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Alien Armageddon [RELEASE]  "showcasing sebabdukeboss20 characters with some enhancements"

User is offline   Player Lin 

#181

Finished the mod, not found all secrets, but found lot of them, Sunk City's only one really tricky but I still found it by checking automap. :(

I even found the optional secret level.

Spoiler


View PostTrooper Dan, on 25 August 2018 - 09:31 AM, said:


Reflections work fine when you are Bombshell -- check the mirror in E1L1 for example. I'm not sure what's happening with that particular mirror in Hard Rain, though. I'm guessing that it wouldn't reflect Duke, either.



In my run on the AA episode, I used Bombshell after the first level, and run through some levels, then when I found the restroom in Area 59, I noticed the mirror never shows Bombshell, not even Duke(switch to Duke, nothing shows up on mirror, switch back to Bombshell, still nothing).

Using user map option to just start Area59.map and directly run into the restroom, both Bombshell and Duke sprite never shows. E1L1's mirror is working, but the one on Area59 never show any of sprites at all...

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User is offline   Jblade 

#182

Mirror bug is a polymost bug, it seems sporadic but happens relatively frequently I've seen.
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User is offline   Mike Norvak 

  • Music Producer

#183

I haven't finished the episode yet (I'm at the beginning of level 2) but so far here are my initial thoughts.

Spoiler


EDIT: Ninja edit before somebody kills me for not using spoilers...

This post has been edited by Mike Norvak: 25 August 2018 - 02:40 PM

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User is offline   Phredreeke 

#184

Suggestion: Provide a way to heal the other character when they're not downed.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#185

View PostMike Norvak, on 25 August 2018 - 01:42 PM, said:

I haven't finished the episode yet (I'm at the beginning of level 2) but so far here are my initial thoughts.

Spoiler


EDIT: Ninja edit before somebody kills me for not using spoilers...

Valid points.

Spoiler


This post has been edited by Forge: 25 August 2018 - 04:02 PM

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User is online   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#186

View PostMike Norvak, on 25 August 2018 - 01:42 PM, said:

I know we aren't professional mappers, nobody is paying us for doing maps, and time constraints are really limiting. But there are some basics point I'd like to share:

Map 1 in games should be the easier and self explanatory, so the player can discover and learn the mechanics, enemy behavior, etc. Both in navigation and progression. We all are DN3D players and are somewhat acustomed to nonlinear, almost sandbox maps, but what if an outsider that haven't played usermaps before is atracted by the new features, but discouraged by the first map hard navigation? Well there is still the original maps, but I think this could have been avoided with some planning and testing.


The layout of the first map is definitely challenging (and to a lesser extent the second map). But as you pointed out, players can try episodes 1 through 4 before tackling the new episode 5, and they will still get to encounter most of the new enemies and NPCs. Nonetheless, I see your point.

When this became a group project, we had no idea how big it was going to get. At first it was just going to be one map featuring three or four new enemies and a new gun. As the map was being constructed, more and more content was added to the game. I hadn't even thought about adding Bombshell as a playable character until a few months into development. sebabdukeboss20 was like a goose who kept laying golden eggs, cranking out amazing sprite sheets at a great pace, and I would keep coding the ones that looked most interesting. So the level designers had a moving target, not only in terms of content, but in terms of how many maps there were going to be and what the story was. So in that sense it was a flawed development process without much leadership. However, what the project lacked in planning it made up for in momentum and sheer talent. As hobbyist developers, we all know that momentum is critical. If someone had said "this first map needs to be started over from scratch now that we know what we're doing" it would have killed the momentum and maybe crippled the whole project. Now we have an excellent mod that is a little rough around the edges, and ready to be taken to greater heights in the future.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#187

View PostTrooper Dan, on 25 August 2018 - 04:02 PM, said:

When this became a group project, we had no idea ,,,,

That's putting it lightly. Large amounts of input and output and retractions and submissions across different time zones from multiple talented people.
That was still going on late in the development when I was asked aboard. So fun waking up to 20 or more messages in my inbox & trying to figure out what's going on. And I was just a minor bit-player beta-tester.
good times

This post has been edited by Forge: 25 August 2018 - 04:32 PM

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User is offline   Player Lin 

#188

View PostPhredreeke, on 25 August 2018 - 03:54 PM, said:

Suggestion: Provide a way to heal the other character when they're not downed.


Yes, many time I have to "forced" damaging(shoot him/her directly) my teammate because I can't heal him/her until downed.

