[PsychoGoatee]

Hendricks266, on 12 October 2015 - 03:51 PM, said:

EDuke32 (particularly ASS, the Apogee Sound System) is picky about what wav files it will play. Try encoding it to FLAC and updating the definesound definition to point to the new name and extension.

Thanks, that worked! Fun stuff sprucing up the one-liner selection.

[Danukem]

After several years of neglect, I want to buckle down and work on an update in the coming weeks. At a minimum, I want to fix various bugs that have cropped up due to changes in EDuke32 and the HRP since the last time I touched DukePlus. I have literally not even fired up the mod in years. I will start with LeoD's nixfix and roll those in, test with latest Polymer HRP and go from there. I'm not going to promise anything great, it may just end up being a maintenance update.

It's hard to explain what my hangup is about working on this project again. It's a combination of things. A big part of the hangup is simply a desire to move on. Another element is that I wouldn't do things the same way today, or have the same set of features. Just one example: When working on Duke Forces 1.1 update, I added code to allow enemies to better follow the player. It's a "breadcrumb" kind of system, which in concept is similar to something that enemies can use in DukePlus. But in Duke Forces it's much more simple and elegant, and less resource intensive. In DukePlus it's a complicated mess. Now multiply that example by a hundred and you can begin to understand. Everywhere I would look in DukePlus, I would see things I don't like. I guess what I'll try to do is leave it intact and focus on results, and hopefully I won't get discouraged. The other thing is, as far as my motivation is concerned, DukePlus is a link to a darker time in my life which I don't want to revisit. I know the project should be independent of what what going on in my life, but unfortunately there's a bit of a psychological connection, even though it was definitely a positive thing in my life at the time.

[Jmoc]

For a simple yet effective update, please let us use the flak and octabrain shots as weapons, or some other ridiculous complication. I played all the maps with randomized monster at 20, and the flak+octabrain pigcops that also launch grenades were really entertaining!!!

DukePlus is by far my favourite mod, even if it represent your dark moment in life. It's difficult to play stock maps without it now.

[Fantinaikos]

Quote

For a simple yet effective update, please let us use the flak and octabrain shots as weapons, or some other ridiculous complication. I played all the maps with randomized monster at 20, and the flak+octabrain

I don't see how Duke could use an Octobrain shot

A more reasonable addition it's something like implement the scrapped Sonic Resonator Drek has recreated.

Quote

pigcops that also launch grenades were really entertaining!!!

In theory DP Pigcops already launches gas granades if you enable the super AI option.

[Lightning_Hunter]

I would recommend releasing a hotfix in the next few days that takes care of the obvious bugs, such as the spinning shells on the ground. After that, I say release a version later with all the tweaks you wish to make.

[Danukem]

Lightning_Hunter, on 11 July 2016 - 01:46 PM, said:

I would recommend releasing a hotfix in the next few days that takes care of the obvious bugs, such as the spinning shells on the ground. After that, I say release a version later with all the tweaks you wish to make.

I will definitely start with fixes. Whether I get beyond that remains to be seen.

[Forge]

I don't recommend re-making the wheel. (or even making new wheels)
I do recommend making sure the experience is an enjoyable one, so you can associate the work and mod with good times instead of bad.

[Jmoc]

Fantinaikos, on 11 July 2016 - 01:32 PM, said:

I don't see how Duke could use an Octobrain shot

In theory DP Pigcops already launches gas granades if you enable the super AI option.

When you set random enemy attributes, pigcops can fire with other weapons other than the shotgun: flak cannon, fireballs, and an "energy rifle" that react as an octabrain shot when it touches something, in addition to grenades like batlelord's. All those are extremely deadly.

[TheDragonLiner]

Jmoc, on 11 July 2016 - 10:39 PM, said:

When you set random enemy attributes, pigcops can fire with other weapons other than the shotgun: flak cannon, fireballs, and an "energy rifle" that react as an octabrain shot when it touches something, in addition to grenades like batlelord's. All those are extremely deadly.

duke0002.png

Indeed !

I remember I was playing Tribute to Action 2 and at some point I was at 200HP and 100AP and a double barreled pigcop with flakshots killed me in one shot in the corridors and yet I had set enemy damage to 70 O_O


Anyway the biggest bug to fix I can think of is the gigantic Cycloid Emperor which is invincible, not moving and renders Dukecide unbeatable (since it houses the key to the exit). When outdoors it's mighty impressive but it's frustrating ...

[Danukem]

OK, I have nixfix rolled into DukePlus now and I'm using the Polymer HRP. I have also fixed the shells spinning forever bug (had to use a workaround due to mdflags 2 not working on them anymore for an unknown reason). I also fixed a few HUD issues (most notably faded messages about reloading etc. due to EDuke32 now having hardcoded message fade when .fta gets close to 0).

