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Ladder missing in Solitary level

Issue #195 resolved
Former user created an issue

See here:

https://www.gog.com/forum/daikatana/solitary_ladder_where_art_thou

I'm hitting this issue, too. Please fix.

Comments (46)

  3. Frank Sapone

    With that said, I've passed it on to @Knightmare66 about ways to modify this part of the map to be easier. I've been getting asked about this a lot recently and I assume it's stemming from the recent exposure from pcgamer magazine.

  5. Ryan Paul Spidell

    It requires a duck jump like you would do in Half-Life to get into a small space but once you do it once then it's really easy to repeat.

  7. Frank Sapone

    Well Knightmare redid this area to always have the ladder no matter what skill level and to make it a little easier to get up there. Won't be available for at least a couple of days though.

  8. Purkkaviritys

    I don't really agree that it is a good decision to always have the ladder there regardless of the skill level. But it isn't like I don't see the benefits. Problem is that this is a yet another good idea (levels that change a little bit based on skill level) that most people don't really understand about this game. Instead they think it's a bug. It'd be better to explanation for the differences between each difficulty level and educate the players. And what's going to be the next issue? The end of the episode 1? Are they going to complain that the elevator side in toxic shaft with moving parts is too difficult on hard skill level and should be changed to same static standing still elevator ride of the easy difficulty?

  9. Frank Sapone

    The problem with this particular issue is that I get asked about this every couple of months or see complaints about it in coop or wherever. I'm getting tired of trying to explain how to do the jump, showing them that it's possible, then still see the complaints saying they had to cheat to do it.

    I don't know what to do at this point. There is a valid complaint in that this is one of the only spots I know of in the game where it is required to continue.

    The other issue you mention like the elevator, it's not a trick to continue and I haven't seen complaints or confusion about it.

  10. Frank Sapone

    We can hold off on releasing the "fixed" map for the time being and see what everyone thinks. I still haven't heard back from Romero on the other issue with the Ion Blaster behavior so I assume he's too busy with whatever he's working on right now. Usually he answers me within a couple of days.

    With that said, e2m5a and e2m5b are going to be merged into one map soon. I found backtracking from e2m5b to e2m5a gets you stuck in the floor (happens in v1.2 as well) in coop. Knightmare then notice it would be possible to merge those two maps into one maps, like he did with e4m2a and e4m2b.

    He also said e2m5c and e2m5d should also be possible to be merged into one single map.

  12. Frank Sapone

    Unrelated, but I really don't appreciate these anonymous issues being reported and then never return to give us any feedback.

  13. Daniel Gibson

    Problem is, while Bitbucket allows anonymous (not logged in) users to create issues, it doesn't allow them to respond to issues. Only alternative is not allowing not logged in users to create issues at all - we could do that, if you want.

  14. Frank Sapone

    Well, I just thought anonymous bug reporters were just being rude. That's very odd it is setup this way.

    If they can leave an email address are they being emailed on this thread or no?

    If not, then I am unsure what to do. Because, it is good that someone took the time to complain to us about it. But, I also don't want people having to register as that will put people off.

  16. Frank Sapone

    Heh, that's funny. Then maybe we should consider bugzilla or something else that we can use for the issue tracker? Or just let it be?

  17. Daniel Gibson

    no bugzilla, then we have to handle the spam and keep it up to date etc.. let's just keep it like it is.. it's annoying but better than nothing (and maybe some people will create an account later after all)

  18. Frank Sapone

    @Purkkaviritys I just realized that we have an e1m3a from 02-25-2015 that already changed it so the ladder is available in medium difficulty as well. For some reason it was missing in the pak6.pak.

  19. Purkkaviritys

    @maraakate Yeah, I understand the issue. I get complains about it as well. I don't oppose the ladder being there for easy and normal difficulty. For hard difficulty I'd rather see the trick jump itself made slightly easier to do. Something like they're in Half-Life where they probably took the concept for it. But I don't wish to see the ladder in hard difficulty. The point is that you're required to make that jump as an extra bit of difficulty. It also gives the game slightly more replayability by having slight variance in things you need to do.

  20. Frank Sapone

    Speaking of half-life pipes, there's a pipe you eject out of in the same map and it needs to be widened because you always end up getting stuck.

