Quake Combat+

[Totalitarian]

Quake Combat+ mod - Mod DB

Moddb page is up.

Details some new stuff such as:

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Better Pickup Management

Size difference between small and big ammo boxes. Additionally, the printout at the top of the screen will distinguish between big/small ammo: "You got the small shell box".

As for health: Reduced collision size of all health pickups to allow for selective tactical retrieval, allow jumping over them, and prevent picking up through walls. All other pickups retain oversized collision boxes.

[Totalitarian]

I just completely overhauled the eruption effects. I'll upload a revised version shortly.

It's restricted to nightmare+ only (not even nightmare) to retain the original tone on the four vanilla difficulty levels. These spooky spirit attacks are cool, but there's also a comical sunday morning cartoon feel to them, so I'm keeping them away from the normal modes of play. Not to mention they also now add quite a bit of difficulty. You should see the new vore vengeful spirit attacks. Or the Ogre's. Or the Fiend's. Or the Afrit's...

Also as of the time being, you can activate Nightmare+ (menu toggle) but play on any lower difficulty with it,. But that will likely be changed. I'm not one for modular design, but rather a strict design vision.

Yeah SMC is pretty great. Credit where it is due.

[Mr.Burns]

Hi Total
It's looking promising, I like the idea of of the gas being spawned by certain gibs. Personally I wouldn't restrict it to Nightmare level only, but from a technical perspective it's looking nice. It makes me realise just how much work Seven must have put in to the SMC project in the first place to get it as far as he did. Keep up the good work Total.

Kind regards
Monty

[Totalitarian]

Combat+ takes SMC's demon vengeance effects, overhauls them, and removes from the game entirely unless the new Nightmare+ difficulty option is selected. Here is the Warlord's new attack: summons a quake that erupts volcanic venting and goes out with a bang. Walking into the vents damages you or other monsters and they are a permanent affliction upon the world.
Vengeance attacks have a small chance to activate when an enemy is killed on nightmare+. Gibbing the enemy prevents vengeance attacks.

Vent eruption effects could use a slight polishing, I'm aware. Looking into it.

[Totalitarian]

Someone had a kneejerk reaction to Reiver Wallphasing, expressing concern that he believes it would be annoying which is perhaps understandable without the neccessary context:

The frequency of it was set high for testing & demo purposes. In actual play it's something that rarely happens and it is not in any way bad, but rather the opposite. Indeed if it were something that happens all the time it could easily end up annoying/frustrating, but that's not how it be. I have years of experience doing AI work, trust me.
For example of how it actually plays, they can only perform it when they 1) have spotted you in the first place, and 2) no longer have line of sight. This essentially means they largely only do it when the player backs off/away (a very efficient and dominant strategy to create bottlenecks and cover your back), which is the perfect opportunity in which a sly enemy type take an alternate route other than the one bottle neck the player has created. As long as you maintain line of sight, they will never phase. Another context in which they may phase is when they cannot physically reach you by normal movement (say, a door that only opens when shot, or they're locked behind bars like the ogre in E1M3 start), which once again is a perfect opportunity for awesome encounters, as long as you break line of sight and actually let them phase through, maybe, because even then it is not guaranteed to happen. They are also a rare enemy type, and lastly it is clearly telegraphed via sound design so that they are not a nasty unfair surprise.

A tester played through the recent and good Cimmerian Nights mini-episode and encountered approximately 3 reivers in total, and of those 3 encounters a wall phase only happened once when he, of course, backed away and created a bottleneck. It's good shit.

[Totalitarian]

Improved Yakman projectile attack. Visuals improved + wider spread so it is harder to dodge and can't be abused with elevation differences in the same way shambler lightning can + sets you on fire on nightmare difficulty + better sound design + slightly faster projectile speed based on skill level + chance to refire (fire twice) on nightmare like most of the other enemies do.



Yakman have various other improvements, this details the one projectile attack only.

[Totalitarian]

That's actually a Quake 1.5 death animation, though I have been expanding a lot in that regard too. Even more variety or refinements, e.g nailgun can perform headshot death animations (note: headshots do not deal more damage, purely cosmetic), lightning gun death animations are overhauled and much more varied yet also less imposing on gameplay than they were in q1.5, and so on.

[Mr.Burns]

I have to say, I loved the bit in e1m1 where you blasted the opponent only his legs were left standing. Very nice touch. Overall it looks very promising, so keep up the good work and please keep us posted on where you are with it.

Kind regards
Monty

[Totalitarian]

Combat+ is an overhaul of Quake and the mods Combat+ is based on (Quake 1.5, SMC, utilizing the Darkplaces Engine). Boasting advanced artificial intelligence and a better, more visceral + balanced arsenal alongside numerous bugfixes, overhauled nightmare difficulty (and even a new Nightmare+ difficulty) and improved effects.

The goals are as follows: deeper gameplay, more visceral feedback, greater replayabiliy, polish & challenge, all while aiming to not change things too much (but also not autistic vanilla purism either) so that it retains compatibility with the base game and hundreds of great custom user maps.

Currently v5.4 is in beta. Consider joining! Play Combat+ today. Provide feedback: https://discord.gg/RArSVSu

I'm working on showing you more of what this mod is about, but I can tell you that one of its greatest focuses and highlights is its advanced AI. You've not faced a horde like this before. Casuals can get fucked. To start is a new AI feature: Reiver wall phasing. Reivers can dynamically phase through walls at any time. Sound telegraphs when they are phasing. Quite a sight to behold. For testing purposes they are spawned in E1M1/2 in high frequency, and this is the result:

Stay tuned for more!