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Posted by ijed [190.20.71.90] on 2008/08/24 20:31:46

Thought I'd start a thread on this, it could have gone in Gameplay Potential, but this is more specific.
What are the favoured special abilities for monsters to have?
Shield
Homing shots
poison
wall / ceiling climbing
leaping
explosive death
ressurection
cannabalism
spawning / cloning
Teleportation
Dodging
That's off the top of my head, anyone have any other cool ideas or concepts?
And what new abilties could the old monsters have - like Scrags that change to swimming if they enter water (thanks text_fish) or an Ogre that pisses on the player after killing them (thanks Romero).

#1 posted by Zwiffle [24.183.101.72] on 2008/08/24 20:39:04
I'd like to see more intricate infighting. Like two monsters that just have an absolute hatred for each other, and will go after each other if they get a whiff of the other's smell or something.
Hm
#2 posted by Tronyn [24.78.41.15] on 2008/08/24 20:44:14
Q1's monsterset, even default, is probably the best ever. Out of the new abilities you mention, I'd say wall/ceiling climbing is by far the best, in that it really adds to the gameplay. Poison sucks (it was in CoE and dropped for SoE). Homing shots, ala Vores, I think has been exploited (by me - lol) too much - there should be a monster with homing shots that do much less damage but home faster. That way, it wouldn't be a linear "run away, find an obstacle" thing. I realize I did force the player to do this in nsoe3 and 4, but to me it seemed like Vores hadn't been used that way before and if you really wanted to, you could take them out (otherwise they were a constant source of tension).
Quoth additions are extremely well designed, especially the Gaunt. Quoth basically outdoes all other new monsters, in actually creating new monsters that the player must fight in a new way (although I think nsoe bane has quite a few tricks up his sleeve).
Overall, new monsters fall into two categories: those that change the gameplay (ie Quoth additions) and those who are basically "same old" but look different. Even now there are very likely new "styles" of monster that have yet to be implemented/exploited.
I Would Like To See
#3 posted by RickyT23 [90.199.193.104] on 2008/08/24 20:51:01
soldiers who use cover, and retreat to more cover then blind-fire, or pop out from behind cover, take a few shots then hide again
Poison
#4 posted by [83.30.43.247] on 2008/08/24 21:02:36
Travail's take on poisoning the player was fairly cool, it'd be great if people used them in their own projects more. If one would get poisoned, it was usually their own fault, rather than the unfair gameplay's.
As for the rest of ideas:
spawning/cloning - it's one painfully cliched method.
teleportation - overdone.
shields - I usually dislike shielded monsters (if the designer wants people to waste ammo on a monster, why not just give them more hit points?) but the Death Lord (Quoth) did it well.
An idea I recently had is making a monster damagable, but impervious to pain - basically it wouldn't go into pain frames unless seriously damaged. It would make the player have to act quickly before he finds himself cornered by a group of those.
Good Topic.
#5 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/08/24 21:09:35
Will muse on it.
Cover
#6 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/24 21:17:14
Cover makes things so static. It reduces a game that's about movement and aiming and target priority and dodging and shooting to basically precision whackamole. Not really fun IMO. The way you usually deal with monsters who behave that way is to snipe them off or just go up to them and execute them in their hiding places, which also isn't much fun.
Quake really is better when the maps are interconnected and non-linear, because it makes you move around and mix it up and deal with monsters from all angles - czg03, dm3rmx, and gmsp3 are all awesome examples of this. Real linear maps don't work so well, because the player winds up in a pattern of "go forward 5% more, back up while you kill the stuff chasing you, go forward a little more than before." Face to face firing-squad cover gameplay is more suited to that kind of level design.
#7 posted by RickyT23 [90.199.193.104] on 2008/08/24 21:20:59
it would increase realism?
#8 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/24 21:24:13
it would increase realism?
You're really not making an friends here, you know?
To Contributate
#9 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/24 21:30:49
Quake needs more low-mid level monsters. Something in the 3-DBS-shots-to-kill range. You can only arrange ogres and hknights so many different ways before you want to eat a gun. Look here:
http://www.gamers.org/docs/FAQ/qua...
There's a jump from the 60-80 HP's to the 200's. That's the perfect gap.
They don't need to be special, they can still be cannon fodder to any player with a nailgun, but their behavior should be such that you can't afford to ignore them while you take care of the more immediately threatening Shambler or Fiend.
On poison: the drowning mechanic, and the poison headcrabs in HL2, both have a great mechanic. They reduce your health but not permanently - it comes back over time. Momentarily injects the panicky tension of only having five health left without being overly cruel.
On monsters spawning monsters: how is this cliche when no quake monster has ever done this? the pain elemental from doom2 was swell, and had a way of also becoming a "high-priority" dangerous monster because you'd be swimming in other monsters if you didn't deal with it. Same with the arch-vile - resurrecting the things you already killed (and also being able to blow your ass sky high) made it a serious threat.
If Quake had something smallish and fairly pushover-y like a lost soul, this would be ideal. If spawns weren't so annoying the vomitus would have fit right in. (how about something that gives birth to scrags in mid-air?)
Hush, Kell
#10 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/24 21:33:01
Ricky, I'll steal kell's favorite valve quote here for you:
Realism is a tool, not a goal.
Let that be the last of this, now, this thread shouldn't turn into the same old for & against realism circlejerk.
#11 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/24 21:44:04
Quake needs more low-mid level monsters <...> afford to ignore them while you take care of the more immediately threatening Shambler or Fiend.
We have a monster to fill this exact role in mind for Quoth.
Also: alternative swim monsters. Don't know when that'll happen though :/
#12 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/24 21:45:40
If Quake had something smallish and fairly pushover-y like a lost soul, this would be ideal.
How about a vore queen that gives birth to vorelings, a la the Gonarch from Half-Life 1 birthing baby crabs?
Okay
#13 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/24 22:14:03
"like a lost soul only not even more annoying and with a properly sized bounding box" :)
For the mid-monster, I suspect something like a hell knight in training would be enough. Halfway between a knight and a death knight - still opens you up like canned meat up close, but hasn't fully mastered the fire spell enough to produce the full spread. But, something Quake hasn't got: monsters that can fire on the move. Maybe that's their trick.
Something from RTCW and Hexen and countless other games: monsters with shields that only protect them directionally. It's not an ammo waster that way, but makes the monster more unique to fight. I can easily see knights in Quake dragging around big towering blood-spattered kite shields, although implementing the hit detection in Quake would be ... non-trivial. Preach?
Something from Byzantine: a monster that fires a projectile which sticks where it hits for a moment, then explodes. Has the immediacy of a rocket (doesn't uselessly bounce all the hell over like ogrenades) but with player-avoidability of a grenade (you can still dance away from it if lands near you). Direct hits still blow up immediately.
#14 posted by Omus [86.131.57.136] on 2008/08/24 22:15:23
<quote>On monsters spawning monsters: how is this cliche when no quake monster has ever done this?</quote>
Gremlins? The vore queen idea does sound cool though.
For explosive death there should be a jetpack enforcer dude (loses control of jetpack or goes kamikaze on you). If you armed them with rapid fire lasers you could say they were used for aerial defence before bob drones were invented to replace them.
#15 posted by Omus [86.131.57.136] on 2008/08/24 22:18:53
Something from Byzantine: a monster that fires a projectile which sticks where it hits for a moment, then explodes.
Didn't Nehahra have a player weapon like this - don't know if it was used by monsters though.
Yarr
#16 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/24 22:20:13
An idea I recently had is making a monster damagable, but impervious to pain - basically it wouldn't go into pain frames unless seriously damaged. It would make the player have to act quickly before he finds himself cornered by a group of those.
shamblers have that bit coded in them. they always play their pain sound, but don't do a pain animation unless the damage is over 50~60 and even then, only a percentage of the time.
good discussion so far, guys :) and yes, i'd like to see a monster that does resurrection.
i think the main problem though is it creates uncertainty about how much ammo is needed. resurrection would need to be kept in check-- only a certain number rezzed at a time (or even cap it to a static number). the death lord's shield adds enough uncertainty as it is (if the player is frugal and only attacks when the shield is down vs firing when shield is up).
#17 posted by Omus [86.131.57.136] on 2008/08/24 22:30:38
The resurrection health problem can be sort of balanced by giving every monster 1/2 or 3/4 of their previous max health every time they die.
Hmm
#18 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/24 22:32:40
For the mid-monster, I suspect something like a hell knight in training would be enough. Halfway between a knight and a death knight - still opens you up like canned meat up close, but hasn't fully mastered the fire spell enough to produce the full spread. But, something Quake hasn't got: monsters that can fire on the move. Maybe that's their trick.
hm... monster_death_guard? :P well, i guess he could have had slightly less health, but your description is almost verbatim of when kell was describing them to me. :) they fire single projectiles and have a very slow (and avoidable) sword chop attack.
oh: i also think quake can use more bosses. ^_^
stuff that's more complex that just attacking or gimicks. monster spawning maybe, minions, attack protection/deflection, healing(limited amounts and interruptible), different phases (completely/mostly different ai for health levels), etc etc...
or maybe something like a boss that's actually more than one monster. two bosses that work in unison (shared ai) and that have different complementing abilities.
bosses that creates dynamic goals during combat that are more than just 'run for cover'.
i guess i'm pulling from experiences in WoW with bosses like eradar twins or kalecgos/sathrovarr.
maybe a boss that will teleport you into a different area to fight a different boss simultaneously or maybe a very slow attack that will take a large portion of health and in unavoidable but can be interrupted by explosives or something...
Ohh
#19 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/24 22:34:01
The resurrection health problem can be sort of balanced by giving every monster 1/2 or 3/4 of their previous max health every time they die.
i like this! what you could do is only have it resurrect certain monsters and you could have different skins for the different levels of healthiness after each rez. like say a grunt who ends up looking almost like a zombie by the end. :P
i dunno if this would overload quake for skins and stuff. :P
I Think Quake Could Have Room For
#20 posted by bear [213.89.245.129] on 2008/08/24 22:37:42
some monsters with shootemup like bullet patterns with fairly slow projectile speeds. A few simple ones used in different combination could result in some hectic action that encourages movement. The hell knight already has an attack like this and I think I remember someone using a q2 grunt with a plasma gun that also worked rather well.
Hell Knight
#21 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/24 22:40:32
the cool thing i like about his attack is that sometimes you can just over a bolt. even though i'm not a fan of rail shooters, i do like that kind of thing in a few monsters. spread attacks that are slightly random like the hell knight i think can be a good thing.
i liked the stomp attack the guardian has in doom3. it's not random, the fire balls are even spaced, but they move slow and are avoidable fairly easily. they're the kind of thing that keeps you moving, but also thinking about where you're moving to.
#22 posted by [83.30.43.247] on 2008/08/24 22:43:15
It would be interesting to see the Shambler's imperviousity code implemented in a lower class monster, though. Something that would serve as a more melee-oriented Death Knight replacement, I guess.
About resurrection: Omus' idea of halving the HP is fine though it may be kind of useless for stronger monsters (i.e. Shamblers or Gugs). An alternative would be bringing back dead monsters as Zombies, though that may be inappropiate in a few cases (Rotfish? Vores?)
Good Stuff
#23 posted by ijed [190.20.71.90] on 2008/08/24 22:53:26
I've got an idea for a ghoul monster, but don't know if I'll be implementing it.
The idea is to rip off Lovecraft's ghouls and have a pack of them living in tunnels inaccessable to the player - spawnpoints, basically, but with a limited amount of ghouls.
If injured then the ghoul runs away, heading for the nearest tunnel entrance to escape, every ten seconds or so the game checks if there are any ghouls hiding in the tunnels and if so, spawns one from one of the points (that's not near the player). This may sound like an NPC creature, but they'd still attack the player, and maybe try to feast on zombies as well - but then run away almost immediately as the zombie fought back.
Also to have them recover health by eating corpses.
As for spawning, I was thinking of a necromancer type enemy - creating zombies out of dead grunts and / or enforcers. The ammo problem is solved by the replacement for the player axe, which can gib zombies.
Thanks for that list, Lun.
Idea
#24 posted by [83.30.43.247] on 2008/08/24 22:55:05
A monster that blows up corpses. Cleans up the mess after large hordes!
Oh Also
#25 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/24 22:59:01
one other problem with resurrection, at least if we're talking an addition to quoth (or any mod with this feature).
corpse removal. :(
sure the ability to turn off corpse removal on some monsters is there, but it would be very telling if all of a sudden, the corpses of the monsters you're killing don't disappear. it would be an all too obvious sign that a rezzing monster was up ahead.
then you could just disable corpse removal globally? well yes, but corpse removal was to help huge maps with edicts. that means huge maps couldn't really have rezzer monsters. :S
#26 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/24 23:04:18
The idea is to rip off Lovecraft's ghouls and have a pack of them living in tunnels inaccessable to the player - spawnpoints, basically, but with a limited amount of ghouls.
Yeah, the ghoul is the aforementioned 'low -> mid' level cannon fodder monster we intend for Quoth.
I don't want to add specific gimmicks to it, but I have pondered the 'endless spawning of weak enemies' feature in relation to ghouls. I even have a location in a completed but unreleased map that is waiting for this to be tested.
Idea
#27 posted by ionous [75.68.128.81] on 2008/08/24 23:06:58
Monster that has low health (3 DBS shots) that alternates between a railgun, and a negation field (think Fortune from MGS2) that causes all shots to re-direct around the monster. It could not fire while using the negation field. The only weapon that could hurt it while it had the field up, would be the the lightning gun, since every other projectile is metal based.
Maybe another form of enforcer (field is technology based), or a higher-level vore (shield being magic based).
On The Lovecraft Theme..
#28 posted by Omus [86.131.57.136] on 2008/08/24 23:15:54
..There aren't many large swimming monsters around, but making a water only monster with a lot of effort put into AI would not be very rewarding because it would probably be rarely used, so it would be better if it was amphibious. Inspiration to start off with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_...
Video game take: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvj...
#29 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/24 23:33:44
so it would be better if it was amphibious
Again, necros and I had a swim -> walk monster planned. I did consider making a Deep One for a while, since it seemed the obvious choice for an amphibious monster in Quake. Too much other content to do though.
As for a large swim monster - that's more likely to happen. I don't expect it to be used often but it doesn't have to be - as long as there is a place for it. I think there is a place for a larger, more challenging swim monster in Q1SP. What say ye?
Other Possibilaties For Swimming
#30 posted by HeadThump [4.136.111.170] on 2008/08/24 23:41:02
kelp weeds that grab you. They take very little damage to destroy, but can add some tension to tight underwater tunnels.
#31 posted by ijed [190.20.71.90] on 2008/08/24 23:41:38
Yeah, the ghoul is the aforementioned 'low -> mid' level cannon fodder monster we intend for Quoth.
Ok, I'll leave that to you guys then.
I was thinking a map-specific ghoul limit though, so as not to break monster count.
I remember the first time I saw the plethiosaur thing in HL1 - fucking awesome.
Swimming monsters are underused because the assumption of id back then (I assume) is that keyboarders would have a hard time fighting and moving in three dimensions at the same time. Bad explanation, but you know what I mean.
#32 posted by Omus [86.131.57.136] on 2008/08/25 00:00:30
I immediately thought of the shark alien from half-life, that thing made you actually fear the water because it was faster than you, and having chunks taken out would completely disorient your view making it harder to escape. A monster like this in Quake would actually fit right in if used sparingly. It would obviously need a suitably dark design, maybe a giant relative of the rotfish with oversized head, eyes and jaws.
#33 posted by Omus [86.131.57.136] on 2008/08/25 00:00:30
I immediately thought of the shark alien from half-life, that thing made you actually fear the water because it was faster than you, and having chunks taken out would completely disorient your view making it harder to escape. A monster like this in Quake would actually fit right in if used sparingly. It would obviously need a suitably dark design, maybe a giant relative of the rotfish with oversized head, eyes and jaws.
Another Idea...
#34 posted by PM [72.216.23.99] on 2008/08/25 00:07:22
A monster that spawns with and/or can create killer satellite objects that orbit the monster. These orbiting satellites can shoot at nearby players or possibly incoming fire, much like Chmmr zapsats from Star Control 2. The bloodcube from Zerstorer does this for the player, but it is overpowered.
Also, monsters with a special, glittering screen so that anytime the player hurts it, an energy missile is automatically shot back at the player.
If I Were
#35 posted by Text_Fish [82.32.29.116] on 2008/08/25 00:11:36
to choose one option from the list then wall/ceiling climbing would definitely get my vote. In fact I'd like to see that applied to Vores, or perhaps a variant. VoreLords?
This might involve a bit too much of a shift in Quake's AI, but what about a 'commander' style monster that organized the troops? As long as the commander is alive and in the vicinity of a battle there would be no infighting and he could maybe even have some defensive powers, such as summoning a shield around one of his soldiers.
Familiars
#36 posted by ijed [190.20.71.90] on 2008/08/25 00:13:22
Yeah, or a monster that has no attack, but orbits another and heals it as it takes damage.
For a big underwater creature a cthulhoid monstrosity would be good, but a fucker to animate.
That Would Be Kind Of Great
#37 posted by HeadThump [4.136.90.219] on 2008/08/25 00:18:43
As long as the commander is alive and in the vicinity of a battle there would be no infighting and he could maybe even have some defensive powers, such as summoning a shield around one of his soldiers.
If you also got the minions to instantly turn on one another in a spasm of violent power bidding, replay value would be added by simply seeing how many you could leave alive for the event.
#38 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/25 00:20:55
Ok, I'll leave that to you guys then.
Well, don't feel I'm trying to claim dibs on monster designs here. I'm just letting folks know that there's a ton of stuff that's been in potentia for a long time.
I will never allow Quoth to be dictated by popular opinion, but since certain monsters seem to be the biggest controversies or objections to Quoth I might as well pitch concepts into the conversation where it seems people are already thinking about them.
Bad explanation, but you know what I mean.
Indeed. I think the frequency of water deep enough to fight in might also have been a factor - the effort required to make a larger swim monster might not be well spent if deep water occurred only rarely in the game.
a suitably dark design, maybe a giant relative of the rotfish with oversized head, eyes and jaws.
I was planning a rotten, zombiesque version of a deep sea angler fish.
fear the water because it was faster than you, and having chunks taken out would completely disorient your view making it harder to escape.
I think Half-Life's water fogging also contributed to the appearance of ichthyosaurs. The second room in which you encounter them - after the initial debut with the shark cage - was a machine room flooded to great depth, and murky. There's a kind of vertigo one experiences when looking down into apparently bottomless water, and this room nailed it.
Couple that with the slidey breaky catwalk and narrow choke points for escape from the water and you have real phobia-like aversion to even getting into combat in the first place.
However, the plan for the Quoth equivelant was not for a monster that swims faster than the player, but rather something slower but with some sort of spitting ranged attack and a fearsome melee bite.
Would players prefer an icthy like monster instead? Why?
Well
#39 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/25 00:25:44
For a big underwater creature a cthulhoid monstrosity would be good, but a fucker to animate.
not as hard as you'd think. i'm currently creating a bunch of marine type creatures with fins and tentacles and stuff and you can pretty much automate most of that with scripts. as long as you have a decent hierarchy, you can just use springs and never even have to touch those parts.
Blink Dogs
#40 posted by HeadThump [4.136.90.219] on 2008/08/25 00:25:56
as a variation on teleportation. Instead of popping in and out from one place to another, they achieve a state of semi transparency* with their movement increased by a factor of three. Nearly impossible to hit in this phase, but they are also unable to attack in it as well.
Transparency can't be done in the unmmodded Quake engine except for sprite. Perhaps switch to a Sprite entity for a phase out? Then again if sprites only use masking, it may still be a no go.
#41 posted by ijed [190.20.71.90] on 2008/08/25 01:13:55
Well, don't feel I'm trying to claim dibs on monster designs here.
Not at all. I'm going for more a of a rework of the original monsters anyway, and my ghoul idea was never a firm plan either - I'm still learning the qc.
Blinking - I'm thinking of this for the Scrags.
Directional Guarding
#42 posted by Preach [217.44.223.149] on 2008/08/25 01:34:42
Making attacks not register in one direction possible in the quake engine, although it would take some rewiring of the t_damage function to make it happen. The outline of what you need to do is:
1) Get the v_forward vector of the monster's facing angle(here we are assuming the shield faces straight forwards, feel free to substitute another angle when calculating v_forward)
2) Normalise the vector of the offset between where the damage is being taken and the origin of the monster. This step might be non trivial although the origin of the inflicter would probably work in lots of cases.
Note that for shotgun pellets that won't work too well, since it should matter where you aimed them, but this method would always find the vector from the player to the monster, rather than from the point of impact to the monster's origin. t_damage doesn't know anything about that, so you might have to rewire it with an extra parameter, which is a pain.
3) Take the dot product of these two vectors. If the result is less than, say 0.1, then don't do any damage. This effectively blocks attacks in a cone of angle arccos(0.1) in front of the monster. Increase this number to narrow the cone.
Doing a bit of a cone helps to make edge cases where you're directly above the monster go away. If you aren't too bothered about that, then you could reject if the dot product is negative, a full 180 degree frontal shield. If you do that, one advantage is that you can skip the normalisation.
That's the basic idea, but two other complications spring to mind. One is that you've also got to worry about not spawning blood when you hit the shield - since that isn't decided by t_damage but just by the entity's takedamage type. It would be a lot easier if t_damage returned TRUE when damage is done and FALSE otherwise, but that's another one of those big rewiring changes.
The other problem is that quake monsters are fairly relentless in their attempts to turn and face you, which makes an invulnerable shield to the front quite a formidable obstacle. Once you've got a rocket launcher you can start splashing them from behind, but with weaker weapons you might struggle. You could give the monster greatly reduced yaw_speed, so that a player could out-turn them long enough to fire.
A possibly better alternative would be to give the monster some kind of attack where they stay facing the same way for a number of frames. A straight line melee charge would be the most natural example. That way, if you succeed in avoiding the charge, there's a moment to return fire before they recover to turn and face again.
Monster_death_guard
#43 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/08/25 02:13:19
The chop attack might be slow and avoidable but that's somewhat compensated for by the guard not actually needing to hit you, nor scarcely get near you, to do damage.
Same with the Drole or whatever it's called. I'd rather that got fixed before new monsters were introduced.
Shields
#44 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/25 02:18:03
I thought of that approach, but the thing I don't like about it is that if you're looking at the monster from the side he could have plenty of exposed meat, but since you're still inside the cone none of the shots do damage. You'd need to be able to fire past the shield.
I want to go overboard and, say, for every frame of his animation define a point and vector for the center and orientation of the shield (so he could lift it when defending and hold it to the side when attacking). Assume the shield has a certain radius, and when a damage trace hits it, do a further comparison to see if it goes through the circle. If so, bullet puff, else, blood.
Yes I'm mad and it would take tons of rewiring, and the math might be beyond quakeC, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
Okay
#45 posted by Text_Fish [82.32.29.116] on 2008/08/25 02:22:46
I'm a QC nub so this is probably an atrocious suggestion, but couldn't a separate, impenetrable entity be attached to the front [or wherever] of the monster?
More
#46 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/25 02:27:22
Wolf3D's spirit-hitlers fired a dense chain of little fireballs that moved really really slowly but were very very nasty to touch. You can almost look at Quake as being like a 3D shmup like Contra, where it's all about finding the non-lethal places to be standing at any given instant. When you look at it that way, there's a whole range of attacks waiting to be tried.
an Ogre that pisses on the player after killing them (thanks Romero).
