Wirehead Studios

Right... so yes, we all know I'm a Slipgate fanboy. I've been researching a few things here and there, reacquainting myself with q1 because I've been slacking a bit there. Anyway, I know this is a mod.. and I know it won't feel exact.. but being told it will feel extremely close kinda gets one (me) in a mood to post a few things. No, I wasn't comparing physics.. or anything of that nature. I was looking at minor things really. Things I feel go with overall presentation.

Just a simple 'no' or whatever will suffice, and you'll never hear anything on the topic from me again. But with 1.0 looming in the future, and them being on my mind for God knows what reason, I figured I might bring them up.

Now, I'm not saying 'This must be done or I'm quitting!' or anything of the like. Just friendly... things...  from an OCD Hellspawn. (Couldn't find an appropriate word there, sorry).

Right, so let's get started.

Health
Slipgate's maximum health should be 250. After going over 100, it should wait a few seconds before it starts to decay.

Nailgun
The first shot from the nailgun should always be the right barrel. Currently, it alternates when just 'tapping' like it would if you held down the trigger.

Super Nailgun
Odd as it might sound, the barrels should rotate in the opposite direction. That is all.

Nails (in general)
Yes, I'm bringing this up again. But the nails right now are comparable to (Slippy) rockets in terms of size. Take away the rocket's flame and they're actually bigger! After doing tests to help ease my mind, the speed doesn't bother me any more... I guess just 'knowing' fixed that, but the size is still there. If it suits ya, just shrink the current model down to size.. then it's not a basic 4 poly spike. Tho being that small, it'd really go kinda unnoticed, huh?

But really... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vae...QWRockNail2.jpg (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/QWRockNail2.jpg) as compared to... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vae...e3/RockNail.jpg (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/RockNail.jpg)
The nails were always hard(er) to see when flying through the air. ;)


All in all, those are the main ones. I could say about the '666' with the Pentagram, or how Slippy lost armor while under the effect... but those are even minor-er issues. Especially with the armor system in place.. might not be a good idea to penalize the ol' armor.

Love me, or hate me, I'll still always be here. Because regardless, this is still one of the best games I've played. Sorry if I annoyed someone, somehow.. was not intentional. Just needed to clear my mind from the massive OCD fix is all. :) (Pathetic, I know... but, *shrug*)

:ownage:

Health: This is known. I could be wrong, but I think it's a Q3A issue preventing both from working "right"...

Nailgun: Known. The animation it uses at the moment is hacked in, and obviously, will be fixed when the real deal is finished.

Super Nailgun: Known. And what you didn't mention is that it should stop on a dime when the trigger is released. It currently uses the same rotation code as the Arena Machinegun, just like the other "rotating" weapons (gats, chainguns, hyperblasters). This will be fixed when the animations are finished.

Nail size: Requested, actually. People were complaining that they were too hard to see, so Phoenix increased the size of the projectiles. And then people started complaining about the speed. Related? Probably...

The '666' health with Invul won't be done at this point, except maybe in Oldschool mode. Same with the armor loss with the powerup active. This is because Invulnerability is no longer guaranteed 100% protection, and it'd be pretty silly to suddenly have to pound 666 health out of a Slipgater when he's only taking 1/3 damage from all strikes. ;)

What Makou says. Additionally, the health behaviour would have to function likewise for Strogg. I'm sure Pho has all this in his plans :]

I believe we deliberately left out the 250 health thing, for balance reasons, for the same reason we halved the armor values. Skippy was too easy to tank to the point you couldn't kill him.

*cough* if i don't rember it wrong slippy could hold 255 or 256 health tho it degreaded twice as fast as normal when u hitted it over 200

Invuln never gave 666 health. It replaced the armor value with a red '666', which was actually somewhat false... since it just made you unable to lose health. You still lost armor when hit, but the '666' kinda made it go unnoticed unless you paid close attention to your armor before picking it up.

And actually... the decay rate depended on how many megahealths you picked up. If ya get 1, giving 200... then run around and get a second, to 250, it'll decay just the same.. minus the delay. If you pick up a third, it'll decay twice as fast (possibly faster) till you're down to 100.

And I didn't bring up the 'stopping on a dime' thing because I knew it was known. :)

And danke for easing my mind. I was expecting a flame or two... why? I dunno. (Blame the OCD!).

