Wirehead Studios

This thread is for feedback of all sorts for the newest version of GenArena, version 0.99e!.

Do you enjoy the game? Great!
Is there room for improvement? Let us know where!
Hated it? Why? How can we make it better?

Note: Weapon animations, with VERY few exceptions, are due in 1.0.  As such, they are not currently avaliable.

It needs more pimping ;]

I've sent a promotional newsflash to gamer.nl, maybe the dutch crowd can be stirred up a bit...

I'm doing what I can. ;)

Where's my big fuzzy focus damnit!?

Er, what 3?

All I can say is:

FRAGALICIOUS!!!

The HUDs are a really nice touch and I noticed that the bots are significantly tougher - just what I need! Some of those maps are HUGE!!!

Oh and I can see why yez wanted to keep hush over the Doom haste!

One suggestion: how's about doing botfiles for all the available skins (Zael, Flisk, Rampage, etc.)?

<3 I love everything about this version, the new armor is great, so are the weapons...
 
  Improvements ?? If you could have a seperate sound for the machine gun for every class, that would be great....

Fan-friggen-tastic!  :thumb:

I love the new HUDs for each class.  As an avid Strogg and Doom player I feel right at home  <3 Couldn't have been any more perfect.

I love the new Slipgate models and the new grenade bounce sounds really take me back.  I love it.  The new Lugar for Earth is great as well.

I'm also enjoying the rearrangement of the Strogg weapons in first person.  Makes it feel a lot more at home.

The new item models are wonderful.  Really adds a sense of diversity (and of course nostalgia...if I spelled that correctly).

I must ask though.  Why did you take away the animation for the Strogg Blaster?  Its not a huge deal, but I'm just curious.

magnificent

well, we scored another server yesterday thanks to Oz. maybe he can draw some people from the ETG crowd or something.

we just need to spread the word. we need like a Street Team or something.

btw, welcome new players. we're glad to have you aboard. help us out and tell your friends about the mod. those looking for a whole new deathmatch or CTF experience from your favorite id games should look no further than Generations Arena <3

 :ownage:

Copying and pasting from the 99e bug reports thread:
The animation code was wiped when the blaster's projectile and firing codes were redone.

99e is a success, if you ask me..
We had lots of fun on the Euro server just a few mins ago. Hell, most of the players were from the states, enjoying themselves regardless of insane pings ;]

I've uploaded two demos:

1. A good short demonstration of the Q3BFG in action, on llurk's beautiful q2dm8 (the warehouse) remake. Not the best way to use the BFG, but damn, the sparklies are so pretty :]
http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/20040809_ll_q2dm8_q3bfg.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/20040809_ll_q2dm8_q3bfg.zip)

2. Tons and tons of fun in ReBoOt's q2dm3 (the fragpipe) remake (v2).
A short (10 min) game where lots of funny things happen. Showcases chaotic lavadiving contests, odd sniper shots, frag pipe abuse, invul and quad fun etc etc. This demo pretty much sums up why I love to play Gen ;]
http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/20040809_req2dm3_fun.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/20040809_req2dm3_fun.zip)


Just unzip to generations/demos (make the dir if it doesn't exist) and doubleclick the demos in the demos menu :]

Technical answer:  I had to change the way the Strogg weapons were positioned for left and right handedness to work.  The blaster was using Q3-style position animation (hacked in recoil effect).  The weapons no longer position in this fashion, so the animation had to be killed.

I like the fact that this release made people join the servers!
I agree with tab, it needs more pimping. I think I'll go pimp it to the seals.

Ohh ohh I LOVE the Doom mega health.

99e is really good.

Wow. That sums it up. Noticed a few bugs, but i'll report them in the right forum. Thanks guys for all your hard work, Generations is the king of Q3 mods. ^_^

The new  ammo, items, and power-up models are excellent.  The new weapon models and skins are also excellent.

I also like the new skins for some of the player models.  The "Swine" skin is great.  The Earth class needs more skins with a Wolf3D theme.  Maybe a Hitler skin or a Zombie skin.

The "Death Knight" skin for the Slipgate class is very cool.  

Some more Earth (Wolf3D) maps would be nice for the next map pack.   Wolf3D did not have death match, so it would be cool to see DM maps inspired by the Boss levels in Wolf 3D, or even a map inspired by the final map in Spear of Destiny.

it's so hard to find good wolf3d maps.  I've been looking for years.

How do you make a good map based on a game made of 8x8 cubes?

