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goldenboy Joined: 05 Sep 2008 Posts: 310 Location: Kiel |

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:16 pm Post subject: |

need a review of Malice? I like writing. Of course some don't like what I write. I might just replay it a little and write something down. _________________ ReMakeQuake The Realm of Blog Magic

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Chip Joined: 21 Jan 2009 Posts: 314 Location: Romania |

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 7:53 pm Post subject: |

goldenboy wrote:
need a review of Malice? I like writing. Of course some don't like what I write. I might just replay it a little and write something down.

First of all, nice pipes. Those on your blog. Second, I wanted those sources and I asked those questions, because I thought about... like... remaking one of those mods. I initially thought about Nehahra. But the QC is a mess. And I don't want to be limited by a semi-unknown scripting language and a sourceless compiler. Then I thought about Malice. There are several other candidates, too.
I'm really considering remaking a mod into a modern game, like new textures, new models, improved effects, slightly improved story, could be a sequel, or a prequel.
There is also Fantasy Quake, which could be improved, CSQC-ed, rewritten. There's also ATF, which has lots of potential. Like "After the Fall: The Beginning"...
I'm still not sure about what I want to do. But I want to do something.
Those mods were great, and I'm sure replayability won't be a problem with a new engine and new maps and stuff.
What about writing Prydon into something like Diablo 3? Or Assassins Creed?
So many ideas, so little time, so little commitment.
BIG EDIT: What would you think of a mod that combined all medieval mods into a giant game with gigantic maps and endless possibilities?
/me starts doing some research and development, and a bit of brainstorming.
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frag.machine Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 728 |

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 8:18 pm Post subject: |

Chip: regarding gigantic maps, I have an amalgamation of all maps from episode 1 into one single, fully-integrated BSP (all portals between original maps works), without monsters or items. Let me know if you're interested, it can be a start point for a sp or coop mod.
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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 8:31 pm Post subject: |

Chip wrote:
Another question: Do any of you have the After the Fall QC source?

Never released afaik. It's very buggy anyway
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Chip Joined: 21 Jan 2009 Posts: 314 Location: Romania |

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 8:33 pm Post subject: |

frag.machine wrote:
Chip: regarding gigantic maps, I have an amalgamation of all maps from episode 1 into one single, fully-integrated BSP (all portals between original maps works), without monsters or items. Let me know if you're interested, it can be a start point for a sp or coop mod.

That sounds familiar, I read about it, don't know if I played it. Hmm, it would be interesting...
I'd like to give it a test. Do you provide any tech details? Like how long it took you to merge the maps, what editors you used, etc?
P.S. I'm still burned out from doing too many web projects simultaneously, so I need a rest prior to start any Quake projects.
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goldenboy Joined: 05 Sep 2008 Posts: 310 Location: Kiel |

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 8:55 pm Post subject: |

Chip wrote:
First of all, nice pipes. Those on your blog.

Thanks

Quote:
Second, I wanted those sources and I asked those questions, because I thought about... like... remaking one of those mods.

Having been in RemakeQuake for a couple years, the thought of remaking another game is creating mental overflow. Does not compute. You can remake anything, but it's just an immense effort. I'm not sure people are aware how many man-or woman-hours remaking, or even making, a game requires. I'm sure leileilol will have some interesting comments on this, unless he/she already died of horror when you said "remake".
It's not a bad thing, but it's a pretty bold thing to do.

Quote:
I'm really considering remaking a mod into a modern game, like new textures, new models, improved effects, slightly improved story, could be a sequel, or a prequel.

That might be nice. Here are some of the main problems:
- You need at least one person who is very good at modelling *and* animating, and can create a dozen monsters or more and lots of items, mapmodels etc. From the fact that this has only rarely been done in Quake, or even in other games, you can see how hard this is and how rare such a person is. Very little projects of this scale exist, and only a select few are getting anywhere.
- You need at least one artist, who can draw skins, and textures. Such a person is really hard to come by as well.
- You need a couple mappers who are willing to do what you tell them, for a couple years, instead of starting to build whatever they fancy. That is also going to be hard. You should establish a very clear team structure and a concise design doc, including stringent art direction. Once you have that, you should rule with an iron fist, or it'll get ignored. You won't be able to finish it all yourself; you'll need a team, and it will need to be disciplined and motivated.
- You need to compile a set of features you want, and pick an engine which can do most of that. Realistically, I'd go with Darkplaces (unless you want to go for id tech4, or Cryengine(1), which to me seem to be the other good candidates, but both of those aren't open source yet). You need someone who knows that engine; ideally, the engine coder is associated to your team.
- You'll need a sound person, unless you want to use the original lower-quality sounds. This person will need access to sample databases and a lot of time. You will probably need to do voice acting.
- Finally, you need someone to write the gamecode. Malice has stuff like the minisubmarines, ie vehicles, and the whole array of features like breakables etc. Especially Malice is probably a game that could benefit from a physics engine. So personally, I'd maybe abandon Darkplaces (and Quake) and use a newer platform that has these features implemented already.