I just want to say I'm glad they didn't put that in.
Text_fish
#47 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/25 02:28:44
All collision in quake is based on bounding boxes, so unless the monster held his shield perfectly vertical and axial and also it was a rectangle you couldn't really make that work.
Hmm
#48 posted by nonentity [87.194.146.225] on 2008/08/25 02:34:38
Fascinating discussion. Only thought at this time of night is re: the giant underwater enemy. Would it not make more sense to add something like this as a boss entity rather than a standard monster (given the somewhat specialised environment required and the gigantic nature of such a beast). Something kinda like Shubby, but bigger and with actual attacks (although I'm unsure whether making it mobile would be good or bad).
Hell, for that matter, why not start adding a range of original bosses? While I agree there are still some gaps in the monster load out, there comes a point where you're just adding gimmicks and the modelling/coding time is better spent on something else (hence, bosses).
Oh, and slow swimmer + ranged attack seems a better idea tbh, altho alternate skins and some simple ai changes would allow both fairly easily...
Well
#49 posted by Preach [217.44.223.149] on 2008/08/25 02:36:18
If it's all implemented right, then it really should be about the intersection of that cone with the surface of the hitbox of the monster. So you could be inside the cone yourself but aim a shotgun shot into the back half of the hitbox and it would register. You just need to make sure that you use the impact spot not the player origin, which the standard QC isn't set up to deal with but can be written if you're willing to change t_damage. That's only a big deal because you'll have to change dozens of references throughout the code to it(!).
If the shield angle is going to change each frame, then it's probably best to have a vector field on the monster storing the normal vector of the shield. Each animation frame you can update it with a function that adds the monster's yaw to the known angle from the corresponding frame, and runs that through makevectors, into the storage field. That's also much faster for computation, it saves you doing makevectors for each call to t_damage in any frame, shotguns might generate multiple hits.
This does remind me a little bit of a quake mod I made back in the day where you hunted vampires. You had to actually aim for their heart with the stake in order to blow them up into dust, and it used a similar trick. Although in that case it was more checking if the point of impact was within a certain radius of the heart. The heart was located simply by doing a quick offset from the monster origin to the left and up a bit. It worked pretty well as I remember, especially considering quake has such crude boxes to start. One thing that made it work was that relative to the origin the heart didn't really move, a mobile shield might be more exposed.
Well Then Suppose Instead Of A Shield
#50 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/25 02:53:28
he's in a giant wooden badger
At The Risk Of Sounding Unimaginative...
#51 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/25 02:58:32
i think the shield idea isn't worth it considering all the hackery involved.
personally, i don't even think it's that great an idea anyway. painkiller had monsters like that where you couldn't hit them if their shield was blocking you, and they were just annoying. i know, weak argument, but look at it this way, you'd only ever be able to use them in large areas. if you had them in a corridor, they'd be impossible to kill.
Pissing Ogres
#52 posted by ijed [190.20.71.90] on 2008/08/25 03:15:03
I was thinking more along the lines of plaer death cams, like in Undying. Every enemy had its own little kill sequence. The skeleton sticks in the mind for ripping the player's heart out.
HL1 had these to a degree as well, the alien grunt feeding on the player's corpse.
So maybe when the player is killed by a zombie instead of (just) the message we'd see the player's corpse gibbing and leaving behind a zombie.
Plaer = Player
#53 posted by ijed [190.20.71.90] on 2008/08/25 03:15:23
AVP1
#54 posted by RickyT23 [90.199.193.104] on 2008/08/25 04:40:28
loved the way that the monsters ran across the ceiling (and flanked you)
#55 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/25 05:04:07
The chop attack might be slow and avoidable but <...> Same with the Drole or whatever it's called. I'd rather that got fixed before new monsters were introduced.
Both of these have been changed in Quoth part 2. We shortened the melee ranges, reduced the runspeed of the dguard and the dmg of the drole tentacles too iirc.
Sorry to be a tad blunt, but you can blame necros for the earlier versions :P He had an almost relentless drive to make every monster a death machine, partly because he is so good at SP himself and partly because of inexperience. He'll have to forgive Preach and I for nerfing his creations for the sake of us mere mortals.
the Drole or whatever it's called
What is it with learning the names? It's written on the webpage. It's printed on the screen if one kills you. It's only five letters, and one syllable. Anyone would think you're trying to not learn them.
#56 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/25 05:06:40
couldn't a separate, impenetrable entity be attached to the front [or wherever] of the monster?
The SoA scorpion has an invisible bbox in front of it that, when damaged, triggers the monster to strafe. Preach brought this to my attention working on the Quoth base content, and fixed some issues the feature had. Maybe he can elaborate on its relevance to your suggestion.
All collision in quake is based on bounding boxes, so unless the monster held his shield perfectly vertical and axial and also it was a rectangle you couldn't really make that work.
The box only has to reasonably approximate the model. After all, the monsters themselves are only boxes when it come to weapon impacts, but we're all used to exactly whereabouts we need to shoot them, and don't seem to mind that it doesn't line up exactly with the polygons.
The design for this 'shield' business should, imo, be monster_juggernaut. A creature similar in appearance to the D3 pinky, also perhaps like the GW juggernauts of khorne. A brutish quadruped like an armoured bull/rhino, an organic tank-on-legs. Like the uruk-hai berserkers from LotR, they would be heavily armoured at the front only. Their behaviour fiend-like in that they would charge ( though not leap ) causing dmg and even pushback on contact, but very slow at rotating to change facing. A successful dodge by the player allows them to shoot at the sides or rear of the juggernaut while it slowly wheels around for another charge. The shield is not invulnerable, but perhaps reduces dmg by half and negates splash dmg, a la the cross of deflection.
There must be monsters of this sort in other games, surely...?
I thought of that approach, but the thing I don't like about it is that if you're looking at the monster from the side he could have plenty of exposed meat, but since you're still inside the cone none of the shots do damage. You'd need to be able to fire past the shield.
But the cone doesn't have to be 90° does it? Can't it be narrower, as narrow as the model implies?
I think you're thinking too literally about a 'shield' - just make the monster armoured at the front. Actual wood/metal shields would be too difficult to line up with quake's collision detection and tbh I think they're too medieval and not quakey enough. We have the death knight and reskins, isn't that enough generic medieval? :/
#57 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/25 05:10:24
Only thought at this time of night is re: the giant underwater enemy. Would it not make more sense to add something like this as a boss entity rather than a standard monster (given the somewhat specialised environment required and the gigantic nature of such a beast).
Why would it have to be any larger than an ogre? Who said it had to be that big?
And no, making it a boss monster only reduces its use further.
What I intend is a monster that can be used to make a single underwater area dangerous to enter, but safe once that single enemy has been defeated. See the watery areas of e2m5rmx. A single 'bigfish' in one of those areas, patrolling back and forth in anticipation of feeding time, would make falling or diving in of greater consequence, but solved with a single combat of around fiend -> shambler difficulty.
Another location would be in a remix of e1m4, inhabiting the main pool and guarding the cavemouth that leads to the silver door.
At present, the only option for areas such as these is a shoal of rotfish, which is a totally different type of combat. Less dramatic and arguably less fun.
Why would an ogre sized fish in these locations need to be a boss monster?
Hell, for that matter, why not start adding a range of original bosses?
Well necros and I would like to have added other boss monsters to Quoth. Some obstacles though:
1. Making new models, and especially animating and skinning them, is a lot of work. Really, until you've tried it yourself you have no idea how much work it is. For comparison, making the gug was as much work as building red777, and necros was doing some of it too.
The vermis was actually easier - 6 days plus a weekend of feedback from RPG - but it is a noticeably simple design.
You want more complex than that, and we're going to need a good incentive and a long time to achieve it.
It's on the cards, but it sure isn't top of the deck.
2. Limited useage. Boss monsters do not have as much fun to be extracted as normal monsters. The vermis is supposed to solve the problem with chthon and shub in that it has no special method to kill, so there's more a mapper can do to make their use of the vermis different in their map. But it's still limited.
Boss monsters are only really going to be used as a one-off climax. Considering the above mentioned workload, it isn't an attractive ratio of work/usage.
3. Mappers want boss monsters that fit their personal epic vision. We could end up pouring time and effort into a boss monster that everyone promptly turns their nose up at. Time and effort that could be spent on other monsters or content.
#58 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/25 05:11:15
he's in a giant wooden badger
trigger_centerprint_pythonquote
Whatabout
#59 posted by RickyT23 [90.199.193.104] on 2008/08/25 05:15:22
that big motherfucking fish in HL1?
when you first met in in a crossbow cage, then again by the dam...
Ricky
#60 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/25 05:20:37
see posts 32 and 38
Pssst ... That's The One He Means ... The Ichthyosaur
#61 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/25 05:27:53
Bosses are best left customized by the designer to whatever he's building, yes. We see fewer bosses that way, but not every map needs one (some have them anyway!) and the ones we do are usually better for it.
I Hate To Say It But:
#62 posted by RickyT23 [90.199.193.104] on 2008/08/25 05:38:31
hmmm - spitting underwater?
Something scarier would be a squid or octopus, with tentacles that whip or grab, maybe a trilobite?
It Would Never Work.
#63 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/25 05:43:13
the quake engine wouldn't be able to do it convincingly. heck, even modern engines would have a hell of a time with it. i guess it would be a mixture of standard animation, IK and some of the procedurally generated stuff that's starting to see some use in games these days.
Pssst ... That's The One He Means ... The Ichthyosaur
#64 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/25 05:46:18
Psst...I know that...that's why I pointed out the suggestion had already been made much earlier in the thread
I'm Not Sure We Need New Monsters Right Now...
#65 posted by mwh [118.93.57.65] on 2008/08/25 09:13:56
... as I don't think people have really figured out the Quoth menagerie yet. Or at least I haven't. I had a strange sense of relief in Ruined Nation when I saw a shambler. "Ah!", I thought, "I know what to do here!", as I ran right up to him and did the double-barrel shotgun shambler dance. I don't have the same reflexes for, say, defenders, yet (my best approach so far is to run around like a headless chicken and take the odd potshot until they're gone).
I Want
#66 posted by megaman [193.167.41.43] on 2008/08/25 09:33:57
enemies that
hide and try to get in your back.
fly sideways while shooting at you in bursts.
have to kind of projectiles, like fast + slow.
homing missiles that have a max turning radius and are pretty fast so you can evade them by going sideways and then forward.
Interesting Discussion Indeed
#67 posted by negke [82.82.189.4] on 2008/08/25 09:42:54
Check out this water boss http://www.quaddicted.com/anaconda... (not the one on the screenshot).
Choppity Chop Chop
#68 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/08/25 10:53:32
Sorry to be a tad blunt, but you can blame necros for the earlier versions :P
That's not blunt - I'll happily blame necros :D
the Drole or whatever it's called
What is it with learning the names? It's written on the webpage. It's printed on the screen if one kills you. It's only five letters, and one syllable. Anyone would think you're trying to not learn them.
Ummm. Well I don't tend to read the webpage much....and I don't tend to get killed by Droles much... And I have a small brain that can only fit certain information in.
That Anaconda
#69 posted by Text_Fish [82.32.29.116] on 2008/08/25 12:22:21
shit me right up.
Wouldn't work very well on a modern alpha-vis'ed map though.
Re: The Big Fish...
#70 posted by Omus [86.131.57.136] on 2008/08/25 13:14:22
I prefer the fast-bitey concept than the slow projectile thrower. Given that this monster is meant to dominate a large area of water, you can't allow the player to easily plug it from a distance while only having to dodge a few projectiles. It could make for a lot of quite easy fights, and make the player lose respect for the monster. Something is required with the immediacy of a fiend that takes the fight to the player.
It doesn't have to be much faster than the player or it could even be a bit slower, just as long as it gets to you quicker than those lazy rotfish.
I was planning a rotten, zombiesque version of a deep sea angler fish.
Heh, that's exactly what I imagined, I just couldn't remember what those things were called.
Also the vermis could make a good kraken-like underwater boss, maybe if it was adapted to grab and hold players instead of throwing them.
Text_Fish
#71 posted by Spirit [213.39.146.225] on 2008/08/25 15:14:25
You can vis liquids non-transparent. Transparent lava looks so silly...
Yes
#72 posted by bear [213.89.245.129] on 2008/08/25 15:54:38
You can almost look at Quake as being like a 3D shmup like Contra, where it's all about finding the non-lethal places to be standing at any given instant. When you look at it that way, there's a whole range of attacks waiting to be tried.
That was pretty much my idea, I really think a lot of bullet patterns from 2d-shooters/Shoot 'em ups could work well in quake.
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-c...
#73 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/25 16:08:48
I'm Not Sure We Need New Monsters Right Now
as I don't think people have really figured out the Quoth menagerie yet.
Yeah, you're right. Close the thread, we really shouldn't even be talking about this.
#74 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/26 00:48:19
I want
enemies that
hide and try to get in your back.
polyp
fly sideways while shooting at you in bursts.
polyp
have two kind of projectiles, like fast + slow.
got me there
homing missiles that have a max turning radius and are pretty fast so you can evade them by going sideways and then forward.
death lord
rocketeer
Heee
#75 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/26 02:10:24
i was going to say that ^^^^ ;)
i've noticed people not side stepping rocketeer rockets in demos for the maps i released. those rockets are very easily avoided, even in a completely barren room.
same thing with gaunts-- their lightning is easily avoided by just strafing.
out of curiosity, are those two things not readily apparent, and how can we communicate it better to the player?
I Think
#76 posted by Text_Fish [82.32.29.116] on 2008/08/26 02:14:36
that's the sort of thing players just have to discover on their own. Isn't that part of the fun of meeting new baddies?
Weehl
#77 posted by ijed [190.20.88.144] on 2008/08/26 03:16:25
I read the readme and use those techniques by habit now, but it's unrealistic to expect all players to be mappers.
Will say that consistently sidestepping the Gaunts lightning is made almost impossible because of its duration - you need a big open space to do it.
#78 posted by mwh [118.93.57.65] on 2008/08/26 03:31:02
Lun:
Well, that's a bit more negative that I meant it. But maybe we could talk about how to use quoth monsters effectively *as well*?
necros:
I've noticed that dodging rockeeter rockets isn't that hard. Hadn't noticed so much that dodging gaunt lightning was easy, I guess shamblers train you to not to try to dodge that sort of thing. Also, they don't seem to do that much damage, so I think I don't find taking the punishment while I'm killing them that bad.
Yeah
#79 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/26 03:37:51
maybe it was a mistake to do the gaunt attack with lightning. i had a feeling about the shambler vs gaunt lightning attacks.
if you stand still, the gaunt's lightning actually does more damage than the shambler's (45 vs 30) but the damage is calculated dynamically based on how far it hit you from the player's origin, so if the lightning grazes you on the foot, it'll do about 1-5 damage. as long as you are dodging in at least some limited fashion the damage is reduced drastically.
i guess the problem is that this isn't communicated to the player. the tools to avoid/mitigate damage are there, but a typical player isn't aware of them. :(
Append:
#80 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/26 03:38:29
i had a feeling about the shambler vs gaunt lightning attacks.
that is to say, i had a feeling it would be brought up in this discussion.
Teaching
#81 posted by Lunaran [24.158.1.74] on 2008/08/26 04:49:34
You need to teach these things to the player in a nice literal fashion. We've all been playing with Ogres and such for so long we've got them all figured out, but the new things take time, and Quoth by nature left that largely up to whoever built maps using those monsters first, the kelltestNs notwithstanding. I know the quoth monsters I've faced so far have all been in groups or mixed up with other monsters so there's no real chance to figure out the behavior for serious.
Also,
#82 posted by HeadThump [4.136.111.244] on 2008/08/26 05:03:50
we all learned how to fight the Quake monsters on small maps of 40 to 60 odd monsters each where you faced small groups of monsters. Most Quoth maps have been oriented towards horde combat making the adjustment a bit more difficult. Quake maps today are mere training grounds in comparison though there have been some really well balanced maps, Kell's first Quoth map (one with Red in the title, I think), for instance.
Monsters' Lightning Attacks.
#83 posted by PM [72.216.23.99] on 2008/08/26 05:14:57
The shamblers, along with other lightning zappers in other mods, train me to hide from anything blasting lightning at the player. Only when I read the Quoth docs later that I learned nightgaunt lightning was avoidable.
For what it is worth, the nightgaunt lightning gave me the idea to do something similar to the blue dragon in SoE: Indian Summer. The dragon begins aiming behind a moving player, then the lightning in the following frames catch up to the player to zap him and cause some damage, though the moving player only takes 10 or 20 damage instead of the full 40. This was a way to balance the dragons' attacks between players and other monsters. In the older Dragons mods, even though the red and green dragons could cause far more damage than the blue dragon, it was *always* the lightning from the blue dragon that damages and kills my player, and this would not do if I ever wanted to place a Draco bot in any map I would build.
<- No Beer
#84 posted by megaman [193.167.41.43] on 2008/08/26 08:49:48
you can't allow the player to easily plug it from a distance while only having to dodge a few projectiles.
Fast Homing projectiles.
Kell:
No, no, no. Maybe i wasn't precise enough:
hide and try to get in your back.
-> hide != invisible, very fast, teleportation.
hide as in: hides behind pillars or in corners so you walk by, or in a larger room circles around you and comes from the back. Retreats if it doesn't cause dmg from the place it is in.
fly sideways while shooting at you in bursts.
-> i meant bursts like a shotgun, but not insta-hit (still a fast proj), so dodging is interesting. not (perceived?) insta hit steam whatever projectiles that just hit you no matter what :)
I think circleing around the player is ai behaviour that's not used enough. All melee enemies seem to just run up to you ;/
Yuck
#85 posted by Spirit [213.39.196.176] on 2008/08/26 09:53:27
Does/did anyone actually like (as in prefer to the original behaviour) the crosshair evading (strafing) monsters in Nehahra?
I Hated Them
#86 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/26 10:12:07
i spent a lot of time with godmode on playing nehahra.
bot behaviour is one type of thing and SP gameplay is another.
for one thing, bots behave way to erratically to accurately predict difficulty and ammo usage.
there are other points, but they all revolve around the 'randomness' of bot behaviour. there are reasons that a SP game has rules and bots break all those rules.
Actually, The One Monster Change I'd Really Like To See Is....
#87 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/08/26 10:24:28
REMOVING z-aware Ogres :)
You Meant To Say
#88 posted by [83.30.8.118] on 2008/08/26 11:01:59
cheat-aware Ogres
Lol!
#89 posted by RickyT23 [81.157.18.43] on 2008/08/26 11:05:51
Love Madfox's booth. Stick 'em all in a unified progs, so we can map with them :P
The Doom-Quake monsters look funky. A Quake map with a spider mastermind would be cool, would make an excellent boss...
Also the Skeleton is the best monster...
The Scourge Shuffle
#90 posted by Preach [86.153.44.236] on 2008/08/26 12:27:04
Kell mentioned a few posts back that the scourge has a dodge ability, and asked if I could explain that, so here we go. The ability of the scourge to sidestep projectiles has existed since the original hipnotic mod. The scourge spawns a trigger roughly the same size as itself, and every frame positions it 300 units in front. Any time a projectile (not the hitscan weapons) touches this trigger, a message is sent back to the scourge to trigger one of it's sidestep animations. The 300 units distance seems to be designed so that the scourge doesn't bother trying to dodge when the player is so close it won't avoid the shot.
The problem with the hipnotic implementation is that there is no cooldown on this ability. If you attack the scourge with a continuous stream of nails down the long corridor in hip1m1, you'll notice that it entirely stops attacking you and just shuffles from left to right(you may need to lure it down one end with godmode first). Each nail makes it randomise the direction it strafes as well, so it ends up moving right back into the path of most of the nails.
The fix is to enforce a gap between dodges longer than the dodge animation itself. If you shoot a rocket down a long enough corridor at a scourge in quoth, hopefully you'll be able to spot it strafing out of the way. It is a more useful ability when the scourge is in a more open space with room to manoeuvre. I guess that can be today's Quoth monster placement tip!
I Always Thought
#91 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2008/08/26 15:22:47
Just changing the colour of the Gaunt lightning would have helped let the player know it's a completely different attack to the Shamblers and not copy-pasted. Problem is that all Quake players learn early on that they cannot dodge Shambler lightning, so the similarity defeats the smarter Gaunt lightning's purpose.
Megaman, that's what I was thinking with that Ghoul description before, but similar to the Nehahra Jagger in that they'd do their own thing (eating corpses) if no player was around.
I didn't mind the Nehahra AI. It was pretty much like fighting bots at times, but the levels were designed with these features in mind when they were used.
Shambler, I'll put in a NoOgreGrenade mode. It'll remove collision between the player and Ogre grenades.
Also
#92 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2008/08/26 15:25:15
Are there any other changes that anyone's always wanted?
Mine was always Ogres that aim at me (see above).
Another might be fish that work - I'm working on it.
Are there any other common failings with the original monsters that you wish were fixed?
Shields
#93 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/08/26 15:26:00
The monster could just crouch entirely into a ball and hide his soft spots and just be shielded from all directions at the penalty of not moving. This could be triggered by firing at it so he doesn't just randomly huddle while running towards you.
Not effective-sounding alone, but in a group it could be fun to have to alternate between potshots at these guys to 'keep their heads down' and whatever else you're shooting.
Grunts And Enforcers
#94 posted by Text_Fish [82.32.29.116] on 2008/08/26 15:41:45
should have melee attacks [simple rifle-butting or something]. The main advantage of this would be to make their infighting more drawn out and amusing. Which is very important.
Oh and vores should have an idle anim.
Vores
#95 posted by [83.30.8.118] on 2008/08/26 15:44:20
Should take no splash damage from their own voreballs.
And they should bite the player when he gets too close.
Can We Have
#96 posted by RickyT23 [81.157.18.43] on 2008/08/26 16:02:52
Enforcer lazers which bounce of walls, like the energy balls in Portal or the purple thing out of UT? That would be cool!
Also please can we make feinds swim? They jump into water dead easily, then you cant see them, but if they floated, or even had the ability to jump out of the water back onto dry land then that would be cool. Imagine watching a feind swim across water, then jump out at you!!
Ijed - Please can you add blood splats? :P
Also voreballs could be shootable, so you can explode them before they hit you.
Dogs that howl occasionally...
A grunt with an axe AND a shotgun....
#97 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2008/08/26 17:06:57
Close combat ideas generally good, but having grunts change between an axe and shotgun is pretty complicated. I've already got a few modified attacks on that score, although enforcers don't have a close attack yet.
Howling dogs - yes.
Blood will kill the entity limit.
Vores immune to their own explosions is good, and maybe some sort of force push close combat attack . . .
Swimming enemies is good.
I've got plans for the voreballs, making them shootable might just allow players to spam the vores to death. Maybe only on easy skill or something.
More Ideas
#98 posted by [83.30.8.118] on 2008/08/26 17:27:00
Spawns hanging on walls and ceilings.
Rather than making voreballs destructible, let the player to slow them down with the LG.
Shamblers getting killed (read: spectacularly gibbed) when trying to do their lighting attack underwater, or submerged.
Some Thoughts.
#99 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/08/26 18:34:06
1. Don't fuck with Quake monsters. If you want different monster behaviour, change the monster somehow so it's clear it's not a Quake monster. Quake monsters are good already. Additions can be good but make it clear they're additions. Want an aiming Ogre?? Give him or his weapon a targetter. Want a swimming Fiend?? Give it a few subtle fins. Want a close combat voreball-resisant Vore?? Give her some chitin armour and bigger claws. Give all of them subtle re-skins.