Creativity, and multiple rooms & floors in a dungeon enviroment =]

Fantastic game. More fun than I know what to do with. :)

Well, Wolf3D did have those end-of-level elevators.  Maybe some elevators (lifts), with door triggers, some broken sections of floor you can drop through, and stairwells for added measure could make for a more multi-level environment?  I'd move any further discussion of that to Laced Neptune though.

Keep that feedback coming!

When I loaded 99e on my ATI powered comp it defaluted the handicap to 5. I didn't know what this was, so left it at the time. I've since read about it. on my ati comp it goes all the way up to 100! if I set it. I am probubly wrong, but I thought it was only from 1 to 5.

This didn't happen on my voodoo comp mind. do I make sence?

Yeah, handicap can range from 0 to 100, with 0 and 100 being "no handicap".  Anything inbetween and you will do damage times handicap (as a percent).  Knockback is unaffected, and we also removed the health gimp from handicap.  I was playing with a handicap of 60 earlier, and that is quite hard!

Thanks. I see.

Can I have pics of those HUDs? I never expected them. Were they previously announced behind my back?

No, because they're placeholders. Not intended for 'big pimpage'

I wouldn't mind pimpage though :P

The reason they weren't announced is because I started work on them (also unannounced) about a week or so before the release-date ;]

Why annoucne work when you don't announce the final product? Or better yet, why announce the announcement of announcing the product when the announcment on the work wasn' t announced?

:D

Neither the work, nor the product were announced. What are you blabbering about? :]

Because announcing the announcement of annoucing the announcement of the work before the announcement of the work is announced would be silly. A better idea would be to announce the annoncement of the work and then announce the announcement of the announcing -

Fatal Exception Error :zzz:

Rofl.

Back on topic please. :)

Absolutely. :smirk:  I had a thought (yeah, unusual for me). I was wondering, with the introduction of class-specific HUDs are we likely to see the same done with the scoreboards like in Q2Gen (getting ahead of things here a bit but still, it's better than asking about weap anims for the umpteenth time)?

BTW This mod is way better than Q2Gen was or ever could have been and those Doom orbs are REALLY beginning to freak me out!! WHY DO THEY KEEP STARING AT ME???

I think the new models look good and the code is way cleaner now
than the previous version.
only dropped in once to check it out but it's noticably smoother
and more polished than before.
graphics and lighting seem better also but it could have been the level's
or my machine changes.
I run it at 1600x1200 with all the eyecandy turned on and my fps is always 85-125.
nice work guys.
can I request a model addition.
I like to use the Massacre model and sometimes the Lobo model.
if you could fit them in it would be realy cool.

I don't know if it's been said already...

The Doomspheres pWn.

Is the haste sphere a variant of the original Megasphere?

No, that's completely new.

The new hud's are just like the original. great work Tab.
And BTW the new version RULES!!!! The new Hud's, The new powerups, the new models, the improved AI of the bots (finnaly bots use the BFG!). Keep it up guys!

I love 99e.

I've played about 10 hours of it now, and about  2 hours of Doom 3.

I just say that so you don't think I am critisizing it  just coz I can. (I hate critasizum from those who can't do, and that's me in this case.)

But I want to say the slipgate rocket lancher  looks excellent, but is too thin!

I like the damage changes etc, but the model looks like a supermodel. its too thin.

Heres a screenie of the original RL in one of my fav levels....fragtown (hint, hint, levels that are in all generations...)

Shambler: what is your FOV set to?

The RL looks fine to me at 90 (default) and a bit skinny at 110 (my setting).

However I think it still looks like it's pointing off in the wrong direction a bit at both.

That must be it.

FoV for me = 100

I think your right about the direction thing too.

BTW I've just shoot wrack with the RL and he bounced across the map (stormatorium) I love the effect, and don't think that used to happen before like that, did it?  :ownage:

Yes that happened. The slippy RL has always had insane knockback. That wasn't changed in 99e.

If anything it got toned down a bit due to the decrease in damage from that splash-damage bug removal, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

Always did that for me.

Con:

Yes it was the FoV. when I set it to 90 it  looks like the shot below. This was taken in fratown 30,  an 'open' map that I play on a lot. (I just love the Doom poster , and the grapeler.)

is that pic from a source port or from Quake Vanilla?

BTW please give me a download link for the map.

I got the map from a PainKeep arena site.  its fragtown30


http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Nova/2704/...4/pklevels.html (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Nova/2704/pklevels.html)


The screenie is Generations 99e, with the fragtown map loaded on my LAN

The guy who made it  has been on the forums, but I'm so stupid I can't remember who it was!

