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Incorperating elements into gameplay

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Elemental Style Enemies?

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Didn't read your post, don't care |

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Total Votes : 5

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ShoTro Joined: 18 Mar 2008 Posts: 61 Location: Virginia, USA |

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:25 pm Post subject: Incorperating elements into gameplay |

Without modifying the default weapon set but adding new creatures to the universe, would taking some of the raw elements that are focused on in Lovecraft's works destroy the game? Creature idea: Deep Ones: Description - Like a humanoid rot-fish the deep ones get their power from the sea. Immune to acid. Deep Ones are melee capable but generate spikes to shoot at the player when in contact with water or acid.
Water Abilities - They can move very fast in water, able to jump extremely high out of water, gain the ability to spit acid while in even a little bit of acid, spikes when they are in water or leaping from either and 1/2 damage from explosives while in touching water. They are extremely weak to the lightning gun while in water.
Out of water abilities - Out of water they move slower, can leap similar to, although shorter distances then, the fiend, will spend most of their time navigating back to water, BUT are no longer extremely weak to the lightning gun.
The idea is to push for more interesting gameplay. The player will have to try and keep these types of creatures away from their "power" source or have to wait a second for a patrolling creature to step out of the water in order to get the jump on them. Mappers can design levels that the player can "force" themselves through an area surrounded by water, or find a button that drains the water first, making combat easier for the player who uses their head.
Other ideas include: creatures that actually heal when exposed to the lightning gun or explosives, creatures that gain similar abilities when exposed to lava, an enemy that changes into another creature based on how you kill it (like a that gets blown up and forms smaller creatures), enemies with "weak points" or even a creature that is only able to be damaged by the Axe. None of these will be made too extreme, Quake is about the action and to break that up too much would be a sin. The point is to create creatures that can potentially increase the chaos drastically if the player isn't careful mid-combat.
Just throwing around some ideas for creatures and things. I am hoping for a concept of a couple monsters in a month or two. I am just wondering what other people think of this kind of concept?

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Wazat Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 732 Location: Middle 'o the desert, USA |

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:28 pm Post subject: |

I vote Yes, it's a good idea. I do have some comments on the specifics. Deep Ones: As long as you can tell where water is (which is hard in quake sometimes without waypointing or other hint objects), you can definitely have creatures that will move in and out of liquid. Jumping out of the surface of the water is reasonable (even rotfish could do it), though again the big deal is finding the surface of the water to jump out properly.
Draining water can be very hard in quake, because you have to make the water into a separate object and then fake the water physics. That said, there are mods that have done exactly this, with great success. Maybe some of the other people in the forum will remember the names of those mods.
Another option is to not drain the water, but instead move the floor or a grate upwards to push everything out of the water. Or have a platform get pulled up from above so that it's out of the water.
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Lava-based creatures would be very cool. I'd love to see monsters harmed by lava, slime or water depending on their nature, and likewise be immune to other environments (lava spawns are hurt by slime or water, which cools them, but empowered by lava).
It could be that the lava spawn is the one that breaks into smaller pieces as you destroy it, and you have to then destroy the smaller spawns.
A flying electrical/wind creature could be really cool. Any liquid will kill it because it electrically discharges (and it falls from the sky when harmed severely, so you can knock it into liquid). It is extremely tough against most weapons, however, and very evasive.
It looks like the elements could be:
Acid: Slime
Fire: Lava and flame
Water: All normal liquid (non-slime, non-lava)
Air: Electricity and flying
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Here is another idea, inspired by a B-movie called Moon Trap: A slime-based creature that assembles itself and gets larger by incorporating the corpses and pieces of other monsters.
The monster is composed of a slimy pod core, and it uses telekinesis to pull in gibs, weapons, corpses, and anything else lying around to it. It then binds with those parts and starts using them as legs, arms, etc. And any weapons it assembles become its weapons (for example, it pulls in an enforcer still gripping its laser gun).
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ShoTro Joined: 18 Mar 2008 Posts: 61 Location: Virginia, USA |

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:05 pm Post subject: |

Wazat wrote:
Deep Ones: As long as you can tell where water is (which is hard in quake sometimes without waypointing or other hint objects), you can definitely have creatures that will move in and out of liquid.

I agree, it might take a decent effort on the part of the map designer to help put these effects together. Such as a way-point where if the Deep One is under attack they will attempt to reach immediately, if this point isn't in the water, then the level designer has a problem. Also the points where they leap out of the water and attack might be totally left up to the map designer. Specific abilities might be modified after looking further at the code, a deep one might rely on speed and melee attacks in the water, and long range out of water in order to simplify it's attributes considerably, balance the character a bit, and get it actually to work within the codes constraints. Although I am sure you can get the original design to work, it might be asking for too much at one time.
I remember now why the "draining" idea was a bad idea in Quake when I used to do maps, it was easier to raise something out of the water as opposed to actually just lowering the water itself.
I have a couple ideas taken directly from Lovecraftian bestiaries which I want to implement. I like your idea of many smaller monsters forming one larger monster, it might be harder to implement then the previous idea of one monster becoming many.
I have been trying to figure out how to implement one of my more favorite Mythos creatures, the Mi-Go, into Quake. You might have just bridged the gap with your suggestion. Mi-Go or Mi-Go larva gathering on a humanoid corpse to create a Crawler would be an interesting creature... or meta-game to prevent a more powerful creature from forming. Although, again, the issue is implementation using what is available.
Like many Mythos characters already being used, they are heavily modified to meet gameplay needs. The same might be necessary, I will have to do more with the code to see if I can work something out.

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