[Sobek]

Ohio!

Just had a random little question if I might... It was to do with Shooters. I don't have access to an EDuke32 install to test it, but I was wondering what behavior a shooter would exhibit when set to only target enemies, and placed with multiple enemies around it.

Will it just target one at a time until it kills it and moves on to the next, or will it fire randomly at different enemies?

Please tell me it fires randomly

[Ninety-Six]

I was just directed from the official forums.

Anyway, I've been having a severe problem with DukePlus. I recently reinstalled the most recent versions of eDuke and the HRP; no problems. But then I downloaded the most recent version of DP, and it brings the entire game down. It takes 3x as long to load the game with Duke Plus activated. And that's just to get to the main menu. To load the levels, it can and has taken up to 7 full minutes. But once the levels load, I can't do anything. Any action I take is delayed for several minutes before Duke actually does it. 9 times out of 10 the game doesn't carry out the command at all. I can't even bring up the main menu to quit. I always have to use the Start key and call up Task Manager to end it. And it doesn't matter if I'm using 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit. It crashes all the same.

And again, this is only when DP is activated. Otherwise the game runs perfectly, HRP or not.



I'm certain that my video card specs are a little at fault, but there's no way that's the main reason, considering that DP won't even run in software mode.

I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong?

[The Commander]

Ninety-Six, on Jul 1 2010, 02:26 AM, said:

I was just directed from the official forums.

*sigh* these are the official forums, you were redirected from the old ones.

Anyway, now that you are here it would help if you post the "eduke32.log" AFTER you have experienced all these issues that you say.

Also, what is your full system specs? I find it very doubtful that DP! is causing this.

[Ninety-Six]

The Commander, on Jun 30 2010, 07:42 AM, said:

*sigh* these are the official forums, you were redirected from the old ones.

Anyway, now that you are here it would help if you post the "eduke32.log" AFTER you have experienced all these issues that you say.

Also, what is your full system specs? I find it very doubtful that DP! is causing this.

Well, before I can post an eDuke log on that, suddenly eDuke stopped working, itself. Something about a DirectSoundCreate failure.


As for the specs, I'm not quite sure where I'd find I complete list of it, unless I'm to type it all out manually?

[The Commander]

Just the OS, RAM, CPU (is it multi core) and video card.

[Ninety-Six]

The Commander, on Jun 30 2010, 08:05 AM, said:

Just the OS, RAM, CPU (is it multi core) and video card.

OS: Windows XP Service Pack 3

RAM/CPU: Intel®
Pentium® 4 CPU 1.80GHz
1.79 GHz, 512 MB of RAM

Video Card: I'm not certain if this is correct, but NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X/AGP/SSE2 (from an eDuke log. I'm assuming (I inherited this computer) that that's my video card.)

[The Commander]

Ninety-Six, on Jul 1 2010, 03:16 AM, said:

Video Card: I'm not certain if this is correct, but NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X/AGP/SSE2 (from an eDuke log. I'm assuming (I inherited this computer) that that's my video card.)

Yeah, your PC is really old and slow, I have one of a similar set up behind me and it struggles to run the HRP let alone DukePlus with it, only thing I can suggest is to remove your (not delete) HRP from the autoload folder and try play DukePlus without but you still need to run it in 32bit.

EDIT: Also, this mod here may run a lot better for you.
http://forums.duke4....?showtopic=1942 (I believe it can now be ran in classic mode as well)

[Sangman]

Not sure why his system specs would matter if it runs fine all the time except when DP is on.. Unless DP has higher system specs or something I dunno.

Ninety-Six: You can find out your specs as well by pressing windows key + R and typing dxdiag. For even more info you can download something like CPU-Z, but if the game works fine aside from when using DP I doubt your hardware is at fault here. Of course I could be wrong.

[Ninety-Six]

Sangman, on Jun 30 2010, 08:36 AM, said:

Not sure why his system specs would matter if it runs fine all the time except when DP is on.. Unless DP has higher system specs or something I dunno.

Ninety-Six: You can find out your specs as well by pressing windows key + R and typing dxdiag. For even more info you can download something like CPU-Z, but if the game works fine aside from when using DP I doubt your hardware is at fault here. Of course I could be wrong.

