Small Mod compilation

[talisa]

@seven
yes thats exactly what i meant, to have the same options for dust as for the custom health models with in which map-types it appears.


i personally kinda like the flames on the base of that reiver monster!
i think you should keep them! or perhaps some fog-ish effect could be nice too!
oh oh oh... or what about trying to make an effect like this floating hellknight has:


and i noticed the 'raising from ground' animation in the clip which shows of the animations,
you should definitely add that it will sometimes be invisible at first and when player gets close itll come out of the ground,
that should add some fun random surprises

i like the idea of leeching life from player! it would be neat if the monster itself would actually gain health from this,
and fighting it could be more of a struggle cuz the monster will gain health back after being damaged by leeching the player

[MadGypsy]

I think there should be a better 4 legged beast. The dog is not scary or challenging. Like maybe a zombie lion or something would be better. I think I saw a free lion on game banana, it would need to be retextured and rigged but I guess that's better than starting from scratch.

[Seven]

Hello,

I am currently experimenting with some improved view-weapon techniques.
Including real idle animations, shooting animations and animations connecting between shooting and fall-back to idle, so that it looks as fluent/real as possible. Beeing a great Hexen fan I chose veirdo´s amazing mage weapon model as base for my testings.

Furthermore new sounds for idle+shooting animations, new textures, shaders and models had been necessary.
You can switch between lightning gun and mage weapon via cvar (as both use the same ammo type, do the same damage and so on).


Disclaimer:
This small project was more or less intended to gain experience in coding and assets work, rather than beeing a really serious one. As the Hexen weapons of course do not fit into Quake !!!
But nevertheless, I will leave it in the mod, in case someone wants to try it or use it.
(If you watch the clip closely, you will see several hints about its seriousness)

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAbeBPHLd1M&list=UUbX7uVIXqMzBza0YmLJuMdw]Quake weapon switch test Hexen - YouTube[/ame]



=======================



On other news, I implemented 3 new monsters now. The flying reiver as well as 2 other walking ones (more informations will follow soon). The reiver will be the most complex one, as he uses some new techniques to hunt down the player
One monster is done 90%, the other around 75%, while the reiver still needs time (around 50%).
The other things which had been requested the last weeks in this thread are already implemented.


Best regards.

[Mr.Burns]

Yet another excellent idea. I've never played hexen, but (were it possible) I would use this even in vanilla quake as an occasional replacement for the LG just to keep Quake "fresh" and interesting.

Keep up the great work old friend

Kind regards

Monty

[gdiddy62]

I think the hands and lightning is an awesome idea Seven! May I make a small observation please? The lightning should originate from the ball of energy in the hand. In this obvious test it is originating it seems from the body. Maybe something to consider in the final version? I still love the effect regardless.
You and your coding skills and monster ideas never cease to amaze my friend! Thank you for your work!

Best wishes!

[nahuel]

The lightning should originate from the ball of energy in the hand. In this obvious test it is originating it seems from the body. Maybe something to consider in the final version?
Best wishes!

Seven this issue is very easy to fix;

1- spawn a new entity -i use an empty md3 model with just a tag, but maybe you can use a null model- with the viewmodelforclient flag, after you need to locate it in the -first view- place where the blue ball of power is,
2- with gettagindex and gettaginfo you can get the vector for the origin of the lightning

[Seven]

Hello,

There are 2 reasons why this might not work as intended (A) Visual and (B) Technical:

A) The 'thickness/width' of the lightning is too big to really make the impression that it comes from the ball. If I would make it as slim as the ball, it will not be visible in around 100 Quake units anymore (as it gets smaller the further away). I spend quite an amount of time to get the new lightning model look *ok-ish*. Biggest problem was the exact same point (how big shall it be). If it would start from the balls origin, it would approx. cover both hands (left to right).

B) I am using TE_LIGHTNING2 for the mages lightning. I do this because DP (as well as all other engines) use a trick to always stick the bolts origin to the players origin (and thereby center of view). You can deactivate this "trick" in DP via: cl_beams_quakepositionhack 0. I do not know if other engines allow to "un-glue" the origin of TE_LIGHTNING2 from players origin, but the result is: When strafing, the lightning bolt will not match the "guns mouth" (= players center) anymore. It will almost touch the borders of your screen when straing left-right-left.
The unfair thing about this "trick" is, that the engine will not follow qc anymore for TE_LIGHTNING2. If I add this little line, that will move the origin from players origin forward: org = org + (v_forward * 30); It gets ignored by the engine (all engines, even FTE), as they all use this "trick".
When disabling the "trick" via: cl_beams_quakepositionhack 0, the bolt follows qc again and its origin is always in front of the player (approx. where the mages ball is). Hurray! But, as mentioned above it will result in bad visual when strafing.

If I would not spawn it with TE_LIGHTNING2, but with a regular spawn function, the behaviour is similar. Even when using a very small frequency, like 0.01 or smaller, the origin will jump from left to right when strafing. As the players movement is much too quick to be able to keep up-to-speed with the spawned bolts.
I think that is the reason why the Quake engines simply had to do this "trick" to always glue the bolt origin to players origin. But unfortunately they do not follow qc (mod) which moves the origin forward. It will always be spawned from players origin. How sad.

I guess Spike would be able to explain more about the TE_LIGHTNING2 "trick" of Quake engines.

By the way, the other TE_LIGHTNINGx users (shambler and chton) do not have this issue as they are standing still, hehe. So their origin do not move like the players.


