Rayman 2

[Hunchman801]

Oh I got it running eventually, with RayCarrot's help! It's really annoying to play though tbh

Good news! Any insights on how that telescopic fist works then?

[PluMGMK]

I only figured out how to use it after I'd already played through a level It just… kinda sucks really Like Rayman 1, and unlike Rayman 3, you can only use one hand, so once it's in the air you can't keep shooting. I'm not sure how to check how much damage it does since I don't think any of the enemies have a resistance meter I can probably try it on cages though, which seem to have a much higher resistance in this!

[RayCarrot]

Good news! Any insights on how that telescopic fist works then?

I haven't tested much myself, but someone on Discord said the fist deals 3 damage while the magic attack only deals 1. Either way the fist is definitely stronger.

[Hunchman801]

Well, I'll suppose we'll have to take their word for it! Anybody got a few screenshots of it handy, by any chance?

[PluMGMK]

I want to go smash a cage with energy balls and the fist to see if it's different, and get it on video. But I still can't get OBS up and running so it'll probably be another few days

[The Jonster]

I want to go smash a cage with energy balls and the fist to see if it's different, and get it on video. But I still can't get OBS up and running so it'll probably be another few days

Oooh you’re going to do a video of Rayman doing the telescopic fist? I’d be interested to see it! Reminds me of the videos topic that was around here somewhere….

[PluMGMK]

Oooh you’re going to do a video of Rayman doing the telescopic fist? I’d be interested to see it!

Here you go!

It looks like both energy balls and the fist take four hits to smash a cage, so I'm not sure what the story is there…

[RayCarrot]

Hm, interesting. I just tested it on the first pirate enemy and there the fist kills him in one hit while the magic attack takes 2 hits. It could be that the cage doesn't have health per say, but rather always takes 4 hits?

[PluMGMK]

In the final game, cages have health, and they take damage the usual way using "Func_GetColliderReal". But it's highly possible that this was different when the beta was made, especially since programming the cage seems to have been a frustrating experience for whoever did it – ARG_CageLums.Intelligence[6]["ARG_PutainCestBuggeLesMacros"]

Not sure if Droolie was able to make any inroads with figuring out which functions are which in the beta scripts…

[Hunchman801]

Hm, interesting. I just tested it on the first pirate enemy and there the fist kills him in one hit while the magic attack takes 2 hits. It could be that the cage doesn't have health per say, but rather always takes 4 hits?

Does the beta feature any stronger enemies? This could be useful to confirm the statement that the first is three times as powerful as the energy balls.

[PluMGMK]

Unfortunately no, we just have Zombie Chickens and a few Henchmen. Even the really strong Henchman in the final room wasn't there at all IIRC.

I can't get over how unfinished it is. I would say it's more Alpha than Beta quality tbh, but then I haven't done much playtesting.

(Also it looks like Droolie did indeed figure out which functions are which but for some reason ( ) I can't get the thing to load in Raymap, getting a Null Pointer Exception )

[dr_st]

Unfortunately no, we just have Zombie Chickens and a few Henchmen. Even the really strong Henchman in the final room wasn't there at all IIRC.

I wish they had kept all the Zombie Chickens in here, and left them out of the final game. Getting the cage in that area of Tomb of the Ancients where those b****es fly around is such a pain.

[Hunchman801]

Unfortunately no, we just have Zombie Chickens and a few Henchmen. Even the really strong Henchman in the final room wasn't there at all IIRC.

Then I suppose the only option left is to reverse engineer the beta, let's see what people find.

[PluMGMK]

As I said, Droolie succeeded in adding support to Raymap, but I can't seem to get it working on my PC. Everything we need to know should be in those scripts!

[Hunchman801]

From experience, it's not always as simple as adding it to Raymap, but hopefully we can decipher this one properly.

[The Jonster]

Here you go!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV4npUVqtgg
It looks like both energy balls and the fist take four hits to smash a cage, so I'm not sure what the story is there…

Wow! I dunno why but I feel like after watching this tyat that option could have worked in the final game. The magic fist for far away enemies and cages and the telescopic fist for combat up close.

[Droolie]

I looked into this fist vs magic energy ball question.
It seems the calculations are done as follows (simplified):

Code: Select all

float baseProjectileDamage = rayman.chargetime_in_milliseconds / 750f + 2f;
float projectileDamage;
if(fist)
    projectileDamage = LimitToRange(baseProjectileDamage, 6, 10);
else if(magic_ball)
    projectileDamage = LimitToRange(baseProjectileDamage, 2, 6);

So yes, the magic energy balls are definitely less powerful. One thing though is that there are a lot of places in Rayman's code where "chargetime_in_milliseconds" is set to a constant value like 600 (sometimes also 0 or 500). I assume it does so when jumping for example (since you can't charge in the air).
Also, for simplicity's sake I didn't include the two inaccessible fist types, which are the rebounding fist and a fist affected by gravity.

Cages have 4HP (pirates can have 6, 15, 30 or 4 HP depending on a dsgVar) and do take damage using GetColliderReal which is set to the projectileDamage value.
At least, that's how it was supposed to work. However, at some point the developers decided that each hit on the cage would subtract exactly 1 HP, and they set this right after reading the damage value from the projectile:

Code: Select all

UByte_3 = Int(GetColliderReal(0));
UByte_3 = 1;
SubHitPoints(Me, UByte_3);

So that's why every cage takes 4 hits to destroy despite Rayman's projectiles normally doing higher damage.
Damage should work correctly on the pirates (at least when they're standing still. if you hit them while they are not colliding with the ground, they'll take damage in the same way as the cage).

PS: I forgot to mention this before, and I assume Robin already told people in the modding server by now, but a lot of the controls I mentioned before actually do work, but the effect is a bit hidden. For example, Numpad 0 enables a look mode if you hold it for a while, but it only works in certain places (where there is no camera modifier). Non-numpad 5 allows you to switch between "Mario" controls and tank controls, but the tank controls are already mostly removed and this toggle only affects one mode for Rayman: "gi" or overhead climbing. You can test it where you climb the spider web toward the yellow lum. It's almost impossible to survive this part with tank controls thanks to all the zombie chickens attacking you...

[PluMGMK]

I see, thanks Droolie for clearing up yet another mystery! I wonder what on Earth made them decide to do that, especially since an uncharged energy ball shot would take two hits to break a cage (like the final game) if they'd left it as normal…

Tbh I don't think I was able to survive that barrage of Zombie Chickens with even normal controls, I think I noclipped

[Hunchman801]

Thanks a lot for looking into it Droolie, I have updated the wiki with this information.

[DaveRattlehead]

Well that's very interesting! That trailer featuring Rayman using the telescopic fist makes sense now. It would have been great to see both of them included... With the open world and having the possibility of enhancing/improving these two skills separately, Revolution definitely had the opportunity to be a very interesting RPG version of Rayman 2