Official EGwhaven thread.

[Corak]

Looks like a map error rather than a code one. Aside from a couple of WH1 maps I haven't addressed those much yet. This one doesn't occur in the copy of the map that's on any of the CDs I have though. Is it from the Les Bird site (which had some files that were different) or some other source?

Yes, you are right, sorry, it was seems map from Les Bird, i replaced map back to original CD version and everything perfect. Also in his version of the map - game ends right after completing the map, so it's very bad

Some enemies, especially armored ones, do have higher HP, also it is multiplied on higher skill settings (I think skill 2 should be considered "default" for this game). Do you mean 100 HP, or actually swinging the sword at them 100 times? The former sounds normal, the latter shouldn't be happening though.

Then it's ok) Thanks!

Well, yes, allowing ranges outside of what the game originally allowed is going to look strange. I can probably have it clean up the background area to get rid of the ghosted bars, but the bar going off the screen if you set it that high is what it is. At least it doesn't crash the way Doom would.

Heh, yes, i thought the same - at least it's not crashing But its very good.

And what is this file supposed to demonstrate, exactly...? I have the game and all old versions of the port on hand already. v0.5 mouse code has some bad issues with mouse sensitivity on my machine (can't fine tune it, either too slow or too fast). If the problem is just related chunkiness/smoothness rather than turn speed though I may have a solution for that, but I'll have to test it a bit more to be sure.

Just gamepack (with all versions of the game, not only ports and preset easy network setup-server-ip selector for dosbox) to test with dosbox, where everything works smooth perfect in v0.5... But ok, doesnt matter.
Yes, i meant about chunkiness/smoothness, if you have such solution - that would be absoulutely great.

Also found interesting bug/feature - pike-throwers have limited amount of pikes when they throw at you... But if you save game and load it again - their pike amount will be refilled, so you can use them to get "cheat-like" unlimited amount of pikes and use only it instead of melee weapons. It was in original code too) Seems saves dont have value of pike amount of every monster.

Also, offtop, i just ripped-converted both game graphics to png with alpha and true palletes (duplicates removed), if you interested:
https://vk.com/doc-65855514_452892664
One of my friend (PLEXURA) just wished to make his own HD graphic-remaster addon, but game engine seems will not allow hires he planning, so there seems nessary first to port game code-scripts to eDuke32 in Duke3d standards)

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Also found interesting bug/feature - pike-throwers have limited amount of pikes when they throw at you... But if you save game and load it again - their pike amount will be refilled, so you can use them to get "cheat-like" unlimited amount of pikes and use only it instead of melee weapons. It was in original code too) Seems saves dont have value of pike amount of every monster.

I didn't know that one, interesting. But yeah, pikes are a bit messed up in WH2. There's no limit on how many you can carry (although the code has a definition somewhere that seems like they meant the limit to be 100, like with arrows) and another exploit to get lots of them is to get the pike axe enchanted and then throw it at the wall until the enchantment runs out; each enchanted shot only costs enchantment ammo rather than the base pike ammo, and shoots three at a time, but can still be collected from the walls like regular ones (as long as you don't have any enchantment charge on the weapon).
There are a few points to thrown pikes that don't make them the ideal choice in all situations, though. Halberd/two-handed sword generally kill things quicker (at least compared to the non-enchanted version) especially if you have strength potion or hero time active (and especially both together). Neither of those powers apply to projectile attacks. Also it's hard to hit guys higher/lower or through narrow windows with pikes since the projectiles are tall and hit the floor/ceiling easily compared to arrows.
Still, I may consider looking into patching out this savegame exploit, and maybe I should put in some more RULES.CFG options to customize some limits on them.

Another exploit I know about is that you can hit enemies with the freeze spell, let them thaw out, and freeze them again. You get XP each time they're frozen, even if you don't smash them afterwards.

Smoothness fix that I mentioned before looks like it should work, so I'll have that in a new version soon. Unfortunately it means the jump/fall/run physics changing a bit one more time but hopefully it'll be the last time.

