did we ever discuss the poison headcrab attack mechanic? it's a pretty unique one afaik. 

as a matter of fact, won't I be agony scratching my head after playing the level?

spy, that was the testlevel, indeed rather light, but I had to think of ammu. Once down the cavern the player can't get extra. 

It would be possible to add frames to the player model with a headcrab on its head.
This one for instance.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/trog.gif 

than headcrab 

It keeps on my mind...
Could it be possible to add a headcrab.mdl to the player?
So the sight gets weird between slices of yelly and so desorientates.
I know how to add a weapon, I could add a crab to the playermodel.
But for the view of the player?
v_crab.mdl? 

yeah, that would work, but it would replace your gun (maybe that is a good thing, if you're being face-hugged you can't shoot) 

but if I would like to shoot all blind, isn't there another way?
I can't code my gun to give damage to myself, which makes the headcrab rather undangerous.
Of course the loss of weapon means damage done by other monsters. 

poison headcrap attack mechanics:

if monster further than playersight >fly
if monster range playersight> start swift
if monster near playersight> jump on its head and distores sight with a squeezing sound
if monster becomes player> ask necros for a antidose...

http://members.home.nl/gimli/HEADCRA1.gif 

well, you missed the most interesting thing about the poison headcrabs:
when they hit you, you are poisoned and your health drops down to 1 (regardless of what you had).
over a few seconds, you health will return to it's initial value.

i find it interesting because it manages to be incredibly dangerous but at the same time, not at all overpowered.

i'd like to see this used for monsters more often. not exactly this, but with a sort of build-up of damage where the first hit is not fatal, but follow up hits can be. 

One of the things that balanced the poison headcrab was that when you encountered them, you weren't fighting other enemies at the time(with the possible exception of 1 or two headcrabs). If you're dropped to 1 hp, a single combine with a submachine gun would have frequently been deadly, sometimes with no chance to react to your sudden drop in health. Only facing melee monsters meant that you could easily escape being exposed to damage, as long as you recognised the need to do so in the short term.

You wouldn't be able to combine them with many existing monsters in quake, which is why I wonder if it would be a helpful addition to a boss monster instead. I always think that boss fights should shift between parts where the player need to take the offensive and do damage, and moments where they are forced to play defensive. Especially in quake, where there are no reload times and high ammo capacities, it's frequently the case that even against a boss you are constantly attacking them, which makes the combat quite flat.

While we're on the subject of stuff we'd steal from half-life, I always liked the way the bullsquid melee attacks worked. He had a bite that was reasonably fast and low damage, 10-15 hp. Then he had a tail smash which was a bit slower but did 40-45 damage. However, the bullsquid was coded to only ever use the tail smash if it would be fatal on connecting. Once you realised that, it made things quite intense when you saw it try one, because you knew even though you had moderate health you might die instantly. 

i didn't know that about the bullsquid. from what i remember, i always blew them away before they got close enough to melee me at all. this is actually a shame, because i (and probably other players too) completely missed out on something pretty unique and interesting.

it is definitely an interesting idea to code up a slow execute style attack though and something to keep in mind.

re: boss and defensive play, this is something i've been looking into doing via unavoidable damage. the core of what i've been thinking of is that you have attacks that cannot be avoided but you provided respawning health kits (or if you wanted to make it harded, *non* respawning kits).
it shifts your priorities around between filling up your health and dealing damage. the poison attack, though, neatly creates the same situation, but rmeoves the need for external items, which is nice. 

Sounds like you're describing phases there Preach.

For example

phase 1: damage the tail, avoid eye beams

phase 2: escape collapsing walkway, damage the claws

phase 3: destroy brain, avoid the claws and tail.

Its a nice understandable way of breaking bosses down for both designer and player - I don't think its overused since even the best orchestrated boss fights are based on it.

Inever realised the Bullsquid only pasted you if it was able to. Interesting idea - the final melee attack not being more of the same but something like a finishing move. So instead of clawing until the player is dead the Fiend could do a double overarm swipe.

And Madfox is talking about an enemy that attaches to the player in order to attack, as opposed to an enemy that has a gruesome parasite form (which never affects the player in HL).

Thing is, how would you get it off while it was draining health - jump in water, pick up a med kit?

Poison headcrabs were a good enemy, but exceptionally carefully used. The main thing was the panic ffactor, as opposed to how lethel they weren't. At least in the way they were used. 

Poison headcrabs were brilliant, IMO. I hated them when they got me but it always intense for me as a player when I got pasted, got knocked down the 1 health point, and lost track of where it went. THAT'S panic time. :) 

I was playing Resident Evil 5 this last week or 2 on the PC and I must admit that their boss fights are pretty cool. I mean certain dynamics of RE games which I dont particularly like so much are the fact that you have to press a button to turn quickly, you can move and aim at the same time, or move and shoot at the same time at all.
But there are quick time events where you are required to "dodge" an attack by pressing buttons quickly, which is interesting - caught me off guard a few times because you are watching a cutscene then all of a sudden BOOM your dead!
It will just say "A + D" or "F + V" and you have to hammer those buttons to complete the dodge manouevre.
There are also spider mosters in that game which will jump up and grab you round the chest. The way you excape is the same - hammer "A + D" eventually you wriggle free. At the time you cant move anyway so you arent using those buttons to strafe.

There are other monsters which grab you in RE5 too. 