2. If you need to re-skin something, i.e. to make it clear it's a different monster, don't make them shit. It should be obvious but evidently it doesn't get heeded enough - we have good maps, good textures, good modifications, so re-skinning should be good too. And don't fuck with Quake monster skins, they're good already.
3. Same applies to new models although thankfully these days most of them are actually good.
4. It's Quake. QUAKE. If your addition doesn't scream Quake from every pore, then you're making it for the wrong game. Enhance the Quakiness of Quake, don't fuck it over.
5. Just because you CAN make something new and different doesn't mean you SHOULD. Just because you can change something doesn't mean it's a good idea. IF it's going to be something better, really good, really enhance the game, then go ahead. If not, then remember there's always the alternative to not do it.
Got that??
I Agree For The Most Part
#100 posted by Text_Fish [82.32.29.116] on 2008/08/26 18:51:15
Shambler. But there are additions and then there are enhancements. The voreball resistant vore should be an addition, but I think swimming enemies would actually work best as a surprise enhancement. Quake's water aspects always seemed like a bit of an afterthought so I'd say enhancements like that would be bringing the game up to speed rather than altering it considerably.
Although
#101 posted by Text_Fish [82.32.29.116] on 2008/08/26 18:52:18
I'll concede that a Fiend might look a bit stupid doing the doggy paddle. Maybe they could just drown/melt when they jump in to deep liquid.
We Had The Idea In #tf Once
#102 posted by Lunaran [24.158.1.74] on 2008/08/26 19:09:15
for fat or skinny versions of existing monsters. Direfiends, gaunt shamblers, etc. Faster/weaker or slower/tougher than their brethren. The trick is differentiating them into territory that isn't filled by existing monsters.
We could use zombie versions of everything (face it, normal zombies are pushovers). Especially knights - zombie knights with swords that stagger toward you fast enough to worry about, and fast enough that you might have to put it down temporarily with the DBS to buy the time to back off to safe grenade range.
The Zombie Idea Is V.good IMHO!
#103 posted by RickyT23 [90.199.193.104] on 2008/08/26 19:24:32
Would make for good game play, a more aggressive Zombie, so you have to immobilize it whilst you panic and look for pineapples.....
Although I still think that a feind which could swim would be a good "enhancement", man I get sick of feinds just running around underwater for ever.
Ok, I'll Rename The Mod 'NotQuake'.
#104 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2008/08/26 19:25:21
And there's alot about the Quake monsters that isn't finished.
The vore is supposed to slowly kill itself when on top of a ledge and attacking the player?
All enemies can breathe underwater, in slime or lava and react as if in normal gravity, attacks included?
I'd like to agree with your vision for enhancing the Quakiness, but that gets in the way of my goal of making a Q1 mod that's a pile of shit.
Zombie Knights
#105 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2008/08/26 19:44:21
I thought of this as well. They'd be unable to throw their gibs like zombies or move as quick as knights, but be kind of hybrid.
Zombie Ogres
#106 posted by [83.4.14.46] on 2008/08/26 20:34:40
Which throw gibs that stick to walls and weakly explode after a while (akin to Nehahra's sprockets), and have their chainsaws stuck in heads :)
Killed The Thread
#107 posted by ijed [190.20.121.172] on 2008/08/27 03:37:29
Ok, I'm not at work so can respond reasonably. And with a bit less sarcasm.
1. Additions can be good but make it clear they're additions.
It is a mod. I could paint all the ogres red to show that they're aiming vertically, but this wasn't something done in, say, Nehahra. Granted alot of people hated the Nehahra AI and maybe I'll be on the borderline of alienating players who are comfortable with the way the monsters work.
I'm not happy with that, but if I tried to please everyone then the mod would fail or be ten years delayed.
2. If you need to re-skin something, i.e. to make it clear it's a different monster, don't make them shit.
Definately. ATF was ruined by shoddy skinning. I can imagine it took them days of frustration to get where it is, but it still spoils the mod and seems lazy. At the time they were probably spitting teeth to get the skins where they are.
3. Same applies to new models although thankfully these days most of them are actually good.
Bastard ;)
4. It's Quake.
Yes. It's all that needs to be said. If I think something will detract from the core of the game it's dead.
5. Just because you CAN make something new and different doesn't mean you SHOULD.
Same as above. With help from the Inside3d forums (Dr. Shadowborg) I figured out how to get a decent poison working. It was nice to learn and gave me a fresh understanding of the code. The spider (which uses it) doesn't fit in my maps though. I'm going to make it work perfectly and then decide if it goes or stays (as a hidden enemy in the progs). I have the time to mess around like this.
Got that??
One of my favourite func_ quotes - no, maybe you should type a bit slower.
Ijed
#108 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/27 03:43:04
right on
I'll Play It If ...
#109 posted by Baker [69.47.51.111] on 2008/08/27 07:45:44
1. Clumsy Shamblers that manage to fall into the water float upside-down and flail around helplessly and make lots of noise.
2. White Shamblers get distracted and lose interest in the player if pink female Shamblers come into sight, and they promptly try to mate with the pink Shamblers.
3. Hell Knights have a personality disorder involving obsessive curiosity about teleporters and tend to stand around them and stare at them.
Yeah
#110 posted by SleepwalkR [85.179.16.31] on 2008/08/27 10:18:52
What Baker said.
#111 posted by Spirit [213.39.174.46] on 2008/08/27 13:28:15
I think some people are forgetting that this community likes Quake in its purity. There has always been a gap between mappers and modders, this is just another incarnation of the "problem".
Baker's ideas however are just great!
ijed: Please don't make the poison kill the player. Just leave 1-5 hp. Please! :)
But
#112 posted by ijed [190.20.66.43] on 2008/08/27 13:47:31
Do I give the female Shamblers tits?
I was thinking that the poison gets cancelled if the player reaches a health pack or is reduced to red numbers. Regenerating the lost health then would seem odd since the player doesn't have a HEV suit.
Hmmph
#113 posted by RickyT23 [86.136.54.58] on 2008/08/27 15:19:17
I think some people are forgetting that this community likes Quake in its purity.
ooooh!!! Saucey. There goes all members PMing Spirit again to tell him what to say on their behalf.
Well I'm not a mamber of no GAY Quake community!! And I want ENHANCEMENTS!! And Ijed (low and behold) is mapping AND modding. There's one for yer G-Spot! ooooh!
I think the female shambler should have some scarring. Maybe one titty remaining. But I dont think she would suit a HEV suit. :P
(popcorn)
Pfff
#114 posted by Spirit [213.39.174.46] on 2008/08/27 16:01:53
I just forgot one word "majority" or something like that... I guess you know what I mean?
ijed: That sounds good! :)
Sorry
#115 posted by RickyT23 [86.136.54.58] on 2008/08/27 16:10:30
I was asleep on the floor in the office. Then I woke up feeling saucey! But now I'm OK :)
Rofl @ Baker
#116 posted by Lunaran [24.158.1.74] on 2008/08/27 22:38:03
http://www.lunaran.com/pics/she-bl...
Hmm
#117 posted by nonentity [87.194.146.225] on 2008/08/28 01:26:57
No.
#118 posted by scar3crow [207.109.247.122] on 2008/08/28 02:16:08
"I think some people are forgetting that this community likes Quake in its purity."
I love Quake in its purity. I also like it in various other incarnations, I like it through the eyes of other people, I like its pacing to be changed by a new monster, a new gun, a new map, a modified monster, a modified gun, a modified map. I like to experience Quake as id released it, and as its users are curious to try it as.
I am fine with it as a sidescroller, I am fine with it as a vehicle for an RPG or a racing game, just as much as I am fine with it bearing a hue shifted Enforcer that is periodically invulnerable.
I've never understood the hatred for the concept of modding, it is no more changing of the game than an additional map because it is only an addition to the existing id game. Participation of the user is completely voluntary, and plenty of maps significantly change Quake from what could be argued as pure Quake, without changing a single line of code.
I don't know. Does Beyond Belief violate the purity of Quake by having a Chthon you can kill with weapons, along with acknowledging rocket jumps in game, and delivering personalized messages via centerprint?
/\ That
#119 posted by ijed [190.20.65.59] on 2008/08/28 03:45:52
And it's a great ideas trap to bounce concepts back and forth.
I Like Quake One Here Or There
#120 posted by Lunaran [24.158.1.74] on 2008/08/28 04:23:12
I think I like Quake anywhere
I am Quake's most biggest fan
as sure as I am lun-a-ran!
I like Quake upon a boat
I like Quake with eighty goats
I like Quake inside a box
I like Quake beside a fox!
I think about it in the car
zombies, shamblers, there they are!
Quake is awesome you must see
I even like it in a tree!
I am Quake's most biggest fan
as sure as I am lun-a-ran!
Oh Lunaran
#121 posted by Scampie [24.158.1.74] on 2008/08/28 04:51:28
you certainly are the Duke of Awesome.
Eighty
#122 posted by ijed [190.20.65.59] on 2008/08/28 05:00:48
Black goats of the woods?
#120
#123 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/08/28 09:22:00
End of discussion.
Hmm
#124 posted by nonentity [87.194.146.225] on 2008/08/28 14:09:57
I'm amazed that he missed the filled with cocks (cox?) line...
Lunaran Is Madfox
#125 posted by Kinn [86.153.225.202] on 2008/08/28 14:14:24
there i said it
Example Bones
#126 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/08/30 04:17:05
here's a test map with bones.
I have the idea the trick of making it swing with an axe for more than 128 points also is responsable for it'slightly disappearing.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/bones...
Nice
#127 posted by ijed [190.20.103.211] on 2008/08/30 19:11:25
He's pretty cool.
He has alot of health, much more than I'd expect for such a creature.
His close combat attack animation could be better. Is he using a laser whip? I'd suggest having the movement of the arm much more exaggerated, maybe an overarm smash type movement. If you want to really get it down it'd be cool to see two or even three different animations, with bones randomly choosing which attack to make.
And finally, I saw him die twice occassionally - running through the same anim more than once.
Hopefully you'll take these as constructive criticisms.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Bones
#128 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/08/30 20:27:03
actually it has the same properties as the enforcer, only i made his health 130 in stead of 80. In Qmle you can see that it is the laser bullit I used to convert a kind of whip.
But as it takes more than 2 model units from origin this is also the reason the monsters just disapears. First I thought it as a new manner to respawn the monster. But it can be seen as a bug.
I could make some extra frames for attack. By now I am more worried about the fact he won't die. Same failure I have with the doom monsters.
Sometimes one qc for the new monster isn''t enough and it needs more attachments to the AI.QC Only a newbe in kjuci
I am only waiting for your constructive criticism. If I play it onmy own computer chance is great I play the wrong one..haha.
Re: Bones
#129 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/08/31 01:37:23
You do realise the skin you've taken from Q3A - the 'default' bones skin - isn't bone, it's an x-ray, right? Right?
The skin you probably want is bones/bones.tga
I Was Wondering Why He Was Green.
#130 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/08/31 04:03:26
:P
Uh...
#131 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/08/31 08:27:07
it was the one I thought it was bones.
wrong? Wrong? haha!
If you dare to take bones x bones I'll nail you to the bone! rlof!
but then again.., you're right. Although I like this one.
I Think It Looks Boney
#132 posted by RickyT23 [90.199.193.131] on 2008/08/31 13:05:39
The bones of the Garfish are green!
#133 posted by negke [82.82.168.189] on 2008/08/31 13:18:49
Then maybe it's a skeleton of a Deep One.
So
#134 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/08/31 21:08:38
where are my x-ray spectacles...
Well Pardon Me For Pointing It Out
#135 posted by Kell [80.192.82.197] on 2008/09/01 00:45:26
Awesome
#136 posted by ijed [190.20.126.55] on 2008/09/01 02:14:57
How Did Kell Infer Hostility From Madfox's Post?
#137 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/01 03:28:22
especially after he said "you're right"
Haha
#138 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/01 22:16:46
It is probably the repronauncion of "right", which suddenly gave me the impulse of inforcement of your answer.
I'm more concerned with someone telling me of his statement, from which I can learn, than I felt disputed.
I have the cyberdemon from doom converted in Quake. When I added the cybershot to its subroutines it came to as if the projectile comes turned to the player in stead of round rotating.
It rotates, but in the wrong way. I tried to change the compass angles but the effect stays.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/cyb01...
so the chance it faces the player becomes random.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/cyb02...
.avelocity
#139 posted by Lardarse [62.31.165.111] on 2008/09/01 22:51:37
controls rotation speed.
In the code where the missile is fired, do
newmis.avelocity = '0 300 0';
You will need to experiment with the numbers. One of them does end over end rotation (like it is rolling towards the target), one of them does frisbee-like rotation, and the other does corkscrew rotation, where it apears to drill its way through the air. You can adjust the size of the number (it's degrees per second), and also the sign of the number (negative will rotate the other way), and you can also specify all three (grenades do this).
self.angles will likely want to start facing the directin of fire. See how the rocket code sets newmis.angles for how to do this.
#140 posted by Omus [86.131.57.136] on 2008/09/02 00:10:54
missile.velocity = (self.enemy.origin - self.origin) * 1000;
missile.angles = vectoangles (missile.velocity);
missile.avelocity = '0 0 1000';
Thanks!
#141 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/02 04:47:24
Will try this out, explains a lot of the way it can be done.
Here's some new convertions.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/cyber...
http://members.home.nl/gimli/s0ul....
http://members.home.nl/gimli/manq0...
The textures are still awfull, but sofar I got most frames for the model to make them work in Quake. Having now this mancubus shooting two guns at the same time... is this just alike the wizard spike?
Cyberdemon Looks A Little ... Short
#142 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/02 05:33:16
shouldn't that dude be like 128 tall?
MadFox
#143 posted by JPL [213.30.139.243] on 2008/09/02 09:55:59
There is already a CyberDemon model available I reused in Event horizon map. Unfortunately I don't think I have the corresponding .qc files...
However, if I rememeber well, aguirRe provided me some help for progs.dat generation, and about CyberDemon model skining, so I guess he has the .qc files: ask him ;)
#144 posted by Omus [86.131.57.136] on 2008/09/02 11:58:36
Unless I'm mistaken these are conversions of the jDoom models. I remember an ancient cyberdemon qc mod but the model probably wasn't great.
#145 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/02 13:06:32
The models are scaled to the player length so I can test them in Quake. When the frames are centered it is easy to rescale them. I'm just trying sorts of attacks. Like the Cybershot.
JPL - If you used it in your mod then the progs.dat could be recompiled for the corresponding mdl. My convertions are just a hype of the moment, and I wonder if I can adjust a quake.qc
I downloaded the models on a site when I discovered they were convertable with Milkshape. I just need one for making a base model. Could be jDoom, I forgot. The frames content respawning acts, which indicate they were for respawn.
Omus / JPL
#146 posted by JPL [213.30.139.243] on 2008/09/02 13:45:51
Check out this http://lambert.jeanphilippe.free.f...
and/or ask aguirRe for further details and qc source code ;)
BTW I think the CyberDemon model I used was quite good ... test it and let me know..
Wasn't That Babel?
#147 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2008/09/02 15:55:04
For the cyberdemon.
Or there's YPOD - Your Path of Destruction.
Ijed
#148 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2008/09/02 22:14:46
Indeed, Babel is the original bsp where the CyberDemon model has been first used ;)
Iirc
#149 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/09/03 01:00:16
the ypod doom models were pretty terrible... the jdoom md2s are much better
QDoom Models
#150 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/03 11:37:09
Thanks for the map, jpl, looks good, but I haven't Quoth installed, so I 'll try it later. I thought it had a progs map.
I have six doom models now and beside the fact the texuture thing isn't right yet,they get harder to beat!
http://members.home.nl/gimli/do0m....
http://members.home.nl/gimli/doom....
Lost souls has a fine explode end. Another thing is that killing the Mancube or the Demonpig gives that awfull lot of gib.
Maybe let them all explode.
Hehehe
#151 posted by meTch [69.183.85.235] on 2008/09/04 02:53:52
the mod im making at one point all the monsters gibbed at -0 health, and i had about 40 lines extra of "ThrowGib ("progs/gib3.mdl");"...
and on top of that i had pices of monsters cut out and made gibs of those, it wasent too bad, it would only drop you to 3 fps if u killd 3 monsters in a row, but in multiplayer online it ould paketoverflow and cut the sound out {it has monsterbots and i removed alot of the "if != Deathmatch stuff"}
hehehe the sever would crash 5 times a playtest XD
Do The Imps Have Socks On?
#152 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/04 04:26:01
Cyberdemon Source Code
#153 posted by Baker [69.47.51.111] on 2008/09/04 07:02:32
http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames2...
Diabolic
#154 posted by ijed [190.20.88.172] on 2008/09/04 13:44:55
, Hellish socks woven from the screams of a thousand damned.
The monsters look great, the best Doom conversions I've seen.
But is the screenshot a bit stretched vertically? Or is it just the fov?
ZDoomGLmd2 Models
#155 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/05 00:31:33
Must be a great carnage, meTch. I never managed to bring up more than eight monsters at the time before the package overflow killed the game.
Lunaran - no he just came back from the herrador.
It's a tough job to make them stand centered, as registering the frames can make them fly a little from the ground, or make them shake horrible. Hope the dimensions are more to your apreciation?
Baker - thanks! I'll take a look at it.
Ijed - The screenshot is made in air, because I had hardly time to survive!
I found the zdoomglmd2 models, which were easily convered with md2mdl. I think in Doom it are sprites, which circel around, while now it are 3Dmodels. Makes the texture thing harder.
I'm trying to add the same subroutines to them as in Doom. For now only Soul Souls is suceeded.
Lost
#156 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/05 00:34:25
souls...
Make Them Roam Around And Steal All The Ammo And Shit U Need
#157 posted by meTch [69.183.103.136] on 2008/09/05 02:24:32
http://minion.planetquake.gamespy....
its great fun having to wait for the healths respawn whilst doging nails
Whoever Mentioned Swimming Fiends
#158 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/09/12 23:23:05
You cunt, I had a disturbing dream about them the other night. Some massive map partially flooded and fucking Fiends swimming along the surface. I think in my dream Ijed made the map, so I'll blame him too.
Fiends Can't Swim
#159 posted by Scampie [24.158.1.74] on 2008/09/13 04:51:11
the water hurts their eyes.
Yes, I Did
#160 posted by ijed [190.20.81.131] on 2008/09/13 04:59:14
A friend of mine had a nightmare about z-fighting. I told him it was time to change jobs.
This Map.
#161 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/09/13 13:46:51
Didn't have any z-fighting in thank fuck.
What it was....imagine a series of vast, open, intertwined canyons. Some islands in the bottom and maybe the odd random structure. Very tall and very deep water at the bottom. The walls had a typical Quake rock texture and the water had various Quake water textures depending on depth. Standard Quake sky too.
There were lots of Scrags around and plenty of Fiends. I remember luring Fiends off structures and the diving into the water to get out of trouble. And ending up in more trouble because the Fiends were swimming around not romping around on the deep bottom. And there were loads of Scrags shooting me from miles away. It felt pretty hard and reminded me somewhat of the "out of depth"-ness I felt in Warpspasm.
Errrm yeah.
#162 posted by negke [82.82.169.159] on 2008/09/13 13:53:13
The exceptional number of map releases has left its mark.
And How Did Zis Make You Feel
#163 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/13 13:58:17
please, tell me about your mozzer
Hey
#164 posted by megaman [92.72.3.243] on 2008/09/13 15:04:05
falling into the hom dreams, anyone?
Thoughts 1.
#165 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/09/13 19:11:20
Further to my previous post a while back about monsters.
Bear in mind I say what I say because I am a fervent supporter of Quake, the Quake mapping scene, and good enhancements (map and mod-wise) to Quake itself. I may say belligerent stuff but it is all for the goal of encouraging people to do what I firmly believe is best for Quake, and avoiding what I believe is detrimental to the Quake experience. There has been a lot of both of those over the years!!
With monsters as with other mods and indeed maps, I firmly believe in enhancing and building upon the sheer Quakieness of Quake. This is a scarcely definable concept but will be fairly obvious to many fellow fanatics. Many people "get it" and have demonstrated that in their work. There is a certain atmosphere, a certain brutality, a certain individuality and distinctiveness from other brands, a certain viscera, a certain dislocatory flair to Quake that makes it what it is. I don't believe in "sticking to the old ways" and keeping Quake solely Quake but I believe additions that are Quake 1.1 or Quake 1.2 not non-Quake.
I sense in this thread there are 3 concepts at work:
Firstly, fixing Quake monster bugs. Non-self-damaging Vore-balls, monsters drowning or burning, and Z-aware monsters being part of this. I.e. behaviour that people feel that *should* have been part of the original Quake but wasn't for whatever reason (technological limits or laziness). This concept is the least changing of the Quakiness of Quake but I do think for many veteran players it changes the experience quite significantly. In particular we are used to exploiting some monster behaviours (Z-unaware monsters) and not exploiting others (monsters surviving in harmful liquids). This could take some adapting to for the Quake purists, myself included. The idiocy of Ogres is not a fundamental part of the game, but it IS a fundamental part of the gamePLAY, for better or for worse. Fixing these bugs might be done with the best intentions but I think it needs to be done with care - I personally would like to see some visual differentation and some different classes of monsters, rather than the old behaviour completely overriden.
Secondly, enhancing current monsters. For example swimming Fiends, strafing base enemy, better AI etc etc. There is a lot of crossover between this and the first concept but there's definitely an area where you're adding to the monster rather than fixing something that is "obviously wrong". This is sort of an in-between concept - it changes the Quakiness somewhat but not as much as custom enemy, and it changes the gameplay BUT it's also a bit more obvious that the enemy are enhanced and one must tackle them differently (i.e. more obvious to get used to than bug-fixed enemy). However I personally question how worthwhile a change it is....further than the bug-fixing, it's starting to change the Quake monsters' characters, and thus Quake's characters. If it has to be done, visual cues are even more important, but I think it might be better to go the whole hog and have clearly new monsters in addition to the standard bestiary.
Thirdly, clearly new monsters. New skins, new models, new attacks, new behaviour. BUT hopefully still QUAKE ones ;). This area is the clearest potential departure from Quake but also the clearest potential enhancement. Okay Quake monsters are a great selection but there are only a few of them....especially in comparison to the vast number of maps and gameplay-hours most of us have experienced. I still really like pure Quake but I think there's a lot of potential for great additions IF THEY'RE DONE RIGHT. I.e. in keeping with the spirit of Quake both aesthetically and gameplaywise.... AND to have value and worth in their own right - the discussion of additional swimming monsters being a good example of that, an enhancement concept with a clear purpose.
Okay....next....some thoughts on current monsters.
Thoughts 2.
#166 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/09/13 19:54:35
My opinions on various monsters I can remember. From the perspective of how they enhance Quake in it's ethos and gameplay.
Scourge:
Centroids:
Good. Good combat style, good to have nails. Fairly well done but too based on a real world concept, needs to have more Quake abstraction.
Spike Mines:
Great. A sort of abstract and bewildering enviromental hazard (e.g. why do such arcane things track you?). Good, different style of gameplay from them.
Gremlins:
Very good. Adds a useful small enemy into the equation and has good character. Stealing weapon is a novel concept but without being overly irritating. Plenty of potential there. Model is a bit....well....Gremlin-like. A bit more Quake weirdness would be good.
Armagon:
Good. Looks like a pretty suitable Quakey bio-construct. Boss gameplay yadda yadda.