  21. Purkkaviritys

    I know exactly what you mean and I fully agree that it should be widened if possible to prevent player from getting little bit stuck in there and allow player to properly fly into the hallway with the air flow.

  22. Frank Sapone

    @Purkkaviritys Knightmare informed me that he spent some time readjusting the ladder area; but still requiring a trick jump in Hard difficulty. I won't be able to check it out for another 8 hours; but if it's OK I'll send it to you to check out and let me know what you think.

  26. Frank Sapone

    OK. Knightmare made a new version that just removes that ladder in hard skill. I asked him about widening that one vent so you don't get stuck in it. After that, I think we can close this particular issue.

  27. Purkkaviritys

    @maraakate I don't see how it is different from the current version but I guess were on same page here. The vent works as intended if player constantly crouches while passing through it. The problem is the open end of it since the tube is tall enough for player to stand inside of it. And you do, then you hit your head when you're exiting. I'd just drop the "air flow" from it but considering you're supposed to fly into the room some other solution is probably more respectful for the original designer's idea. Like widening the tube itself to become more air duct like.

  28. NightStrike
    1. Hi. I opened this bug. I supplied my email address, but received no emails on new comments. I checked back because I saw that there was an update to pak6. And yes, signing up for yet another service is an annoyance that I'd generally avoid. However, you took the time to actually respond to my issue in a reasonable way, so I took the time to make an account here and reply.
    2. I didn't see that PC Gamer article until you mentioned it, but I did just read it. Interesting. Anyway, I started playing because this was next on my GOG list :)
    3. I was very unfamiliar with Daikatana previously, and this is my first playthrough ever. When I first encountered this section, my instinct from playing many other games was to of course duck jump. I tried for half an hour, but just couldn't do it. I finally resorted to googling for how others got through the area, thinking I missed something obvious. This led me to seeing videos with the ladder. Googling that discrepancy led to bug reports of the ladder going missing. And so, here I am.
    4. Now that I understand the disappearing ladder being intentional due to difficulty, let me be clear -- in no way do I think you should change this intentional hurdle. However, it may be that the specific mechanics of duck jumping might need adjustment, as this is a staple of many FPS games. I consider myself a gaming veteran and an FPS veteran, and I couldn't do it. You guys are Daikatana veterans, so obviously you were able to do it easily given your experience with this particular engine. I'm coming from the outside of Daikatana specifically, though, so consider this just an alternate perspective. And, to be clear, this isn't a demographic thing, either. Games of this era are my bread and butter.

    Finally... I'm going to give it a shot once more with the latest pak6 and see what I can do.

    TL;DR: Leave the ladder as is, consider improving the mechanics of duck jumping, direct people to this issue when they ask the question, and see if you can make bitbucket email anonymous posters.

    EDIT: Update: It seems that I can't load my save to retry this with the guidance in your videos, presumably because I updated pak6. Do I really have to restart the level?

  30. Daniel Gibson

    Thanks a lot for signing up! I agree it's annoying, but there's nothing we can do.. at least bitbucket allows you to sign in with your google account, so that might help many people? They also used to allow logging in via Github, Facebook and Twitter, but apparently they're phasing that out.

    Anyway, improving the duck jumping mechanics is probably kinda hard - and if it's only really needed at this one place in the game, adjusting the level is a lot easier ;) However, there might be other ways than a ladder to make it easier to get on the pipe, like giving some more space above the pipe, or maybe placing the pipe a bit lower

  31. Ryan Paul Spidell

    I think just having the ladder always be there makes the most sense. Having map changes like that feels more like a bug even when they did it intentionally and it's the only place in the whole game I can think of that does that.

  32. Daniel Gibson

    There are other places like that. For example, at the beginning of "The Marsh, Part 3", that connection between the pipes is only there on the easiest difficulty level. daikatana001.jpg

  33. NightStrike

    It says that the local map version differs from the server version. Kind of confusing, as I'm playing locally, not on a server.

  34. Frank Sapone

    Again, if you're trying to reload a save, and you updated the map pack it will give an error like that. You will have to restart the game. There is no way around that problem.