I'll look into the Cycloid at the end of Dukecide being unkillable. But surely there are many more bugs. Anyone want to post them here?

[LeoD]

Trooper Dan, on 11 July 2016 - 11:49 PM, said:

But surely there are many more bugs. Anyone want to post them here?

Case mismatch in DEFSPLUS.CON:

definesound LIFESBICH		DUKEPLUS_RESOURCES/SOUNDS/LIFESBICH.voc 0 0 255 4 0

IIRC the cannon in Project Zero has stopped working some years ago, thereby blocking map progress.
A couple of notable maps has been made for DukePlus since its last full release. Are you going to add some of that stuff?

[FistMarine]

That bug with unkillable Cycloid at end of Dukecide, I also reported long ago. I'm glad there will be a new version of DukePlus to be released, I was about to use older version 2.10 to play all the included DukePlus maps, since it was the last update that had new maps added, as far as I remember.

[Jmoc]

Some warnings and md3 loading issues:

Spoiler

DukePlus/strooper/STROOPER.CON: At top level:
DukePlus/strooper/STROOPER.CON:114: warning: variable `rand' masks keyword.
Found 1 warning(s), 0 error(s).
Script compiled in 1492ms, 629012 bytes
Initialized 24.0M cache
Loading "dukeplus.def"
Warning: Failed including duke3d.def on line dukeplus.def:1
....Warning: Failed loading MD2/MD3 model "highres/sprites/characters/1405_duke.md3"
Warning: Failed loading MD2/MD3 model "highres/sprites/firstperson/2524_pistol.md3"
Warning: Failed loading MD2/MD3 model "highres/sprites/firstperson/2524_pistol.md3"
Warning: Failed loading MD2/MD3 model "highres/sprites/firstperson/2530_clip.md3"
Warning: Failed loading MD2/MD3 model "highres/sprites/firstperson/2532_cliphand.md3"
Warning: Failed loading MD2/MD3 model "highres/sprites/firstperson/2510_devastator.md3"
.......Error: file "DUKEPLUS_RESOURCES/GRAPHICS/MAP_EFFECTS/models/br_billboards/br_bill4.jpg" does not exist
.Error: file "DUKEPLUS_RESOURCES/GRAPHICS/MAP_EFFECTS/models/br_schoolbus/br_schoolbus.jpg" does not exist

I'm not using the HRP

[LeoD]

Jmoc, on 12 July 2016 - 04:13 AM, said:

Some warnings and md3 loading issues:

Make sure to download&install the latest NixFix before reporting issues.

[Danukem]

I think the giant invincible cycloid is something from Duke Nukem Eternity that accidentally got put into regular DukePlus at some point. DanM needed it for the finale scene. Well, I think at one point I stuck the DNE code into DukePlus and didn't remember that that one monster flag worked differently.

EDIT: Fixed it. Turns out that the flag for the invincible cycloid was supposed to have been unused prior to my implementing it for DNE. But for some reason it was on the Cycloid in the Dukecide map -- a harmless error until I changed the code. I'm hoping that I will be able to integrate DNE into the next release.

[Danukem]

LeoD, on 12 July 2016 - 03:22 AM, said:

IIRC the cannon in Project Zero has stopped working some years ago, thereby blocking map progress.

Are you referring to the mortar gun near the beginning of the map? It works fine. You have to "pick up" mortar shells before it can work. That's an old Build trick that is used in vanilla maps, too.

[Lightning_Hunter]

Quote

OK, I have nixfix rolled into DukePlus now and I'm using the Polymer HRP

Just a dumb question, but will your next release of Duke Plus still continue to work in Polymost mode? I use HRP 5.4 with the Polymost override pack, and the Z-Pack by LeoD. I can't use Polymer due to the severe slowdowns I get on my system (which is strange considering I have a Geforce GTX 550 Ti with 1GB of RAM, and an i-5 3.2Ghz quad core processor).

[LeoD]

Trooper Dan, on 12 July 2016 - 12:13 PM, said:

Are you referring to the mortar gun near the beginning of the map? It works fine. You have to "pick up" mortar shells before it can work. That's an old Build trick that is used in vanilla maps, too.

I feel dumb now ... I know this trick but I've never been aware it is used here.

Lightning_Hunter, on 12 July 2016 - 03:00 PM, said:

Just a dumb question, but will your next release of Duke Plus still continue to work in Polymost mode? I use HRP 5.4 with the Polymost override pack, and the Z-Pack by LeoD. I can't use Polymer due to the severe slowdowns I get on my system (which is strange considering I have a Geforce GTX 550 Ti with 1GB of RAM, and an i-5 3.2Ghz quad core processor).