Dissolution:
Enhanced Ogres etc etc:
Average. Decent enough to fight against but don't do anything that interesting.
Flying wizard dudes:
Average. Quite a good fight against them but pretty un-Quakey style.
Gay dudes with staffs:
Rubbish. Nothing to do with Quake. Okay gameplay but too badly themed.
Mini-Chthons:
Very good. Fits into the Quake style very well and adds some good, if un-revolutionary, gameplay. A solid addition.
Zerstorer:
Mega-enforcers:
Excellent. One of the first monsters that really gave a fresh gameplay feel, and still one of the best. A good new challenge to face but not excessively so. Good new model and effects BUT the colour was pretty weak.
Nemesats:
Good. Pretty weird and worrying which is good for Quake, but the robes are somewhat....too wizardy. And the attacks, although very interesting, can seem somewhat random (i.e. random instant death).
Sanguinoch:
Very good. Not a monster but has a similar ethos to a monster. Very cool and different effect, but with a brutal feel well fitting with Quake.
Nehahara:
(Embarrassingly I can only remember one Nehahra monster!!)
Vomitus:
Good. Easy to fight but a good style for fitting into the more evile Quake maps.
Quoth:
Enhanced enforcers:
Okay. Effectively done and well skinned, but some issues with them (i.e. instant reaction for DBS grunt), and a disproportionate challenge for mere humanoids.
Bob drones:
Poor. Too out of place in Quake and although the challenge is fair, they just seem a tedious ammo-sink.
Slow-moving drones:
Okay. Better than Bobs - less tedious to face and more fitting with the arcane Quake style.
Nail-firing Ogre thing:
Very good....ish. Great new base challenge. Looks a lot more bad-ass than normal base monsters and appropriately IS a lot more bad-ass. Very well-fitting model for Quake....but unfortunately also a very well-fitting model for Quake2. I'm not sure how that could be avoided though....
Polyps:
Very good. Cool gameplay, worrying without being too dangerous, and a different approach for them. Like Zer's ME, a fresh and good challenge. Fits in pretty well to Quake being somewhat of an advanced Spawn.
Vorelings:
Excellent. Spot on. Fills a small monster niche and fits into Quake perfectly. Cool new baby-Vore model.
Knights who slice you from miles away:
Average. Decent model and ranged attack and stuff, but I can't see they offer anything that new.
Hell lord Knight thingies:
Good. Like the Zer ME a fresh new challenge although not as clear-cut as Zer's shield effects and not quite as needed as MEs were. The "easy to kill but very dangerous in sight" aspect is good. The strolling is good, I'd prefer a slightly more impressive model though.
Flying things:
Good-ish. Good attack (although I never knew it could be dodged), good sounds and good to have another flying challenge. But the model, although well done, doesn't feel very Quakey to me. Too much standard fantasy and not enough abstract monsterousness that say Scrags have.
Droles:
Good. Good attacks and stuff (apart from the hitting you from miles aware). Good to have another BIGish monster. Good weird monster but doesn't quite hit the Quake mark for me. Not quite....brutal enough in it's style.
Gugs:
Very good....ish. Great to have another seriously bad-ass monster. Great attacks too. Good model, good head....BUT it strikes me as very simian with the arms and pose, this always distracts me from the Quakiness. Close to greatness apart from that.
...
Maximum Length Is Whatever Homie...
#167 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/09/13 19:54:54
I think there must have been some bollox monsters I've forgot as many more of these get my appreciation than I'd have thought. What I find noticable is that the ones I don't like are mostly....don't have much point to them, they don't seem to add a lot to the game, or they add stuff that's in a very specific direction (e.g. pure base). And equally noticable are several monsters that are close to greatness but by some quirk or small feature of their design just don't quite hit the Quake mark. Ones where you think "just a different colour" or "just a different arm design" and they'd be proper Quake bad-assness....but not quite yet.
Word.
Shambler...
#168 posted by DaZ [80.41.139.109] on 2008/09/13 20:18:30
You forgot the new jumping knight things in Nehahra :o my favourite custom Quake monster by far!
Agree with most of what you wrote though, although I thought the model for the Drole was a bit,err, funny in a way, the way its apendages flap up and down when it walks/runs makes me laugh out loud, but it is a good enemy to fight.
ROFL at the gay dudes with staffs btw... I had totally forgot about them :)
I Tend To Agree With Bambuz
#169 posted by [130.233.243.229] on 2008/09/13 20:27:30
that the voreling has too much health. It's supposed to die from one dbs shot ffs.
Monster Enhancements.
#170 posted by Text_Fish [82.32.29.116] on 2008/09/14 02:21:19
I've played Quake since it came out, like most people around here, I'm sure. We all know the ins and outs of fighting every single monster in the original game, and I'm pretty sure most of us are overly familiar with the newer Quoth additions too. If you ask me, this is an argument FOR adding z-axis, and other small enhancements. I want to be surprised and challenged, not only by new monsters, but by improved monsters. As long as the mapper introduces them well [as in that e2m5 remake where a z-aware ogre fires a grenade from stupidly far away at the beginning of the map] then I don't see it as unfair on the player.
I still think swimming fiends would be stupid though. They simply don't look like they would be good swimmers. It's hard to be scared of something when you're laughing at it.
As Fiend Has No Eyes...
#171 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2008/09/14 08:47:51
... they don have fins... so I'd rather prefer to see a new monster: a swimming-fiend ;)
Raghr
#172 posted by Spirit [80.171.28.121] on 2008/09/14 10:27:18
I don't see how z-aware ogres are an enhancement to Quake's simple and pattern-based gameplay. Look at Zelda, those Octorok monsters can only shoot in 90° angles. Would you see it as an enhancement if they would shoot in all angles? It would overcomplicate gameplay and frustrate players because evading is much harder.
It's an important gameplay element. Easy to learn and handy to use. If this "flaw" of the ogre is too apparent in a map, well then the mapper has placed him badly. You wouldn't place a knight on top of a pillar 20 feet away either, would you?
Why not also add "headshots" where the player dies instantly if the enemy hits his upper body (fiend on top, hello). I mean, it's only realistic and totally enhances the game!!!
#173 posted by [83.22.67.10] on 2008/09/14 10:43:32
Maybe I'm just seeing things, but after playing nsoe, it appears as if the z-aware ogres can shoot grenades with such velocity/range that the player would never be able to replicate, which is cheating, sort of.
Do correct me if I'm wrong..
The Point Is
#174 posted by Text_Fish [82.32.29.116] on 2008/09/14 11:27:49
that the mapper placed the first ogre in his e2m5 rmx VERY WELL, so an interesting new gameplay twist was introduced WITHOUT being unfair to the player.
Z-aware ogres simply require a slight shift in approach. Instant-kill headshots would require game-breaking use of god-mode.
Nope
#175 posted by Spirit [80.171.81.209] on 2008/09/14 12:01:49
They would just require a slight shift in approach and being introduced WITHOUT being unfair to the player.
Z-awareness
#176 posted by Sielwolf [91.4.219.218] on 2008/09/14 12:10:12
I don't see how z-aware ogres are an enhancement to Quake's simple and pattern-based gameplay
- more caution/challenge/skill/planning etc., which some players might enjoy (after 12 years...)
- it's 2008, nearly everyone uses mouselook, why not grant the same to them poor Ogres ? I find it always silly to see an Ogre frantically throwing grenades above my head.
Easy to learn and handy to use.
always the same pattern - boring / unpredictable monsters - surprise, excitement
Why not also add "headshots"
nice try to generalise, coming soon to the slipgate near you though
Z-aware
#177 posted by megaman [92.73.87.86] on 2008/09/14 13:43:08
I'm not sure, but i think the non-z-awareness of ogres actually helps them being more dangerous - i can ALWAYS dodge their apples (if there's room), but it's v. hard to keep track of the ones you didn't dodge...
I Take It
#178 posted by megaman [92.73.87.86] on 2008/09/14 13:44:01
the mapper placed them right, so they're above me and behind me is wall so them apples bounce back to me and hit me from behind.
Z-aware Fiends
#179 posted by rudl [78.104.8.249] on 2008/09/14 14:22:54
would be nice.
And to blast all of them with a bfg and a rail gun :)
Swimming Fiends
#180 posted by ijed [190.20.68.235] on 2008/09/14 20:08:20
Is stupid. What I meant before is that monsters should know what liquid is from a purely mechanical POV - drown in water, burn in slime or lava, etc. Depending on the monster type - so fiends would be immune to lava damage but drown if completely submerged in any liquid for long enough. Fiends do have eyes, and I think they need to breathe as well.
Enforcers immune to slime damage?
Z-aware fiends is an interesting idea, so they can leap up onto a 64 unit high ledge, for example.
Look at Zelda, those Octorok monsters can only shoot in 90° angles. Would you see it as an enhancement if they would shoot in all angles?
No, because the player can only move in 90% angles. You can spaz it a bit to get nearly diagonal movement, but that's about it. Quake on the other hand has a fully three-dimensional environment with 360 degree movement in all three axis. It's true that the Ogre can now fire much further than before, so a cap to his maximum distance is probably a good idea.
Z-Aware..
#181 posted by [83.30.24.157] on 2008/09/14 20:21:17
shouldn't it be Y-aware instead?
I like the idea of enforcers being immune to slime damage, but then again one rarely sees them (or any enemy period) submerged in slime, if ever.
Death Knights should be lava immune, though, knowing fire magic et al.
Careful
#182 posted by Kinn [86.153.225.202] on 2008/09/14 20:32:15
RE: monsters affected by liquids.
Careful here. I always considered quake's monsters as unearthly entities that aren't bound by the normal rules. I think it adds to their appeal. I can't remember who said it, but the best example i heard was someone's description of a deathknight (and i can't remember the exact words) as "waiting behind the door motionless for thousands of years, but ever ready to spring instantly into action with his sword, should anyone disturb him".
I think it makes them a lot creepier to know that they are somehow immune to drowning, lava etc.
Kinn
#183 posted by [83.30.6.106] on 2008/09/14 20:46:24
http://celephais.net/board/view_th...
What you say is very true, but some monsters are more unearthly than certain others. Shamblers burning in lava may be wrong, but Ogres and Knights taking the fire damage is something I'd find appropiate.
Sure
#184 posted by ijed [190.20.68.235] on 2008/09/14 20:47:46
And I agree that a Deathknight being immune to lava damage makes perfect (twisted, arcane) sense.
But the current behaviour in liquids has two things that prompt me to mess with it.
1. Monsters treat liquid exactly the same as air in terms of gravity / whatever. This just looks dumb.
2. They don't die if they fall in, and if the player can't reach them (eg. lava) then they get lost from the killcount, apart from grenade spamming.
The
#185 posted by ijed [190.20.68.235] on 2008/09/14 20:49:30
Obvious solution is 'build the map better' eg. put a trigger_hurt at the bottom of pools the player can't enter. But its a waste of an entity and won't affect other maps running under the mod in question - the original maps for example.
#183
#186 posted by Kinn [86.153.225.202] on 2008/09/14 20:55:49
good call, that's the one :)
Might As Well Mention It
#187 posted by Kinn [86.153.225.202] on 2008/09/14 21:00:48
If i recall (it's been a long time since I looked) SoA's gremlins had an ugly bodge which did a check for lava at a certain point in their run cycle, and gibbed them if it returned true.
An Alternative To Monster Death From Liquids
#188 posted by [83.30.6.106] on 2008/09/14 21:10:48
Would be damaging the monsters a bit, and hurling them out of the liquid (most likely back into the player) to make them appear scalded.
It would be pretty annoying to code and the effect would end up somewhat cartoony, but what the hell :p
Ya I Been Thinking
#189 posted by meTch [64.148.26.103] on 2008/09/14 21:49:20
of monsters being able to drown and be burnt
hvent gotten round to figuing it out
somthing with limiting there aair like the player and wutnot
Monsters In Liquid
#190 posted by gb [89.27.215.27] on 2008/09/14 21:54:05
Re: ijed
Number 1 is fixed by Gyrofying them. Liquids have movement resistance. You can even give them buoyancy.
Number two, I agree, they should drown or burn. This shouldn't be so hard to do. Monsters should just remove self when inh2o= lava.
// Gollum :-P
Party Hard2
#191 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2008/09/15 19:21:29
http://shub-hub.com/files/images/o...
Maybe in the crowd for Madfox' band ;)
Ijed
#192 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2008/09/15 20:22:33
I'd love to see such an ogre in Quake :D
Remake Quake
#193 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2008/09/15 21:09:45
#194 posted by scar3crow [207.109.247.122] on 2008/09/15 22:55:55
z-aware monsters, monsters taking liquid damage etc can be found in the DarkPlacesMod. Monsters also do a bit more damage, do some leading... but not perfectly. However LordHavoc also made one-hit kills from monsters deadly. They can only bring you down to 1 in a single hit, after that, its your priority to get the hell out of Dodge (for which he provided health regen and offhand grapple). I enjoy DPmod, its a good way to replay any map due to the presence of the grapple with the more aggressive monsters.
Fiends
#195 posted by Lunaran [24.158.1.74] on 2008/09/16 01:09:44
Here's a bug that needs to be fixed:
fiends getting stuck. I know it's part of the "gamePLAY" to use stairs or little doorways as a way of defusing fiends so you can plug away at them safely, but it just seems like an exploit.
I wonder if the lookspring code could be adapted to alter fiend jump velocity to get them up stairs? Or maybe just lift them 16 units off the ground when they jump so that they clear whatever stair they're butting against - wonder how obvious that would look.
Better Yet
#196 posted by Lardarse [62.31.165.111] on 2008/09/16 01:35:20
Just make them hull1. Doesn't sort out the stairs thing, but it solves nearly everything else...
Fiend Jumping Trick
#197 posted by Preach [86.148.8.180] on 2008/09/16 01:43:21
I'd be wary of doing something like bumping them up 16 units, in places with low ceilings you'd run the risk of them getting stuck in the ceiling, and then they're a worse sitting duck.
What might work better is giving a little extra horizontal velocity to the fiend at the apex of its jump. This would be a bit like the air control the player has, just nudge them forwards by 10-20 units/second. That should be low enough that you wouldn't notice the extra speed if they're making a full leap. Ordinarily the fiend gets stuck because all the horizontal velocity is zeroed when he hits the step at the start of the jump. If you give it him when he's already high enough to clear the step, then it should work.
Of course, that little velocity won't get him up more than one step per jump. Perhaps if you started him off a little slower in the horizontal direction and gave him multiple small boosts during the jump you'd get better results. I'd recommend storing the initial jump direction for all of these calculations, you shouldn't be letting the fiend correct its course mid-flight.
Also Fiend Bug
#198 posted by Preach [86.148.8.180] on 2008/09/16 01:47:34
To get rid of the fiend instakill leap bug, add some code just after the damage code in the touch function. Check to see if the "other" entity is still alive after the touch. If so, then prevent the fiend from doing any more damage in this leap by setting a flag, for example setting self.worldtype to 1. Then you need to check for this flag before the damage is inflicted. Also be sure to reset this flag each time the fiend launches a new jump.
Wouldn't That Save Me From Multiple Fiend Impacts At Once?
#199 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/16 07:19:10
The demon_jumptouch function is supposed to reset its self's touch func when it's called so it only does damage once, and that doesn't seem to happen (so if you're running at a fiend as it's leaping it's like being under a crush door). why is that?
Jonesing For A Fix
#200 posted by Preach [86.148.8.180] on 2008/09/16 10:12:36
Because the flag would be recorded per fiend, you'd still take damage from multiple fiends hitting you. The reason it doesn't cancel after one hit can be found in the if(!checkbottom(self) block. This checks if the fiend is properly onground, basically if it's on flat navigable ground. If this is not the case then it's still in the air, or stuck on a steep slope. The inner if statement checks for FL_ONGROUND, which would mean it's on a steep slope. In that case it resets the touch function and goes for another jump.
However, most commonly if checkbottom is false, the fiend is off the ground with no FL_ONGROUND, so it just goes to the return at the bottom of the block without changing the touch function.
Normally when two entities collide side to side and stay in contact they don't get repeat touches called, so even if you run at the fiend which is leaping, you only take one ping of damage. In theory if you could hit it, back off and hit it again you could take damage twice but it's not easy to do that.
When a fiend lands on your head it's a bit different. For some reason quake registers a touch every frame for vertical collisions like this, possibly the gravity code, I couldn't say. But isn't the fiend at rest as soon as it comes to rest on your head? Sadly, standing on an entity doesn't count for checkbottom, and even worse, the sliding bbox effect is caused because you don't get FL_ONGROUND on top of such an entity. So the fiend decides it's in the air the whole time, and you keep getting hit.
Now That Bug...
#201 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/09/16 11:24:43
...I would totally agree with fixing. Because it's a game-breaking insta-death bug. Unlike, say, Ogres who can't aim right, the Fiend bug really fucks your gameplay experience up on the occasions when it happens. That is probably the best reason for fixing anything...
Couldn't You
#202 posted by megaman [92.73.94.178] on 2008/09/16 12:45:12
just let the finds run a bit more than they do now and make them climb up stairs while running?
P.S.
#203 posted by Shambler [77.97.138.124] on 2008/09/16 13:05:10
Fiends:
1. Don't have eyes.
2. Are an awesomely cool monster.
More Running, Less Jumping
#204 posted by Preach [86.148.8.180] on 2008/09/16 13:32:51
Yeah megaman, this would be another good way to prevent stairs from blocking fiends. You could add an self.attack_finished time to the jump which is a bit longer than the length of a full jump, all frames included. Then make sure that DemonCheckAttack checks for it before making a jump(although it should be ignored for melee attacks as usual).
Alternatively you could just extend the jump sequence by adding
void() demon1_jump12 =[ $leap12, demon1_jump13 ] {};
void() demon1_jump13 =[ $run1, demon1_jump14 ] {};
void() demon1_jump14 =[ $run2, demon1_run3 ] {};
You'd also want to actual put some ai_face(); movetogoal(n) stuff to make it move during those last two frames without calling ai_run. I don't think this would be the best way to do it though.
This would make the fiend slightly slower to rejump in all situations though. You could make it a bit smarter about this by calculating at the start of the jump the rough endpoint of the jump under the assumption the fiend isn't obstructed, and store that in self.pos1. Also store the current position, or somewhere a little behind the fiend in self.pos2.
Then in demom1_jump11 (the first landing frame) decide if the fiend's origin is nearer pos1 or pos2. If the former, then the jump went well and continue as normal. If you're still nearer pos2 then put an attack_finished time on of half a second or so, making sure you won't jump for a while. The reason you might want to put pos2 some way behind the fiend is so that the jump doesn't have to get more than half way to count as a "good jump". Just make sure that if the fiend goes nowhere/essentially nowhere, pos2 is going to be nearer.
The attack_finished trick is already used for the pyro in quoth, to make sure that after each shot he tries to close the distance with you. It's pretty neat, but you do have to be careful when thinking about nightmare skill. If you use SUB_AttackFinished to set your attack_finished value then you won't get the behaviour in nightmare mode. So you should only use that subroutine if the attack_finished time is intended to make the monster less dangerous.
That Won't Work
#205 posted by Sielwolf [91.4.241.146] on 2008/09/16 16:11:19
unless luns_mom_jumptouch is triggered previously and in sequence.
sorry dunno what's got into me :E
Advanced Lessons In Fiend Tweaking
#206 posted by Preach [217.42.220.18] on 2008/09/17 23:44:07
So I had a go at implementing the first fiend stair fix, and ran into a snag pretty quick. Almost instantly after the fiend jumps into a set of stairs the touch function decides the fiend is on ground and jumps to demon1_jump11, thereby bypassing the velocity boost added to demon1_jump5.
(to avoid confusion, in the rest of the post "frame" means a server frame, animation frame functions should just be called by name)
As far as I can tell, in the first frame after the jump starts, the function checkbottom returns true even though the fiend is off the ground, and has just banged into a wall. I suppose that this might be a consequence of the order things run in the physics engine, that touch functions occur before the information that checkbottom relies on is updated.
In any case, if you set
self.t_length = framecount;
in demon1_jump4, and then add
if(framecount == self.t_length + 1)
return;
in DemonJumpTouch just before
self.touch = SUB_Null;
self.think = demon1_jump11;
self.nextthink = time + 0.1;
Then the jump actually reaches demon1_jump5 so the physics trick can go ahead. And then it does in fact work. It's good enough that the fiends in e1m3 only get stuck once or twice before leaping up to you, even if you try and glitch them in place.
Stay tuned for part II where I see what the other fix does for the fiend.
Advanceder Lessons In Fiend Tweaking
#207 posted by Preach [217.42.220.18] on 2008/09/18 00:28:34
So, armed with this knowledge, I decided to try the other way. The basic method is to add
if (self.attack_finished > time)
return FALSE;
to CheckDemonJump.
The trick is knowing when to apply the waiting time. In the last post we had to work around the problem of the jump cancelling at the first available opportunity, but here we can use this to our advantage. It turns out that if that happens, it's very likely that the fiend is stuck on some stairs. So we put the same line into demon1_jump4:
self.t_length = framecount;
Then in the same place in DemonJumpTouch we add
if(framecount == self.t_length + 1)
self.attack_finished = time + 1;
And just like that fiends will walk a way up stairs if they jump into them, it actually looks quite natural. I went for a 1 second gap, because it takes about half a second for the fiend to actually land again and begin to run. If you wanted to get more sophisticated you might vary the time based on how much higher the player way, but you would have to ask if the sophisticated way would actually perform better.
The source I came up for each of these methods can be found at
http://www.btinternet.com/~chapter...
[warning: the insta-kill fix has not been applied to these files, and in the case of the first one it's really worth doing, as the extra velocity boosts could make it inflict multiple hits]
If you notice a strange alteration to one of the jump functions, you may want to read the next post, which gets really nitpicky about it.
Some food for thought to finish with. The second method only alters the way in which a fiend chooses to use it's abilities, rather than adding a new dimension to it. So it might sound like a fairly faithful and "safe" alteration. However, remember that all that differentiates the majority of nightmare monsters from their regular skill counterparts is when they decide to use their attack and pain sequences...so the decision process matters too.
Another Fiend Bug Caught
#208 posted by Preach [217.42.220.18] on 2008/09/18 01:08:27
Take a look at this shot:
http://www.btinternet.com/~chapter...
How did the fiend end up through the wall, so high up in Gloom Keep?
The eagle-eyed might have spotted the alteration I alluded to above, it was a setorigin call in demon1_jump4. Nobody saw that? Fair enough...
You might be thinking that I was trying to sneak Lunaran's 16 unit lifting fix into the mix as well. Actually, the code that lifts the fiend 1 unit off the ground is in the original ID source, but they do it as:
self.origin_z = self.origin_z + 1;
This is bad practice, as you aren't meant to set the origin of an object without calling setorigin(but you can get away with it if the object isn't solid yet). So I thought I was fixing a bug.
It turns out I was fixing a bug after a fashion, but only in the sense that the original line is a bug, and the fixed line is a bug with the proper function call. Because there's no checking for low ceilings when the line is called, the fiend can be bumped up into a stuck position.
It's not easy to do this, as quake monsters won't walk into a place where there's no clearance between the top of their bbox and the ceiling above them. Due to grid snapping, you need to use sloping surfaces to make the gap smaller than 1 unit. The small doorway below the fiend in the screenshot offers one such place, as the doorway has 45 degree bevels at the top. If you jam the fiend into the doorway and make it leap into the door frame enough times, eventually it'll do it close enough to get stuck. The 1 unit bump just moves its bounding box into the sloped roof of the doorway.