:offtopic: Which download? The individual one, tailored to PKA, or from the whole flumaps pack?

The individual one.

the one in the pack is smaller. its basically  the same but with about 1/3 of the map missing.

I tend to play open, urban maps a lot. it makes me less 'travel sick' if I  play for too long. must be because theres less corners and turning.

I think I have found a glitch or something in 99e. But maybe it was always there...

My next weapon key is E. if I press it  and hold it down, the weapons cycle as mega speed. if you then press the fire button, you get  the most amazing effect. you rotate between weapons and fire each in turn, kind of.

the new package is extremely nice - one of the duel maps, don't recall the name atm, just brings back perfectly the feel of good ol' q2, while, for instance, the dark zone is a superb remake of the original one. the physics feel great also .. so just some minor issues: having another sng as a slipgater on the q3dm6 rail ledge is awful... up there happens to be one of the most powerful weapons of that map, so this would have to change...  the other one will fall back on me & my incapabilities to understand the manual correctly, I suppose - as much fun as the game is, I couldn't figure out how to get player models which are visible even in the dark zone in ffa & 1on1(while playing bots, I might add..) -  with or without forcing enemymodels. the model-commands didn't change anything at all, if I'm not mistaken (*lol*, I am, I know, but I just don't know where & why) ... this takes away some of the fun of playing ga... other than that it's besides cpma & osp the best mod for q3a by far...

Weapons replace by item type.  Every Slipgate weapon is still a Q3 item spawn, but they convert by weapon number to the old Quake weapons upon pickup.  All railguns in Generations give Slipgaters a Super Nailgun.  The reasoning for this is twofold.  One, Slipgaters have no long-range instant hit weapon.  Second, no other weapon is a good replacement.  Adding another rocket launcher would be insane.  We tried that earlier on, and it gives Slipgate three high-explosive weapons pickups (Rocket launcher, Grenade launcher, and Railgun) that he can draw ammo from any of those three ammo types.  Shaft is also far too powerful and is a short-range weapon so the conversion makes no sense.  It would also give Slipgate 3 lightning gun pickups (Lightning gun, BFG, and Railgun) as opposed to the two that already exist.  The SNG was the logical choice since nails are scarce as it is and the other two choices would seriously overbalance the game in Slipgate's favor.


I'm not sure what you're asking here.  Are you wanting to select a different player model for yourself but having difficulty doing so?

thx for the quick reply. I can see the problem there and I think I'll just learn how to get a frag with those nails ... =)


...because of my crappy english, that is... what I wanted to say is that I didn't yet figure out how to get a clearly visible crispy enemymodel, no matter what I did. such as the enemy-models in cpma or osp...

as for bug reporting: whenever I start a listen server in 1o1 or tdm from the in-game menu I always start with either "the forlorn hope" (1o1) or "iron yard" (tdm) - no matter which map I chose ... but this doesn't bug me seriously, just for the record.
I hope I'll be able to test your mod on lan anytime soon, so you don't have to cope with bot-player's complaints anymore ...=)

We don't support bright skins the way CPM does, if that's what you want.

Also, any time you start a server, a certain map rotation is put into effect. If you look in your generations directory, you should see files such as "gen_ctf.cfg" and "gen_tourney.cfg". Those are the map rotations. You may edit those if you wish.

it wouldn't take brightskins - even though for a deathmatch-game they are extremely useful - but the standard models are sometimes very hard to see, which I think is unnecessary ... so something inbeetween maybe would do...

We have absolutely no intention of adding CPM-style bright skins.  If the models are hard to see I would suggest checking your video settings, specifically gamma correction if things are too dark, before blaming anything on the mod.  If you wish you can set cg_forcemodels to 1 and every player will render as the default model for that particular class - Sarge for Earth, Doom for Doom, Ranger for Slipgate, Grunt for Strogg, and Visor for Arena.  This may help if you're having trouble determining who belongs to what class during play.  Some other settings that may help:

r_overbrightbits - should be set to 1, 2 max.  I wouldn't go too high with this number.
r_mapoverbrightbits - should be set to 2.  You can set to 3 if you need some extra light on a map.
r_picmip - should really be no higher than 1 or 2 max.  Anyone who plays with r_picmip 5 needs the kind of help only a straight jacket can provide.

Remember all these settings require a vid_restart to be effective.  You can always compare screenshots of your in-game appearance to our image gallery as well.  Maybe if you attached a screeny of what you're seeing it would allow us to better help you tweak some settings?

