Conquest Release -- try it out, yo!

[Wazat]

Since a few people asked for it, and I'm interested in your opinions, here is the latest Conquest release. There's nothing ground-breaking in there yet (the town is only barely started on, no NPCs, shop is still text-based), but there's still some new weapons and shields for everyone to play with. There are also some new monsters, including a hell-knight you don't want to tangle with unless you've been investing in shields like you're supposed to.

I've also got a complete listing of the different types of shields in the readme, so please do take a look at that section.

There's also ammo pickups, new weapon mods, two new shields, and a tentative beginning to a town map (which you will visit between every level). To get the full listing, view the changes.txt and check the last two versions. (I'm not posting it here for the sake of neatness... my posts are long enough already ).

I'm interested in opinions on the town (which I know isn't near as good as it should be, but nonetheless I'd love suggestions and help), weapons, monsters, ammo, shields, you name it.

In the future I'd even like to divert away from the original quake maps and have a whole new campaign built specifically for Conquest, but that's not something I'll do until about 90% of the mod is done.

So, Questions? Comments? Is it any fun?

[Tei]

downloading!...

[Entar]

I tried playing it with my engine, but it said that I "need an engine with checkextension ability" - I ended up having to use DP, even though it worked with my engine in the earlier versions....

[Spike]

Entar: read this: http://wiki.quakesrc.org/index.php/checkextension

[Entar]

I know about checkextension, and it was working in my engine, hence my comment:

it worked with my engine in the earlier versions....

(of Conquest)

[Sajt]

We got the feeling that Wazat only added the calling of checkextension/checking of pr_checkextension in recent versions...

[FrikaC]

Me like Conquest.

[Wazat]

Yay!

I've been trying to wrestle specific opinions from people, but they just scream and spray mace in my eyes. It was nice when FrikaC, Entar and Supa told me they liked it and explained why. They still used mace, though.

With all the comments on the Attractor before the release, I was expecting at least some comments once people got to try it. Did anyone think the fire arrows or attractor or Omega Machinegun or any of the new guns listed in changes.txt were cool? Did things need to be fixed or changed?

Should I drop what I'm doing and get NPCs in the town?

[SkinnedAlive]

I didn't get long enough to try out the new weapons but I managed to play through a few levels. I enjoyed how balanced the rewards and prices for the weapons are but I found it frustrating fighting monsters sometimes. It wasn't immediatly apparent when a weapon was having no effect so I often ended up wasting ammo trying to find it's weakness. Perhaps this could be fixed with painskins or different sound effects when the monsters are hit.

I also found the scrag replacement to be too difficult and they do not behave well in E1M3.

This is the kind of thing I could get addiced to, the gameplay just needs ironing out.

[Wazat]

You're right, there needs to be an easier way to know how much you're hurting the monsters.

Here's a few things I want to do:

* Health Bars above monster's head
There will be a health bar (think Warcraft III) that gives a rough idea on what percent the monster's health is. I might also add 3 other bars for their shields.

* Damage shown in mid air
When you do damage to a monster, you see the number printed in mid-air in front of it. This number will continue incrementing until you shop hurting it for a second or so, then it will fade away (and next time will start counting at 0 again). It will only print the amount of damage you're actually getting through to the monster, so you can tell how effective the shields are against your guns.

* Sparks and other effects when the shield is being highly effective
Right now, when you fire the railgun at a monster that's wearing Limit Shields, you see a colored ring around the attack point indicating that the shield cut out all damage above a certain point. This should be a strong indicator that you might need to switch weapons. I'm also experimenting with the ogre, so that if you fire a nailgun at him and his precision shield blocks it out, you see sparks as the smaller bullets are defelcted.

I'll definitely do options one and two, since they'll be relatively easy. The third one is far more detailed and obscure and I might not get around to doing it. One and two combined should fix the problem anyway, since you can really see the effect.

The scrag's replacement is the Horror, and yes, their bite is way too powerful. Also the poison and fire does too much damage. I'll fix that.
I'll also have wizards in there again, sooner or later.

Thanks for the comments, Skinny! They were very helpful!

[Tei]

Humm..

This version works well here. For some reason, feel right.
I like the 'new' enemy. (new to me?). these stuff that fly like a gayrgole. Works on Telejano.

[leileilol]

these stuff that fly like a gayrgole.

What

[Wazat]

He's talking about the Horror, which replaces the Wizards currently. It's really dangerous if you let it get close, or poison you, or set you on fire, or...

[Wazat]

By the way, impulse 254 and 253 are the money cheats, for those of you who want to try out the different weapons.

^_^

I'm worried that the player won't have enough money in easy and normal skill (because there are so few monsters). What's everyone's experience been in this area?