I want to see a flying enforcer :(
I know that there is QC for that, but no models involved :(

Besides, most of Q1 monsters suck ;) 

I like the drones used in OUM, forget who made them. Their constant muzzleflash is really annoying but easy to remove from the QC. 

i'd like to see some more modifications to current monsters... like in neh, the vores could walk on the cieling, and there was a stronger version of the fiend which walked more upright and windmilled it's arms at you...

maybe there could be a version of the scragg that used it's tail to attack you, maybe swatting you around or something... :D 

The "vores on the ceiling" still fill my nightmares, hehe.

I must admit, i dont remember the fiends you describe though. 

are probably my most favorite monster from quake, followed by the ogre, so it'd be cool to see some more vore-type monsters. I can see a vore that explodes when it dies and spawns little vore ala headcrab boss from halflife. BTW is it Vores or Vore for plural? I'm not sure. 

i had a 'normal' quakec version based on that neh upright walking fiend but it didnt look right because the animations weren't very long, and didn't look that good on engines w/o interpolation. if the animation was smoothed out & cleaned up it would r4wk. i'll try to dig it up when i get back home in a few weeks, might not be as bad as i remember :) 

Because the general thread has moved on a bit, I'm gonna post this here, but it's actually an addition to the skin mapping stuff I said there.

I said then that there were two ways of fixing the skin while keeping under the vertex limit. It turns out that saying it without trying it is rather dangerous...

You can't weld vertexes back up in QMe to try and get back under the limit. Sorry, I said you could, and it's just not true. The way Qme decides whether a model is Q1 compliant is by comparing the number of model vertexes to the number of skin vertexes. If total skin vertexes - number of seam vertexes(as they count twice on the skin) = number of model vertexes, it gets the thumbs up.

The kicker is that merging vertexes only does it on the model, not on the skin. So if you merge them, you'll never get your model to run in Q1, as the skin vertex count will always be higher.

Oooh, and I'm making a night gaunt model, but as you might guess from the above, it's not gone smoothly so far. Pics once the skin works and I can start skinning it properly. 

It's finally skinned, so here's a shot or two. I may still mess with the proportions a bit, but adding new stuff now would be very tough(for a start, it's exactly 1000 vertexes as it is) I've been making the skin as a 24 bit TGA, with colours that convert reasonably to quake colours. This is why the black skin is done in shades of green, as it's the best colour in the quake palette for highlighting black.
Shot of the .TGA skin:
http://www.btinternet.com/~chapterhonour/gaunt1.jpg
And a shot of the quake colours skin:
http://www.btinternet.com/~chapterhonour/gaunt2.jpg

It's not quite what Lovecraft described, it's not even what Kell described, but hopefully it'll work out. Animations to follow... 

...that'd be bitched about for not fitting into the game. Dark green skin? God, that's hideously out of place.

Make it a brownish flesh color (like the fiend's skin) and it'd be great. 

wow, man! that's awesome! the colours really work good in quake, especially the dark green.

i have a few suggestions, if i may...

waste a few polygons and give it some clearly defined teeth. maybe about 6 or so (maybe 3bottom, 2top or viceversa)

could you maybe stretch the rear or the head furthur back,and make the curve more... 'vicious'?

i'm also concerned it won't mix in well with the other quake monsters... for the most part, all the hellish looking ones have fairly light skin, usually pinkish... the dark green is really different... i don't suppose you tried it with shambler type white or the greyer vore color?

good luck with animations and all that! 

The mouth looks a little funky. Maybe too wide?

And like Scampie and necros said, I think the dark green doesn't fit in well. A color set similar to the fiend, vore, or shambler seems like it would be much better, IMO.

Otherwise, it seems pretty good to me. 

i'd like to see some more modifications to current monsters...

