Fake Hitlers and Guard/Object Map Limits

Wasn't quite sure where to post this. Anyway, I have been testing a lot of different things while making my mod. Yesterday I tried all of the things below and found some interesting results. Not sure if most of this stuff is common knowledge. If not, I hope this helps anyone making a mod for the first time!!

Yesterday I did some testing with the Fake Hitlers. It turns out, that every fireball they shoot out counts as one guard each. The guard limit per map is 149. If that number gets exceeded, the game crashes. So, the lesson is, you cannot have too many Fake Hitlers fighting you at the same time or in real long corridors. I am saving them for my third episode, but when I do include them I think it will be safe to still have around 100 guards per map with Fake Hitlers. I think putting four in one room or corridor would be too much. I also learned that you can’t make them deaf or they only react when you shoot them. I have already changed their Dir function to NoDir in the source code, so you can approach them from any direction and they will react to you. But, for now I need to keep them on separate floor codes.

Also, the object limit per map is 399. I also tested this and found some interesting results. If you use all 399 objects and then load that map and start playing- when you kill your first enemy, the ammo clip they usually drop won’t be there. The game does not crash, but until you start picking up things like treasure, ammo, health, etc. this will continue to happen. So, picking up collectible objects definitely lowers the object count per map.

I also tested out if killing a guard lowers the guard count, like picking up a collectible item lowers the item count. I made two rooms and put 148 dogs in one room and a Fake Hitler in another room. I then killed all the dogs and then fought the Fake Hitler. I allowed him to shoot his fireballs (again, each fireball counts as one actor/guard) and the game immediately crashed. So, that told me that killing guards DOES NOT lower the guard count per map.

Just some goofy testing by me to figure out some of the limits in Wolf!

Regarding the Fake Hitlers, I find that even with just one of them on a level it affects the total guards allowed a lot. Anything over about 122 total guards on a level risks having the game crash when the Fake Hitler is killed. The Hitler boss counts as 2 guards so there's a 148 maximum when that is used.

Hitler boss counts as 2 people because, it is basically 2 people, one with the armor, dies, then another, the normal hitler.
When you get 399 objects, there's no memory left for any ammo clip to appear. If you pick up an object, the object isn't there anymore, so why would it take up memory?
Actually I kind of found about about all that quite a bit ago.

Kinda figured this was old bit for most of you. I am just finding much of this out for the first time tho. And the comparison was between objects and guards. Objects are removed, which frees up some mem-however a guard you have killed still takes up mem. Therefore, a fake hitler shooting fireballs will crash it.

It's really quite easy to raise the amount of objects and guards allowed in each level in a mod as well with some simple coding. Generally you need to clear some room by removing other stuff but theres a number of things you can take out that won't affect the game in any way, even in a full 60 level remake.

I remember making a level with the raised numbers that had about 10 fake Hitlers, Mega-Hitler and about 140 guards and the game never crashed.

Wow. that sounds really good. I had heard that adding more actor/objects to the code really hurt performance of the mod. (A lot of slowdown). I was thinking of maybe just raising my actor limit about 20 or 30 higher...

Nope, doesnt affect it any way, in fact I find that my mods actually run smoother with less stuff in them. I take out the debug keys, the ghosts and some other files and sections that aren't necessary.

At the DHW forum there is a whole thread about things you can do to save space in the code. From memory Chris Chokan even released a source code with heaps of extra memory that you can download and use.

Thanks Dean! I will definitely have to check that out! Have removed some useless files from the project and as of now, I still have no issues with my memory, but any extra I can get would be great...

Dean wrote:Nope, doesnt affect it any way, in fact I find that my mods actually run smoother with less stuff in them. I take out the debug keys, the ghosts and some other files and sections that aren't necessary.

Weird hallucinations? Beyond the fps limit? Framerate-wise you won't notice a difference unless you are using a Pc < 200mhz or Dosbox.

If you increase the actor limit to 249 and play a map with 249 enemies you will get a drop about 7 fps. If you only add shading you will get a drop about 10 fps. That doesn't matter for a fairly good system but Dosbox requires ~2.0 ghz to run a mod with shading at max. fps.

Jay's problem about fast moving fireballs made me think. So I started a little investigation about tics. I couldn't find the root of all evil (some asm lines broke my mind) but I coded a sweet exe which may help a bit.

A lot stuff of the wolf3d engine uses tics and the calculation of the tics behaves different on different pc systems. For example if the tics increase to 4-5 then the fireballs drop some frames and move faster. The pushwalls hit the >256 tic counter faster and only move 2 spaces. Seconds/minutes should also behave weird with more tics though it takes an eternity until you notice a difference (requires stop watch).

The exe displays Tics, Seconds, FPS, Pushwall Tics and other stuff on the screen. So you can use this exe to check how well the dos version runs on your pc or in dosbox.

Here are some of my results. Dosbox 0.72.

System	Tics	Pwall max	FPS	FPS with 250 enemies (all active)
P4 (2.5ghz) XP	1	384 (3 tiles)	70	70 (active: 70, 1 tic)
P4 Dosbox (max cpu)	1-2	2-3 tiles	52-58	43 (active: 24-26, 2-3 tics)
P4 Dosbox (3000 cycles)	4-5	256 (2 tiles)	16-20	12 (active: 8-10, 8-9 tics)
486 (50mhz) W95	1-2	2-3 tiles	53-58	43 (active: 24-26, 2-3 tics)
486 (50mhz) DOS	~1,3	~3 tiles	62-66	54 (active: 32-34, 2-3 tics)

tic = 1/70 second
maxtics = 10

You should be able to run Dosbox+Wolf3D with 3000 cycles on a 600-800mhz pc system. The 250 enemy numbers were collected with an older exe version. The maximum actor limit is 149.

if tics<1 the graphical pages 1-3 start to overlay each other. So you will see the floor shining through the walls/sprites and so on.

I think 1,1 or 1-2 is the best tic result which you can get because there seems to be a bug in the player movement if you have 70fps. At least it's mentioned in the code though I haven't figured it out yet. Due to maxtics=10 you can't get less than 6-8 FPS. If you have 70fps it still drops for a moment if the screen flashes (items, damage). The exe performs VL_WaitVBL, a vertical retrace, which waits until your monitor refreshed the screen.

If you set tics to a certain number in the code then it acts like the clock level of Mario 64. Either nothing moves or everything runs with light speed.

If some of my thoughts are wrong or incorrect feel free to throw a stone at my head.

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