Steele Dawn

[OjitroC]

Thanks - going through it again, I saw those hints. Didn't see them first time as I followed the Nali guy to the door. So yeah completed my first Sudoku - mind you it took me a while to realise that one just had to click on a square and it would cycle through the glyphs - silly me!

--------------------- EDIT ------------------------------
Got the following critical error in Lava Plant

Code: Select all

Critical: appError called:
Critical: OneWayPass SD4_LavaPlant_V1.OneWayPass (Function SD4_LavaPlant_V1.OneWayPass.Touch:0000) Infinite script recursion (250 calls) detected
Critical: Windows GetLastError: Not enough memory. (8)
Exit: Executing UObject::StaticShutdownAfterError
Exit: Executing UWindowsClient::ShutdownAfterError
Exit: UGalaxyAudioSubsystem::ShutdownAfterError
Log: DirectDraw End Mode
Exit: UOpenGLRenderDevice::ShutdownAfterError
Critical: FFrame::Serialize
Critical: UObject::ProcessEvent
Critical: (OneWayPass SD4_LavaPlant_V1.OneWayPass, Function SD4_LavaPlant_V1.OneWayPass.Touch)
Critical: TouchTo
Critical: AActor::BeginTouch
Critical: ULevel::CheckEncroachment
Critical: ULevel::FarMoveActor
Critical: UObject::ProcessEvent

Loads of the last 6 llines until the log cuts off.

It happened in the small cave with lots of boxes where the Lava Titan suddenly appears - I went back to the entrance to the cave to avoid the lava boulders and obviously touched the 'fire' blocking the entrance trying to run through it.

The previous fight with Lava Titans was fun though it went on for a long while as new ones seemed to spawn endlessly - counted around ten altogether I think. I am playing on Difficulty=0 as I always do when first playing a SP campaign and that fight seemed a bit over the top for Easy?

[Delacroix]

While the crash needs to be investigated... just don't touch the fire, obviously.

I think that the Lava Titans are good the way they are on any difficulty mode. The mandatory encounter has the large rock you can use for cover, right in the middle of the arena (and of course Brandon comments on it appropriately), while the optional encounter... well, if you walk into such an obvious trap, you fully deserve the world of hurt that comes next. The encounter is still perfectly doable - please utilize the most destructive weapons in your arsenal to your advantage and remember... except for the smallest ones, the downed titans always split in two. You can go through the entire fight while having mo more than three or four on screen, and since they die fairly fast...

As for UT99 oldskool not setting Male 3 with Brandon skin slapped on it - IDK why that is. Will have to add that to the to-fix list as well.

[OjitroC]

The mandatory encounter has the large rock you can use for cover, right in the middle of the arena (and of course Brandon comments on it appropriately),

Something is out of sync there - playing my save of the start of Lava Plant again (actually the save is right at the end of the previous map though I didn't know that at the time) after the encounter with the predators, Brandon gets to the point where he needs to jump on to the large flat rock in the lava pool and at that point says "Hi big guy" and then getting to the entrance of the 'arena', the large titan has already emerged - thus no opportunity to go down into the arena and use the large(?) rock to hide behind - at least I don't see any point in doing so. At that point Brandon hasn't said anything about the rock.

OFC the same things don't happen in the same sequence each time one plays it - playing it again now I get attacked by only one predator and the others are either in the lava or over the 'bridge' and seem to have triggered the Titan. I see what you mean by the Titan fight - they aren't as threatening as they appear.

Loads of log spam of these lines

Code: Select all

ScriptWarning: olpawnshadow SD4_LavaPlant_V1.olpawnshadow19 (Function oldskool.olpawnshadow.Tick:001A) Accessed None 'Owner'
ScriptWarning: olpawnshadow SD4_LavaPlant_V1.olpawnshadow19 (Function oldskool.olpawnshadow.Tick:0113) Accessed None 'Owner'

about 7MB - which is a lot!**

Coming back to my question about Old Town - are there differences between what happens at the various difficulty levels as, like I say, I couldn't find any differences in pawns and major pickups?


------------ EDIT ----------------------------
It now looks like I can't save Lava Plant (that is, trying to save the map when actually in the Lava Plant map - previous saves were at a point just before the start of LP and so in the prevous map) - get this in the log

Code: Select all

Warning: Can't save ..\Save\Save164.usa: Graph is linked to external private object Palette Mine.Light.Palette108.

I noticed that at the transition from the previous map to LP, the map title etc came on the screen as though one were starting a new SP campaign (stuff like the titlte, gametype, other messages I can't remember). Note that the Palette number is different in other save attempts warnings - I'm using what I take to be a HD version of Mine.utx - it's over 268MB in size compared to the 7MB size of the one in my UnrealGold folder - no idea if this is the reason or if it has any impact?

**Got 77MB log after playing part (most?) of the way through Lava Plant - good map - gets better when one has played it more than once - now see how not to trigger the cave Lava Titan trap. Pity I can't save this map though.

