The City of the Damned : Apocalypse | Remaster | v2.0 | Oct, 31st 2023

[Nash]

Alright, I'll start on the script cleanups.

[Graf Zahl]

Just one word about the moon. While doing some tests with other skyboxes recently I noticed that the skyboxes inherit the vertical 1.2x stretching from the map. So I fixed that because it looks like crap. Let's hope that this doen't squash the moon to something non-round again.

[Nash]

Graf - that bothered me too, I literally just fixed it on my end.

@Torm and Ozy: My goals are to ZScriptify and massively clean up every single actor code in the project. There's a lot of old DECORATE-isms in there and I want to heavily optimize every single actor so that thinker costs will be cut down to a minimum. I'd appreciate it if you leave the actor code alone for now until I say I'm done with the refactoring.

[Gorman Frebmane]

Speaking of a new boss, does this seem like it would look good for a replacement [WIP]

[Gothic]

Found some more stuff in the newest build:

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There's a missing texture above this door outside the fridge room:


Mistextured ceiling in the box room:


This is the safest of all safes, because it doesn't even open:


Even turned off, this bonfire can still damage you


This door in the Knife house is still invisible:


An old one that I forgot to report, but you can shoot through the windows in the church:


Minor visual stuff, but why aren't these 3d floors?

[Ozymandias81]

@Torm and Ozy: My goals are to ZScriptify and massively clean up every single actor code in the project. There's a lot of old DECORATE-isms in there and I want to heavily optimize every single actor so that thinker costs will be cut down to a minimum. I'd appreciate it if you leave the actor code alone for now until I say I'm done with the refactoring.

Thanks a lot Nash, you know my limit is within zscript which is something I still can't handle... I might go for a full zscriptification of BoA even if being hellish effort, but well I am used to hellishly works (like 4000+ colored brightmaps and import of countless models during development)
I knew that my 'enhanced' old nashgore code needed a different approach, since most of it comes from Gore: Horde of Titans (which god knows when I'll return to work on) which is 5 years old. Brb with modding next monday, and it will be probably BoA related (plus ClusterBloom and a personal private models repository)

[Nash]

@Dan: I have a request, can you remove all ambient fire sounds (thing type 14026) from the map? I'd like to implement the sound emitters from the torch actors themselves (and don't worry, I have strategies on how to make actors that play looping sounds have low processing cost).

EDIT: Regarding your comment about the exclamation marks: what's wrong with them? They are already behaving in the exact way you describe it, except for "dormant" - I don't remember exclamation marks being dormant (and therefore disappearing). I'm confused by what you actually want here.

[Tormentor667]

Regarding your comment about the exclamation marks: what's wrong with them? They are already behaving in the exact way you describe it, except for "dormant" - I don't remember exclamation marks being dormant (and therefore disappearing). I'm confused by what you actually want here.

In the old version the exclamation marks had only 2 states: Inactive (invisible) and active (visible). Some exclamation marks, for example the one on the graveyard, are dormant until the right text note has been read hinting them. As of now, inactivte is grey and active is blue. What we need is "dormant = invisible, active = blue, touched = grey". Just removed the ambient fire sound things btw. Great work on your improvements so far, you are extremely fast and I am happy to have you on board improving this project!

[Nash]

Ah yeah I did notice something was a little off with the exclamation marks. For your information, I noticed these even before I started touching the scripts (since the first beta you posted in this thread). I was a little confused why was there

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a marker on top of the graveyard, despite there being nothing there. And also why was there a marker near that wall with the naked ladies, before being able to actually access it.

I'm not sure how your marker system works because I haven't looked at it yet. Do I have to edit the map to fix this behaviour? In that case, I'd like to ask you to freeze the map temporarily so that our works don't collide.

Speaking about the marker system overall - I have been toying with the idea of an objectives system. So that, for example, if you

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activate the script that makes the key appear in the graveyard, an objective that says "I heard a noise coming from the graveyard" will be added into your journal, which you can open any time. This would require me to move a chunk of the scripting from ACS to ZScript.

Also, if I am to work on the nightmare mechanics, for example to add the lamp item, and also for the scoring system, I'm going to have to remove it from the ACS map script and port it to ZScript - which means I'll have to edit the map

Let me know your thoughts. If you decide to let me edit the maps, it will be done after I complete ZScriptification of all actor code (so it won't be today/tonight).

By the way - do you think it's a good idea to create some kind of private way to discuss collaboration about the project? I'd rather not people read our improvements and potentially spoiling the new experience. Do you use Discord? Or if you have any other platform recommendations, feel free to suggest.

[Tormentor667]

Ah yeah I did notice something was a little off with the exclamation marks. For your information, I noticed these even before I started touching the scripts (since the first beta you posted in this thread). I was a little confused why was there...

Yes, that's exactly the cause. To improve this, I think there is no need to edit the map. We can have an "inactive" state with a invisible sprite, an "active" state that initially is blue and on touch just grays out and stays like that - that should be enough to keep the functionality.

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activate the script that makes the key appear in the graveyard, an objective that says "I heard a noise coming from the graveyard" will be added into your journal, which you can open any time. This would require me to move a chunk of the scripting from ACS to ZScript. Also, if I am to work on the nightmare mechanics, for example to add the lamp item, and also for the scoring system, I'm going to have to remove it from the ACS map script and port it to ZScript - which means I'll have to edit the map

Yes, I am totally for doing this, sounds great for me. I would like to do some mapping work for the rest of the days and could commit my changes in about 6-7 hours, then you could continue working on the map if that's okay for you?

By the way - do you think it's a good idea to create some kind of private way to discuss collaboration about the project? I'd rather not people read our improvements and potentially spoiling the new experience. Do you use Discord? Or if you have any other platform recommendations, feel free to suggest.

I agree on that, but no idea which platform is the best. For Blade of Agony we have a Facebook chat group, would that work for you? (I wrote you a message anyway, did you get that?) If that's okay, I'd just open a chat group for us - that's the easiest way for Ozy and me.

[Tormentor667]

New areas in the Remaster: The Cellar and The Swamp

[Tormentor667]

Another new area: The Gipsy Camp

[Nash]

Loving the new areas! Being so close to working on this, I pretty much could speedrun the old layout now, so I appreciate the new areas. Gonna make sure I don't spoil it too much myself, despite being a developer on it. :D

[Clownman]

Just tried a bit of the beta you posted on page 2. The weapons do feel better to use, though I feel the animations could still use some work. The pistol's muzzleflash is even misaligned and the Sawed Off seems to have smoother firing frames now, but the reload anim still looks rather choppy.

Part of me would suggest making the pistol semi-auto albeit having to reload, but that's your call. I could probably supply some new sounds for the guns too just to make them sound fancier. Maybe also give the player some unique sounds? I dunno, I feel the fact they sound like Caleb to be kind of off-putting for some reason. lol (Then again, That's also because I'm too used to associating Stephen Whyte's voice with the bloodthirsty anti-hero himself)

Disregaurd this, I just found beta 3 has even more refined weapons. HUGE improvement.

[Nash]

I found the source of the slowdowns - the starting bonfire scene is drawing ~2500 walls, which chokes even my RTX 2080. https://imgur.com/HpmxrnM

I've managed to optimize it by carefully occluding the level at key points while still retaining the original atmosphere. Got it down to ~550 walls: https://imgur.com/gT9QvMw

I will continue to make sure wall draw counts are kept in check to ensure this mod runs as smoothly as possible.