I found a bug if you try to heal your downed teammate but you have no portable medikit and only about 25~30 health and below, then you could not totally heal him/her to full health, and he/she will like "full healed" but the status window still shows "Down", so you cannot command him/her or switch to him/her even he/she follows you.

It's fixable just try damage him/her again until his/her health drops to 0 and then make sure you have enough health (about 31 or more) or get a portable medikit for healing.

This post has been edited by Player Lin: 25 August 2018 - 07:55 PM

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User is online   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#189

View PostPlayer Lin, on 25 August 2018 - 07:55 PM, said:

I found a bug if you try to heal your downed teammate but you have no portable medikit and only about 25~30 health and below, then you could not totally heal him/her to full health, and he/she will like "full healed" but the status window still shows "Down", so you cannot command him/her or switch to him/her even he/she follows you.

It's fixable just try damage him/her again until his/her health drops to 0 and then make sure you have enough health (about 31 or more) or get a portable medikit for healing.


Thanks for the report, I have it fixed in my code and will release a patch with this and a bunch of other little fixes soon.

What's actually happening is there are two different places in the code where the bot is revived, depending on whether they are fully revived or only partially (because the player is too weak for a full revive). On the partial revive version I simply forgot to set their status variable to the normal value.

Do you think it would be better if the bot slowly recovered health when not in combat? I would rather not have to add another command option to heal them when they aren't down -- the idea of fussing over the bot that much doesn't sound good. EDIT: On second thought, that might encourage the player to stand around waiting for the bot to heal before entering combat. I'll think about this.

This post has been edited by Trooper Dan: 25 August 2018 - 09:37 PM

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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#190

View PostTrooper Dan, on 25 August 2018 - 09:36 PM, said:

Do you think it would be better if the bot slowly recovered health when not in combat? I would rather not have to add another command option to heal them when they aren't down -- the idea of fussing over the bot that much doesn't sound good. EDIT: On second thought, that might encourage the player to stand around waiting for the bot to heal before entering combat. I'll think about this.

A. - replace the swap command in the bot menu with heal. there's already a designated key for swapping and one in the menu isn't necessary
B. - don't transfer health points when swapping. Then the player can swap to an injured bot & use a med kit or pick up a healing item.

just an opinion
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User is offline   Player Lin 

#191

I personally think more way to heal the teammate/bot, more better, so I like both ideas(automatic slow-heals by time, and Forge's ideas: added heal command to menu and Duke and Bombshell never shared health when swapping.

But later levels(of AA episode) just lack of health items(or the warzone just too hot and too easy hurt your teammate so they wasted so quickly), so I actually has no idea about if worth or not about Forge's ideas. :(

This post has been edited by Player Lin: 25 August 2018 - 10:04 PM

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User is online   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#192

View PostForge, on 25 August 2018 - 09:45 PM, said:

A. - replace the swap command in the bot menu with heal. there's already a designated key for swapping and one in the menu isn't necessary


The problem with inheriting the bot's health is it punishes the player pretty severely for switching characters, since the human player takes much better care of his/her health. The player may be saving up 150+ health from atomic health drops and then would be strongly discouraged from using the swap feature.

Also I'm pretty sure some players don't know about that key, so if I remove that command from the menu I worry that the players won't even know there is a swap character feature. Alternatively, I could stack some commands. Example: press right once to select heal, press again to move to the outer ring and select swap. On the left side, press left once to change the bot's weapon, press again to change their costume. So the less important/redundant commands could move to an outer ring.

Here's a nice video of Forsete playing Hard Rain (spoiilers!)


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User is offline   MetHy 

#193

I never even realized that I was losing some of my own hp when reviving the bot. If in the future you can improve the bot AI, maybe you should give a try to giving each character its own HP pool, perhaps even weapons too.
Also you're right about the swap key. Even thought the first thing I did was check the control settings, when I was in the last level and had to swap using the key to enter the 2 side rooms, it only hit me after a while. I even sequence broke one of the doors using steroids, but it's only possible on one door which for some reasons was given slower speed than the others.

View PostTrooper Dan, on 25 August 2018 - 09:31 AM, said:

Merlijn probably has more to say about this, but I have to agree that it's easy to get lost in that map (even though I think it's a great map!)
The level designers can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I believe that the open somewhat confusing layout is due to it starting as a deathmatch map by WG. It was then added to and retrofitted to make it singleplayer. Of course, most of the construction happened after WG left, but the deathmatch layout is kind of in the DNA of the map.


