Was done in Quoth for the Death Lord - not sure of the method there.

We've got a version as well although it's a bit involved.

Basically you add a global 'shielded' that turns on in the animation while its blocking. All the weapon touch functions then check for this value when hitting anything.

If they hit it then reverse their direction;

self.velocity = self.velocity * -1;

And reset the owner field so it can hurt the player;

self.owner = other;

Or do something a bit more clever with scattering.

It's a bit more work this way but you can apply it whenever you like - so running or doing a standing block would both work. You can also have him receive lower damage from hitscan stuff as opposed to automatically damaging the player with an unfair reflected attack.

Not sure if this would work against the LG. I could investigate more.

Vague idea with the rune sword - why not use framegroups? You can animate up to four skins. Yes, it's a lot of overhead just to make a small part of the skin psuedo-shiny or glowing, but it could look cool.

If you 'group' multiple skins (max 4 AFAIK) in Qme it will flipbook between them automatically.

You can also do this manually by just calling the self.skin = whatever. Which could allow you to make the runes glow when he's doing something special.

Like blocking ;) 

I've had good success with duplicating some of the mesh and pushing the faces outward a bit and then using alpha value. 

Another trick you can use is to take that duplicated & enlarged mesh, and flip all the triangles in it. This creates an "outline" effect around your model, where the original model can be seen inside even without alpha. 

I remember your (?) model that did that with an egg shape around an Enforcer.

This is how all cell shading solutions do the outline effect as well, duplicating the mesh and applying a 'push' transform and flipping the triangles, then applying a flat black colour to the newly generated mesh.

Where black lines are needed they just get painted onto the diffuse layer.

When it's done to extremes on low poly stuff you start to see artifacts:

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/93349-viewtiful-joe-gamecube-screenshot-starting-a-new-game-joe-and.png

For a Quake forcefield, if you wanted to go nuts, you could export the entire mesh plus animations, push it, flip it and then attach it inside the Qc so that it would follow the animations of its owning monster. This would allow you to apply a .alpha value, animate the skin and apply texture fencing. 

Quouth Death Lord forcefield gameplay works very well.

Sock that's a nice model but I don't like the curved swords. 

To be honest I was not expecting to do anything interesting with this knight besides having two cool looking swords, but after what ijed said it got me thinking.

Personally I find bullet reflection abilities confusing to read and understand in games. There are plenty of examples of artifacts that do this function, empathy shield, cross of reflection, even the drake MOD has one, but I am not sure what it is called. So trying to implement a reflection ability is going to be tough because it has to be a certain state which the player can read and understand quickly.

I like the idea of swords glowing with an extra large sword model over the top (insync animations) and the alpha value changed. Once the animations are setup then I will post a video to see what people think.

Coding the reflection ability is going to be easy because I have re-written all monster projectiles QC scripts to go through one routine. 

That's why the method I mention is my preferred one, even though its more complex to make.

Visually you can see right away what's going on - the attacks bounce off the guy. The reason it works so well is you understand it immediately at first glance.

I never knew what the function of empathy shield was and never worked up the curiosity to find out. 

Taking a small break from the blue map to mess about in Trenchbroom. Here's what I have so far, it's a remake -

http://s22.postimage.org/ei4s3ovtt/deck.jpg 

http://s8.postimage.org/5z1apv6n9/Quake0000.jpg 

 

Every single brush! :D 

 

 

I wonder who will release the first fully trenchbroomed map? :D (not me, I'm only editing stuff made in another editor atm) 

but I fear some other folk are secretly toiling away at it and might beat me to it. :D 

Make a speedmapping session? 

I have the layout / connectivity finalized on the tournament map i mentioned earlier. Working on rebuilding the map from scratch using non-developer textures now. Starting on the most important part of the map, the main atrium!

http://www.mediafire.com/conv/c239e6971c2db654835d602641caef7523cd7c729fed97a5cbdef18b3272e2ed6g.jpg
http://www.mediafire.com/conv/fc49244047926b9698e121464681c353638d0fcef547a83fde986a29cecfde7e6g.jpg

Haven't really put much thought into detailing it or lighting it yet but just wanted to give people something to chew on and to assure them that I'm still working on this map. 

I love those textures, they are definitely underused! 

Looking for comments: http://www.quaddicted.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=500 

The map is in beta now pick it up from this thread:
http://www.quakeworld.nu/forum/topic/6042

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?5ul1k4t3cokbnmt
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?7a5i7axts87dgdb
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?c3cqmvk7lccufpn
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?v1z61kah5hsqph2
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?fmxjkxrq3f1nrzu
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?vsyybbmzod2og62 

I haven't played it, but it looks beautiful, foogs.

The megahealth seems out of place. I guess I would've expected that the megahealth be on a platform or stylish place, and not just on top of a couple of beams.

I noticed that you have some items placed right at the edges. Is this because to allow players to grab those items without actually landing there? Isn't that a little too forgiving?

I've been out of the quake scene for some time, so I don't know if that's a trend now, to be so forgiving like that. 

I'd say the quake scene is pretty forgiving. 

That looks really good.

Are you sure about that black sky? I'd just put a ceiling there, myself. 

Be sure to release the source when it's done so somebody willing can make a SP version... 

I wrote up a quick OBJ to MAP convertor program so I could do stuff in Modo and import it into TrenchBroom. First test - successful!

The little "S" shape was modeled in Modo and converted ... It's alive. ALIIIVE!!

Granted, there's no texturing info but, hey, the brush shapes are better than nothing...

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/161473/Misc/QuakeStuff1.jpg