I don't think a 250 max health on Slipgate would be balance-killing, considering most maps don't even have two megahealths close enough to one another that this would be an issue (Abandoned Base is the only exception I can think of), and unless somebody manages to take no damage at all, the health decay is enough to prevent it from happening too much on 1MH maps. The Regeneration pickup could probably be made to cap at 200, the same as the +5 health pickups, and I believe the Autodoc tech already caps at 150.

An argument to include this: Doom's health max is 200, but it's also the only class without decay above 200. I think that's a bigger "balance issue" than an max boost to 250. For the record, the decay rate increased on every pickup, at least up to two (I've never acquired more than two at a time).

As for the armor, that's somewhat a different issue, since that's much easier to come across (shards are quite literally EVERYWHERE, far more common than +5 health items)...

Spawn: My fault on where the 666 appeared. I thought it was health, since that's what's protected.

Known, and this was more of a "didn't get around to it yet" than a direct balance concern.

Will be fixed with animation code.

Will be fixed with animation code, among other things.

Cvar for alternate model has been proposed (by me) to either use a cylindrical or 4-poly spike, or add all three in as options so we can satisfy both purists and those who actually like the current nail model.

On the to-do list at some point.

Nothing of what you mention here deserves flaming.  These are valid questions and concerns I'd expect from any oldschooler. ;)

Makes me wonder if you even read my post, Pho. :(

Here is an extremly picky thing I was afraid to mention for the very same reasons. Will there be class specific weapon walking animation? (I belive it is called "weapon bobbing") and sounds for
things like picking up items, weapons and ammo?

me runs and hides in a fruitless attempt to survive :p

Walking animation gets a resounding "yes." That's part of the promised first-person animations, isn't it? ;)

As for item pickups, I think that's something Phoenix wants to include, but there's that issue of "making it sound like it should," which is kind of hard to do right now because we lack 1) sufficient info on what makes a "legal" sound and 2) someone to actually make the sounds.

I have some auditorial editing experiance, maybe I can help when or if the time comes.
But for now I'm glad most of the questions runnning through mind are answered.

IMHO the Invul/Battlesuit option should be independent of Old Skool mode. After all, one class' Invul nerf is another class' BS boost. Meat man's one is poison man's another, etc. :)

Radiation suits, anyone?

(ducks to avoid potential Strogg railslug)

I believe the slippy nails were a lot smaller, but I prefer them as they are myself. the concept of having a foot long steel dart stuck in you is pretty horrible.( Like Spawn I love this class, as it was my first game: )

In Quake and when you are midair, hold back. You just stop in mid-air and fall, in Generations you fly backwards too
I personally believe there are a lack of Slipgate models too. Tab's Enforcer is great and hope it is included in the next version.
A personal issue with me is the lack of models for the classes except the Arena side.
In the manual online you mention a character: Jaeger
Has been there for quite awhile but I haven't heard or seen of this model, in both this and the orig. Quake.

Additional models which would be a great addition to Slipgaters (IMO) are:
Enforcer - added already by Tab.
Grunt - Possible with just a Ranger skin, but he sounds completly different.
Ogre - In QuakeTest he used a nailgun and chainsaw, retail he uses a grenade launcher and chainsaw. So he has a knowledge of using more weapons than any other monster in Quake :P.
Zombie - Basically the last human-like shaped character in the game. I would of said Shambler but that might be a little much although that is my favorite enemy.

This brings the Slipgaters model count to 9 (8 if you exclude Jaeger) which makes it match the Arena side count (arrording to manual).

Same would have to go for Doom, Stroggs and Earth.
Doom
Update Bones to have sholder pads.
Update Doom model - Zombies (Human, Sargent, Chaingunner) - All somewhat possible with just a reskin of the Doom model.

Archvile
Imp
Hellknight (With Baron reskin)
CyberDemon but with no Rocket arm or have it with and make the weapon you have be the hand.

Stroggs
Gunner
Enforcer
Guard (with all the sub-class skins)
Iron Maden or Tank (with Commander skin)

Earth
Hans Grosse (with Trans Grosse skin)
Hitler (kinda debatible though, don't want to offend some users)
Guard (can has SS, Officer and Mutant/Zombie skin)
Heinrich

I think that not a hitler model rather his robo suit with custom head.

