Small Mod compilation

[webangel]

What gdiddy said:


smc

Gypsy is correct, SMC is not a dead horse at all. I like the ideas. I'm glad to see you excited again about working on Quake and the SMC!!!!!

[talisa]

i like the idea for the enforcer, it reminds me a lot of the hyper-enforcer from travail,
which also has a shield it will throw up upon being hit which temporarily shields it from being hit.

i like the idea of giving the enforcer a shield and make him less of a push-over.

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the shalrath idea is cool, i really like that, it reminds me of a map which also had shalraths that walked on ceilings.
couldnt this be achieved by simply turning the entity in its entirety upside-down using self.angles and changing the hitbox-size accordingly?
if you do that it would work regardless of which model is used, as the entity itself as a whole would be flipped 180 degrees instead of using custom animations

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the fiend motion-blur thing is also cool, that he jumps so fast his movements become a blur to the player. i like that idea!

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also looking forward to even more cool new monsters!
especially the reiver, he'll be a great addition to the flying enemies of quake and his attacks sound very intersting

[JDSTONE]

I Love the tracers on the demon! the whole list sounds good and would be a fun add. the Ogre is by far the best monster in quake it would be a outstanding add to bring more life to him.

[Seven]

Hello and Thank you,

If the particles, added to a moving + animating entity, should always be at the same spot of the bbox (which is seldom the case), DP_ENT_TRAILEFFECTNUM is a good option for a single player mod. In other cases DP_SV_POINTPARTICLES must usually be used to somehow manage to match the real models shape and position. Examples of both are available in many places in this mod. The mentioned ogre ones are examples for the latter.
Anyhow, i will only match the original ogre.mdl. I made the decision because it is also the only ogre model in the 'Starter Kit', because for me its animations are better than existing replacement ogres. User of others will most probably have to disable these particle effects or edit them themselves. Those are only slight coordinate edits, so everybody will be able to do it. I do not see a possibility to cover all existing combinations due to the multimodel feature of the smc.

For the motion blur / tracers: They are not so good visible from the exact front. I played around with them and found that slowly enlarging/scaling the "trail" is helping a lot. Also their direct dependency for the entities velocity direction is helping as it "swings" up and down then and makes it better visible from the front.
I tried this effect for the tarbaby and it doesn´t look that good, as it is jumping in a chaotic way bouncing off walls and thereby changing its movement a lot.
Didn´t try it for the underwater monsters (fish + hydra) yet. I think a slightly reduced/adjusted effect would look good on them. Any opinions about it ?

The enforcers power shield is almost done and I would like to ask interested people´s opinions. Also concerning the default values for lifetime and appearance chance.

I would like to hand out more betas this time if there are any volunteer testers.

Best regards.

[JDSTONE]

Maybe try the motion blur / tracers on the wizard he moves side to side a lot and i think it may look good. i think this effect will go good with phyco 1 (i think the effect is called) and the skull that pops out of the wall. my time is limited but if you would like me to play the beta i would be happy to however if your looking for a super fast feedback i may not be the best tester at this time.

[Seven]

Hello,

I just wanted to show the current progress of the things I am working on for Ver.5.20

1.) Enforcers protection shield/spehre
This feature is finished. This is the AI:
- Enforcer can activate it when he feels to (without external intervention) when hunting an enemy.
- It also activates randomly when Enforcer is getting shot / takes damage
- It protects him from all projectiles (also explosives and grenades)
- Lifetime and randomness factor are adjustable via cvars





2.) Demons fast jump/movement tails
This feature is finished.
Compared to the concept video clip I posted some days ago, I changed its shape and appearance. It is now much better visible from the front (when he jumps at the player).
This feature is one of my favorites. Especially when played with reatlime lighting in dark areas. And Quake HAS many dark areas
It makes the Demon a really spooky opponent. I tried to catch some screenshots, but better see it in-game...

Please click on the thumbnails to see the screen in bigger sizes with more details




3.) Shalrath jumpings and hanging on ceilings
This feature is finished.
I could find a way to do it without additional model frames. Tested and developed with original shalrath model. I could make use of several existing frames to make the jumping believable. The original model has wonderful animations. But I also tested it with Obi-Wans shalrath model and could find a good compromise of frames.
I used Nehahras code to begin with but there were many issues for conversion. Nehahras shalrath is also sliding a lot across uneven ceilings, which I could eliminate. Also the shaking/trembling from nehahras shalraths when hanging on ceilings is gone.
I definitely spent most of my time for this feature. Also added more AI to the code so that the shalrath will go back down if the enemy is too long out of sight. That prevents map-specific issues. It is a really fun feature. It is well adjustable with cvars.

Please click on the thumbnails to see the screen in bigger sizes with more details


I will most definitely also add this for the spider monsters in the "small mod compilation". And add an extra option, that they will randomly hang on ceilings when the map starts. That gives a much bigger suprise affect for the player, when they attack from above


Have a nice weekend.
Seven

[talisa]

hell yeah! that shalrath on the ceiling looks frigging epic <3

the enforcer shield and fiend motion-blur are also looking good

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also looking forward to the random rotation of boxes from arcane dimensions

[gdiddy62]

Looking forward to this!!!

