Donkey Kong Forum

Donkey Kong Strategy => Basic Donkey Kong Strategy => Topic started by: mrvaya on September 08, 2015, 09:23:31 am

Title: Piesmash failure
Post by: mrvaya on September 08, 2015, 09:23:31 am
Hi guys

After many many hours of donkey kong and all kinds (I thought) of deaths, today I for the first time tried getting killed by a pie while wearing the hammer and running towards the pie/direction of conveyors). I have always been of the opinion that such a death were not possible because the pies are stationary on the conveyors - while the opposite is true with the fireballs, from which you could easily die, should you forget NOT to run towards them on a conveyor going in your opposite direction. Guess I was wrong.
Can anybody explain how likely such a death are and how much effort one should put into avoidance?

http://www.twitch.tv/mrvaya/v/15063237 (http://www.twitch.tv/mrvaya/v/15063237)
Title: Re: Piesmash failure
Post by: Xermon54 on September 08, 2015, 01:18:00 pm
At first I was like:"How it that possible?!" but after waching the video, it makes sense that you died that way. In fact, when you are to the left end (or right end) of the conveyer, a spawning pie can go under your hammer and kill you. It's like if the hit detection is different when there's a spawning pie, so your hammer doesn't always have the time to hit it before it goes under your hammer and kill you. When I run toward a pie at the same place you did, it also happened to me that I died. But when you smash the pie in any other place on the conveyer, you won't die.

Hope it makes sense!
Title: Re: Piesmash failure
Post by: Sock Master on September 08, 2015, 03:34:42 pm
There's some weirdness in DK when it comes to objects that are just off-screen.   The pies themselves do not exist when they are all the way out of the screen, so there's no hit detection to be detected - they simply 'appear' a certain number of pixels out of screen.

But there might be more weirdness.  If Jumpman is holding the hammer a certain number of pixels out of the screen's edge, it's collision detection hitbox might also have a coordinate overflow.  (a -1 X coordinate might register as +255 instead, and mess up the hit detect.)    The Pie's hitboxes might be suffering the same overflow when the pies are outside of the screen.

The very first pixel on the left is actually X=16 internally, so weirdness doesn't happen till some calculated coordinate is less than zero... 16 pixels left of the edge.
Title: Re: Piesmash failure
Post by: mrvaya on September 09, 2015, 01:53:05 pm
It makes perfect sense - thank you both. So how does play the conveyor stage safely? Just stay a bit away from the edge?
Title: Re: Piesmash failure
Post by: ChrisP on September 09, 2015, 04:48:35 pm
WOW, this has never happened to me that I can remember.

I tend to stay away from the very edge, but that's because I want to see the amount of the point-award sprite. Now I have an even better reason to.
Title: Re: Piesmash failure
Post by: Adam_Mon on September 09, 2015, 06:06:41 pm
It makes perfect sense - thank you both. So how does play the conveyor stage safely? Just stay a bit away from the edge?

Yeah, you wanna keep a slight distance from the edge of the screen but be close enough to smash pies that are not visible yet.
Title: Re: Piesmash failure
Post by: mrvaya on September 09, 2015, 10:33:21 pm
Thanks for the help!
Title: Re: Piesmash failure
Post by: danman123456 on September 10, 2015, 02:11:03 pm
Ah yes that has happened to me before. I just keep my hammer on top of the red circle thing on the conveyor. That way im not so far over that a pie can "spawn" under the hammer and nail you in the foot! :D
Title: Re: Piesmash failure
Post by: mrvaya on September 10, 2015, 02:20:47 pm
Will do the same thing from now on :)