Using vars with quotes and displaying vars on screen in text form...

[TerminX]

Well, you're using a snapshot from after I removed dynquote. It was renamed to qsprintf and the syntax was changed to require a source quote and a quote to write the result into.

[DeeperThought]

Originally Posted by TerminX

Well, you're using a snapshot from after I removed dynquote. It was renamed to qsprintf and the syntax was changed to require a source quote and a quote to write the result into.

I got it working, thanks. Just for once I'd like to get the order of the parameters right on the first try, though

[DeeperThought]

On an unrelated note: It's too bad that the large font which starts at tile 2929 has its tiles in a different order than the other fonts. For this reason, it doesn't work properly with the gametext and minitext commands. You can display the letters correctly with the right choice of starting tile number, but the other characters are still screwed up.

[Lord Misfit]

Screenshots are demonstrating a new addition I've been working with over the last couple of days. Now when you and enemies go around shooting each other, the damage either of you receive is shown, the player's at the bottom of the screen in light red, and the monster's damage in dark red nearer to the top. If the player nulls the damage "NO DAMAGE!" displays instead of a number, like above. If you inflict a critical hit on the enemy, the font will change to the large red font used in the menus to mark a visual indicator.

When the player is hit, a miniature picture of the monster[including the palette of the monster] is displayed behind the damage value. This is meant to sorta simulate one of Blake Stone's features, where the HUD would tell you what was attacking you.

When a monster is hit(but only by the player, not another actor), a picture of the monster[with its' palette as well] shows above the damage amount. One reason I did this was because when in a dark and low-vis area, you might shoot blindly if you hear enemies nearby, and if you hit one, you'll see the identity of your victim and the damage you did.

Also, the blue and yellow text is the EXP and then Rank Points earning for killing the current monster. If you gained negative rank, the yellow text is instead also red.

All this stuff also will fade away 2 seconds after a hit is made on each player or monster. It's just some stuff that might sound cool to some of you. :P

EDIT: One note, not sure how oftern TerminX browses here, or if he's already fixed this in a later snapshot, but I noticed that when the HUD is in its' normal form, the Health value doesn't visibly update unless you grab something like health[the reason I could tell is because as you see above, my health is also displayed on the left side of the screen next to the max, and I noticed the health display looked off. The Health display updates fine if the HUD is expanded that only Health/Ammo/Inventory is shown. Hope that helps something. >.>

[Hendricks266]

Wow! How much time do you devote to this every day?

[Lord Misfit]

A decent amount of time[1/3 to 1/2 of my comp time mainly for now], but I spent a lot of time perfecting it, because I was having various problems of sorts. There's still a few things I really wanna get working with it sometime down the road[one example: sometimes instead of showing the attacking enemy, it'll show the picture of the attack they used on you, but this is a rare occurance], but it seems good enough for now].

EDIT: One other small note I forget to mention, when you hitscan a valid enemy, it will also show the value of their Defense in a (usually) yellow number a ways below the Health number[which is now red instead of being the palette of the monster, aka DNWMD's color for showing the health]

[DeeperThought]

That's starting to look interesting. You should make the "character sheet" stats into an optional display that is toggled on and off on a key press, because there are too many words on the screen.

[Lord Misfit]

I need to ask a new question here: is there a way to force the text of a gametext command to always be centered at a specfic x/y point, as opposed to the x/y point determining where the left-side of the text starts? >.>

Sorry for the quick and probably dumb question, but I was messing around with the orientation flags, and none of them seem to work for it. :\

[TerminX]

No, but if you knew the number of characters in the quote you could figure out how much to offset things and do it yourself fairly easily. I guess I can add a command to return the length of a quote.

[Lord Misfit]

Yeah, that would be nice, mainly because the thing I was doing with this was using qsprintf to make a quote for displaying "HP: %ld/%ld" under the name of the monster for my hitscanner all in one easy action, however due to the fact variables change all the time, there's really no simple way to gauge the number of characters in the quote into a variable itself. >.>



In other news, mod progress:

All enemies except Recon, Slimer and Eggs now have varying hit points depending on the skill level, with a 10% error of varience added/subtracted afterwards. The episode and missions you're playing also have a minor effect on enemy Health values.

(However I cannot do this accurately for the RECON, since the method I attempt for it only works one time for the same actor ID per game[for some reason, per-actor-variables don't reset when other variables reset(event_resetplayer, resetinventory, etc), so this botches up my attempt to edit the strength of recons beyond the first encounter with one].)

