splitting very long linedefs
frater mus
(say 8000 units) and automagically break them up into <=1024 linedefs?
I'm working on a physically large wad (based on a real location) and
some of the linedefs are quite long. zDoom is handling the long walls
but I have read of the dreaded long wall error in vanilla engines. I
don't want to spend all day splitting linedefs...
--
L.V.X., brother mouse
OTR trades http://www.mousetrap.net/otr/
OTRnap http://www.mousetrap.net/OTRnap/
PGP/GPG pubkey http://www.mousetrap.net/pgp/pubkey.html 0x851E21F0
Colin Phipps
> Is there an editor or app out there that will take Very Long Linedefs
> (say 8000 units) and automagically break them up into <=1024 linedefs?
*silence*
Guess that's a no, then.
Taking a more low-level approach, presumably it's not necessary to break
the linedef up, only the segs it generates? Perhaps I should add a feature
to BSP to deliberately split up long segs?
Nobody ever suggests features to me so I guess I'd better start floating my
own ideas :-)
--
Colin Phipps <c...@cph.demon.co.uk> http://www.cph.demon.co.uk/
frater mus
> *silence*
> Guess that's a no, then.
:-)
> Taking a more low-level approach, presumably it's not necessary to break
> the linedef up, only the segs it generates? Perhaps I should add a
> feature to BSP to deliberately split up long segs?
I have a hint of what you're talking about, but not enough to offer
constructive input. I'm sure you know what you're doing. :-)
> Nobody ever suggests features to me so I guess I'd better start floating
> my own ideas :-)
If you're the BSP guy, thanks for all your work. I use it on the back end of
SLIGE.
Never_Again
rec.games.computer.doom.editing and thus spake unto all:
>[...] Nobody ever suggests features to me so I guess I'd better start floating my
>own ideas :-)
I do! Just check the feature request section at sourceforge.net.
But then again, you seem to be working on it anyway (Doom v1.2
compatibility, that is :)
--
Never_Again
I am is that which ends.
Colin Phipps
>>Perhaps I should add a feature to BSP to deliberately split up long segs?
> I'm sure you know what you're doing. :-)
I'm not, so I was hoping to draw some comment from the experts around
here... :-)
> If you're the BSP guy, thanks for all your work.
Not really, I've just taken it over since the original authors moved on.
Never_Again wrote:
> In <o4mp1a...@cph.demon.co.uk> Colin Phipps came forth to
> rec.games.computer.doom.editing and thus spake unto all:
>>[...] Nobody ever suggests features to me so I guess I'd better start
>>floating my own ideas :-)
>
> I do! Just check the feature request section at sourceforge.net.
Yes, but I was referring to the program BSP :-)
In fact I've had almost 0 comment on BSP v5.0 in over a year now(*).
Admittedly that's partly my fault for making v5.0 verifiably output
identical with v3.0, and having no gimmicky new features to make people
bother to upgrade. I think I've only seen one level that confessed to
using it so far.
OK I am exagerating, I did get a complete patch for compressed blockmap
support from fraggle. But I've kind of been delaying any 5.1 release on the
grounds that I can't believe 5.0 really had no bugs, so I'm assuming it's a
conspiracy not to send me bug reports.
frater mus
> Thanks from me too anyway. 5.0 certainly made a difference for me
> (I can have more weird angles without risking firelines and such).
"firelines" = "slime trails" (narrow bands of missing texture or whatever)?
Andre Majorel
> frater mus wrote:
>>>Perhaps I should add a feature to BSP to deliberately split up long segs?
>
>> I'm sure you know what you're doing. :-)
>
> I'm not, so I was hoping to draw some comment from the experts around
> here... :-)
Non-expert comment : yes it sounds like a clever idea, but do we
really want to encourage the creation of levels that have so many
linedefs longer than 1024 that they need automated splitting ?
Instead, don't we want to print nasty warnings like "don't you
think there are enough dull, boring levels on idgames already" ?
Only half-joking.
This is not meant as a rap against the OP, editing newbies all
make the same mistakes. Been there, done that...
I'd love to see a program that measured the suckiness index of a
level, looking for niceties such as :
- outside areas at light level 255,
- most of the level at LL >= 160,
- 113 different textures used in the same level,
- 42 cyberdemons and 26 spiders,
- 99 rooms all alike,
- all floors at 0 and all ceilings at 128,
- all rooms larger than 1024 x 1024,
- lack of texture alignment,
- long corridors 64 wide,
- etc.
> In fact I've had almost 0 comment on BSP v5.0 in over a year now(*).
Supposedly that's because any bugs it may have are well hidden.
Haven't been doing a lot of editing lately but it's always worked
fine for me. Really Nice.
I've already said that, Colin, but the one feature I'd like to see
in BSP is infinite horizons.
--
André Majorel <URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/>
I'm for equality as long as it's not at my expense.
-- fast...@hotmail.com in comp.dsp, apparently not joking
Len Pitre
>>> Thanks from me too anyway. 5.0 certainly made a difference for me
>>> (I can have more weird angles without risking firelines and such).
>>
>> "firelines" = "slime trails" (narrow bands of missing texture or whatever)?
>
>enough that I keep mixing them up; vertical lines, a single pixel wide
>with a HOM-like look, that only show up when you stand in certain very
>specific spots in a level.
Rez! Rez! They're using your coinages! Rez!:)
Len
--
Pointless sig file.
http://archonrealm.cjb.net/ | http://archonrealm.tripod.com
Replace "Doom!" with "Hotmail" to send e-mail.
End pointless sig file.
jerk-o
BSP 5.0, the Fraggle Script dissapears.
frater mus
> Non-expert comment : yes it sounds like a clever idea, but do we
> really want to encourage the creation of levels that have so many
> linedefs longer than 1024 that they need automated splitting ?
Making a Corvette does not encourage people to drive 150mph.
The pwad that prompted me to ask the question was a mockup of the Masada
siege. It is/was a Big Place:
http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/images/doom/jc-masada.jpg
Yes, the pwad sucks because I am a newbie, and because the dynamics of the
siege do not lend themselves to normal Doomish play. But standing on Masada
was quite moving for me as a human, and interesting to me as a historian.
Len Pitre
>really bad with Doom95. Don't know about Legacy or Zdoom.
>http://hjem.get2net.dk/RasII/doom/colos.zip (~91K, for Doom 1).
Did you release this around late 2000? It looks familiar.
>Rebuild it with BSP 5.0 to see the difference. Building it with WARM
>also made a large difference, but not as much as with BSP 5.0.
Yeah, but WARM once did some weird texture things on me. I figured it was
safer with BSP.
len
Colin Phipps
>>>>segs?
> ... do we
> really want to encourage the creation of levels that have so many
> linedefs longer than 1024 that they need automated splitting ?
> Instead, don't we want to print nasty warnings like "don't you
> think there are enough dull, boring levels on idgames already" ?
Oh, I think such warnings belong in the level editor ;-)
I think it's a useful convenience feature, removes one chore from the
author, and it's a bit more efficient by not requiring them to split the
linedef itself. It would have to be optional at least, some advanced
authors would prefer to do it manually (e.g. not to split distant segs
which the player never approached unnecessarily). Default off at first but
I might be tempted to make it a default once it proved stable. But this is
all thought experiment, I'll have to try it out.
> I'd love to see a program that measured the suckiness index of a
> level, looking for niceties such as :
> - outside areas at light level 255,
> - most of the level at LL >= 160,
> - 113 different textures used in the same level,
> - 42 cyberdemons and 26 spiders,
> - 99 rooms all alike,
> - all floors at 0 and all ceilings at 128,
> - all rooms larger than 1024 x 1024,
> - lack of texture alignment,
> - long corridors 64 wide,
> - etc.
LOL
Well it sounds like you have the logic all worked out, when can we expect
to see it in Yadex? :-P
> I've already said that, Colin, but the one feature I'd like to see
> in BSP is infinite horizons.
Hmm, I'll have to look into that then. Any other node builders do this
already?
frater mus
> Masada?! Oh, wow. A person could make a whole episode out of that.
I would think so.
> Remember the "Masada" TV miniseries, starring Peter O'Toole, James
> Mason (and I forget who all else) ?? Wonderfully done, IMO probably
> the best single production ever made for TV. I dearly wish I had it on
> tape.
I've never seen the movie, but I have been to the location and stood on
Masada.
> fit. (Now he's gonna ask me what they were. The fortress, the nearest
> city and villages, Rome itself, some caves and rocks used as a meeting
> place, and the big flat where the Romans camped. I forget if there's
> anywhere else, I last saw it ca. 1984.)
I just did the mesa (?) itself and the areas flanking, with the earthen ramp
(flipped to the east side, I couldn't get wadauthor to draw the steps in the
other direction...), the eastern roman walls and towers.
Andre Majorel
>>>>>Perhaps I should add a feature to BSP to deliberately split up long
>>>>>segs?
> Andre Majorel wrote:
>> ... do we
>> really want to encourage the creation of levels that have so many
>> linedefs longer than 1024 that they need automated splitting ?
>> Instead, don't we want to print nasty warnings like "don't you
>> think there are enough dull, boring levels on idgames already" ?
>
> Oh, I think such warnings belong in the level editor ;-)
Ah but BSP has more users than Yadex. :-)
[list of bad editing ideas]
> Well it sounds like you have the logic all worked out, when can we expect
> to see it in Yadex? :-P
That was my first idea but I figured that it would be useful to
more people if done as a separate program, in the spirit of DCC.
But yes, automatically calling said program from the editor has
merit.
>> I've already said that, Colin, but the one feature I'd like to see
>> in BSP is infinite horizons.
>
> Hmm, I'll have to look into that then. Any other node builders do this
> already?
None that I know of, except BSP 2.3. <g>
The effect can be seen in horizon.png, from
http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/doom/bsp23bug.zip. From what Rez
said, seems this happens when you're standing on a fireline
vertex.
What I'm looking for is a way to create such effects
controllably, for large, open outdoor areas (cf. the exit of
Memento Mori MAP29 and a hundred others). Have no idea whether
it's possible at all, though.
frater mus
>> I just did the mesa (?) itself and the areas flanking, with the earthen
>> ramp (flipped to the east side, I couldn't get wadauthor to draw the
>> steps in the other direction...), the eastern roman walls and towers.
>
> Would be interesting to see,
I suck at this, so it really wouldn't be that interesting (unless you want a
laugh!).
> but you're using some ZDoom specific
> things, aren't you? The ramp in the screenshot looked a bit unusual for
> standard Doom.