Flying Polyp For Quake 1

linkage to .txt file for further perusal:
http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/monster_polyp.txt

pic from the CoC rulebook:
http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/polyp.jpg

my custom skin on the spawn model:
http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/polyp-mdl.jpg

I did try several eye designs and other stuff, but they just didn't look right. So I left it as a 'big flying mouth'. This is also my first skin :/

I have also put together a bunch of sound effects for the polyp. And some for the gug and gaunt too.

polyp:

idle - http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/sound/polyp/idle.wav
sight - http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/sound/polyp/sight.wav
ranged attack - http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/sound/polyp/windblast.wav
invisibility - http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/sound/polyp/invisi.wav
weirdness while invisible - http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/sound/polyp/murmur.wav
back to visible - http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/sound/polyp/visi.wav
melee attack - http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/sound/polyp/chomp.wav
deathsplat - http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/sound/polyp/death.wav

This is everything. All it needs now is for someone to do the qc.




gaunt:

sight, or maybe idle - http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/sound/gaunt/sight.wav

That's it. I'll forego the gug sounds for the moment since there isn't a model anywhere.
I also updated the txt files with further ideas/refinements, but I won't post them in the thread for the moment. 

has me interested... i'm going to go code it now. :)

can i have that skin please? 

here's the spawn.mdl with the new skin

http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/polyp.mdl 

you can't change the colours of the explosions' pixels. these (which include: rocket explosion, tarbaby explosion, chthon lava splash, and any other type of particle animation) are hard coded into the game, thus would need some new engine to change. :(

i was actually thinking of making the polyp explode into a bunch of like coloured gibs, as if it was loosing integrity and suddenly fell apart or something. anyway, when it's done you can take a look at it and see what it's like. 

and...I suppose I should zip the mdl before uploading it o_O

gimme a sec... 

http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/polyp.zip 

http://www.planetquake.com/necros/temp/polyp.zip

yarg! :)

it's still a WIP, so there's debug text in there and stuff...

also, i ommited the melee attack and implemented a more fancy movement code.
the monster will try to stay within a specific range of the player, backing away if the player is too close and closing in fast if it is far. it's all math dependant, so if the thing is really far from the player it moves very quickly, then slows down to a crawl as it gets into range.
once it's in range, it cirlces the player, firing it's wind/air attack.

i coulnd't get a decent looking air effect using particles, so i opted for a sprite that looks sort of like air waves, although i think some people may mistake it as Sound instead of wind... if someone can come up with a better sprite (or even better yet, model a nice air wave shock model) i'll gladly use that instead.

as it is, the wind will push you backways and up a bit. if you fight the wind, that is, walk into it to try not to move, the wind will hurt you, depending on how much you fight it and how long you are in the wind wave.

it will also abritrarily become invisible. kell, i know you wanted an nauseating piping, but all i could come up with that was remotely similar is an annoying high pitch whine

the monster will not attack while invisible however... it continues to move though.

as for the death, it does not explode, perse, but it does blowup into a shower of chunks which will hurt you if you touch them. acidic maybe? :P

to play: unzip into a folder, keeping folder names on.
do quake -game foldername +map polyp_q1

the map is unforgivingly ugly, but it lets you test out a 1 on 1 fight or 3 on 1 . there are no weapons, so do impulse 9 at the start.

remember, work in progress :) i'll work on it some more later. ;)

cheers 

will check out when I get back to my lair :)

For the gib death, I reskinned the 3 gib models with essentially the same texture as the polyp skin but without obvious details. I called them polypop1 - 3 .mdl:

http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/polypops.zip

I did discover the thing about the particle effects being presets when I looked at the 'global model proerties' options. For the polypops, I unchecked 'trail of blood' and selected 'wizard green tracer' instead. In game it looks pretty good as an acidy spatter.

Going just on what you describe above:
I like the idea of the movement - actually backing away as well as advancing. And having the speed proportional to the distance to the player is a very neat touch, really suggestive of predatory intelligence.
My only concern with the absence of a melee is that the player is usually disadvantaged by a melee attack, because all the emphasis is really on ranged weaps. But I do like the ideas for the movement, so I'll playtest and see what it's like before commenting further.

The particles. Hmm, I kinda thought the rocket, grenade or vorepod trails would have been ok, but I obviously don't know all the technicals involved so I'll shut up about that. A sprite seems the better option than a model, and I'll have a bash at one if need be. I reckon a model would look a lot less like wind because it would look inherently solid.