EDIT: I just investigated this savegame issue a bit more and it's even more serious than just ammo counts. Enemy HP also gets reset to full when loading a game; since you were using save/load so much that might also have been why some of the enemies seemed so hard to kill. Putting this on the priority fix list, thanks Corak.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

I have update EGwhaven with version 1.2. This version has a smoother framerate at the expense of some slight changes to physics. I also addressed the save game bug found by Corak as well as the issue with freeze scrolls potentially granting XP more than once per monster if you let them thaw and then re-freeze them.

I investigated a bug that occurs in WH2 Level 13 that sometimes causes the map to get screwed and then frequently crashes the game afterwards. This appears to be a BUILD bug rather than Witchaven-specific, and occurs when force yourself against the unusual sloped ceilings that were used to create stalactite structures on this map. I've documented it on the bugs page, but it is not fixed due to being an engine bug. To be re-evaluated in a later phase of the EGwhaven project and perhaps addressed with a map fix in the meantime (unsure). Is this a known BUILD issue, potentially already fixed in existing ports?

[Corak]

Thanks, ETTiNGRiNDER! Just tested - Now everything is perfect with framerate and speed)
Also found some small issues - in WH1 - he's jumping a bit higher (+40% more than original), but it seems related with WH2 code, because there he really jumped higher and seems no different from your port.
And also found interesting issue in WH1, when you trying to jump inside a window - players stucks and dies or passes through the wall, but it seems more related to Build engine or map structure:
http://coraksoft1.narod.ru/games/3dAct/ ... -death.ZIP

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Yeah, making the jump values in WH1 be exactly the same as WH2 was probably a mistake as it seems jumping in the first game was intended to be a little lower. It's one of those things that's fiddly due to having been framerate dependent but I can doubtless improve on the accuracy some with the right tweaking.

Dying when you push yourself against walls, especially recessed areas like windows, is a well-known BUILD engine bug rather than anything in the Witchaven gameplay code, for example:

Instant death due to glitches is frequent and is nearly always caused due to being pushed into a wall. While in a small closet, Duke can instantly die due to the small amount of space pushing him into a wall. A swinging door can very easily push Duke into a wall when he is sandwiched inbetween. In "Free Way" Duke can instantly die in the start of the map by floating upwards to the sides of the first water grate. This could be occurring due to the game assuming that Duke can always rise a specific amount out of the water with out collision, causing him to partially move into a wall, though this is fully undetermined. Listing the occurrences of these events is outside the scope of this page.

There might be ports that fix/improve this (I suspect, without having really looked into the code behind it, that it's a fixed-point precision error of some kind that would be improved if the game's 3D math were converted to true floating point--fine for relatively modern computers but back then it incurred too much extra overhead in the calculations for a fast game). Another "not until Linux/Windows version" thing, although I'm close to ready to begin that stage assuming there are no major roadblocks that come up in the process.

However, it might be possible that the framerate increase makes it more likely to happen; I have to investigate it more to be certain but I feel like I've noticed the issues of monsters walking to places they shouldn't (like onto thin air) more in the faster framerate versions. If so Witchaven's own sprite movement routine might be partly at fault and in need of adjustment.

[Corvin]

I'm not one to tell you where to go with a Windows port. But may I suggest the JFBUILD Engine. http://www.jonof.id.au/
(I think it was him and Ken that introduced the High-Tile support.)
I feel EGWH could benefit from his programming the most. He's worked with the limitations of the engine countlessly, without him, there would not be anything else, especially so fast.
But up to you of course.

[Pheener]

Thanks for all your work on this, EG.

I installed EGWH about a month ago, played it solidly for a few hours, but then got sucked into a newly completed mod for Blood.