No zdoom stuff that I'm aware of. Built it in WinDEU and Wadauthor. The
steps were automagically made by wadauthor.
frater mus
> ZDoom? Argh! In that case, I'll never play it :(
>
> I wish for a ZDoom-to-normalDOOM conversion utility. Yeah, some stuff
> would get messed up and need manual fixing, but beats hell out of not
> enjoying the map at all cuz I can't stand the engine.
I *play* in zdoom, but my newbie maps are all vanilla doom2, AFAIK.
frater mus
>>I just did the mesa (?) itself and the areas flanking, with the earthen
>>ramp (flipped to the east side, I couldn't get wadauthor to draw the
>>steps in the other direction...), the eastern roman walls and towers.
>
> Wonder why it only liked steps going one way? Anyway, sounds like you
> included the critical points.
Dunno. I needed them to go west-east but wadauthor would only show me north-
south and east-west. I tried the east-west thing but the stairs were
backwards. So I just moved them to the other side. :-(
frater mus
> Also, it probably shouldn't ever have been made out of that green
> marble, but I couldn't find another texture that had the kind of
> 'Roman Caesar' look I needed. Not that the green marble had that
> either, but hey, marble.
Colored marble and green travertine veneer were both used in Roman
architecture, so it may have been more accurate than you think. The use of
exotic materials was a socio-political statement; "I have enough power/wealth
to bring in this material from BFE. Fear me!"
Note that Roman buildings were not *made* of marble (or whatever), they had
marble veneers covering and protecting the concrete structure. The greatness
in Roman architecture is based on their ability to work in concrete.[0]
Also note that much of what we think of as the classical stark white look is
largely a function of renaissance and later neoclassicism; the stains and
paints of artfacts had faded by the time they were "found" again.[1] The
original colors of much classical architecture and statuary would seem
unbelievably gaudy to us today (well, most of us).[2]
jc
[0] the loss of concrete and arcuating (building arches) techniques in the
West after the fall of rome meant that architecture would pretty much suck
for about 500 years or so until the Romanesque period (hmmm, wonder where
they got that name...)
[1] as a teen, Michaelangelo was present when the Roman artifact "Belvedere
Torso" was excavated from a farmer's field; do you think the artifact's
massive muscularity affected his style much? Nahhhh.....
[2] greek more so than roman, but you get the idea.
Len Pitre
>19 Jan 2002: askme...@earthlink.net (Rez) wrote
>
>>>I just did the mesa (?) itself and the areas flanking, with the earthen
>>>ramp (flipped to the east side, I couldn't get wadauthor to draw the
>>>steps in the other direction...), the eastern roman walls and towers.
>>
>> Wonder why it only liked steps going one way? Anyway, sounds like you
>> included the critical points.
>
>Dunno. I needed them to go west-east but wadauthor would only show me north-
>south and east-west. I tried the east-west thing but the stairs were
>backwards. So I just moved them to the other side. :-(
I suppose negative stair heights don't work either?
Len
Roy Olsen
> > DOOM textures during that phase (the DOOM1 look generally works better,
> > I think), then add and replace textures as they fit the map, rather than
> > trying to make the map fit the textures.
>
> Good idea. It'll be a pain to change the textures later, but it might
> well be worth it.
>
Changing textures is very easy with DM2CONV.EXE v3.0
(by Vincenzo Alcamo) provided you want to change ALL
of one texture to another.
DM2CONV was written to convert levels between Doom,
Doom II and Heretic (any two in either direction).
By setting it to convert Doom II to Doom II it will
change texture names in the level to what ever you want.
Roy
frater mus
>>Dunno. I needed them to go west-east but wadauthor would only show me
>>north- south and east-west. I tried the east-west thing but the stairs
>>were backwards. So I just moved them to the other side. :-(
>
> I suppose negative stair heights don't work either?
I'm not sure I understand. I know I could have made the stairs by hand and
made it work (just keep the rise <=24, right?), but it was (is) my first
attempt at stairs and wanted wadauthor to drive if possible.
Len Pitre
>22 Jan 2002: I_am_the_archon@Doom!.com (Len Pitre) wrote
>
>>>Dunno. I needed them to go west-east but wadauthor would only show me
>>>north- south and east-west. I tried the east-west thing but the stairs
>>>were backwards. So I just moved them to the other side. :-(
>>
>> I suppose negative stair heights don't work either?
>
>I'm not sure I understand. I know I could have made the stairs by hand and
>made it work (just keep the rise <=24, right?), but it was (is) my first
>attempt at stairs and wanted wadauthor to drive if possible.
Does WA give you a stair height entry box? If so, try a negative number. It
should make a fight of stairs going down in the opposite direction from how
they'd normally go.
Len Pitre
>>>mh. The original idea was to have a small fight between two or three
>>>monsters down in the arena when the player entered the 'balcony', but
>>
>> Well, the Roman games DID include melee fights!
>
>.... Maybe I've completely overlooked something. hmm. Perhaps I ought
>to try that idea again.
I suddenly got this image of the Doomguy with a net and a trident.:) Can't see
how to implement it, though a sword and shield might be possible.:)
(Snip)
>It's a shame I never got to see what Echoanna did with it. It sounded
>rather interesting.
Too bad we couldn't pry her WADs off her HD. Though I suppose asking might be
worth a go?
>heh. I watched Alien 4 for the first time earlier tonight and got
>all Alienated in the head again, so I just took a look at my last
>attempt which stranded in August. I have 43 flats and some 163
>patches in varying states of finishedness. At least I gave them
>sensible names on that attempt, so I have a chance of figuring
>out what is what this time.
Mine are LENTX000 and LENFL000 and so on. Oddly enough, I did several maps and
had no problems remembering that the pale brick with a cornice and quarter
round molding is LENTX068 while the one without the cornice and quarter round
is LENTX072.
Len Pitre
>>>It's a shame I never got to see what Echoanna did with it. It sounded
>>>rather interesting.
>>
>
>Don't know. She disappeared again. I mailed her last Wednesday, but
>haven't heard anything. Maybe her computer died again or something.
Peachy. So much for asking.:\ Any alternate e-mail addies?
>>>heh. I watched Alien 4 for the first time earlier tonight and got
>>
>> Alien 4 ?? I only know of three.
>
>Well, not if you know about Resurrection. That's the fourth.
>.... I think. I missed the title screen when I watched it.
>The fourth takes place some 200 years after the third movie
>(the one on the prison planet) and Ripley has been recreated
>from DNA. It's a bit strange, but I thought it was okay.
>Definitely not as bad as I'd heard it should be.
That the one with Winona Ryder? All I remember is a Mad magazine joke that
goes something like:
"She's an android?"
"Yeah. That explains her acting. What's your excuse?"
As to the actual movie, all I remember was a special effect show that gave
away part of the ending. I think it was the ending - ugly semi-alien hybrid
learns what happens when you use the vacuum of space for a laxative.
Andre Majorel
> The effect can be seen in horizon.png, from
> http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/doom/bsp23bug.zip. From what Rez
> said, seems this happens when you're standing on a fireline
> vertex.
>
> What I'm looking for is a way to create such effects
> controllably, for large, open outdoor areas (cf. the exit of
> Memento Mori MAP29 and a hundred others). Have no idea whether
> it's possible at all, though.
There seems to be a related feature in ZDoom:
September 27, 2001
Added Line_Horizon special to extend a sector's floor and
ceiling to infinity--should be useful for skyboxes.
frater mus
> Does WA give you a stair height entry box? If so, try a negative number.
> It should make a fight of stairs going down in the opposite direction
> from how they'd normally go.
Ahh, I get it now.
IIRC, it asks you for the # of steps and does the math itself. I'll check on
it.
Never_Again
up very long / OT threads ...
Len Pitre
>Folks! What we really need is a newsreader that automatically splits
>up very long / OT threads ...
It's been invented. It's called a subject line.:)
Roy Olsen
> get them to do it? (with dehacked or something).
Some species seem to be more apt to attack others.
Most will fight/attack another if hit by friendly fire.
So get one or more between you and an enemy.
Imps seem to be immune to damage by other Imps
and I've never seen them attack each other even when
hit by accidental friendly fire.
I'm not sure if any of the other species are immume
to their own kind BUT none are immune to bullets,
shells and/or bites.
I doubt that any dehack program available can do this.
Roy
Roy Olsen
> >> Do any monsters always attack other monsters or is there a way to
> >> get them to do it? (with dehacked or something).
> Shotgunners and soldiers seem less tolerant, but I'm not sure
> if they actually attack their own species (I often use them
> together).
I pretty sure I've seen all six possible combinations of fights.
> For colos.wad, I wanted to have melee monsters fighting each other,
> but I couldn't figure out how to get them to attack (the player is
> quite a bit away, visible, but not reachable by the monsters at that
> point in the level), so I tried having one soldier placed so he hit
> the other monsters when shooting at the player. It only worked maybe
> one out of three times, so I couldn't use it.
>
To do this, I think the player is going have to be closer and be able
to move around the edge of the combat area ( as someone else noted)
> Maybe I should make some test levels to see if there's a
> particularly intolerant monster I can use.
>
In Doom II level 8, a cyberdemon and several Barons ALWAYS start
fighting as soon as the player enters the room but it might start be-
cause the much taller cyberdemon is looking directly at the door
the player comes in and his fire hits a baron.
Personally I THINK:
1 - monsters will only fight each other when hit by friendly fire.
2 - most monsters will almost always fight if hit by friendly fire.
Roy
Never_Again
rec.games.computer.doom.editing and thus spake unto all:
>Never_Again wrote:
>>Folks! What we really need is a newsreader that automatically splits
>>up very long / OT threads ...
>
>It's been invented. It's called a subject line.:)
Anyone in the know?
:P
Len Pitre
>> Do any monsters always attack other monsters or is there a way to
>> get them to do it? (with dehacked or something).
>
>Some species seem to be more apt to attack others.
The fine details:
Any bullet monster will attack any of its own kind - bullets hurt anyone.
Former humans, SS Nazis, and Spider Masterminds will hurt and fight their own
kind.
Projectile monsters can't hurt their own kind. They can hurt any other
projectile monster.
Exception: Hell Knights and Barons of Hell - special-case code keeps them from
hurting each other with their plasma).
Exception 2: I'm pretty sure that if the projectile is DeHackEd to have a
rocket blast radius, it WILL hurt even its own kind - or even the specific
being who threw it! Since the only rocket-firing monster in Doom is the
blast-radius immune Cyberdemon, this is never seen in plain Doom.
Exception 3: Lost souls can hurt each other. Their attack is halfway between a
projectile and a claw attack, and uses IIRC special-case code.