Then once the fiend is stuck, it tries to jump its way free. Each jump it tries to make begins with the 1 unit bump, so it gets stuck further. If you go away and do the crossword for a bit, the end result is what you see in the screenshot.
Now, I believe I'm right in saying that the line should just be commented out, because lifting the fiend off the ground like that is unnecessary. From trial runs, the fiend certainly jumps just like before. Unless someone can suggest a more unusual case when the height bump is needed, I think the line only causes the occasional bug.
Jump!
#209 posted by Lardarse [62.31.165.111] on 2008/09/18 01:43:34
Do the other monsters that use leaping attacks (dog, spawn, that's it, isn't it?) have these issues as well?
Bump!
#210 posted by Preach [217.42.220.18] on 2008/09/18 01:51:08
Both of them have the same line that increases their height by 1 unit each time they jump, so if you're fixing that for one, fix it for all of them. I've not checked if they have the same problem jumping into stairs, so it could go either way. The best way to verify that would be experimentally. The same kind of approaches to fixing them should work, if they are problems.
Dogs And Spawn
#211 posted by Preach [217.44.87.19] on 2008/09/18 14:18:55
(gee, I just love this thread)
Spawn don't have the same problem with stairs because they become MOVETYPE_BOUNCE when they start jumping. This means when they collide with a stair, they bounce back off it, and so they launch their next jump with enough of a run up to clear the obstacle.
If you look in the dog.qc file, there's a comment
// if close enough for slashing, go for it
which suggests the whole thing is a big copy-paste from the fiend file. Technically you can get dogs stuck jumping in the same way, but it's harder to do, as dogs will only leap at you under very specific circumstances. You have to be between 80 and 150 units away, which isn't easy to judge.
Still, if it bothers you enough you can fix it by copy-pasting the lines of code from demon.qc. Hell, it's what iD did...
Heheh
#212 posted by meTch [72.10.122.69] on 2008/09/18 18:47:01
can make them jump too you if u r using some cranked stuff
Hey Preach
#213 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/09/19 02:33:24
why is:
self.origin_z = self.origin_z + 1; // raise off floor a bit
in walkmonster_start_go?
i'm guessing it has to do with either droptofloor or the somewhat hacky use of walkmove to print out the debug message?
and what exactly is the difference between setting origin directly anyway? what does that mean 'messes up entity links' or whatever. i've always used setorigin but never really understood why.
Necros
#214 posted by Lardarse [62.31.165.111] on 2008/09/19 10:11:50
I think droptofloor requires it. Similarly, the items need it as well.
Also
#215 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/09/19 10:44:05
why is FL_FLY broken?
a walking monster without FL_FLY will fail on a walkmove(0,0), but a flying monster (with FL_FLY) will pass, even if it is inside a wall. this is probably why scrags can sometimes 'noclip' through walls.
some cool shit could be done if the walkmove check functioned properly with FL_FLY. :(
Questions
#216 posted by Preach [86.146.19.8] on 2008/09/19 12:14:18
Yeah, I agree with Lardarse, it's so that the monsters actually have a distance to fall with droptofloor, even if the mapper placed them flat on the ground. I've never checked what happens if you omit it, it might be that the monster gives off the warning message for being stuck. I don't think it's such a bug risk though, because mappers have to account for it in monster placement.
setorigin does a lot of behind the scenes work which is hard to understand. One of the most transparent things you can see it do is update the absmin and absmax of the entity(including the extra size for FL_ITEM entities). The next step is to link to the PVS leafs, which I think determines where the entity is visible from(but I don't know the engine source well).
The next thing the function does is recurse down the tree of areanodes to find the first node which crosses the bounding box of the entity. It then adds the entity to the linked list of all other entities which cross that areanode. This is the important physics thing which you break if you don't use this function. When you change the origin directly, your entity will be in the wrong list of areanodes, which may mean it misses collisions.
The idea behind the walkmove(0,0) is that it returns FALSE if the monster couldn't move the entire distance in the desired direction, and TRUE if it did, which is meant to be used for detecting when a monster has just walked into a wall. If you look at the engine code which governs it, you see that actually flying and swimming monsters have almost no walkmove code in common with walking monsters. By contrast, the only difference between FL_FLY and FL_SWIM is that if the endpoint for a FL_SWIM monster would leave the water, then the fish doesn't move and FALSE is returned.
The other thing that's important to note is that other than that for FL_SWIM, the only reason the move can fail for a flyer/swimmer is if the trace_fraction from the attempted move is not equal to 1. If you're moving 0 distance, then this cannot fail. In the walking case, there's a lot more going on to check for stairs, including checking whether the trace is allsolid. The check ties into deciding whether the monster needs to step up/down, specifically whether the trace is "startsolid". Because some degree of solid tracing can occur even in a sucessful move, it's important that the case of the whole trace being solid is dealt with by returning FALSE straight off. As a side effect it spots when the monster is stuck.
Preach
#217 posted by gb [89.27.200.160] on 2008/09/20 18:52:05
Those links don't work for me :/ Can you put the fix on shub-hub or something?
Quick Question
#218 posted by Zwiffle [66.170.5.18] on 2009/06/10 23:00:34
Any love for a small Quake monster art event? Something just as simple as "Draw/sketch an original quake-themed monster" or something?
Yes
#219 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2009/06/11 00:36:36
Yeah
#220 posted by Tronyn [70.76.34.81] on 2009/06/11 00:46:19
if it's in the next couple weeks, or in august
Ill Draw Maybe
#221 posted by meTch [64.148.27.69] on 2009/06/11 01:59:07
but its not going to be spectacular
do u want creature spec's also?
Uhh
#222 posted by Zwiffle [66.170.5.18] on 2009/06/11 17:15:54
Anyone have any guidelines they'd like? Like ... have a piece of art in by a certain deadline (say like next Friday?) Any theme we're going after, "New Ogre Boss" or something, or just whatever we feel like coming up with? Ideas!
This'll
#223 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2009/06/11 18:14:55
Be a pretty good reference. I've got a few Quake artwork images that have surfaced on the net over time and by various artists - good for inspiration.
#224 posted by Zwiffle [66.170.5.18] on 2009/06/11 20:16:55
Well I'll just post this as tentative right now:
When: Due by Saturday, June 20th, 2009
What: "Original Quake Monster" art - come up with a monster that you feel fits in the Quake universe!
Who: I suppose right now send them to me, but I'll have to find some place to upload them, unless anyone wants to volunteer to host magnificent, original Quake art.
Where: Wherever you can.
How: Pens, pencils, paper, 3d models, clay models, 2d digital art, whatever.
#225 posted by gb [89.27.246.239] on 2009/06/11 22:21:22
I need to get a scanner :-/
Zwiffle
#226 posted by Spirit [80.171.27.36] on 2009/06/11 23:03:31
Quaketastic loves you.
OMG
#227 posted by biff_debris. [24.158.194.52] on 2009/06/12 01:57:21
Count me in for sure!
Tempting.......
#228 posted by RickyT23 [86.26.252.180] on 2009/06/12 02:03:07
I havent drawn anything for years....
#229 posted by RickyT23 [86.26.252.180] on 2009/06/12 02:05:12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOX...
Assuming
#230 posted by Zwiffle [66.170.5.18] on 2009/06/12 22:13:12
That everyone submits a piece of art - can I expect something like 4-5 drawrings by Saturday?
As a side note, I will probably be gone 20th, but will be back late on Sunday. So unless Spirit wants you to send them directly to him, my email is ZwiffleOwnsU@gmail.com. Use something like "this here is quake art" for the subject so I don't just delete it (which I might just do anyway.)
And Awae We Go...
#231 posted by biff_debris. [24.158.194.52] on 2009/06/13 05:00:44
Here's my take on a variant Quake bad guy: http://biff.quaddicted.com/art/scr...
Isn't he precious?
I Feel Bad For That Camel Spider.
#232 posted by Drew [76.75.125.214] on 2009/06/13 06:56:24
Im Working On A Drawing Of A Monster
#233 posted by RickyT23 [86.26.252.180] on 2009/06/13 12:22:54
Well a couple of drawings so far...
Biff: That looks awesome! Like a land-scrag or something.....
Is the submission date 20th June?
Yep
#234 posted by meTch [64.148.27.69] on 2009/06/13 12:48:14
"#224 posted by Zwiffle [66.170.5.18] on 2009/06/11 20:16:55
Well I'll just post this as tentative right now:
When: Due by Saturday, June 20th, 2009
What: "Original Quake Monster" art - come up with a monster that you feel fits in the Quake universe!
Who: I suppose right now send them to me, but I'll have to find some place to upload them, unless anyone wants to volunteer to host magnificent, original Quake art.
Where: Wherever you can.
How: Pens, pencils, paper, 3d models, clay models, 2d digital art, whatever."
Change Of Plans
#235 posted by Zwiffle [97.87.57.94] on 2009/06/17 06:30:50
I'm going out of town on Friday night and won't be back until some time Sunday, so I'm changing deadline to some day on Sunday, if anyone else besides Biff and myself want to participate. Whenever I get home and scan my shit is what I consider the cut off, unless you just send me a thing telling me to wait.
Did Mine FAST!!!
#236 posted by meTch [64.148.27.136] on 2009/06/19 04:41:25
nice and quick and sloppy, but i think you'll get the idea on what it is :D http://metchsteekle.deviantart.com...
i know its crap, that's what i was aiming for >:}
Favorite Quoth Monsters...
#237 posted by metlslime [173.11.92.50] on 2009/10/01 06:12:32
1. Voreling -- visually perfect for quake, also adds variety (Quake lacks any really small creatures) and most mappers actually use them well. I only wish a single shot from the SSG would kill them, but i realize this would make them almost too easy and not enough of a bother. But the way they look and sound, i do expect that to kill them. Memorable and unique.
2. Drole -- not my favorite skin, but combat is unique and fun, good panic inducers, without being unfair.
3. Eddie -- a good solid fight without being cheap, good sounds, good model. Fits into the miniboss category like a shambler, but moves and attacks differently enough to be unique. A bit on the techy side, which might not feel right in the more lovecraftian settings, but feels good in the medieval / steampunk / base / industrial maps.
4. Rocketeer -- Slow homing rockets work well. Effective long-range, which is rare. Good balance of damage potential and health. The "recolored enforcer" syndrome is still going on with the bright red uniform, but at least the gun is remodelled and I like custom details like the crazy goggles.
5. Defender? Yeah, i guess he goes at #5. A solid threat in close quarters, AI is suprising enough that you can't easily predict his attack.
There are a few monsters i don't feel i've fought enough to judge yet, such as the hell knight variants. The flying lightning guys can be annoying, but i like the sound effect, plus they do fit into a needed category (somewhat tough flying monsters.) Haven't gotten enough of a feel for their combat yet.
#238 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/01 08:39:19
i agree that the voreling feels like it should be much weaker. his effective health is even higher because his small size and erratic movement usually means you miss a few times (and a DBS from range will be 50% or less damage because of the spread).
i really dislike the drole these days. i wish i could remake his death animation to something that's just *normal*. he was the first model i animated and i made the death animation way too elaborate. honestly, he should just fall over quickly.
i also find him way too strong. he's too fast and his run + melee attack is downright annoying. the original intent of that was to stop 'shambler dancing', but it also makes it retarded when you're just trying to back away. instead of run + melee, he should have had a standing melee attack and just break out of melee animation and go to run if the player moves away. it basically means you can never use these guys unless you have a room bigger than 512-768 or a long hallway to back down.
Edie was the last monster i animated and i'm very pleased with him. i also learned many lessons after the gug and drole, and i find edie to be a fun monster to fight. 10 edies is nowhere near as annoying as 5 droles.
one thing i wish we had done was something akin to the doom/doom2 baron a hell.
the baron of hell is essentially a turret. it moves extremely slowly and the player can pretty much run circles around it, easily dodging it's attacks. the death lord kind of fits this profile, but it has too many unique gameplay mechanics to really be a true turret monster.
turret monsters are great because they can be used in packs of other monsters. high health + low risk means the player can ignore them until last but it also means they have to keep moving even if they are facing only melee monsters.
Edie can fit in this category, but unfortunately, non-base monster set has nothing to compare. Droles are too fast, gugs are too powerful (and must be a primary target) and shambler lightning can't be dodged and vores tend to piss off other monsters easily because you can train their voreballs into whoever you want.
also, on the subject of gugs: why i never put more thought into the ramifications of endless gug-quakes (and attenuationless quake sound) is beyond me. they are essentially useless unless you can guarantee it is dead before the player moves on.
defenders ai is ok, but i foolishly decided they should have SSG blasts as good as the player. i've been nearly one-shotted by these assholes without armor on. nothing fills me with as much fear as hearing their shotgun cocking right next to me. suddenly the new top priority is gtfo and this is completely *wrong* for such a low-level monster. i don't jump out of the water when i hear rotfish.
just some stuff i've learnt after using these monsters for a few maps now.
Giant Fiend
#239 posted by yhe1 [71.109.66.236] on 2009/10/01 08:42:46
The Giant Fiends with Shields in Carved in Flesh, are they used in any other maps?
Necros
#240 posted by Lardarse [62.31.162.25] on 2009/10/01 10:23:15
At least you're willing to admit that you've made mistakes...
Oh...
#241 posted by metlslime [98.248.107.212] on 2009/10/01 10:24:16
I actually meant #2 to be the Flying Polyp, not the Drole. Got the names confused. Anyway, the rapid strafing and invisibility are a good combo, and the gameplay when he is invisible is fun either way -- 1. try to extrapolate his position from last sighting, or 2. just spray bullets and look for blood.
Eddie
#242 posted by spy [89.218.15.173] on 2009/10/01 13:56:23
one thing i wish about Eddie it's his ability to drop backpak[w/spikes] after death
Moaning
#243 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2009/10/01 15:31:52
I liked The original Polyp's better - their invisibility tactic is easy enough to learn, the Quoth1 version just works as an armour stripper (like Pyro) which seems a bit . . . ineffective.
The Voreling would have been much better with lower health - imagine a pack of Vorelings as opposed to dogs in a netherworld map.
I wouldn't change the Drole to be honest, although his death is a bit elaborate it usually happens after he's chased you across half the map, like you mention, so it works as a reward. Coupled with the Drole Rage trigger he works well as a high teir rocket enemy. The map has to be designed around their use, which is refreshing.
As opposed to drop 30 knights, 5 death knights, a few vores and its done.
Edie is a sloid addition, although I always thought he could have done with a special of some kind. Not necessarily an attack, but something solidify his character as a mean fucking cyborg Ogre.
Turret monster - I guess this was supposed to be the Vore, but her accuracy breaks this mechanic. We're modifying to put her back in (what I think was) her original role. Basically less likely to hit but with an array of secondary abilities like rocket deflection and summoning multiple vore balls if the player moves out of sight, to launch all when they show themselves.
Rocketeers have a major flaw in that their shots can't be heard. I screwed up in warp and had them at such a distance where their rockets would just arrive without warning. No idea what the fix could be, since there's no moving sounds in Quake and making their fire sound a global would be weird.
Defenders are pretty good, although like the Edie an unexpected ability would have been nice - boot to the face with low damage but high knockback, for example.
Quoth3 - Ghouls?
So
#244 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2009/10/01 15:33:11
I'm complaining and making more spelling mistakes than usual.
Poker night recovery.
#245 posted by onetruepurple [89.75.203.25] on 2009/10/01 16:48:34
defenders ai is ok, but i foolishly decided they should have SSG blasts as good as the player. i've been nearly one-shotted by these assholes without armor on. nothing fills me with as much fear as hearing their shotgun cocking right next to me. suddenly the new top priority is gtfo and this is completely *wrong* for such a low-level monster. i don't jump out of the water when i hear rotfish.
This. It's always pissed me off how a recolored Enforcer was able to do more damage to me than a Fiend. Combined with the rate of fire they spell out "completely unfair" 9 out of 10 times. Fix in Quoth3 please.
Moving Sound
#246 posted by Preach [94.169.109.218] on 2009/10/01 19:52:19
Rocketeers have a major flaw in that their shots can't be heard. I screwed up in warp and had them at such a distance where their rockets would just arrive without warning. No idea what the fix could be, since there's no moving sounds in Quake and making their fire sound a global would be weird.
This is something that I have thought about, as Kell raised the same concern. The most clever technical solution I could think of would be to have two channels playing a rocket flying sound in parallel. The sound they play would fade in and then fade out, so the dynamics are like so:
<>
The sound would then be repeated on each channel by sending a new sound command once the last one runs out:
<><><><>&l...
Then the trick would be to play the two channels 180 degrees out of phase with each other.
chan1:<><><><...
chan2:><><><>...
The result is supposed to be an average level of sound the whole way along, but because the new sounds keep getting triggered, they move spatially.
In reality, there are practical problems which make it probably unworkable. Because timing in quake has to snap to the frame times, you are always going to have some degree of delay in triggering the sounds(even ignoring lag in networked play). So there is reason to make the sounds as long as possible, to lessen the impact of the random timing.
The problem is that the longer you make the sounds, the less frequently you play them, and so the less frequently the position of the sound updates. Which was essentially the whole point of the exercise - it's a bit like Heisenberg uncertainty! Perhaps 3 channels seperated by 120 degrees phase would allow for enough of a compromise - I'd have to check that would produce constant expected volume...
Anyway, I wouldn't post all this if I didn't have an alternate suggestion to float. Rather than trying to create a moving rocket trail sound on an engine ill equipped for it, what would people say to adding a 'radar ping' sound to the rocket? It would still eminate from the rocket, but as a very short sound you could get away with just playing it from a new position each time. It could probably be made to speed up as the rocket approached(or more likely the longer the rocket lived, even if it has flown past or isn't going for you). Does that sound too arcadey for Quake?
Maybe A Combination
#247 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2009/10/01 20:32:02
Of both the radar sound and a global (no attenuation) sound.
They'd both be rocket woosh, but the global would be very low volume and the radar fading into it.
Don't how well that'd work though, probably need lots of trial and error.
Rocketeer
#248 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/01 21:04:56
i had already tried to do the rocket whoosh sound in that manner (in fact, bob uses this method for his rotor sound) but the rockets move so fast that i ended up having to have the sound triggered every 0.1 seconds on 5 channels.
the radar ping is a pretty good idea though. i'd only have it play if the rocketeer is attacking a player though.
Necros
#249 posted by Text_Fish [82.46.2.175] on 2009/10/01 21:59:47
Nearly all of the 'problems' you highlighted above are actually things I LOVE about the Quoth monsters. It takes me back to my early Quake days when I hadn't yet learned all the monsters off-by-heart so they were still challenging.
Leave 'fairness' to multi-player quake. Single-player is you vs the computer, and that should always challenge expectations rather than ticking boxes.
#250 posted by Ankh [88.199.103.6] on 2009/10/01 22:16:53
I must say that I got to like most of the quoth monsters. they are a great enhancement to the standard ones.
My quoth favourites list looks much different than metlslime's:
1. Defender - because he is so dangerous but yet possible to kill within short time. I think them equal to fiends which I equally like.
2. Polyp - I didn't like them at first but once you get used to them they are fun. Don't give you much damage yet can be dangerous if push you into some hazard. Fun to predict their movement and kill with any weapon.
3. Eddie - give me some good weapons and I will have him done with pleasure :)
3.5 Rocketeer and pyro - the same amount of fun delivery as standard enforcers. Can be spicy when used in groups.
4. voreling, drole, blue plasma blaster - both take too long to kill and have annoying attack for me
5. gug, flying electro-cutter, vermis - take decidedly too much time to kill. Gug and vermis usually kill me on first encounter.
I don't have any feeling towards the whole knight family. But I have a question. Why do their swords reach further than expected?
#251 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/01 23:55:03
Why do their swords reach further than expected?
same thing as the drole, poor attempt on my part to discourage shambler dancing.
Wow
#252 posted by Drew [70.52.62.43] on 2009/10/02 00:01:58
I just wrote a whole long rant. and there was an error. 52? maybe? I'm drunk
Basically I love all the monsters. especially Bob. And gugs. though I lament their quakiness due to how much more variety they would have otherwise.
by the way, Necros you are a fucking beast all of a sudden! you're all over func and mapping and shit.
you've totally become the big man on messageboard.
#253 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/02 01:21:54
i just have a lot of free time atm, is all.
Was This Supposed
#254 posted by megaman [94.221.102.252] on 2009/10/02 11:56:00
to turn into a quoth discussion?
Descent has that radar ping sound (but on the player side) for homing missiles. It doesn't even hint at the position, I think, just the distance-the nearer the missile, the shorter the beep interval.
Megaman:
#255 posted by metlslime [173.11.92.50] on 2009/10/03 04:27:58
i don't know, i just posted here rather than start a new thread, since the topic is "monsters" it seemed fitting.
Monster Texturing
#256 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/03 20:05:45
I'm rather conventional so I have a giant apathy against other monsters then the given Quake classics.
I almost gave up playing Quoth because I find them much too hard.
I know it's not fair because they only add a new touch to the brilliant game.
Although I really enjoy making monsters, and my boundless passion for it encounters no end.
Here's an example of Granito, trying to break its blockyness.
Still struggling to get its texture perfeckt disguisable, which is rather a tricky job with all different engines.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/grani...
That
#257 posted by onetruepurple [89.75.203.25] on 2009/10/03 21:07:51
looks boss.
Kasicam
#258 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/04 21:09:53
I started again on my kascam project.
I would like to have a camera in Quake, that substitute the players sight. So by using an impulse one could see through the camera and inspect the level. By making a stealth walk frame it would be possible to enter places the player couldn't go by its size.
Although its health would be lower than the player.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/kam0c...
Only if is that I'm such a bad script writer.
Hmmm...
#259 posted by generic [67.233.131.37] on 2009/10/05 01:48:02
Isn't that the microphone, Mike, from the movie version of "The Wiz?"
Granito Awakes!
#260 posted by sock [92.249.164.198] on 2009/10/05 11:23:03
@madfox, maybe it is just me but the bottom half of granito looks like it is dry humping a shambler leg or something ... could be the speed of the animation maybe ... umm need another coffee.
Sock
#261 posted by Ankh [192.100.112.202] on 2009/10/05 11:57:11
I had the same impression
Granito Waiting For A Coffeemachine
#262 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/05 22:00:39
This monster is construckted on a 64x64 cube in disguise of a wall. So its shape indeed looks rather clumpy. I don't know what you mean with a humping shambler leg, but if you find it looks like a queer sack: true.
As it has the precise angles to have its stand functions excact, it is rather difficult to change this in the other frame animations.
Chance is rather big it distracts the cube allignment, and then it isn't disguised anymore.
Madfox
#263 posted by spy [89.218.19.196] on 2009/10/05 22:05:03
please increase the granito's health
(2000hp? will help), the last time i fought him, it was too easy
#264 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/05 22:13:24
did we ever discuss the poison headcrab attack mechanic? it's a pretty unique one afaik.
You Have The Composition?
#265 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/06 02:11:51
as a matter of fact, won't I be agony scratching my head after playing the level?
spy, that was the testlevel, indeed rather light, but I had to think of ammu. Once down the cavern the player can't get extra.
Headcrab
#266 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/06 02:48:45
It would be possible to add frames to the player model with a headcrab on its head.
This one for instance.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/trog....
Maybe More Metroid
#267 posted by meTch [64.148.34.191] on 2009/10/07 00:04:54
than headcrab
Headcrab Attack Mechanics
#268 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/07 01:34:40
It keeps on my mind...