A couple notes on that whole list:

1) There's no way in hell we're going to get away with remaking tons of monsters for an official release. Look at Reborn. We're not going to get foxed, if there's anything we can do about it.

2) For those who don't know me well yet: I loathe skins slapped on models to make them represent monsters. It doesn't work. Q3 default models not only suck ass in general (being very low poly), they also suck specifically for this type of thing (having incredibly sucky skin maps). Besides, I want re-animated monsters for Resurgence, since monsters will have to walk normally, instead of run, sidestep, stand still instead of bob up and down like a nutter, etc. Since that is a hell of a lot of work in itself, one may aswell make a new mesh.

3) We're not going to try to get each and every class (about) the same amount of models and/or skins. The arena class is also not a good reference for this kind of purpose.

Mak:  I read everyone's posts.  I just wanted to put the "official line" out there.  :thumb:

As the Tabs said, it is absolutly impossible and illegal to release it with Gen 1.0. Impossible being that it is a ton of work to sketch the peliminaries and get them in a 3d modeling application, model it , skin it, animate it, and create sounds for it (which I hope I could help in that area as soon school finishes up for the year). Illegal: well that has been explained 10 times 10 to the millionth power. Go to this thread (http://forums.wireheadstudios.org/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=2472&st=75) for just one of those explainations.

Plus, the Cyberdemon has already been done, complete with aforementioned hand attachment:

http://www.fileplanet.com/83506/80000/file...Q3-Player-Model (http://www.fileplanet.com/83506/80000/fileinfo/Cyberdemon-Q3-Player-Model)

Not great, but hey, only a handful of Q3 PPMs are.

 :offtopic: BTW Tab: Sorry for spamming blimps last night. I don't usually stay alive long enough to have 26 of them.

btw , on polycount and fileplanet there is also a
doom revenant , arachnatron and Imp you can download .

... aside of all illegal and work-heavy points on adding more models per class, i would definitely agree with some of his suggestions. The point here, though, is not to fall in his temptation of wanting to make every enemy into a playable model for the MOD. I definitely would like to play with a grey-dark-and-some-reds skin AND model of a DooM Zombie Sargeant (shotgun guys, next to regular zombies, in DooM hierarchy), and the Bones idea of adding a simple colored shoulder pads (even without any weapon) to a white (-ish) skeleton is also appealing. Trying to make an Arch-Vile or a CyberDeamon tends to fell cheesy and out of place. We all remember those as those bigger, thougher ENEMY bastards: they should stay that way...

Adding a blue-uniform nazi soldier like those at DooM II lvl 31 would also sound nice :) ...

I don't see how a Revenant is not big and tough? He certainly wasn't a simple human-sized skeleton with shoulder pads. Load up doom and look at it again:

(http://www.doomcenter.ru/doom2/monsters/revenant1.jpg)

Ofcourse you can't tell the size from a picture like that, but look at its structure: It isn't a skeleton, it's a zombie - there's a fleshiness to it that lacks on 'Bones'. It's wearing armor and it walks VERY differently from bones, in any case.

Here's something that I'd sooner pick for a Revenant:

(http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/revanant.jpg)

It was modeled by Demon (apparantly) and skinned by Dark Horizon.

... *puts GEN hat of oficial PR agent* but Tabun sir, GEN is not about a direct take on those games represented, but rather a free approach to those, even with some artistic liberties :p ...

... more seriously, making that Bones idea would make it a"remake" -ish Revenant wannabe while keeping it "original" in GEN, not in anyway infringing copyrights, making illegal (the 'oh so many times question brought to light' )(just like the HellKnight *someone* uses ;) )...

... our own Bones :) ...

... and Arena needs more models, or at least a shitload more skins (do not throw that toilet seat at me, Tab!)...

... more! Quake 3 Arena wanted a Quake 2 enemy model but the Quake 2 tank was obviously out of place for such a fast, competing game. What did Id do? Tank Jr, and it works like a charm ;) ...

