RMQ forum
Public Forums => Feedback & Discussion => Topic started by: gb_remake on October 03, 2011, 10:08:07 PM
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Wot it says.
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Not all enemies in Quake are created equal; gameplay wise I find some inherently more interesting than others.
For example, you could argue that the knight is nothing more than a weak fiend without jumping capability.
The thematic backgrounds are interesting though, I was thinking of possibilities one could go to exploit that further.
The death knight is one of the more sinister enemies, also, he seems to posses a form of dark magic.
Now I was thinking, what if he was a necromancer, he could revive fallen enemies.
He could turn fallen grunts into zombies for instance, or revive his knight brothers.
The latter could be an interesting hook; the regular knights are but his minions.
You could make a special class of knight, for example, that can't take damage untill the death knight is defeated.
Also having an enemy that heals his minions, is interesting, because it creates the need to prioritize targets.
I can also imagine map designs where you could exploit that, you could set the death knight behind bars or on the foot of a mountain so he's difficult to get to.
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I posted something along the same lines recently in the internal ticket, but dividing the death knight up into various classes and types.
Not quite 'death brigade' but more like various types of brigade with their own hierarchies - raising undead could be one ability of one of these brigades.
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Sometimes when I'm dicking around in Q1 sp I turn on god-mode and try to kill enemies by making them attack each other.
Most fun is making the shambler shoot lightning into other enemies.
I thought that could make for a cool boss, a big shambler that charges lightning for a certain time,
and sends waves of enemies behind you, which you need to kill by getting them to line up between you and the Shambler.
Best would be if he had an obvious powering-up stage before shooting, perhaps he would only be vulnerable during this stage...
Another thing I though about, are the lava balls that jump out of the lava. I think those could have some gameplay potential.
Perhaps having some kind of powerful weapon that only works with lavaballs as it's ammo.
It could works as a sort of tractorbeam like weapon that you can use near lava to 'catch' the lavaballs before firing.
Hah, sounds silly enough huh? Just thinking out loud here :P
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Lava ball monsters. :)
What about a lava ball version of the tarbaby? Lava baby?
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Sounds a lot like the HL2 thing, or the grabber from Doom3... interesting. E4 is still quite underdeveloped, though Pineapple has a catalog of ideas.
Maybe the boss could be some sort of horde / lightning thing such as you describe. Ancient shambler... one without legs, who moves by teleportation and smashes stuff, including his own minions. Ep4 boss, maybe.
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Lava baby 8)
How to make the actually fun, and not torture, though.
I still want to include a new idle state for the tar babies, where they start on the ceiling, and then drop off after their usual delay, to attack.
Maybe a lava baby could reattach to the ceiling at will, but not do the horizontal leaping that the tar baby can do, so it just creeps towards you until it drops on your head, or you kill it.
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Regarding zombies, Necros had given them a running animation in his Altar of Storms episode, which I thought was a brilliant touch.
Ofcourse that would break consistency, but perhaps in some hellish or alternate dimension map, where the creatures behave a bit differently.
He also had the firebreathing lava tarbabies at the bossfight, they had a short lifespan before they became petrified -- they breathe out their lifeforce vs. freezing over?
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How about a short lifespan before they explode?
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I like running zombies, it's just a matter of using them well; it's no fun if you get cornered by fast zombies and then killed because you simply couldn't shoot them fast enough and they act like a living wall that surrounds you (where Quake zombies act more like slow-moving turrets).
This depends to a large degree on what the mapper makes of it. There were similar issues with some of our spellcasting monsters - spells are area effects, and mappers have to ensure the player has enough room to dodge those. Having the player near a dead end and then slamming either a Forcewall spell or 10 fast zombies in there == frustration. The only way to break such a living wall before you get killed is with a supernailgun and Quad. :)
The idea is good though, maybe a spawnflag and a different skin... we don't have a lot of zombie "wargear" yet.
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Fast zombies need to be easily killed - a single shotgun blast and they should gib. You'll remember Necros had 50+ attack the player at once.
An explodign zombomb has been posited before, that wouldn't have any upper limbs or head, instead something like a massive throbbing pustule - when shot, boom. I'm thinking the boom would be the same as that of a tarbaby, but red. Walking speed as per a normal zombie.