I'm just talking out of my ass but it looks like the problems of the maps comes from the fact that nobody dared change anything William Gee made. Except for the explosion, and a couple of rooms like the video game shop which were even probably added where the other mappers found space, it looks like the rest of what WG made was left as is while they shouldn't have been afraid to made some changes, if only to close some areas when you get in that you can unlock when you backtrack or even turn some places in secret places or cut them to paste them elsewhere. Instead it seems they only kept adding areas around WG's part, which in a way doesn't help either because they all loop back to that center city area which is the most confusing area.

View PostJblade, on 25 August 2018 - 10:16 AM, said:

Mirror bug is a polymost bug, it seems sporadic but happens relatively frequently I've seen.


Any idea about the circumstance when that happens? Has it only been happening since some relatively recent revisions (few months old) ?

Edit :

View PostTrooper Dan, on 25 August 2018 - 09:31 AM, said:

In the long run I would like to see the original enemies replaced with new art so that they can all be in the same style. This would also make it possible to add new animations to the old enemies. One issue is that the new sprites tend to be be somewhat higher resolution, so the scales don't quite match. They look great, of course.


That would be good. My first thought was that you shouldn't even have used the original enemies alongside the new ones, at least not in the same maps. Besides it looks like you had enough new enemy types.

This post has been edited by MetHy: 25 August 2018 - 10:56 PM

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User is online   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#194

View PostMetHy, on 25 August 2018 - 10:48 PM, said:

I never even realized that I was losing some of my own hp when reviving the bot. If in the future you can improve the bot AI, maybe you should give a try to giving each character its own HP pool, perhaps even weapons too.


Yes, but, I have to be careful with that. Playing with a bot who is actually competant has a big downside. Once the novelty wears off, you realize that you as the human player have lost out on playing some of the game. Let's say the bot clears an entire room while you are in a nearby area. You may not even get to experience the gameplay that the room had to offer which the designers may have worked hard on. From a programming standpoint, improving the AI is a fun challenge, and as you may know I have other projects with more advanced AI. But from the player's point of view it's not always desirable. When you are playing with a human partner it's different because you can talk to them and it's a much richer experience.


View PostMetHy, on 25 August 2018 - 10:48 PM, said:

That would be good. My first thought was that you shouldn't even have used the original enemies alongside the new ones, at least not in the same maps. Besides it looks like you had enough new enemy types.


The original enemies fill gameplay niches that the new enemies do not. In particular, none of the new enemies quite fill the roles of the liztroop, pigcop and enforcer. And that's fine -- I would rather have new enemies for new niches than have lots of redundant enemies who don't have clear roles.
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User is offline   Merlijn 

#195

Awesome to see our mod released, thanks for all the feedback and comments so far! :unsure:

A couple of things about the first map:

1. As Dan said, it used a DM-map as basis, so that's why the HUB area is more open ended than most user maps. I personally found it a refreshing idea so I didn't change it. Nevertheless, I did actually lock down several areas and turned several rooms into secret areas. I thought that was enough make the map easier to navigate, but of course the map still remains very complicated and intricate. This can't be changed really, unless we start over from scratch. I think our biggest mistake is making it the first map of the episode, since it's by far the hardest map in terms of navigation. But the story kinda left us with no other option.

2. As a tip I would say USE THE VIEWSCREENS! They guide you to the right direction. And I'm sorry to say this, but if someone calls them "hardly useful", then it tells me that person didn't pay enough attention to them (no offense).
The first viewscreen you encounter shows you:
Spoiler


3. Killing the pigboss doesn't trigger anything, so there's no bug there. The yellow keycard puts the city in lockdown and forces you to look for an alternative route. Check the spoiler tag above if you want to know where the alternative route is. :(
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#196

View PostTrooper Dan, on 25 August 2018 - 10:06 PM, said:

The problem with inheriting the bot's health is it punishes the player pretty severely for switching characters, since the human player takes much better care of his/her health. The player may be saving up 150+ health from atomic health drops and then would be strongly discouraged from using the swap feature.

The alternative is to punish the player by dragging a bot around with 8 hp, which dies instantly during the next large encounter & becomes as useless as tits on a boarhog.
1

#197

Just finished !

The most interesting thing is that this mod gives the impression that DukeNukem games never existed, AA franchise exists instead :unsure:.