... and the point about Revenant's shoulder mounted launchers brings the "issue" i have with hipothetically including CyberDeamon: they have weapon things onto themselves. Doesn't fit/feels fake, to make them MP player models. Again the Tank Jr example - he doesn't have a mounted arm blaster/chaingun, or a retractable shoulder-mounted rocker launcher. Id *adapted* the idea to Arena "standarts". Just what GEN team has been doing all along? ;) ...

Certainly, Tank Jr. is pretty damned good: it is also a model made for exactly that purpose.
Bones is an ugly model. It is an annoying model. It is a badly skinmapped model with mirrored bits all over the place. Slacking off and being easily satisfied is not the same as taking artistic liberties. Trust me on this one, I know what kind of liberties we can and will take with Generations, and if I'd reasoned like that, we'd have reskinned Quake 3 weapons to 'match' Quake 2's for instance. Be very thankful we don't work that way :P

(i.e. We use those 'liberties' to add details, not to leave them out)

... sooooooooo... we're in for a full blown *own* "dwarfed" Revenant model for GEN, then? :p  :rules: ...

If that would not get us foxed: perhaps. But like you said, big monsters have no place running around like puny gladiators. Their place is in single player, and that's perhaps where Resurgence comes in...

... fine. Gimme the Zombie Sargeant :)  :rules: ...

That Revenent model is good, but the pose is all wrong, looks like he's got constapation. And he reminds of Beavis for some reason.

(http://www.soniguales.com/fotos/Beavis.gif)

Yeah, lol, I was going to say, that revenant model is OK but the animation sucks ass. And yes, it reminds you of Beavis because Beavis used to strike that pose when excited (ie looking at GWAR videos, hot chicks, or turning into Cornholio and requesting teepee for his bunghole.)

As far as an 'enemy' model for Doom, I think the best route would be something like a "Cyberdemon Jr". It would be like a Cyberdemon, but closer to human size, and since they all have the same basic body structure (horns, arm cannon, goat legs) it could be easily reskinned into a Hell Knight or Baron of Hell. You could probably set it so the weapon models attached inside the arm cannon, so enough of the weapons' barrels would stick out to show which weapon the player was using, but it would still apear that the demon was shooting with the arm cannon and using different types of ammo.

I also agree some zombie models would be nice. A few years ago I did a reskin set of zombie uniforms for the Doom model, including a tan "zombieman" and black "shotgun guy" based on the veteran skin (which I thought was closed to looking like the original Doom guy). They didn't feature new heads or blood stains, because they were supposed to represent live Doom soldiers and sargeants before they became zombies. However, zombie heads and bloodstains could easily be added. In the end the skins weren't that great, and Tab could do a much better job, but they served to illustrate the concept. If anyone wants to see them, I made a thread for them on here a long time ago, and you can find em if you search. Anyway, I think something done along these lines would do well to provide more authentic Doom-themed player models/skins to Gen.

I think you need to take a look at the Cyberdemon 2000 (http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/reviews/quake2/cd2000/cd2000.shtml) model for Quake 2, that was part of the Generations Q2 project and later released as a player model.  I had thought about giving it vweaps to replace the generic arm gun, but never got around to either contacting the author for permissions, let alone having enough time to actually do it.

The problem with trying something like that with Gen's Doom Warriors class is how is his arm going to contain this:

(http://www.wireheadstudios.org/album/album38/doombfg_shots.thumb.jpg)

That's why arm-mounted weapons don't work well in Q3.  Q2 they were fine since Q2's vweap system allowed custom, per-playermodel weapons, and before anyone asks, no.  Gen is not getting a custom weapon model system.  The model parsing code is already complex enough as it is!

Well then some innovative modeling techniques should come into play in the modeling of an arm with the BFG in mind.

Edit:
I have an idea, nothing to do with modeling but a skin.
Now what you could do, is take the skin image, and place a alpha channel on the bar thingies, then they would be transparent, thus invisible! The polys would still in essence, be there, but be completely transparent.

Heh heheheheheheh heh :D

The Q4Gladiator and Q4Hybrid PPMs don't carry their weapon models ... ;)

I think NOT seeing when someone had a BFG out and ready to go would give a slightly unfair advantage. You'd have no warning at all until it started warming up. That's very little time to find a proper hiding place.

Now you might say there was no problem in Doom... well ok... then give Doom his rifle, Slippy can get his gun that looks oddly like a grenade launcher but shoots everything. Dunno what Grunt or Sarge would get. Visor and the arena dudes would just have to live with it, being out of the loop.

