[re-release] Vermin Clearance

[Puritan]

BTW, check the code. I killed the overlord at the end of the map, it played an episode ending "movie" clip as it would when a boss is killed, then the game exited to the main menu instead of the next level.

I'm playing 32 bit, no mod, no hrp

Funny.
It must have something to do with the latest EDuke32.

I use an older version ( 2009-03-13) because I'm tired of crashes in the latest versions, especially when toggle between 2D and 3D mode in mapster.


See what happens playing with the mentioned version:

[Gambini]

Damn, seems like one more recently introduced bug.

Instead of keep adding new features i would first try to make a 100% working eduke32 version. I wonder if there were any someday. 

[Dan G]

As someone who has had lots of problems with bugs getting introduced in new versions of EDuke32, I'm sympathetic.  But in this case I suspect that something else is going on.  The CON code responsible for ending the game when killing a boss is extremely simple.  Just look for the endofgame command in the BOSS3 actor and you can easily find out whether the code is correct.  In normal CONs, spritepal 0 bosses end the game, others don't.  The correct way to make a miniboss is to set the boss to pal 3 (or some other nonzero pal) in the map, then change the CON code so it has the correct amount of strength.  If it's a respawn it will spawn as pal 0, so put a line where the monster initializes saying ifspawnedby RESPAWN { spritepal 3 strength 1000 }

You could check what is going on in less time than it took you to post those screenshots.

[ck3D]

As someone who has had lots of problems with bugs getting introduced in new versions of EDuke32, I'm sympathetic.  But in this case I suspect that something else is going on.  The CON code responsible for ending the game when killing a boss is extremely simple.  Just look for the endofgame command in the BOSS3 actor and you can easily find out whether the code is correct.  In normal CONs, spritepal 0 bosses end the game, others don't.  The correct way to make a miniboss is to set the boss to pal 3 (or some other nonzero pal) in the map, then change the CON code so it has the correct amount of strength.  If it's a respawn it will spawn as pal 0, so put a line where the monster initializes saying ifspawnedby RESPAWN { spritepal 3 strength 1000 }

You could check what is going on in less time than it took you to post those screenshots.

Giving the respawn sprite a palette in Mapster is even faster (for a mapper at least) than adding a special line of code commanding the palette value of the respawns

[Forge]

Giving the respawn sprite a palette in Mapster is even faster (for a mapper at least) than adding a special line of code commanding the palette value of the respawns

If you try that with any boss other than the battlelord and not edit the con, it'll only have 1 point of strength. It takes only a few seconds more to edit a line of code than it does setting a palette value in mapster, so one might as well edit both lines of code to be on the safe side.

I think the goal was to have the boss killed to end the level and have the game go to the next level instead of ending the game and exiting out to the main menu.

[ck3D]

Giving the respawn sprite a palette in Mapster is even faster (for a mapper at least) than adding a special line of code commanding the palette value of the respawns

If you try that with any boss other than the battlelord and not edit the con, it'll only have 1 point of strength. It takes only a few seconds more to edit a line of code than it does setting a palette value in mapster, so one might as well edit both lines of code to be on the safe side.

Yeah yeah I know that you need to edit the .con file to give the boss some strength anyway, my point was mostly because I remember how editing .con files used to confuse the hell out of me when I was much younger and less experienced (even though I already had a small background in basic programming), to the point where I had to ask (and most likely, annoy) experienced coders just to learn how to make viable minibosses back then, so complicating the process would have confused me even more (at least in this thread DeeperThought included the line of code in his post). In general plain mappers know more about mapping than coding, so it's always better to give them alternatives in a field they are actually supposed to master, if that makes any sense.

[Dan G]

As someone who has had lots of problems with bugs getting introduced in new versions of EDuke32, I'm sympathetic.  But in this case I suspect that something else is going on.  The CON code responsible for ending the game when killing a boss is extremely simple.  Just look for the endofgame command in the BOSS3 actor and you can easily find out whether the code is correct.  In normal CONs, spritepal 0 bosses end the game, others don't.  The correct way to make a miniboss is to set the boss to pal 3 (or some other nonzero pal) in the map, then change the CON code so it has the correct amount of strength.  If it's a respawn it will spawn as pal 0, so put a line where the monster initializes saying ifspawnedby RESPAWN { spritepal 3 strength 1000 }

You could check what is going on in less time than it took you to post those screenshots.

Giving the respawn sprite a palette in Mapster is even faster (for a mapper at least) than adding a special line of code commanding the palette value of the respawns

That doesn't work.  You can give the RESPAWN a pal of 2 and the thing it spawns will still be pal 0.  This is due to a bug that goes all the way back to DOS Duke.  It works in DukePlus because I added code to make spawned sprites take the pal of the RESPAWN.

[Forge]

That doesn't work.  You can give the RESPAWN a pal of 2 and the thing it spawns will still be pal 0.  This is due to a bug that goes all the way back to DOS Duke.  It works in DukePlus because I added code to make spawned sprites take the pal of the RESPAWN.

Works on the battle lord spawning sprite with a pal of 21.

[Gambini]

That doesn't work.  You can give the RESPAWN a pal of 2 and the thing it spawns will still be pal 0.  This is due to a bug that goes all the way back to DOS Duke.  It works in DukePlus because I added code to make spawned sprites take the pal of the RESPAWN.

Works on the battle lord spawning sprite with a pal of 21.

Such a great new, i was -right now- trying to prevent this battlelord to shoot me until i saw him, i scrapped the idea of making it into a respawn because that pal problem.

[Forge]

Used it in my last map. If you'd managed to jump into the wind turbine off the barrel, it would spawn when you grab the blue key.

[Dan G]

Does it work on all the bosses?  I'm quite sure it doesn't work on everything.

[Forge]

Don't know if it works on any other boss.


edit: I did try it on a queen, but I don't remember if it worked or not.

[ck3D]

It works on every boss, under certains pals (I always use pal 21 but I wouldn't be surprised if it worked with some others) they respawn as minibosses with just one point of health for bosses 2, 3 and 4. I'm surprised that you didn't know this already, it's always been really basic Build knowledge for me, I was already using respawning mini-Overlords back in 2004 for my Anarchy City maps and I didn't even know you could code in such palette specifications back then. I know what you mean about the bug though, ie. if you respawn liztroops with any palette value that isn't 21, since it's not originally coded in the game will just scratch the extra palette value when respawning the actual actors.

Rural Nightmare and DNF_BTTG had respawning mini-Queens as well.

[Forge]

Yep. I remember now. That's why I didn't keep the spawned queen in the sewer of my first map. Pal 21 made it ugly and it only had a power of 1.

[Dan G]

Back to the topic:  I'm willing to look at the code/map and try to fix the problem, but currently the download link is disabled.