I don't expect that anything will get actually broken for you. There is still no way for DukePlus to determine the used HRP flavour, though, and Polymer surely should be the default. If incompatibilities should show up which need to be dealt with outside of the default DP distribution package, I'll do my best to provide what's necessary, at least in the Z-Pack.

[Danukem]

LeoD, on 12 July 2016 - 07:18 PM, said:

I don't expect that anything will get actually broken for you. There is still no way for DukePlus to determine the used HRP flavour, though, and Polymer surely should be the default. If incompatibilities should show up which need to be dealt with outside of the default DP distribution package, I'll do my best to provide what's necessary, at least in the Z-Pack.

Right. So here's my current plan. I'm going to work on bug fixes and making renderer neutral improvements to existing features. When I say "improvements" I'm talking mostly about easy stuff, like reducing the number of jibs to help eliminate lag spikes. That's phase 1 and it shouldn't take very long. I will release the results of that as the last "regular" version of DukePlus.

In phase 2, I'm going to make Duke Nukem Eternity an episode you can play in DukePlus -- The DukePlus Eternity Edition (or something like that). That will require putting the DNE fonts and some other assets in DukePlus, thereby eliminating what remains of 8-bit support and making it an HRP mod. That will be the version I will continue to support when PolymerNG is released, and I plan to update it to work well with the new renderer.

[TheDragonLiner]

I'm exited about implementing DNE as an episode but is DanM okay with this ?
I think I remember DNE ended on a bitter note ...

[Danukem]

TheDragonLiner, on 12 July 2016 - 10:39 PM, said:

I'm exited about implementing DNE as an episode but is DanM okay with this ?
I think I remember DNE ended on a bitter note ...

Duke Nukem Eternity has always been an episode made for DukePlus so it contains a fair amount of my own work as well. I just want to present it in the best way possible so that people can continue to enjoy it. DukePlus continues to be a popular add-on used with the HRP; including DanM's episode with it will make that episode far more accessible to a larger audience.

[FistMarine]

I like the idea of integrating DNE into an official release of DukePlus. Do you think you can integrate Imperium episode as well? It would be nice to have all the DukePlus episodes included in the next official release.

Speaking of DNE, I've had some serious issues with that mod last year when I played it last time. I remember I had many crashes because my PC wasn't good enough for playing the mod, so I had to turn on 8-bit mode sometimes to make some maps load after loading the game. I also found annoying how when I saved and reloaded a game that had an active or a dead super trooper, the game crashed to desktop because of failing to load the model. So I had to gib its body before saving to prevent that of happening. I've also had crashes when the next level was loading, so I had to save at end of each level, exit, then enable 8-bit mode, exit level and let next one load, then turn back 32-bit mode.

However I've also had a game breaking bug. At end of level 4 (I think), when you are supposed to activate the bridge to be able to exit the map, I got stuck in that room that activates the bridge, with no way out. I somehow got locked inside and couldn't get out without using DNCLIP, there seemed to be an invisible wall blocking the way. I mean I could enter that room but once I entered, no way out unless I cheated. So if I wanted to complete the map without cheating, I had to use steroids to cross the pit, which worked but still left me dissatisfied because of that bug. The bug didn't happen in the old 1.3d version of the mod, it only seems to happen in latest 2.0 version. I also want to point out that all of these things I've reported, happened in latest 2.0 version. The old 1.3d version was better optimized, in my opinion. It ran flawless and I didn't encounter that bug. But the latest 2.0 version is poorly optimized. Thankfully in past 2 months, I've got a new graphics card, so I might be able to properly play DNE this time.

[Danukem]

Would you like to be a beta tester? If you do, I'll send you a PM when I start working on the DNE integration.

As for Imperium: that's a good idea, but it may actually be more difficult to do. They were working on Imperium for a long time before they decided to use DukePlus with it, and it has custom art which may cause tile number conflicts. I'll look into it.

[FistMarine]

Yes I would like to be a beta tester. Thanks for the offer!

About Imperium: I completely forgot that the episode used custom art. I hope you are able to find a way to integrate the episode without art conflict.

[Fantinaikos]

Eternity will still a Polymer only episode? Performance and compatibility always been the major problems reported.

Maybe even the 8-bit art can be updated at this point, one thing that you could do is utilize the EDF soldier from DNF 2013 for the EDF soldiers in the episode.

[Danukem]

Fantinaikos, on 13 July 2016 - 10:53 AM, said:

Eternity will still a Polymer only episode? Performance and compatibility always been the major problems reported.

