Billy Boy maps and Dukeplus...

[Headless_Horseman]

Ok, I'm a very BIG fan of Billy Boy maps and I truly ejoy playing them with Dukeplus.
Howevere, there are 3 of them (Biglight, Bedrone and Deadfall) that have altered art (but no problem, since they don't use tile05 and 024) and modded cons.
I've tried to make them run with Dukeplus, but not being a CON modders I stumbled in many errors and Eduke32 crashes.
So, here's my plea : there's someone over this board that it's able and willing to make the above mentioned maps work with DukePlus ?
You'll receive my endless gratitude and an hot plate of spaghetti col ragù

[DeeperThought]

I'm doing Bedrone, and I have a question. Did he modify any of the regular actors (such as pigcops, weapon pickups, etc) or were his modifications limited to adding new actors? I found all of his new actors, but I can't tell if I'm missing edited code in the regular actors unless I look through all of it, which would take too much time.

[Jblade]

I think he modified pigcops to fire stuff like morters and the like at certain palettes, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Sang]

Originally Posted by Jblade

I think he modified pigcops to fire stuff like morters and the like at certain palettes, but I'm not 100% sure.

That is correct.

[DeeperThought]

Yeah, and there are some other pal monsters that shoot morters and maybe some other little differences, but apparently nothing that would dramatically affect gameplay or cripple the map if left out (like a monster dropping a keycard). It's too much work to try and mix and match code with my own monster shooting states, so I'll just leave that out. Since the result will be compatible with Duke Plus, one could always edit the map by giving the pal monsters flags to make them shoot different projectiles, thereby achieving pretty much the same thing.

[Sang]

[nevermind this! stupid post ]

[DeeperThought]

Ok, I've got something that seems to work:

http://deeperthought.dukertcm.com/dp/BedronePlus.rar

Instructions:

unpack the contents of BedronePlus.rar into your Duke folder (the folder that contains dukeplus.bat). Use BedronePlus.bat to start the game.

[Headless_Horseman]

As Blood Duster would say : OH F**KING YEAH !

[Headless_Horseman]

Finally playing Bedrone with Dukeplus, it's almost perfect, but there are some minor flaws :

1) When you return to the broken down shuttle, you find a corridor with a lock that needs a red card. After that, beneath the shuttle there's an empty pit with a spawned keycard, but it's a blue one ! This is surely an error, as I recall that the keycard was a re one ! Otherwise, you'll have to dnkeys to pass that point

2) The first spawned Cycloid Emperor ends the map if killed : this is a bug, because at that point you still need to see a 30% of the map !

3) This is probably a mapping issue : there's a partially submerged room with a switch that open a great door on the bottom. You cannot reach the opened door unless you dnclip or you remain stuck in midair (midwater ?).

Apart from that, if you use Advanced AI the maps is a serious killer, but the Sawed-off helps a lot, together with Health Storing. I'm really enjoyng it, thanx a lot DT !!!

[DeeperThought]

Originally Posted by Headless_Horseman

Finally playing Bedrone with Dukeplus, it's almost perfect, but there are some minor flaws :

1) When you return to the broken down shuttle, you find a corridor with a lock that needs a red card. After that, beneath the shuttle there's an empty pit with a spawned keycard, but it's a blue one ! This is surely an error, as I recall that the keycard was a re one ! Otherwise, you'll have to dnkeys to pass that point

That's why I asked about whether he edited the regular actors. I missed this:

actor ACCESSCARD
ifspawnedby RESPAWN
{
ifawayfromwall spritepal 0
else spritepal 23
ifoutside spritepal 21
}

Originally Posted by Headless_Horseman

2) The first spawned Cycloid Emperor ends the map if killed : this is a bug, because at that point you still need to see a 30% of the map !

Yeah, because I just noticed that he edited BOSS2 so that it never ends the game, even if pal 0. Normally I would complain that he should have added that feature only to a special pal BOSS2, but respawns are always pal 0, so I understand why he did it that way (however, he could have added something like ifmove 0 ifspawnedby RESPAWN spritepal 3 and then made only pal 3 bosses not end the game)

The solution is to edit the map: give the boss RESPAWN sprite a nonzero pal (that works in DP), and then give it whatever extra flags are needed to make it a challenging fight. The same would apply to any other emperors.

Since I've gone this far with it, I suppose I'll have to make an update.

@TerminX: Did you ever incorporate that patch which allows multiple declarations of the same event? It would be handy here, because I could add some extra EVENT_GAME code to the DP code without including an entire set of CONs just for this map.

[DeeperThought]

I updated the download with a new CON file that should fix the problems with the keycards and the emperors. Same link as before.

[Headless_Horseman]

Just tried BigLight (Lighthouse) : everything seems fine, so he modified only some enemies (including BOSS2, so avoid killing it or the level will end).

Now, for Deadfall : apart from the modified enemies, there's no new art, but surely a new actor that spawns 6 different types of keycard. The question is : how can I find it ? I looked into its GAME.CON, but it's really messy...

[DeeperThought]

Originally Posted by Headless_Horseman

Just tried BigLight (Lighthouse) : everything seems fine, so he modified only some enemies (including BOSS2, so avoid killing it or the level will end).

Now, for Deadfall : apart from the modified enemies, there's no new art, but surely a new actor that spawns 6 different types of keycard. The question is : how can I find it ? I looked into its GAME.CON, but it's really messy...

Find "spawn ACCESSCARD".

Also look for anything defined in his CONs that isn't defined in DEFS.CON. Use what I did for Bedrone as a template.

[Headless_Horseman]

Ok, this is pretty funny : apart from the modded enemies, there's no serious CON editing in DeadFall, apart from a little "trick" to make the end user think that you'll have to search 6 different coloured access cards.
It works in this way : he putted in the map 4 blue access card and 4 locks matching, but 3 of these cards and locks have altered palette, so they seems greenish, brown and black. The trick is that he altered some of the quotes and write a little piece of code to use that quotes when one find a specific re-coloured lock. A pretty simple but nice trick, mr. Billy BOy
So, You can easily enjoy DeadFall with DukePlus, and it's even more great that the original experience

[DeeperThought]

Originally Posted by Headless_Horseman

he putted in the map 4 blue access card and 4 locks matching

Is Spanish your native language? Your grammar reminds me of some Argentinians I know.

[moggimus]

Originally Posted by DeeperThought

Is Spanish your native language? Your grammar reminds me of some Argentinians I know.

Stay tuned for Duke Nukem's next adventure... "Duke it out in Argentina!"

[Headless_Horseman]

No DP, I'm Italian, but there's a big italian colony in Argentina, so you aren't completely wrong

[DeeperThought]

Originally Posted by Headless_Horseman

No DP, I'm Italian, but there's a big italian colony in Argentina, so you aren't completely wrong

I was completely wrong, but the grammar in those two languages is similar, which explains it.