If anybody is trusted by Valve, please report them a bug. TL;DR included

MOCOLONI

L6: Sharp Member
Dec 16, 2014
373
89
I'm tired of sending actual bug reports and that only the 30% of them are read (linking a "proof" video and tracking the views of it is the key; two of them haven't been watched in months after the reports). People like @ics and some other mappers here once mentioned to have reported things and even received a reply from the TF Team, so I'd like to share one interesting bug which is related to Merasmus:

I'm updating this joke map to include an actual Merasmus Boss and more features, giving the map more stuff to offer since I made the mistake of rushing its first version.

After not finding a proper tutorial on how to create a spawnable Merasmus boss, I found a small article on the VDW which helped me create a simple "merasmus" entity spawned by a point_template, despite it claiming somewhere not to work this way. This then led me to add the Truce Mode, which only works if your map has the tf_logic_holiday set to the "Halloween" setting. The problem is that when it's set to Halloween, Merasmus doesn't seem to set you on fire when it uses its secondary attack, but it still damages and pushes you in the air. There's a small map I used to create my first Merasmus Boss which also helped me determine whether the "Halloween" setting is what causes the problem, and it is so. "None" and "Birthday" are the only Settings that don't avoid you from being set on fire, while "Halloween" is the only setting that enables the Truce Mode with SetMapForcedTruceDuringBossFight 1.


TL;DR: setting tf_logic_holiday to "Halloween" makes Merasmus not to set you on fire. If someone has gotten their reports to the TF Team read (or even replied), please report this one. It's kinda drustrating having a Boss that doesn't work properly because of a simple setting that enables Truce.

EDIT: turns out that the Afterburn is what's currently broken, affected on anything that uses it, not only Merasmus. I have a trigger_ignite entity that only damages me over time by igniting me, but there's no Afterburn during the Truce Mode.
 
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ics

http://ics-base.net
aa
Jun 17, 2010
841
543
You could ask @The Jill to look into this one. I'm sure that he got a note already since i mentioned him just now as i got it when you mentioned me in your post. You could also try to mail the team members directly @valvesoftware.com. I dont have any "direct line".

Last year there was commotion about merasmus not being able to be damaged by bombheads (they didnt explode on touch) and that was fixed. Also there were issues while under tiny melee spell, heavy was able to shoot minigun and sniper shoot with rifle. Those were fixed but they are not the only hidden issues.

There also was an issue with tf_logic_holiday not working when smissmass was actually on, but that was fixed. So maybe something they did to fix that caused something else to go broken. I don't know.
 

ics

http://ics-base.net
aa
Jun 17, 2010
841
543
I actually went in and tested this, i can confirm that the players wont fire up while truce is on, but they do take damage. Did this in Brimstone, forced merasmus to spawn and truce to be on while having halloween as holiday.
 

MOCOLONI

L6: Sharp Member
Dec 16, 2014
373
89
I actually went in and tested this, i can confirm that the players wont fire up while truce is on, but they do take damage. Did this in Brimstone, forced merasmus to spawn and truce to be on while having halloween as holiday.
I already mentioned that you get damaged and pushed in to air, but not ignited.