SIREN | v0.86

[Ferretmanjcdenton]

The flame thrower looks AWESOME

[kalensar]

It'd be nice if I could make progress past the first hallway where you learn to climb. I literally had to noclip to see past there. -laughing face-

[soulshinobi]

My hud isn't working lol.
edit: i’m dumb, just had to max it out

My HUD still isn't working, it's just a Doom brick texture across the bottom with a gap in the middle, been playing with the settings for 15 minutes. The crosshair appears to be custom for this mod and is working, however it's off quite a bit vertically, bullets go above it. Any help is appreciated.

[Enjay]

It's been a little while since I last played this TC and it has really come on since that time. It's looking fantastic and there are loads of new additions since I last played it. I don't even think I'd seen some of the enemies before. Very nice. The gameplay style is nicely different to Doom (I was delighted to see that headshots were nice and effective) and it's generally looking a whole lot nicer than the last time I played.

I have to admit that one of the reasons for me re-looking at the TC was because I knew that you were using Nash's PDA starter kit and I've been having problems with it since 4.7.0 ( viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73426 & viewtopic.php?f=7&t=73403 ).

The PDAs that I have in my WiP use a lot of images in the messages and I knew that yours were mostly text-based affairs. So I wondered if I would be able to get the same issues with your TC. The bad news is that I can - but it takes a bit longer. I summoned all of the PDAs that I found in your PDAdec.txt file and then just spent time reading through them, clicking back and forth between messages for a while until the game froze. It took about a minute and a half whereas with my PDAs it takes less than a minute. (I think this only happens when using the Vulkan renderer BTW).

And while I'm picking up issues, with developer mode set to 2, I see the following warnings during startup:

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Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/bullets/sirenbullet.zs" line 43:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/bullets/sirenbullet.zs" line 48:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/bullets/sirenbullet.zs" line 49:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/bullets/sirenbullet.zs" line 68:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/bullets/thrownflames.zs" line 83:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/headshots.zc" line 25:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/headshots.zc" line 26:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/zwl/zweapon.zs" line 316:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/zwl/zweapon.zs" line 680:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/zwl/zweapon.zs" line 686:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/zwl/zlaser.zs" line 61:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/zwl/zlaser.zs" line 90:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/zwl/zrailgun.zs" line 42:
Truncation of floating point value
Script warning, "Siren -v0.51.pk3:zscript/pdamenuelements.zc" line 368:
Truncation of floating point value

All truncation of floating point value warnings - a common error in ZScript code. I notice that one of them is in PDAElements so you must be using a slightly older version of the PDA starter kit because Nash has addressed that (though the crash problem is in the old and the new version).

Oh yes, and these texture warnings too:

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Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVAL1
Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVALG
Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVALY
Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVALR
Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVALP
Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVAL2
Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVCUR
Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVCRG
Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVCRY
Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVCRR
Resolved self-referencing texture by picking an older entry for H_INVCRP

[ReformedJoe]

...
I have to admit that one of the reasons for me re-looking at the TC was because I knew that you were using Nash's PDA starter kit and I've been having problems with it since 4.7.0 ( viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73426 & viewtopic.php?f=7&t=73403 ).

The PDAs that I have in my WiP use a lot of images in the messages and I knew that yours were mostly text-based affairs. So I wondered if I would be able to get the same issues with your TC. The bad news is that I can - but it takes a bit longer. I summoned all of the PDAs that I found in your PDAdec.txt file and then just spent time reading through them, clicking back and forth between messages for a while until the game froze. It took about a minute and a half whereas with my PDAs it takes less than a minute. (I think this only happens when using the Vulkan renderer BTW).
...

When I was messing around with Nashs PDA kit a year or so ago I noticed that there was a very nasty memory leak with it where even a relatively simple PDA causes GZDooms RAM usage to jump up by about a MB every second. I think it's an issue with the underlying ZForms library and not the PDA kit itself. Perhaps this is causing your issue?

The issue still seems to be there as just sitting in the starting area in Siren with the first PDA message open is causing my memory usage to skyrocket pretty rapidly.

[Enjay]

There is an issue with the the garbage collector and the PDA kit. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=70492&p=1171933

Basically, the garbage collector cannot keep up when the PDA is open and it just eats more and more memory. If you put

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menuactive = OnNoPause;

into the Init function of PDAMenu.zc it allows the garbage collector to keep up, but has the downside that the game doesn't pause when the PDA is open (players just need to be a bit more careful where they stop and to the PDA - which is kind of realistic).

The issue that I mentioned in my previous post is a new one and only appeared in a git build from 13th August onwards (including 4.7.0). Prior to that, aside from the garbage collector issue, my PDAs (and the ones in SIREN, I assume) were working without causing a crash.