[Barbie]

Loads of log spam of these lines

Code: Select all

ScriptWarning: olpawnshadow SD4_LavaPlant_V1.olpawnshadow19 (Function oldskool.olpawnshadow.Tick:001A) Accessed None 'Owner'
ScriptWarning: olpawnshadow SD4_LavaPlant_V1.olpawnshadow19 (Function oldskool.olpawnshadow.Tick:0113) Accessed None 'Owner'

about 7MB - which is a lot!**

This problem is based in package "oldskool.u":

oldskool.olpawnshadow

Code: Select all

// ============================================================
// oldskool.olPawnShadow:  By UsAaR33 (well, ripped from playershadow and modified :P
// shadows for scripted pawns (not skaarj trooper though).
// Why can't I use playershadow and update?  It only works if the owner is a player.  I still have yet to figure out what L is...
// Unfortunately, lighting data is lossed making the shadows a little less 1337 :(
// Psychic_313: unchanged. I don't know this stuff :-)
// ============================================================
...
simulated event tick(float delta) {
... 
	// formatting by me --Barbie
	if
	(
		! timing
		&& owner.style == STY_MASKED
		&& owner.default.style == STY_NORMAL
		&& (
				level.game == none
				|| level.game.gamereplicationinfo.priarray[0] != none 
				&& (/*owner.isa('slith') || */ owner.isa('SkaarjWarrior'))
				&& ! owner.IsInState('startup')
				&&
				(
					owner.bstasis
					||
					! owner.IsInState('waiting')
				)
				&& owner.PlayerCanSeeMe()
			)
		&& CheckRender() /*&&owner.IsAnimating()&&(owner.bviewtarget||owner.PlayCanSeeMe())&&owner.RenderInterface!=none&&owner.RenderInterface.Observer!=none*/
	)

Owner is used without checking for NONE.
Maybe olPawnShadow is used in a wrong way in the map; the comment at the beginning indicates that it does not work for skaarj trooper.

[UnrealGGecko]

Cant wait to try this out, hoping on saturday, well done to the team

[OjitroC]

Maybe olPawnShadow is used in a wrong way in the map; the comment at the beginning indicates that it does not work for skaarj trooper.

Thanks for the info. As far as I can tell (using UTPT), there are no olskool assets in this map. These assets (like the olweapons) would be added when starting the map presumably.

It looks like the olPawnShadow is a decal and I could turn off decals in OldSkool but not until I have finished the campaign as doing so now would presumably cause problems with current saves. In addition turning off decals would turn off all decals which would some spoil the experience of playing.

[Delacroix]

The NewbiesPlayground mirror now hosts version v1b. Updated are Vegra and LavaPlant:

Vegra:
- Made the initial jump into vent easier. Note that the BSP was touched, so there's a small chance of problems.

LavaPlant:
- Probably fixed the OneWayPass.Touch crash.
- Probably fixed "Can't save [...] Graph is linked to external private object".

[OjitroC]

That's good

Any idea what causes all the olpawnshadow log spam? It seems to be two shadows (olpawnshadow18 and olpawnshadow19) though whether these are always the same (that is, it's always the same two pawns with shadows) and how one discovers what these are, I don't know.

Coming back to the difficulty level - I've looked at Old Town, River Ruins and Lava Plant and can't find any differences at all - as far as I can tell all pawns and pickups 'occur' at all difficulty levels - so my question is whether this is intentional?

In RIver Ruins, how many Skaarj Worshippers should there be in that battle? Looking in the editor it seems to be 1 (plus the cutscene SW) but perhaps I missed something there?

Any tips on evading the four Skaarj Praetorians in Old Town - presumably people have been able to do that but it is very challenging especially on DIfficulty0?

The issue with not changing the player model seems to be down to oldskool - play a map from the Editor and the model changes to Male3 with the Brandon skin.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Well, so much for Delacroix thinking that waiting for me to test things wouldn't find any more problems. And I am pretty expert at finding them. And here you have someone on the forum finding a critical crash still. I think the 'anniversary' release date should have been postponed, I also had to do the same with FLP back then and I don't care if you think that sucked or not. After all it was "just" 24th anniversary not even 25th and its certainly not anniversary of sd's conception either.

I don't think FLP sucked, its a fine pack and I tried to link all those contest maps (that were referenced in an official release) with a single story basically, it made perfect sense because votlan and some of those maps were bloody obscure. It was also the first time for me working with yrex and back then they were simpler times. It kind of went all over the place with ASP though but that's because our goals kind of clashed there and I tried to limit some of the puzzle excesses or provide bypasses for coop. I find that FLP has a really good flow actually when it comes to gameplay. It worked really well as a forgotten expansion pack of sorts. You might find this post kind of out of nowhere but I'm still reacting to the time Delacroix said something about this in a different post in the OU SD thread where he compared my ideas to something of someone infamous for modifying everything. That's missing the point though. I choose always some specific theme/stuff and the only thing left was a cover cd pack which upon SD's maps recovery I would use for Steele Dawn Extended instead (so as not to have two new separate projects running). But because I became homeless right after i made all the recoveries and fixes, that went nowhere and delacroix instead started this project. My project wouldn't extend the SD maps themselves (only map1 as it just had inside of one building and adding interiors for map2) with dm maps and new stuff, instead maps that featured on cover cds (sometimes unique versions) that are thematically linked to the sd maps or were by the same authors, I would link them, like lavaplant and the cd version of gramercy (but redone in flp style) and I would also find time to feature liberation of na pali, because my project would take place on a different planet than na pali but still in the same system (and there are hints that it was once the case with SD as well, SD most likely started as to be commercial expansion, but since the experience with twin dragon they went for free instead and then there was a major shift post-220 to make it more like a TC even, so there were clearly different periods/plans for SD). So Liberation would, in my version, take place right after jolly roger. And it would continue from there, after all liberation (by steve farrow, one of mappers on this project) was never continued either and its a damn good map that featured even in semi-official bonus discs and magazine cover discs and such. It might also have been the first addon map to appear for macintosh unreal separately. But its often forgotten and many coop admins don't wanna run it because it was never optimized for coop and its just a single map and not part of a bigger pack.