(find the sarcasm, get a cookie!)

This is a long shot, but....

Is it possible for the model to have a different weapon holding animation for the BFG? If so, maybe you could make it so the BFG is carried in the Cyberdemon's free hand, instead of in the arm cannon. Or perhaps, you could just let the BFG be bigger than the arm cannon, and look like the BFG was the arm cannon. I guess you'd have to just try it an see how bad it looks (assuming it is possible). Of course, logically, it's not very beleivable that the Cyberdemon would just instantly rip the cannon off his arm and intantly install a hand-BFG, but then it's also not very logical that characters carry all their 10+ heavy weapons down their pants and instantly draw each one specifically on command.

And all that for a single model that shouldn't even ever be controlled by a player? If it ever comes to that, why not just let Resurgence code take care of model probs?

I'm going to borrow Spawn's disclaimer and imply all its meaning into this post. ;^)
I don't know if such things have been discussed but I'll give it a go.

Green Amour [/u]
Green Amour would be awesome for us mappers. It will give us the ability to cleanly distribute amour throughout the level, without the use of amour shards. Amour shards are good and all, but the more there are the sloppier the map is. Amour shards should be used in groups of 2-4, and if we are making a doom level, we don't want to place a giant group of 25 amour bonuses, and it will translate into 125 amour for another class. Basically is gives mappers more options, and a green arena class amour would look awesome! ;^)
Slipgate Armor Shard Model [/u]
Even though this model looks absolutely cool, and the Tabs did a great job on it, I think choosing a Runestone for an armor shard is rather odd. When I first seen one of these, I thought, ?Cool! A power up!? A good analogy for this would be ?fool?s gold?. Again, I?m not bashing the effort that has gone into it, nor am I implying that it was intentional to fool players. Don?t take it the wrong way. I would suggest a knee pad or some feature from the Slipgater body armor, to better indicate that it is indeed armor.
Doom Single Rocket [/u]
Again just as I described in the Green Armor, this gives mappers more options when making a doom style map. Maybe the alternates for the other classes be armor or heath shards.
Strogg Useable Powerups [/u]
I haven?t played Quake 2 that much, but one thing I remember, is that you manually activate the Quad Damage ?Item?. I think this should be implied to all Powerups.
Ammo Backpacks [/u]
This is from Doom and not Slipgate BTW. :^P This would be awesome to implement.
Super Charge [/u]
This would be sweet as an alternating ?power-up?. This is the thing that gives you 200 health and armor.

about that revanant model .
sombody should contact demon again , he is the 1 that  also made the imp and arachnatron model .
and altough he stopped making q3 models he was also in the warks with a demon
model , a mancubus model , cacodemon , chaingunner and cyberdemon model .
 anyway , maybe he still has those models , none animated that is .

2 years ago when I asked he was OK with it that we used it for gen . he even sended the complete packet to me ( but due comp crashes over the years I lost them )
but I seem to remember that I gave them 2 pho 2 ( unless he lost them 2 ? )

Ammo backpacks were in Quake... only in the multiplayer environment. In Doom all they did was give a very small amount of every type of ammo, and double your total ammo capacity. In Quake, when you died, you dropped all of your ammo and the current weapon you were using. At the end of a QWDM match, there was usually always at least 1 backpack running around that had near full ammo (100 shells, 200 nails, 100 grenades, 100 cells). I say 'near full' because I'm assuming the person carrying it was using at least 1 weapon...

So... the way they're used in Gen... they were from Quake. :)

Unless you mean like... 'This is about the backpacks from Doom' or something... then that would make this post totally useless. *cough*

I brought up the question of green armour a while ago with the idea of possible CPM map compatibility as many CPM maps are great in Gen (Hubster's first Aerowalk remake comes to mind). It would be nice to see.

A single Doom rocket would be great for the grenade ammo spawns IMO. It would certainly help with gameplay balance as Doom rockets wouldn't be as abundant.

Not too sure about the Megasphere though as only Doom had those.

So did doom only had berserk, it would be great for all classes. :)
 :ownage:

As much as some people hate to hear or know this, nothing will ever be done with this mod to make it "CPM compatible." Period, end of story. If something like a green armor pickup (other than shards) is ever created, it will be because Phoenix feels it will add something to Generations. It would probably still not be fully compatible with a CPM-specific map.