Bite/claw attacks hurt anyone, even the same species. However, because a bite
attack can't (except maybe via code/memory corruption) miss and hit something
else, no monster ever accidentally claws one of its own kind. If a monster
hits a barrel, the barrel survives, then the barrel explodes later next to a
monster, the wounded monster will go after the original barrel attacker
regardless of species. See also http://members.aol.com/ledmeister/odddemos.htm
If this happens between two monsters of the same species, the wounded
monster monsters will attack the other long-range - doing no damage - until
they eventually close to melee range and one begins clawing, damaging the
other. After that, the other responds in kind.
This can happen to:
Imps (but it's rare because they rarely survive a barrel explosion)
Cacos
Hell Knights
Barons of Hell
Revenants
It can't happen to:
Demons/spectres - no projectile attack to damage the barrel in the first
place.
Arachnotrons - one might get mad and attack the other, but the other ignores
the attack, since it's not damaging. Since the arachnotron has no claw attack,
the mad one never hurts his supposed victim, and will go on firing
indefinitely (or until one or the other is killed).
Viles - their long-range attack isn't a projectile attack.
Pain Elementals - their projectile is a monster in its own right.
Mancubus - same as Arachnotron.
Cyberdemon - immune to blast radius.
Len Pitre
>If this happens between two monsters of the same species, the wounded
>monster monsters will attack the other long-range
Why do I suddenly feel like Little Caesar?
Roy Olsen
"Len Pitre" <I_am_the_archon@Doom!.com> wrote in message
news:3WC48.84$gD6....@sapphire.mtt.net...
> >> Someone ?Rez2? asked:
> >> Do any monsters always attack other monsters or is there a way to
> >> get them to do it? (with dehacked or something).
> >Roy Olsen replied:
> >Some species seem to be more apt to attack others.
> Len Pitre added:
Than you, I've saved this excellent explaination !!
Roy
Len Pitre
>>>> Where is Echo these days anyway?
>>>
>>>Don't know. She disappeared again. I mailed her last Wednesday, but
>>>haven't heard anything. Maybe her computer died again or something.
>>
>> Peachy. So much for asking.:\ Any alternate e-mail addies?
>
>addresses that don't exist anymore.
I suppose one could send something to an insanely wrong addy, but that's too
much work. Might even be so wrong someone's already taken it.:)
>[Alien 4]
>> That the one with Winona Ryder?
>
>yes. And Michael Wincott (they killed him off way too soon).
>And Brad Dourif. And that guy from "The Name of the Rose"
>I can never remember the name of (Ron Perlman, I think).
>Quite a nice collection of actors.
:) All I remember regularly is Sigourney and the one who played the android a
few movies back. Paul McGann.
>> All I remember is a Mad magazine joke that
>> goes something like:
>>
>> "She's an android?"
>> "Yeah. That explains her acting. What's your excuse?"
>
>heh. I thought she was okay, but even fairly bad actors can seem good
>when you don't have sound on your TV, so it's hard to know.
:) Yeah, flat delivery LOOKS just like good delivery.
>> As to the actual movie, all I remember was a special effect show that gave
>> away part of the ending. I think it was the ending - ugly semi-alien hybrid
>> learns what happens when you use the vacuum of space for a laxative.
>
>Right. I wasn't too fond of that; it seems a bit like blasphemy to
>mix the Alien genes with human genes (the other way around is okay;
>Ripley was quite spiffy in Alien 4).
Also about the only way to get her back.:)
>But the hybrid worked better
>than I'd thought it would from the stills I had seen.
>
>It was also pretty annoying to have read several proposed scripts
>for it (I kept mixing "Resurrection" up with "Redemption" for one
>thing).
"Resurrection, Revelations, Remembrance.... now they're just sticking words in
front of it and hoping we won't notice it doesn't make sense!" - A slightly
misquoted Complete(ly Useless) Encyclopedia, on assorted "... of the Daleks"
episodes of Doctor Who.
>I think the movie ends earlier than the original script.
>Or earlier than one of the scripts I'm mixing the movie up with,
>possibly.
I'm confused again.:)
Len Pitre
>In article <slrna54iq5.4...@gmx.net>, repl...@thanatos.cjb.net
> wrote:
>>That wouldn't be possible, I think. I need something that'll
>>attack every other creature, including the player.
>
>Len?? ideas?
Give 'em all guns.:) Maybe make everything low-level blast radius, but that's
going to require IIRC Fusion's DetonateMisc pointer. MBF's Detonate pointer is
tied to the missile damage or something, and it'd likely be better
independent.
>Bullets don't care, anyone who gets shot will shoot back no matter who
>it is. Same for rocket backblast. Same for scratch attacks, in the
>event that you get a critter to scratch his brother.
>
>LSs do "tit for tat" rather than "retaliate until the other guy dies".
Yes, I'd forgotten that. Better description than mine.:)
Len Pitre
>>Do any monsters always attack other monsters or is there a way to
>>get them to do it? (with dehacked or something).
>
>Well, any time they have bad aim :) Infighting can be turned up,
>down, or off with various ports. Personally I think it probably
>started life as a bug that was so much fun it was left in the code.
Could be. Dehacked has an "everything infights" sort of option.
>>>>Definitely not as bad as I'd heard it should be.
>>> Apparently the aliens reproduced while I wasn't looking!
>>That's what they do.
>
>Dang, we better get some more alien monitors. :)
Ali3N Pr0n?:)
>>You'd only get the plain shotgun in my ATC; there's no double-barrel in
>>the movie. Should be other weapons that will work well enough, though
>>(except for the flamethrower, probably; I've never seen a Doom flamethrower
>>that looked or behaved properly).
>
>Hmm. Maybe something that spits a stream of maulotaur fires a la our
>MythTC critter. Len??
Well, that was just a nod to Strife's incendiary grenades. It can be rigged as
a flamethrower, though.
Speaking of Myth, did we ever reach a concensus on the final bad guy? I
haven't even started work on it yet!
Len Pitre
>In article <3WC48.84$gD6....@sapphire.mtt.net>, I_am_the_archon@Doom!.com
> (Len Pitre) wrote:
>>The fine details:
>
>Much more technical than mine :)
but harder to understand.:)
>>Exception 2: I'm pretty sure that if the projectile is DeHackEd to have a
>>rocket blast radius, it WILL hurt even its own kind - or even the specific
>>being who threw it! Since the only rocket-firing monster in Doom is the
>>blast-radius immune Cyberdemon, this is never seen in plain Doom.
>
>Rarely, revenant fireballs exhibit a blast radius -- seems to be a
>very old bug. I know I've sometimes taken damage when the fireball
>clearly hit something else, far enough away to see it clearly.
Could be the source of that thing where you saw the revenants go turncoat.
>Once in DOOM2 v1.666 with a vanilla PWAD, I found myself gazing down
>on a pitful of 50-odd revenants, with no ammo to speak of. Naturally
(Snip.)
Yeah, like that.:)
>>If this happens between two monsters of the same species, the wounded
>>monster monsters will attack the other long-range - doing no damage - until
>>they eventually close to melee range and one begins clawing, damaging the
>>other. After that, the other responds in kind.
>
>I've also seen them just stand there and heave fireballs at one
>another without making any attempt to close on each other. Strange!
Could be something about the intervening linedefs. Of course, I've seen an imp
take out a baron before, in one of my Tarnished Oldies maps. (The baron was
limited in movement, so the imp never missed him. The imp wasn't limited and
was far enough away that the baron never hit him.)
>>Viles - their long-range attack isn't a projectile attack.
>
>But remember what happened when I shot a crowd of 'em with the mauler
>gun! they apparently blamed its side rays on each other, and started
>fighting and killing each other!!
The mauler is an abuse of perfectly good code.:)
>BTW: If a vile had a close attack, what would it be like? I mean, what
>kind seems right? I haven't come up with an idea I liked yet.
Maybe stretching out one hand towards the player, who gets a "lite" version of
the full blast. Possibly something that throws him backwards but not up off
the ground?
>>Pain Elementals - their projectile is a monster in its own right.
>
>Actually, PEs can be got to fight, usually by one's LS burning
>another at "birth", but I *think* I've seen it when a newborn LS
>happens to explode a barrel on another PE, too. Whatever way it
>starts, eventually one PE will kill the other, tho it takes forever
>and relies on the chance of hitting the other PE with a LS that's
>pissed the moment it's born. I've also seen a PE fight with *itself*
>more than once -- it just sits in the middle of an open space and
>spits LSs as fast as it can, all of which pop at birth, and the PE
>will occasionally groan, so it does sometimes get hurt by this rather
>ineffectual suicide method.
:) True enough, I saw that before. Usually floats up to the ceiling too,
right?
>Not sure what triggers fighting with itself, tho.
Same thing as fighting with others, maybe. I don't think the anti-suicide code
from 1.2 days was made flexible enough to figure out "pain by proxy". Pain
Elementals didn't exist then.
>Sometimes they appear to be fighting with a wall since
>they're face to face with it while spitting futilely at it -- not
>entirely sure in those cases if it's the wall or themselves they're
>mad at.
Could be either. The mauler makes it bloody easy to get any monster mad at a
random wall.
Len Pitre
>>>>You'd only get the plain shotgun in my ATC; there's no double-barrel in
>>>>the movie. Should be other weapons that will work well enough, though
>>>>(except for the flamethrower, probably; I've never seen a Doom flamethrower
>>>>that looked or behaved properly).
>>>Hmm. Maybe something that spits a stream of maulotaur fires a la our
>>>MythTC critter. Len??
>>Well, that was just a nod to Strife's incendiary grenades. It can be rigged as
>>a flamethrower, though.
>
Spit a fireball that explodes into a flame? It can be done.
>>Speaking of Myth, did we ever reach a concensus on the final bad guy? I
>>haven't even started work on it yet!
>
>Um, I'm not sure what we decided, if anything. But why not just futz
>around til you come up with something that makes you change your
>pants, and we'll use that one. :)
:) I wish it were that easy. All I see now are falling snakes, but I think I
could only get them to fall from the big boss itself, rather than from random
places. I might be able to do something, but it'll take a while. I'm not
really fond of the sprite, because of how 2D it is. Speaking of which, do you
happen to have that sprite lying around?
Len Pitre
>>take out a baron before, in one of my Tarnished Oldies maps. (The baron was
>>limited in movement, so the imp never missed him. The imp wasn't limited and
>>was far enough away that the baron never hit him.)
>
>closes to one another, they just stood in one spot like morons. :)
Given the AI, that's what they are.:) Morons with very lucky die rolls at
times.
