Q.u.a.l.k.e.r. 0.3

[Baker]

Download link: https://www.moddb.com/mods/qualker/d...ds/qualker-v03

Does not require Quake to run ... the engine is the Zircon Engine (a modified DarkPlaces engine).

[Mr.Burns]

Hi Baker,

Looks interesting, I'll give it a download. Is this one of your excellent creations?
Kind regards
Monty

[Seven]

Hello Baker,

I watched one of your video clips, showing your new game.
Really well done !

You implemented so many mechanics and game features.
Unfortunately I do not know the game Stalker so I cannot compare.
But thech wise your game is surely not behind.

Great to see your passion again for a new project.
I hope it will come to a great end and you will gain attention that you deserve.

All the Best,
Seven

[Gem]

Great to see your passion again for a new project.
I hope it will come to a great end and you will gain attention that you deserve.

What he said ^
Whoa - amazing!! I wanted to say a few more things and praises but I'm just too excited to formulate them now
But basically, this is just what I wanted to see (love STALKER). So what a coincidence - a full stand-alone game too
Woo hoo!! It's a great day indeed in Quake Land

[foq]

So, I gave it a play...

The first map was unforgivingly difficult. You start with a PMm, some grenades, and a random large weapon, and encounter some blind dogs. Easy enough, until the snorks, bloodsuckers, zombies and controllers start pouring in. There's no time for exploration as the enemy count constantly increases, and your resources dwindle too fast to be able to deal with anything. On that note, the more powerful mutants seem to be extremely bullet spongey, and I couldn't find any armor to help protect myself at all. God help you if a controller decides to use their psychic attack, as hiding behind cover to avoid it doesn't work very well. The buy menu is here, as are cash rewards for killing mutants, but it appears to be useless outside of Survival mode, as there is no Trader nor any other NPC to be found anywhere. The inventory system could be better, as in real Stalker you can carry as many guns as you want until you are over your weight limit. It took me a minute to figure out that I had to drop my current rifle in order to be able to pick up another one. This also greatly limits your chances of survival. At least, if you could carry multiple weapons, you could use multiple ammo types. If you do decide to switch weapons, whatever ammo you were carrying before becomes useless to you, if you had any. There's no natural progression to the weapons system, either. Where in Stalker can you find a Gauss rifle in the first five minutes of the game, in some random dilapidated village? I would expect, at most, to find an AKM-72/2U or a Viper 5 here.

Moving around just... doesn't work very well. I've gotten stuck many times even in simple doorways, having to wiggle my way through. The one underground area with the stairs is exceptionally bad, as I had to resort to crouch-jumping to glitch my way up the stairs on the way out. On a happier note, the bleak hopelessness of the Zone was captured moderately well here. It really did seem like the Zone was alive and out to get me, as if I were some pathogen invading its body. However, the immersion would break whenever those random human screams could be heard in the background. There's clearly nobody human here besides myself, and all the mutants are focused on me, so it doesn't really make sense to me to have a background sound like that.

Moving on to the lab, this area seemed to work a little better than the village, although it was far simpler from its real Stalker counterpart. No door codes or anything to find, just brightly glowing documents that are impossible to miss. The psuedogiant was exceptionally bullet-spongey, though. I get it's supposed to be a boss level enemy, but damn. He's also... really giant. They're not nearly that big in Stalker. And then, when you leave, you're at... Start? Okay, so I tried the E1 teleporter. There seems to be more planned for the game, as the grunt that usually spawns appeared to be a military guy, but after that it was impossible to continue as the elevator button didn't work anymore. Pretty sure this is some sort of design oversight, maybe just have the game end with a "thanks for playing, here's where you can follow us" type splash screen?

And then I tried "survival mode". Ah, this is what that buy menu was for... It's pretty unforgiving as the bunker with Sakharov is really the only place you've got to hide, and you can't really climb on anything here. You're pretty much screwed unless you can trigger infighting, which I'm pretty sure wasn't really a thing in Stalker. But why is Sakharov at the Wild Territory, and why are mutants coming from the Bar area? Also, if Psuedogiants spawn here, they just get stuck in the spawning area because they're too big to move through. All in all, it looks like there's some potential here, but there's definitely a lot that needs work.

[Gem]

Wow - what a great read (and amusing too) by someone with a STALKER background too. Thanks for the detailed review! Foq endured a mutant bite to spare the rest of us lol. I was gonna play this soon-ish but based on what I just read, I decided not to. It sounds way too ALPHA for now. But that doesn't mean I'm not interested in it.

Foq, if you'd be so kind to post your review on the project page itself on MODDB, so the creator can fix these serious flaws. I did watch some videos of it and saw some of the things you were talking about, but I didn't know they [the problems] were so profound actually.

Happy gaming!
-Gem.

[foq]

I'm not sure if I want to do that or not. On one hand, I'd like to give constructive feedback, on the other hand I don't want to just shit all over their project (even though I did enjoy it despite the jank), especially when the version number alone should be as good an indicator as any that it's nowhere near what it should be yet. Maybe I'll include a disclaimer or something.

[Gem]

Haha. Sure sure yea, you take your time with it. It's your review and writing. And whatever you decide, I am sure it will be good. I didn't want to seem like I wanted to urge you or push you towards it with anything, it was just a suggestion. I just thought if you'd copy pasta it, it'd be less work for you.

In my opinion, a disclaimer wouldn't be good. That could be more toward hurting the project - because it sounds like a warning. Maybe you could translate your review into some bullet-points for fixable things. But ultimately it's up to you how you do it. Maybe Baker reads these threads and he can sort some of those things out. The game does look enjoyable indeed. That is why I'm giving it my attention - I just wouldn't like to suffer thru the foolishness of what I read from you lol. I mean I REALLY want to PLAY a fast PACED STALKER... mmm yea

[Baker]

I've been coding virtually non-stop and often the threads I've done here haven't seen much activity.

So thanks for the feedback, a little shocked by the number of replies.

QUALKER is KleskBY's work, not mine but uses Zircon Engine -- KleskBY is a friend of mine and kind of an anti-Seven, if that makes any sense. I appreciate the tremendous works of Seven and his crew -- which includes one of my best allies in jakub1 -- KleskBY has done tons of work in almost the opposite direction.

[Baker]

I've been doing "extreme" coding for weeks on end, when I get "in the zone" I forget all reality and everything else like threads I make.

I've been making barrels roll, trees falls and 85 other things.

[Gem]

Perhaps you can show KleskBY this thread as an appreciation place and some things that need fixin'
I think this is a worth-while game, that's why it has gotten good amount of replies. For one, I can't wait to sink my teeth into it and do some Quakin and clacking on my keyboard playing this arcade-y Stalker game

I think all your work is fascinating and diving like that into coding is great, as you can solely focus on your tasks. I always encouraged this when I see some of your projects. (But maybe it's weird lol - my encouraging that is). I think it would be great if all these things you can somehow integrate into a perhaps sandbox section of a Quake program, so that we can all play with. I think that would put it into a good tangible application form and would be a neat thing

I think I may be(come) a good coder too, only that I don't think I can sit so much at the computer I think I sit enough just playing some games here and there lol and I already got a few other hobbies outside the computer

Well.. Happy Autumn everyone

[Baker]

I hope to make some interesting things. I have a large list I'm trying to work through.