And yet despite those additions I would have kept most of the SD maps untouched at their core and made sure that things like mininuke were included (I wanted a separate item with peacemaker mesh and different skin) and it would be possible to launch it with the F3 grenade launcher. That thing, in the recovered content, only had two grenade modes, not four, but a third one was meant to be included obviously, hence the name f3, as in three functions. It had temporary mesh as flakcannon and the grenades also had the same look (hence why I tried to suggest changing that to something else, but its no biggie). And the launcher was seemingly made right after they had the sdeightball idea (in the 220 version they started adding sd version of each gun, so that they could eventually add brandon arms on more things or add more ammo types). It was still shaping itself obviously and we didn't see everything from the developement but at least most of it finally was found last year and released as historical files. The notes for sdeightball contained that it would fire the mininuke in the alt mode. There was a mininuke mod once in existence apparently but since I had the nuker file too from wod and someone from upsx team also had it in their dev tree, i converted the mod for 224 compat as an example for future to make mininuke from, I only wanted to use specific features of the nuker, not to copy it whole. But my intention was "lost in translation" and instead delacroix's version started to feature nuker outright (with changed mesh to that of small warheadlauncher). But yea the only reason the sdweapons for everything started existing is during one of those switches for the project when they wanted to move it to be more TCish and started getting code and stuff from joe wilcox, who provided some stuff from his cancelled AWGD project, like the interactive terminals and such that didn't even get placed in any sd map yet but that existed in the system file already. This is what then inspired the interactive stuff in this community version of SD. Except sudoku was never planned lol and that really made early sd rework tests pain for me. That is something original for this specific version.

to get back to patching topic:
The main reason why I had to release a lot of patches for UPSX in that one period was because of IRL troubles or circumstances and because I didn't properly test them everywhere (when I was in norway i had just a really ancient machine and yrex had to supply me with special "mini 225", which didn't reveal the linker crash problems for example and coop I couldn't test properly either).

But yea we had a pallete error thing in flp, that was my fault though iirc but also related to s3tc texture usage, because I referenced explicitly a pallete of a texture for a firetexture instead of letting it use its own, you know, for efficiency. That was just the intro map being affected though.

---

Automatically merged

That's good

Any idea what causes all the olpawnshadow log spam? It seems to be two shadows (olpawnshadow18 and olpawnshadow19) though whether these are always the same (that is, it's always the same two pawns with shadows) and how one discovers what these are, I don't know.

Coming back to the difficulty level - I've looked at Old Town, River Ruins and Lava Plant and can't find any differences at all - as far as I can tell all pawns and pickups 'occur' at all difficulty levels - so my question is whether this is intentional?

In RIver Ruins, how many Skaarj Worshippers should there be in that battle? Looking in the editor it seems to be 1 (plus the cutscene SW) but perhaps I missed something there?

Any tips on evading the four Skaarj Praetorians in Old Town - presumably people have been able to do that but it is very challenging especially on DIfficulty0?

The issue with not changing the player model seems to be down to oldskool - play a map from the Editor and the model changes to Male3 with the Brandon skin.

Sorry to make this a separate post but I don't have all the time especially after making a return/introductory post.

I can adress some of your questions. The shadow bug I know/am familiar with. I had to modify a coop gametype to get rid of it. I forgot the specifics by this point since its been years ago, but yea I couldn't fix it fully, only fixing oldskool fully would, so I opted out for more classic shadow use. It was really stupid and hacky of oldskool to do this though, they explicitly made the shadow decal work in fog too, by using a nasty hack, without doing sanity checks and all. This is why it spams so much.

The Skaarj Praetorians...that is a new addition (and obviously xidia inspired) and already 3 refused to run the maps further until their health is reduced or something.

EDIT: Also...the brandon skin issue thing...for upsx I had to make a bypass for oldskool/make a new gametype/subclass of oldskool's iirc. It should have been done with this too if it hasn't. Because you are playing it literally with plain oldskool. For UPSX I made it up to player to select Jack's skin though and didn't force it, but some stuff has been changed. Like teleporters giving off the dm unreal effect (with some exception noted in code), and provision for the intro map etc because the myleveled gameinfo wouldnt work on oldskool.

Oldskool is very clumsy and its hacky nature also requires a similar approach.

EDIT2: Yea well difficulty settings sometimes are forgotten about in projects like these. Several upsx maps also suffer from the same symptom.
Especially in a hurry. Difficulty settings play usually happens after map is done and can be tricky if you're pressed on time.

[OjitroC]

The shadow bug I know/am familiar with. I had to modify a coop gametype to get rid of it. I forgot the specifics by this point since its been years ago, but yea I couldn't fix it fully, only fixing oldskool fully would, so I opted out for more classic shadow use. It was really stupid and hacky of oldskool to do this though, they explicitly made the shadow decal work in fog too, by using a nasty hack, without doing sanity checks and all. This is why it spams so much.