>>>gun! they apparently blamed its side rays on each other, and started
>>>fighting and killing each other!!
>>The mauler is an abuse of perfectly good code.:)
>
>Come to think of it -- would that be useful to ras2's need to make
>everyone hate one another?
Maybe, maybe not. Since that isn't the main effect, it might not work
consistently. Also, it damages everything it hits. They'd need to have a lot
of health.
(Thinks.)
In Fusion, there is a codepointer called MFC_Friend that should - I never
tested it - toggle something's friend flag. Attach it to the first walking
frame, and any given monster will switch between friendly/evil every time it's
hurt, shoots, or completes one walking sequence. That MIGHT - if it doesn't
confuse the EXE all to hell - get a uniform group of monsters fighting down to
the last man/monster. Let me check later and see.
>>>BTW: If a vile had a close attack, what would it be like? I mean, what
>>>kind seems right? I haven't come up with an idea I liked yet.
>>Maybe stretching out one hand towards the player, who gets a "lite" version of
>
>>the full blast. Possibly something that throws him backwards but not up off
>>the ground?
>
>Yeah, that sounds right!
The frames of animation wouldn't be that hard to do. Problem is, there's no
code to do it. One suggestion I had for codepointers just before Hakx vanished
was one that allowed a monster to alter the frame pointer of its target, along
with one that basically says "jump to pain frame". So, the idea - which only
works in theory! - is that all victims jump to an arbitrary frame bunch, with
a total duration of zero. This just forces the thing backwards, maybe sets off
a small blast radius explosion, then jumps to the monster's own pain frame, so
the same code could be used with any monster. (Since the frames are duration
zero, you never see them.)
I even wrote some rough code, but it never got anywhere.
(PE Suidice)
>>:) True enough, I saw that before. Usually floats up to the ceiling too,
>>right?
>
>Not always. Sometimes they just sit in the middle of a big open space
>and don't move at all, up down or sideways. Hmm.. see above re imps
>fighting but not bothering to try to close on one another. Related??
Maybe. The code is so amazingly fragile in places it's a wonder it works at
all. But most likely several similar bugs all trace back to the same point. It
could be a bug in the targetting code.
>>>Sometimes they appear to be fighting with a wall since
>>>they're face to face with it while spitting futilely at it -- not
>>>entirely sure in those cases if it's the wall or themselves they're
>>>mad at.
>>Could be either. The mauler makes it bloody easy to get any monster mad at a
>>random wall.
>
>I had a splurge of wall-hatred a few months ago, in some vanilla WAD.
>Haven't seen it in a while, tho.
It's an odd thing. Remember when I saw it three times in a row during one test
of COD.EXE?
Len Pitre
>>>heh. I thought she was okay, but even fairly bad actors can seem good
>>>when you don't have sound on your TV, so it's hard to know.
>>:) Yeah, flat delivery LOOKS just like good delivery.
>
Okay.:)
Len Pitre
>>>Right. I wasn't too fond of that; it seems a bit like blasphemy to
>>>mix the Alien genes with human genes (the other way around is okay;
>>>Ripley was quite spiffy in Alien 4).
>>
>> Also about the only way to get her back.:)
>
Yeah.
>They should have used William Gibson's script for that instead.
>Pretty good story and Ripley is in a coma all through the movie,
>so there would have been plenty of opportunities for sequels too.
Never saw that. I like Gibson's cyberpunk though it tends to be similar enough
that it all melts together in my mind. I loved "Virtual Light", great novel,
even if it swerved in some weird directions at times.
I couldn't stand the short story "13 Views of a Cardboard City", and his work
with Bruce Sterling on "The Difference Engine" was just.... Well, both are
capable of better. The Difference Engine's story stopped 200 pages before the
book did. Started over 50 after the book did, too, now that I think of it.
(Parts 1 & 3 could have been reduced to summaries, with part 3's being about
10 pages long. Part 2 wasn't bad.) Problem is, that stupid deck of punchcards
were the REAL main character. And they couldn't prop a window open properly,
never mind a support a plot.
>>>I think the movie ends earlier than the original script.
>>>Or earlier than one of the scripts I'm mixing the movie up with,
>>>possibly.
>>
>> I'm confused again.:)
>
>Me too, but I was right; the first 'final' script has a battle that
>takes place on earth, but the movie doesn't. The final 'final' script
>is closer to the movie and the movie probably has the better ending, for
>once.
Amazing!
Len Pitre
>>take out a baron before, in one of my Tarnished Oldies maps. (The baron was
>>limited in movement, so the imp never missed him. The imp wasn't limited and
>>was far enough away that the baron never hit him.)
>
>closes to one another, they just stood in one spot like morons. :)
Given the AI, that's what they are.:) Morons with very lucky die rolls at
times.
>>>gun! they apparently blamed its side rays on each other, and started
>>>fighting and killing each other!!
>>The mauler is an abuse of perfectly good code.:)
>
>Come to think of it -- would that be useful to ras2's need to make
>everyone hate one another?
Maybe, maybe not. Since that isn't the main effect, it might not work
consistently. Also, it damages everything it hits. They'd need to have a lot
of health.
(Thinks.)
In Fusion, there is a codepointer called MFC_Friend that should - I never
tested it - toggle something's friend flag. Attach it to the first walking
frame, and any given monster will switch between friendly/evil every time it's
hurt, shoots, or completes one walking sequence. That MIGHT - if it doesn't
confuse the EXE all to hell - get a uniform group of monsters fighting down to
the last man/monster. Let me check later and see.
>>>BTW: If a vile had a close attack, what would it be like? I mean, what
>>>kind seems right? I haven't come up with an idea I liked yet.
>>Maybe stretching out one hand towards the player, who gets a "lite" version of
>
>>the full blast. Possibly something that throws him backwards but not up off
>>the ground?
>
>Yeah, that sounds right!
The frames of animation wouldn't be that hard to do. Problem is, there's no
code to do it. One suggestion I had for codepointers just before Hakx vanished
was one that allowed a monster to alter the frame pointer of its target, along
with one that basically says "jump to pain frame". So, the idea - which only
works in theory! - is that all victims jump to an arbitrary frame bunch, with
a total duration of zero. This just forces the thing backwards, maybe sets off
a small blast radius explosion, then jumps to the monster's own pain frame, so
the same code could be used with any monster. (Since the frames are duration
zero, you never see them.)
I even wrote some rough code, but it never got anywhere.
(PE Suidice)
>>:) True enough, I saw that before. Usually floats up to the ceiling too,
>>right?
>
>Not always. Sometimes they just sit in the middle of a big open space
>and don't move at all, up down or sideways. Hmm.. see above re imps
>fighting but not bothering to try to close on one another. Related??
Maybe. The code is so amazingly fragile in places it's a wonder it works at
all. But most likely several similar bugs all trace back to the same point. It
could be a bug in the targetting code.
>>>Sometimes they appear to be fighting with a wall since
>>>they're face to face with it while spitting futilely at it -- not
>>>entirely sure in those cases if it's the wall or themselves they're
>>>mad at.
>>Could be either. The mauler makes it bloody easy to get any monster mad at a
>>random wall.
>
>I had a splurge of wall-hatred a few months ago, in some vanilla WAD.
>Haven't seen it in a while, tho.
It's an odd thing. Remember when I saw it three times in a row during one test
of COD.EXE?
Len
Len Pitre
>>>>You'd only get the plain shotgun in my ATC; there's no double-barrel in
>>>>the movie. Should be other weapons that will work well enough, though
>>>>(except for the flamethrower, probably; I've never seen a Doom flamethrower
>>>>that looked or behaved properly).
>>>Hmm. Maybe something that spits a stream of maulotaur fires a la our
>>>MythTC critter. Len??
>>Well, that was just a nod to Strife's incendiary grenades. It can be rigged as
>>a flamethrower, though.
>
Spit a fireball that explodes into a flame? It can be done.
>>Speaking of Myth, did we ever reach a concensus on the final bad guy? I
>>haven't even started work on it yet!
>
>Um, I'm not sure what we decided, if anything. But why not just futz
>around til you come up with something that makes you change your
>pants, and we'll use that one. :)
:) I wish it were that easy. All I see now are falling snakes, but I think I
could only get them to fall from the big boss itself, rather than from random
places. I might be able to do something, but it'll take a while. I'm not
really fond of the sprite, because of how 2D it is. Speaking of which, do you
happen to have that sprite lying around?
Len
Len Pitre
>>>heh. I thought she was okay, but even fairly bad actors can seem good
>>>when you don't have sound on your TV, so it's hard to know.
>>:) Yeah, flat delivery LOOKS just like good delivery.
>
Okay.:)
--
Len Pitre
>>>Right. I wasn't too fond of that; it seems a bit like blasphemy to
>>>mix the Alien genes with human genes (the other way around is okay;
>>>Ripley was quite spiffy in Alien 4).
>>
>> Also about the only way to get her back.:)
>
Yeah.
>They should have used William Gibson's script for that instead.
>Pretty good story and Ripley is in a coma all through the movie,
>so there would have been plenty of opportunities for sequels too.
Never saw that. I like Gibson's cyberpunk though it tends to be similar enough
that it all melts together in my mind. I loved "Virtual Light", great novel,
even if it swerved in some weird directions at times.
I couldn't stand the short story "13 Views of a Cardboard City", and his work
with Bruce Sterling on "The Difference Engine" was just.... Well, both are
capable of better. The Difference Engine's story stopped 200 pages before the
book did. Started over 50 after the book did, too, now that I think of it.
(Parts 1 & 3 could have been reduced to summaries, with part 3's being about
10 pages long. Part 2 wasn't bad.) Problem is, that stupid deck of punchcards
were the REAL main character. And they couldn't prop a window open properly,
never mind a support a plot.
>>>I think the movie ends earlier than the original script.
>>>Or earlier than one of the scripts I'm mixing the movie up with,
>>>possibly.
>>
>> I'm confused again.:)
>
>Me too, but I was right; the first 'final' script has a battle that
>takes place on earth, but the movie doesn't. The final 'final' script
>is closer to the movie and the movie probably has the better ending, for
>once.
Amazing!
Len
Len Pitre
>In Fusion, there is a codepointer called MFC_Friend that should - I never
>tested it - toggle something's friend flag. Attach it to the first walking
>frame, and any given monster will switch between friendly/evil every time it's
>hurt, shoots, or completes one walking sequence. That MIGHT - if it doesn't
>confuse the EXE all to hell - get a uniform group of monsters fighting down to
>the last man/monster. Let me check later and see.
