and the skin is coming on good as well. 

Nice technique, if it works. (I have doubts about whether md2-style UV mapping will actually work in the mdl format.) Please post a screenshot of the finished model in quake, when you get a chance. I'd like to see it. 

making more headway. got the drop stuff worked out, so that leaves me with the lightning attack.

i wanted opinions on this one... should it be a no-evasion-besides-cover lightning attack, like the shambler, or a lightning attack that tracks a little behind the player, so if you are moving/strafing, you can avoid some of the damage like i did with the brown shamblers in nesp06 and 09? 

little behind. I hate Shambler's lightning. 

Yeah, the MD2 UV mapping can be done in quake, but you have to alter the model, so that seperated portions on the skin are seperate on the mode. Now, I've been spending hours doing this by hand, but it turns out that quark 5 does do this correctly and automatically, which is very nice to know : - ).

Also necros, you might wanna look at this inside3D thread when you're coding the lightning.
http://forums.inside3d.com/showflat.pl?Board=Inside3D&Number=17770&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5
It's not about whether the lightning is accurate or not(I agree with scampie though), but it is a rather nice visual effect, and I think it's quite portable too. 

While you guys are at it, how about making a couple more base set monsters, a runic set of monsters, and another zombie guy. I would appreciate it. Thx. 

Since base maps are much more popular than, well, you'd expect from the four maps in the original quake, I always reckoned that they could do with some variety. But the problem is trying to come up with something that's not just a grunt with a different weapon, as those are best done with a reskinned grunt. Also it shouldn;t be too Quake2-ish, as quake doesn't really go in for cybernetic stuff.
The only possible I had was to rip off the arco-flagellant:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/gamers_web1/damien.gif
as it's kinda like the grunts(chemically enhanced, and has a pacifier helm that sedates it until it's triggered, when the helm is lifted the thing goes bezerk). It'd be a melee creature for those base levels, which would make a change(fiend cameos excepted). Some kind of flying thing would be nice too, any ideas? 

The zombie as a cybernetic, symbiotic looking creature that rises from the green sewage but results so far are butt ugly as I haven't had the time lately to develop it further. Maybe that idea would be an easy one for someone to implement if they are looking for a base creature addition without the time factor of modeling something from scratch. 

a zombie that crawled around on the ground would be nice variety. it's attacks would be the same.. 

Well you could rip off Doom 3 and have a mechanical spider-head type monster. Then the player could put headless torso things around the stage, and the spider-heads would go them, attach themselves to it and use it as vehicle. You can't kill the torso itself, but if you damage it enough the spider-head will fall from it and won't be able to use it for a while. The only way to kill it is to shoot the spider-head while its not attached to a torso, but that brings about the problem of torsos falling into walls and not being useable, etc. If I come up with any more ideas I'll post em. 

 

Id ripping off Rodriguez who in turn ripped off (but at least credited) Heinlein who was probably visually inspired by Rider
who in turn was influenced by Shelly's Queen Maub.

Very Interesting, at least to me. 

for a flying base monster... I can't find a pic online but a nursebot-type thing that shoots hypodermic needles at you (a la bioforge) would be entertaining. :)

and.. who remembers those spider enemies with the death knight attack and scrag sounds? 

Make hipnotic's roboscorpion float. It'd be perfect, I'm sure Daz will agree.

<D4Z> OMG! A scorpion that hovers without flapping!!!!!!!11 

Yes that would be awesome, ph43r it, for it hovars without flapping!!!!!!11 

death ray eyes, water tanks and a Di Vinci like propeller to float around the air -- they would be the baddest Mothas in the game.

Shub: "I grow weary of your insolence Quake Guy! Send in the fishes!" 

again, wanted some opinions...

currently, this is what i have done...

lightning attack:
this attack aims similar to the way a soldier aims it's shotgun. if you are moving, the shot will be slightly behind you and if you don't, you'll be hit dead on.
there is a small difference though: it doesn't miss as bad as the soldier, so sometimes you will be hit even if you are strafing (i'd say about 50% of the time) this is speed dependant, so if you're bunny hoping and got a lot of speed you probably won't get hit at all.
also, the damage given is completly dependant on where the gaunt hits you. (there aren't any headshots or anything stupid like that though, don't worry. :P) if you stand still, the gaunt will hit you dead on and deal about 9 damage. if you are strafing, and suffer only a glancing shot you'll receive maybe about 6 or so damage. (that's from an individual lightning shot btw...)

grabbing the player:
the gaunt will only go for a grab if:
-it has been at least 5 seconds since it last released the player
-it has been at least 5 seconds since it last tried to grab the player and failed

after grabbing the player, the gaunt heads for a gaunt_corner and starts following the route. if it passes over a info_gauntdrop (ie: around a pit of slime) it will let go of the player. (this also counts towards the 5 second delay before grabbing again)
while being held, the player receives between 1 and 3 damage every second or so.

ps, i haven't updated the monster i have on the net yet.

also, how's the model coming along, Kell? 

The lightning attack will only be attempted if the player is furthur than 384 units away from the monster, otherwise, it charges you and tries to grab you. 

It makes too much sense:

It has a fairly normal amount of limbs.

It has wings to support it flying.

It's more anatomically correct than the average Quake monster.

And that, I think, isn't not in the spirit of Quake monsters. They (and I mean the true monsters, not abhumans) usually don't make sense. They have no eyes, or spikes instead, 3 legs so walking is a strange affair, they fly without any means of support, or bounce without any obvious mechanism. That strangeness is an inherent part of what makes them Quakey, rather than just another demon / ghoul / standard fantasy monster.

Just meh �2 (yes my opinion is more expensive than most :P). 

'Just meh �2 (yes my opinion is more expensive than most :P).'

