I don't mind, and I need it
your help apreciated!

I'm still on the crossbow thing.
Do you think my comparishing with the knight and its soard can stand?
Of course the knight is always close, so its soard you'll hear, but not as loud as a shotgun. I thought the first time you'll hear the arrow flush you would notice.

Or don't you hear no flush at all? 

i just checked, the crossbow knights do not make any sound when firing. i thought it was just because i was far away. 

That's strange. It can be that on my comp I did change something,
but I can clearly hear the cbow.wav as it is present in knight2.qc

sound (self, CHAN_WEAPON, "weapons/cbow.wav", 1, ATTN_STATIC);


It would solve the problem, as gb is telling me that from the start, and I can't find the clue.

I watched your demo, gb. Alright, mayby I'm a little coy, sorry.
That thing can be killed indeed. But when I place the pent in the last part the chances would be odd Granito would survive.

It wasn't really clear to me why you took the pent and megahealth, while you could see there were no monsters around. A player could think it would be wisely to spare some items.
Than you would have survived, I think.

Also it is a long walk, but I thought when you had catched that GK at once, the fight back wouldn't be a so easy one.

If you would have shoot the round nob in the end pit, your chances to survive would have risen dramaticly.

Thanks for the demo,
your comments were welcom! 

it is stupid, to catch a key while sitting on a pillar, I don't know. It just was there, I think.

I had the same odd feeling, when I had made Granito. Rather a rough clumb , with hardly any Quake-a-like. But as it opened the oppertuntity to change gemeplay I got used to it.

People still may think, is this a stupid joke?
In a matter of fact hellspawn is also a joke. 

(some posting without playing here, sorry)
Even when they do have a firing sound, crossbow wielding enemies in quake have always been the source of 'cheap sniping' complaints. I think it's more to do with the visual feedback.

Crossbows lack a muzzleflash - which at range is the clearest indicator a shot has been fire - and arrows are much harder to see than any projectile a regular quake monster fires. Scrags, hell knights and vores all fire brightly coloured projectiles with fullbright tracers. Even ogre grenades have a red band and smoke particle effect.

One solution, which is simple in concept but may require carefull modelling to pull off well, would be to set the crossbow bolts on fire. This would make the arrows as bright as the enforcer's lasers, although personally I'd draw the line at making them glow as well. Yet I would at least try out the ogre's smoke effect - placing the origin of the arrow model just behind the arrowhead would probably create the best visual. If you left off the glow from the arrow, then you could instead have a 'muzzleflash' as the arrow is lit.

I'm now quite tempted to go and adapt this to the harpoon-toting ogre I've had in the ideas pile, hmm... 

yea, it's partially that too, preach. but mostly it's just the lack of sound effect at all.

even if it did play a sound, keep in mind that ATTN_STATIC = 3 which is a very high attenuation. for a monster that is going to be used as a sniper, it would be better to use a much lower attenuation so that the sound could be heard at long range like ATTN_NORM (1) or even lower values such as 0.7 or 0.6. 

I get a sound most of the time with Fitz 085. I'm wondering if it's a different engine thing? The sound only plays when you're hit or a close miss. Arrows ideas here sound good. Quake's organic weapons are great, but the only time you get a good look at an arrow is pausing the game (nice arrows though, madfox). 

I only hear a sound when the bolts strike a wall.

The firing sound in Quake is the main cue that something fired at you... the first time I noticed the attenuation problem was with Quoth's rocketeers way back in the early rmq days. When they're placed at a distance and used as snipers (big maps...), you got the problem of guided rockets coming out of nowhere, because you can't hear the firing sound anymore.

The problem is the firing sound, not the hit sound.

I'm not sure if the crossbow knights in madfox' map play a sound when the bolt is fired; it's either that they don't, or that it's not loud enough / the attenuation is too high. This again creates projectiles that give you no clue that they are coming.

Of course a crossbow isn't as loud as a shotgun, but it does make a sound (a normal bow would probably be even more silent, but still makes a sound). And I think because it's only a game, the player should get a cue when something is shooting at him.

About the pent, I mainly decided to take it to drive the point home. Some players will take it, thinking that there is a fight ahead or something. It's also in a secret, so not everybody will have it in the granito fight. The only way to make sure the player has the pent is to place it in granito's arena. But then again, if you need a pent to kill a monster, it would be easier to remove the pent and just halve the monster's hitpoints. :)

My complaint about Granito is only in regard to the easy skill setting, anyway. As a monster, he is cool. 

The problem is the firing sound

Actually I just copied the enforcer code inside there, and left the enforcer/enfire.wav inside.
That I don't hear the firing is something I'm not sure of.
It's true I didn't check the firing sound, but not hearing anything was also the reason I didn't add a plunge sound.
I either didn't get a message : enforcer sound not loaded.

I know I thought about the idea how to make the crossbow launch.
And it seemed reasonable to me to make no launchsound, but then again it could be handy to make a player's attention key. The code had
sound (self, CHAN_WEAPON, "weapons/cbow.wav", 1, ATTN_STATIC);
so it should be heard on a loud range as the arrow strikes in.
In the longest shoot part on the street I couldn't hear the launch of a crossbow.

So I made something to make its attention.
More in the way Preach wrote about a burning arrow.
The front are luminating colours, the back are standard pal.
Maybe the fire dots should be more in its tail.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/flair.gif

I know the crossbow knight code is a little cranky.
I often saw it shooting with its back to me, as if the ai_face wasn't tweaked.
In regard, I think he looks better than the original knight.

Pentagram - When seeing an item my most attention is to the point if I can use it or not. There can be three items, like megahealth, pent and squad , but I think it poor to use them all the same time.
More with the idea it could be usefull when there is an end boss.

