Wirehead Studios

Okay, guys, I finally got it going.

My first impressions are as follows. Bear in mind that I didn't get the map packs, so this just refers to the minimum install stuff.

I thought the Earth Soldiers' weapons were a tad dull compared to the original Wolfenstein ones. Beautiflly modelled, but the guns just didn't seem to have that much "Oomph!" about them. Maybe they're realistic, but personally, I'd rather they had a bit more whammy. There should be more recoil/ louder sound effects on them, I reckon. The sniper rifle in particular, would have been better if it was like "BOOM!" every time you fired it. The chain guns were neat, however.

The Doom Warriors' weapons were kinda similar, although that chainsaw sporking rocks. I know the shotguns aren't finished yet, but the pistol could have been a bit meatier. If it was more like the desert eagle in Opposing Force, that would be cool. Maybe not realistic, but this doesn't need to be that realistic.

The Quake Rocket launcher could do with being a bit bigger on the screen. It's a damn nice model, but it feels a bit insignificant.

BTW, I think maybe the weapons would look better if they were fired from the right of the screen rather than the centre. I know you're trying to recreate the feel of the old games, but unless you're going to make stuff so similar that you're going to piss ID off, I don't think you can really do that anyway.

So just take it in a bit of a different direction. Don't worry about keeping it so authentic, change stuff around so it's more fun. Do what makes the game look more natural.. you get to see more of the gun models if they're at the side of the screen anyway, so that's kinda cool. Plus it feels kinda unnatural to have half the characters shooting from the centre, when the other half shoot from the side.

The best thing about the mod was the quality of the models. They are bloody well made and skinned, even if they're not finished yet.

Okay I'll leave it at that. Maybe what I've said sounds harsh, I'm sorry if this pisses anyone off, but this is just how I see it. I admire the fact that you guys started from scratch after Q2 Generations was canned.

just to comment, the idea behind this mod is not to go with what 'looks better' .. but to go with what feels and plays like the old games so we can all argue over which one is better..heh

We appreciate your feedback.  Bear in mind what we're trying to do here though.  The idea is to grab your favorite old-school class and feel right at home in the Arenas Eternal with it.  Breaking the concept by switching a lot of stuff around just takes away from it.  We've done everything possible to stay on the good side with Id, and so far it's worked out rather well.  No worries there.:)

Yeah.

I've been thinking about what I posted actually and maybe it's better if some of the weapons do stay in the centre. However I still think some of the weapons need beefier sound effects/ models.

Oh and how's about a different HUD for each character? I don't mean a status bar, I mean, something similar to the Quake 3 one, with icons over the viewable area, but each player should have it done in the style of his game. For example, have different armour icons for each character. Also, when you change weapons, instead of it showing the normal weapons icons, have old style ones come up instead, and have a different weapon changing sound effect too.

It sounds like a small thing, but it would make you feel more like you're playing characters from different games. Also I'd rather the HUD was the standard Quake 3 size too actually. It''s a bit small ATM.

Oh and hey if you guys think my ideas suck, tell me, I won't be offended or anything. I mean, I've got a lot of respect for you getting off your asses and making something from nothing. These are just a few ideas of mine..

new HUDs are planned and are in the works. Have no fear  ;)

I call a vote for a progress sticky, ie "the list of what we want done, what we've done, and what we haven't"

No problem with the suggestions, revanent.  A lot of what you're mentioning there is already planned at some point.

Angst:  I'm against those kinds of "stickies".  A progress bar does Gen absolutely no good.  Since we have many things in the works at once, you'd need multiple progress bars for each design area, and then we run into a question:  Do we put more effort into maintaining a site progress format on the web page, or doing the actual work?

Usually we post if something significant changes.  I don't see any reason to deviate from that format.  It also invites more in the line of creative feedback and suggestions.

I agree with Pho on the progress bars - anyway, what IS on percent? Who's to say the last 3% won't take more than the first 40%? Does anyone know when 100% is truly reached? What about unforseen changes?
If anything on the site is to show progress, my vote would be for a ToDo list, so you can see which items are done. Easier to update, useful during production. Still, I hardly think it's important- anyone really intrested checks the boards, and that's the only thing you need to check to stay updated, aye? :]

Well tab, that's actually what I meant :P.
A list of items with comments regarding what's in the works/etc..

Biggest thing about the 'oomph' of the weapons is that they're not animated. A few of them spin, but that's it. The animations will go a long way towards making  them feel a bit meatier.

And I agree with the sniper rifle sound. It's not BAM! enough at all ;)

Just wait till doom gets his SG animation frames =D let teh gibbage begin!

I think part of the thing is also how big the guns appear on screen. Many of them look a lot smaller/ skinnier than the originals..

Personally I like the meaty, close up look of the Quake 3 weapons.

Most are fairly accurate, but might be more immersive and realistic if the first person view of them were made slightly larger.  