I checked. It worked fine.
Rez: If you want to check it out yourself, use the following BEX:
-Quote-
Thing 18 (Hell Knight)
ID # = 84
Bits = 1077936134
Thing 24 (SS Nazi)
ID # = 69
[CODEPTR]
Frame 558 = MFC_Friend
-Unquote-
and IDCLEV32. (I wanted a map with a lot of similar monsters and a big arena,
MAP32 was handy.) The two bugs are A) that it's not quite "down to the last
man" - sometimes two or three monsters switch from friend to enemy at the
exact same moment and therefore constantly ignore each other, and B) the kill
ratio tends to be inflated randomly, depending on how many of the monsters
died while in the "enemy" state. Not show-stoppers, and possibly fixable
though only through something of a nuisance.
Ras2: If you want my copy of fusion.exe, I'll zip it and send it to you.
Rez again: I guess we'll need to get a Fusion release package ready for
MythTC, huh? Or should we just include the EXE with the download?
Len Pitre
>Than you, I've saved this excellent explaination !!
As long as you can understand it.:)
Roy Olsen
> >Thank you, I've saved this excellent explaination !!
>
> As long as you can understand it.:)
>
> Len
>
666 and 667.
Sigh, I've been able to learn and understand level
editting, now if I could only come up with a few
good ideas for the levels I've started.
Roy
Len Pitre
>On 2002-01-31 20:21:42 GMT, Len Pitre <I_am_the_archon@Doom!.com>
> wrote in <qHh68.470$o%6.3...@sapphire.mtt.net>:
>>
>> Rez: If you want to check it out yourself, use the following BEX:
>
>by hand or do you have some fancier way of doing it?
I use DeHackEd for some of it (like the ID and bit numbers). But I write the
[CODEPTR] section by hand, and sometimes the rest of it.
>I've been thinking that it shouldn't be too difficult (for someone
>else than me) to make a program that could do it. A script of some
>sort, perhaps. Linux really needs something like that (and dehacked
>does not appear to be portable).
Probably not, though I'm not a coder. One thing I'd love in a DeHackEdish was
something showing the codepointer's names now that we know 'em. I did hack my
DeHackEd to show the names of the four MBF flags:
25 [X] Not in deathmatch
26 [ ] Color 1 (grey/red)
27 [ ] Color 2 (brown/red)
28 [ ] Touchy
29 [ ] Bounce
30 [ ] Friend
31 [ ] Trans.
But that's just hex editing.
>> Ras2: If you want my copy of fusion.exe, I'll zip it and send it to you.
>
>Thanks. It would be interesting to see.
Uhhh. Where should I send it?:) To the addy in the reply-to? And can you
accept binaries of about 1/2 a meg? Maybe I should just put the EXE somewhere
and let people here play with it as they see fit.:)
Rez? Opinions? We could do a "real" release for Myth later, but just toss a
text file + EXE up now and let some of the boys here kick it around?
Len Pitre
>> Never saw that.
>
>I think you can find it here:
>http://www.planetavp.com/al/index2.htm
>http://moviescripts.cjb.net/
>Probably called a3gib.zip most places.
Yep, there it is, thanks.
>Many of the other scripts are also worth reading, but a few are utterly
>terribly.
Some scripts that make it to the screen are.:)
>> I like Gibson's cyberpunk though it tends to be similar
>> enough that it all melts together in my mind.
>
>Really? I feel his early stuff is very different from the more recent.
Well, maybe my reading is just lopsided towards one end of the scale. But, as
an example: "Burning Chrome" and "Neuromancer". While their real-world scenes
were different and I can tell 'em apart, as soon as it gets into cyberspace,
Dixie Flatline, the Russian(?) attack program ROM, etc. it all melts into one.
My main memory of Dixie is as the narrator of a walkthrough for the game
"Neuromancer", and it's the only way I can remember that his construct was the
thing being stolen by Molly in one of the real-world scenes. (The passages
about a dozen alarms not going off and thinking they were comes to mind.)
I have "Idoru" here but never tackled it. I read so much bits-and-pieces text
on my PC it's a devil of a thing for me to get reading anything over 20
real-world pages long! Once I start I don't stop, either. I often kill a novel
on Christmas day. Maybe once I'm commuting more (Need a new job first, not
something that's easy to do in this economy!), I'll get back into it. (Reading
on the way home from high school is one of my few pleasant memories of the
long bus drive. Everything from novels to a 60ish-page Doctor Who parody
fanfic - "The All-Singing All-Dancing Five Doctors Pro-Am Cabaret
Extravaganza", how's that for a memory? - I printed off on the school's laser
printer.:)
>The early novels and short stories are more 'harsh' in some way. I like
>that about them, even if they're also a tad far out in some respects
>(AFAIK, "Neuromancer" and such were written before he'd even seen a
>computer, so perhaps that explains it).
Well, I was forgiving of that. It had a logic of its own, that I remember.
Unlike "The Matrix", which I had no fondness for. Cyberspace was too
real-worldish for me. Yeah, I know, that's part of the plot, but I didn't like
it. I'd seen such guy-with-super-powers-doing-kung-fu before and I can't stand
it.
>> I loved "Virtual Light", great novel, even if it swerved in some weird
>> directions at times.
>
>Me too. It's much 'milder' than the earlier novels, though. Same with
>"Idoru". I miss Molly from "Neuromancer" a bit when I read the later
>stuff.
Yeah, Chevette's no Molly.
Eeeeg.... Just got a flash back to Leo Laporte's dirty old man look when he
said that Molly was basically a grown-up version of the girl in Neal
Stephenson's "Snow Crash". Kate Botello had read "SC" but not "Neuromancer",
so she only saw the similarity when Laporte did a "Geek Library" segment on
"Neuromancer". But the conversation on the subject just weirded me out. It
went something like:
KATE: "Oh, so she's a lot like (whatever that girl's name is) in 'Snow
Crash'".
LEO: "Yeah, but grown up." (Leo looks into camera and grins.) "*Very* grown
up."
I could almost hear him thinking the word "Labia". Maybe it's just my dirty
mind or my memory, but I can still see - and shudder a bit - at that look on
his face. I was already gaining a distinct dislike for Botello at that point,
but I felt so sorry for her because she had neither read the book nor had
(that I saw) a mind quick enough to pick up on Laporte's overtones. Like
looking at a babe in the woods and a deviant in the bushes.
>> I couldn't stand the short story "13 Views of a Cardboard City",
>
>I haven't read that.
Not worth it, IMHO. Apparently inspired by Iain Sinclair, whoever that is. I'm
told it's "Very Post-Modernist". Just meant to me that it was hard reading
with zero characterization. I had got through 2 of the 13 views and realized
it was just descriptions of places. Then a Microsoft reference happened, which
hit me as gratuitous instead of any sort of Big Symbolism kind of thing. I
gave up. And I don't think it was even 30 pages total.
>> and his work with Bruce Sterling on "The Difference Engine" was just....
>> Well, both are capable of better. The Difference Engine's story stopped
>> 200 pages before the book did. Started over 50 after the book did, too,
>> now that I think of it. (Parts 1 & 3 could have been reduced to summaries,
>> with part 3's being about 10 pages long. Part 2 wasn't bad.) Problem is,
>> that stupid deck of punchcards were the REAL main character. And they
>> couldn't prop a window open properly, never mind a support a plot.
>
>hmm. I'm quite fond of it, but I know what you mean. I think what I like
>about it is the setting. That part works. The story is of less importance
>(and obviously was for the authors too).
The setting was gorgeous. The Information Revolution running just a decade or
so behind the Industrial Revolution. Later part 2 where the Thames dried to a
stinking mudbed was a great environment with a nice actiony finale - and
something of a Deus Ex Machina, but it wasn't that bad.
The main problem was the setting had all those people in it! (The tart in the
first part made sense, even if she was mostly there to be an excuse to follow
the plot. The professor and the cop named Fraser in the second made sense.
Oliphant in part 3 lost me. He seemed ancillary. I'm weirded out by his rubber
bathtub, too.)
>I often like something that fails utterly in what it tries to do, for
>some reason. I think it's because I feel I can see the idea behind it
>and I get fascinated by the idea, not the execution. I bought "Hellraiser"
>(the movie) for the same reason, and "The Crow" and some other stuff.
>Maybe the reason for my obsession with "Aliens" is that it didn't fail
>at what it was trying to do.
Could be. I'm the sort who sits through a story for a good read. I don't get
it, and I get ticked off. I prefer characterization over symbolism, since a
writer who sets out to do symbol-heavy stuff (rather than one who lets it
happen) tends to write stuff dense as lead and surreal to boot. They sometimes
forget that the symbol doesn't make much sense if the characters are
sacrificed to the point of ignoring their own motivations. (Rez: Does Orson
Scott Card and that thing Alvin(?) was lugging around count in that category,
or was it just another case of Card not killing his baby?)
(Though sometimes a book is good just for the inaccuracy of the back cover
blurb. My favorite: "Proteus in the Underworld", whose blurb reads almost like
"Biblical morality and alien invasions in 3000 AD". The book is about as far
as from that as possible: An SF mystery novel.)
Len Pitre
>>I use DeHackEd for some of it (like the ID and bit numbers). But I write the
>>[CODEPTR] section by hand, and sometimes the rest of it.
>
I wish. It'd save time!:)
>>Uhhh. Where should I send it?:) To the addy in the reply-to? And can you
>>accept binaries of about 1/2 a meg? Maybe I should just put the EXE somewhere
>>and let people here play with it as they see fit.:)
>
>Actually I'd been gonna suggest something of that sort for a while,
>but keep forgetting.
Great. Now I'm acting as your neuronic swap file. Why not just use a CD-R like
me?:)
>>Rez? Opinions? We could do a "real" release for Myth later, but just toss a
>>text file + EXE up now and let some of the boys here kick it around?
>
>Personally I think there's no reason we can't toss the .EXE to the
>world, as a sort of pre-release. Other folk may as well be creating
>demented WADs for *our* enjoyment. :)
http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/len.pitre/bin/fusexe.zip (Not virus scanned,
though I try to keep a clean organ-ization.:)
No text file, I suppose I should write one. Basics:
Copy fusion.exe into your MBF directory (or Boom, I suppose).
Copy mbf.cfg to fusion.cfg so your settings will be pre-tweaked.
Run.
Check the key bindings and set the jump key and other such things.
That should be it. Codepointer list soon.
Len Pitre
Len Pitre
>
>There apparently is a compilation now; Ultimate Quake. It should
>have Q1, Q2 and Q3 for about the same price as one new game. Here,
>at least. It's probably cheaper in the US.