Quote:
There is also Fantasy Quake, which could be improved, CSQC-ed, rewritten. There's also ATF, which has lots of potential. Like "After the Fall: The Beginning"...

Yeah, those are cool. But finding anyone who is willing and able to redo the maps of Fantasy Quake, perhaps even in another engine, is probably going to be super hard. And I think Malice's fan base isn't big enough to yield a lot of personnel for a mod. I have never seen a custom map for Malice, for example, although a devkit exists.

Quote:
What would you think of a mod that combined all medieval mods into a giant game with gigantic maps and endless possibilities?

I would think it's highly unlikely to get a team together that can do it.
Of course, there is no QC source for Malice, so you'd have to do it like Shambler's Castle - that DOOM3 mod that tried to remake Quake. Or you'd have to painstakingly write new QC for all the models and weapons. Now that would be a worthwhile project.
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Chip Joined: 21 Jan 2009 Posts: 314 Location: Romania |

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 9:12 pm Post subject: |

goldenboy thanks for your thoughts, BUT: 1. The engine will be DarkPlaces. 2. The "remake" idea is due to the fact that THERE ARE restrictions regarding it. Like, remaking a map is easier than creating a brand new one. You don't need to research level design and create new map elements. Just improve an already existing one. Easier for me.
3. There are many open-source mods to find QC inspiration, no need for source decompiling and hacking and working deep into the night to find some breakables code.
4. leileilol is a "she".
5. I can do texture design and write code. I'm a programmer and a web designer. So I'm close.
6. I have a friend who's in a rock band. He agreed to make the soundtrack.
7. I worked for 6 years in television and I gathered some nice sound effects. High quality.
Indeed, I'm really determined to do something about this. And, indeed, I need discipline and a team. Wish me luck!
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Last edited by Chip on Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:51 am; edited 1 time in total

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goldenboy Joined: 05 Sep 2008 Posts: 310 Location: Kiel |

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 9:37 pm Post subject: |

Ah OK, so you want to start with a mod's original map sources and "remix" them? I thought you wanted to go all from scratch. I don't make assumptions on people's gender anymore, so I usually write he/she, because I don't know I do wish you luck.
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avirox Joined: 16 Aug 2006 Posts: 109 |

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 11:26 pm Post subject: |

A remake of Malice would be awesome, though it's hard to improve on the perfect cheese of the existing cut scenes. I thought that the QW source or some other source for it was released? Once, long ago (in a galaxy far, far away) I remember decompiling the SP game and recompiling it to work on QW. Not sure if i still have the source somewhere..

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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 11:30 pm Post subject: |

Some perspective from my own remake experience (I run 4 remake projects currently, 3 of them stagnant because i'm alone in that 3)... OpenArena only got off the ground because i'm my own lead artist, animator and skinner, because no one else would (well, Enki and kit89 helped 0.7.X with skins and more models, but that was it). When you go the "GPL game" route, there is a cursed stigma already around it that immediately associates it with low quality/scavenged work (BZFlag, Blob Wars, Open Quartz) and artists that could help won't understand what that's about and just simply turn your back to you, or their practice opportunities for their portfolio will be foiled since the license allows derivatives. There are a lot of snobby ones about that. Also typically associated is license philosophy zealousism, i.e. "doing it for the Stallman, for GNU/Linux and Free Software, and Freedom". That goes a long way towards a true motive for a project to the point it just scares people that you're not doing it for the game but for promoting the license. That also builds the low quality stigma. It also seems to depend highly on the role of the leader. If you're a coder, be prepared to have patience with a lengthy put-up of placeholder programmer art. If you're a creative artist, if you build it, they (coders) will come. Eventually. OA used to live on stock unmodified fresh q3 VMs until Sago007 came along some years into the project (and he pretty much saved it with new gametypes ). Also, there's no such role as "leader". I am not sure if I ever saw a game get off the ground for the leader, just being a 'leader'. You have to do something, or nothing will happen. Writing a design doc won't fabricate a team with the game right in front of your eyes. Even a role of "web master" won't do anything good these days.
And by the way, the "GPL game" scope is a LOT broader than the "Remake a Quake TC" scope you appear to be discussing. Quake TCs are relatively obscure, even the really good ones like Malice. The only one the majority remembers is the horrible XMEN one. Going this way just limiting production opportunity. Also since you're deriving from community work, you'll also need individual permissions as there isn't a singular company to hold the rights wholly to the produced work. This will essentially put your TC remake ideas in a potential legal development hell. For Malice's case though, it is a company, the developers Ratloop are still very much around today. Can't say the same for ATF though. I liked ATF too and I also wish it had a bit more polish than it had, especially considering that in 1997 when no one could ever model a convincing low poly female for Quake. "biker bitch" still haunts me to this day.
And yes, the audience is small. 6 people will download your hard-worked mod, and even less will play it through, unless it is directly derivative of a mainstream game because then you'll just hijack an established fanbase. That's the ideal motive behind all this PSP Quake modding, and is why you hardly see the originals shown about (Bulletz).
Today, Darkplaces has IQM formats, skeletal animation blending, csqc physics,... i don't think there's an artist's excuse in the world now.
BUT REMAKES ARE HARD EVEN WHEN THE DESIGN DOC IS ALREADY DONE FOR YOU!
Start small!! Make a game where you get one gun one level and shoot things just to familiarize with a pipeline first. Playing 'replace null assets' won't make you learn fast, it's more trial and error and you also have less creative control. Even Navy Seals Quake only started off small as "M-16 replacement with unskinned terminator hands", and remember... that is the earliest beginning of the enormous Counter-Strike empire.
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frag.machine Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 728 |

