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Thread: Sword Triggers Are Not Continuous

  1. #11
    The Timelord
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    Quote Originally Posted by Saffith View Post
    Sword triggers were continuous in 2.10, but they aren't in 2.50.0. I don't know when exactly it changed. Shouldn't be hard to figure it out, I just can't check the logs right now.
    In LinkClass::check_slash_block(), comment out the lines
    Code:
    if(!isTouchyType(type)) set_bit(screengrid,i,1);
    and
    Code:
    if(!isTouchyType(type)) set_bit(ffcgrid, current_ffcombo, 1);
    and they should become continuous again. screengrid and ffcgrid are used to keep track of which combos have already been checked for the current attack.
    Do you happen to know if this was intentionally blocked, or if it was merely an oversight?

    I obviously don;t want to introduce a new and different bug by changing it. i could supply a quest header requirement to these instructions, to fix 2.10 quests; but if continuous triggers are in fact broken, as @Tamamo describes--I accepted her explanation for the present, as it seemed plausible--then they need some kind of reworking to be viable.

    I have some preliminary work to do on the flag editor components, which amount at present to little more than an experiment, but if they prove, then I will think about adding continuous flags for this type of event.

  2. #12
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    Thanks to Saffith pointing out this portion of code I had forgotten I decided to investigate things. The screengrid array (and later also the ffcgrid array) was designed to ensure that activating slash and pound combos via the sword or hammer respectively would occur only once per attack. Without it, if you had, say, a series of pound combos that linked into each other requiring the player to use the hammer multiple times, the successive pound combos would simply keep activating on every frame that the initial attack was active. I recall this being an issue at some point before 2.10 but I could be wrong. I believe the isTouchyType refers to the continuous variants of those combos.

    Anyhow, as far as I can tell looking over my archive of code, this was the only purpose for that code, and in 2.10 and almost all the 2.11 betas the set_bit statement was nested right where the code would change a slash combo to its undercombo or next combo. I can't look at the svn logs, but the clear change between this behavior and the current behavior seems to be when I implemented freeform combos. What happened is that the set_bit statement now resides outside of the code that checks for the exact type of flag or combo that was struck. Where previously set_bit would only evaluate in the specific instance of a slash or slash->next combo being struck and changed into the undercombo or next combo respectively, now set_bit will evaluate at any time a successful cuttable block or trigger is struck with the sword.

    As to whether this was an intentional change or not, I can't say without looking at the svn logs as my memory of ten years ago is understandably spotty. Heck, I can't even be 100% sure I was the one who made this specific change. However, looking at the code now, I/m reasonably sure that the thinking was that the screengrid tracking only prevented continuous slash blocks from occurring in those two specific cases mentioned above. Slash combos that changed into the 16-31 secret flags or the armos secret would still exhibit continuous behavior if they changed into more slashable blocks, and then of course there's the very obvious case of a sword trigger changing into itself to create a toggle trigger which, without this change, would trigger on every frame that the sword was active. I definitely remember that being an issue in some 2.10 quests that attempted such functionality using the trigger flags. And yet in hindsight it makes sense that there might be some use cases where a continuous trigger would be desired, and certainly some 2.10 quests were designed with this limitation in mind. Incidentally everything I just said applies to pound combos and triggers as well.

    I'm not sure what Tamamo is talking about in that sword and wand triggers can never be continuous. Unless he means that the sword and wand animations eventually end which obviously they do.

    As for what to do about it, if it's really necessary to maintain compatibility with 2.10 quests that expected the continuous behavior, then fixing it should be trivial, so long as we can identify the exact version of the betas the change occurred in. For moving forward having continuous versions of the sword (and hammer) trigger flags to go along with the continuous slash combos currently in use seems like the best way to fit both use cases without breaking any 2.5 functionality.

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by CSD View Post
    I've been debating reporting this for a while b/c it seems like something that would be more of a pain for you guys than something that would actually make ZC better. Some of what I'm about to say here is just my best guess as to what's happening. There's a bug in there somewhere but I'm not sure exactly what it is or how to fix it? I don't think I've tested if there's been a change in behaviour since original 2.5.

    All trigger flags are 'continuous' except for sword triggers (I only tested this with looping secrets and not tiered secrets in general, but I'd guess it does apply more generally). When a sword trigger is used in a way where the continuousness of other triggers would apply, in addition to not behaving in a continuous manner, for some reason screen secrets are not activated. It's especially strange when the strike trigger is involved, because its behaviour differs depending on whether or not you hit it with a sword. I think it's a good bet that this inconsistency with sword triggers was introduced along with the slash and slash/continuous combo types, but I don't know that for sure.

    The fix might be to make sword triggers continuous again. Unless all triggers didn't used to be continuous in past versions. If that's the case, then the fix is to make non-continuous triggers actually activate screen secrets and then do the same that was done for slash combo types to all trigger flags (continuous and non-continuous versions of them all).

    Maybe I'm just stupid and couldn't solve the room, but there was a room in Lost Isle I cheated my way through. It had looping tiered secrets that, if there is actually a version inconsistency and if the room was implemented in a certain way (I have no way to check how it was actually implemented), might have made the room unsolvable in 2.5? (I vaguely recall a sky dungeon, and I think the room was maybe near the upper-right corner of the map? But maybe plenty of people have played through Lost Isle on 2.5 with no problems and I'm just dumb for not figuring it out. The possibility of a version inconsistency that may or may not exist was in the back of my mind the whole time I was in that room and it was pretty distracting. Me being dumb is the more likely explanation here I think lol.)

    I added an Emulation Menu toggle for this to 2.53 Beta 36. Care to test to see if it does what it needs to do?

  4. #14
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    "I added an Emulation Menu toggle for this to 2.53 Beta 36. Care to test to see if it does what it needs to do?"
    Suffice to say I don't check this forum very often... Honestly I reported this so long ago at this point I don't even remember how to set this up.

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