Well there's no reason I can't use the same item name CPM did, that would solve both problems for green armor.  Otherwise Makou is right.  CPM is it's own mod, Gen is it's own mod.  I'm not against a green armor pickup at some point.

About the other items, "Supercharge" is the message you get when you pick up a blue Soul Sphere (our current megahealth).  You're mixing this up with the Megasphere, which was the brown orb with the mancubus face that gave you 200/200.  I am extremely loathe to put a megasphere into Gen for the same reason I'm loathe to include Quake 2's power shield.  It's just too damned strong.  You think a player like Tab or myself is unstoppable now?  Sure, someone else can grab one, but the same goes for Quad and Invuln, etc.  It would throw balance completely out the window.

Some smaller pickups like Doom's single rocket just don't  translate too well.  This is one of those things I'd definitely want to balance test well before implementing.

I don't think we're going to change the armor shard pickup at this point.  It's small, it's purpleish, and easy to tell from the Haste powerup which glows a nice gold color.  If someone's colorblind, well, sucks to be you I guess? ;)

One solution to the PowerSheild/ MegaShere :) thing may be to have some special item for each class. Strogg has its Power Sheild, Doom its MegaShere :) and figure out a some clever ideas for the other classes, keeping their strengths and weeknesses in mind to protein balance. About what if Pho, and Tabun has it, well... If a terrible player (me) wants to get any better, they will have to face ultra hard players, until they practice and practice and just get better.  :ownage: That's how anyone becomes an expert at almost anything, is pure practice. Watering down something for "noobs" is really a dis-service, they won't get any better unless their asses get kicked a few times, then they start developing their own techniques, you know. ;)

There also needs to be a limit me thinks... hence why they felt the need to change the q3 BFG.

Entirely in agreement with Pho here.

I'm not too fond of the idea of green armor, since it means I have to do more modeling work :p

Useable powerups for Strogg doesn't make sense, since this is deathmatch. In deathmatch Q2, powerups took effect immediately.

Slipgate armor shard model looks fine to me. Since I don't know any place where a single shard is spawned (they pretty much always come in rows or bunches), it would be odd if people believed there would be four power-ups up for grabs, right next to eachother. They're also a great deal smaller, and have no glow.

Power Shield = NO FREAKING WAY. It was too hard to take someone out in Q2 deathmatch when they had it -- you can ask Phoenix for the numbers. It's insane. You'd have to rail someone who's fully loaded more times than anyone has any right to survive. About the only way to take him out would be with Quad Slipgate or Strogg rockets. Game breaking? I think so.

Tab, I also have to agree that a "kneepad" or half of Rangers armor plate from his chest would look better as a shark for the Slipgate guys  :ninja:

Im afraid i have to agree also a kneepad whould be a cool looking slippy shard, tho the rune is quite cool too, but it whould feel more right with that kneepad.

I'm with the rune

quake was always a bit on the occult side and the runes were in the original

so i reckon the runes should stay.

it's like wanting to change the strogg shards, or arena shards

... except not, because the Arena shards are what they are in normal Q3A, and Strogg's shards are based on the armor shards in Q2.

I'm happy enough with the runes, myself. The first time I saw them I knew what they were.

I'm happy enough with the rune. I think there was a mod for Quake tho that used the four runes in a similar fashion to what those CTF techs do, but it doesn't bother me.

Like was said already, they come in bunches.. are somewhat smaller.. and don't stand out as well with a glow or whatever. So getting them confused with a powerup is nill. The rune works well enough, and it fits the theme.

The only way it could be entirely confusing is if we actually had the runes as runes.  The CTF Techs are using the Q2 model format.  We're content with that, they do pretty much the same thing, and there's absolutely no Wolf or Doom equivalent whatsoever.  The only thing close in Q3 is the persistant powerups, but those are Team Arena anyway, so there's no sense in making a ton of models for items that are seldom used anyway.  It's not like the normal powerups which are seen on just about every map.

Bottom line - if it's not broke, why fix it?  I'm happy with the rune-shaped shards, and I see no reason to change it.  I don't like the kneepad idea, it's too UT-ish.