  35. Purkkaviritys

    @NightStrike There's no need to restart the complete game. You can do following:

    1. Open the game and in main menu enter to console by pressing tilde key (the key between esc, number 1 and tab in left top corned of your keyboard).
    2. Type: cheats 1
    3. Type skill 1 for normal difficulty setting. Or skill 2 for hard difficulty setting. (On hard the ladder won't be there.)
    4. Type: map e1m3a
    5. It should load the map, then give yourself skill points and some weapons in console with boost (cmd will explain itself how to boost specific stats) and weapon_give_2 & weapon_give_3 to have the weapons player is supposed to carry at the beginning of the Solitary level.

    If you're still stuck with the local map version differs from the server version message check that there isn't any files in your Daikatana folder's map folder which are format eXmYz.bsp like for example e1m3a.bsp which might cause issues. If you have Daikatana installed at e.g. C:\Games\Daikatana then the folder I'm talking about is at C:\Games\Daikatana\data\maps. If you're using Steam then the directory is probably at something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Daikatana\data\maps if you have default Steam install folder in use.

  36. NightStrike

    Thanks for that detailed explanation, but I already loaded my save from the very end of the previous level and played through. I noticed that the pak6 update did already add the ladder, so I couldn't really try duck jumping again.

  37. Purkkaviritys

    @NightStrike Heh, OK. By the way is everything else working for you? The levels load fast? Gamma & brightness are fine and colours come off properly and the game is not pitch black? Have you had any issues with the gameplay? (Other than this ladder business.)

    Can you share some of your opinions? We'd love to hear some feedback from you. And please, try to get to the second episode. =)

  38. NightStrike

    Overall, it's decent. I'm playing on a .....very.... powerful rig, so there's no performance issues at all. The game as a whole aged better than most, although the sound effects didn't. I've not noticed any particular issues, although for this particular problem, when I completed the level, I didn't get the summary screen that shows me percentages, secrets, monster kills, times, etc. Is that related to the pak change and how I went back a save?

    For other issues, I'll be sure to open a new tracker item. You guys are responsive, which is great. If you ever need compiler help, swing by irc.oftc.net/#mingw-w64, and I'll make sure you get helped. To that end, do you think you'd ever be able to compile a native 64-bit windows executable?

  39. Frank Sapone

    You should be seeing a tally screen at the end of each UNIT, not per map. If you were seeing it previously you were likely playing in coop mode which will show it at the end of each MAP.

    There will never (never, never? never, never!) be a native x64 compile. Code is extremely complicated, still has lots of fundamental flaws in which it was easier to bandaid some issues instead of completely reimplementing stuff. Mostly due to a time/cost issue. Some of it is just way too involved and we don't get paid for it. And even if we had more people on the project, the game just simply doesn't have a large enough community that would have that many people dedicated in reimplementing tons of bad code.

  40. Frank Sapone

    Like, some off-topic example is that there are some memory leaks that may likely never fully be resolved for years (yes, years) because they would require completely reimplementing how some things work in addition to chasing down every last part of the code that would require NULL ptr checks for such nonsense. The code itself unfortunately relies on the fact that memory leaks are occurring to access stuff. :(

  41. Frank Sapone

    Also, returning to the x64 issue... YQ2 had some oddball growing pains with hard to track down issues with x64. Physics and triggers may subtly break in various ways upgrading to x64. Something else I am not looking forward to, considering that DK's physics engine is very broken in various ways.

  42. Daniel Gibson

    Yep, making Quake2 work properly in 64bit was painful enough, but Daikatana's Code is 100x crappier.. not really worthwhile. And we wouldn't gain anything from it, it's not like Daikatana needs that much memory.

    For YQ2 we mostly did it to make building and using on 64bit Linux/BSD easier, but as we can only ship compiled executable of Daikatana anyway that point is moot..

  44. Frank Sapone

    Because during development of DK Romero gave up ownership of the intellectual property for Daikatana in order to secure more funding to finish the game.

    He and another developer for DK have tried unsuccessfully in the past to repurchase the rights to DK.

  45. Daniel Gibson

    And Ion Storm Dallas went out of business in 2001, so there was no one in the position to officially release the source a few years later (no one who was actually interested in it that is, Eidos probably didn't want to spend another moment just thinking about that game).

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