Don't forget:

r_intensity 2

=]

There's also cg_playerColorLevel
Setting that to 192 will make Ranger's custom shirt and pants color readily visible. :)
Although, I can't remember if that's set to 192 by default for 99e.

I am sorry for the late post, I had been too busy playing DOOM3 and mapping to notice there had been an upgrade, and I guess you could call it an upgrade, but it surely feels like a brand new game, and a real good one at that, it exceeded any expectations I had for this mod. Tremendous work, responsive weapons and awsome animation on the powerups. I have been playing it with the bots and have no complaints or even suggestions, it blew me away. Nice work.

That's not a bug. Q1 had instant weapon switching. And that trick is cool, but not even remotely useful.

And the guy who made the Fragtown map is FluSyndrome. He's back in action, with a new hangar map (see Laced Neptune).

It would be nice to have a class_teamheadmodel command. For the sake of being unique, I use custom headmodels for all my classes, and would like the retain the head configurations in team games.

Also, it would be nice if you could pick between different colored skins for each team. i.e. since there's various blue colors for strogg and doom (like light blue, medium blue, dark blue), it would be nice if you could choose between them to stand out from your team mates instead of being stuck with the same generic skin as everyone else.

Also, for the last time, what the hell is up with Leemon's strogg skins? :p

Headmodels were primarily a "feature" that resulted from Team Arena's model scheme and caused some unhappy complexity in the Q3 model parsing code.  I'm not too keen on tinkering with complex areas if they work fine unless it's really necessary.  You can use the team_headmodel command to set your headmodel manually from within your class.cfg files, but I have no further plans for this area of the code outside of bug fixes until the new player animation stances are written in.

Unfortunately the code only recognizes one skin per team.  Again, this is an extremely touchy area of the code since it involves precaching and forcing of specific skins.  I don't see this as happening since debugging it would be a nightmare.  It works right now, and I do NOT want to screw it up.

The last time I inquired he still hasn't finished them.

there's a team headmodel command? That's what I was looking for but it wasn't in the manual so I thought it didn't exist.

It's not Gen-specific, it's a Q3 command.

Hi everyone I got this mod yesterday and have so far played it online for a total of roughly five hours, its very good with some maps looking even better than 3w/ra maps. I was impressed with the slipgate class as it seems very accurate even having little touches I noticed were missing from the mod classic quake arena.

I have two gripes though. For some reason I can't start my own server and get this error message: Hunk_Alloc failed on 436896

Also I have noticed most euro servers are always empty and usa ones are usually busy. I have so far only played in usa ones but as I am in uk I get pings of 150ish. Just ask Lena/Shambler/Crioknight lol.

This has got to do with the amount of memory that is set aside for Q3 to use. Gen needs more, so check the manual about setting com_hunkmegs.

Mind I could be wrong....I'm not a tech or anything.

On the euro server thing, we often have a game at 8pm satuerday night, GMT.
There is often a few of us euros there with low pings. You can check the server list, or use gamespy, or all seeing eye. :ownage:

mpb: I noticed your presence on the Euro server the other day, but when I joined, you were  gone again.
And alas, 'tis true about pings - I ping 130-140 to the Central server myself too (I'm a Dutchie). Even so, Generations is amusing, and kicking ass with that kind of ping is tough, but possible. But you knew that, ofcourse.
When you feel like a Euro game, but no-one's on, drop on by in the #wirehead channel (more info can be found on the Wirehead site) - I'm usually there, and easily persuaded to play for a bit, plus I can give a shout out to my mates, who are equally likely to join the game.

The memory problem is indeed due to the higher requirements of Generations - read the manual (esp. the bit concerning server setup) for more info on preventing problems.

I hereby announce that this thread shall return to being on-topic!

Um... slick just sayin I dig the mod minus one thing. Slipgate class. What's up with the weird physics? I read on planetquake that you used 'Classic Quake Arena's' ?  I don't suppose you'll make it netquake or quakeworld physics strictly anytime rather than a mixmesh of them or whatever it is. I personally would really love it if you had actual quakeworld physics. Otherwise I enjoy it alot minus what would be favorite class.

We ditched the CQA physics a long time ago, I believe.

We've done out best to imitate quakeworld physics, but it's quite difficult to get them 100% true to the old game. They're close, but not quite perfect. Same goes for Strogg physics.

We've tweaked the physics several times, and probably will do so again in the future.

not to mention that if slippy's physics were 100% spot on he'd own every other class more than he did before the .99c/d explosive railgun.