Thanks for all the info.

So I can expect to get the log shadow spam in the maps with fog and/or skaarjtroopers. I don't mind a bit of spam but 77+MB is rather a lot and makes it difficult to check the log for other stuff. I don't recall ever getting the olpawnshadow spam before though when using Oldskool (did nobody else get log spam when beta-testing the map in OldSkool?).

Yea well difficulty settings sometimes are forgotten about in projects like these. Several upsx maps also suffer from the same symptom.
Especially in a hurry. Difficulty settings play usually happens after map is done and can be tricky if you're pressed on time.

I suppose it's not really a big deal but ... I am slightly miffed at having to evade 4 Praetorians (with their 2K+health, speed, high melee damage and massive SightRadius - I don't use them much in MonsterSpawn because of the difficulty in disposing of them). The issue though is a wider one - I would think that people playing this on Unreal Difficulty would also be miffed to find that that difficulty level is no harder than Easy?

I'm really just looking for tips on how to play the map - go for the QACannon first and then use that on them to slow them down and finish them off with other weapons is one strategy but is that effective?

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Yes the "Quality Assurance" cannon could be one way, lol. I still haven't played this new version, I'm catching up on a lot of things but I think it would be best to tone down this fight really, a lot of people have complained by this point about this fight.

The Unreal difficulty also increases the toughness/health so its not the same experience as on Easy still.

---

Automatically merged

The shadow bug I know/am familiar with. I had to modify a coop gametype to get rid of it. I forgot the specifics by this point since its been years ago, but yea I couldn't fix it fully, only fixing oldskool fully would, so I opted out for more classic shadow use. It was really stupid and hacky of oldskool to do this though, they explicitly made the shadow decal work in fog too, by using a nasty hack, without doing sanity checks and all. This is why it spams so much.

Thanks for all the info.

So I can expect to get the log shadow spam in the maps with fog and/or skaarjtroopers. I don't mind a bit of spam but 77+MB is rather a lot and makes it difficult to check the log for other stuff. I don't recall ever getting the olpawnshadow spam before though when using Oldskool (did nobody else get log spam when beta-testing the map in OldSkool?).

It definitely happens with other maps lol. It is annoying but indeed it happens inside the fog and shit, foggy maps tend to spam like this iirc. Well any maps with fogzone turned on even if there's no volumetric lighting.

[OjitroC]

Started again now that some of the maps have been patched.

Still in Vegra - get quite a few lines of this

Code: Select all

ScriptWarning: NeutronBallInfo Save161.NeutronBallInfo2 (Function SteeleDawnPak.NeutronBallInfo.Working.Tick:00B4) Accessed None 'RadiusVictims'
ScriptWarning: NeutronBallInfo Save161.NeutronBallInfo2 (Function SteeleDawnPak.NeutronBallInfo.Working.Tick:00BC) Attempt to assign variable through None
ScriptWarning: NeutronBallInfo Save161.NeutronBallInfo2 (Function SteeleDawnPak.NeutronBallInfo.Working.Tick:00F4) Accessed None 'RadiusVictims'
ScriptWarning: NeutronBallInfo Save161.NeutronBallInfo2 (Function SteeleDawnPak.NeutronBallInfo.Working.Tick:00FC) Attempt to assign variable through None

with different Info numbers - coud be when the Neutron Ball misses the target? Suggests some issue with the code though?

I've noticed that on starting a save, a dispersion pistol is left in the spot I start in (even if the save starts with me holding the QACannon) - this didn't happen in the previous version of this map (and I don't think I've changed anything in my setup).

On the story - it's not clear what that building is with the lethal security or why, in fact, it would have that kind of security. A bit further on, the updraught from the fan doesn't work all that well - it takes quite a few attempts to get to the top, I kept getting stuck on the side. The pupae at the top alerts the player to the presence of Skaarj but it's not clear what a lone pupae would be doing in that kind of environment? Odd that Brandon makes no comment on it?

[Delacroix]

Coming back to the difficulty level - I've looked at Old Town, River Ruins and Lava Plant and can't find any differences at all - as far as I can tell all pawns and pickups 'occur' at all difficulty levels - so my question is whether this is intentional?

Yes, the daunting difficulty spike is intentional in Old Township. Brandon is just one civilian in the middle of enemy territory. The official Level Infinity description explains that stealth must be used on the level. Now Unreal doesn't have stealth mechanics of course, but even still, options are on the table for the player to avoid some of the confrontations. The chief of these options are: the Quantum Accelerator cannon and the slew of voice boxes that the player should damn well still have from Vegra.

In RIver Ruins, how many Skaarj Worshippers should there be in that battle? Looking in the editor it seems to be 1 (plus the cutscene SW) but perhaps I missed something there?

There are two Worshipper brothers.

Any tips on evading the four Skaarj Praetorians in Old Town - presumably people have been able to do that but it is very challenging especially on DIfficulty0?

While the Praetorians are powerful Skaarj units, please do try to utilize all tools available at your disposal. Once again, the QA Cannon, the primary fire of which makes the enemy a sitting duck which you can punish from afar, or voice boxes to lure the red boys away while you sneak past them. They can be defeated of course and careful management of the resources you receive throughout the map just might leave you with not only all weapons available for Brandon in SD overall (except the secret one) but also well over half the max ammunition.