For the fast zombies,we have a green skin we could use - although I was thinking of that one being a POISON version.
Before RMQ I was planning on a mod called the Dead Mod..
Flesh Golem: That was a big pile of zombies stuck together, lumbering around on a collection of limbs and with multiple heads spitting at the player. Would become various other creatures on death, wouldn't have recovery.
Zombie: as normal, but when gibbed can be split into two sections - the top crawling towards the player until re-gibbed.
Spine: A head and spinal column, like a snake - one hit and its dead, but very fast, melee only. No recovery, the head would gib on death.
Anyway, Let's do fast zombies with a reskin and the zombomb.
Later, maybe others.
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Fast zombies could have their arms raised while they charge - this would make them immediately identifiable among several monsters. A matching sound would help, too.
Exploding fast zombies that need just one nail or shotgun blast (or just a few pellets) to kill would perhaps work. The explosion could resemble a cloud of gibs and poisonous gas or spores.
I like the flesh golem etc. ideas; the zombie fight in the e1m3rq moat for example is pretty boring and more zombie-like monsters would help spice it up.
and btw, I still like the idea of zombie dogs, RE style. These would also run pretty fast.
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The two-section zombie sounds awesome. I'd like to see that as the gib behaviour for fast zombies actually, where one shot would split them, with them then becoming a regular crawling slow zombie that bites yer ankles (and a pair of legs that kick around but don't do much else).
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I reckon an exploder would have to be the same speed as a normal zombie - if it kills you then it has to be your fault. Also, would provide much hilarity with chain reaction explosions.
I remember Arne drew the exploder in one of his sketches, but I can't find it now. Looked like a giant zit, with legs.
Zombie dogs sounds good actually - I can just picture them getting up after the typical recovery delay to carry on attacking.
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Found it. Check out his site - there's some great ideas on there, even if they're cute / Chibi: http://androidarts.com/kawaiik/kawaiik.htm
(http://androidarts.com/kawaiik/kawaiik_knights_2010.jpg)
Also, an idea: the explosive zombie, if a slow mover, wouldn't have any attack at all - not even exploding. It'd just walk towards you and stand there when close enough. That'd be fun, although we'd have to let the player gently shove them aside.
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Can the zit pulse while it's moving? The zit must pulse!
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It pulses even now, ripe with poisonous gibs to spray upon the unwary slipgater.
Also, we can have one special zombie type per episode, if everyone agrees, with the old zombie as the regular filler version.
In fact the zit should move like there's something trying to fight its way out from inside..
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I think a basic pulsing is slightly more disgusting, so long as it's reasonably irregular.
It needs to occasionally spray a gob of green goo too. Make it look like "this baby's gonna burst!"
We're revolting, aren't we? 8)
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I like the exploding zit, warts and all.
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HEY, MADFOX! ;D
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Moving this here: http://icculus.org/remakequake/forum/index.php?topic=69.new#new
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We'll need to change the damage tint to green of course.
MADFOX!
Edit: since this is the public forum, talking in more general terms on the "zit should just pulse" thing.
In the chestburster scene in Alien, the real moment of terror is just when the swelling begins. You know the guy is having some kind of fit, but that's the point at which you think "woah, something really wrong here". After that when things go nuts - by then you're just in for the ride, you're in gross-out city and you're just trying to see how disgusting things can be. But the first swelling just beginning to rise - that's when it suddenly shifts to genuinely unnerving.
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The explosive zombies made me think of the headless kamikazes in Serious Sam, those were pretty fun in large open areas.
Fast and explosive, easy to kill... when mixed with other enemies those should be first priority, perhaps a bit close to the tarbabies gameplay wise though.
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Were they the ones who ran at you screaming or was I thinking of something else?
I never got far in Serious Sam. I picked up an aversion to all things Egypt after having been there some years back - it's amazing how quickly you get so totally fed up of hieroglyphs, temples and mummys. Even in the Pergamon I had to run away from the Egyptian section.
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Remember that they were in very large open plazas though.
It was a fun game, just didn't have enough enemy types.