Well the weapon physics are spot on.  I think he's referring to Slipgate's movement physics.  I definitely plan on revisiting the physics code at some point in the future.  As always, feedback is certainly welcome, good or bad.  Keep it coming! :slippy_thumb:

I meant movement physics :P

Slippy's mid-air strafe is a disturbing thing.

Yes I was meaning the movement. Though I can partially empathize on the weapon differences. Course all you need to really do is keep slippies away from RL with weapon control, or dodge the rockets, but that's a whole strategy argument aside :offtopic: . Anyhow, after spending a couple of hours fragging a way with daily quakeworld practice I would jump into generations and it would feel very very awkward as far as movement. Accel jumps are a lot slower, air control is a quite a bit different, turning is extremely slow for the speed. Corners that I would be able to take with ease in quakeworld are difficult because of the slow air control turning etc.
There was a mod that was called custom quake arena that had the movement just about perfect (minus jump pads), perhaps you could find the author and email and find out what he did for the movement?
Well, regardless of your course of action I will look forward to seeing what you do with it. It's always fun to get away from from vanilla q3 once in a while with friends.

Actually on a side note, custom quake 3 had just about all the movement correct from quake1-3 and weapon speeds and damages. with exceptions of rotating of hyper blaster and the rules for BFG triangulation of q2. wasn't sure if they had the correct  directional ray-cast BFG from doom down though.

I have the source codes to both Quake and Quake 2.  The current physics code for Strogg and Slipgate that we have was donated and I had to add a lot of hacks.  What I plan on doing is revamping the movement code for both Slipgate and Strogg to be as close to 100% in line with the original games.

The weapons for Slipgate use the exact same projectile physics and knockback calculations from the original games.  Shotguns pattern the same, nails fly at the same speed, etc.  Same with Strogg's weapons.  You should notice grenade bounce behavior in-line with Q1 and Q2.  Slipgate and Strogg projectiles utilize different physics than Arena, Doom, or Earth at present.  This owes to the fact that Q3's projectile physics work drastically different from Q1 or Q2, so I had to write completely new projectile physics code.  Our previous release (.99d) had horrible grenade physics.  If you're familiar with Mastaba's Q2 to Q3 map converter I invite you to convert Q2DM1 and try the Strogg grenade launcher, then compare it to Quake 2's grenade launcher, barring animations (for now).  Also bear in mind that the Slipgate weapons are based on Quake 1, not Quakeworld.  I know the Quakeworld super shotgun, for example, patterned extremely tight, whereas the "out of the box" gun patterns like ours.  We also need to do some visual tweaking on the Thunderbolt's lightning beam.  Overall we plan to sticking closer to Quake as opposed to Quakeworld in regards to the Slipgate class, but I will examine both Quake and Quakeworld's sources for movement physics and see which works best for Gen.

The BFG10K triangulation currently in .99e is incorrect.  It was correct in .99d.  I've already fixed that for the upcoming bugpatch.

This mod is great.. a great idea and its really come together almost perfectly.  I say almost, because I do have a few minor gripes, nothing serious at all, but if you will abide.. :)  

(Just as a side note, I've played competitively in every id multiplayer game since doom, with the exception of maybe q2, which , while I played it quite a bit and did pretty well, I don't feel as qualified to comment on your mod about it, I'll let the real diehard q2 players do that.)

1. Doom guy.  I played competitive doom2 with all the best players, and right off the bat his combat shotgun reload time irked me.  Its just a titch too long, like maybe .15 seconds or so.  The exact time I counted out in my head is like nearly 1 second perfectly.  I mentioned this on the irc channel and someone said something about making it 'balanced'  Which, I'm all game for, but the way to do that IMHO is not to adjust the core of the classes attributes (i.e. movement, reload time, weapon switch time,  air control, splash damage) but adjust the one most unobtrusive thing.. damage.  

Here's what I said on irc
[17:01] yeah thats fine :)
[17:01] but just scale the damage back
[17:01] its cool if its feels like the original game so you dont have to modify your impulses
[17:02] doom2 is built into my brain
[17:02] heck, all id games are
[17:02] when i load up as slipgate i constantly hit shift for my rl .. which is funny
[17:02] cuz i play q3 1000x more and i use shift for zoom
[17:02] its .. genetic :)

the Slipgate guy is pretty close to perfection, and when I see the HUD and the RL i just impulsively (pun intended:)  hit shift for my rl, even though in generations (a q3 mod) my RL is bound to F, like it is in q3.