Well, so much for Delacroix thinking that waiting for me to test things wouldn't find any more problems. And I am pretty expert at finding them.

That is a choice that certainly had its consequences, but think of the other side of the coin: what if you continued to remain in enough trouble to be unavailable for the test? It's by no means your fault, however that doesn't mean I can afford to put things on hold without any set date to wait around for.

And here you have someone on the forum finding a critical crash still.

A crash Yrex fixed as soon as he could. Mistakes and slip-ups happen. What does count is the fact that this particular mistake was fixed promptly.

I think the 'anniversary' release date should have been postponed,

I also had to do the same with FLP back then and I don't care if you think that sucked or not. After all it was "just" 24th anniversary not even 25th and its certainly not anniversary of sd's conception either.

First off, drop the antagonizing. No one says FLP or anything else sucked, so don't even start jumping on that idiotic bandwagon and defending yourself. You're not being attacked. It's not being attacked.

And while it's 'just' 24th anniversary, do you honestly think anybody would continue to invest time and resources into SD for the next year? SD which was essentially complete for weeks and was just being tested? Come on. There was no good reason to wait till 25th anniversary.

And I don't even know how to address the 'anniversary of SD's conception thing. Am I supposed to telepathically rummage through the minds of people responsible to find out who thought about it first and when, then go with that date?

I don't think FLP sucked, its a fine pack and I tried to link all those contest maps (that were referenced in an official release) with a single story basically, it made perfect sense because votlan and some of those maps were bloody obscure.

Again, don't defend something that isn't even being attacked. No-one is saying FLP sucked, by any stretch of the imagination. While it does bring parallels with Stvaan Ivanhoe's reworks of otherwise-unrelated maps to mind (he also releases campaigns composed of single levels by connecting them with a story, there's several of those available), nobody's bashing on it.

I'm still reacting to the time Delacroix said something about this in a different post in the OU SD thread where he compared my ideas to something of someone infamous for modifying everything.

I mean... I am not wrong.

I choose always some specific theme/stuff and the only thing left was a cover cd pack which upon SD's maps recovery I would use for Steele Dawn Extended instead (so as not to have two new separate projects running). But because I became homeless right after i made all the recoveries and fixes, that went nowhere and delacroix instead started this project.

So you would rather be adding after Jolly Roger. With Yrex' and my handiwork released, you can still issue that as a sequel. Sort of a 'Steele Noon' or something similar.

My project wouldn't extend the SD maps themselves (only map1 as it just had inside of one building and adding interiors for map2) with dm maps and new stuff,

In that case, the Old Township wouldn't be much of a town. Notice how in Farrow's level the buildings were very few and scattered around. The additions I chose for addition turn it into a genuine town landscape in the beginning, leaving the Farrow's section as a 'working district' of sorts, centered around the water purification and measurement station.

and I would also find time to feature liberation of na pali, because my project would take place on a different planet than na pali but still in the same system (and there are hints that it was once the case with SD as well,

I remember Io being mentioned as a setting, so I rolled with it. Makes sense in context, seeing as it gives some motivation to the Skaarj Empire's involvement in what is essentially a human-on-human slave raid. 'Helping' the Vesspines meant the Skaarj would be getting a foothold.

SD most likely started as to be commercial expansion, but since the experience with twin dragon they went for free instead and then there was a major shift post-220 to make it more like a TC even, so there were clearly different periods/plans for SD).

One doesn't necessarily contradict the other. A commercial product may very well end up as a Partial Conversion (kinda like Doom II: Hell to Pay or Perdition's Gate). As for different plans for SD throughout the project... well, I did best to acknowledge and include as much as I knew about and mesh it together to make sense.

So Liberation would, in my version, take place right after jolly roger. And it would continue from there, after all liberation (by steve farrow, one of mappers on this project) was never continued either and its a damn good map that featured even in semi-official bonus discs and magazine cover discs and such. It might also have been the first addon map to appear for macintosh unreal separately. But its often forgotten and many coop admins don't wanna run it because it was never optimized for coop and its just a single map and not part of a bigger pack.

There aren't 'many coop admins' by now. There's mostly just 3, Rubie, NewbiesPlayground, Zora, and Hyper. Others... come and go. And e.g. Rubie and NP feature Liberation, so it works just fine for coop.

And yet despite those additions I would have kept most of the SD maps untouched at their core

Er... Most SD maps are untouched at their core. The first two don't count since they were, in fact, larval. Expansions of other maps include, to my knowledge (sorry, kinda fuzzy about the original prototypes already):

River Ruins: the final section with the Skaarj Worshipper brothers boss fight.
Lava Plant: enlargement of the area for the first Lava Titan fight to give the player some space to move around.
Mountain Stronghold: added the fields for the Nali and integrated the 'ForCrista' section into the ending, as well as added a bit to connect to Starport
Starport / Comm Center: added the ending section to connect to Planet Head
Jolly Roger: enlarged the hangar to make space for both the initial fight below and the boss fight above.

Nothing more aside from minor things and seamless improvements was added to the original maps. This was an attempt at finalization of the pack so I don't think the changes are that drastic.

and made sure that things like mininuke were included (I wanted a separate item with peacemaker mesh and different skin) and it would be possible to launch it with the F3 grenade launcher. (...) sdeightball idea (...) It was still shaping itself obviously and we didn't see everything from the developement but at least most of it finally was found last year and released as historical files. The notes for sdeightball contained that it would fire the mininuke in the alt mode. There was a mininuke mod once in existence apparently but since I had the nuker file too from wod and someone from upsx team also had it in their dev tree, i converted the mod for 224 compat as an example for future to make mininuke from, I only wanted to use specific features of the nuker, not to copy it whole. But my intention was "lost in translation" and instead delacroix's version started to feature nuker outright (with changed mesh to that of small warheadlauncher).