Could it be possible to add a headcrab.mdl to the player?
So the sight gets weird between slices of yelly and so desorientates.
I know how to add a weapon, I could add a crab to the playermodel.
But for the view of the player?
v_crab.mdl?
Madfox:
#269 posted by metlslime [173.11.92.50] on 2009/10/07 01:58:02
yeah, that would work, but it would replace your gun (maybe that is a good thing, if you're being face-hugged you can't shoot)
Right
#270 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/07 21:47:54
but if I would like to shoot all blind, isn't there another way?
I can't code my gun to give damage to myself, which makes the headcrab rather undangerous.
Of course the loss of weapon means damage done by other monsters.
Where's The Headcrap Discuss?
#271 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/08 05:22:57
poison headcrap attack mechanics:
if monster further than playersight >fly
if monster range playersight> start swift
if monster near playersight> jump on its head and distores sight with a squeezing sound
if monster becomes player> ask necros for a antidose...
http://members.home.nl/gimli/HEADC...
#272 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/08 06:01:35
well, you missed the most interesting thing about the poison headcrabs:
when they hit you, you are poisoned and your health drops down to 1 (regardless of what you had).
over a few seconds, you health will return to it's initial value.
i find it interesting because it manages to be incredibly dangerous but at the same time, not at all overpowered.
i'd like to see this used for monsters more often. not exactly this, but with a sort of build-up of damage where the first hit is not fatal, but follow up hits can be.
Poison Chalice
#273 posted by Preach [94.169.109.218] on 2009/10/08 09:53:21
One of the things that balanced the poison headcrab was that when you encountered them, you weren't fighting other enemies at the time(with the possible exception of 1 or two headcrabs). If you're dropped to 1 hp, a single combine with a submachine gun would have frequently been deadly, sometimes with no chance to react to your sudden drop in health. Only facing melee monsters meant that you could easily escape being exposed to damage, as long as you recognised the need to do so in the short term.
You wouldn't be able to combine them with many existing monsters in quake, which is why I wonder if it would be a helpful addition to a boss monster instead. I always think that boss fights should shift between parts where the player need to take the offensive and do damage, and moments where they are forced to play defensive. Especially in quake, where there are no reload times and high ammo capacities, it's frequently the case that even against a boss you are constantly attacking them, which makes the combat quite flat.
While we're on the subject of stuff we'd steal from half-life, I always liked the way the bullsquid melee attacks worked. He had a bite that was reasonably fast and low damage, 10-15 hp. Then he had a tail smash which was a bit slower but did 40-45 damage. However, the bullsquid was coded to only ever use the tail smash if it would be fatal on connecting. Once you realised that, it made things quite intense when you saw it try one, because you knew even though you had moderate health you might die instantly.
#274 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/08 10:35:00
i didn't know that about the bullsquid. from what i remember, i always blew them away before they got close enough to melee me at all. this is actually a shame, because i (and probably other players too) completely missed out on something pretty unique and interesting.
it is definitely an interesting idea to code up a slow execute style attack though and something to keep in mind.
re: boss and defensive play, this is something i've been looking into doing via unavoidable damage. the core of what i've been thinking of is that you have attacks that cannot be avoided but you provided respawning health kits (or if you wanted to make it harded, *non* respawning kits).
it shifts your priorities around between filling up your health and dealing damage. the poison attack, though, neatly creates the same situation, but rmeoves the need for external items, which is nice.
Bosses
#275 posted by ijed [190.20.117.93] on 2009/10/08 13:51:58
Sounds like you're describing phases there Preach.
For example
phase 1: damage the tail, avoid eye beams
phase 2: escape collapsing walkway, damage the claws
phase 3: destroy brain, avoid the claws and tail.
Its a nice understandable way of breaking bosses down for both designer and player - I don't think its overused since even the best orchestrated boss fights are based on it.
Inever realised the Bullsquid only pasted you if it was able to. Interesting idea - the final melee attack not being more of the same but something like a finishing move. So instead of clawing until the player is dead the Fiend could do a double overarm swipe.
And Madfox is talking about an enemy that attaches to the player in order to attack, as opposed to an enemy that has a gruesome parasite form (which never affects the player in HL).
Thing is, how would you get it off while it was draining health - jump in water, pick up a med kit?
Poison headcrabs were a good enemy, but exceptionally carefully used. The main thing was the panic ffactor, as opposed to how lethel they weren't. At least in the way they were used.
#276 posted by Willem [24.199.192.130] on 2009/10/08 15:26:15
Poison headcrabs were brilliant, IMO. I hated them when they got me but it always intense for me as a player when I got pasted, got knocked down the 1 health point, and lost track of where it went. THAT'S panic time. :)
Interesting Stuff Guys....
#277 posted by RickyT23 [86.151.228.238] on 2009/10/08 15:50:02
I was playing Resident Evil 5 this last week or 2 on the PC and I must admit that their boss fights are pretty cool. I mean certain dynamics of RE games which I dont particularly like so much are the fact that you have to press a button to turn quickly, you can move and aim at the same time, or move and shoot at the same time at all.
But there are quick time events where you are required to "dodge" an attack by pressing buttons quickly, which is interesting - caught me off guard a few times because you are watching a cutscene then all of a sudden BOOM your dead!
It will just say "A + D" or "F + V" and you have to hammer those buttons to complete the dodge manouevre.
There are also spider mosters in that game which will jump up and grab you round the chest. The way you excape is the same - hammer "A + D" eventually you wriggle free. At the time you cant move anyway so you arent using those buttons to strafe.
There are other monsters which grab you in RE5 too.
#278 posted by RickyT23 [86.151.228.238] on 2009/10/08 15:51:24
Thing is, how would you get it off while it was draining health - jump in water, pick up a med kit?
that was what my previous post was related too....
Boss Phases
#279 posted by Preach [94.169.109.218] on 2009/10/08 21:57:03
Having a boss with different attack patterns was something I tried with Azoth in the Travail pack, in a few different ways, and a little success. One of the phases was set up so you could only harm Azoth during his melee attack, and so you had to shambler-dance him to provoke an attack, then back up and hit. The rest of the time he shielded himself with a wing. The other phases were more subtle preferences to do with attack choices, either chasing the player with close range attacks or evading him while sniping with vore-pods.
That much was present, but it didn't come together very well. The fight dragged for lots of reasons: the health between stages was too high, Azoth had to navigate between waypoints before another phase triggered, which could be a lot of dead time. Even worse, because he needed to navigate to open space to make the shield phase work, that part of the fight was lengthened to justify the long walk there. In actual fact this just slowed things down more, forcing you to pull off the same fairly easy trick 4 or 5 times.
So I was never totally happy with him, but I thought the basic phases themselves were quite sound. Certainly it's something that could be incorporated into future bosses for quake.
One tip for anyone who want to end a mission pack with a boss: work backwards. Start by making the arena for the boss and lock it down as final as soon as you can. There's little point trying to write generic boss ai, it's easiest to just hardcode it to work with the map the boss appears in. That way you can teach the boss tricks to foil any player trying to exploit it, make sure it can navigate the whole space - and having the map available from the start might allow you to create some scripted/semi-scripted interaction with the environment. It's always nice to end a pack with something that's really polished too.
I never realised the Bullsquid only pasted you if it was able to. Interesting idea - the final melee attack not being more of the same but something like a finishing move. So instead of clawing until the player is dead the Fiend could do a double overarm swipe.
It would be really easy to do this with the shambler, since it already has the two animations. Slight snag in that currently the damage falls in a large random range, but that could be adjusted and accounted for. Since it's much easier to shambler-dance against the overhead smash, the result would be giving a player with low health a slim lifeline. Just think how cinematic it would be if the quake ranger gets bashed with the left, the right, the left again - then just slides to the side as the killer blow from overhead comes down!
How To Get It Off?
#280 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/08 22:15:34
rocketjump?
harmfull and unpractical.
slimejump?
ibidem.
running hard against walls?
logical, but do quakewalls hurt(yes, uh..I mean damage..no)?
keeping the gun and shooting while blindsighted?
unpractical because other monsters get hurt too.
loosing the gun and blindsighted while hurt by other monsters?
rather harsh.
just sucking health and fade back after x sec?
most practical.
Finish Him!
#281 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2009/10/08 23:37:18
We're on it ;)
Current frames for these types of attacks tend to be slower than existing ones - the Hellknight overhead slice for example, so it adds an interesting mechanic for low health players dancing around enemies with finishing moves.
With Azoth he was a bit disjointed by both the movement between phases and not always being clear on what to do.
For me I'd have just teleported the player between phases, maybe with a 1-2 second minimatic and shown an obvious vulnerable point on the boss constantly. Like a continually bleeding wound.
But it's easy to say what would be good from outside a project.
For a jellyface hugger I'd say damage over time, max 25 at which point it drops off. Or the player can find a health pack which would cancel it early. Its something else that has occurred some time ago, but there's too many monster features to include him just yet.
To make such an enemy work we'd probably take the trap_spikemine code and modify. Although as you know the special player states (which such an entity entails) are kind of in limbo for the forseeable future.
Madfox
#282 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/09 02:49:12
there were these slimes in duke nukem 3d. when they touched you, they would attach to your face and start doing damage.
all you had to do was fire your weapon once (anywhere) and it would kill it, so normally you just switch to the pistol, fire a shot, and switch back.
the reason it worked, imo anyway, is because when it first attaches to your face, there isn't a noise that's played and you only realize it's there when the sprite slides up from the bottom of the screen to eventually cover your entire view and the damage doesn't start to come in until it's pretty much fully covering the screen.
Yeah!
#283 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/09 07:05:23
First I thought of Half Life because of the scientist who was walking with such a thing on its head. Then I reminded the ones in DukeNukem.
I tried some frames, but I changed the sprite for a mdl and reused he shotgun. I don't know how to fetch this to a qc, but I think coding the v_shot into it could be a solution.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/kcrab...
#284 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/09 08:37:31
you could try adding a hook into playerpostthink (which runs every frame) to attach the monster model to the player instead of replacing the weapon. you can just run makevectors and then use v_forward based off of the v_angle vector.
Looks Really Awesome!
#285 posted by RickyT23 [86.151.228.238] on 2009/10/09 10:22:46
Agreed...
#286 posted by generic [67.233.143.163] on 2009/10/09 13:51:49
MadFox is really on to something here.
Although the skin needs to be tweaked a little and the dying animation is a bit slow, it looks like this monster would a good addition to the Quake bestiary.
Yeah
#287 posted by Zwiffle [97.87.57.94] on 2009/10/09 14:47:04
Madfox that jellyfish thing actually looks pretty cool, I kind of wish when it attacked the player it did like a lunge or something, like a really quick strike. Think of how a cat gets ready to pounce before it jumps on a mouse or something similar.
#288 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/09 22:22:27
So far the thing uses self.th_melee for its horizontal squeeze attack, and I left self.th_missile for its jumping on the head lemmon turn.
@necros- I believe I know now where I would add the v_shot part. Thanks, the only just is that my spagethi code knowledge is horrible with angles adjustments.
@ricky- wait till you ate its spagethi! Icould add a slime ball.
@generic - animations are at full frames, this means I could delete some. walk frames are 18, and melee_attack 20, which is much too high concerning its jump off to run.
@zwiffle- it depends on the attack frames. now it are 20, 8 would be reasonable, 5 would be quick. But then it would loose its squeezing face. The lemmon squeezer attack could be quicker, as v_shot only needs 4 or 5 frames.
It has arms enough to blindsight the player.
Textured Shape
#289 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/10 08:30:14
In Fitzquake and JoeQuake the texture looks bright,
while in glquake it becomes more dimmed.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/crab0...
Madfox:
#290 posted by metlslime [98.248.107.212] on 2009/10/10 10:23:31
not sure about joequake, but the difference between glquake and fitzquake is fitzquake supports overbrightening on models (as does winquake.) Maybe joequake does too?
Fullbrights
#291 posted by Preach [94.192.82.29] on 2009/10/10 11:49:51
It also looks like you are using the fullbright colours for the spike in the centre. Again, this is a feature that worked in winquake, was omitted from glquake for technical reasons, and was restored in fitzquake. If it isn't intended, there is a quick way to remap those colours in QMe: open the palette tool and clear the checkboxes next to the bottom two rows. To get best results, you may have to put ticks in all of the other rows first, as it only maps to ranges already ticked.
Joequake Does Support Overbrights
#292 posted by onetruepurple [89.75.203.25] on 2009/10/10 13:31:19
That Thing
#293 posted by meTch [69.183.59.39] on 2009/10/10 14:22:27
is awesome madfox
Onion Eye Gamma
#294 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/11 02:13:07
The overbright point was intended as centre. Texturing is an art in its own way, it had me going the whole evening. That creepy dark textures that have a gammaburst ingame.
The one thing that hits me is that a flying monster goes up for 64 units, so its attack scene I had to lower that measure to get it on playersight. (can't this be done with ai_face?)
Bad is that in that attack-while-shooting it rarely goes back up in its fly pose with a strange gap.
I was thinking of aguires'glquake, there the monster appears rather dimmed, as if it should have some extra lighting.
Could be an advancement to have a dark shape.
@meTech- same as the qc is my contradiction.
Crossbow Knight
#295 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/24 11:10:31
helps this poor creature more strength,
although walking in harnash with a soard and bow...
must weight at least more than start fighting!
http://members.home.nl/gimli/cross...
That Could Actually Be A Cool Enemy
#296 posted by nitin [118.10.197.16] on 2009/10/24 11:41:58
He Is
#297 posted by ijed [190.20.98.171] on 2009/10/24 15:41:22
#298 posted by Zwiffle [97.87.57.94] on 2009/10/24 15:43:26
Why is there no Grenade Launcher Knight? Hmm?? HMMMMM???
Funnily Enough
#299 posted by ijed [190.20.98.171] on 2009/10/24 15:45:50
I'm thinking of the 'beat you to death with a rubber cock' Shambler.
Rocket, nail and dual chainsaw Ogres as well as GL.
Where's your map? ;)
#300 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/24 20:22:28
when will the supply of Orgue's chainsaw-oil run dry ?
Textured Octopus-insularis
#301 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/24 20:24:37
http://members.home.nl/gimli/kcrab...
#302 posted by meTch [69.183.34.226] on 2009/10/24 21:39:00
they just get cool-er don't they :)
Collision
#303 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/25 05:15:01
Octopus-Insularis is an octopus Darwin had not found and seems to be one of earth's not yet discovered species.Insularis =>island
I gave it a better collision, so it looks more comfartable.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/crab0...
#304 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/25 10:03:36
that's a nice skin madfox. also, the movement is really quite hypnotic... -notic... -notic...
#305 posted by Spirit [213.39.169.32] on 2009/10/25 11:06:37
That model kicks ass. Would it be possible to make its normal movement go up and down like a wave? So the end movement line would look like a sinus. That would make its appareance like an outworldly jellyfish (sounds silly, I hope you understand what I mean).
#306 posted by meTch [69.183.34.226] on 2009/10/25 20:01:17
sine seems like to much of a natural wave form
make it sawtooth with decay all the way down and cut off all the way up
#307 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/10/26 00:04:20
i'd do the up and down movement with qc instead of animating it. that way, it will jump less when it transitions to pain and attacking frames.
Further
#308 posted by Preach [94.192.82.29] on 2009/10/26 00:18:25
I'd second what necros said, and also add that even the rotation portion of the animation should be taken to the qc side, for the same reasons.
Spongebob
#309 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/26 07:56:57
I was supposing the half-quarter turn would bring it almost invisible back to its startframe, but somehow the frames keep going a turn back.
I could make it bend, and although I made it as high as the normal player, while flying it stays up in the air. Which gives a strange sight in pain frames getting up again.
That movement and animation should go into the qc seems right to me, although I can hardly position it there.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/crab0...
MadFox
#310 posted by JPL [213.30.139.243] on 2009/10/26 08:03:22
It looks more like a Jellyfish rather than a crab... but I like this odd monster !!
Thanks!
#311 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/26 20:07:10
Took some time before I understood the skinfile, it seems the arms have for and backsize.
Colours of the inside are too bright, concerning the shaded shape of the thing.
I have no idea where its aiming at.
Someone called it a good watermonster, but movements in that environnement are rather dull.
One of its attack should be a lemmon squeezer headjump.
Don't know which jelly will be the crab.
If I May Interject
#312 posted by Caitlin Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/28 02:42:24
This very new Quake fan has got some relatively (IMO) good ideas for enemies. (I like the jellyfish, by the way.)
I'd like to see an enemy that can crawl on walls and ceilings. I'm seeing a slug-like thing. In my opinion it'd have quick, quiet ranged attacks, blend in with general quake scenery, but move slowly. (Perhaps it can move faster if the player retaliates, since by then they'll have a bead on it? Maybe speed inversely proportional to health?)
A very easy-to-kill melee enemy with extreme speed, teleportation and medium damage. I'm seeing something like a hyperactive low-health slightly-lower-damage fiend that can "blink" around. Health would be about 1.5 full SSG blasts, but the speed of the enemy in question (perhaps combined with a love for circle-strafing?) would ensure this wouldn't be an easy task to lay on it.
As Necros earlier suggested, a "turret" enemy would be great. I don't honestly have any suggestions here, but I see something sort of like the Acid Spitters of Diablo 1. That would present an additional danger, because you'd have to be mindful of the residue of dodged attacks as well as new attacks coming at you.
I think there needs to be a medium-range extreme danger. Something which practically spells game over if you're in a very small, very specific range, but which is practically useless at either melee or long ranges. It'd have medium-fast speed -- not as fast as the Drole or the Fiend, but fast enough that it could get into that deadly-range if the player isn't careful. Examples that come to mind are the fetish shamans of Diablo II, whose inferno spell is a death sentence (in my experience). Possibly a "hell hound"? Suitably Quakeified, of course.
I'd make these myself, but I'm only a designer, not a modeller or an animator.
If anyone wants more suggestions... Well, I work in the game design field, so I can come up with enough ideas to fill a small automobile. Just ask.
-Caitie
#313 posted by Zwiffle [97.87.57.94] on 2009/10/28 02:59:09
This is the worst spam bot yet by far!
(As I have learned from previous newcomers to the community, I will add that my comment was in jest, and welcome to our little shrine to Quake.)
And
#314 posted by ijed [190.20.66.215] on 2009/10/28 12:51:23
Learn modelling and coding :D
I Would, Ijed.... Buuut
#315 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/28 16:25:34
I learn best in a very specific fashion that's (to the best of my knowledge) impossible to do with models. I COULD conceivably learn maps and coding, but that'd require someone willing to get me started.
I learn best by picking apart a small number of simple (but complete) examples that cover pretty much everything I need to know, along with having someone to pester about things I don't quite get. Modelling doesn't work for this because models look like they're all one big piece -- which doesn't work with the method I use.
Hate to be picky about how I learn and all, but when that way of learning is the difference between 3 days and 3 years, it matters.
Also, thanks for the welcome. Click here for free Viagra sample clearlyfakeurl.com
--Caitie
#316 posted by Willem [24.199.192.130] on 2009/10/28 16:32:24
Yes, but if you just want to get a monster into the game to test it ... make a cube with a single frame of animation. Done. Now you can play with QuakeC (referencing the existing monster code) to your heart's content. Just a tip. :)
Hmm
#317 posted by nonentity [81.141.21.25] on 2009/10/28 17:04:17
zomg, a disclaimer Zwiffle? Clearly over the line ;p
#318 posted by LTH [94.193.174.213] on 2009/10/28 19:51:25
Goddamn it there's no viagra at that url :(
hax
#319 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/10/28 20:02:31
I'll code the Insularis with a free headjump with Necro's suggestion headcrab poison, followed with a bud-jump with free Viagra samples.
I wonder which side's the strongest?
Monsters
#320 posted by Zwiffle [66.170.5.18] on 2009/10/30 17:15:37
I personally like monsters that do different things. I think I have become jaded on monsters that are just hit points and ammo.
One reason I like L4D is because the special infected aren't just guys that shoot at you - they play so outside-the-norm that it's a refreshing change of pace. They actually DO something different than run and shoot, and there is some strategy in how to handle them and play as them. The Jockey/Boomer both use the hordes of zombies in slightly different and unique ways, the Charger is a different sort of fast character than the Hunter, the Smoker and Spitter are also different yet provide great ranged support.
The humans on the other hand are familiar to play with, but really are just kind of boring.
I can come up with other examples of neat enemies such as the Archvile from Doom, the Medic (Doctor?) from Quake 2 that revived dead enemies, or the Pain Elemental which spawned Lost Souls. I would be more interested in things like that which provide some elements of different ways of thinking about the combat.
Oh Man
#321 posted by RickyT23 [86.151.228.238] on 2009/10/30 17:26:25
That would be a cool feature to put in a certain community Quake 1 mod which is in the works ATM:
A medic-grunt who can revive downed enemies
#322 posted by Willem [24.199.192.130] on 2009/10/30 17:38:45
I don't think it would work in Quake. The doctor would be dead in seconds - he'd never reach a downed enemy.
Shubling
#323 posted by generic [98.192.134.174] on 2009/10/30 17:57:36
This idea is somewhat related to what Zwiffle said...
I once thought that the scattered gibs of Shubby could turn into smaller, bud-like forms of the Hell Mother -- but with little nubs for tentacles -- still lacking movement and having only the defensive ability to repel non-melee attacks, leaving the Quake axe or the Quoth hammer as the only effective weapons against it. In combat, it would give an added "push" to grenades / nails / rockets / monsters in its vicinity causing extra unpredictability in already tense fighting situations.
Or maybe something similar to a Shrieker in Dungeons and Dragons: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/...
Perhaps A Midevil Apothecary
#324 posted by RickyT23 [82.25.182.231] on 2009/10/30 19:00:24
Something like a HellKnight or a DeathLord or something. Imagine an enemy with a crazy projectile attack, like fireballs or something, some sort cool coat and armour, and also a savage mele attack.
A room with a hoard of Knights that could be easily taken down, and then two fo these Apothecarys turn up, and whilst you battle one, the other has healing the downed knights as a higher priority than attacking you.
I Like The Apothecary Idea
#325 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/30 20:40:26
I'd like to suggest that the apothecary get an appropriate weapon, probably a polearm as those are large enough to be memorable in close combat. Probably a scythe or lochaber axe, the lochaber axe being preferred if the apothecary is supposed to be good at combat.
The crazy projectile attack should serve the purpose of suppression. If one is trying to give the other time to revive enemies, then make that attack more of a "threat" than an actual danger. It'll be easy to avoid but only if you stay the hell away. If you start getting close and it does that attack, you can expect to be damaged severely. (Unless, of course, you can close the distance fast enough to get it into melee.)
Melee should, IMO, be a combo attack to make shambler-dancing possible but either risky or with awkward timing (depending on the risks the player is willing to take).
Lastly, I'd like to say they should be exceptionally weak to melee. That's your ticket to killing the bastards, an axe in the face. That would make them fearsome, but not a total hindrance to someone willing to take the risk of some damage.
I really do enjoy the idea of armor under a long coat, maybe with a hood too (sort of like the Necromancer of Hexen 2).
Of course, these are all just suggestions, albeit exceptionally in-depth ones, for an idea that doesn't even belong to me. Hope Ricky doesn't mind that I sprinted away with the concept so fast that we crossed the Pacific in ten minutes. (If you do, sorry.)