>
>I still haven't managed to get Q3, but I talked to a guy who runs the
>only game-only shop in the area and a lot of people are looking for
>Q3 right now, for some reason. Odd because I don't think anything new
>has happened with it.
>
>I found my local library's web site; *they* have Q3. And some 300
>other games. Boggle. Libraries must have changed a bit since I last
>visited one.
When I was using one regularly, all they had was a bunch of Apple-II PD
software.:)
>> The rest has been
>> totally well-behaved, one of the soundest programs I've seen for
>> stability and overall good design -- most shareware sucks (and is
>> overpriced too), but this is as good as any commercialware. It's very
>> modular, like netscape, in that the parts all talk to one another at
>> need, but only whatever is doing work at the moment has to be running.
>
>It's weird because Echoanna had the same problem with it that I did.
>Don't know if it's incompatible with some specific hardware or
>something. It definitely wasn't even close to being useable here and
>it caused one of the nastiest crashes I've seen on Windows.
I'm somewhere in between. For instance, I can get it to crash - and take all
its downloads with it - easily.
Open http://www.tripod.lycos.com/bin/membership/ in the browser portion (opens
automatically if you try download from a site that's exceeded its bandwidth
quota).
Wait for the "403 Forbidden" window to pop up.
Close the browser (which I didn't want open anyway) BEFORE closing the 403
error window. It'll crash on this machine every time.
Len Pitre
>Also, thanks for your explaination about sector tags
>666 and 667.
Sure, no problem.
>Sigh, I've been able to learn and understand level
>editting, now if I could only come up with a few
>good ideas for the levels I've started.
I just think of something fancy and scale down. One map I'm working on started
with the thought of a knight holding a vigil in a chapel. I did a simple
chapel, then the rest of the church/fort grew off of it.
Len Pitre
>>>It should look much like a real one, I'd think.
>>Spit a fireball that explodes into a flame? It can be done.
>
>About like ours after our first encounter with a maulotaur :)
:D
Load with Myth:
-Quote-
Frame 109
Unknown 1 = 111
[CODEPTR]
Frame 109 = Spawn
-Unquote-
Have fun with the plasma gun.:)
>>>>Speaking of Myth, did we ever reach a concensus on the final bad guy? I
>>>>haven't even started work on it yet!
>>>Um, I'm not sure what we decided, if anything. But why not just futz
>>>around til you come up with something that makes you change your
>>>pants, and we'll use that one. :)
>>:) I wish it were that easy. All I see now are falling snakes, but I think I
>>could only get them to fall from the big boss itself, rather than from random
>
>That would be best, at least if she moves around, but if it looks like
>she's spawning them in random places, that would probably do.
>Especially if we can't SEE where they come from.
That might be what I can do. I could make her spawn them, but then it strikes
me that it'll be a little obvious. If they come from "nowhere" you have to
watch your back.
>>places. I might be able to do something, but it'll take a while. I'm not
>
>I have faith :)
I'm glad someone does.:)
>>really fond of the sprite, because of how 2D it is. Speaking of which, do you
>>happen to have that sprite lying around?
>
>You mean the old medusa? Dunno, I'd have to look. Remind me in email
>if I forget, which I will :)
I got it from Dan. Yeah, I think there was only the one frame.
Len Pitre
we can avoid the issue! (Seems there's something in the reader that tries to
split it right, but doesn't. Blahh.)
Len Pitre
>>mh. But are there any plans for a Linux version?
>
>We sorta lost our coder a while back, and the source we've got doesn't
>have a makefile, and neither Len nor I are coders. :( But the intent
>is to release the entire mess along with the MythTC project. Which
>relies on all the weird shit Fusion can do to monsters :)
All done with a few simple pointers.:)
>>>>marines that attempt to follow you and only shoot at you when you
>>>>hit them first. I assume they also shoot at monsters, but the level
>>> That sounds like it uses MBF's "helpers"...??
>>I thought so too, but it's made for plain Doom II, so unless it's
>>possible to make them with dehacked, it can't be those.
>
>Hmm. Perhaps Len should take a look. If it's a dehacked thing, Len
>can expose its magic to the world :) Where to get?
Yeah. I'll take a look.
Len Pitre
>>(Thinks.)
>>
>>In Fusion, there is a codepointer called MFC_Friend that should - I never
>>tested it - toggle something's friend flag. Attach it to the first walking
>>frame, and any given monster will switch between friendly/evil every time it's
>>hurt, shoots, or completes one walking sequence. That MIGHT - if it doesn't
>>confuse the EXE all to hell - get a uniform group of monsters fighting down to
>>the last man/monster. Let me check later and see.
>
>Weird notion.
That mostly worked.:)
>>was one that allowed a monster to alter the frame pointer of its target, along
>>with one that basically says "jump to pain frame". So, the idea - which only
>>works in theory! - is that all victims jump to an arbitrary frame bunch, with
>>a total duration of zero. This just forces the thing backwards, maybe sets off
>>a small blast radius explosion, then jumps to the monster's own pain frame, so
>>the same code could be used with any monster. (Since the frames are duration
>>zero, you never see them.)
>
>Sounds complicated!
Makes perfect sense to me.:)
>>I even wrote some rough code, but it never got anywhere.
>
>We need a new captive coder :)
Yes.:)
>>(PE Suidice)
>Could be a descendant of the v1.1 suicide bug. They sure missed fixing
>a lot of other bugs when it came to floaters, so...
Yeah. Lot of funny little quirks.
>>>I had a splurge of wall-hatred a few months ago, in some vanilla WAD.
>>>Haven't seen it in a while, tho.
>>It's an odd thing. Remember when I saw it three times in a row during one test
>>of COD.EXE?
>
>Yeah, you mentioned that. I got it in a spasm all in one WAD, between
>only 3-4 maps and none of them anything "special", just ordinary
>fights in ordinary situations. No such events since. Sure makes you
>wonder!!
About the integrity of the EXE?
Len Pitre
>>Len Pitre wrote:
>
>Now you've got you talking to yourself :)
Heh heh heh....:)
>>>the last man/monster. Let me check later and see.
>>
>>I checked. It worked fine.
>
>I knew it would, I had faith :)
Sez you.:)
>>Rez: If you want to check it out yourself, use the following BEX:
>
>Oh, more for the To Do List! :)
Well, there should be some other people who tried it with the EXE I uploaded.
They'd BETTER have tried it.:)
>>and IDCLEV32. (I wanted a map with a lot of similar monsters and a big arena,
>>MAP32 was handy.) The two bugs are A) that it's not quite "down to the last
>>man" - sometimes two or three monsters switch from friend to enemy at the
>>exact same moment and therefore constantly ignore each other, and B) the kill
>
>Yeah, figure that would happen sometimes, tho .. um, can you make 'em
>spawn children whenever they switch modes??
They switch every five seconds or so. They'd multiply faster than evil
exploding mushrooms.
>>ratio tends to be inflated randomly, depending on how many of the monsters
>>died while in the "enemy" state. Not show-stoppers, and possibly fixable
>>though only through something of a nuisance.
>
>If you've seen as many viles as I have lately, you cease to pay any
>attention to the kill ratio, so long as it tops 100%!!
Yeah. It could have been rigged to either come in at 50% under or 50% over, so
I went for over. Only problem with that is that they're awake when the map
starts, not when they see the player. If you were using 'em later in the map,
they'd need to be kept in individual pens off-map and teleported in.
>>Ras2: If you want my copy of fusion.exe, I'll zip it and send it to you.
>>
>>Rez again: I guess we'll need to get a Fusion release package ready for
>>MythTC, huh? Or should we just include the EXE with the download?
>
>Funny you should mention that :) I think it would be sufficient to
>just include the EXE with the download, and package up what source
>we've got (in whatever mess it may be) and stash it somewhere with a
>link in the .EXE's readme where people can get it, if so inclined.
>Maybe we'll snare a "volunteer" <g> to clean it up and add Colin's
>bugfixes. Then we can repackage source at our leisure, and do a
>re-release EXE/source once we're sure what we've got compiles and all.
Well, I uploaded the EXE. (Did that post get through?) We'll have to do a Real
Release soon.
Anyway, in case it didn't get through (let me know if this is the first time
you saw it!)
http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/len.pitre/bin/fusexe.zip (Not virus scanned,
though I try to keep a clean organ-ization.:)
No text file, I suppose I should write one. Basics:
Copy fusion.exe into your MBF directory (or Boom, I suppose).
Copy mbf.cfg to fusion.cfg so your settings will be pre-tweaked.
Run.
Check the key bindings and set the jump key and other such things.
New codepointer list: http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/len.pitre/bin/pointers.txt
>There is still a very definite memory leak at about the 600 monster
>point, tho it's not nearly as bad as it was in MBF. (Alien Vendetta
>has some maps in the 600-1600 monster range -- really show the bug.
>And with only two exceptions, not nearly as hard as they look. Some
>really NICE maps. I'm already on my 2nd trip and doing pistol starts.)
Ouch!
Roy Olsen
"Len Pitre" <I_am_the_archon@Doom!.com> wrote in message
news:UPh88.146$NC.3...@sapphire.mtt.net...
> Roy Olsen wrote:
> >Also, thanks for your explaination about sector tags
> >666 and 667.
>
> Sure, no problem.
Somewhere I played a map that ended when player's health dropped to
around 20% (no need for an exit line). Do you now of a sector tag
number that will do this and is it restricked to specific maps?
>
> >Sigh, I've been able to learn and understand level
> >editting, now if I could only come up with a few
> >good ideas for the levels I've started.
>
> I just think of something fancy and scale down. One map I'm working on
started
> with the thought of a knight holding a vigil in a chapel. I did a simple
> chapel, then the rest of the church/fort grew off of it.
>
I understand the DCK 22.2f is more or less compatible with BOOM and intend
to
use it. So far I'm having trouble figuring out how to produce most of the
new
effects Boom is capable of, but I hope that will come in time.
I've come up with a scenerio for a mega wad and produced some of the
textures
required for it (including a rather nice wrap around sky texture). (As
usual, I've
gone over board. I seem to do this with any new hobby I get involved in .
Roy
Roy Olsen
"ras2" <remov...@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:slrna64r42.m...@gmx.net...
> On 2002-02-07 00:20:46 GMT, Roy Olsen <grop...@shaw.ca>
> wrote in <yLj88.32624$2x2.1...@news3.calgary.shaw.ca>:
Line 2 above has been caused by Windows (its getting even for me hating it)
I tried to activate my second email address (gropo-six) for use in doom NGs
and that seems to have resulted in combining both.
gropo-six = groundpounder(marine) - group leader
> > I understand the DCK 22.2f is more or less compatible with BOOM and
intend
> > to use it. So far I'm having trouble figuring out how to produce most of
> > the new effects Boom is capable of, but I hope that will come in time.
