Remake Quake Winter MP Demo

[goldenboy]

OK. Noted. We could easily differentiate the skill level dependant behaviour of the bots more. We could touch up the shotguns, but I'd like to hear more opinions first because this is pretty close to the core.

I win every single match against several bots on skill 0; granted, I have been playing this a lot. I doubt that I'm a good player though, I don't even play online much. Getting used to it does have some effect. However, as ijed says, we shouldn't piss off players, so there will surely be tweaking and discussing. Promise.

Now, I wanted to say something else...

The arrows in dm6rq, OK, I played a lot of warsow when I did them I might handle them better in the future. A more Quakey texture perhaps. I see your point though - I thought that myself (let the players discover that) but wanted to be noob-friendly and liked the bluntness of the approach.

The landing sounds are starting to annoy me a little, too, we can handle them differently and make them less frequent and not as loud, or connect them to fall damage, will meditate on this. There are also plans to change grunt and knight sounds a little or more.

Fullbright pixels will be dealt with, we had the small problem that aenoch had to take a vacation due to RL issues and thus the map didn't get the rigid testing and tweaking that most others got. Problem noted.

And finally, the desire to get a second walljump in I can understand, I felt the same sometimes; a matter of balance though (Warsow disallowed more than one wall jump). Discussion, testing and fine tuning needed.

[ceriux]

so is anyone actually got a server playing this on?

also i found this what is it?! it looks interesting!

[goldenboy]

There might be a server, but nothing to announce yet. I think something may be cooking in this regard though. There are people who know a lot more about servers than we do, and there was some talk about it.

That red weapon is the cauteriser, and the red fluid is blood. It acts as a healing spring, returning every 20 seconds, and every player touching it (while it's up) can get 1 (one) megahealth.

One mega per player, per cycle. I was kinda hoping to turn this room into a magnet, so it would become "teh killing room".

It's all explained in the readme - RTFM !

Finally I got to say RTFM. Thank you, Ceriux

[ceriux]

lol np man =p

[ijed]

Give the bots a try - the Cauteriser (or Caut) is more fun to use than look at

[mh]

OK feedback time.

Just took a brief spin through the maps, and I'm quite impressed. Your DM1 unfortunately was the weakest of the lot; a nice enough layout but there was no real reason to prefer it to the standard DM1 (I missed the lava/bridge bit too). The others are "OH WOW OH WOW OH WOW!!!" Chains hanging from the ceiling, that clanking sound going all the way through your Bad Place, cogs, interesting shaped bits sticking out of walls, a genuine sense of unease, oppression and "you should not be here, and Bad Things will happen if you stay".

Huge slowdowns in the main courtyard in your CTF1, but I suppose a showpiece arena like that is not really supposed to be lightning fast.

I got one bug going into water on DM7, almost as if something in the BSP tree is not joined up right. That might be my engine rather than the map though.

Can I suggest using some of the impaled bodies models from Quoth in place of the bodies textures? Even do them as static entities. And more chains, I like me some chains. It would help a lot with the atmosphere of the maps.

Texturing looks great though, even if - again - DM1 is somewhat on the bland side.

Nothing much to say on the gameplay, I just wanted to look at the pretty architecture.

[ijed]

Thanks, feedback is always worth it.

CTF1 is a bit of a mistake really. It's the type of arena that Quake isn't geared towards, so needs a machine more powerful than the norm (for Quake) to run. bear in mind though that it's supposed to run with around eight players, I was testing with 7 bots.

I should support 10 no problem, although that hits the edict limit for fitzquake - just too much stuff going on. Maybe real players will be cheaper than all the bot calls there though.

DM7 uses transparency for the water, but one that's nothing to do with wateralpha (which is disabled in DM to avoid cheating) meaning the volumes are entities. This means more volumes (so they don't flicker) and using metslime's skip utility to remove the internal faces of each volume.