Oh, Also
#326 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/30 20:45:19
Another suggestion, before I forget, although I don't know if it's possible in Quake: a "swarm" enemy, where every individual enemy will be killed by a single shotgun pellet and do very little damage, but you're facing, like, 30 of them at any given moment. And they're fast.
--Cait
Heh - No Worries!
#327 posted by RickyT23 [82.25.182.231] on 2009/10/30 22:17:27
Thats pretty much exactly the kinda idea I had.
I mean TBH im no monster designer, just a daft Quake mapper who comes up with daft ideas sometimes but rarely follows through with them.
'Twas a good idea though methinks ;)
I mean there will be people reading this (hopefully) who do make monsters and know how to code them and stuff.
Problem is I can think of a few reasons why this could be difficult do 'do' in Quake:
1 - it would meddle with the killcount. I would say that a revived monster could either count as one more overall count, or on revivng a moster the killcount would drop by one, to be raised again if the moster was killed again.
2 - Navigation - How does the apothecary know not to kill the opponent if the other one is fighting the player......
(lol "stream of consciousness")
cutting myself short - if the one which is on revivng duty wanders off to earlier parts of the map healing loads of corpses, is may or may not know when to stop, but wouldnt it be cool having monsters coming back towards the player from earlier parts of the map. When they are revived they are already aware of the player and (lol Quake AI) running towards him.
Imagine the glorious chaos...... !!!
#328 posted by Zwiffle [66.170.5.18] on 2009/10/30 22:34:22
Well it could be just as simple as attacking the player, check to see if there's any corpse in a 128 units radius (or something), if so try to revive it, attack player. Something like that.
Then it doesn't have to run off to find corpses. You can spawn a medic at the beginning if you needed the player to go back through there again.
You could solve the kill count a number of ways - going over the kill count (200/25 kills!), killing the monster once is the only kill that counts (not sure if that's possible) or adding another monster to the total number of kills, etc, as you've said.
Or the medic could just spawn a monster using a corpse - ie uses the monster's soul to spawn a ghoul or something different.
About The Possible AI Problems, Etc
#329 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/30 22:52:35
I don't know how coding works in Quake, so I'm going from what little knowledge I have of scripting and etc in other games.
It might need to be set up so if the player is "targeted" by one, it triggers a switch/flag/whatever that is shared by both of their AI routines, which sets the second apothecary to ignore the player and simply attend to healing duties. You could also make pairs of apothecaries be controlled somehow by just one AI routine, so that you could have, say, 4 apothecaries with two attacking and two healing. I'm not sure if this is possible, but if it is, similar routines could be used for other "cooperative" monsters, including my swarm-enemy idea.
Oh, an idea just came to mind, could the apothecaries be set to be immune to in-fighting, given their place as healers? Perhaps they could only infight with the (clearly mindless) zombies, making that a possible way to deal with them if the player has too low health/ammo to do so directly?
As for monsters able to be revived... I dunno, I'd limit it. I can easily see if you activate the apothecaries, but don't see them and walk out of the room... you could quickly have literally the entire goddamn level biting your ass before you can blink. This gets worse in Quoth. And it could get to the level of literal impossibility in a Quoth "miniboss-rush" style level.
Lastly, regarding the monster kill-count thing, I want to say revival would subtract from the kill counter so that killcounts would still have some kind of meaning. But at the same time, I think you deserve SOME reward for beating the same vore in a tiny room 4 times in a row.
Hmm
#330 posted by nonentity [81.141.21.25] on 2009/10/30 22:59:20
I like the uber-damage medic idea, although it does seem like they'd need to be forced use in groups (with, as Ricky points out, code to work as a team), else they'd merely be high dmg, weak def enemies when used alone (and there're already those in Quoth).
I'm not dismissing the idea, it's very good, I just think you'd also need a more 'solo' medic monster, possibly something with high survivability but low dmg that prioritises ressing monsters over attacking the player. It'd give the mapper more variety of situations/monster groupings to use it in (depending on the numbers of high dmg monsters grouped with it and their relative damage absorbion the threath/'kill priority' of the player would vary more than with the Apothecary)
Nonentity, I Believe You Misunderstood
#331 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/30 23:02:10
These are supposed to be high def, middling-damage healers. The damage is only dangerous if you let it be dangerous (e.g. are an idiot), but avoiding it means letting the other one heal other nasties to its hearts content. They're supposed to take awhile to kill unless you get right in their face and chop it off. But yes, I agree they'd probably be forced to work as a team.
Hmm
#332 posted by nonentity [81.141.21.25] on 2009/10/30 23:04:59
Heh, posts while posting...
But at the same time, I think you deserve SOME reward for beating the same vore in a tiny room 4 times in a row.
Possibly have respawned enemies drop small health packs rather than their normal ammo drops. Certainly I agree beating the same enemies several times deserves increased reward, although there is the 'risk' of players farming relatively easy, respawning enemies if they drop extra items.
And Quoth has a fast, weak swarm enemy in the Vorelings.
Also, On The Subject Of A Solo Medic
#333 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/30 23:06:08
How about one with low health and damage, but taking from a previous suggestion of mine: extreme speed? Runs like hell away from the player, ressing anything it can get its hands on, but it only takes one good SSG blast to put the damn thing down. Problem of course, being that you'll have a hell of a time getting that good SSG blast in.
Regarding Swarms
#334 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/30 23:08:29
THe vorelings don't seem to follow the same idea as what I mean. They take two shots from an SSG to put down, do decent damage, and only appear in groups of roughly 5-6 to my knowledge. I'm talking enemies sort of like the Parasites from Metroid Prime: great, huge swarms of little things that can barely touch you and you can kill pretty much by running into them, enemies where the ONLY danger comes from the sheer numbers.
I Dunno
#335 posted by RickyT23 [82.25.182.231] on 2009/10/30 23:09:44
Keeping it simple could have its advantages from a practical point of view.
Imagine an enemy as tough as a shambler, suddenly arrives in a room you just cleared and starts reviving the corpses whilst you try and kill it. It ignores your attacks and keeps on bringing back the other dead foes. And as it revives more and more dead enemies you are forced to attack them rather than it. And as you kill them, it keeps bringing them back multiple times. The player would have to adjust its tactics to "avoiding the attacks of the minions/other enemies and concentrating fire on the apothecary until its dead"
Hmm
#336 posted by nonentity [81.141.21.25] on 2009/10/30 23:11:45
Yeh, seen. Was going off of Ricky's initial description, didn't see the bit about making the attack a suppressive threat rather than a damaging attack. Same effect on gameplay then, and the team idea makes for an interesting element to what is effectively one monster.
Unfortunately I'm not a coder either, but I imagine it'd be relatively easy to code AI for 'just' healing if the monster is in a team of it's own (either through design or death of the other apothecary(ies))
Regarding That Idea
#337 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/30 23:12:11
I don't know. That's not quite what I saw, Ricky, I saw the apothecaries being intelligent and working together in a way that suggests that. Maybe that could be their behavior when alone?
Regarding The "rewards" For Revived Enemies
#338 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/30 23:21:09
I think that would work. Almost nothing for humanoids (including ogres) because it's simple to kill those without sustaining any damage. Possibly just half of the ammo normally dropped when they die. Stronger humanoids (Quoth assholes and Death Lord) maybe drop 5-10 health packs, along with weaker non-human enemies.
For stronger enemies, possibly 25 health packs, or even 50 health packs for exceptional badasses (e.g. the gug).
Remake Quake
#339 posted by ijed [200.6.105.173] on 2009/10/31 11:45:04
This blob basically became the Q1 medic - he's about 1/4 built in terms of code and needs the mesh reeporting to fix the Quake UV's.
He's got a reasonable health count (two rockets to kill) but also undead recovery - so five seconds after non gib death he revives.
His ranged attack is basically four zombie gibs - this needs to be fixed to be a scatter attack, making him more likely to hit but with lower average damage. Like all RMQ monsters he aims with Z in mind, so can hit targets above or below him.
He's weak against the chainsaw (which is the undead buster) which will gib him after some sustained sawing.
There is no infighting amongst undead.
The features not yet in:
Revival - eats corpses transforming the remains into zombies.
Eats heads, storing them as maggot ammo.
Devour - a very slow melee attack that causes massive damage. This is supposed to be defensive, used against players who melee other targets near the vomitus.
So the vomitus is a cross between an artillery monster and a medic - he's more interested in corpses as the player but will spam chuck when he's got nothing better to do. Rockets or the Cauteriser (Q1 Railgun) will work at long distance or the chainsaw up close - anything else will just have him revive like a zombie. His final specials are the maggot ammo (earned for eating heads, produces a handful of maggots on hit) and devour melee which is slow but a nasty surprise to any player being even slower.
Maggots are worth a mention since they follow the earlier comments about swarm creatures. We actually have something called trap_swarm which releases a cloud of wasps when activated which hit for 1 damage and ignore armour.
They move in a flocking pattern, and only lack one feature - to ignore the undead, which causes some goofy stuff. A 'fear' reaction in other monsters would be funny, but will have to wait
The maggots work more like monsters (movement only, they don't affect the killcount), but otherwise have the same profile 1 damage, ignoring armour. They basically crawl towards the player relentlessly. They can be shot, but if touched then the damage is done and the maggot removed.
Monster drops: We've got these with both armour shards and small health's (5) them all being linked model wise to the world type - medievel, base or runic.
An apothecary is an interesting idea, but for us it'd be repetition to have two creatures capable of revival. Another type for knights - Chaplain. Whilst alive he incites other creatures (all of whom get a special effect) to do more damage in melee and move faster.
Should Say
#340 posted by ijed [200.6.105.173] on 2009/10/31 11:46:16
Vomitus in the title there.
Well...
#341 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/31 21:35:23
The apothecary is a personal preference, and it'd be cool if it made it into other mods, so I don't think the discussion was wasted (I'm going to be compiling it into a cohesive notepad doc here in a bit).
As for your mod, what about my earlier suggestion of the wall-crawling slug beast? Usually placed on really, really high ceilings, blends in with the architecture (which might require multiple colorations to work properly). Quick, quiet ranged attacks that do a slightly below-average amount of damage but can be fired in relatively rapid succession (making it dangerous to try to get a bead on it). Initially it doesn't move, but when attacked it will start to crawl down the wall toward the player, gaining speed as it loses health. If it reaches the player, it detonates for a large amount of damage.
OH! Details I Forgot...
#342 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/10/31 21:37:41
The attacks would be hitscan but they'd also lag slightly behind the player.
#343 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/11/01 02:51:14
it would be kind of cool to give a monster regenerating shields.
it would work just like halo or any of those ww2 games. shield points would go down as it took damage (this could be represented with a series of skins that progressively get darker or something (or with entity alpha getting more and more transparent)) but if the monster didn't take damage for maybe 5 seconds, it would begin to slowly regenerate back to full and the player would have to begin damaging it all over again.
you get 3 alternatives with that:
1. lots of shields, very little health.
pretty much when you get through the shields, it dies.
2. decent shields, decent health
probably the most annoying because it would both take a not-insignificant amount of time to take down the shields and then be expected to do the same for the health.
3. low shields, high health
the is probably the most favourable of the options available.
you are penalized for leaving the monster alone, but not as badly as in option 2. at most, you'd have to break through another 50 points of shields before getting back to work on the monster's health.
Wall Slug
#344 posted by ijed [200.6.105.235] on 2009/11/01 16:18:59
Well we've got plans for a hanging (Voreling style) spawnflag for the Spawn . . . although I know that's not what you mean.
We have to be careful with new introductions since we're revising everything, but the wall crawling you mention could easily be applied to existing creatures - the maggot seems a reasonable candidate. The Fiend has been considered as well, but the organic buzzsaw is still tabled for now about how it will be remade.
Shields make me think again of a tank type enemy, though not necessarily mechanical
Got To Burp The Baby
#345 posted by ijed [200.6.105.235] on 2009/11/01 16:19:15
On The Subject Of The Apothecary
#346 posted by Cait Reid [24.239.108.14] on 2009/11/02 06:59:25
I just had an epiphany.
The Apothecaries could be our turret monsters.
Say their ranged attack is slow and, perhaps, very lightly homing until it passes the player. It does LOADS of damage, but it's sort of easy to dodge. The attacking Apothecary, IMO, wouldn't move except to block the player from getting to the healer one -- but both Apothecaries would be capable of some pretty damn fast speeds when they DID move.
This makes one's role as "defender" more useful, as it can, with the right amount of speed, actually take long range sniper-rockets for the sake of the healer. Furthermore, it means that running away from the apothecaries isn't necessarily a working tactic because they'll follow -- and fast. This makes them multipurpose enemies, a VERY big danger. A pair of apothecaries and a room full of corpses could be easily equal to a gug or a full-on boss in terms of pure "WTFPWNtential".
At the same time, a brave enough player won't have much trouble plastering both of them, adding a strategic layer to their encounters -- do you have enough health/the balls to axe them or enough ammo to scrap them at range?
With this set-up they work VERY well as end-of-episode minibosses. Have a gauntlet of normal enemies in a big room initially, setting you up for (after all enemies are dead) the appearance of two apothecaries, who immediately show up their rather frail appearances with punishing hails of returned enemies and slow-but-hard-to-keep-track-of balls of pure condensed pain. The panic... it's almost PALPABLE.
--Caitie, the -evil- game designer
Damage Reduction
#347 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/11/10 20:31:09
so, playing some nwn2... seems like the d20 games have some kind of flat damage reduction where, say you had 10 points of damage reduction, it would simply reduce all damage by 10.
if your attack does 10 or less damage, you basically don't do any.
it would be cool to implement something like this on a monster where the NG would be completely ineffective, as would shotguns of both types (you'd see the grey bullet puff particles instead of blood) but the SNG would work with reduced damage. it would also reduce the effectiveness of the LG since it's damage is delivered in a constant stream. over time, more damage would be reduced from the LG or SNG than from rockets which deliver large chunks of damage slowly.
Reduction
#348 posted by Preach [94.192.82.29] on 2009/11/13 12:19:09
One of the issues with flat damage reduction is that it makes rockets the far and away most efficient choice for tackling the target, when they are already the weapon of choice a great deal of the time. I suspect this is why the shambler takes reduced damage from explosions instead. The flat damage reduction could be used intentionally like that though, if you wanted to create a monster which prompts players to use up lots of rockets, in order to make a later horde combat more difficult. Like zombies, but without the ability to kill many at once.
One final technical issue you need to overcome is the part of the shotgun which combines several damage updates into a single hit. If all the pellets hit the same target, then you end up with 1 call to t_damage inflicting 24 damage, not 6 calls inflicting 4 each. Perhaps the best way to resolve that would be to add a third variable, multi_hitcount, which is incremented by 1 each time a hit builds up, and reset in all the right places. Your damage reduction code then needs to spot when that is non-zero, and reduce damage by reduction_factor * multi_hitcount.
If you wanted to create a monster which was resistant to low rates of damage, but more vulnerable to high tier weapons, you could employ limited, fast rate regeneration. An example monster could have 150hp, along with a pool of 400hp it could regenerate back up to that starting value. So it always dies after 550 hp of damage, but if you can deal damage faster than it regenerates, then you can kill it in much less.
At 60hp/s regeneration, 2 consecutive rockets or grenades kill it, and 6 cells should also do it in. But constant fire from the nailgun would take 5 seconds to take one down. The regeneration also means that you have to focus one down in order to kill it, the benefit of using a high tier weapon is lost if you allow it time to regenerate. Rockets lose some of their power against a group of these enemies, as most splash damage will be regenerated anyway.
The problem is that this is quite a complicated mechanism, and you might have to worry about player feedback. Otherwise they might get the impression that these monsters just have random amounts of health. If you encounter them with low tier weapons, you might feel you've learnt that these monsters have 500 hp, and then when they start dying to 2 rockets you'd end up confused. Would borrowing the health kit sound, or some recognisable variant of it, and playing it in pain animations be a good start?
#349 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/11/23 00:50:34
reading those comments about a worm that would consume someone from the inside out made me wish i had thought of this before:
it would have rocked if you could put a entity key on a voreling so that it would search for large corpses like ogres and shamblers near it when it's spawned.
it would move to them and go inside them and hide there so if you're backtracking through an area with a bunch of dead monsters, these things could burst out when you get near (with a nice little shower of blood and a squelching sound of course).
it could even periodically play a chewing sound like it's eating the organs and stuff in there.
Yeah
#350 posted by ijed [190.20.109.247] on 2009/11/23 01:55:45
We've got lots of plans for corpses.
In Quoth could cause problems with the corpse fade flag though.
Necros
#351 posted by nitin [203.202.43.54] on 2009/11/23 02:36:17
that is a tremendouis idea.
#352 posted by Zwiffle [97.87.57.94] on 2009/11/23 04:12:56
I had an idea for a monster a while back that was basically a maggot kind of thing that would crawl into an enemy corpse and start consuming it and then eventually pop its head off as it got bigger and would use the monster's body as its own.
Somewhat similar to how Resident Evil 4 and 5 had those centipede creatures pop out of a zombie's head if you shot it.
I'm Actually
#353 posted by Text_Fish [94.169.113.195] on 2009/11/23 20:42:43
working on a mod called AWESOME QUAKE and it pretty much contains all of the ideas shared in this thread already TBH.
Plus Helicopter-Ogres. You'll see ... you'll all see.
<-- Helicopter Blades
#354 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/11/23 20:59:13
i say: fuck yes, for helicopter ogres!
Well We Just Changed The Name
#355 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2009/11/23 21:22:28
To 'Better than Awesome Quake'.
Awesome Quake You Say?
#356 posted by meTch [69.183.59.241] on 2009/11/24 04:06:19
http://www.newgrounds.com/collecti...
relation ??
Awesome
#357 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2009/11/24 13:00:12
Res4 For The Win
#358 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2009/11/24 13:07:32
Killing Bones Gib.
#359 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/11/24 23:20:58
I'm betatesting my level and the funny thing arises I can't kill my monster by gibbing it.
It hadn't occured to me as I always shoot them to death, and then they're finished.
When I blast bones with my rocketlauncher its head keeps attacking me untill I'm killed.
Suddenly it has become untouchable.
Must have to do with the qc. Can't imagine bones read these posts.
Hmm
#360 posted by nonentity [87.113.187.110] on 2009/11/25 11:57:07
+1 for helicopter ogres.
For Zwiffle
#361 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/12/22 01:08:59
lets help a DarkYoung, not an Endboss, but well..,
http://members.home.nl/gimli/dark....
one go on its way.
#362 posted by meTch [69.183.58.210] on 2009/12/22 01:10:44
YES~!!!!!
How Bout A Yog Yothoth As A Last Boss
#363 posted by meTch [69.183.58.210] on 2009/12/22 01:14:09
even though i remember it being invisible but here is picture
http://www.3x6.net/vhoorl/wp-conte...
(cept i imagined it with feet sense it was trudging through the woods knocking down the trees and/or town)
..err I Ment That Yothoth To Be A Sothoth
#364 posted by meTch [69.183.58.210] on 2009/12/22 01:14:47
Kind Of Like
#365 posted by ijed [190.20.108.153] on 2009/12/22 01:36:38
The demon from early on in Princess Mononoke?
BOSS2: The Wizard
#366 posted by ijed [190.20.108.153] on 2009/12/22 02:13:15
Concept:
http://dougbot.com/forum/meatHoleD...
A real wizard, physically he's taller yet thinner than a Shambler.
A number of magical ranged attacks as well as summoning abilities and physical regeneration.
When the player first sees him he's seemingly dead, impaled on a lance jammed into the wall, on their approach he disimpales himself and uses his regenerative magic to recover from the wound.
Throughout the battle the player wears him down despite his regeneration until he resorts to destroying the floor, levitating himself around the arena. Heavy attacks can disrupt his concentration though, causing him to fall into the void revealed below.
#367 posted by Zwiffle [97.87.57.94] on 2009/12/22 02:14:06
That is clearly not Yog Sothoth, but instead is obviously the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/ev...
Zwiffle
#368 posted by ijed [190.20.108.153] on 2009/12/22 02:14:18
Check out the Trac ;)
Ijed
#369 posted by Zwiffle [97.87.57.94] on 2009/12/22 02:16:02
Oh yeah I'm a part of that. Totally slipped my mind!
Also, that wizard pic is pretty cool.
There's Some
#370 posted by ijed [190.20.108.153] on 2009/12/22 02:41:38
3d, though I don't want to post a shot of it - it's too squat and needs a structural rework.
Nice Concept...
#371 posted by metlslime [173.11.92.50] on 2009/12/22 02:45:48
seems very quakey except maybe for the tail...
Hm
#372 posted by ijed [190.20.108.153] on 2009/12/22 02:59:21
Well tails and tentacles don't get into games much, because they're difficult to animate, same for odd numbered legs on stuff.
(Kudos to Madfox for taking on the tripedal Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath)
The tail can stay or go I spose, but I quite like it, and animation in Quake is 8bit interpolated - assuming the engine supports it / it's turned on.
Used a Shuffler and Shambler for size reference, but the mesh got taller. But the references were a bit counterproductive as well since he ended up too stocky, like I mentioned.
func_messageboard_vote? Wouldn't override a team_remakequake_vote, but would be taken into consideration -
Tail or no tail?
Mainly thinking of the finnicky animation it'd need.
#373 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/12/22 03:21:51
i think the tail is a good idea. it stops the monsters from looking top-heavy from it's spindly legs.
i'd only be worried that vertex dancing may distort the extremely thin and mobile tail.
Ijed
#374 posted by meTch [69.183.58.210] on 2009/12/22 03:30:16
actually yes, kinda like that demon, accept with the wolfmothers teeth when she laughs in that one scene
#375 posted by ijed [190.20.108.153] on 2009/12/22 04:33:47
Good point, the tail is thin and ratlike, so a potential breaker is the .mdl format. If it breaks badly in testing we can remove it easily enough. Patience is a virtue and a curse.
Don't follow you there so much, meTch - Joker and the Thief? ;)
They All Look Awesome!
#376 posted by RickyT23 [86.23.53.24] on 2009/12/22 04:37:00
Madfox:
That will be awesome! Best monster yet, cant wait to see it with all of the frames of animation and some texturing :)
Ijed:
MeatHoleDemon looks proper scary. I think the tail gives it a very devilish look. Attacks could be a tricky one. Red fire perhaps? Wouldnt want it to looks cheesy :D Also that picture is very nice, who drew that?
Zwiffle/Metch:
That looks very sort of nightmareish. Kinda like a Cacodaemon with tentacles and no mouth. And bigger. So nothing like a Cacodaemon.
All concepts very quakey.
That Meatholedemon would make an OK boss, but I think it would be nice to see more than one of them in an episode. Like you say - a Shambler level enemy.
Man I wish I knew where to start with modeling.
Long Baddass Bossfights, Yes Please
#377 posted by grahf [76.104.21.196] on 2009/12/22 05:02:58
Throughout the battle the player wears him down despite his regeneration until he resorts to destroying the floor, levitating himself around the arena. Heavy attacks can disrupt his concentration though, causing him to fall into the void revealed below.
This sounds like a really proper intense bossfight. With different stages to drag things out a little bit.
I never liked how, in some games, you go "oh shit it's the boss, I better pull out my big guns" and then splat him against the wall in 10 seconds flat, because you used the big guns. Regeneration would avoid this problem I'm sure. ;)
#378 posted by necros [99.227.133.158] on 2009/12/22 07:36:53
well, doing the shambler thing where the 'big guns' are not that effective works too.