But I will try what I can to make the visual as convincing as possible.
Maybe with a loooong bolt model which has several frames (for the lightning effect), which will be spawned via viewmodelforclient. So it will follow the player exactly. That would work I guess...

Thank you very much for your feedback.

Best wishes.

[Spike]

frankly, this is a job for csqc.
incidentilly, good luck with prediction. :s

[Seven]

Hello Spike,

Just as I thought/feared, the TE_LIGHTNING2 cannot be edited/modified via simple qc (doesnt matter where or how 'org' is defined, the engine will ignore it) wich is sad. Thank you for the confirmation.

But I just borrowed the third trail function from Rogue: TE_BEAM (which uses float TE_BEAM = 13; ) So I have at least the possibility to use a dedicated beam model for the custom lightning and do not need to interfere with Quakes originals. Hurrray.

Each day one tiny little step forward.

[JDSTONE]

hear are some ideas that came to me when i was floating around in the clouds...

what do you think of afrit getting a ram attack and a scratching attack? i think it would be cool to see him fly at the player and give him a big push back and then ripping your face off...

killing the wizard he just kinda falls flat maybe you could do something in qc where he would do a little spin and or flip when he falls. some times to the right sometimes to the left sometimes a back flip...

also i would love to see more monsters with the burn animation. the knights would be on the top of that list. it could be a good place to use the on one knee frames before he fall to his death.

these are all just ideas use what you think would be good. best luck with the lighting gun i like the "shambler lighting hands" kind of idea i hope it sticks!

[Seven]

Hello,

Last night I dreamed about how to proceed with this lightning issue and I woke up with a sweaty shirt
The solution is so simple that you do not think about it:
Simply move the models origin backwards (away from the model in an editor).

The engine will still spawn the model from players origin, but the offset is now matching the spawning point exactly (where the ball is). TE_LIGHTNING2 / TE_BEAM will still spawn the model in extremely various angles so that there is no negative side effect. Other than that there is no visual change.
No client side modification was necessary this time.

I did not want to record a new clip, I think screenshots will be enough here:

old model / new model



Thank you again Jeff for mentioning this issue in first place !
It is always a good idea to fix issues before the release...



================================


But now lets leave Hexen where it is and go back to Quake !!


Hello Josh,

Thank you very much for your new ideas. Yes, sometimes it makes sense to fly around in the clouds

1.) Scratching attack for Afrit
The Afrit is a ranged-only enemy, BUT the new Reiver will have multi-attack-abilities (and defend abilities, but that is still a secret...). Here are some screenshots of his melee attacks in action:
left hand:

right hand:


2.) Wizard´s death animation
Every change wich is related to monster frames is delicate, as you know there are so many replacements available. And the smc shall work with all. So, calling frames which are only available for one (or some) models can result in unexpected visuals for others. Even when adding them at the end of the original frames.

3.) Knights burning death animation
Yes, I get the idea. This will sure look interesting. Thank you.


You maybe remember the other idea you mentioned several weeks ago:
Add random player audio taunts when gibbing monsters (like the evil laugh I sometimes use in the youtube clips).
I grabbed the idea and extended it a little bit. I added a "bodycounter" and a "gibbed-monsters-counter". If you manage to kill/gib an adjustable amount of monsters (lets say 3) per an adjustable time (lets say 1 second) the player (you) will randomly make audio taunts.

This can be really funny


Thank you for your always good ideas.

Best wishes.

[PrimalLove]

@ Seven

Nice work! Creative! And yet so simple. Things like this come to me in my sleep too! Cheers!

[gdiddy62]

Awesome news Seven!! Keep the excellence coming my friend!!

[jakub1]

hi seven, reiver looks cool. my only problem si that he (or she?) is too colorful and shiny for the rusty and decayed quake universe. in my mind reiver should be hideous ugly monster. something like flying zombie torso with blood dripping from it. i can't help myself, but right now he looks like he's smiling :-)
-
anyway.. keep them comin'
-
jakub

[Seven]

Hello jakub !

I am very happy that you still find the time to visit quake sites now and then.
I hope you are doing well and will soon come back to modding

Thank you for your comment. Yes I think you are right, especially the plates on his shoulders and his helmet are very colorful, the rest fits good. Fortunately even my free Paint.NET has these "Saturation" and "Hue" sliders, which can do magic with colors. I will play around with it and see if I can do something about it.
I am sure that you will like the other 2 monsters more, as their main colors are brownish.

Regarding the smiling, I think you will forget about this quickly when meeting him in-game. He is a nasty and strong minion with evil attacks. Better take him down quickly... before he will laugh at your grave


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Dear all,

JDStoner and I had a small conversation recently and he mentioned the skull model in that overcrowded start map of my youtube clips. He had an excellent idea with it !
Why not make it a new walltorch model ?!

Knowing that his wife is an artist, I know now why he always has these great ideas

So I reworked it, and brought it into the shape that it fits to smc´s "tilted & oriented torches" feature, which is available since V5.0

I want to share it with you, if you are interested. You only need to put it into your smc mod folder and it will be used in-game as wall-torches. Below are some screenshots. I personally like the idea very much. Thanks again Josh !

These are the cvars you want to edit:

torch_tilted_angle 0
torch_tilted_newmodel 3

The rest of the "torch_tilted_" cvar family must be kept at their default settings.


Have fun with a new fascinating/evil wall decoration.

Best wishes.


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