So anyway, back to the doom guy.  His movement speed seems about right, but in doom/doom2 the standard run forward speed is about 15% slower than the holding strafe speed.  Go ahead and test that one out, back in the day we had FAQ's about it.  If you want to get really hardcore you could make him boost off the walls when you rub up against a wall and strafe toward it and hold foward and look away at about a 30 degree angle.  This if you look in those old FAQ's was called the 3x wall run.. and you could use it on doom2 map01 to fly down the long hallway with incredible speed.  I could post a demo if anyone wants to see this.  

But thats really a trivial thing.  The SSG reload really irks me and man I'd love to see it mirror the feeling of doom2, because that game to me is the all time greatest FUN to play dm experience. Maybe not the most balanced competitively but definitely the most fun.  

Finally, speaking of balance.. right now doom guy feels too strong for what he was/is in my mind.  In doom/doom2 he could not take a hit from anything, not matter how much armor.  Right now he seems like a tank in comparison.  Maybe to really balance him out, you could leave his weapons ultra strong, but make him comparitively paper-like in terms of getting hit.  When we would play doom2 ffa or even 1v1 we would routinely race to 100, as opposed to going for 15 mins.  Thats a lot of fragging, because basically it was about 1-shot kills the whole time. 2 or 3 shots with the single barrel, and just a quick burst from the chaingun.


2. Slipgate
Pretty much awesome, I don't mind the slightly modified physics, because it feels like a mix of qw/nq, and I can get used to that.  My only gripe here is the rocket launcher.. the initial fire feels like it has a q3 style built in lag, but that wasn't really present in q1.  It's noticeable to me, but then again that might just be my ping.  Also the splash doesnt hurt quite as much as I remember it hurting in q1.  Lg is perfect, everything else seems perfect. [EDIT]: So one little niggling thing here.. is nothing you kill as a slipgate drops ammo for you.  You can't ever get a decent pack of lg cells going unless you play purely other slipgaters.  I'm not even sure if they drop their cells in their pack ala q1.  If you made it so people dropped a q1 pack with the ammo adjusted over to q1 ammo maybe that would help?

3. Q3 guy
well.. duh. he's perfect.  Not sure why you changed the lg sound but whatever..

Which brings me to my final hope, that you use the id animations and sounds from doom and quake, because man THEY ROCK.  Nothing would make me smile more than to see and hear the oldschool quick load CHIK-CHOK of the doom2 double barrel.  And hearing the q1 rl's thunderous boom, and the ultra low frequency thunder of the shaft( with the backround ZZT ZZT) .. and lets not forget doom's insane plasma rifle.  All in all a great mod if you tweak out the weapon firing/reload time issues I mentioned.  I really didn't see anything else wrong with it.  It's awesome, great work.

- rdwilson

As far as I know, weapon refire times for Doom, Slipgate, and Strogg have all been timed and code-checked to be accurate to their source games. Doom, as I understand it, is a hard one to do, because the game runs on an entirely different clock (Hz) from Quake, Quake 2, and Quake 3, so I guess it might be a tad off -- but I highly doubt it. Phoenix is pretty much the Mr. Doom of the team, and he's the coder. You're never going to be able to time any weapon properly in your head. The reasons it might feel "off" to you are 1) it has a different firing sound, 2) it lacks a reload sound, and 3) it lacks a reload animation.

See below for the fix to some of that!

As for Doom's armor... he's already been weakened! :wtf:  Both Doom and Slipgate have had an armor nerf at some point since 99a. Doom still dies the easiest, overall.

There is one major difference between Doom and Gen's Doom class that should be noted, and that is his weapon damage: None of it is random in Gen, where it was random in several cases in Doom/Doom 2. The SSG and RL do a set amount of damage now, instead of a possible 300-somesuch. If you're used to getting pasted point-blank with the SSG and dying in Doom 2, but are survivng those shots while armored in Gen, there's your reason. :)

Also keep in mind that the other classes' weapons do varying amounts of damage, and there is nothing in Doom or Doom II that you could accurately compare them to.

Also, you say the Slipgate shaft is perfect. It's far from perfect, actually. ;)  I don't remember the lightning stream lagging behind the gun the way it does in Gen, and that's something that will be done as close as possible to the original for 1.0... if I'm remembering the Q1 Thunderbolt correctly.

As for the animations and such: Hold onto your shorts and keep waiting for 1.0... :ninja:

Thanks for the feedback! :thumb:

All the weapon reload times are 100% identical. The difference in 'feel' is the lack of animations.