Well, the mininuke now is in fact, SDEightball instead. It's a secret superweapon. The peacemaker mesh is used to give the player an impression that the altfire completely eschews the barrels of the gun (so if you place an ammo pack on the map, it's like a new set of barrels for it). Overall, I think it turned out...

F3 grenade launcher. That thing, in the recovered content, only had two grenade modes, not four, but a third one was meant to be included obviously, hence the name f3, as in three functions. It had temporary mesh as flakcannon and the grenades also had the same look (hence why I tried to suggest changing that to something else, but its no biggie).

Now it has a total of four firing modes, but I think I'll just stick with F3, seeing as the first two firing modes are that of regular grenade, only either exploding outright or being an on-contact trap.

(in the 220 version they started adding sd version of each gun, so that they could eventually add brandon arms on more things or add more ammo types). But yea the only reason the sdweapons for everything started existing is during one of those switches for the project when they wanted to move it to be more TCish and started getting code and stuff from joe wilcox, who provided some stuff from his cancelled AWGD project,

Yes, but that's also why at some point I just had to say 'enough' and limit the SDWeapons-scope. As it stands now, we have SDAutomag (added akimbo function), SDGrenadeLauncher (completely different beast from the UMS standard issue GL), SDEightball (secret weapon that is based on the nuke concept), SDRifle (beta mesh, different scope than U1 retail which essentially has no scope), SDMinigun (a terran issue minigun mesh of which I snagged from a mod called PerUnreal, to replace the U1 minigun, but essentially, it works the same way) and lastly, SDImpactHammer which is the alpha Nut Buster. The DP, the Stinger, the ASMD, the regular Eightball, the Flak Cannon, the Razorjack and the GES BioRifle remain as-is and all are present in the pack.

like the interactive terminals and such that didn't even get placed in any sd map yet but that existed in the system file already. This is what then inspired the interactive stuff in this community version of SD. Except sudoku was never planned lol and that really made early sd rework tests pain for me. That is something original for this specific version.

The Nali sudoku was something I envisioned after finding out about the touchscreens concept. I wanted to expand on the Nali lore a bit. It's not that hard any longer, not even on Unreal difficulty, as it was during your last experience. Don't pick on me.

As for the numerical touchscreens, expect to find them in Lava Plant and Starport. They are now used there.

to get back to patching topic: The main reason why I had to release a lot of patches for UPSX in that one period was because of IRL troubles or circumstances and because I didn't properly test them everywhere (when I was in norway i had just a really ancient machine and yrex had to supply me with special "mini 225", which didn't reveal the linker crash problems for example and coop I couldn't test properly either).

But yea we had a pallete error thing in flp, that was my fault though iirc but also related to s3tc texture usage, because I referenced explicitly a pallete of a texture for a firetexture instead of letting it use its own, you know, for efficiency. That was just the intro map being affected though.

It honestly doesn't matter to me and I am starting to get really aggravated by the whole patching debacle. There is nothing wrong with issuing patches for software if you find defects in it. Stuff happens post-release. We did our best and I think that while coop admins have a right to feel a bit annoyed by the frequent updates (which now stopped), calling things 'obvious beta' just after the street date and after most fervent tests I've ever done myself alone (that is not even mentioning SteadZ', Aspide's or Prophet's dedication, whose feedback was also paramount) is just downright hurtful to me. You want to wait a week or two before introducing SD to your coop server of choice? Be my guest. You want to provide feedback and tell me of bugs? Be my guest. Call something beta when it isn't? Criticize patching instead of being grateful we are quick to fix our work's shortcomings? Hold your tongue and take a step back.

We did this for you guys. For this community. I am fully ready to receive any flak for what was done wrong. But I don't think our jumping to repair what was wrong with the pack is an incorrect course of action. Please do be more fair in judging that particular aspect.

The shadow bug I know/am familiar with. I had to modify a coop gametype to get rid of it. I forgot the specifics by this point since its been years ago, but yea I couldn't fix it fully, only fixing oldskool fully would, so I opted out for more classic shadow use. It was really stupid and hacky of oldskool to do this though, they explicitly made the shadow decal work in fog too, by using a nasty hack, without doing sanity checks and all. This is why it spams so much.

Then yeah, a patch to oldskool itself would be in order. It has more issues than just that anyway, e.g. the map pack amount limits.

The Skaarj Praetorians...that is a new addition (and obviously xidia inspired)

No, it isn't inspired by Xidia. They are taken from Xidia, yes, because SD is designed to fit in (and expand upon) an extended community canon which Xidia is a part of. Their presence on site should damn well raise suspicion, because why would the Empire use such powerful units for what seems to be a minor operation? This may be expanded upon in further projects. But yes, SD solidifies Praetorians' spot in the hierarchy of the Empire. One Praetorian in particular leads a mini-squad of special agents on board of Jolly Roger.

and already 3 refused to run the maps further until their health is reduced or something.