Oh yeah, that's right, I did. About a month ago and it is about damn time! 

--------------------------------------------
Gaunt Update, 18th April 2004
--------------------------------------------

jpg: http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/gaunt/gaunt-skinned-turn.jpg

The skin is done, the model is almost complete. There's just a couple of animations I want to add.

The main thing that I don't know how to do is get the model to work in GL. I know it needs to be 'meshed' or something, and there are .ms2 files in the various glquake folders that correspond to the models. I'm sort of hoping that the engine can do this itself, but I really haven't a clue about it. Any info appreciated.

The animations so far, in the order stored in the .mdl file:

hover
magic
swoop
drop
paina
painb
deatha
deathb

Animations to be added:

perch
launch
painc

necros, regarding the animations:
Both the death anims take a few frames for the model to rise above the ground plane: deatha is above the ground in frames 6 -> 8, deathb is above the ground in frames 5 -> 8 This is important because the gaunt will drop from its location when killed, so I had to get the model above its centerpoint before it hits the ground, otherwise large portions of the model might sink into the floor then reappear o_O
I already mentioned in monster_gaunt.txt that the gaunt should remain airborne for a time when killed anyway, because it may be carrying the player when it dies and a short delay will open a gap between the falling player and the falling gaunt. Based on the model anims as they are, I suggest a delay of 1.0 seconds. I have no idea if this is actually something you can effect with the monster's qc, but it should be noted. You have the model - experiment and see what you get :)

Note also that I flipped the two halves of the hover anim. It's 10 frames long, 5 frames for each wingbeat. For one half, the tail remains dangling down. For the other half, the tail 'lashes disquietingly' ( the verts for the wingbeats are essentially identical for the two halves ). I swapped the halves so the tail lashes during frames 1 -> 5 instead of 6 -> 10. This is to coincide with how I imagine the tail attack to work. When the player is grabbed the gaunt reverts to its hover animation. Exactly 2 seconds after the player is grabbed the tail damage is inflicted, accompanied by one of the ( randomly selected ) player pain wavs. The actual damage of the 'tickle' can be modified during playtesting, but the frequency of the tickle must remain at 2 second intervals so the animation will sync with it. The first tail damage should only be inflicted 2 seconds after the player has been grabbed. That's why I changed the arrangement of the frames. Hope that makes sense.
I thought it would be a good idea to have the gaunt emit its sight.wav at the moment it successfully grabs the player. This makes sense because sight.wavs are used to indicate a monster changing from one behaviour ( passive ) to another ( aggresive ) and in this case the gaunt is changing from one form of behaviour to another. It would also act as a useful audio cue for the player so they always know when they've been grabbed, regardless of which monster currently has their attention.

Oh, and I rotated the model around 180&deg; so it's facing the right way now :P

I had a look at the screenshots of that lightning modification. Excellent! If you want to use that for the gaunt's lightning, necros...feel free.



Thanks for all the info and advice regarding the skinning. Though I didn't read any of it until after I'd already skinned the gaunt :/ Tbh, I'd rather just stick with the Q1 format for now anyway. It's good to work within the limitations of the game, and I want the monster to fit with the existing aesthetic. And this is my first model, of anything. Evar :P
I think the skin turned out pretty good. I went for a bony, skeletal effect like the back of the vore and scrag. Not quite Giger biomechanical, but close. I may have gotten carried away with painting ribs. For the wings I did corrugated leather, which fits the prose description, the creatures from Pitch Black and the Quake color palette. Seems okay. The skin is 340x192 - only slightly larger than any of the id skins, which is mostly because of the wing surface.
Here it is in jpg:
http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/gaunt/gaunt-skin.jpg

I also finished the gibbed-head skin, so the teeth are now properly yellowed.

And any offers to make new sound effects for the gaunt would be muchly welcome. There's only so much I can do with the Windows Sound Recorder.

gaunt-model-2.zip: http://kell.vondur.net/monsters/gaunt/gaunt-model-2.zip

-------------------- 

fekking tags 

that actually looks pretty decent, skinwise at least, can't say about animations. i'm looking forward to it. 

Models in GLQuake are meshed when the engine first loads them. They are then stored in .ms2 files for later reference. If you make a new version of the .mdl, you will need to delete the corresponding old .ms2 so the engine can re-mesh it. Obviously, there is no need to distribute .ms2 files with a completed model. 

first of all, i really like the model. the skin is great, as are the animations. i find it surprising it's your first model! i like the rib/bone look of the skin!

so far, i haven't had too much trouble putting the animations in, however, i need you to change some things for the final version.
the death animations are busted... you see, when a monster dies, it falls, and stops falling when it's bounding box hits the ground... not it's origin. so the final death anims need to be 24 units below the origin, because the bounding box goes 24 below it's origin... (so, as it is now, the monster falls to the ground and hovers 24 units over the ground)

there are only two different sizes of monsters, small ones like the player and grunt, and big ones like shambler, fiend, vore, dog...

VEC_HULL_MIN = '-16 -16 -24';
VEC_HULL_MAX = '16 16 32';

VEC_HULL2_MIN = '-32 -32 -24';
VEC_HULL2_MAX = '32 32 64';

these are the presets that quake uses. you actually can't have different sizes of bounding boxes, because the way quake does collision detection. it builds three versions of the map, only the regular is the one you see. the other two get 'extruded' so that the game will know if a hull1 or hull2 can fit through...

as you can see, the z min and max are not even, though the x and y are... so remember to take that into account when you work on the death anim.

also, try to take that into account with the rest of the model... do a uniform move for all frames. i noticed the gaunt is a little forward and a bit down during it's normal movement animations.

the rest of them work great. looking forward to the finished product!