are go!

Now I'm obliged to get some doors in. 

awesome takeoff procedure 

Looks like my placeholder textures (though mine are coloured). I've been half tempted to actually do a map like that rather than adding "proper" textures, since it does look kinda cool (hey, it worked for Warsow anyway). 

A 'The Cube' theme being talked about a while back - lots of func_train rooms. Could fit the texture theme. 

still working on this melee mod. :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqj-NpgeSLk

so, just a little intro here:
max health = 500 now
regeneration: 100health + 200health over 12sec
invisibility: monsters can't attack you (for 10sec)
shift: teleport forwards (through monsters or telefragging them) 384 units
bind: make either a fiend or scragg your pet (they get stronger attacks, follow you and attack normal monsters)
damage you take is also split with the minion, although atm that's not very useful since they only attack monsters.

at this point, i have two choices:
1. combat based around hordes emphasizing positioning, crowd control, AoE and maneuvering
2. combat based around 1 or 2 monsters emphasizing debuffing, good footwork, cover and spell/energy conservation.

pets work for either large or small group combat. for example fiends hit multiple targets, scrags poison huge groups.

testing out horde combat atm, even without any AoE attacks. just lots of moving around, scrambling for cover as well as trying to stagger cooldown use so you always have a 'bailout' available.

the idea i'm going for is something like diablo where you're given a framework of spells/abilities and then thrown in a situation where you need to work out how best to use said spells/abilities. ie: this test map which is just about 15 shamblers and 20-30 hell knights in a small room with moderate cover. 

What song is that, I love it!
It's kinda hard to see what's going on but it sure looks fun. 

that's Beauty Never Fades, Junkie XL. it's the animatrix version.

and yeah, it's hard to see what's happening. i had to annotate when and what i was casting to help give some more indication on what's going on.

i'm still trying to see if i can balance it around running in normal maps, but it ends up being kind of boring only facing a couple of weak monsters at once.

i suppose i could make the player more fragile (and certainly the inability to pick up armour at all makes it more difficult) but the notion is that you are supposed to be playing a death king who was betrayed and stripped of most of his powers. 

http://www.deezer.com/#music/result/all/junkie%20xl 

I don't doubt there's more finesse than it looks like there is, but if you can't see any it's usually not as deep as you think. 

there's room for more interesting abilities, i think.

the thing i'm finding when i test stuff is that if there are a lot of abilities, you usually don't have time to pick the best choice in a heated combat situation.

so it's finding abilities that would be useful in a wide range of situations, don't unbalance gameplay and are fun that's the hard part.

ie: you used to be able to slow monsters down to 30% of their movement speed. it was very useful, but ultimately very boring. you'd get a mass of slow moving monsters in the center of a room. i replaced it with the teleport which, while less useful, makes gameplay faster by giving you really good maneuverability.

but yes, if you would consider a game like diablo or hellgate mindless, than that's definately what this mod would be to you. :) but then, quake itself isn't far off from that either. 

you don't just run up to stuff in quake and click it to death 

No, you stand back a ways and click it to death. 

oooauu baby 

No, you stand back a ways and click it to death.

hehe pretty much. :) i mean, sure you dodge shots and take cover in quake, but you do that in melee too, but aside from dodging shots, you're also juking back and forth to trigger melee attacks while avoiding the damage.
it's at least on par with quake in it's simplicity/complexity.
the big difference now is that item management is removed and placed in the player's hands.

i think what's maybe missing is more variety in the main attack-- the sword itself.

what i think i'll do is something like oblivion where the direction you move affects the type of swing you'll do.
back: normal damage + bleeding
forward: strong single attack (more damage if bleeding)
or there's the option of just making sword hits do different effects and you'd switch them like weapons in quake.

or something.

thanks for the feedback though, i appreciate it. :) very helpful while developing this on my own for so long. 

being at range means you have an order of magnitude
- more space in which to dodge projectiles and advancing monsters
- more targets to prioritize
- more attacks of your own to choose from

your video doesn't show you juking to trigger melee attacks, you just wade into two dozen hell knights and start clicking. Occasionally I see a label appear like "regeneration," and the combat doesn't appear to change at all.

movement based attacks would definitely help although there'd have to be reasons to use each one depending on the situation you're in. More than one melee weapon with some differentiation between them would be nice too (ala the warrior class in Hexen). 

Holding down fire charges the sword, when released it does a single strike for more damage.

Thirdperson camera would be good as well to put the dodging back in - but the general reaction to thirdperson cameras in Quake is disgust.

Could work well with the teleport spell though. 

MMO-style combat mechanics generally need to be supported by a really good HUD/interface. Without the proper feedback as to what the heck's going on, it all tends to get a bit messy and confusing. Being in first-person might not be helping matters either, but what the hell, it sounds like an interesting experiment. 

your video doesn't show you juking to trigger melee attacks, you just wade into two dozen hell knights and start clicking.

if you're talking about the very beginning, i wade into the monsters because my original plan was to stick with the fiend pet. his melee attacks hit everyone in front of him, so i was going to make monsters swap between me and it but i ended up getting cut off from him and he drops like a rock. at that point, i knew i was in trouble, so i pop regeneration to mitigate some damage. now i'm fully trapped in a corner, surrounded by hknights so i teleport through them in order to get some space.

ijed: i tried it out with the built in fitzquake 3rd person cam. it's ok, but you loose some accuracy esp. w/regards to teleporting (at least for me). it's not something i'd want to enforce on the player.

kinn: yeah, not having the ability to display information is making me run up against a lot of walls.
cooldows are displayed in the ammo counters but that means i can only ever have 4 cooldowns (and the cells slot is used to display pet health %).

i might try to shift this over to doom3, but then that'd be even more work and d3 isn't as flexible as quake before you need to start compiling the sdk. 

saw this picture in #qdq anyone know when it will be finish?

http://trinca.quaddicted.com/temp/joequake112.jpg 

A month or two I think. 

 

near christmas T|M i wish... layout is almost finish necros,negke and ijed are helping me a lot, i will not rush this map like others... i wanted to make this a blast, i will try hard at least...

http://trinca.quaddicted.com/temp/joequake106.jpg
http://trinca.quaddicted.com/temp/joequake107.jpg
http://trinca.quaddicted.com/temp/joequake108.jpg
http://trinca.quaddicted.com/temp/joequake109.jpg
http://trinca.quaddicted.com/temp/joequake110.jpg

still have many stuff to fix, but i�m not withy any hurry... the best are helping me out and i dont want to desapoint then! 

this is a really great looking map, and i see you've put some good work into the lighting. shots 3 and 4 esp. look atmospheric.

great job so far :) 

Yeah I am really looking forward to playing this one!

One thing I will say is that will the bright skybox in one of the pictures the level looks quite dark, maybe adjust the skylight parameters there? Otherwise...Kick arse. 

thks to you concerting in lights!!! you gave me 90% help on this issue. i read the Aguire manual just have some dificult on the softangle :\

Daz skybox is not decide iet :\ i must get a proper on...

thks for the motivacion! i will not quit this one and i will not rush it.