I really liked how the new episode includes modern easter eggs like classic duke did for its era, also i was surprised when ending the secret level brought you back to the entrance and not skipping to the next level.
Spoiler


I admit i expected longer levels and many duo puzzles in the last episode... and waaay more enemies, if we look at the starting hype. To the other side, there is a great number of NPCs with nice detail and animations.
Spoiler

It is strange anyway that the first level is way longer than the others, and the last is relatively short.

I played mostly with Bombshell to enjoy the new weapons: i think fire rocket is too useful with its DoT and enemy control, i much liked the incinerator, and the railgun is a "must" addition; the hud SMG sprite is quite meh, however.

I suggest a hitscan control before the companion shoots, to avoid firing to and hurting the player. Also i would rethink or rebalance the revive process, sometimes it seems too easy.

I bet that some features are subject to change, and we should expect new levels and enemies in the future.
Great work everyone ! :(
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User is offline   MetHy 

#198

View PostTrooper Dan, on 25 August 2018 - 11:26 PM, said:

Yes, but, I have to be careful with that. Playing with a bot who is actually competant has a big downside. Once the novelty wears off, you realize that you as the human player have lost out on playing some of the game. Let's say the bot clears an entire room while you are in a nearby area. You may not even get to experience the gameplay that the room had to offer which the designers may have worked hard on. From a programming standpoint, improving the AI is a fun challenge, and as you may know I have other projects with more advanced AI. But from the player's point of view it's not always desirable. When you are playing with a human partner it's different because you can talk to them and it's a much richer experience.



Isn't this why you can order the bot to wait and not do anything? Perhaps a quick key to give and lift that order would help although I'm not sure at which point one more key becomes too many keys.
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User is online   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#199

View PostRichardStorm, on 26 August 2018 - 06:47 AM, said:


Spoiler




I'm almost done with a patch that fixes this and other bugs and annoyances that have been reported. There may be map updates in the future, but that will come later.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#200

View PostMetHy, on 26 August 2018 - 09:26 AM, said:

Isn't this why you can order the bot to wait and not do anything? Perhaps a quick key to give and lift that order would help although I'm not sure at which point one more key becomes too many keys.

That's the way it originally was, before there was a use menu. Use would make it wait. Use again would make it follow.
It could have been more useful if it was done remotely instead of having to 'use' directly on the bot though.
side note:
Unless healing or other commands are implemented at a later date, the only purpose of the bot menu is to make the bot change clothes.

This post has been edited by Forge: 26 August 2018 - 02:59 PM

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User is online   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#201

A patch has just been released:

https://www.moddb.co...eddon-patch-101

Here is what is fixed:

Quote


1.01 Released August 26, 2018
-Fixed ironsights alignment on Bombshell's M4
-AI companions will now check their fire if player is in the way
-Fixed bug that caused chainsaw to be taken from player upon return from secret level
-Bombshell's grenades (on weapon slot 8) now have a slightly higher trajectory
-The bot command menu can now be accessed when under water
-Nerfed damage on enemy railgun shots
-Fixed the display of new weapon and ammo icons in the hud, when the player uses reduced % hud size
-Changed trigger for sliding kick so the player has to be actively pressing forward in addition to pressing down. This should reduce accidental sliding.
-Added option in AAUSER.CON to disable Duke's laser dot on his pistol and use a regular crosshair instead
-Fixed bug where you could farm laser pistol ammo by dropping it and picking it up again
-Reduced chance of enemy decapitation from low-damage shots
KNOWN ISSUE from 1.0 still not fixed -- Scuba Troopers are very difficult to hit when using auto-aim. It is recommended to turn auto-aim off in level 3.

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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#202

Here we go. This is what I was waiting for. I always wait for the 1.1 or 1.2 version of a mod before playing it.
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#203

"Warning: Awesome Content", i would say more than Awesome!!! Unbelievable job!

I was about to report some of the above bugs too, anyway i noticed other things that maybe you may wish to fix and, due this mod is new, i'll tell them under spoiler (btw the patch 1.1 is applied here):

Spoiler


This post has been edited by The Battlelord: 26 August 2018 - 08:22 PM

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User is online   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#204

View PostThe Battlelord, on 26 August 2018 - 08:12 PM, said:

First one: This problem does not exist with wheel up and wheel down but, i have 2 side buttons on my mouse, i use them to switch weapons (next weapon/previous weapon), in some way the last weapons are a bit "sticky".


I can't replicate this as such, but I can produce something similar if I mash the next or prev weapon key rapidly. What's happening is that the weapon switching process is getting restarted over and over. This only happens when switching to one of the new weapon slots, which means that my code is not handling it correctly. The funny thing is, I can bind weapon switching to any of my mouse buttons and it works fine.