As for the other stuff, Doom's armor is roughly as effective as a wet paper bag. Unless you can control the megahealth, any other class can chew a doomer to bits in seconds. Earth in particular is the anit-doom class.

Also, Doom had semi-random damage values. The rocket launcher and ssg were both capable of 300+ damage iirc. Which is why you died so easily in Doom DM, the weapons vs health were crazy unbalanced. Where the quake titles had relatively static damage values.

I have a reputation of slaughtering just about anyone on the server with the Doomguy.  He does dish out a lot of damage.  However, a good player in any other class that uses the class properly can give him trouble.  I played a lengthy 1 vs 1 match with a VERY good Q3 player just last night.  We were neck and neck throughout most of the match.  He'd get 3 frags on me, I'd get 3 on him, and we'd see-saw like this.  We won roughly the same number of matches against each other.  Among most Gen players, the default Q3 class tends to feel week and "middle of the road" unspecialized, but in the hands of a good player he can be just as dangerous as the Doom Warriors or any of the other classes.  This holds true for every one of the classes.  Those who think the Strogg Troopers are weak and pathetic should play against Tabun sometime, you may find it quite humbling.  If you think Earth is underpowered, give ConfusedUs a try.  Think Slipgate's a wimp?  Tekhead will play ping-pong with you and show you some mad physics tricks.  Gen's gameplay varies a LOT from one game to the next.  How many players you have of a specific class on a map can affect how the map plays, and the maps themselves make a huge difference.  Some maps favor Doomers, some favor the Q2 grunt, etc.  Gen is a complex mod, and balance is a very hard thing to pin down since there's so many variables involved at any given time.  That's part of the appeal behind Gen is that you never know how things are going to play out.

As for the Doom physics, yes I'm aware of the wall-running and strafe-running techniques.  However, Doom's source code used polar coordinates, and a primarily 2 dimensional movement system with z calculations hacked in for elevation.  Quake 3 Arena uses vector equations.  The math is completely different, and not easily adapted.  Also, as Makou correctly stated, Doom ran on a 35Hz clock, whereas Q3 runs on a 20Hz clock.  There's also a question of how much of those old physics do we actually need.  Doom's maps were mostly flat with slight elevation changes, and any serious elevation changes were handled by elevating platforms.  Q3 maps have much more severe geometry, and fewer areas where straferunning and/or wallrunning would actually be useful.  We usually jest about people wanting Doom to walk on water when these things are brought up, but we do have to pass everything through the filter of necessity.  Would it be better to write a completely new movement system for Doom, and try to adapt it to Q3's environment, or would it be better to use the existing Q3 movement and add some enhancements as we've done?  Some things get finished before others as well.  Movement physics are an ongoing project.  We're not finished with them, and there's going to be improvements to all the classes (save Arena) during our development of the 1.0 version.  We're still in development on many things, which is why we're only a publicly playable Beta version at this point.

On to those weapon reload times.  I have timed, both numerically from the source codes, and by using a stopwatch, all the weapon reload times for Doom, Quake, and Quake II.  Every weapon's refire time is exactly as it is in the old game.  Now keep in mind the client's predicted module runs asynchronous to the game server.  So long as you're running g_synchronous clients 0 in a local game, if you get 100 Frames per second in Q3 your client will run as close to that as possible for it's movement timer, including weapon refires.  However, the game's server module runs at 20 frames per second, so the actual damage impulse will be rounded to the nearest multiple of 50 milliseconds.  There's no way around this fact.  I know the Combat Shotgun might "feel" a bit slow, but if you hold down the trigger and time over a length of a minute and count the shots you'll find it will match the Doom II SSG precisely.  Once we get those animations and reload sounds in you'll notice a pronounced difference.

Gen's current mode of play primarily matches the old games as much as is possible, with balance tweaks where necessary to ensure no single class dominates every other class 100% of the time.  There's always going to be some give and take, but we're dealing with the law of averages.  We want everyone to have fun no matter what class they use.  For our 1.0 build, we're going to incorporate an "oldschool" mode.  That is, everything as exact to the original games as much as possible.  Weapon damages will be as unfairly unbalanced as in the original games, armor pickups, health pickups - you name it.  Both modes of play will be available through a simple server cvar, which should satisfy people wanting to play Gen as it has been so far, as well as the die-hard oldschool purists.