Maybe even the 8-bit art can be updated at this point, one thing that you could do is utilize the EDF soldier from DNF 2013 for the EDF soldiers in the episode.

That would be a lot of work and probably wouldn't help. The EDF soldiers in DNE are just my Dukebots with modified skins. Aside from the fact that the skins were made by DanM specifically for that purpose, I wouldn't want to change them to 8-bit art because the art would not have the identical animations that are tied to all the ai code. I don't think it would do much for performance anyway -- The Dukebots are an infrequent and tiny hit on performance compared with level geometry, lighting, and other factors.

So, does anyone remember any general DukePlus bugs that haven't been mentioned so far? I don't want to spend much time on the maintenance update. I know that DNE integration and fixes will probably be a lot of work and I want to get to that ASAP.

[Forge]

Who's going to fix the DNE maps?
I remember beta-testing the 1.3 version and DanM getting all butt-hurt over the amount of things I found. He fixed a majority of the level breakers, but his ego over his work got in the way and he snubbed me.

Like 1stmarine noticed; there are still some messed up walls that are either blocking and shouldn't be - or are not blocking and should be (-among other things-)

[Danukem]

Forge, on 13 July 2016 - 08:03 PM, said:

Who's going to fix the DNE maps?
I remember beta-testing the 1.3 version and DanM getting all butt-hurt over the amount of things I found. He fixed a majority of the level breakers, but his ego over his work got in the way and he snubbed me.

Like 1stmarine noticed; there are still some messed up walls that are either blocking and shouldn't be - or are not blocking and should be (-among other things-)

As far as I know, the maps aren't broken, aside from a few trivial and easy to fix problems which won't involve altering his vision in any way. In other words, anyone could do it, and it shouldn't be any more controversial than when someone makes similarly trivial changes to include an episode in the Add-On Compilation. Heck, maybe he'll want to do it himself. I'll bring it up to him when I actually have something to show. My focus will be mainly on the code side of things (both scripting and content definition). I'm not going to even think about touching the maps until I have the episode running and I have finished my end of it.

[Forge]

Trooper Dan, on 13 July 2016 - 09:16 PM, said:

As far as I know, the maps aren't broken, aside from a few trivial and easy to fix problems

I don't recall if I played the 2.0 version, so I can't say if the issues got fixed or not.
I also wouldn't say the maps are "broken" as they are playable, but If they didn't get "repaired" there are some places where portions of maps can be skipped, and some background scenery areas can be gotten into to.

also that was rude of me to say his ego got butthurt. The initial relationship started out fine; I'd report my findings and he would respond with, "good catch, fixed". It degraded over a couple weeks to where he'd say, "I don't care about that", and finally to the point where he stopped replying entirely. Then he released it without a word to me while I was still beta-testing. I don't know what was going on in his life at the time and maybe he was having personal problems. Also I don't care that he didn't give me any credit, but I put a lot of hours in to help him out and I didn't even get a simple "Thanks". Maybe I'm the one butthurt.

[LeoD]

Trooper Dan, on 12 July 2016 - 07:34 PM, said:

Right. So here's my current plan. I'm going to work on bug fixes and making renderer neutral improvements to existing features. When I say "improvements" I'm talking mostly about easy stuff, like reducing the number of jibs to help eliminate lag spikes. That's phase 1 and it shouldn't take very long. I will release the results of that as the last "regular" version of DukePlus.
In phase 2, I'm going to make Duke Nukem Eternity an episode you can play in DukePlus -- The DukePlus Eternity Edition (or something like that). That will require putting the DNE fonts and some other assets in DukePlus, thereby eliminating what remains of 8-bit support and making it an HRP mod. That will be the version I will continue to support when PolymerNG is released, and I plan to update it to work well with the new renderer.

TenTwenty upvotes from me if only I could...

Trooper Dan, on 13 July 2016 - 10:17 AM, said:

As for Imperium: that's a good idea, but it may actually be more difficult to do. They were working on Imperium for a long time before they decided to use DukePlus with it, and it has custom art which may cause tile number conflicts. I'll look into it.

Please consider Overkill Beta as well. Its custom ART could easily dealt with using the ART-per-map feature. OK1-OK3 are like release-ready IMO, besides one of the nuke buttons being too hard to use. OK4 desperately needs more ammo in the first section, though.

Trooper Dan, on 13 July 2016 - 07:11 PM, said:

So, does anyone remember any general DukePlus bugs that haven't been mentioned so far?

Sometimes when you encounter a group of troopers, one or two of them become invisible and can only be killed by explosives. I think only the red ones are affected and maybe only if spawned instead of pre-placed. Happened to me twice when playing Sanek's DoomBOX, but it's not exactly reproducible.