[Map for CFD2012 ] "The Descent" -File and discussion thread

[Komag]

Hey man, to err is human

[JohnWordsworth]

Hi John, had a good time playing through much of 'The Descent', although, I'm afraid I have a bit of bad news in that I made it crash a few times (in the same area). I've not quite finished it yet, but thought perhaps you would like me to take another look if you can reproduce and fix this crash. While I think there are a few tweaks that could make it even cooler, I really like the feel of the Dungeon and it has a nice mix of fighting and puzzling. A good use of lighting and layout too I feel, especially using the Red Teleporter to light up an area ominously.

Have attached some relevant screenshots and videos...
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6102574/The%20 ... 200.9c.zip

Playthrough Notes below...

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FPS was a solid 120 for the entire length of my play through.

Butchered a skeleton and feeling bad ass. Bring it on!

Hanging Lantern looks a little strange as there is a glow on the lantern that doesn't cover the whole thing, so the front bit is full colour, but the sides look like their behind a glow particle. (See screenshot).

Nice note about the upcoming beast (I assumed it was an Ogre or a Guardian!). Like the pit trap and killing of the Ogre. Nice and straightforward but makes you think and keeps you on your toes. Where did it come from though!? I'm sure I searched all the corridors before hand? Could have had a visible pressure plate and a wall grinding sound effect to let me know *something* had happened.

In fact, throughout the mod a few things felt like "they just happened", which was weird (couldn't put a cause to the effect). When I jumped down the pit to kill the Ogre - what made the final door open (it seemed to not do anything for about 5-10 seconds and then just open). When I was down there, there was a pit that the Ogre and the Skeleton both walked on and died (I didn't really do anything to prompt that). While I was here I also pressed a couple of buttons and got awarded with a 'Secret' sound. Not 100% sure what I did (although, I pressed the buttons before fully exploring, so my fault).

On level 2, when coming up the stairs in the North of the map, there was a weird clipping effect on the stairs (See screenshot). Hard to notice, but I did when walking up!

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading". Nice quote, but I couldn't figure out the puzzle.

Potential bug: If I step forward into the 3 buttons, and click 3 times REALLY fast (always on the front button), then I end up back at the starting point. If I click the 3 buttons slowly, I end up in a space with no button in front of me but 1 left, right, behind. (See Video 1)

Some of the buttons in the different teleporter 'box rooms' are a different style (some have a bezel, some don't) - is this intentional? No real idea how I got through this puzzle. I tried just going 'forward' every time, and then I tried ensuring that I was always pointing in the same direction on the Map every time I pressed a button - but that also didn't work. Ended up just doing a search tree on paper! Perhaps another clue or a slightly simpler variation would be more friendly.

Found secret with Anti-Venom.

Room (A). Killed spider and Skeleton Ok. Third spider waiting for me around the corner! Haha - took me by surprise (nice). Found secret with Torch Holder (Poison Bomb). Torch was dead by this point from all the teleporting, but thankfully I had my light spell :p. I'm sure I would've taken more torches if I didn't take the light spell, but a spare torch in this area wouldn't go amiss.

Skeletons were marching in a regular 'round the room' pattern behind the grill. That looked awesome. Very much liked seeing them march around the Red teleporter.

Entered room (B), attacked from behind by Spider and Four Skeletons. Both of front row were poisoned at this point, hardest fight so far (but still not that hard). Found a Mortar and Pestle (in a sack) - Huzzah! I can make potions now (have played some dungeons that forget to give you the basics of what you like to use from the game). Found Cruciform Key.

New wall has opened up in Room (A). A few things happen automatically, but it might have been nice to have pressed a secret button to cause it to happen instead of the things happening automatically. Sneak attacked from behind again by a Spider!

Killed spider, picked up Huntsman Cloak in secret area. Walked back to main corridor - CRASH!

Reloaded back to (A) room when I last saved.

Found secret Poison Bomb again. Entered room (B) again, tried to figure out what triggered the wall. Walked in 1 step, spawned Skeletons. Fought skeletons in door way. Sleeping when injured. Left room to look down corridor that just opened. CRASH. (See Video 2, error.log and crash.png).

Repeatedly crashing around here - inconsistently, but always in Monster.lua in animController.

[Ancylus]

Hi John, had a good time playing through much of 'The Descent', although, I'm afraid I have a bit of bad news in that I made it crash a few times (in the same area). I've not quite finished it yet, but thought perhaps you would like me to take another look if you can reproduce and fix this crash.

I've been exchanging PMs with SpiderFighter related to a bug at this area, and it looks like you've hit the same one. The symptoms are extra skeleton patrols appearing in the central room (as I think is the case in your video) and potential crashes at later points in the level. I think ultimately the error occurs earlier, probably when the patrols are spawned. If you have a save where you can already see them, then things are likely already set up to go wrong or work fine.

[JohnWordsworth]

Ahh, so that Patrol that spawned in behind me wasn't meant to be there!? Interesting. Yeah - I guess my save had got corrupted as it were because every time I reloaded (about 4-5 times) it crashed every time at some point down the line.

[SpiderFighter]

Great notes, John. Thanks, although I'm sorry you didn't get to play through the whole thing. The stairs have been fixed already, and I really liked your idea about the ogre coming from somewhere. Sometimes I still can't get out of the Doom/Duke3D designing mode, where things just happen and you deal with them.

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The Warrior and the ogre and the pit: That was intended as a little treat / chuckle for the player. The idea is that the warrior hits the switch to trap the ogre and then jumps down after to kill it. If it's too obscure, I can scratch it. Oh, and the ogre opens the door (it's actually a plate, but I can easily attach the wall button to it).

