http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2016/03/1453567594-wip3-bfg9500.png 

Since the topic came up, the group_frames function in qmdl does support an optional 4th parameter called duration, which defaults to 0.1 if not set. This sets the duration of frames in the framegroup. Because of the GLQuake bug that prevents per-frame setting of the value in most engines, the function only takes a single value and applies it to all frames. You could write your own code to set individual values if you desired but I wouldn't recommend it. 

Avoid mixing blue tones with gray, that's very hard to get it looking really good in the software renderer.

Try to use similar hues for both the base image and the weathering, only drastically switching hues on neighbouring pixels that have the same brightness, to smooth out the transition.

Grayscale tones are difficult to mix with other colors. They mix better with more desaturated colors. 

That would be a nice debut for this guy I think in Arcane Dimension. I just finished his original animation set so now I can look into adding some new one. Check it out!

https://youtu.be/OemMkCeTB6Y

New Idle and death for sure! AOE Stomping lighting attack would be murder.

Speaking of lighting... Its one of the things I would love to redo. Longer more varied chunks because the default tiles like crazy and does not give me the electric vibe. 

that looks absolutely incredible!! Cannot wait for this badboy! 

 

 

 

this time trying to put more rust, bonus point for software rendering (I don't like that because it stings the eyes, but some people do so eh)
http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2016/03/1453577612-wip4-bfg9500.png 

That would be a nice debut for this guy I think in Arcane Dimension. I just finished his original animation set so now I can look into adding some new one

I would recommend 2 idles, something with claws as they are obvious to see from a distance. Also as the Shambler has no neck, turning would not be obvious to see. 3 channeling lightning animations (start/looped/stop), a single foot stop (shockwave effect, lift all around up into the air unless jumping) and 1 extra death animation.

I would suggest any new features be on a shambler with a new skin (always best to keep the original behaviour) and to keep the HP exactly the same with GL/RL resist as before. If you want this as part of AD then then let me know as it could be added as a patch easily.

Longer more varied chunks because the default tiles like crazy
The lightning bolts are hard coded to the engine lightning effect. If you want more variety of bolts then its needs new QC to calculate the length, draw the segments and then fade them. It could be easily added as this is what I am doing with the AD fire wraith. 

skiffy: that looks great. 

Hey Daya, that latest one has come on leaps and bounds from the first shots. Making the weathering rusty is a good move because it gives the metal a contrasting warmer colour to the blue body. It could probably stand to take a bit more noise on the flat portions, perhaps by adding a specular highlight on those portions (the directional illumination is already much better).

I think you could also get some more mileage out of that blue glowing bit at the back. If you can bake some fake blue reflected highlights into the surrounding portions it will stand out much more. You are working with the quake palette of course, but you might be able to switch palette rows to do it, using the lower bright blue row to find some more saturated highlight for the blue bodywork, and pale blue tones on the nearest metalwork highlights.

One final idea for the light itself, since the palette has very few fullbright blue tones it's hard to do anything other than make it totally flat. However, perhaps you could try a chequerboard pattern with the lighter shade. In software mode you might hope for an effect like:

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzU1WDE2MDA=/z/KpsAAOxyVLNS8SsT/$_35.JPG

In GLQuake the smoothing will at least create more texture and perhaps some kind of gradient effect. 

Now it's looking really closer to the original Quake style. I'll wait to see it ingame. 

Like so?
http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2016/03/1453584132-bfg9500-backlight.png 

But more so. The light had a great pattern now. The highlights on the edge are what's needed, but can you try adding some spilling onto the surrounding elements? Like the inside edge of the crank handle, maybe the metal part of the stock and the blue portions right below the light. Make it so it's really emitting (fake) light onto the surrounding portions. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/1453584132-bfg9500-backlight.jpg

One thing I didn't mention was the highlights on the ridges. It looks like the light is coming from back to front on the model (a good choice for first person models), so the sides of the ridges closest to the player should be in highlight. 

http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2016/03/1453587973-bfg9500-back-lights-and-others.png 

Others may have suggestions but I'm liking it now. The way the blue highlights on the handles define the shape is really nice, it's a shame that will only be seen on the pickup model. Unless the handle can drop down during the fire animation to show it off...

If there's any way to fade the blue highlight out towards the back of the middle surface of the stock that would be nice, but it might take some clever pixelisation depending on how deep the palette will go.

One last job to do when all the skin is basically finalised is to look for all the seams, and use QME to try and unify the pixels on the edges. For example, the caps on the cylinders have bright pixels on the lower half, which clash with the shadows on the sides of the cylinders. You can paint in 3d view, using right-click to select the pixel colour from one side of the seam, and left click to apply it to the other. I do recognise this is a level of nit-picking very few of my models would stand up to... 

It did wierd stuff with edges and texture deformation for my Infantry Gun and Gatling Gun while they looked good in both Blender and Quake (Quakespasm and DP).

As for the viewmodel, I plan on cutting the crank. I prefer viewmodels where we can't see the player's hand, and while making the hand appear like in Q2 would make the weapon look exceptional, I just prefer going the "no-hands" way. Still, when that crank rev-up sound comes up I'll be sure to lean the model left and backwards to simulate that strong pull Ranger has to do to recharge the big guy.
Oh and, thanks for your input Preach, as always it has been helpful. 

When I suggest tweaking the skin in QMe, I mean

1) Paint on the skin using QMe
2) Export the modified skin to a new file (so the original is backed up)
3) Import that modified skin to the model made using the original tools (e.g. blender/gmax/etc)

Saving the model in QMe directly will usually degrade the quality in some way, but changing the skin in this way should be safe (assuming you don't do something you dislike on the skin AND you lose the backup you started with). 

Blender has some way to paint on the skin in 3d as well, right? Can you still work in the quake palette when you do that? 

But I don't know much about it, never tried it as I don't think it supports layers and palette import. 

So I noticed one thing.. the way the default Shambler is implented the use of the lighting cast animations is terrible. It frame skips and does not use the entire range from the original model. When looking at it ingame it clearly does not use all the frames and has no interpolation when doing so. Is this just me or do some of the more programmmer skilled folks here agree when looking at the code itself? That be the first place I start to fix the default Shambler in AC's implementation.

As for Channeling casting I would just add a casting look because you can use the first few begin frames and then the last few end frames and the begin and start. I also like the idea of adding a glow shell effect model like on the lost soul and rune knight. For a more souped up shambler he has constant static and glow around him and glowing claws or something. 

I'm not sure that's quite the problem here. The frames which get skipped are magic7 and magic8, but they're hardly different from magic6 in pose. The real jump is between magic5 and magic6, which I guess is meant to be a fast and sudden unleashing. Part of the trouble with tidying that up is that it's also the transition from the lightning ball to the lightning beam, which you can't interpolate nearly so easily. This didn't matter when the shambler was designed of course... 

Muzzle flash stops frame lerping for that frame.