but I just saw HT's new Scrag and simply had to comment.

Quake's hordes should defy explanation. The scrag is scary because it flies without the aid of [big butterfly] wings, and doesn't have any arms. It's like a ghost.


A few weeks back, I stripped the wings from the scrag/naga and now it has spiked fins on the sides. I salvaged those wings, and now they are fitted for a flying worm demon like you see in Zerst�rer, Might&Magic and Arx Fatalis.

However, in the past few weeks since my system has been healed, I have been playing the games and packs I've been forced to give up over the last several months, so QExpo may be calling things a little short.

Still would like to do the Minimal thing for it, though. A stand alone that has the bare minimal amount of media material -- sounds, models, maps, conchar, etc, to stand on its own.

A wild blue tangent, but many may not be aware of this -- there is a relatively easy way to produce your own sounds. Get the Audacity Audio editor and learn its basic functions. Produce a short abrupt, sound, either through vocalization or noise generation, and put it on one track. Find the sound you want to mimic and put it on another track. Stretch the first sound out to be relatively the same size as the first. There are tools in Audacity that allow you to 'shape' the sound, use them to shape the generated sound to match the acoustic pattern of the sound you are mimicking. You will likely need to use other processing tools to get an acceptable sound, but at this point you'll have a solid basis, and you can go ahead and erase the sound you are mimicking. You will likely also not get a perfect duplicate, but then again, that is not the aim.

You can find examples of sounds developed this way for a Quake3 style hand held Cuisinart on my Mortisville site, if you dig into the index file. 

I have disturbing yet fond memories of the fucking noise that thing made. 

Between bang and clang.

It was a bit crap in Xen and the desert where it was just tapping on the rocks / sand. 

That's an interesting sound hint. 

How about a mapping scenario which would require some progs jiggery-pokery - a "migration"!

You could have (for example) a ravine/gorge environment with a constant supply of monsters (say feinds for example) running into the map at one end through - for example - a cave exit which is too high up for the player to reach.
The feinds would then run through the entire length for the map, probably following a series of path_corner type entites to an exit at the other end. The exit could be at the other side of a deep trench, the monsters having to go through a monster_jump entity so that they could reach an exit which the player wouldn't be able to.

The players mission could be to carry out a mission for another exit, fighting humans or other non-migratory beings with the constant trickle of feinds running through the map. The emphasis being on running.

Or it could be a survival mission, with little weaponry and other monsters placed around the map.

Migratory monsters would only attack if attacked, returning to the path after their attacker is killed (in the instance of infighting)

Is their any way of doing this without new progs, Quoth or otherwise. It wouldn't be too difficult using the info_multispawn so long as THREE things I guess:

1 - the monster will move towards the first path_corner when spawned.

2 - the monster will spawn RUNNING

3 - the monster will not attack thre player on sight.

Please help me obtain fruition! I would love to put something like this in me episode... 

Fucking cool idea, Ricky! I love the idea of having a trickle of fiends creeping up behind you at all times. Keeps you moving and keeps you on edge constantly. That would be a neat element in any map, really. Monsters that walk a very long path and are continually spawning to fill up their ranks if any are killed. Would add a lot of randomness to the level.

I did a bunch of that sort of thing in 'White Room' although it might not have been too apparent. I have wandering code that makes monsters wander around instead of waiting for you to show up. Every monster was in motion when you encountered it in 'White Room'. I think that sort of thing is a lot more interesting than the norm. 

sitting around thinking about stuff... imagine this:

boss monster with unspecified normal projectile and melee attacks.
boring, but here's the interesting part. The attacks do a fair amount of damage but decent armour (green or yellow) is provided (that respawns) along with lots of megahealths (that also respawn).
the respawn time is short enough that getting health isn't really a problem.
the boss, unfortunately, has a self heal that can only be stopped by using explosives on it as well as a special attack.
the special attack is a stacking effect that gradually reduces the amount of health the player gets when they pick up a health pack.
So, let's say it does the special attack every 15 seconds (it is NOT avoidable).
each 'stack' of the effect reduces health gains by 5% (additive).

this means that after 5 minutes, the player would not receive ANY health when picking up health packs.

the challenge would be the race to blow the shit out of the guy while stopping it from healing with explosives before you stop being able to get health. 

special attack goes like this:

you start the fight, a mega health gives you 100HP.

after 1 attack, you only get 95% health so a MH gives you 95HP.
after 2 attacks, you only get 90%.
3 = 85%
4 = 80% and so on and so forth. 

another interesting idea would be to make use of the side effect of picking up many different mega healths.

in case you aren't aware of it, each time you pick up a different MH, the 'tick down' effect is added, so if you pick up 2 mega healths, your health ticks down twice as fast. if you pick up 10 MHs, you health will drop very quickly back to 100.

imagine a shambler like lightning attack but with a longer 'charge up' time.
the attack only hits once, but hits for between 150 damage.

