Scorpion Engine

[Mixel]

^^ That is very strange, I don't think I've had that problem. I just set my coins to give me 25 score and they work as usual.

Edit: Thinking about it.. How are you displaying the boss health? Do you print the variable to a panel? That’s how I keep track of variables, could it be that it’s actually your attack inflicting a variable number of damage instead or something odd like that?

Earok: One thing ive noticed about the CPU_follow_direct type is it turns to use the left/right animation when it's accelerating left/right, rather than when it's actually moving left/right.. [ Show youtube player ] - which works great on a spaceship or car or something but looks odd on some things. Could there be a way to get it to switch to the direction when it's actually moving that direction? Not sure how easy that is to implement. (for now I guess I'll bake a bunch of left frames into the start of the right animation and a bunch of right into the start of the left)

[Lemming880]

/\ Odd indeed, and it got even odder. When at first variables worked normal again from 26 and up it now starts working from 31 and up. So now anything from 1 to 19 works normal and from 31 and up. It happens when the boss spawns, before I attack it.

26 = 13
27 = 14
28 = 17
29 = 15
30 = 16
31 = 31
32 = 32

I have the boss health variable set to 0 on the startup codeblock. Then when the boss spawns it has a 'on spawn' codeblock that has 'Set variable (boss health) to 25'. I have a panel bar image linked to the boss health. And for testing I also print it with numberfont to see the actual number. I have multiple bosses and they all have the same problem. I also tested it with the latest experimental version and it also happens there.

However, when I set the boss health in the startup codeblock to 25 it works normal. So it happens because of the 'on spawn' set variable codeblock. But I want the boss health bar to stay empty until a boss spawns. So setting it in startup isn't an option for me.

[Mixel]

Yeah, super bizarre. :O I set all my monster healths onspawn too.. until earok can look at it Idk how you can know for sure, for my bosses and enemies I use actor_var1 for their health, and then have a separate “enemyhealth” I pass that variable to every time I change actor_var1, and have that enemyhealth being an image bar just like you’re using.. (so my healthbar only exists when an enemy has >1 hit point and I specifically tell it to display.. and so the healthbar switches between tough enemies when I punch them..) I just tested that with a numberfont and giving my enemy 30 health etc with the onspawn codeblock and it works as intended.

Very puzzling, I hope you can figure it out.

[Lemming880]

You gave me the idea to try it with actor_var. I use actor_var1 for the small enemies but I use custom vars for the bosses. So I used actor_var2 for the boss and.. it still gives the same wrong numbers.

Then I had the brilliant idea of doubling all the vars of the player attack and enemy healths. In theory that should work since everything from 31 and up seemed to work fine. The first boss works now but at the second boss it happened again: its health var is set to 40 but ingame it's 18.

Worst case my project is corrupt. Thing is I've already done a lot of work since I moved to v2021.6.0 so I don't want move back to v2021.5.2.

I tried before to activate/deactivate a bar element but I can't find that option. Is it possible? This way I could set the boss health in startup and tell it show the health element only when the boss spawns.

[Mixel]

I don’t think there’s a way of deactivating them, but that’s similar to why I have two variables for the same enemy health, one for the actual value and one for how much I want to display in the health bar.. set the display one to = 0 on project startup but then set it to = othervariablename at the beginning of bossfights, and feed it the initial variable’s value whenever the boss takes a hit too.

It sounds kind of convoluted when I write it down lol.

I’m not sure if there’s a more correct way of doing it, I wonder though if 2022.6.1 fixes your problem and you’re having the same weird “logic problems where things go crazy” issue I was having, just manifesting very differently. That was only fixed on Oct 9th in experimental. Until that release I was having a bunch of strange behaviour - not sure when it started though.

[domkid]

hey guys, i'm trying to get my player to go up and down the ladder,
i put a block on the ladder that calls a codeblock when the player(rick) is collide (change player to rick_climb). there is also a codeblock on the animation frame rick_climb that makes it go back to player rick, i did a lot of testing,
but it's not ok, either on control or control platform,
I don't know what to do anymore...



[ Show youtube player ]

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by domkid

hey guys, i'm trying to get my player to go up and down the ladder,
i put a block on the ladder that calls a codeblock when the player(rick) is collide (change player to rick_climb). there is also a codeblock on the animation frame rick_climb that makes it go back to player rick, i did a lot of testing,

I couldn't work it out either and tried initially to do it with off ladder and on ladder blocks, which didn't work, but Earok helped and did the ladder block code for CMO. I think there might be similar ladders in the Pitfall example too..

I have codeblock repeating on the player overlap on the ladder block that looks like this: (well its actually a much longer codeblock


I have a player actor for climbing ladders that runs an "offladder" codeblock on a 0tick timer.. it looks like:

Obviously you can ignore anything about IsAnna or IsFrancis etc, that bit at the bottom is so you leap off the ladders though.

I still don't entirely understand the setblock stuff, haha.

[Lemming880]

Originally Posted by Mixel

.. set the display one to = 0 on project startup but then set it to = othervariablename at the beginning of bossfights, and feed it the initial variable’s value whenever the boss takes a hit too..

I failed to do what I think you mean lol. It also doesn't work in the latest experimental. I can only hope earok has a solution.

[domkid]

Originally Posted by Mixel

I couldn't work it out either and tried initially to do it with off ladder and on ladder blocks, which didn't work, but Earok helped and did the ladder block code for CMO. I think there might be similar ladders in the Pitfall example too..

thanks a lot, I will try this...