When I came back to mess with Witchaven a week or so ago, first DOSBox gave me an issue about not being able to find "SDL.dll", which tends to now happen at random. Around this time, somehow the music and sound variables got set to "0" without my input, which had me troubleshooting why DOSBox wasn't giving me any sound (obviously, in retrospect, because it had been set to zero). Still, I reinstalled Witchaven/EG, ran into the same issues again, found the volume issue, fixed it, fixed the "center stick" issue by disabling the joystick... and now ... everything's working! With Yhkwong Dosbox and everything! ...

... Except 20 feet from the start of the game, where you can crouch into that lava cave, it just insta-CTD's the second I pass into a crouch-only space. I haven't tested it in other spots specifically, but I seem to remember passing in there without incident a month or so ago, and really doubt that anyone playing this regularly wouldn't run into the same issue if it was global.

So, all that to ask:
A) Has anyone run into this SDL issue with DOSBox before? I'm worried it's something wrong with my system itself, like an overactive anti-virus program, but I've disabled them to no effect.
and
B) Is the crawlspace-lava crash a known issue, or does it just sound like I have a garbage WH1 install?

Thanks again, it's great to see so many Build games being kept up-to-date.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

@Corvin:
Yeah, I believe we'd discussed it before and basing off of JonoF's BUILD port is in the plan, I haven't got around to trying to compile it or anything though. I did check recently in the code for DXX-Rebirth to see how they handle the HMP music and it seems like that stuff should hopefully be adaptable to my needs for Witchaven, so that's encouraging news at least. Life's been a bit hectic again but hopefully EGwhaven won't be dormant as long as it was last time.

@Pheener:
You're referring to the secret passage that leads to a room with a pair of red ogres and a sapphire ring, right? If so, I'm not noticing a problem there, and I tested with my vintage K6-2 machine booted into MS-DOS 6.22 so I am guessing this is most likely a problem with your emulator setup. Unfortunately troubleshooting DOSBox problems (especially with all those wacky unofficial builds that are out there) is a bit out of the scope of this project but here are my suggestions in order of what you might want to try:
* Turn off sound and music in the Witchaven setup and see if that changes anything. It's possible that incorrect sound setup can cause crashes and other weird issues in which case you might also try reconfiguring the sound options (you have to use the vanilla setup program for that still) and trying again. If so, let me know if that helped so I can look into the issue further.
* It could be a problem with your DOSBox install; try uninstalling and reinstalling it clean. The fact that you had an issue with the DLL suggests that this might have something to do with it.
* It could be a problem with the build of DOSBox you're using, so you could try a different one like the official 0.74 which is old but known to work for EGwhaven. You could also try PCem instead of DOSBox, which is an emulator that offers better accuracy at the cost of much more demanding system requirements and a somewhat steeper learning curve. If you find that a different build or emulator works better, it would be a good idea to report the issue to whoever's responsible for the build you had the problem with since it may be a bug in the emulator itself.
* If none of the above help, it could be that your system is more deeply messed up (virus, system software getting messed up, etc.) and you might need to do a system restore or reinstall of the OS. If you suspect a virus issue, Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool might be worth a shot.

[Corvin]

@EG, yeah, my memory is going quick with too many projects at hand, and age too.
JF did some work with Tekwar a bit to. Not sure how he handle the HMP system in his code....worth a look.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Version 1.3 has been released. This version corrects some serious bugs to save game reloading that were introduced in v1.2, as well as a few other tweaks and fixes:

- Regressions to save games which could heavily break reloaded sessions in v1.2 have been cleaned up.
- Jumping and gravity strength have been re-corrected mathematically and should now be finally finalized (I am very confident that WH1 at least is as close to original intent as possible without being able to check against the original dev machine.)
- Stricter checks to prevent monsters from stepping off the edges of cliffs.
- Stricter checks to the player's vertical movement to work around an occasional bug where Grondoval would be erroneously pulled up into the ceiling.
- A bug which doubled health potion / ankh health values and potentially exceeded the player's max health was fixed in Witchaven II.
- New RULES.CFG options for spell level requirements and maximum ammo for bow & arrows and pike axes.