Thanks Seven!!

[golden_boy]

Classic Quake modding. I love it. Keep it up Seven.

[jakub1]

hi seven,
-
it's good to have you back. i just have two or three short notes. i moved to the version 5.11 two days ago... been using old 4.xx version for a long time... and i have small suggestion. would be possible to change a little bit the color of the white spider? other versions are fine, but the white one is just too white. especially with bloom enabled. instead of ugly hideous spider monster i see glowing white something... the glow is so intense that all the model and texture details are almost unnoticeable. it's maybe just me, but it doesn't fit into quake. shambler is also white, i know, but not even remotely THAT white. second note regarding spiders - in one of the q2 missions packs there is a semi-mechanical spider monster capable of running on the ceilings. it would be absolutely great to have them in smc - so yes, spiders should be able to walk on the ceilings! go for it!
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and the last one: have you ever thought about adding flashlight into smc? i like to discover dark corners... and some of the custom maps are really dark. quoth has this functionality and code is compatible with darkplaces.
-
looking forward to the reaver :-)

jakub

[xaGe]

Shalrath on the ceiling?! YES Please!

[Seven]

Hello and Thank you all for your kind words and posts.

I hope you will be satisfied with the results.



Hello Jakub,

Thank you for your feedback.
First of all, you seem to have made a quite big jump from V4.25 (or earlier) to V5.11.
Did you take some time to read through the "Change History v5.11 .txt" file ?
I think you should do it at least once to see what has been changed and added to get a better overview. Many features are disabled by default. You may want to test them.

Regarding the white spider skin:
Hmmm, I do not have this issue myself. Also I never heard of anyone reporting something is this direction. There have been many screenshots made with the white spider on it and until now, I couldnt see what you reported.
Most probably it is a lighting setting. Please rename your configs temporary 8also from your id1 folder and restart the engine to let it create defaults. Then switch to realtime preset or whatever you prefer and re-check. As you know, there are sooo many cvars that are not accesable from the main menu. Lets see what it looks like.


Thank you very much for your "flashlight" suggestion:
Yes, a feature like this should at least be included in the "small mod compilation", as it is a quite common feature. What I do not understand is, that you mention the Quoth flashlight, as it has a flashlight that doesnt look so good. Biggest issue is, that the Quoth flashlight cannot shine on models. Models that you illuminate with it are pitch black. (see some screenshots on the bottom of this post).

There are many existing flashlight codes that look better in my humble opinion. Examples are ShockMan´s, Behind_you´s, Renegade`s, Nahuel´s, Drek´s flashlights. The "small mod compilation" can only be run on DarkPlaces (and with a few drawbacks on FTE), so fortunately I can use engine extensions for the flashlight code.

I decided to use a mixture of Renegade`s and Nahuel´s code and added it into the smc. Please download it (from the "BETA builds" subfolder) and see if you can get used to it Jakub:

DOWNLOAD


And yes, you are absolutely right. Now that I played around with it, I also think that this feature is long time overdue

It creates effects, that have not been possible before:

- Now the _gloss and _norm textures are really looking great:


- The "Spookiness factor" regarding shadows in extremely huge sizes are frightening:


Have fun with the flashlight

Best wishes,
Seven


Here are screenshots from Quoth (upper 2) compared to other existing flashlights (lower 2) to see the issue with models:

[jakub1]

hi seven, thanks for quick update. i'm testing the new flashlight right now and and it looks even better than i have expected. i thought about that feature for a long time, but i didn't mention it until now for some unknown reason :-)

you're right - quoth flashlight looks like ugly unwanted child in comparison with this new one. i only mentioned is as a starting point.

as for the white spider - it's just me. forget it. not a big fan of the white color :-)

jakub

and yes, i went through the new changelog and new config file. it took me ages to adapt my old config to the new one. not to mention adapting my personal effectinfo.txt but i'm not complaining... when it comes to quake we all have to be prepared to make a sacrifice.

update - is ti possible to make flashlight more "directed"? something like a flashlight in hl2 perhaps?

[talisa]

oooh a flashlight! flashlights are fun for such dark games like quake


that screenshot with the afrit looks absolutely epic!
i'd totally take a run if i walked around a corner and suddenly saw such a huge shadow on the wall


a flashlight is a great new feature, which definitely in a way was overdue.
its great to see the quake-ranger managed to find a flashlight somewhere to light up those dark areas

[Spike]

update - is ti possible to make flashlight more "directed"? something like a flashlight in hl2 perhaps?

with DP, you need to use a cubemap (with the tenebrae extension, self.skin=cubemapindex).
make the front face just some sort of white circle (perhaps with some lines to simulate an inperfect bulb or whatever), and the other 5 faces pure black. the light will then appear in only one direction.