View PostThe Battlelord, on 26 August 2018 - 08:12 PM, said:

Third one (this affect the regular eduke32 too, old and latest versions) Some monsters can be 1 hit killed when "inactives"


I think I just fixed that and it will be included in the next patch (probably next weekend).

View PostThe Battlelord, on 26 August 2018 - 08:12 PM, said:

Fourth and funny one: Shelly has a Man voice under water xD


I think I just fixed that as well. Wait for next patch.

View PostThe Battlelord, on 26 August 2018 - 08:12 PM, said:

Fifth one: "Enemies left", well, i'm not sure if is possible to miss all those enemies in the first A.A. level :(


Still investigating this one.
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User is offline   Jim 

#205

An idea for a future update:

What about a sprite version of the Super Trooper from DukePlus. That enemy is good, and having a sprite version of him would fit in a lot better
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User is offline   Mike Norvak 

  • Music Producer

#206

Now some real bug report and another aspects that could be actually changed:

I can't get to use snipper mode on any weapon, is there a key for that? alternative weapon key just switches through...

There's an invisible SUV with pigs at the end of Hard Rain, the first one that starts running in circles, the one that spawns from the dark room works ok.


The player needs to wait until an oxygen bubble pops out in order to restore, the effect should work immediately after entering the sector. As I stated before, some scuba here and there would really help gameplay in hard rain and sunk city, punishing the player for not being an acquatic creature is an old troppe in videogames that have annoyed generations of players, the gimmick doesn't add anything to gameplay but annoyance, please don't take that route :( The oxygen bubbles a la Sonic didn't work in DNF why reutilizing it DNAA? I think they can be kept as supplementary devices while the player finds more scuba, the item is in the original game for a reason, you can easily reduce the inventory time if that's a problem.

So far I'm at the beginning of Sunk City. Really dig the ambience!
1

User is offline   Jblade 

#207

You get the scuba near the end of the map (or in a secret area) the point of the level was to take that comfort away from the player and force them onwards through the level. If you're not a fan of it than I understand, but I made that level with Duke veterans in mind who are gonna be more used to exploring underwater areas.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#208

View PostMike Norvak, on 27 August 2018 - 08:08 AM, said:

Now some real bug report and another aspects that could be actually changed:

I can't get to use snipper mode on any weapon, is there a key for that? alternative weapon key just switches through...

there is an alt-fire AND an alternative-weapon key. two different keys, so make sure you bind them both.
side-note for Shelly's automatic rifle in slot 4: one key is for iron-sights, the other key is for reload

View PostMike Norvak, on 27 August 2018 - 08:08 AM, said:

The player needs to wait until an oxygen bubble pops out in order to restore, the effect should work immediately after entering the sector. As I stated before, some scuba here and there would really help gameplay in hard rain and sunk city, punishing the player for not being an acquatic creature is an old troppe in videogames that have annoyed generations of players, the gimmick doesn't add anything to gameplay but annoyance, please don't take that route :( The oxygen bubbles a la Sonic didn't work in DNF why reutilizing it DNAA? I think they can be kept as supplementary devices while the player finds more scuba, the item is in the original game for a reason, you can easily reduce the inventory time if that's a problem.

all you have to do is make it to an air bubble before you drown - any health lost due to drowning damage is restored.
the player gets an oxygen meter capacity AND all their current health points to go through before they actually die. That's quite a large bit of time, considering the frequency and short distances between air-bubble sectors

This post has been edited by Forge: 27 August 2018 - 08:22 AM

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User is offline   Mike Norvak 

  • Music Producer

#209

View PostForge, on 27 August 2018 - 08:15 AM, said:

there is an alt-fire and an alternative key. two differnt keys, so make sure you bind them both.


Got it!


View PostForge, on 27 August 2018 - 08:15 AM, said:


all you have to do is make it to an air bubble before you drown - any health lost due to drowning is restored


I'm not sure, still Sonic'ish. Why don't simply using regular scuba gear?
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#210

View PostMike Norvak, on 27 August 2018 - 08:20 AM, said:

I'm not sure, still Sonic'ish. Why don't simply using regular scuba gear?

the added stress to the player to make the experience more intense.

5 years from now, someone will ask you what you remember about the first AA episode, and you're going to bring up that effing underwater map.

some people just don't like underwater maps, regardless of the amount of scuba-tanks. It is what it is, that's just the nature of things.

This post has been edited by Forge: 27 August 2018 - 08:32 AM

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