>
> There's a zip file with some Boom tools that should make it easier, but
> I've never quite understood what those tools did. Maybe they can just
> change the linedef types in levels if your editor isn't capable of it
> or something. You could take a look.
I've glanced thru them, but not enough to understand them properly.
www.doomworld.com/tutorials/boom/shtml also has some information
with what appears to be good illistrating diagrams
>
> > I've come up with a scenerio for a mega wad and produced some of the
> > textures required for it (including a rather nice wrap around sky
texture).
> > (As usual, I've gone over board. I seem to do this with any new hobby I
> > get involved in .
>
> I think we're supposed to do that. I also started on my Aliens TC before I
> had any idea of what it really involved.
>
Well, the maker of Aliens TC !! I've heard a lot about it, but some how
never
got around to looking for a copy - will have to do so. Actually I didn't
get into
Doom until about 95 or 96 and then I started with Doom ][.
Hmm, I'm still looking for a sector tag number that ends a level when
player's
health drops very low.
Roy
Len Pitre
>Somewhere I played a map that ended when player's health dropped to
>around 20% (no need for an exit line). Do you now of a sector tag
>number that will do this and is it restricked to specific maps?
It's not restricted to specfic maps - it's a kind of damaging sector. Like
nukage but it also ends the level when your health hits 10 or less.
>I understand the DCK 22.2f is more or less compatible with BOOM and intend
>to
>use it. So far I'm having trouble figuring out how to produce most of the
>new
>effects Boom is capable of, but I hope that will come in time.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask here.
Len Pitre
>>>Sounds complicated!
>>Makes perfect sense to me.:)
>
Nah. Just little bits make sense at any given time. And with the Myth DEH/BEX
merge, it's up to 99,256 bytes. 97 K.:)
>>>We need a new captive coder :)
>>Yes.:)
>
>Safely kept in a jar. Er, a .jar :)
jarbinks.jar?:)
Andre Majorel
Rez wrote:
>And I've no doubt already ranted about the AMD K6-2 CPU bug vs
>Win95 Setup -- it wouldn't run at all!!
I'm not sure this is the same thing but there was a bug in older
versions of Windows that caused it to crash with K6 CPUs. On
startup, Windows did a CPU timing loop (to measure how fast the
CPU is). They made a certain number of iterations and then
divided by the number of seconds it had taken to run. On a fast
K6, it took less than one second -> division by zero -> crash.
The situation, as perceived by Wintel weenies, was "AMD chips
don't work".
--
André Majorel <URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/>
Write yourself a threatening letter and pen a defiant reply.
Len Pitre
>[Getright]
>[close browser component, hit OK on the "forbidden" notice, no
>problem]
>
>AMD problem again??
Maybe. Something's causing it to crash.
>I almost never use the browser part, tho. If I want a webpage as a
>download, I do the hold-down-CTRL+ALT thing to make GR grab it.
Yeah. Any way to stop it from popping up by itself?
Len Pitre
>>>>>the last man/monster. Let me check later and see.
>>>>I checked. It worked fine.
>>>I knew it would, I had faith :)
>>Sez you.:)
>
>Voice of experience ;)
Thankee.:)
>>>>MAP32 was handy.) The two bugs are A) that it's not quite "down to the last
>>>>man" - sometimes two or three monsters switch from friend to enemy at the
>>>>exact same moment and therefore constantly ignore each other, and B) the
> kill
>>>Yeah, figure that would happen sometimes, tho .. um, can you make 'em
>>>spawn children whenever they switch modes??
>>They switch every five seconds or so. They'd multiply faster than evil
>>exploding mushrooms.
>
>Rabbits :)
That too.:)
>>http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/len.pitre/bin/fusexe.zip (Not virus scanned,
>>though I try to keep a clean organ-ization.:)
>
>You might want to put it on Tripod with its own page, to avoid the
>bandwidth thing. Remember we've got a shitload of lurkers here.
Yeah, though Tripod has its own bandwidth blocks now. Fortunately, they only
last an hour or a day, it seems.
>>New codepointer list: http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/len.pitre/bin/pointers.txt
>
><looking> Nice.
Yeah, just wish I remembered what the odd ones were for.
>>>There is still a very definite memory leak at about the 600 monster
>>>point, tho it's not nearly as bad as it was in MBF. (Alien Vendetta
>>>has some maps in the 600-1600 monster range -- really show the bug.
>>>And with only two exceptions, not nearly as hard as they look. Some
>>>really NICE maps. I'm already on my 2nd trip and doing pistol starts.)
>>Ouch!
>
>The bug, the death toll, or the trip? :)
All of it.:)
Len Pitre
>In article <XRh88.148$NC.3...@sapphire.mtt.net>, I_am_the_archon@Doom!.com
> (Len Pitre) wrote:
>>Rez is using the same b0rken reader.:) I've chopped the headers down just so
>
>it, and we'll all be borkend alike so no one will notice. :)
:)
>>we can avoid the issue! (Seems there's something in the reader that tries to
>>split it right, but doesn't. Blahh.)
>
>Sometimes half-baked fixes are worse than the bugs they tried to fix
>:/
Yeah. I suppose I should get Brave and write a kludge to fix it.
Andre Majorel
>In article <slrna6cnjo....@atc5.vermine.org>, amaj...@teezer.fr (Andre Majorel) wrote:
>>In article <iNJ88.19292$Hb6.1...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
>>Rez wrote:
>>
>>>And I've no doubt already ranted about the AMD K6-2 CPU bug vs
>>>Win95 Setup -- it wouldn't run at all!!
>>
>>I'm not sure this is the same thing but there was a bug in older
>>versions of Windows that caused it to crash with K6 CPUs. On
>>startup, Windows did a CPU timing loop (to measure how fast the
>>CPU is). They made a certain number of iterations and then
>>divided by the number of seconds it had taken to run. On a fast
>>K6, it took less than one second -> division by zero -> crash.
>
>itself -- I had inside information on that; AMD *knew* about the
>problem (it also prevented linux from running on that particular
>batch of CPUs, made ca. Sept.1998). My client's other K6-2 CPU
>(identical except for being from a batch made 2 months later, in an
>otherwise-identical system -- I know, since I built both) did NOT have
>the problem.
Ah sorry, my mistake, I wasn't aware of that one.
Now Rez, to help you see the good side of AMD : you might not
realise this, but their existence, no matter how lousy you think
their CPUs and policies are, surely helped drive the price of
Intel chips down.
Len Pitre
>>>[Getright]
>>>I almost never use the browser part, tho. If I want a webpage as a
>>>download, I do the hold-down-CTRL+ALT thing to make GR grab it.
>>Yeah. Any way to stop it from popping up by itself?
>
>clicking the URL. Continue to hold down SHIFT thru the "Save" dialog
>if you really want NS to save the file instead, or til whatever loads
>if you really want GR to ignore the link.
Actually, I mean to prevent the browser from popping up every time it
downloads HTML like a 404 page.
Len Pitre
>In article <prU88.73$0H3....@sapphire.mtt.net>, I_am_the_archon@Doom!.com
> (Len Pitre) wrote:
>>Rez wrote:
>>>Yeah, but you think 25k DEH files make perfect sense too :D
>>Nah. Just little bits make sense at any given time. And with the Myth DEH/BEX
>>merge, it's up to 99,256 bytes. 97 K.:)
>
>as 25k!!
It probably was a few dozen monsters ago.:)
Len Pitre
>>>>>I knew it would, I had faith :)
>>>>Sez you.:)
>>>Voice of experience ;)
>>Thankee.:)
Not much left to do.:) If I had some decent boss sprites, I'd get that done,
but I don't. I tried the morphing effect, but the boss-head gets too blocky as
it morphs. If I shrunk it at the same time, maybe.... Did you get that e-mail?
How's that for vauge?:)
>>>>http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/len.pitre/bin/fusexe.zip (Not virus scanned,
>>>>though I try to keep a clean organ-ization.:)
>>>You might want to put it on Tripod with its own page, to avoid the
>>>bandwidth thing. Remember we've got a shitload of lurkers here.
>>Yeah, though Tripod has its own bandwidth blocks now. Fortunately, they only
>>last an hour or a day, it seems.
>When'd that start? GeoShitties has gotten real bad about this, tho..
I don't know, but I saw it about a week and a half ago. (I was downloading
something of not-entirely-legal legality.:)
>>>The bug, the death toll, or the trip? :)
>>All of it.:)
>
>Just wait til I get around to answering mail and tell you the EASY way
>to beat that revenant trap. :)
So mine was not the easy way?:)
Len Pitre
>>>>split it right, but doesn't. Blahh.)
>>>Sometimes half-baked fixes are worse than the bugs they tried to fix
>
I did. Wanna be a guinea pig?:)
Len Pitre
>>but I don't. I tried the morphing effect, but the boss-head gets too blocky as
>>it morphs. If I shrunk it at the same time, maybe.... Did you get that e-mail?
>
>done anything about it. I just had an idea, tho.. lemme cogitate.
Take your time. I'm tinkering (witness the carpeting textures I sent you) and
Dan's busy, so it's not like we're waiting on anything.
>Friend has been having a Major Life Crisis (well, her mom is having
>the crisis, she's getting the fallout) and that's sucked up a lot of
>time lately.
Ouch.:)
>>How's that for vauge?:)
>
>Is that the French spelling? :)
Is that like pirates are a bunch of rouges?:)
(Gotta remember that as a mnemonic - I can never spell "vague" right unless
I'm watching for it.)
>>>>Yeah, though Tripod has its own bandwidth blocks now. Fortunately, they only
>
>>>>last an hour or a day, it seems.
>>>When'd that start? GeoShitties has gotten real bad about this, tho..
>>I don't know, but I saw it about a week and a half ago. (I was downloading
>>something of not-entirely-legal legality.:)
>
>Something good? :)
"Roswell" episode "I Married an Alien". Judging by Usenet, the audience had a
love-hate relationship with it, and the ones that hated it also hated the
other episodes I liked. So I decided it was a must-see. And I was right.