You were very close on the teleporter maze. The key is to make sure the teleporters always face you in the same direction after you port (since you start off facing south when you pick up the scroll, that's the direction you want to be facing after each teleport). Any tele that is wrong will bring you out facing a different direction. I thought it was just obscure enough to be clever, but apparently it's just frustrating, so I'm thinking about cutting it.
The bezel/no bezel thing is because most of them are on secret doors. The ones that have a bezel are on solid walls. Good eye.

New wall has opened up in Room (A). A few things happen automatically, but it might have been nice to have pressed a secret button to cause it to happen instead of the things happening automatically. Sneak attacked from behind again by a Spider!

You're right; I was trying to create an alternate way around the maze, and didn't stop to think that I should make the player do it. However, I say to you, Good Sir, that that spider is perfectly legal. It's not my fault if the sound of the wall sliding open in front of you muted the sound of the one sliding open from behind you!

I knew about the crash (poor Ancylus has been dealing with it for days, but I could never replicate it, and Brodie and Komag didn't have an issue), but I've never seen any extra spawns, and I wanted to see what you would experience (which is why I PMed you about seeing more than two patrols at once). From your video though, I can't tell if you have more than two patrols marching around the exit tele? If so, there's two pressure plates that are affecting this. The first is just inside the catacomb room, and the second is right when you experience the crash (outside the spider/ Huntsman's Cloak room). Because skeletons have a compulsion to ocassionally stop and look around before resuming their march, eventually they will catch up to each other and just stop moving altogether. For that reason, I have plates placed in strategic positions that will "reboot" them when the player isn't looking. The first script called is

Code: Select all

function blindpatrolReplacers()
  for i in allEntities(1) do
    if i.name == "blind_skeleton_warrior" then
       i:destroy()
end
end
end

'
and the second is

Code: Select all

function blindpatrolspawn()
	spawn("blind_skeleton_patrol", 1, 10, 10, 3)
			spawn("blind_skeleton_patrol", 1, 9, 13, 1)
end

It seems as if the second one is being called and the engine is skipping the first one. Maybe this has to do with processing speed? Maybe I'm overthinking this, and what I need to do is use the plate to trigger the first (destroy) script and then a timer, which will then trigger the spawn script. Hopefully, that will slow things down enough so that we don't see this issue any longer.

Thanks for the videos, pictures and log; they were very helpful. And all your notes!!

[EDIT: Just wanted to say, I'm very glad you liked the effect of the patrols marching around the exit room. A lot of people have suffered to bring it to the world! ]

[Komag]

a short timer is often a good solution!

[JohnWordsworth]

Glad the notes were useful SpiderFighter. Would be happy to play through again / finish the map if you can fix that pesky bug :p.

SpoilerShow

Re: Ogre: Not obscure at all, I really like that bit. I was referring to a little bit at the end of that area though - after you've jumped down the pit to kill the Ogre (which I like), there are a number of secret buttons. I'm sure I pressed one, then a second, then a third and there was a locked gate. I walked up to it, couldn't figure out how to open it - but then after spinning around and looking for a secret button, it was already open when I faced it again.

Re: Teleporter Maze: Ahhh, I see what I did wrong. I personally think it's more logical to have it so that you have to ensure that you are always facing south when you press a teleport button. Easier, but not too easy I don't think (you still have to figure out that you don't always end a teleport with the same facing). Also, a Compass would make that bit a lot easier than tabbing to the map every time. Perhaps you could give the player a compass right back at the beginning of the map (early enough that they think it's a red herring, but then it's useful later).

I definitely liked some of the sneak attacks (it seemed fair when there was an obvious opening for where it came from behind me - even if I didn't notice it before the attack), there were just a couple for me that felt like they just teleported in behind me (like playing Doom). That one that got me at the end for instance, seemed very well placed (as I could see the wall opening up behind me if I turned around).

Sorry, forgot about your PM re: multiple patrols. Have just reloaded and added another video for what happens when it all starts to go wrong, incase it helps. Note: before I enter that room, I have 2 patrols acting normally. When I come out - there are 3 in the cell, one frozen, one acting normally and 1 acting crazy (plus the additional patrol that's spawned outside of the cage to attack me).

Video of Glitch in Action (please wait 5 mins for it to upload to DropBox).

[Xanathar]

Just started but:

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- 2nd floor : what if one has no torches ? I had one, but just to be sure you considered the eventuality
- 2nd floor stairs : there is a ceiling tile visible in the middle of the stairs, if I rememeber correctly this happens if you have an empty tile directly behind the stairs (stairs require a solid wall behind).

Up to where I am : funny

[SpiderFighter]

Just started but:

SpoilerShow

- 2nd floor : what if one has no torches ? I had one, but just to be sure you considered the eventuality
- 2nd floor stairs : there is a ceiling tile visible in the middle of the stairs, if I rememeber correctly this happens if you have an empty tile directly behind the stairs (stairs require a solid wall behind).

Up to where I am : funny

There's a torch on the wall in front of you when you start.

Got the stairs, thanks. It happened because the stairs got moved and I hadn't realized it. Then when Komag spotted it, I moved them back and didn't notice the room behind.

I'm glad you like the funny. You should know you're taking a chance on catching the Spawning Bug that's going around...it affects nearly 40% of all players so far!

@JW: Just reading your post right now

[Xanathar]

SpoilerShow

There's a torch on the wall in front of you when you start.

Yes, of course, but if you get down the pit without one you have to reload (as far as I can see, I might have missed one). In the old version there was a handy hidden alcove with a torch inside for this purpose.