I overrode the original armor absorbancy settings finally, and got it that I can make varying Armor classes[even made a redone SHIELD sprite that is light blue so palettes can be applied to it properly for different colored armor, ala Doom]. On top of this, now when the player is hit, any damage his armor receives will also be shown below the Health damage display, if he has any left.

[Lord Misfit]

Updates:

As you can see above, enemies now have AP[Armor Points] of their own they can utilize by either starting off with armor of their own, or actually running over a SHIELD item to gain armor. The bracket to the right of the AP readout is the Armor absorbsion rate for that monster's armor. It can be anywhere from 1% to 100% depending on the situation or the armor type picked up.

Yes, you heard right, enemies can pick up various items now. All health and armor items can be grabbed(including Atomic Health). The Maximum HP and Maximum AP bonuses can be grabbed by enemies[and it does increase their stats, so you need to grab them before they do]. Also, Firstaid[Portable] can be picked up and used by the monsters. When an enemy has a Firstaid Kit, they have "[#]" to the right of their HP readout[like in screenshot 2]. When they lose Health and are below their Maximums, they will automatically use the Firstaid to heal until they run out[or if they take a 1-hit killing blow].

Also, Defense can be read for the monsters when you point at them.

Also, as an addon to the damage display system above, you can now see the armor damage of the enemy as well as the player when they get hit[if they have armor on at the time].

Anyways, I've been messing around on Stadium with the Cycloid[on Skill 8, one of the unlisted skill levels I use for extreme challenges, hence why he has such a huge number of stats compared to the usual range], to try these out, and on the high skills, blowing up the blimp can now work against you as much as it can work for you since the Cycloid can grab the Armors and Firstaids that it drops, and grab the Health Atoms on both sides of the field.


P.S. Deeper, as a responce to the last PM you sent me, I have it currently set that the monsters explode after going into their death actions[unless it's an end-episode boss]. I tried some other things with less success, but the current setup is a quick fix at best and I don't plan to leave it this way and will try to work on it more when I got time.

P.P.S. The reason the Cycloid in screen 2 has 32767 HP is because that is the most any actor can have without becoming invincible[or in the player's case, dying]. I don't know if this health limit can be increased in a later version, but that's basically up to TerminX, not me. >.>

[Hendricks266]

Does anyone know how to set the color codes for quotes? I saw something about a "^" in the changelog, but the rest I'm not sure of.

Also, I tried to post this with quick reply but the title of the thread is 3 characters too long. Perhaps you could rename it to "Lord Misfit's EDuke32 Mod" or "<insert title of mod here> by Lord Misfit". Maybe you could rename it to "LMMOD for EDuke32". JK.

[Lord Misfit]

Okay, how's that? :P

[TerminX]

Originally Posted by Hendricks266

Does anyone know how to set the color codes for quotes? I saw something about a "^" in the changelog, but the rest I'm not sure of.

Also, I tried to post this with quick reply but the title of the thread is 3 characters too long. Perhaps you could rename it to "Lord Misfit's EDuke32 Mod" or "<insert title of mod here> by Lord Misfit". Maybe you could rename it to "LMMOD for EDuke32". JK.

Just enter "^#", where # is a palette. You'll need to use a 0 before the single digit palettes if you plan to follow it with a number.

[Hendricks266]

Where do I put it? In the quote itself, in the quote number, where the quote is called...

What does NR stand for?

I found out that if you take away the "Re: " part of the title, then it will work.

[TerminX]

In the quote itself, of course.

[Lord Misfit]

NR = Naferia's Reign

The full name is Naferia's Reign: Invasion of the Dark Mistress, but it would be pushing it for the post titles. :P

The mod is actually on its' fourth attempt, but this is the only one with any true coding done, the last ones were mostly maps and normal CON stuff. :P

[Hendricks266]

Oh... If you have a name for it, don't name it NRMOD! DeeperThought named his mod with his nickname because he didn't have a title yet. I did the same thing because I don't want to have a proper title for my mod because it is mostly bug fixes and minor enhancements. There is nothing revolutionary about it like DNWMD's upgrade menu (yet). I might give mine a true name if I do make something thought awesome by others.

Enough rambling about H266MOD. Some good acronyms for you (without the "MOD" part) are:

• NRIDM
• NR:IDM
• NRIotDM
• NR:IotDM

just to name a few.