I don't know much about how it works, but basically it reorders the rendering for those faces so they're not visible - metslime will be able to break it down.

Corpses keep coming back as an idea, and we've got some plans, ever since Gb mentioned Q2 insanes. What we have now is a full NPC system supporting anything from roaming insanes, ghosts, bosses, custom enemies), but a lack of models.

So me or Madfox will have to work on some meshes - it's overkill to include the NPC AI in DM, but the same meshes will most likely be used for tortured static props.

Mainly to leave open the option of some of them still being alive.

[scar3crow]

It's the type of arena that Quake isn't geared towards, so needs a machine more powerful than the norm (for Quake) to run.

For reference, I ran this in the January stable build of DarkPlaces on a Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ 2.21ghz, 3gigs of ram, and a GeForce8800 GTS 640 meg. I know its not the optimal geometry for Quake, but it really shouldn't be in the 20s with no bots and no action going on, though I could be underestimating Quake's lack of efficiency in these matters.

[ijed]

Ouch.

Well, at least we've got our get out of jail free card - it is a demo; expect revisions.

[goldenboy]

Probably what negke said about combining textures to save polys, or thereabouts. It's a fucking huge arena with curves and angles and stuff, though, which is a bit heavy for Quake.

Rhogog is already a func, right?

I tend to get lower fps in Darkplaces, btw. It's a nice engine, but Fitzquake is faster and almost as nice. Haven't checked the same map in FTE yet.

I managed to get a couple "server can't keep up" messages from Darkplaces, too, which I found entertaining.

The reason for removing the lava and bridge from dm1, way back when it was started, was that even my granny can make that jump. So I removed the clutter. I'll give it to you that the lava is the only bit of atmosphere in DM1, though

Just kidding, lava and wbrick* don't really mix, quite simply.

[Team Xlink]

I think all of these maps are amazing!

...Except

DM1

It really has nothing that makes me want to play it more so then normal DM1.

Everything else is amazing!

Thanks, feedback is always worth it.
DM7 uses transparency for the water, but one that's nothing to do with wateralpha (which is disabled in DM to avoid cheating) meaning the volumes are entities. This means more volumes (so they don't flicker) and using metslime's skip utility to remove the internal faces of each volume.

I don't know much about how it works, but basically it reorders the rendering for those faces so they're not visible - metslime will be able to break it down.

If I am understanding correctly, metslime's skip utility would help speed up the fps of a map greatly?

[Downsider]

I think all of these maps are amazing!

...Except

DM1

It really has nothing that makes me want to play it more so then normal DM1.

Everything else is amazing!

Thanks, feedback is always worth it.
DM7 uses transparency for the water, but one that's nothing to do with wateralpha (which is disabled in DM to avoid cheating) meaning the volumes are entities. This means more volumes (so they don't flicker) and using metslime's skip utility to remove the internal faces of each volume.

I don't know much about how it works, but basically it reorders the rendering for those faces so they're not visible - metslime will be able to break it down.

If I am understanding correctly, metslime's skip utility would help speed up the fps of a map greatly?

No, it just makes it so faces assigned with a skip texture don't get rendered. Used correctly, it can help achieve a better FPS, but not drastically, and certainly not automagically.

[ijed]

Not even greater FPS - the faces are still drawn, but their Z-Sort value means they're behind the rest of the world.

It's just a visual thing - water shouldn't have walls inside it.

Strange that DM1 gets some complaints, visually its far better than the original. Need to polish the gameplay a bit.

[mh]

Not even greater FPS - the faces are still drawn, but their Z-Sort value means they're behind the rest of the world.

It's just a visual thing - water shouldn't have walls inside it.

Problem is that when you're actually in the water you can't see the inside surface. I've tried this with a few engines now and it's across the baord.

[ijed]

Yeah, that's a bit annoying. I think there's a very inefficient hack I could do with thin water brushes and skip, but it'd be a waste of resources. No big deal though, it is a DM map.