ammo or something or enabling the fact of keeping the previous level's weapons I admit that would help a lot ^^


edit : be fore I'm told off about that, I know you made it so that we lose weapons from a level to the other because maps were made this way

[stumppy84]

Couldn't we just include an older Eduke with the install?

[MetHy]

I thought of that at first but it'd be counter productive. In 2-3 years, EDuke32 will have had tons of new updates, and it would be stupid to still ask people to use an old version (do you recall how EDuke32 was a few years ago? it was worse.)

Plus, there are EDuke32 updates that are going to improve compatibility with Duke Hard. IIRC there is a problem with the cachesize, if you're running on some old hardware, Duke Hard will crash when trying to run the intro videos unless you manually add more cache; but an EDuke32 update should fix that.
Well maybe that wasn't exactly the issue and what I just said is all wrong, my memory is fuzzy, but you get the point.

[Hendricks266]

stumppy84, on 30 September 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

Couldn't we just include an older Eduke with the install?

What needs to happen is that this needs to get debugged and fixed, but there are close to a dozen bugs that have popped up recently and it's like a scene from some shitty movie where an adult is overwhelmed by a bunch of badly-behaved kids making mischief.

At least the Megaton addons should be appearing in the startup window again, as of last night.

MetHy, on 30 September 2014 - 09:11 AM, said:

Plus, there are EDuke32 updates that are going to improve compatibility with Duke Hard. IIRC there is a problem with the cachesize, if you're running on some old hardware, Duke Hard will crash when trying to run the intro videos unless you manually add more cache; but an EDuke32 update should fix that.

I already fixed that, and it's in the version that you guys are spreading around.

It wasn't that it crashed when you played the intro video, it's that if you started the episode multiple times, the game would use more space in the cache for a copy of the ANM each time, without freeing it, and Duke Hard's enormous ANMs would quickly use up all the cache.

It has nothing to do with hardware.

Adding more cache from def only delayed the problem.

[MetHy]

I knew my memory was fuzzy, but anyway that was just an example.

[TheDragonLiner]

Taking more and more space on cache ?

Somehow it reminds me of a shitty glitch I sometimes have with my EDuke32 + PLUS + HRP where sometimes if I reload too many times it loads more and more textures, the record so far was beyond 30 000 textures *faints*
I guess I should change to the latest version for this one as well.


BTW I'm done playing the mod and yeah it's realy good, and also I didn't have any more bugs of episode ending prematurely and the outro video played fine as well !
Thanks again for helping solving my problem ^^

[Blue Lightning]

Can Duke Hard be played in classic 8-bit mode?

[Hendricks266]

I believe 8-bit mode is mandatory.

[Micky C]

On the contrary I thought 32-bit is recommended, since at least one of the maps has some visual glitching in 8-bit.

[MetHy]

DukeHard.txt said:

The intro and ending videos will look MUCH better in 32-bit video mode ("Polymost").
Some maps were designed with 8-bit video mode ("Classic") in mind, while others were designed with 32-bit ("Polymost") in mind.
However, everything was made to work and look fine in both modes. (for instance dh14.map "Legal Joint" looks better in 32bit)

If you're talking about Legal Joint Micky C, the biggest glitches that would appear in 8-bit in it got fixed before release.

[Micky C]

Why would the intro and ending videos look different between renderers? I had the feeling due the file size of the mod that they're actual VP8 videos? Or are they in-game cut-scenes?

[MetHy]

I believe they're in-game cutscenes (.anm) if you play in 8-bit but use a different format in 32-bit.

Honestly I don't even remember the details about that, I made the videos in fucking windows movie maker (and I built the parts that needed to be built in mapster) but Daedolon did the conversion and made them work in game, he'd know better.

So anyway - the episode was designed so that people can play through it all both in 8-bit or in 32-bit, as their liking. The reason to this is because I didn't specify a mode in the rules of the making of the episode, because I had no idea there were THAT many differences between both renderers; I wrongly thought that as long as the rules I gave were respected everything would look and work the same in both 8-bit and 32-bit.
Actually, most people didn't know either and we learnt the hard way. The good thing is that anyone can play in either (or both) renderers, depending on what they like best.

[Hendricks266]

Micky C, on 11 November 2014 - 01:51 AM, said:

Why would the intro and ending videos look different between renderers? I had the feeling due the file size of the mod that they're actual VP8 videos? Or are they in-game cut-scenes?

VP8 only works in OpenGL. It would be difficult to display a full motion, true color video in 8bpp.

[Blue Lightning]

This is why I only load MAP files.

I dropped the Duke Hard folder in my DN3D folder. I bring the game on, and it isn't under Maps, but Directories (In blue). Fine, When I highlight the game and enter, it changes the directory word and gives me blue dots. So out of frustration, I take the two files out of the folder and drop that in the DN3D folder. Well, that killed the game.

So after I dispensed with Duke Hard, I noticed every god damn control was changed. Took me an hour to get it back right, and it still isn't 100%.

