DieHard Wolfers

[Andy_Nonymous]

I am having problems reproducing the holowall trick in John Bucksnort's Mutantstein III. It is required to work correctly for the player to get the yellow key and to get 100% kills on level 1.

I tried the version 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7 Activision EXEs from ChaosEdit, and only the v1.5 behaves like the original DOS version did. In the others (and in my own compilation) the guards do not come out at you, but *might* be bothered if you shoot right at the area where they reside in the wall.

So I did an svn checkout of revision 214 (v1.5), thinking that I could just do a revision by revision update and see exactly where it breaks. However, the initial revision 214 didn't even work for me.

I suspect the problem may be compiler-related. The older ChaosEdit executables were made with Visual C++ 6.0 IIRC, and I use Dev-C++.

If anyone can think of something else that may be going on (DLL versions?), chime in by all means!

I'd like to submit my source code for others to compile using:

Visual C++ 6.0
code::blocks
Visual C++ Express 2005
Visual C++ Express 2008
Dev-C++ (sanity check! )
other compilers I may not be aware of

Anyone who would like to help me out, please respond here and let me know which version you would compile for me.

I will be working some strange shifts at work over the next couple of days, so once I am coherent again, I will respond here and post the source code.

Thanks in advance!
Andy

[Chris]

Try this in SpawnStand() of wl_act2.cpp:

::: CODE :::

    map = mapsegs[0]+(tiley<<mapshift)+tilex;
    tile = *map;
    if (tile < AREATILE)
    {
        if (tile == AMBUSHTILE)
        {
            tilemap[tilex][tiley] = 0;
            newobj->flags |= FL_AMBUSH;
        }

        if (*(map+1) >= AREATILE)
            tile = *(map+1);
        if (*(map-mapwidth) >= AREATILE)
            tile = *(map-mapwidth);
        if (*(map+mapwidth) >= AREATILE)
            tile = *(map+mapwidth);
        if ( *(map-1) >= AREATILE)
            tile = *(map-1);

        *map = tile;
        newobj->areanumber = tile-AREATILE;

        // newobj->flags |= FL_AMBUSH;
    }

Or try this in wl_play.cpp:

::: CODE :::

void DoActor (objtype * ob)
{
    void (*think) (objtype *);

    if (ob->areanumber >= NUMAREAS)
        ob->areanumber = player->areanumber;

    if (!ob->active && !areabyplayer[ob->areanumber])
        return;

The first one gives them the room floorcode (more stable). The second one alerts them whenever you shoot (closer to DOS).

If you want to try the first and second ideas together, add this to the bottom of the first also:

::: CODE :::

        *map = tile;
        if (newobj->flags & FL_AMBUSH)
            newobj->areanumber = tile-AREATILE;

        // newobj->flags |= FL_AMBUSH;
    }

[Andy_Nonymous]

Chris,

Once again, you come through!

Both fixes actually did the exact same thing, reproducing the DOS behaviour:

- The guards embedded in the wall always see you and react
- All guards (embedded and behind them) hear you shoot and react

Both fixes together also worked, just to be thorough.

I'll use the first one, since you cite it as being more stable.

Should this be considered as a fix to the base Wolf4SDL source code? IMO it restores an original DOS Wolf3d behaviour (although merely an exploitable bug) that is missing in Wolf4SDL. Currently, the embedded guards do not see you, but the ones behind them respond to your shots, but do not shoot at you. Only if you shoot directly into an embedded guard and kill him can anyone get in or out of the holowall.

I will not persist in investigating the compiler angle mentioned in the first post, though it would have been interesting to know what happened.

Thanks again,
Andy