Thing is, how would you get it off while it was draining health - jump in water, pick up a med kit?

that was what my previous post was related too.... 

Having a boss with different attack patterns was something I tried with Azoth in the Travail pack, in a few different ways, and a little success. One of the phases was set up so you could only harm Azoth during his melee attack, and so you had to shambler-dance him to provoke an attack, then back up and hit. The rest of the time he shielded himself with a wing. The other phases were more subtle preferences to do with attack choices, either chasing the player with close range attacks or evading him while sniping with vore-pods.

That much was present, but it didn't come together very well. The fight dragged for lots of reasons: the health between stages was too high, Azoth had to navigate between waypoints before another phase triggered, which could be a lot of dead time. Even worse, because he needed to navigate to open space to make the shield phase work, that part of the fight was lengthened to justify the long walk there. In actual fact this just slowed things down more, forcing you to pull off the same fairly easy trick 4 or 5 times.

So I was never totally happy with him, but I thought the basic phases themselves were quite sound. Certainly it's something that could be incorporated into future bosses for quake.

One tip for anyone who want to end a mission pack with a boss: work backwards. Start by making the arena for the boss and lock it down as final as soon as you can. There's little point trying to write generic boss ai, it's easiest to just hardcode it to work with the map the boss appears in. That way you can teach the boss tricks to foil any player trying to exploit it, make sure it can navigate the whole space - and having the map available from the start might allow you to create some scripted/semi-scripted interaction with the environment. It's always nice to end a pack with something that's really polished too.


I never realised the Bullsquid only pasted you if it was able to. Interesting idea - the final melee attack not being more of the same but something like a finishing move. So instead of clawing until the player is dead the Fiend could do a double overarm swipe.

It would be really easy to do this with the shambler, since it already has the two animations. Slight snag in that currently the damage falls in a large random range, but that could be adjusted and accounted for. Since it's much easier to shambler-dance against the overhead smash, the result would be giving a player with low health a slim lifeline. Just think how cinematic it would be if the quake ranger gets bashed with the left, the right, the left again - then just slides to the side as the killer blow from overhead comes down! 

rocketjump?
harmfull and unpractical.
slimejump?
ibidem.
running hard against walls?
logical, but do quakewalls hurt(yes, uh..I mean damage..no)?
keeping the gun and shooting while blindsighted?
unpractical because other monsters get hurt too.
loosing the gun and blindsighted while hurt by other monsters?
rather harsh.
just sucking health and fade back after x sec?
most practical. 

We're on it ;)

Current frames for these types of attacks tend to be slower than existing ones - the Hellknight overhead slice for example, so it adds an interesting mechanic for low health players dancing around enemies with finishing moves.

With Azoth he was a bit disjointed by both the movement between phases and not always being clear on what to do.

For me I'd have just teleported the player between phases, maybe with a 1-2 second minimatic and shown an obvious vulnerable point on the boss constantly. Like a continually bleeding wound.

But it's easy to say what would be good from outside a project.

For a jellyface hugger I'd say damage over time, max 25 at which point it drops off. Or the player can find a health pack which would cancel it early. Its something else that has occurred some time ago, but there's too many monster features to include him just yet.

To make such an enemy work we'd probably take the trap_spikemine code and modify. Although as you know the special player states (which such an entity entails) are kind of in limbo for the forseeable future. 

there were these slimes in duke nukem 3d. when they touched you, they would attach to your face and start doing damage.
all you had to do was fire your weapon once (anywhere) and it would kill it, so normally you just switch to the pistol, fire a shot, and switch back.

the reason it worked, imo anyway, is because when it first attaches to your face, there isn't a noise that's played and you only realize it's there when the sprite slides up from the bottom of the screen to eventually cover your entire view and the damage doesn't start to come in until it's pretty much fully covering the screen. 

First I thought of Half Life because of the scientist who was walking with such a thing on its head. Then I reminded the ones in DukeNukem.

I tried some frames, but I changed the sprite for a mdl and reused he shotgun. I don't know how to fetch this to a qc, but I think coding the v_shot into it could be a solution.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/kcrab.mpg 

you could try adding a hook into playerpostthink (which runs every frame) to attach the monster model to the player instead of replacing the weapon. you can just run makevectors and then use v_forward based off of the v_angle vector. 

 

MadFox is really on to something here.

Although the skin needs to be tweaked a little and the dying animation is a bit slow, it looks like this monster would a good addition to the Quake bestiary. 

Madfox that jellyfish thing actually looks pretty cool, I kind of wish when it attacked the player it did like a lunge or something, like a really quick strike. Think of how a cat gets ready to pounce before it jumps on a mouse or something similar. 

So far the thing uses self.th_melee for its horizontal squeeze attack, and I left self.th_missile for its jumping on the head lemmon turn.

@necros- I believe I know now where I would add the v_shot part. Thanks, the only just is that my spagethi code knowledge is horrible with angles adjustments.

@ricky- wait till you ate its spagethi! Icould add a slime ball.

@generic - animations are at full frames, this means I could delete some. walk frames are 18, and melee_attack 20, which is much too high concerning its jump off to run.

@zwiffle- it depends on the attack frames. now it are 20, 8 would be reasonable, 5 would be quick. But then it would loose its squeezing face. The lemmon squeezer attack could be quicker, as v_shot only needs 4 or 5 frames.
It has arms enough to blindsight the player.