Destined: Boss picture moves upwards when damaged

[Ghabry]

Name of the game:

Destined https://rmarchiv.tk/games/1922

Attach files (as a .zip archive or link them)

The official save that doesn't load in RPG_RT:
Save12.zip

Custom save by me obtained via "--start-map-id 193 TestPlay Window --start-party 2" that loads in RPG_RT:
Save14.zip
(Hero doesn't receive damage because it is Don and not Alex, not a bug)

Load the save with RPG_RT (note: For some reason RPG_RT is RPG_RT2.exe because the normal one is EasyRPG :/).

Describe the issue in detail and how to reproduce it:

Walk upwards, after the cutscene attack the small slimes by mashing DECISION, then the big slime shrinks and moves upwards.

Because the event code is only move picture (always at the same coordinate!) I assume this is a X/Y miscalculation of Move picture when combined with zoom changes.

[mateofio]

Whats the bug here? When I play this with RPG_RT and attack slimes, the big slime also moves up.

[Ghabry]

did you see my note? "Load the save with RPG_RT (note: For some reason RPG_RT is RPG_RT2.exe because the normal one is EasyRPG :/)."

[mateofio]

I must have gotten this from a different place than you, because mine doesn't have RPG_RT2.exe

Anyone have a proper download link for this game? It's name is hard to google.

[Ghabry]

Oh didnt notice that the DL link is missing. added

[mateofio]

Ok so for this one, the RPG_RT2.exe works as expected. The big slime stays put and just gets smaller. If I upgrade RPG_RT.exe to rm2ke, the bug we see in player happens.

So I guess there is something about these move picture commands where the position doesn't change in old versions of RPG_RT.exe

0000: code=MovePicture(11120) indent=0 str="" params=[1 0 160 -15 0 185 0 0 80 80 120 100 0 15325932 10 1]
0000: code=MovePicture(11120) indent=0 str="" params=[1 0 160 -15 0 160 0 0 80 80 120 100 0 5497976 10 1]

Here are the show picture and initial move picture when the battle starts

0024: code=ShowPicture(11110) indent=0 str="Slime" params=[1 0 160 -15 1 200 100 1 80 80 120 100 2 3]
0027: code=MovePicture(11120) indent=0 str="" params=[1 0 160 -15 0 200 0 0 80 80 120 100 0 0 10 1]

That ShowPicture command has the fixed_to_map flag checked, so I'm not sure why this seems to get ignored in newer RPG_RT.exe and player?

Player detects this game is rm2k >= 1.61, but I confirmed with hashes that It's using Don's RPG_RT.exe v 1.07. So we incorrectly detect the version of this game also.

[mateofio]

Confirmed with --engine rpg2k the bug still exists. So there is some difference in move picture behavior with fixed_to_map in Don's rm2k vs newer rm2k versions. It looks like we emulate the new rm2k behavior.

So in order to fix this, we need to:

• Implement whatever the show picture / move picture behavior is here and wrap it in conditionals against the rm2k versions it applies to
• Correctly detect the engine version for this game and possibly others.

From some preliminary tests, it appears that move picture in this version works on relative offsets. So if you do ShowPicture(X, Y, fixed_to_map) and then MovePicture(X + N, Y).

In old rm2k: The picture will move zoom * N pixels to the right?
In new rm2k: The picture moves somehow to (X+N,Y) relative to screen or map position?

This needs verification.

[carstene1ns]

May also be worth to check #1126 (testcase, possible regressions).

[Ghabry]

@fmatthew5876
Can you provide a test case for this? Somehow I'm unable to create picture commands that exhibit this behaviour. (I use the RPG_RT from Vampires Dawn, which should be Dons version).

[Ghabry]

are you sure this is Don Miguels RPG_RT? Don is a very old RPG_RT version that depends on harmony.dll, but this engine version doesn't use Harmony.

EDIT:
Can't test with the one from Vampires Dawn because the game supports more pictures, need to patch this first...

[mateofio]

are you sure this is Don Miguels RPG_RT? Don is a very old RPG_RT version that depends on harmony.dll, but this engine version doesn't use Harmony.

From Destined - [Vollversion-1.0]-2005-06-14.zip:

$ md5sum Destined/*.exe                                    
6948fc9d8cb13d46b69e8d442d18009d  Destined/RPG_RT2.exe                               
e476c9621b60f8c39cd1ab2de2a58d97  Destined/RPG_RT.exe

From my installed copy of Don's rm2k:

.../RPG2000/Project/SAMPLE GAME$ md5sum RPG_RT.EXE
6948fc9d8cb13d46b69e8d442d18009d  RPG_RT.EXE

Just try opening the game in newer rm2k, say yes when it asks to upgrade RPG_RT, and then you'll see the bug happen.

[mateofio]

So this is a difference between older versions of rm2k. To test simply put a picture on the screen with "Scroll to map" checked.

Then walk somewhere and talk to an event which moves the picture.

In Don's rm2k, the picture will not move. In Value! or Steam, the picture will move to that position and then stay there fixed to the map.

Destined was using MovePicture to animate the slime boss and taking advantage of the old behavior of not moving the picture.

[mateofio]

#1969 adds support for the correct MovePicture behavior in Don's rm2k.

Unfortunately we can't close this issue when that PR is merged because Player still incorrectly detects Destined as Steam rm2k and so the bug will still happen to our users playing this game normally.

If you played Destined with --engine rpg2k and #1969, the behavior will be correct.

[Ghabry]

@fmatthew5876
The game is incorrectly detected because the one uploading to rmarchiv.tk replaced RPG_RT.exe with EasyRPG Player. The proper file is RPG_RT2.exe, when you rename it back the result is:

Debug: Using RPG2k Interpreter
Debug: RPG2k < v1.50 / RPG2k3 < v1.05 detected
Debug: Engine configured as: 2k=1 2k3=0 MajorUpdated=0 Eng=0

which I consider correct.

[mateofio]

If that's the case I guess we can consider this fixed?

Unless we put some special one off hack for this one game that is packaged poorly, I'm not sure what else we can do here.

[carstene1ns]

Yes, I think we can close this. The game should be packaged correctly on rmarchiv instead. Our detection is useless, when the executable is renamed. One would need to add engine info to RPG_RT.ini or something when shipped with different RPG_RT.exe. See #627.