Unfortunately, we cannot use the original game sounds because they are copyrighted.  It would be illegal for us to do so, and it would mean the doom of this project (no pun intended).  The only way we could use them was if Id were to grant us carte blanch to do so, which will never happen.  Even then, some of their sounds are under license from a third-party sound library.  That license is not transferrable, and the library costs over $1,000.  Unless someone is willing to make a hefty donation so that we can procure this sound library we cannot use those sounds at all.

I hope this helps to answer any questions you might have.  Thanks for the feedback!  :thumb:

I'll use the sounds issue as another opportunity to plug: We need good sound engineers, with the upcoming weapon animations and just the general lack of good sounds in Gen, someone with the right skills could really help us get the mod sounding nostalgic, too :]

Indeed those were good games.  I should know, since I was that good player hehe.  But I do see your point, and I did in fact double check the reload on the double barrel, and it seemed a lot  closer on further inspection.  Maybe just the tiniest of a fraction of a second slow, at least in my mind it seems that way.  But I think you are right about the weapon reload animation and sound being important for the visualization and 'feel' of it.  Someone mentioned the shaft, and I'd argue its pretty close to "looking" like what it feels like when you play.  While the original q1 shaft was immobile in GL mode (like truelightning in cpm/osp) it had a tiny lag to it in software mode, incidentally i always played in software.  It feels very much like the q1 shaft, adapted of course for Q3.  As far as the sounds go, completely off the record, is there any chance of.. lets say, an underground 'tribute to id' sound pack that might not be specifically bundled with the game.. ?  :evil:

Single emoticon replies tell us absolutely nothing.

Actually he used the quote function and somehow got the quoted text intermingled with his own text.  I've straightened it out and removed the quoted section.

Underground packs can only be.. well.. underground. Couldn't be posted here, couldn't be distributed by WH or advertised on the site. But if you want to make your own, go right ahead - just don't count on it working on pure servers :]

Hey wassup been away for a while and wow :thumb: nice job guys.I was wondering if any of you have played the PS2 version of Q3 before?It had a game mode called possesion.Where you had to capture a flag and hold on to it for as long as possible.Any plans on putting it on Generations?

Oh yeah    :rules:

Hello everybody!
First of all, Generations ROCKS. :) I played the Quake 2 mod before it was cancelled, and always regretted that  they never finished it, it was so cool. So imagine my surprise when, checking if there were any Matrix mods for Quake 3, I came upon a new Generations mod. :P
And this one is far better than the old one... it's wonderfully playable, captures the 'soul' of the old games well, and is just a ton of fun. I really think you did an amazing job, this is a worthy tribute to Wolfenstein, DOOM and Quake. :)

I have a few questions/suggestions... ;)

First of all, any chance of at least one Wolfenstein map being included? :) I know they're rather dull and square compared to DOOM and Quake maps, but I think Wolfenstein deserves at least one map of its own, right? ;)
Oh, and more DOOM / DOOM 2 maps would be kick-ass, too. :P I was very happy to find 3 (4? I may have missed one) DOOM maps remade in Generations, but I definitely wouldn't mind seeing more. :P

And a question, how do I give orders to bots in teamplay/CTF games? That menu seems to have disappeared completely. Or perhaps this feature isn't available (yet) in Generations? It sure would make CTF with bots more fun.

I know you guys walk a thin line between staying true to the original games, and not infringing on copyrights, but do you really think you'll get sued if you give the Earth Soldier in the logo orange-ish hair? ;) When I first saw the title picture I was like "DOOM guy! Quake 1 guy! Quake 2 guy! Quake 3 guy! But who's that? Must be the Wolfenstein guy then..".
Also, but maybe I'm whining now, I really liked the Rocket Launcher sound in Quake 2. It made firing that thing a lot more gratifying. ;) I know you cannot use the original sound, but I think the current Generations sound doesn't do it justice.  Well, I'm just giving my opinion. ;)

Oh, and I've also got two questions about Quake 3. So this doesn't really have much to do with Generations, but I'm sure somebody here can answer them for me. ;)
First of all, weapon switching. I can only get it to switch never, or always, even if I have a Rocket Launcher and walk over a Chainsaw. Neither mode is really useful. How do you guys do this?
Secondly, how do I change the bot skill? I seem to remember you could change the skill with a console command, and even set it to non-integer values, like 3.5. But I can't find that command, neither skill nor botskill nor bot_skill exist. Does anybody know?

Ok well anyways, kick-ass mod!!! I love it! Keep up the good work and such, and thanks for this wonderful mod. :)