Gimmicky, but funny. Running parallel to the standard "Roswell" A-plot was a
dream-sequence type B-plot. The B plot was just the A plot done as a take on
"Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" - down to second opening credit roll done
as a Bewitched/IDoJ-esque cartoon - called "I Married an Alien". Wonderfully
funny at times, taking jabs at everything from "Bewitched" and "I Dream of
Jeannie" to "The Jetsons", "Star Trek", etc. (Including a slightly more risque
humor than was allowed in the days when Jeannie's navel was deemed unshowable
to the sensitive viewers, who presumably didn't have navels.)
Oh, and the tackiest spaceship on the face of the Earth.:) Of course, the
'shippers and the like hated it.:)
>>>>>The bug, the death toll, or the trip? :)
>>>>All of it.:)
>>>Just wait til I get around to answering mail and tell you the EASY way
>>>to beat that revenant trap. :)
>>So mine was not the easy way?:)
>
>Hell no :D In fact you did it almost like I did the first time. This
>was a serious mistake. :)
:)
>Spoiler alert..
>
>
>
>
>
>
>If you haven't played Alien Vendetta yet, you may not want to read
>this...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>*phew, it's rank in here*
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
><holding nose>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>By now everyone with a sense of smell has left, so..
>
>
>
>
>
>
>First time I came in loaded to the gills at 200/200,
Well, I had to do it from a pistol start. But then, you've done that too.:)
>wiped the SSG
>guardian and other greeting committees with a brave disregard for
>ammo, since I had a full load and spares in sight, and jumped down the
>hole in fine shape. Oh dear... BFG'd what revenants I could, ran like
>hell thru the rest, killed some of the viles and holed up in that
>corner while the remaining revenants, mancubi, and a vile or two that
>got loose fought for the right to paste me all over the floor. About
>the time the last of my ammo ran out (remember I started with a full
>load of rockets, shells, and bullets too!) and I was down to 6%
>health and about 4 shells, they finally all died off. Fetched the
>remaining supplies from the switch area, hit the switch, jumped down
>the next hole, and went on my way in much the standard fashion
>(forgetting the key the first time too, and leaving the cybe to rot
>for the time being, for lack of wherewithall to kill him).
I tried running past him but he got me at the stairs, or at least winged me.
Being cheaper with health than ammo, I decided to do away with him.
>Second time -- pistol start, took the punching box at the entryway.
>Ran past the SSG area fast enough that they didn't see me (apparently
>neither did a baron standing in some shadows) and hitailed it up to
>the red door. With some sliding around I got the mancubi to do in all
>the imps and loose demons. Ran back over their way and was startled by
>the baron, who got into an argument with the mancubi and did them in,
>whereupon I punched his lights out. Went back to get the SSG, punched
>the imps and shot the hell knight. Shot the vile and took the plasma
>gun. Down the hole... ssshh, don't wake the babies. (Tho it would be
>safe to do so from the sidelines -- must be part of the odd reject
>setup, as they ignore you if you shoot from those areas.) Run down the
>side tunnel, grab all the plasma I can carry, hit the switch and keep
>right on going.
So you didn't wake 'em? I thought they were lively from the moment you hit
tunnel floor.
>Blast the viles (or enough of 'em to shove past)
>point-blank and jump down the next hole, leaving the howling-mad pack
>above to argue among themselves. BFG the chaingunners on their island,
>in the interests of preserving my health.
Yep.
> At this point I'm at about
>135/135 and have enough plasma to BFG the cybe, after using him to get
>rid of everyone else except the uncooperative vile in the tunnel, who
>wouldn't play nice and had to be shot. Tease the revenants until they
>do away with the last vile or two up above, then get the key and go
>back upstairs (punching out the LSs in the upper tunnel, as I was
>short on shells and bullets, not to mention cheap).
:)
>Since I know where there is a soul sphere coming up pretty shortly,
>and since there were at least 400 spare plasma units left downstairs,
>decided I'd experiment with trying to kill off the horde. So jumped
>back down the hole, and was highly amused to note that so long as I
>stood still at the foot of the cliff and didn't shoot anyone, the
>revenants were happy to fight with the remaining mancubi instead. Once
>I ran out of mancubi, I started BFG'ing 'em, and in 5 or 6 shots
>and a bit of running after the more cowardly specimens, had the place
>cleared out, taking a couple solid hits in the process but in no real
>danger of dying. Picked up the leftover plasma, repaired my health,
>thumbed my nose at the heaped corpses, and hied myself back around to
>the surface at something like 96/96.
>
>See? Easy. Tho I'm not so sure I could record it. :)
Took a lot of saves, right?:)
Len Pitre
>In article <cjTa8.26428$8s4.2...@news20.bellglobal.com>,
> I_am_the_archon@Doom!.com (Len Pitre) wrote:
>>Rez wrote:
>>>>>>split it right, but doesn't. Blahh.)
>>>>>Sometimes half-baked fixes are worse than the bugs they tried to fix
>>>>Yeah. I suppose I should get Brave and write a kludge to fix it.
>>>
>>>Uh-oh! :)
>>
>>I did. Wanna be a guinea pig?:)
>>
>
Not much.:) I'll send it to you, if you want. Nothing fancy, just need to feed
it your NX archive dir and it should prune the References: headers down for
you.
Len Pitre
>>>Um, about the medusa head being all there is so far? Yeah, but haven't
>>>done anything about it. I just had an idea, tho.. lemme cogitate.
>>Take your time. I'm tinkering (witness the carpeting textures I sent you) and
>>Dan's busy, so it's not like we're waiting on anything.
>
>senility, ya know :)
So much for that.:)
>>>Friend has been having a Major Life Crisis (well, her mom is having
>>>the crisis, she's getting the fallout) and that's sucked up a lot of
>>>time lately.
>>Ouch.:)
Just realized I mistyped a frowney there. At least it wasn't :*.
>Better now -- she's elsewhere and mom is sulking. Everybody happy. :)
:)
>>(Gotta remember that as a mnemonic - I can never spell "vague" right unless
>>I'm watching for it.)
>
>I seem to have a problem with "gauge/guage" and usually just cheat by
>using the abbreviation "ga." (which is probably why the full word
>escapes me in the first place)
:) "License" is another tricky one for me. I need to think of lice.
>>humor than was allowed in the days when Jeannie's navel was deemed unshowable
>>to the sensitive viewers, who presumably didn't have navels.)
>
>Oh yes, I remember a big debate over Jeannie's navel, back when -- boy
>do I feel old!
Those were the days?:)
>>Oh, and the tackiest spaceship on the face of the Earth.:) Of course, the
>>'shippers and the like hated it.:)
>
>Is that short for worseshippers? :)
Effectively, yes.:)
(Alien Vendetta.)
>>>Spoiler alert..
>
>Left in place for the sensitive readers, if any :)
>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>If you haven't played Alien Vendetta yet, you may not want to read
>>>this...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>*phew, it's rank in here*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>><holding nose>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>By now everyone with a sense of smell has left, so..
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>gun. Down the hole... ssshh, don't wake the babies. (Tho it would be
>>>safe to do so from the sidelines -- must be part of the odd reject
>>>setup, as they ignore you if you shoot from those areas.) Run down the
>>>side tunnel, grab all the plasma I can carry, hit the switch and keep
>>>right on going.
>>So you didn't wake 'em? I thought they were lively from the moment you hit
>>tunnel floor.
>
>Nope, in fact the first time I stood there going OH SHIT for some time
>before trying anything at all.
I'm a little more gung-ho. Charge into a situation screaming with guns
ablazin'.:)
>>>See? Easy. Tho I'm not so sure I could record it. :)
>>Took a lot of saves, right?:)
>
>First time, yes. 2nd time -- bunch of reloads mainly due to accidental
>splashes from the cybe when I was using him to kill off everyone else
>-- but got thru the main trap on the first shot.
Impressive!
Len Pitre
>>>>Wanna be a guinea pig?:)
>>>>
>>>
>>><suspiciously> What do I need to do? :)
>>
>>Not much.:) I'll send it to you, if you want. Nothing fancy, just need to feed
>
>>it your NX archive dir and it should prune the References: headers down for
>>you.
>>
>Oh. I have no idea which are overlong as it is. Will have 'em archived
>here in a few days (IF the damned sick CDRW continues to halfway
>cooperate) so won't feel so bad about experimenting on them :)
Actually, it doesn't alter the archive files, just the outbox files. The idea
is you save your e-mails to the Outbox (close/yes, save message) then run it
on the outbox. I suppose it could be run on archive files, but that's a bit
self-defeating. If they're there you've likely already replied to 'em, or are
in the process thereof.
Len Pitre
>>>>Dan's busy, so it's not like we're waiting on anything.
>>>By the time I got outta here I'd forgotten what the idea was..
>>>senility, ya know :)
>>So much for that.:)
>
Or mass murder.:)
>>>using the abbreviation "ga." (which is probably why the full word
>>>escapes me in the first place)
>>:) "License" is another tricky one for me. I need to think of lice.
>
><thinks of M$ and realises this is a joke that will never get tired>
LOL!
>>>>humor than was allowed in the days when Jeannie's navel was deemed
> unshowable
>>
>>>>to the sensitive viewers, who presumably didn't have navels.)
>>>
>>>Oh yes, I remember a big debate over Jeannie's navel, back when -- boy
>>>do I feel old!
>>Those were the days?:)
>
>Heh, yeah. In its day Jeannie's costume was downright daring!
The wonders of TV. Compare it to NBC's premiere last night of "Leap of Faith",
where "slut", "whore" and "trollop" were tossed around like so many semirotten
casaba melons. (3 times each.)
Hmmm. Wonder if any of the rec.arts.tv'ers will follow me here from the LoF
discussion I'm mired in there. If only they understood the true extent of my
vitriol.:)
>>I'm a little more gung-ho. Charge into a situation screaming with guns
>>ablazin'.:)
>
>I'll do that on a map I already know. AV was fun to mostly do that way
>the 2nd time :)
And die in.:)
Len Pitre
>>>Oh. I have no idea which are overlong as it is. Will have 'em archived
>>>here in a few days (IF the damned sick CDRW continues to halfway
>>>cooperate) so won't feel so bad about experimenting on them :)
>
>laplink. :(
Ewww.
>>Actually, it doesn't alter the archive files, just the outbox files. The idea
>>is you save your e-mails to the Outbox (close/yes, save message) then run it
>>on the outbox. I suppose it could be run on archive files, but that's a bit
>>self-defeating. If they're there you've likely already replied to 'em, or are
>>in the process thereof.
>
>Oh. I almost never use the outbox -- only when the display screws up
>and I need to salvage my immortal words, and then whatever's there is
>sent within a couple minutes. So it would be an awfully short run for
>the utility :)
:) Oh well. Works for me when it's needed. If I can remember where I put
it....