That is his choice and his right, however first off, 1800 per Praetorian isn't too much, but its their default. Second, in a coop scenario, such a Praetorian doesn't face a lone Brandon Steele but multiple opponents at once, so it's the Praetorian that's screwed in this scenario. Additionally, it's quite hypocritical to complain about the Praetorians (I don't know where 3 took their HP being in the 3000s from, does his server modify enemies' HP on the fly?! They're 1800 on Unreal difficulty on my end!), while hosting e.g. UT-Lity Na Pali which is a Boom-Boy remix of RTNP with some of the enemies way more powerful than any single Praetorian, and with their numbers so excessive a lone player will quickly be destroyed over and over. I am not going to touch SD based on feedback from such an individual. It saddens me that 3's playerbase is getting the short end of the stick, but there were more... interesting admins in our community before so I am not all that surprised.

Also...the brandon skin issue thing...for upsx I had to make a bypass for oldskool/make a new gametype/subclass of oldskool's iirc. It should have been done with this too if it hasn't. Because you are playing it literally with plain oldskool. For UPSX I made it up to player to select Jack's skin though and didn't force it, but some stuff has been changed. Like teleporters giving off the dm unreal effect (with some exception noted in code), and provision for the intro map etc because the myleveled gameinfo wouldnt work on oldskool.

That's strange, I could've sworn we're having custom oldskool-subclass gametypes (see SteeleDawnPakUT and UT version of SteeleDawnGUI) that force Brandon as a player. And it worked fine. If something changed in that aspect, I think it warrants an investigation.

Yea well difficulty settings sometimes are forgotten about in projects like these. Several upsx maps also suffer from the same symptom.
Especially in a hurry. Difficulty settings play usually happens after map is done and can be tricky if you're pressed on time.

That too, but I just thought that the difficulty-level changes in enemy aggressiveness and other aspects of gameplay balance was just enough, honestly. Didn't want to dwindle the numbers because (as tests have shown) with not enough enemies, maps just feel empty.

I suppose it's not really a big deal but ... I am slightly miffed at having to evade 4 Praetorians (with their 2K+health, speed, high melee damage and massive SightRadius - I don't use them much in MonsterSpawn because of the difficulty in disposing of them). The issue though is a wider one - I would think that people playing this on Unreal Difficulty would also be miffed to find that that difficulty level is no harder than Easy?

I'm really just looking for tips on how to play the map - go for the QACannon first and then use that on them to slow them down and finish them off with other weapons is one strategy but is that effective?

Yes the "Quality Assurance" cannon could be one way, lol. I still haven't played this new version, I'm catching up on a lot of things but I think it would be best to tone down this fight really, a lot of people have complained by this point about this fight.

This won't be toned down because the planned concept for the level was to have Brandon at a grievous disadvantage. While engaging the Praetorians to an extent is unavoidable, slowing them down with QA cannon fire is perfectly enough to evade them. And before they notice you, you have the voice boxes. I've been luring them out of the way with those with a lot of success.

Steele Dawn requires a bit of a mentality change. Kill everything that moves when you're a random civilian that just happens to be capable of using guns? Yes, that's going to work admirably, right?

Well, it doesn't always work that way. The first portion of Old Township requires you to play smart. That means, pick your battles and focus on surviving and getting through enemy territory. Clearing out the area is still possible but it's ball-bustingly hard to dissuade you from trying to do that. If you continue to be stubborn about it, you do so at your own risk.

Spoiler

Same deal about the Skaarj commander you meet at the mansion and reencounter on the final level. In the mansion (and initially aboard Jolly Roger) he is invulnerable. You aren't supposed to waste ludicrous amounts of ammo by engaging him. Actually, I find Impact Hammer to be particularly helpful in these encounters, because a charged shot can still knock him back if he corners you.

During the actual phase two of the final fight, where he's vulnerable, again, QA Cannon can slow him down drastically and if you scored the Dyatlov's Eightball, a few shots of this baby pretty much skips the fight entirely. Fighting him legitimately though, the QA Cannon is your friend again. Slow him down, then quickly switch to anything else and punish him until he's down.

And I'm not taking complaints about his health. Yes, it's 3200, but JUST for him and he's a BOSS, so that's well warranted.

On the story - it's not clear what that building is with the lethal security or why, in fact, it would have that kind of security. A bit further on, the updraught from the fan doesn't work all that well - it takes quite a few attempts to get to the top, I kept getting stuck on the side. The pupae at the top alerts the player to the presence of Skaarj but it's not clear what a lone pupae would be doing in that kind of environment? Odd that Brandon makes no comment on it?

The building... it's open for interpretation. Overall, that section of Vegra has its fair share of security measures (the locked-and-secure doors, the jet-propelled elevator being locked behind a forcefield), so the only thing you're supposed to know is that you're not supposed to normally be there. Whatever would normally be accessible behind the locked-and-secure doors or going on in the area right after the two forcefields is not for Brandon, a civilian, to know.
The pupae... Brandon doesn't comment on spiders or scorpions later, and they're similar in size. They're pests not worthy of his time, or comment. The only creatures he comments on consistently are rats, as he has severe dislike of rats, which after the events of Starport will most likely turn into downright musophobia (fear of rats). Sure, he comments on the pack hunting predators once, but that's because encountering the adult Ravager comes off as an unwelcome surprise.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I didn't call your pack a beta, I simply relayed what someone else said, if that wasn't clear.