For the most part they are accurate enough - the strogg ones are most impressive (I mailed Hedhunta to tell him so, and he thought I was telling him that he copied them illegally - they are THAT well done.)  :rolleyes:

Doom and Slippy's rocket launcher and explosion are damn cool, too.  :thumb:

If I were to change any of them, it'd be Slippy's single barrel shotgun - which right now looks puny like a pistol.  What's up with that?

but but! it IS puny like a pistol! :D

The difference between the original Quake shotgun and its supershotgun was but the addition of another barrel.  I spent a lot of time playing Quake, and there was no way to turn the visual weapons off, so I saw a lot of the shotgun.  The super shotgun was very similar - it fired what appeared to be two of the same gauge shot, and used twice the ammo.

The contrast of Generations version is much more pronounced - the shotgun looks like a puny pistol (or perhaps a rifle) and the supershotgun looks fairly massive, and actually looks like an oversized shotgun.

But how does the original shotgun look against the pistol-like Gen weapon?  A bit different!
(http://pretzel.iceware.net/images/shotgun.jpg)

I know, I know :P I was talking about the effect, not the visual. As I recall, there's been talk of redoing the Slipgate weapons, but I can't guarantee anything.

yea i heard something about that too... the shaft and the axe looks awsome but the other weaps. could look better.

My first impression of this mod was very positive.  Finally, a mod that sounds as fun online as Quake 2 has always been.  I've played hours and hours of Quake (original) on LAN as a sort of dare, but never really enjoyed playing it on the Internet with the Quake World client which changed the physics of it so much.  So it wasn't until Quake 2 that I started blasting people I didn't know online.

I got so used to being able to tell people in the game apart by the way they moved when on a LAN.  After the game was over, I could meet up with everyone in the same room again and tell each who had what color shirt and pants on their player.  They'd always pick different names so it'd be a game in a game to figure it out.   That's how I got started playing - someone suggested I sneak in and see if anyone could figure it out.  After I learned how to use the mouse to move, I was a regular threat.

I've played Doom and Castle Wolfenstein in single player and over serial port, but not to the extreme.  I'm familiar enough with them though that playing Generations is very interesting - something game companies could do if they became more efficient and clever in their game designs.   Thankfully, now I have a reason for playing Q3A !   This mod should gather a large following!  :thumb:

r_drawviewmodel 0 ; )

Is there a way to do that in Q3A?

Like he said. Pull up your console in-game (default  ` key (tilde)) and type in:  "/r_drawviewmodel 0" (without the quotes of course) and your weapon goes poof! gone!

To remove the hand/weapon from screen~

From console:
Quake 1 - "r_drawviewmodel 0"
Quake 2 - "hand 2"
Quake 3 - "cg_drawGun 0"


Also, a suggestion of my own, the Strogg class should have the option of setting the location, onscreen, of the weapon. Just like it was in Q2...

For Quake 2, it's cl_gun 0, but that's just one of the ways to turn it off.  Any FOV besides 90 and you can't see the weapon.

I think I read that the models can't be mirrored in Q3A, so there probably won't be a handed option.  Even if everthing's not exactly the same, I still get the impression I'm playing those old games again.

Let the axe swing in Quake!   Let the games begin!

When I first heard of Generations, I was impressed that it was possible and my interest greatly piqued. When I tried it, I found that it was much, much cooler than I expected.

This mod rocks guys.

I particularly like the Strogg arsenal - very well done and very impressive. The Quake arsenal is also pretty cool I think, but maybe Karen is right that the normal shotgun looks a bit wimpy.
I've got mixed feeling with the majority of the Doom weapons however (the chaingun is awesome though), but that's to be expected for a Doom fanatic like me and I don't expect them to be improved either (I mean, why should you?).
Specifics are the shotguns and the plasma weapons: The shotguns look far too old-fashioned for my tastes, they even look older and more primitive than the original ones imo - at least the brown areas didn't look exactly like wood (more like some sort of plastic material that was painted brown) in the classic Doom game.
The plasma rifle looks too "shiny" with those plasma tubes (which is the same issue I had with the Q3A plasma rifle) - I just don't think a believable weapon would have such a large source of light, plus I liked the original brown coating of the original better.
The BFG looks like a big plastic toy gun and seems much too broad imho (compare it to the Strogg BFG 10K).

But those small issues with weapons looks are completely obliterated in the light of everything else which just plain rocks - great work guys.

Looking forward to seeing animated weapons in the upcoming versions :)

alot of the q1 weapons are borrowed from the classic quake(i think?) mod a while ago.. hence why they look massively diffrent.. but like they said, they may get redone whenever we get the time..

May I ask what the next major feature you're working on for the next release of Generations will be?

Or is that classified? :)

By and large, bug fixes. I believe the menu and hud are on the table as well. Beyond that probably some poking at getting dualgats properly visible again 3rd person. All in all, I'll wait on pho and then see if we can get a todo list up here :P

Don't forget weapon animation :]

wasn't weapon animation a 1.0 or late .99 bit? :P