[DitheredOutput]

My hud isn't working lol.
edit: i’m dumb, just had to max it out

My HUD still isn't working, it's just a Doom brick texture across the bottom with a gap in the middle, been playing with the settings for 15 minutes. The crosshair appears to be custom for this mod and is working, however it's off quite a bit vertically, bullets go above it. Any help is appreciated.

Other than maxing the HUD out to use a full screen HUD, I'm not sure why it still wouldn't show up. I did once find the bind for maxing the HUD to have been wiped, so check that there is a bind allocated.

The crosshair requires the gzdoom crosshair to be switched off. (Or you can disable the Siren crosshair if you wish.)

I will create some form of help/readme file for these common issues.

[DitheredOutput]

I have to admit that one of the reasons for me re-looking at the TC was because I knew that you were using Nash's PDA starter kit and I've been having problems with it since 4.7.0 ( viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73426 & viewtopic.php?f=7&t=73403 ).
texture by picking an older entry for H_INVCRP

Thanks Enjay. I haven't come across these yet, (I haven't actually updated to 4.7). But if there's a memory leak, I'll try and look into it. At the time of implementing the PDA kit, I didn't have a clue about the code (this also explains why I didn't update the PDA kit, I didn't want to reimplement my changes to it, when it all seemed to work well for my particular usage). I'm getting the hang of zscript now so maybe I can look at it with a fresh set of eyes. Thanks for raising those issues, I'll keep an eye on the threads for a solution to implement/ and if there's anything I come across I can share it.

I was dreading reading the list of errors/warnings but thankfully they're all simple fixes . Thanks for that.

[Enjay]

and if there's anything I come across I can share it.

I'd certainly appreciate that. My PDAs resulting in a crash in 4.7.0 is causing me a problem in as much as I have to run 4.6.1 for that one project whereas I'd much rather just update to 4.7.0 and be able to test other new features while I'm at it. I assume it will be sorted out one way or another soon enough though.

If, for some reason, you want to replicate the issue with your PDAs, gather them all up (I just spawned them all but you might have a script to give them all or something that I wasn't aware of) then just click back and forth between the inbox PDA list and the actual entry texts. It took about 90 seconds to crash for me after starting to do that. Obviously, you must be using 4.7.0 (or a Git build from after August 13) and the Vulkan renderer.

[DitheredOutput]

Ok thanks, I'll certainly seek to replicate it asap.

[Shadefyre]

So I'm replaying the demo to see the new changes and content since I first did a video on it, and it definitely feels like there's been some solid improvements on an already good base. The new enemies sprites all seem pretty good (though the octo-heads are a bit better at sneaking up on you than the spiders were, with their smaller model) and the atmosphere feels like it's been touched up a bit as well. SIREN itself also does seem a bit more manageable now with shooting it being more forgiving. However, I have run into a few things I thought I should mention. The first is that the minigun seems to have infinite ammo now with the standard fire, while the secondary still correctly uses ammo. Another minor thing was the exit door from the secret area where you find the early lever action shotgun seems to not want to open if you don't immediately go through it after opening. The final one has been a bit of a big one, as it's been preventing me from completing the first level to see the new one. Within a few minutes of going down the big floor elevator in the main lobby, I get a "VM Execution Aborted" crash that seems to be triggered by enemies down there. I included a screencap of the same crash twice below. Still, aside from that it continues to be one of the TC's I'm excitedly keeping an eye on for it's eventual release.

https://imgur.com/a/1rNZRLf

[DitheredOutput]

Thanks for playing again! The bugs you mention have been picked up and will be fixed in an upcoming release. There will be plenty of revisions to the maps too.

To be honest the VM abort issue is a bit of a plague, I have trouble replicating it. I think it's fixed, but I've said that a few times before now.

[ReformedJoe]

...
To be honest the VM abort issue is a bit of a plague, I have trouble replicating it. I think it's fixed, but I've said that a few times before now.

It is/was happening in this case due to your custom A_Leap function. It's doing stuff with the "target" pointer without first doing a null check on it. Whenever you do stuff with pointers you should always check that whatever the pointer points to actually exists. I speak from painful experience.

Cool mod btw

[DitheredOutput]

...
To be honest the VM abort issue is a bit of a plague, I have trouble replicating it. I think it's fixed, but I've said that a few times before now.

It is/was happening in this case due to your custom A_Leap function. It's doing stuff with the "target" pointer without first doing a null check on it. Whenever you do stuff with pointers you should always check that whatever the pointer points to actually exists. I speak from painful experience.

Cool mod btw

Hey thanks! Would you be able to expand on this? Is it simple a case of an 'if (target)' condition prior to any reference to target?

[ReformedJoe]

...

Hey thanks! Would you be able to expand on this? Is it simple a case of an 'if (target)' condition prior to any reference to target?

Yeah that's one way to do it.

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If(target)
{
//rest of the function
}