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http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/oxz38/gaming_vs_disability_an_immediate_and_awesome/
In light of this, the whole autoaim hate seems very jaded.
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Throwing out some 'shader' ideas...
Since underwater screen distortion seems to work I was wondering if you could apply that to looking inside and outside the water.
I was looking down transparent water today coming from playing some newer games, and thinking how nice it would look if there would be a subtle warp perfectly synced with the water movement. When you're underwater though it's a full screen effect, so it might be difficult getting it to work on certain parts only -- distorting the buffer could cause silhouettes of objects to "bleed underneath" the water, you see that often in modern games. Probably way to heavy for RMQ, but I had some more ideas regarding reflection... one of those is a "scribble cell". That's an old 2D animator trick, thinking this could also apply on wet floors and such...
here's an explanation: http://www.biteycastle.com/blog/2006/11/scribble-cel.html
Another idea is to have a reflection texture, very fake, not a cubemap. More something that's aligned to the viewport, Q3 had those I think.
You could also use a normalmap to get more interaction into the speculars. With a single view-aligned texture that wouldn't work with xyz vectors like in a cubemap, but instead I was thinking, what if throwing out z and using x and y as horizontal/vertical offsets of the reflection texture, that should give somewhat of a similar effect.
Sorry if nothing of this is applicable and I'm just posting useless junk, I'm aware this is not Darkplaces, I just enjoy thinking up 'hacks' like these haha.
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This is my current understand of this stuff: subject to change.
Warping a portion of the scene while looking into water is possible. You'd use the stencil buffer to mask off portions of the scene that water is drawn on then capture the scene and redraw it. That would interfere with r_shadows 1 mode which also needs to use the stencil buffer. That's solvable by drawing all water surfaces a second time, with depth and colour writing disabled but depth testing enabled. It needs a clear of the stencil buffer before drawing and because the stencil buffer is interleaved with the depth buffer on most hardware that can hurt performance. The edges where the scene needs to transition from distorted to not distorted are troublesome, yes. I'm not sure how to tackle that one. Overall I think it wouuld be too much overhead for an effect that's not going to matter much in general gameplay.
The scribble cell idea looks nice but I don't think it would be suitable for a murky pool in an underground dungeon.
I actually have Q3A-like environment mapping coded up, tested and working, and I'm intending to use it on glass surfaces. We currently don't have a way of properly identifying glass surfaces though...
Anything involving more general reflections involves drawing the entire scene an extra time per reflection plane (that's why games with mirrors typically have them in fairly tight areas where the reflection doesn't actually reflect very much. Knowing this lot they'd want to use a sphere centered in a huge open arena!!!)
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The scribble cel stuff is nice, but a bit gimmicky.
I'm planning to write a blog entry about what works and what doesn't work in (Remake) Quake. The short version of it is that Quake's visuals are not photo realistic at all; they are very comicky even when you use hires replacement textures (they even bring it out more - Quake's textures look like paintings, not like photographs). Add to that the low poly models and the reliance on brushes to create environments - everything is angular and blocky. It is much more comparable to Team Fortress 2 than Crysis 2.
Realistic water etc. don't work too well in this comicky environment. I was fiddling around with a very pretty wrought iron fence texture today, and ended up dropping it (despite it being pretty) because it didn't fit with everything else. Similar problem with pretty mosaics or colorful floor tiles - it's a total mismatch in the Quake environment.
(http://spawnhost.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/wrought_iron.jpg?w=640)
It would be reasonable to stick to the comicky appearance and make the most of it, like TF2 does.
Angular, simple, geometric, massive, comicky work well in RMQ. Brush-based detail generally looks more appropriate than fancy sprites etc.
I'm not a big fan of Quake's water surface warp, because water simply doesn't do this in real life, but a "pretty water" shader would be even less appropriate. What I would like is reflective water, though - simple reflection, possibly cubemap, nothing too fancy. Staying in the comicky realm and just adding some polish to the comic.
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Hey there
I've just played e2m1rq and it was really entertaining. You're doing a very nice job. Right now I have only two suggestions/comments/whatever:
There are some large areas in e2m1rq where enemies are far away, it would be fun to have some sort of railgun/pulse rifle/sniper rifle to kill them from afar. I've seen a screenshot of a model in another thread so I believe you're already taking care of that.