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by Lemming880

I failed to do what I think you mean lol. It also doesn't work in the latest experimental. I can only hope earok has a solution.

I hope so too, hehe. I might as well keep trying to help until he does. Sorry if I explained that badly..

In case it helps heres an example..
This code happens when player projectile collides with a maggot. Right from the start I'm updating enemyhealth by feeding it the current Actor_var1, and enemyhealth is what's connected to my panel element. (sorry for all the unnecessary extra stuff in the codeblock too) By the end both have 0..

Originally Posted by domkid

thanks a lot, I will try this...

It's pretty weird, but the ladders in cmo do work a lot like the Rick Dangerous ones so good luck. I'd never have worked it out either.

[Lemming880]

/\ I tried something similar as you but the boss health would only show after the first hit which is too late. Also the boss health would start at 25 but somehow I can kill it with one hit. I might have done something wrong of course. But no matter what, a workaround won't do I'm afraid. I also found out that a condition that is set to show an actor when a var is more than 27 is showing it even when it's less than 27. Also I just added 5 events for something else but the last 3 don't work. Not sure if that's related though. But it seems there's something seriously wrong in my project.

[Mixel]

I’m also having a potentially game breaking bug at the moment.. Is anyone else having a thing where the entire game freezes up when you’ve been playing a level for a while, seemingly randomly? Because that’s what I have now..

Just running through every possible thing I can think of that might be causing it, but running out of options. So strange!

edit: it's stranger than I thought, if I leave the game idling, eventually it'll freeze up entirely - but the parallax continues moving? Whuut. Everything else seems frozen, it doesnt accept keyboard input etc.

[acidbottle]

Nothing freezing up on me here, though levels are short and sharp and testing lasts about 5-10 mins at a time. I can try leaving the game idle for a while to see if anything occurs.

edit: left for about 30 mins, no crashes.

[Mixel]

Thanks for testing! That's really helpful (and I'm glad it's not happening to everyone!)

Well.. That's weird. I can even leave it looping my intro sequence and after 12 minutes it freezes. (WinUAE's 100fps option is really useful!) I'm just going to try other levels, as it's already happening on the intro - It must be an engine thing, this is before 99.9999% of my logic kicks in.. Maybe it's to do with my (probably bigger than most games?) asset pack or something. The length of the swamp level has just made it more obvious.

Looks like I'm going to have to pivot to making boss levels for a while, haha.

edit: yup, literally every level.. around 12mins idle and it freezes (with parallax continuing as if nothing was happening)

[earok]

Apologies for ghosting everyone for a bit, works been a bit full on (also admittedly I've been rather addicted to Hitman lately). I'll get back to work on Scorpion this weekend.


@domkid I do need to do a proper ladder demo as part of the asset pack, there are ladders in Pitfall but that's admittedly that project is a bit odd since Pitfall has very non-standard platforming mechanics and it's not part of the "official" repo (can be found here - https://github.com/earok/unofficial-scorpion-demos ). In any case I hope you can work it out with your game.

@Mixel I'll take a look at the game freezing thing soon.

@Lemming880 it could well be something fixed in the latest version, Mixel's revealed a whole bunch of weird and random engine bugs lately (though it seems there are some more to go) so I've already been thinking about replacing the public version with a newer one.

[earok]

Latest update checked in:

- *hopefully* the reported bug with game freezing after 12 minutes has been resolved.


New feature is currently bit of a gimmick, though it might be useful for solving certain bugs, and might illuminate the issue Lemming has seen.

There's a new "debug.log" created on compile, which displays the entire variable and code memory in a simple "BASIC" like format. If there's any bugs where a certain codeblock isn't having the expected effect, we can cross check against debug.log to see if what was compiled into the game is what it should be.

This is a step towards having a rudimentary debug system where we can pause the game at will to see what code is running, what the variables are set to etc.

[Mixel]

That seems to have fixed the 12 min freeze! TY again. (I’ll leave cmo running overnight and see if anything happens later on)

Debug mode sounds like a godsend once it’s up and running, but what you just added sounds great too!

[earok]

Glad to hear it's fixed

Did another update today and this one's a major - debug dumps from the game itself, displaying key details about the state of the game at any particular point in time.



It's fairly complicated to explain, so I've made a YouTube video. But in brief:

- Compiling the game makes a "debug.json" file. This is a file that simply describes the project at a certain state in time, and it's the key to opening dump files.

- Activating the new "debug dump" function from within codeblocks or keyboard events will save a ".dmp" file on the Amiga filesystem.

- Within the Unity editor, you can combine a debug.json file with a .dmp file in order to create a plain English description of the game state from when the .dmp file was made

(Note that it's extremely important that you use a debug.json file belonging to the same build as the .dmp file, the debug.json from a newer build cannot reliably be used to unlock a .dmp file made with an older build).


[ Show youtube player ]

[Lemming880]

Thanks for the update. I tried the debug thing but it only confirms what I see. In this case I set the boss health to 27 (when it spawns) and it comes out as 10. Strangely I got 25 health to work again but numbers around it still act strange. Ps. sound effects don't work in this latest experimental version.

debug.json:
"CodeBlock": "spawn_boss3",
"CodeBlockLine": 1,
"MemoryOffset": 22982,
"Description": "Set 'boss3health' to '27'"

debug.txt:
Boss3Health = 10

[earok]

@lemming880 Ah, ooops, I know exactly why sound is broken, I'll look at it as soon as I can.

Thanks for letting me know. Can you please send me through your project again so I can take a closer look at what's going on?