Bug Question

[Zeke]

I was just playing this level:
Fudo

There are two spreaders along the sides and one gun on the core that can't be destroyed. They stop firing at you after you initially kill them but they never go away, and they draw your fire away if you are close enough to them. So they are more or less just a nusiance.

If seen this before on level #7103 but the difference with that one is that it was a non-weapon part that displayed the anomaly of not going away after being destroyed.

I thought this had been discussed before but I wasn't able to find a related topic.

Can anyone explain why this happens, and if it is something the level designer can fix if they are aware of it?

[Mouzi]

It's the part ID. The last part ID that isn't affected is 1048575. Flash has a limit on data structure depth and that is 1048576 (or 2^20) and because the child parts probably are somehow nested in some data structure the game can't cope with larger part IDs. Same effect with negative part IDs. Just my guess though :P

This is a handy bug to use with another bug by the way. Means that you don't have to make so many child parts for high HP parts like circle when doing "one HP" parts, you can just destory one part more than once, which again means less lag \o/ And you can also do it whenever you want during your level it doesn't have to be the first frame. EDIT: AND YOU CAN MAKE FORCEFIELDS DESTROYABLE! Yay. EDIT2: Oh, wait, that'd be about 2.6 MB of text or a long and laggy timer :(

Oh, and to answer your other question: yes it can be fixed by changing the IDs to something lower.

[Zeke]

Thanks Mouzi. I hope too many designers don't take this to heart and use it. I suppose my workaround for this should have been to change to manual fire but I'm too lazy for that. It's is really annoying to have your firepower getting diverted by what is effectively a ghost though.

The other thought I had was, why isn't there be an error dialogue box associated with this to inform the designer that they've exceeded limitations? No need to reply to that though. Since I don't design levels, it really doesn't matter to me.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

[Mouzi]

Well, it does have some useful applications. It's possible to make them invincible so it's really up to the designer whether it will be annoying or not. It's not that difficult to make annoying levels with or without bugs :P