Yeah
#379 posted by ijed [190.20.65.117] on 2009/12/22 12:31:31
But phases are important, just complicated. PainKiller, with all the bosses it had was a good example of what to do / not to do. Like the Cthulhu type swamp monster which nobody understood.
A decent variety of attacks is important as well.
Painkiller Swamp Monster
#380 posted by nitin [203.217.83.246] on 2009/12/22 13:02:11
I remember getting really frustrated with that.
#381 posted by Zwiffle [66.170.5.18] on 2009/12/22 22:31:30
I think I might like some kind of room-sized boss that was basically growing on a ceiling and would pop out monsters in self defense while you just shot rockets at it or something. It could be above some kind of arena with lava or other traps that you would have to maneuver around while avoiding other monsters and trying to line up a shot.
I guess the weak points would be eyeballs or something on this giant ceiling-growth, I dunno. Seems like it would be fairly Shubbish.
Mantorok
#382 posted by ijed [190.20.65.117] on 2009/12/23 00:14:21
http://www.flyingomelette.com/oddi...
Which was a massibe blob with tentacles, covered in eyes and mouths, also impaled by magical pillars which bound it.
Similar to what we're planning for Shub, yeah. But that depends on the team.
Arkham Horror
#383 posted by grahf [76.104.21.196] on 2009/12/23 07:47:02
I really should write a bigger post about this sometime, but have you guys played (or heard of) Arkham Horror? It's this RPG-ish multiplayer board game where you fight tons of lovecraftian monsters spewing out of portals to other dimensions, controlled by elder gods. Tons of fun, and all the stars of the Lovecraft bestiary are there. Might be good inspiration for monsters I could figure out how to translate the experience to good ol' Quake.
Oh Yeah, Also This
#384 posted by grahf [76.104.21.196] on 2009/12/23 08:57:21
Crazy intense boss battle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uca...
Makes me wanna play some Hexen.
Messier Object
#385 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/12/24 07:40:27
http://members.home.nl/gimli/zork2...
Messiah Object?
#386 posted by nonentity [86.160.178.189] on 2009/12/24 12:19:32
Sweet
#387 posted by meTch [69.183.58.210] on 2009/12/24 14:08:41
but im having trouble imaging it walking, it doesn't have legs like the shalrath with the knees bent out
Right
#388 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.80] on 2009/12/24 19:50:58
The legs indeed stand indsside out.
I don't know what it is.., making a fast chalk of the model goes fine, as soon as I try my best it ends up in verticemeshes.
Would Be Cool To See Walk And Run Animations For This.
#389 posted by RickyT23 [86.27.58.193] on 2009/12/25 05:27:27
It does look like it has three legs from where I am sitting.
You could have aggressive flailing of arms, Aggresive waving of tenticles, and running towards player; perhaps casting a spell with adifferent motion......
Happy Xmass
#390 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2009/12/26 03:41:33
I know, only the tentacle screw is hard to tend, because of the oppertunity to make them wail without getting crossed.
Also my usual three leg walk is a bit hard to lay hands on as I mostly experience this on drunk feet.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/zork4...
Heh
#391 posted by ijed [190.20.117.165] on 2009/12/27 15:39:59
So that's how you're figuring it out :)
Antlion
#392 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2010/01/05 11:25:34
Convertion of the antlion to Quake1.
Rather a heavy model as it takes 1050verts / 2361tris.
Sad I have only the standpose with skin, so to make it worthwhile it needs a decent base frame.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/AntLi...
The original skintex is 256x256, as doom files.
And that was also much work to get in Qml 199 x 300.
I've been trying with odd shapes of the baseframe, but it only gives vertice loss.
Skinned
#393 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2010/01/05 11:36:40
http://members.home.nl/gimli/AntLi...
Nice
#394 posted by ijed [216.241.20.2] on 2010/01/05 14:38:50
#395 posted by roblot [216.106.107.17] on 2010/01/05 20:30:32
That Antlion is Excellent !
RE: Boss Discussion
#396 posted by Text_Fish [94.169.113.195] on 2010/01/05 21:34:16
It has come to my conclusion following the response to A Roman Wilderness of Pain that it's best to just not have boss monsters at all. Personally I loved the end battle because it was immensely challenging and took me several goes to figure out, which is exactly what a boss battle SHOULD do. The whole idea of a boss is that the player has to figure out how to use all of the tools that he's been supplied with to engage in a battle that's probably five or ten times harder than anything that's come before. Tronyn's boss battle did just that -- had I not used the grappling hook to evade danger spots I would never have been able to recoup the ammo or gain the cover required to take out the final boss and win the game. Another crucial part of the strategy which I only figured out after two or three deaths was to conserve the Tome of Power until after I had activated most of the Boss moments, which thanks to the grappling hook was still reachable. To me, that's everything a boss battle should be. It required a very small amount of trial and error, but that only intensified the feeling of satisfaction at the end.
I think a lot of people are far too quick to turn on God mode as soon as they encounter a tricky situation that they don't immediately recognize, which is a shame.
There's a lot to be said for finishing an episode with an interesting or different combination of regular monsters, as it challenges those who enjoy being challenged but also doesn't scare off the people who don't.
Imho
#397 posted by megaman [94.221.118.121] on 2010/01/05 23:20:42
I think I'm repeating myself: Bosses should just provide peaks in difficulty and at most require mild variations of normal gameplay patterns. I hate when i have to figure out stuff specific to the boss battle. I love when there's several strategies to chose from and you can try to find the best. That doesn't work if there's only one that works and all other fail, though.
Recently played through metroid prime, and the boss fights kept pissing me off (mostly controls related "what buttons do I need to press in what moments to survive!?" moments though).
Good examples are the descent 1/2 bosses (except the final d2 boss, which you had to shoot in the back to kill). They have special powers like robot generation, invisibility, homing missiles, etc., but all those features also exist on other, normal robots, so there's nothing to figure out than the best way to do the most damage without getting hit.
#398 posted by metlslime [173.11.92.50] on 2010/01/05 23:53:59
I agree somewhat with megaman above, but I take more of a middle stance: Boss fights should reuse and extend game mechanics that have already been established, true, but they should also be interesting and can have some puzzling elements to them. Puzzles fail when they are not foreshadowed by previous gameplay.
I think the chthon and shub bosses were good, the main problem is the game mechanics they rely on were never properly established beforehand.
However chthon was not that bad, players are already trained to look for buttons and see what they do. I think the main problem with chthon was that you can't immediately tell that he's invincible, because you will probably attack with rockets, which don't spawn blood even when they do damage. If i was attacking him with a shotgun or nailgun, it would have been much easier.... perhaps the rockets should have actually bounced off him, to make it clear.
Shub was harder because 1. telefragging is never introduced before that point, 2. the spikey ball's behavior is never introduced before that point, and 3. shub bleeds, implying that you can kill her with weapons.
#399 posted by gb [89.27.224.216] on 2010/01/06 01:27:15
I like the Doom 3 boss battles. I'm probably dumb.
The seeker thing wasn't established before, and it seemed a bit ... "let's make this a novelty", but you are told what to do.
I like bosses like Sarge.
I like minibosses, too.
The Arwop boss battle was well thought out, I have nothing against the mechanics used. It was just over the top. In my opinion.
Shields
#400 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2010/01/17 04:32:07
Would it be a hard qc nut to refleckt the dmg of a shield back to the player, meanwhile protecting the monster?
And Horns
#401 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2010/01/17 04:32:25
http://members.home.nl/gimli/hogre...
That Shield Is
#402 posted by RickyT23 [86.27.38.238] on 2010/01/17 04:33:51
AWESOME!!! :D
That Looks Pretty Good
#403 posted by nitin [203.217.65.141] on 2010/01/17 04:43:49
a melee ogre only.
Fresh Flesh...
#404 posted by JPL [82.234.167.238] on 2010/01/17 09:33:38
... for a massacre :D
Umm.
#405 posted by onetruepurple [89.75.203.25] on 2010/01/17 12:55:17
a melee ogre only.
http://shub-hub.com/files/images/o... ?
Where's My Throwing Axes...
#406 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2010/01/17 17:50:56
The shield is from Dissolution of Eternity.
Seeing that double chainsaw makes me want slippery oil floors!
Blocking incoming damage is one shield purpose.
Aiming the ame damage back to the player are two.
I think it has much to do with arguementing all weapons again.
Ogres Are Party Animals
#407 posted by ijed [190.20.113.246] on 2010/01/17 18:08:53
Unfortunately the gif that someone (Lunaran?) posted a while back I have saved on another machine . . .
On Reflection
#408 posted by Preach [94.169.109.218] on 2010/01/17 21:15:02
Reflecting attacks is one of those things that's difficult to do in a "nicely coded" way. You can't deal with projectiles in the same way as you do traceline attacks. That breaks it into two cases, which is managable. However, my instinct would be to reduce damage from player attacks so that a reflected player grenade was no more damaging than a regular ogre grenade. This pretty quickly leads you to adding a little bit of code to each of the player attacks. Although that's not too much work, the problem is every time you need to change something, you have to make 6 or 7 identical changes all over the code. Just imagine how hard it would be to get monster attacks reflected too!
I'll try and describe all the things I'd do to get regular nails reflected correctly, which would probably be enough to get any other projectiles working. If you've understood all of the nails code, you can probably go on to do shotguns and lightning too.
So the most important bit of maths we need to do is to calculate the angle that things reflect at. We could just have the ogre send all attacks directly at the player, but not only does that make it highly dangerous, but a little bit dull to watch. I want to see a storm of nails ricochet everywhere when I spray the ogre. So we imagine that the ogre presents a sphere that the nail has collided against, centred on the origin of the ogre, and that we use the standard law of reflection:
R = 2(I.N)N - I
where R is the velocity the nail leaves with, I is the velocity it arrives with, and N is the surface normal. We find the surface normal by normalising the difference between the point of impact and the origin of the ogre. In qc this will look like:
//REFLECT CODE BEGINS
local vector I,N;
I = self.velocity;
N = normalize(self.origin - other.origin);
self.velocity = 2*(N*I)*N - I;
The next question is where to inject this code, and when to run it. I think the easiest way is to isolate the points where you are about to call t_damage, and reflect instead. So we need to modify spike_touch, within the block
if (other.takedamage)
{
}
In there, we detect if we have hit an ogre with a shield with something like
if(other.classname == "monster_ogre_melee")
{
//all of our new reflection code goes here
}
else
{
//all of the original code goes here
}
The new reflection code starts with the bit of vector maths described above(//REFLECT CODE BEGINS). We do need to think about a few other things though. We need to add self.owner = other; so that the nail will collide with the player, and not the ogre. We need to set self.touch = spike_touch_reflected, where spike_touch_reflected is a new touch function which does reduced damage - say 4 per hit. We might want to add a sound showing that the shot got reflected. We need to return; at the end, so that we don't remove the entity.
Join us for post two where I post less practical things, and instead just some possible designs...
Clever
#409 posted by ijed [190.20.113.246] on 2010/01/17 21:45:07
looking forward to post 2 :)
Blocking Filler
#410 posted by Preach [94.169.109.218] on 2010/01/17 22:18:45
Ok, so the first post was how to make projectile reflect, but I've got one bigger idea, which I'll talk about after a few one line thoughts:
• When reflecting a lightning bolt, make sure that the entire length of the bolt does not exceed 600 units. Where the original attack sends out a trace of length 600, the reflection should be 600 * (1 - trace_fraction) in length.
• If you don't add any other visual reflection effect, you ought to add impact effects for shotgun attacks, as there's no visible trace.
• There's a risk that the shield ogre will end up infighting a great deal when reflecting projectiles, so it might be worth inserting an exception for them initiating an fight. Especially useful if you don't implement reflecting monster attacks, as infighting might expose that.
• When it comes to the axe you could have the shield only parry, rather than reverse the damage.
So far, we have created a monster which is almost impervious to damage and can turn our own attacks against us to boot(splash damage from rockets and grenades will probably still kill them unless you were really thorough). So maybe it's time to put back some vulnerability, while also giving it some reaction animation which could build into interesting play dynamics.
What I have in mind is twofold: firstly adding a short "blocking" animation which triggers when a projectile gets reflected - or even better multiple interchangeable animations to provide variety. Each one would only have to be 3 or 4 frames long, starting with the shield held centrally in a defensive stance, and then a quick transition back to the default combat pose.
While taking rocket or shotgun fire, the ogre would play the animation in full, showing it deflect a single shot and then have it take a step forward before the next attack. Continuous attacks would leave the ogre unable to advance. Here, having multiple block animations would be valuable here so that it does continue to animate while under nail fire, moving from the first frame in one block animation to the next as if reacting to block each nail.
So that puts some kind of trade off on having the shield - you can't move while using it. If you were extremely clever in how you designed your animations (coupled with similarly careful code to back them up), you could make an ogre that slowly advanced even while blocking nail fire. Cool as it sounds, I'm not sure the effort expended to make it work would pay off, as the player would rarely see it happen - you've just reduced the effectiveness of the already weak tactic of expending nails to pin the ogre down.
The second part of the twofold plan is thus: once you have a blocking animation - don't block all of the time! Make it so that the blocking animation is not allowed to interrupt certain other animations. This way the player has a means to defeat the ogre - lure it into letting the guard down, and then hitting it.
So what animations do we select. Preventing them from interrupting pain animations seems wise - they're meant to be involuntary. Making melee attacks uninterruptable sounds sensible too, from the point of view of creating a smooth animation as well as a risk/reward trade off - the ogre only becomes vulnerable to damage once you've let them get close enough to attack you back!
I'd also make idle animations uninterruptable - the reasoning being that the ogre won't block attacks that they aren't expecting. This also gives you a kind of justification for not blocking other monsters' attacks - that kind of backstabbing doesn't cross the ogre's mind. it certainly gives you a large combat advantage if you can sneak up on one - between the idle and the pain animation you can probably get two attacks in before blocking comes back up!
I can think of one other way the ogre could give up blocking - if it chooses to! You might decide to write some sophisticated ai whereby the ogre decides "I've been pinned down by nail fire for long enough - I'm just going to make a charge for a second or so before I block again". The trick would be to make that decision process smart enough to be distinguishable from the ogre just forgetting to block due to really bad ai if you keep shooting them long enough - that quote about how hard it is to make enemies appear smart in the 3 seconds before they die springs to mind...
I've written more than I expected to, next post...
Keep Going
#411 posted by ijed [190.20.113.246] on 2010/01/17 22:29:51
Block Party
#412 posted by Preach [94.169.109.218] on 2010/01/17 22:39:22
As I was about to say, technical details on how I'd handle this:
I presented the two ideas together because they both interact, and because they can both be handled by the same system. We go back to the line
if(other.classname == "monster_ogre_melee")
and change it to
if(BlockOnRequest(other))
This is calling a new function, which does two things. It checks if the other is able to block (so if it's a monster_ogre_melee and has the opportunity to shield) and returns false if not. Otherwise, it triggers a random block animation on the monster, and returns true. So it would look something like
float (entity bearer) BlockOnRequest =
{
local entity oself
if(bearer.classname == "monster_ogre_melee")
return FALSE;
if(bearer.guarded = FALSE)
return FALSE;
oself = self;
self = bearer;
//select a random block animation and play it here
self = oself;
return TRUE;
}
The part crucial to the second idea (some animations don't block) is the new field we have added: .guarded. This field is set to TRUE if the ogre is ready to block a shot, and FALSE if not. In the monster_ogre_melee spawn function, we need to set it to FALSE (to prevent mappers turning it on and allowing idle ogres to block!). Then at the start of the run animation sequence, we need to set it to TRUE. At the start of a pain or melee attack animation, we set it to FALSE. We can set it back to TRUE towards the end of the attack/pain, or simply wait until we jump to the first running frame, which will activate it then. It should suffice to change it at the start of each sequence, rather than every frame, unless you have some animations which jump to run4 or the like.
And that should wrap things up. Once you get to that stage the monster should be playable, so the fun part of creating interesting behaviour starts. One way of creating that ai behaviour where the ogre eventually tires of blocking shots and charges for a bit would be to have blocking as a scalar quantity rather than a boolean value. Hitting the start of the run animation increments the .guarded value, while blocking an attack reduces .guarded to min(10, .guarded - 1). If .guarded drops below zero because of that, set it to (say) -3. Then make it so the BlockOnRequest tests bearer.guarded <= 0 . Pain and attack animations should reset .guarded to a reasonable positive value at the end.
Even without that, you should have an unusual melee monster once the player gets to grips with them. I'd love it if they had some kind of charging ability, dangerous enough to give the player real incentive to shoot them and force them to block. That might be making them a bit too complex though, it's easy to overwork a monster when you post 17 paragraphs of text...
One Or Two More Things
#413 posted by Preach [94.169.109.218] on 2010/01/17 22:50:14
I was going to mention something about co-op behaviour in the paragraph where unaware monsters don't block attacks. If you have fixed monsters constantly switching enemies when attacked by two co-op players(that old exploit), you could make it so that the ogre only blocks attacks from self.enemy. As long as you pass the attacker as a parameter to BlockOnRequest, it's a easy check to make there. This would make them much easier to kill in coop though.
The other thing I just though of leaves an exercise for anyone who spent half an hour reading all that guff: What would happen if you set .guarded to FALSE for the first two frames during a block animation? Is that likely to improve gameplay given the current method of reflection?
Typo
#414 posted by Preach [94.169.109.218] on 2010/01/17 22:51:34
if(bearer.classname == "monster_ogre_melee")
return FALSE;
should read
if(bearer.classname != "monster_ogre_melee")
return FALSE;
But you all saw that, right?
I Look
#415 posted by ijed [190.20.113.246] on 2010/01/17 23:37:34
At this from more of a design POV, and the most intersting bit of the posts for me is the idea of the Ogre getting angry and bored blocking all the time.
I love putting in lots of logic to monster functions, of which the player only registers a tiny percentage, where the above would fall neatly.
It makes me think of the Ogre getting pissed off enough to do a running charge with the sheild (still blocking) kind of like a L4D2 Charger.
I need to stop playing that game - its affecting my thinking too much.
AI That's Worth Writing
#416 posted by Preach [94.169.109.218] on 2010/01/18 02:03:41
(I was kind of thinking charger too...)
For a while now I've had some idea about what is and is not, in my opinion, "good" AI, and this post is me trying to put that into words. I think there are three desirable properties for AI design, which I try to apply when designing and coding. Maybe "not worth writing" is too strong a term for things that don't meet them, but if you've got limited resources then they can guide you on what to focus on. They are:
• Useful
• Visible
• Effective
Useful
This means that pretty much any player will see the behaviour after enough encounters. Either that means it has to arise in combat naturally, or it is something that a mapper can highlight by setting up combat in such a way that the behaviour is seen. Writing AI which 99% of people will never see is time that could have been spent better.
Visible
The player has to be able to recognise what monster is doin. The example of AI that isn't visible which I always pick on is the ability of some half-life monsters to track you by scent. It's almost impossible for the player to see the difference between this and the ability of quake monsters to always know where you are. The latter is miles simpler to program, of course.
Effective
The behaviour should change how combat between the player and monster unfolds. Effective doesn't have to mean that it makes the monster harder to kill. Making it so that the shield ogre won't interrupt melee attacks to block projectiles makes it vulnerable to attacks other than splash damage. This makes it much easier to fight, and also opens up a whole second kind of combat with them.
I know that they aren't entirely orthogonal concepts as written, but that's the closest I've come to describing them. They were things I was thinking about in the part of the post about the ogre choosing not to shield any more, and how the charge idea related to that.
Firstly, in order for unshielding to be useful, there needs to be some reason for the player to be spamming nails at the ogre in the first place. As a player, once I've worked out that it reflects everything I fire at it, I'm not going to waste nails doing that without some compelling reason. The ability to hold it at bay by firing isn't very helpful if I need it to be in melee range before I can hurt it. The charge attack was an idea for a threat it might pose which could make the player apply suppressive fire, and so make the behaviour useful.
The charge ability was also helpful because it could make the decision to unshield visible, if the ogre always launched into a charge as they drop the shield. You'd have to take care that reusing the charge idea didn't backfire - if the ogre will charge anyway, is suppressive fire going to remain a useful tactic? At least it's clear that this AI behaviour is effective, because once the decision is made, the ogre changes from invulnerable and static to vulnerable and moving, and the player will have to react to that.
By this point, it feels a lot like theorycraft, and even if you think you've satisfied all three in theory, you can find an ability doesn't work at all in practice*. But my feeling is that unshielding would probably fail as a useful behaviour. Once players figure out the deal with the shield, they won't ever find the need to fire at them for that amount of time, the benefit if any exists is too marginal to spend 10 nails on. So I would have to weight the effort of writing that code in order to experiment with it against the chance of it ever being seen outside my own testing.
* This happened 5-6 times with the Sentinel in Quoth, that thing was a nightmare...
Hey That's Terrific!
#417 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2010/01/18 14:17:04
That's more assambly on my plate then I can hatch, but I asked for it.
Not sure if I can understand it at once, but there's a clue how to estimate the given question.
I'm not good with maths, and the only reason I'm still reading is that I feel there could be a logical scripting to make the monster do what it need.
Hadn't expect that reaktion, but when I remade the Zdoom monsters I already had this feeling quake monsters could be made better.
The animation frames for shielding are already there.
Now screwing that .scr to unknown puntuation.
grmrpf...
Thanks Preach
#418 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2010/03/11 00:14:20
I tried your code of 408, much further I can't follow due to errors. If I place it just after void()spike_touch in WEAPONS.QC the compiler keeps asking for a definition of the spike_touch_reflected.
.float hit_z;
void() spike_touch =
{
local float rand;
if (other == self.owner)
return;
if (other.solid == SOLID_TRIGGER)
return; // trigger field, do nothing
if (pointcontents(self.origin) == CONTENT_SKY)
{
remove(self);
return;
}
// hit something that bleeds
if (other.takedamage)
{
spawn_touchblood (9);
T_Damage (other, self, self.owner, 9);
}
if(other.classname == "monster_ogre_melee")
{
// all of our new reflection code goes here
local vector I,N;
I = self.velocity;
N = normalize(self.origin - other.origin);
self.velocity = 2*(N*I)*N - I;
self.owner = other;
self.touch = spike_touch_reflected;
return;
// all of our new reflection code end here
}
else
{
So I tried something like
void(vector org, vector dir) spike_touch_reflected =
{
if (other.takedamage)
{
spawn_touchblood (9);
T_Damage (other, self, self.owner, 5);
}
newmis = spawn ();
newmis.owner = other;
newmis.movetype = MOVETYPE_FLYMISSILE;
newmis.solid = SOLID_BBOX;
newmis.angles = vectoangles(dir);
newmis.touch = spike_touch_reflected;
newmis.classname = "spike";
newmis.think = SUB_Remove;
newmis.nextthink = time + 6;
setmodel (newmis, "progs/spike.mdl");
setsize (newmis, VEC_ORIGIN, VEC_ORIGIN);
setorigin (newmis, org);
newmis.velocity = dir * 1000;
};
And then the compiler gives no error, only me.
^v^
Spike_touch
#419 posted by MadFox [84.26.170.230] on 2010/03/24 02:41:46
It was worth reading.
Really don't have a clue where to start now.
I keep trying to find a right scripture, but if I wonder where my reflected spike has gone.
Preach's
#420 posted by ijed [190.20.68.103] on 2010/03/24 03:02:10
Posts are like classes in Qc.
Rinie, try adding ¬print's to everything - so when an attack deflects the console says "attack deflected" and then for every other stage "attack hit somethin" and so on.
Its the only way to know for sure what's going on.

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