This is what I'm wondering. Because yeah, the HRP runs fine. I actually just got done playing the first two levels of Episode 1 to test it out. Ran flawlessly. Short load times, never lagged a single time, and overall was as smooth as the original game. So yeah, I'm wondering if DP has higher specs, too. And if so, what they are.


Also, thanks for the dxdiag command.

[The Commander]

Upload (dont copy and paste it) your DXDIAG info by clicking the "save all info" button.
Add it as an attachment.

[Ninety-Six]

The Commander, on Jun 30 2010, 08:55 AM, said:

Upload (dont copy and paste it) your DXDIAG info by clicking the "save all info" button.
Add it as an attachment.

Aye aye, Commander.

 DxDiag.txt (42.96K)
Number of downloads: 622

[Mike Norvak]

Hey DT!

What 'bout the next release of DukePlus?

[Spiker]

 Norvak, on Jun 30 2010, 06:54 PM, said:

Hey DT!

What 'bout the next release of DukePlus?

He's on vacation till July 7th.

[Sobek]

Ahh, didn't realise he was on holiday (ironically, he's on holiday until my birthday ).

Ninety-Six, how are you with installing new videocard drivers? Because what you have installed at the moment is fairly outdated (it's a build from 2003). Obviously the card is also pretty old, but there are many newer drivers for it that had been released since then, the most recent being;

http://www.nvidia.co...2k_93.71_2.html

I'd recommend upgrading to those - it may provide benefits all around - not just in EDuke32 / Duke Plus.

I think you'll also find that DukePlus will hit your CPU a LOT harder than most mods, as there's just so much additional overhead involved with all the new code... Quite frankly, with that old CPU there may not be a lot you can do. I have a P4 1.8ghz machine with an FX5200 here at work, and I did try running DukePlus on it at one stage but it was unbearably slow and did take quite some time to navigate menus and even just get into the game.

Sorry, but you're probably shit out of luck in this case. EDuke32 + HRP may be fine as it is, but DukePlus could simply be putting too much load on your CPU to run smoothly. Nature of the beast and all that.

[Ninety-Six]

 Sobek, on Jun 30 2010, 05:30 PM, said:

Ahh, didn't realise he was on holiday (ironically, he's on holiday until my birthday ).

Ninety-Six, how are you with installing new videocard drivers? Because what you have installed at the moment is fairly outdated (it's a build from 2003). Obviously the card is also pretty old, but there are many newer drivers for it that had been released since then, the most recent being;

http://www.nvidia.co...2k_93.71_2.html

I'd recommend upgrading to those - it may provide benefits all around - not just in EDuke32 / Duke Plus.

I think you'll also find that DukePlus will hit your CPU a LOT harder than most mods, as there's just so much additional overhead involved with all the new code... Quite frankly, with that old CPU there may not be a lot you can do. I have a P4 1.8ghz machine with an FX5200 here at work, and I did try running DukePlus on it at one stage but it was unbearably slow and did take quite some time to navigate menus and even just get into the game.

Sorry, but you're probably shit out of luck in this case. EDuke32 + HRP may be fine as it is, but DukePlus could simply be putting too much load on your CPU to run smoothly. Nature of the beast and all that.

I figured it would be the CPU...

I had a better video/sound/Processor before, and they were all on the same motherboard. However, there were some errors in designe; namely a power surge blew out the entire thing. Couldn't afford anything new, so it had to be downgraded.

Still can't afford upgrades.


Anyway, thanks for the driver. I did install one less than a year ago, but the fact it came from 2003 is...odd.

[t800]

Sorry for partially repeating my previous post but I really cant understand why DeeperThought changed shape of hall with selectable maps. He could make it longer. For me new hall looks ugly compared to older one

[Danukem]

 t800, on Jul 1 2010, 08:35 AM, said:

Sorry for partially repeating my previous post but I really cant understand why DeeperThought changed shape of hall with selectable maps. He could make it longer. For me new hall looks ugly compared to older one

I didn't change the map myself, Gambini did (who also made the map in the first place). I can guess his reason: if the map is one long hallway, then the maps near the ends take longer to get to and so are in effect discriminated against. With the current setup, all the doors are roughly equidistant from the start point. The next version of DP will have even more doors in the hallway, with the additions of NightShade Army by Norvak, and Have Fun Storming the Castle by Salacious Crumb, which would only accentuate the problem if the hallway still had the long skinny format. I do admit that it looked better before, though.