It strikes me as odd that you seem to be very sensitive to criticism when often in the past you were a tester of upsx stuff and then upon release you mercifuly criticized something that you were well aware about, especially the episode 1 part 1 release stuff, because you had that for years and very little changed between the release and the wip version (practically it was ready before just some monsters and stuff had to be finalized that's why the delayed release of 2013 of the first part).

In this case I am simply going with what other people have said. The UT Lity pack is hardly played/chosen on 3's anymore as it was meant for a larger player base. These days the player base is much less and I already limited the monsters' health by a mutator for him on his server so the mega titans arent impossible when played in two. This is a common problem there and still people avoid picking that pack when the server isn't full.

You need to understand that some stuff was made there in mind with tons of players. But now is a different time.

If there is a custom game then I don't understand why OcitroC ended up having those problems...maybe he chose it plain from oldskool without selecting the pack? His screenshot looked like on plain oldskool.

Again, I didn't play the current version yet and didn't feel the hurry anymore either since it was already released and kept myself busy with other, pressing things now.

I think he meant by commenting on pupae the fact they are skaarj, or doesn't brandon realize they're skaarj?

And yes, you must telepathically scan the minds of every player playing SD for better feedback. Muhahahaha.

Either way, because I don't know...have the weapons been made for ut as well, as in tournament subclass or has that not been done?

The thing is there are also things I wasn't aware of and only got to know now.

As for Liberation, I know that servers do run it, but it has problems like, the playerstart doesn't move with the shuttle and players have to end up swimming and if you die at the end there is no shortcut for the lng ride thing etc...it relies on a lot of gimmicks that are once only and it does become annoying if you have to run through such map. So that is why 3 for example doesn't run Liberation at all. And I would have tried to remedy that.

But my question about the weapons, if they don't work properly on dedicated server then I can understand why 3 felt frustrated.

Also, he runs higher than difficulty 3 which combines the filters...
this has been accounted for in the mutator for some maps that might break because of it but since that happened once with upsx map because of the difficulty (a mover was toggled too many times due to there being more enemies and the counter hitting it) I watched out for this in my releases and issued fixes so this wouldn't be repeated in the future. But yea for old packs, a mutator solution had to be made often.

The key is to not make a mover's initialstate toggle, and with triggers stuff like othertriggerturnson instead of toggle again, as when its not necessary then it can break due to unforeseen difficulty settings.

[Delacroix]

I didn't call your pack a beta, I simply relayed what someone else said, if that wasn't clear.

I was making a general statement directed towards anyone that would repeat 3's narrative. It was clear to me from the get-go that it's 3's idea to call it that.

It strikes me as odd that you seem to be very sensitive to criticism

I am not sensitive. I will however not act like I agree with something that I don't.

The UT Lity pack is hardly played/chosen on 3's anymore as it was meant for a larger player base.

Yes, but it's being kept there while SD isn't. With the same particular issue regarding balance. (I understand that 3 is skeptical over the patching recently, so I am not responding to that part again).

If there is a custom game then I don't understand why OcitroC ended up having those problems...maybe he chose it plain from oldskool without selecting the pack? His screenshot looked like on plain oldskool.

Then maybe it's a bug in the UT-related system files, like I said, that warrants an investigation.

I think he meant by commenting on pupae the fact they are skaarj, or doesn't brandon realize they're skaarj?

Please remember that the humans on Seriate IV know only as much about the Skaarj as the Nali have told them. And the extent of knowledge will vary from person to person. A working-class civilian with a passion for booze is bound to know less than an experienced professional soldier would.

And yes, you must telepathically scan the minds of every player playing SD for better feedback. Muhahahaha.

<bewildered> I'd rather not! When in someone's head, I just might see stuff I can't unsee later! Haha!

Either way, because I don't know...have the weapons been made for ut as well, as in tournament subclass or has that not been done?

The thing is there are also things I wasn't aware of and only got to know now.

As for Liberation, I know that servers do run it, but it has problems like, the playerstart doesn't move with the shuttle and players have to end up swimming and if you die at the end there is no shortcut for the lng ride thing etc...it relies on a lot of gimmicks that are once only and it does become annoying if you have to run through such map. So that is why 3 for example doesn't run Liberation at all. And I would have tried to remedy that.

If you ever use Liberation as a starting point or part of sequel to Steele Dawn, I'd like to be in charge of the story for continuity reasons.

But my question about the weapons, if they don't work properly on dedicated server then I can understand why 3 felt frustrated.

An experienced admin has no business surrendering to frustration. If he experienced a bug, I'd like the specifics. A log would help immensely. Yrex had really taken an extra mile to make SD work properly in UT99 thanks to feedback from e.g. Aspide. However, Yrex himself openly admitted to me that he simply does not have the same experience and expertise with UT99 coding as he does with Unreal. If you'd like to help with that, I'd have to ask that you make playing through SD a priority and personally help squash UT99 issues.

Also, he runs higher than difficulty 3 which combines the filters...

Well, if 3 customized difficulty on his server, then that may be the issue causing inflation of Praetorian health. I suggest making an exception in the filter, or reversing its operation to decrease Praetorian health serverside. I refuse to remove them. They have a place there, I explained their purpose so they need to stay.

If Praetorian health was bumped up to over 3000, then I dread a report on the health of the final boss!