NO armour is provided and should be stripped away preferably with a lot of trash fights with lots of health but not much room to avoid damage before entering the fight with the boss.

basically, another arena fight but with mega healths placed evenly around on fairly long respawn timers. (say 30 seconds).

the trick is that you want to make sure you are topped up with more than 150 health at all times so that you don't get instantly killed if you don't dodge the attack. the problem is the more MHs you pick up, the faster your health ticks down, so eventually you'll be picking them up faster than they respawn. the only thing is that if your HP drops below 100, the tick down effect is cleared, so if you do get hit and you are over 150 hp, the health 'degredation' is cleared and you can slow down the rate you pick up MHs. 

then there's this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbcC8qd7Zw
i won't explain it right now, because i'm curious to see if anyone can figure out what's going on. o.o 

i welcome interesting boss fights. When designing them, you should be asking yourself what it means to the player -- what strategy is needed to win? Is it possible to figure out, and is it fun to actually do it? And does the boss really need to be that complicated to achieve that gameplay experience.

For example, your first boss takes 3 paragraphs to explain, and the resulting player strategy is just "blow the shit out of the guy, but save your rockets for use only when he's healing."

Okay, that sounds interesting but maybe a simpler boss design can provide the same strategy, and as a bonus will be easier for players to understand. For example, bosses in quake don't have visible health meters, so any healing effect won't be clear to players.

How about a group of like, 5-10 enemies, and if any of them are dead one of the other bosses will periodically attempt to ressurect any fallen comrades, and an explosion will interrupt the spell. Resurrection is visually very obvious (unlike healing) and the spell-casting effect could also be pretty obvious. The only thing that might be hard to guess is that explosions are necessary to stop the spell.

Now, you could communicate health if you had a series of like, 8-10 pain skins, each where the boss looks more damaged than the last. Then when he heals, there is a visible reversal of the damage. 

actually... i've been thinking of just making a sprite that looks like a health bar that hovers over a boss' head... o.o 

There was a "health bar above monster head" mod at Inside3D about 4 years ago. 

those skingroups that are being discussed in the modelling thread to implement damage skins? Possible? 

No, because they automatically animate - like a flip book. You can't control when each skin in the group shows up, other than controlling the timing of the frames. 

We were thinking of having pain skins, but there's multiple gameplay problems (no technical ones). It drags up locational damage and stuff counter to immersion. At least we're all used to not being able to blow a grunts arm off.

Shooting a Q2 enforcer in the legs to have his head vanish is still goofy.

Granted that's model changes, but the same applies to the Q2 pain skins. 

Having a 'health crystal' lodged in the bosses forehead that changes colour is pretty straightforward, though more arcadey.

And nope, they only automatically animate if part of a skin group - they can also be separated into different groups in the same way as normal frames. 

Quake 1's weapons are sufficiently lacking in finesse [no sniper rifles etc.] to get away with general blood spatter and changes in facial expression on the skins. Bullet holes would indeed be somewhat jarring though. 

Is there anyway if incorporating a health bar as a gif in the HUD? Or, how about something like the flickering skull that appears in the upper corner when Quake is running s-l-o-w? The background could fill up slowly with blood as damage is dealt.

BTW, the Anubis-mummies in Hexen 2 would lose limbs and still cahse the player around. 

grrr... 

those would be engine modifications, sadly, and beyond the scope of what i would be willing to do. 

How about destroying a background environment as the boss dies (takes damage). So background cliffs would collapse the lower it's health got.

A similar idea, stolen right from Mario, is reducing the playable area the longer the fight goes on.

For Quake I always thought it'd be reducing the amount of cover. Tried it in warp for the end battle (compeltely different to what ended up) but the Vermis couldn't break stuff.

Back to the question at hand - I'm thinking something like the pack complete map of rapture, lava etc. but with the player pretty much shut in with the boss. Each time the boss reaches a health threshold a load of scenery collapses, until by the time they kill it the player is left looking at some impressive skybx and open area. Time for a cinematic cam? 

But in RQuake Team Coop, whenever you're fighting Shub or Chthon, the health remaining is centerprinted to all players. Maybe that could be done instead.

If you didn't want to display the actual numbers, then you could show a percentage, or even NetHack-style descriptions: "Shub Niggurath is barely scratched" etc... 

Is a bit invasive though. You know the final idea/plan for shub.

As to a classic boss being damaged visual / audio clues are always better I find.

Apart from in arcade.

A perfect Quake boss for me would vomit blood and limp whilst injured, or better yet, detroy the player's static defences. Pretty much what I was getting at above. 

a health bar at the top of the screen, or in the HUD, would seem to break immersion less than a bar over a bosses' head.

Or, taking inspiration from oldschool gaming... have the enemies get darker/more red as they take significant damage. Bosses change attack patterns and/or move faster when they get closer to death.

I've been having a resurgence of love for Super Metroid, and so I've been thinking about ways to incorporate that style of gameplay into Q1. That is to say, item-based non-linear progression. The multi-level hub system may remain out of reach, but I'm thinking about exploratory puzzle solving based on weapons you have. Like, door won't open unless you shoot explosives at it, or you have to shoot lightning down a tube to hit a switch. Too bad the environment suit can't be saved for later or made permanent (or can it? lol varia suit).