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 1:20 am Post subject: |

Chip wrote:

frag.machine wrote:
Chip: regarding gigantic maps, I have an amalgamation of all maps from episode 1 into one single, fully-integrated BSP (all portals between original maps works), without monsters or items. Let me know if you're interested, it can be a start point for a sp or coop mod.

That sounds familiar, I read about it, don't know if I played it. Hmm, it would be interesting...

No, you didn't because I never released that actually, only a noclip screenshot. At first I did it only to see if it was technically possible, but I see some potential to some horror-survival mod.

Chip wrote:
I'd like to give it a test. Do you provide any tech details? Like how long it took you to merge the maps, what editors you used, etc?

Sure. I used QuArK (the n00b's choice map editor!) to copy, paste and align all the brushes into one single map and to place the minimal number of entities to make it usable (you need to go from e1m1 thru e1m7 to go back to e1m1, nothing that some additional teleporters couldn't fix). Compiled, vis'ed and light'ed with Bengt Jardrup utilities, didn't took more than a bunch of minutes in my Athlon 64 3800+. And it's surprisingly fast for such a big map, and I even managed to place everything inside the standard -4095/+4096 map limits, so no special net protocols are required to run it. I'll zip everything and upload it to somewhere.
EDIT: Oh dang, some corrections. I actually already placed all monsters and items from e1m1 and e1m2, so the map is not totally empty. Also, it's a WIP, so there's a lot of warnings and complains about unmatched targetnames.
EDIT2: Done. If anyone want to check it out:
http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/single_player/maps/ep1.zip
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Chip Joined: 21 Jan 2009 Posts: 314 Location: Romania |

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 9:39 am Post subject: |

@leileilol: I'll start small. I worked on a map last night for 3 full hours. It's going to be the demo map for my mod. I'll polish it tonight, and hopefully release it for some beta testing here in the weekend. @frag.machine: thanks, I'll give it a try.
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Teiman Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 309 |

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 12:01 pm Post subject: |

Wow.. great article, leileilol. You sould put all that text in a Blog or somewhere, here on a oscure forum (pun intended) these words and experience will be lost

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Supa Joined: 26 Oct 2004 Posts: 122 |

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 1:31 pm Post subject: |

leileilol wrote:
Also typically associated is license philosophy zealousism, i.e. "doing it for the Stallman, for GNU/Linux and Free Software, and Freedom". That goes a long way towards a true motive for a project to the point it just scares people that you're not doing it for the game but for promoting the license.

I couldn't agree with this more. Video game projects are already crazy hard to begin with, pushing a political agenda at the same time will only make everything even harder. This is especially so when the agenda you're trying to push is known to alienate a majority of the non-programmer talent you'll need. It's why I now think that project leaders *need* experience in realpolitik - that the leader needs to have a one track mind, to only think of what's best for the maturation of the product and to throw out anything that will delay that goal.
Basically, you must choose between creating a solid game at all costs OR pushing an agenda, trying to do both will only result in a half-assed product. :P

leileilol wrote:
BUT REMAKES ARE HARD EVEN WHEN THE DESIGN DOC IS ALREADY DONE FOR YOU! Start small!! Make a game where you get one gun one level and shoot things just to familiarize with a pipeline first.

If anything ever deserved to be a header for the front page or the forums, this would be it. :)

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goldenboy Joined: 05 Sep 2008 Posts: 310 Location: Kiel |

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 4:23 pm Post subject: |

If you are having an agenda, such as the project being open source, then you should establish it early, while the project is in its formative stage. A design doc, manifesto, or dogma helps here. It is true that most people aren't interested in this sort of overhead during actual production, which is why you make these decisions first.
It's bad to discuss or weaken a project's fundamental goals, including political ones, during production. This is where I think a leader comes in. If he is worth his salt. A leader is not idling on the beach, drinking bacardi cola, and waving his badge about, letting others work for him. I agree that there is no such leader. His job is pointing at the road and saying "uh guys, it's here", and that's what he is respected for if he pulls it off well.
he/she, I mean.
My 2 cents on leadership and politics.
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