One thing that I thought was weird was meeting fiends and a vore in a base themed map. That's nothing really wrong with that, I just feel they don't belong in the map. Thinking about that I had some sort of minor brainstorm. I think it would be nice if different themed maps require different play styles. For example, base maps could require a tactical play style, with grunts and enforcers acting like a squad, defending their positions, taking cover, maybe even falling back after some casualties. Players would have to be more cautious, trying to find good positions to kill enemies, using grenades to take covered enemies and to clear rooms before going in, etc. On the other hand, duck in a corner wouldn't be of much help in a medieval level filled with knights and spellcasters with area effects. And things could get pretty frantic when fighting demons. In quake players just rush toward the monsters and shot at them with the biggest weapon available (well, at least it's what I do =P), it would be nice to have a little change.
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Thanks for the feedback :)
Indeed, there is a railgun style weapon called the Cauteriser that works at extreme ranges. Use the give all cheat (impulse 9) to play around with that - it comes after the Thunderbolt in the weapon order.
We're looking a lot at more complex ai - teamwork would be good, similar to the grunts in HL1 possibly. There are a few ideas, we're deciding how to make it all happen, basically. At the same time we're putting together lots of new enemies, including a large addition to the base set by Gb.
More news on the enemy stuff for the next demo, which we'll be announcing 'soon'.
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The presence of Vores etc. in base maps is explained by the war. They are part of Quake's assault troops. You have a point though, in that mappers could make it a little more obvious that the base is under attack, and the vores and fiends could emanate from broken slipgates and so on in order to drive the point home.
And I agree about better AI for certain monsters; at least the military style enemies, despite being "mind controlled", should probably instinctively remember their squad based tactics. We have "monstergroups" already where they will alert each other and not infight, but this feature is still underused and it needs to be taken further.
Also, I personally appreciate the way it is done in Crysis, where the mapper can place AI anchors (entities) to tell a monster "hey, here is a good hiding place and please pop out of cover in that direction".
Finally, the nailgun is a lot more range ready in RMQ than it was in Quake. The nails travel faster, which increases the accuracy over range. So this is one reason why you're given the nailgun right at the start in e2m1rq.
And finally finally, like Louis hinted at,
http://spawnhost.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/protagonist/
(http://spawnhost.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/herd_lineup.jpg?w=640)
(http://spawnhost.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/ads_morrigan2.jpg?w=640)
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Finally, the nailgun is a lot more range ready in RMQ than it was in Quake. The nails travel faster, which increases the accuracy over range. So this is one reason why you're given the nailgun right at the start in e2m1rq.
Yea, I've used it to kill enemies at long range. Will try cauteriser later. I've also noticed SSG is a lot slower what I think is very clever. I'm glad to know you'll revamp the ai. And, Wow! Very nice previews!
Just finished E3 maps and it was lots of fun as well. From now on I hate zombies! Those bastards can be very annoying. Loved the laser gun, used it most of the time. But maybe it's a little overpowered, isn't it? It seems the game was harder when I was not using it. Also loved the traps! They caught me off guard several times hahaha. And that beholder-like monster is a very nice addition. My only real complaint is against the rope ladders at the end. Had lots of troubles to climb them.
I might play it all again over the weekend, if I get the chance, so do you need glitches to be reported?
oh...have I seen ogres cooking? Oo
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Glad you're enjoying the mod!
We're working a lot on the zombies at the moment, creating an explosive version and a fast version that the player dismembers, so those will be mixed in with regular versions, who've had a few improvements like making a ripping sound when tearing off a piece of meat to throw - this let's you locate them before they fire.
The blaster gets more damaging the more you fire, maybe this is happening a bit too quickly just now, since nobody seems to get the mechanic and it feels OP instead. Will look into it.
Always good to hear bugs :)
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Yes please (glitch reports). We can't fix it if we don't know it :)
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HEY ZOMBIE!
(http://members.home.nl/gimli/zom.gif)
Yes, I walked with a zombie.