The 'naueseating piping'. I did make the murmur.wav and I tested out as a replacement for both the shadowring whisper and the func_train ratchet. It does play more than once, but only every second or something, not in a seamless loop. The actual type of sound isn't terribly important - it doesn't have to be piping. Would you be able to use the shadowring whisper ( sound/items/inv3.wav iirc ) which loops? I think it's really important that the player has some hint as to where the polyp is when invisible.

The death/explosion...acidic maybe? Definitely :D "must be using it for blood"

Other than that, it sounds like a very cool implementation. I especially am looking forward to the movement behaviour since that is what I imagined would be the polyps most interesting aspect.

gg, necros 

I built a more refined testmap, with appropriate stuff for testing against the polyps. Had other feedback to give, but cafe is closing and I have to go.

linkage:

http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/polyptest.zip

I created a new folder for this, and swapped some of the souds around, so it's a separate directory. 

you didn't like the gib sounds! :D i thought it sounded cool with all the splattering noise! :P

i'll work on it a bit later today, btw... did a few changes though... it won't head straight towards you, but will strafe at the same time, but that's about it so far./.. 

it sounds col the first time, then gets intrusive. I don't think it's a god idea to have so many .wavs playing as the result of normal combat.
Btw, I tried another method for giving the player a hint as to the polyps' location while invisible: I added the grenade smoke trail to both models. It looks a bit comical when the polyps are visible, like a tailpipe from some dieselly old car. But when invisible it's quite spooky to see just these thin wisps of smoke weaving through the map to find you. So maybe keep it just for the polyp_i.mdl..? Try it yourself.
It would still be cool to get a looped wav working for invisibility, but the smoke trail alone would be okay.


Now, I had a bash at modelling myself last night ( no, I don't mean I modeled myself, I modeled a mons..oh whatever )
and came up with this:

http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/gaunt/gaunt-mdl-1.jpg
http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/gaunt/gaunt-mdl-2.jpg

No offence to Preach's work, but I had a very specific concept in mind and couldn't contain it any longer.

As well as the flat-color renders above, I stuck my effort in a map with some of his cronies for a Quake Family Portrait7trade;

http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/gaunt/gaunt-ss-1.jpg
http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/gaunt/gaunt-ss-2.jpg
http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/gaunt/gaunt-ss-3.jpg
http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/gaunt/gaunt-ss-4.jpg

The texture wot the gaunt is covered with is an amalgamted mush of vore skin, just to give an indication of color and style. Something distinctly gigeresque would not be unappropriate for the gaunt skin I think.

The 'model' weighs in at 149 brushes, yielding a polycount broken down thus:

23 polys/each wing
64 polys/head ( including teeth )
26 polys/each arm
42 polys/body
29 polys/each leg
22 polys/tail

totalling:
284 polys
~ 150 - 200 verts ?

as a comparison, the shambler.mdl is also 284 polys, 144 verts. The shambler is a more solid, less convluted mesh so this gaunt probably has more verts but even so, it's well within the range of the existing monsters.

The problem, of course, is that this isn't a mdl...it's a map :(
I honestly cannot comprehend how anyone has ever been able to model anything without a grid equating to the engine's world units. So I used Radiant, and made this.
Now there's the quest to find a method - any method - to convert .map to .mdl
Speeds has already recommended a couple of things and I got hold of an old converter which might work. But I'm open to suggestions. If it comes to it, I'll try rebuilding the model vert for vert in the correct editor. But I'd obviously like to avoid that.
Any help appreciated.

In the meantime, here's a zip containing the above screenshotted map/wad and bsp:

http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/gaunt/gaunt-model.zip 

I understand completely what you mean by a grid overlay -- I had thought as well that idea would be a good plug-in for Blender.

You can use 3dExploration (www.xdsoft.com/explorer) which can translate all common Quake files like .map into common 3d data files like .3ds, .obj etc and then import those into a Quake model editor. 

dude! wicked! :)

there are some things i don't like about it, but they are mostly minor things... like, the legs are really skinny, and i think it would be cool if the horns curved forwards just a bit
but wow, if you do get it modeled, i'll definatly code that one too! 

the only problem i see with the model is clipping problems with the wings, that's a common problem with models in-game with wings, which means it wouldn't look right in smaller spaces, which means it would limit where you could possibly put them. but that's just my opinion.