What I would like to see in the future is a more elaborate hub with some fun things to do and look at. Perhaps the various map authors could each take a crack at it and build personalized entrances to their own levels and add details. You know the stars on the doors that appear when the corresponding level has been complete? At some point I would like the stars to actually mean something. Perhaps when the player has completed all or most of the maps, an elevator unlocks and the player can go to a different floor of the hub that has bonus materials.

[Spiker]

Quote

What I would like to see in the future is a more elaborate hub with some fun things to do and look at. Perhaps the various map authors could each take a crack at it and build personalized entrances to their own levels and add details. You know the stars on the doors that appear when the corresponding level has been complete? At some point I would like the stars to actually mean something. Perhaps when the player has completed all or most of the maps, an elevator unlocks and the player can go to a different floor of the hub that has bonus materials.

Sounds cool

[Micky C]

I think there might be a flaw with the activation-by-death-of-a-group-of-monsters feature. It seems that when monsters of different difficulty settings are given the appropriate tags, and an easy difficulty is chosen and some of the higher monsters aren't spawned, the activation won't occur when the spawned monsters are killed.

If that was too hard to understand, I'll put it this way: the activation only happens when all the monsters are killed when the hardest difficulty is selected for monsters with difficulty settings. I hope I got my point accross

It's a problem because in the map I'm going to release in the near future, there's a large area in which you have to kill all the monsters before a cutscene plays showing a door open, so this feature is necessary to finish my level. And if I make it that I only have to kill the easy set monsters, then there's a good chance a bunch of them are going to eat away at your health while the cutscene plays, not to mention I still want the play to kill everything at harder difficulties.

Is this an easily fixable problem?

[Danukem]

 Micky C, on Jul 1 2010, 06:24 PM, said:

Is this an easily fixable problem?

Yes, it's very easy to fix. If you want something to activate when a group of monsters is killed, then don't give those monsters difficulty tags that make members of the group not spawn. Because, as you've discovered, it's hard for the player to kill something that doesn't exist.

[williamjcm]

 DeeperThought, on Jul 1 2010, 07:54 PM, said:

Perhaps when the player has completed all or most of the maps, an elevator unlocks and the player can go to a different floor of the hub that has bonus materials.

Bonus materials ? Can't wait for it.

And what about a training map for new Duke Plus players (I am not one of them, even if I am playing Doom 2 most of the time) ? Once completed, it could give access to the DPHub. And maybe include it in the hub so players can replay it.

[Micky C]

I was hoping not to have to resort to that due to the player's vulnerability in the freeze during the cutscene but I guess people playing harder difficulties will just have to wear it.

@ williamjcm: The DukePlus effects map is a good training map, is that the sort of thing you're talking about? I can't imagine any other type of training map for DukePlus.

[Danukem]

 Micky C, on Jul 2 2010, 01:26 AM, said:

I was hoping not to have to resort to that due to the player's vulnerability in the freeze during the cutscene but I guess people playing harder difficulties will just have to wear it.

@ williamjcm: The DukePlus effects map is a good training map, is that the sort of thing you're talking about? I can't imagine any other type of training map for DukePlus.

Does the player actually take damage during the cutscene? If so, that's a bug. I do know that monsters continue to be active, and that's not a bug. If monsters are mobbing the player while the cutscene is going on, then you need to set it up differently. DP cutscenes do not pause the game, and you'll just have to work with that.

[williamjcm]

 Micky C, on Jul 2 2010, 10:26 AM, said:

@ williamjcm: The DukePlus effects map is a good training map, is that the sort of thing you're talking about? I can't imagine any other type of training map for DukePlus.

No, I'm talking about a real training map. Think about a map where players could get familiar with every weapon and movement option.