[Lord Misfit]

Actually, the "NRMOD" was a bit of a parody of the LMMOD thing you suggested. It was a bit of a joke, sorry about that. >.>

NR:IotDM seems okay for the acyonym though. :P

EDIT: Another change I forget to mention. When you are in God Mode or pick up an Invulnerability artifact, running into an enemy[getting up next to them, etc] will make them explode instantly[except for high-level bosses which it takes a bit longer]. In some ways, it's a bit like Mario.

[Hendricks266]

If you have an invincibility star item, does Duke do a rolling jump when he jumps?

[Lord Misfit]

Nope, sorry. :P

On that subject though, new updates:

Now enemies can also utilize the Quad and Invuln items and pick them up. Enemies experience the same luxuries as a player when invulnerable. This means THEY can kill YOU with a single touch if they get too close, and like the player, all of your damage you directed at them gets deflected back at you. >.>

If both the player and an enemy have Invuln items, they can't do anything to each other. Neithers' attacks deflect, and they can't instakill each other. However an invuln enemy is just as much a threat to its' friends as it is you. If they touch other enemies they explode just the same(unless they share an invuln item of their own). XD

[DeeperThought]

Do the enemies seek out these items, or do they pick them up only if they happen to walk over them by chance?

[Lord Misfit]

Eh, no they don't. I know there's something you got in DNWMD that makes the Holobot look for items, but I'm not sure exactly how to utilize it. >.>

The monsters do have a slightly larger pickup-radius then the player[the bosses have even more due to their sizes].

[DeeperThought]

So, as a practical matter, enemies picking up items doesn't really enter into the gameplay. If the player sees a quad damage or whatever he'll just run over and grab it, and the monsters don't go towards it anyway. I can't be sure without looking at the whole picture, but it seems to me you'll have a hard time making your mod challenging without making the difficulty seem random with lots of cheap deaths.

[Lord Misfit]

At the moment it doesn't, because I'm still working on getting them to seek the items out. In fact, I've just started working on it, since I wanted to be sure they could pick up and use the items first. The thing is, I only have your code as reference and it only seems to point to two creatures as able to seek them[the HOLOBOT and EVILDUKE]. The main trick is diciphering your code[with so many "temp#" variables used in there it can confuse me sometimes :P].

The trickiest part[to me] will knowing where to put the state to make them search in each individual monsters' section. Also, I don't know if I can use just one state for all the monsters or not yet.

[DeeperThought]

You're making it hard on yourself by trying to decipher my code. Surely you already know what you need to do: you need to make the actors find an item, turn towards it, and walk. The only trick is integrating this with the already existing actor code in a way that makes sense (i.e. you don't want them just walking towards items all the time instead of attacking the player).

[Lord Misfit]

Updates:

Death Obituatries now pop up when you get killed by an enemy. They would've been shown in the main quote area, but almost all of them are too big using the normal font, so they are instead shown near the bottom of the screen in the minitext format.

Most monsters search for items they can use when they get close enough to them and will run over to grab them if they need them. This is still not 100% perfected yet, but it's currently the best I've gotten it for now. Drones, Turrets and Sharks are the only monsters that won't look for items even if they would need them[Turrets since they can't move, hence making them look for an item is redundant, and Sharks since they're predators and not intelligent monsters].

My Super Drone[PAL 25 Sentry Drone] is back to its' prime form. This means for you that now it fires volleys of lasers with the occasional RPG missile or two as it flies around chasing you. Also, it will sometimes spawn in monsters while it chases you, when it takes a hit 10% of the time, or spawn a final monster 3 out of 4 times when it dies. It can spawn almost all monsters, even the Elite-Miniboss enemies, although it's rare for it to teleport a boss enemy.

I'm thinking of making a webpage for this, although it'll probably lack in content outside of monster info for a while, so I'll let you know when that gets said and done. :P

[Lord Misfit]

Been a while since my last update, about 1 full month. I haven't been doing much extra work, however...

http://www.zxdware.net/NR/ - I did get a site up with a current 'demo' of what I'm doing. It's very beta though, and the maps with it are filler to mess around for now. The main file is 8 MB, because of the ART and MAP files included. There is a seperate file for just the CONs, but the USER.CON is set up for certain maps. I also have one of the most recent snapshots up, since it was the last one I used before putting these up.