If I could, I would change Granito's behaviour in skill settings, but I haven't found the key.
I know, because Shambler also changes skill in settings. 

change Granito's behaviour in skill settings

if (skill == 0)
->do something easy
else if (skill == 1)
->do something normal
else if (skill == 2)
->do something hard
else if((skill == 3)
->do something nightmarish 

will double check whether it was when I got hit or when it fired. 

I updated again, as the amophora sizes were lost. And I added a better animation to the crossbow knigth, as he suddenly waved with its soard in painframes.

@nitin - When the arrow impact the sound is heard. I tried several times to add a launch sound, but it won't come through.
It is almost the same code as the enforcer.
I added the EF_DIM light again.

@necros - thanks for the hint, I included it in the code. There are three beats granito launches a HellNewLightning, but I think it happens only once in a round.
I don't know if it fits in well,


void() granito_beat12 =[ $beat12, granito_beat13 ]
{
if (skill == 1)
HellNewLightning();
};
void() granito_beat13 =[ $beat13, granito_beat14 ]
{
if (skill == 2)
HellNewLightning();};
void() granito_beat14 =[ $beat14, granito_beat15 ]
{

if (skill == 3)
HellNewLightning();
};
void() granito_beat15 =[ $beat15, granito_run1 ] {};


Does this mean the bold launch happens only half the time in normal as in hard, or am I wrong?

Also it is strange to see the crossbow knight shooting its arrow from its back. I searched in the ai_face but I don't know how to tell it has its bows crossed? 

well, no that's not exactly correct.

1. i'm assuming there's another call to HellNewLightning() in the frame before granito_beat12.

what's going to happen is that in skill 0 it will shoot lightning once.
in normal, it will shoot twice, once on frame 11 then again on frame 12.

on hard, it will shoot TWICE, once on frame 11 and once on frame 13.

what you need to do is use inequalities in your if checks.

frame1:
HellNewLightning();

frame2:
if (skill > 0)
HellNewLightning();

frame3:
if (skill > 2)
HellNewLightning();

now in easy, it will shoot once, in normal and hard it will shoot twice, and in nightmare it will shoot 3 times. 

I'm glad there was already a hint in the shambler.qc that
if (skill==3)
had on its count.
Otherwise it would have taken me ages to conclude it had to be somewhere there.

Now easy skill Granito don't launch bold, normal one, hard two and in nightmare skill it will be three.

On what point in the ai_face decides the monster to shoot foreward?
I ask this as I see it launch two times, front and back. 

on ai_face, i'm not actually sure i know what you are talking about, but ai_face faces the current enemy. it does so incrementally depending on what self.yaw_speed is. 

Watching close to crossbow knight it launches arrows the same time when its face is at the shooter, as when its back is turned in front. 

like i said, ai_face faces the current enemy in increments based on yaw_speed. you have to give it time to turn around. 

but as I'm a little crumpy with coding it took some time to realize and add{ai_face();};
behind the knight2_shoot session. Now it shoots straight.

Also I'm quiet slow to see that
if (self.classname == "monster_enforcer")
there will be never be a launchsound, as there are no enforcers in game.

Now it works perfectly, so thanks to Necros and gb the level is now optimized.
The crossbow knight has a launch sound, as well as an impact sound with a EF_DIM glow.
The sound is only to be heard at close distance to it, that I couldn't avoid.
The end boss has a good skill setting, that were in fact the things I was struck with before I published the level.

Thanks for advice and support! 

You upadated the above link to a newer, optimized version? 

I know it's a bit foolish to contain the same download link.
But I did it because I don't want several links to several maps.

The only reference is that sparcus10.bsp comes from sparcus207.qrm , and the last txt addition is from 28aug2010. 

sparcus207qrk - 30aug2010. 

releasing not properly finished map 

It is said, that when reaching the inner of an atom, the chance really catching up with the proper position of it only becomes smaller, no matter how precise the calculation will be.

The reason of relaesing not properly finished maps is...

the fact it took ages in my imagination to get all the broken polys and homs out of the way, before I could evaluate how many more I could add and relay on, before the engine started spitting its warnings. This sounds odd, but on the last point this balance has a tricky foot by suddenly expanding its clipnodes in a illogical way by only replacing a brush.

the distribution of the entities was done in a short way, after I finally had done the layout. Then I got so weird playing the level over and over again I just couldn't see it anymore.

there were several betatesters, who gave me great ideas but in the end there was no chance adding anything at all. I deleted all ambient-sounds.
I saw the clipcount wouldn't permit me to decorate the level, so I used dxf-models, which are very hard to position when they extend more than 2048 units.

Coding the new monsters took quiet some time, and even then I hadn't the knowledge to make skillsetting go. Yes, I'm a coding-nooblip.

Making a game go means to cut out all oppertunities that don't match the gameflow. I'm the geek, who doesn't see after x-times what a player's purpose has in mind. 

on model/bsp integration:

if you have doom3:
you can export the brushwork in the area to a separate map file and import it into the doom3 editor. doom3 has an option to export brushwork as an obj file which can be imported into your 3d app. then you can just build whatever model with the brushwork right there for comparison.

i think you can do this with gtkr? it's been a while, is there an 'export to obj' option? 

now this i liked. more than red slammer.. despite the brushwork being poor with often shoddy texturing; the *feel* was much more interesting with a better variety of areas (both indoor & outdoor) and more of a sense of being in an actual place (not necessarily a realistic one, but a location as opposed to a mass of generic quake brushes). gameplay was nicely spread out too with a good variety of close-quarters and long-range combat, and it was generally enjoyable to navigate; i never found myself 'lost' even though i didn't always know what to do next. good verticality; nice atmosphere in places

gripes; too many skeletons. no grenade launcher! doors that went up instead of splitting to the sides. gold key pillar thing = meh.

on the whole though, fun