I'll stick to loading Map files and that's it.

[Mark]

Do what I do. I keep an extra copy of my cfg files for just such an occasion. I also have a seperate folder for trying anyone's maps or add-ons.

[Daedolon]

No clear indication of what's the issue and why wasn't the game working for you, so there's little we can do to help.

[quakis]

Late to the party playing through this episode. Wrote an indepth review for Duke Hard over at my site: http://taw.duke4.net...ke3d/duke-hard/

[Jblade]

A fair review, I was fairly unambitious with my level and it probably would of suited going later in the episode as a breathing gap. I wasn't sure if I would finish the map so I tried to make it a small one, but of course everybody else pulled out all the stops in making their levels so it made mine look even more drab in comparison. Still, I was fairly happy with it despite the flaws in it.

[Daedolon]

I'm pretty sure that if we were to go through all the levels, we could find something we could've fixed before release in all of the maps, so you shouldn't worry.

Not to be an asshole but who could forget the excessive amount of turrets in Power Out , the skippable enemies in Shwocase or getting lost in the vents of Legal Joint

[Forge]

Jblade, on 02 December 2014 - 03:43 AM, said:

A fair review, I was fairly unambitious with my level and it probably would of suited going later in the episode as a breathing gap. I wasn't sure if I would finish the map so I tried to make it a small one, but of course everybody else pulled out all the stops in making their levels so it made mine look even more drab in comparison. Still, I was fairly happy with it despite the flaws in it.

aside from the simplicity of the layout, it has a quite interesting atmosphere due to your skill at texture selection.

[MetHy]

quakis, on 02 December 2014 - 03:32 AM, said:

Late to the party playing through this episode. Wrote an indepth review for Duke Hard over at my site: http://taw.duke4.net...ke3d/duke-hard/

Nice detailed review!

As for James's level and level order in general, I thought of almost 10 different map orders while gathering opinions from betatesters, and I quickly realized there could be no perfect order. In the end I still think the final order is probably the best.

LOBBY review said:

I also enjoyed how the standard storage room transforms into something else entirely as we near the end, allowing a few sneak peaks at later floors and then contemplating how perverse this one room suddenly became.

Perverse as in illogical? I guess so, it's supposed to be a sort of big hidden 'security' room, kinda like a super hero hidden cave. It's linked to the manager's office so I wanted to give the feeling the manager would watch everything going on in his building.
I admit not that much thought was put into it, the idea was to make a "cool !" re-use of a room to go around the space limit in an inventive way and add a minute or 2 of gameplay that way.

Parking review said:

[combat] feels chaotic but controlled, a welcome change of pace.

Chaotic but controlled was exactly what I was aiming for so i'm glad it worked. I try to give close attention to every single enemy placement, and even deleted a few enemies at the last minute so it wouldn't get too chaotic.

Edit : btw, I'm surprised not a single review mentionned the new title screen and stats (intermission) screen. I think it's one of the coolest thing about the episode and Daedolon did a great job with that, few DN3D mods/episodes did this kind of things.

[Hendricks266]

MetHy, on 02 December 2014 - 06:37 AM, said:

Edit : btw, I'm surprised not a single review mentionned the new title screen and stats (intermission) screen. I think it's one of the coolest thing about the episode and Daedolon did a great job with that, few DN3D mods/episodes did this kind of things.

Those might have been upstaged by the hacks he and I did for the cinematics, and also

Spoiler

the randomizer.

[quakis]

Thanks!

MetHy, on 02 December 2014 - 06:37 AM, said:

Perverse as in illogical?

Perverse as in a lack of privacy; who knows where else the manager has hidden his cameras for "security" reasons? The room transformation definitely had a 'cool' factor about it, I liked it.

MetHy, on 02 December 2014 - 06:37 AM, said:

Edit : btw, I'm surprised not a single review mentionned the new title screen and stats (intermission) screen. I think it's one of the coolest thing about the episode and Daedolon did a great job with that, few DN3D mods/episodes did this kind of things.

They were both neat and the new graphics do help tie the episode together.

I could mention these aspects more often but sometimes there's only so much to say it's probably better to prioritise subjects in my reviews, I've made attempts to mention aspects like this in the past (non-Duke releases) only resulting in disjointed sentences that appear thrown in for the sake of mentioning them. Perhaps something to reconsider.

[Daedolon]

Has it been nine months? Damn. I need to go back and replay DH.

[Blue Lightning]

I guess I was hoping I could just drag and drop the .map file, but it wont work correctly that way I am guessing.

[Micky C]

It's an episode, of course not. Might be able to play individual maps though.

[Blue Lightning]

Yeah true, there is a program I can DL that seperates the maps I forget what it is. I used it to seperate maps in Metro mayhem.

[Hendricks266]

Blue Lightning, on 26 April 2015 - 03:05 PM, said:

I guess I was hoping I could just drag and drop the .map file, but it wont work correctly that way I am guessing.

Exactly what is so difficult about this?