Or maybe a training like in Team Fortress 2 (if you own it you may know what I'm talking about) : you have a small training on a playable map (let's say Hollywood Holocaust on Piece Of Cake) with tips (when you get to certain places or obtain weapons) on how to play.

[t800]

Hey DeeperThought, why dont you merge Dukebike mod with DukePlus?

[Mike Norvak]

 DeeperThought, on Jul 1 2010, 12:54 PM, said:

I didn't change the map myself, Gambini did (who also made the map in the first place). I can guess his reason: if the map is one long hallway, then the maps near the ends take longer to get to and so are in effect discriminated against. With the current setup, all the doors are roughly equidistant from the start point. The next version of DP will have even more doors in the hallway, with the additions of NightShade Army by Norvak, and Have Fun Storming the Castle by Salacious Crumb, which would only accentuate the problem if the hallway still had the long skinny format. I do admit that it looked better before, though.

What I would like to see in the future is a more elaborate hub with some fun things to do and look at. Perhaps the various map authors could each take a crack at it and build personalized entrances to their own levels and add details. You know the stars on the doors that appear when the corresponding level has been complete? At some point I would like the stars to actually mean something. Perhaps when the player has completed all or most of the maps, an elevator unlocks and the player can go to a different floor of the hub that has bonus materials.

It sounds great.

When i included the new gates for these new maps, i wanted to respect the original Gambini´s hub design. I thought to make a second floor and stairs, but that would require more work and time than i had at that time (was in exams).

Also i included some cool surprises in the DPfx map. Hope the next DP release come soon.

Besides, i think the Skycar demo is old fashioned, maybe a new map to replace it.

[Stabs]

perhaps a modified cinema from e1l1 for the dp hub, and the levels can be the movie that are screening in it

[williamjcm]

 DanM, on Jul 5 2010, 11:30 PM, said:

perhaps a modified cinema from e1l1 for the dp hub, and the levels can be the movie that are screening in it

I also thought of it.

There is a Half-Life 2 mod called "CSS SCI FI 3: Hardwired" which uses a special hub for maps. You start in a lobby that gives you access to (1) an episode hub, (2) an individual level hub and (3) a shooting range for weapons.

Maybe the DP hub could be like that one : The episode hub could launch one of the vanilla episodes, the individual level hub to launch one of the DP maps (with maybe a random map button), and a shooting range with every weapon (vanilla and DP).

[Stabs]

we could make little posters for each level and just pal stack them on tex #199 its nice and square and it wont be changed or have paralax stuff that could screw it up later

also i did some experimenting DT and have found the DP box made invisible makes a grand bounding box for models, I have included the code i used and the modified tiles005.art it uses, its tile #2080, if this could be permanent DP code that would be great

Quote

CON CODE

eventloadactor 2080
ifvare sprite[THISACTOR].lotag 1
{
cstator 33025
clipdist 100
setactor[THISACTOR].lotag 0
}

// BIGGER CLIPDIST FOR BIGGER VEHICLES LOTAG 2

ifvare sprite[THISACTOR].lotag 2
{
cstator 33025
clipdist 150
setactor[THISACTOR].lotag 0
}
enda

===========================================================

DEF CODE

// BOUNDING BOX
model "DUKEPLUS_RESOURCES/GRAPHICS/MAP_EFFECTS/crate1.MD2"
{
// scale 1.25
scale 5.00
skin { pal 0 file "DUKEPLUS_RESOURCES/GRAPHICS/MAP_EFFECTS/metalcrate.jpg" }
skin { pal 30 file "DUKEPLUS_RESOURCES/GRAPHICS/MAP_EFFECTS/0884crate.jpg" }
frame { name "idle01" tile 2080 }
frame { name "idle01" tile 2080 }
frame { name "idle01" tile 2080 }
frame { name "idle01" tile 2080 }
}

[Danukem]

I don't see the point in having def code to go with it. The blocking characterisitics are a function of the 8-bit tile, its size and its cstat -- the model makes no difference. In fact, you already have the ability to use any tile that doesn't have code and give it whatever size and cstat you want (including making it invisible). Maybe the advantage here is that you can see the blocking area in mapster?