Lunkin's Journey

[ajay]

Released last night, finally, and with great relief on my part. Right up until the end I was finding new problems, and new solutions, and more usefully learning a bit more about making mods.
The number of times however, that fixing one thing, just plain broke another, was very fustrating, especially as often it was just a missing word: return; for instance
But I know why; I'm still a noob at heart and I'm completely disorganised. Couple that with code and a mod that spiralled in both scope and size from that which I'd envisaged, and you can understand why I had problems. God forbid anyone else should try to read it
But it's done and regardless it's my best mod, and even though I hate it now, I'm sure I'll appreciate it as such once I've had a break from it.
There are number of things that didn't make the finished version:
Not all quake sounds have been replaced, mostly because the QUake ones suited it just fine, but also because of time pressures. In addition there there's a lot of centerprint - ed 'chat' that was going to have accompanying audio (either spoken/acted words or "vocalisations") but again time, and some skill-decifit, meant it was binned.
A fair amount of planned stpryline is gone or simplified, and this was just unavoidable. There was no way I would have ever finished it, if the planned storyline, needing another 15 or so levels, had been followed. So a few corners have been gut.
Some thing were cut because of model related issues. I'm never going to be a modeller; not even in terms of tweaking existing ones. So some features (there's a full list I may 'release' one day, but I don't want to give the mod any more bad press than I already appear to be doing ) just didn't happen because the model couldn't do it and I couldn't make it!
There are a numebr of cuts made due to coding issues, predominately because I couldn't get things to work, but some (one major thing) that a bit of me thinks you just can't do in Quake, and I'm sticking to that opinion, regardless of what the actual truth may be.

SO what's left then? A pretty big mod. 16 levels, a 3rd person perspective, background music (different for each world type) 5 species of non-playable characters, with different individuals within those, 5 attacks/powers, 5 world-types, a storyline of some description, and a whole range of (spot 'em there's loads!) "borrowed movie and game influences, most none too subtle.
Pert of me loves it, part of me hates it. I'm still quite fustrated that I didn't have time or the skill to include stuff that was pretty great in theory, and also that both in terms of mapping and especially coding, I didn't have the time or enthusiasm to make it as polished as it should be.
But I think it's different, fun and big (during last minute testing I played thorugh it in god mode, taking all the short cuts and avoiding all the pit falls, and it still took me 37 minutes!) and worthy of people playing and giving some time to.

I'll just finish by saying thank you to everyone who has helped me over the it's development, it would have been impossible without you all *sniff*. More detilas of which can be found in the Game Manual [url]http//www.ajaysquakesite.co.uk/lj_dloads/lj_manual.zip[/url] plus installation tips, chracter guides and why you should use TomazQuake, so you really should download it.

Hope you enjoy it

ajay[/url]

[Sajt]

I played it a bit today, got stuck, but I'll try it again tomorrow.

Some enemies appear to be invincible. This is intentional, I presume? It takes a lot of quickloading and trying not to alert the invincible dogs.

You said you advise against strafing? That's fine, but it's hard when the backward speed is set to something extremely low... it's nearly impossible to dodge the dogs' attacks, basically I had to resort to hoping I make them do a long flinch animation (where the dog rolls over).

[ajay]

[Sajt]

Well, at the very beginning of the game, I was able to dispatch two dogs on the left, but couldn't kill the one on the right. After trying about 20 times (honestly ) I managed to hit him up to 10 times or so before he killed me. So basically I ended up running and jumping around like an idiot trying to collect mushrooms with a couple of dogs chasing me...

[RenegadeC]

I used the fart attack while strafing around the dogs, took 'em out nicely. The second level when all the soldier goblins chased me scared me I managed to run around the town and they lost me and stopped following!

by the way ajay, I found a bug.. in the town shoot that dynamite to set the goblins house on fire, then shoot the fire.. CRASH!

[Sajt]

I managed to stand on top of an open door, where I could fart on the dog but he couldn't reach me. It took 17 farts to kill it!! Then it says my attack power was raised to 4. I thought you started with 15? I didn't kill any friendly guys, although I did shoot one once just to get him to stop humping me (he didn't die, he ran away)

[Sajt]

Argh! ajay, I hate to say this but you have created the most frustrating game I have ever played and that is saying a lot. I had to quit before I smashed something.

I managed to draw off a single soldier (I got rid of one or two of the dogs and the rest were trying to attack the cliffs or the walls or something). I lightning bolted him 20 times, and farted 10 times on my best run, and still couldn't kill him! BTW, my attack rating was 7.

I'm going to start over and give it one more shot. Maybe it's just one of those rare glitches (like th Half-Life one that makes it so you can never use wall medkits in that game)

[Sajt]

OK, it happened again. Apparently I load off a save game my attack power plummets (this time it went from 22 to 7).

Is this intentional?? It's pretty harsh

I'm not going to bother playing anymore Until a patch arrives

[Urre]

According to OmegaPhlare's review of the game, you lose attack power from saving/loading. I have no idea wether that's intentional or not, but maybe one should try and play the game in one sitting, like OmegaPhlare did.

[Sajt]

I guess I'll give it another shot in a day or two.

But only because it's so charming

[Sajt]

- Finished - woot!

That was cool. Ajay, I have noticed a few bugs, and if you released the source perhaps me or we could aid with creating a patch

But it was awesome. I loved the story and the environments - very very cool stuff not usually seen on Quake platform.

[ajay]

Sajt, I must say thank you for spending so much time on the game. By thw way there's an easy way of avoiding the soldiers on level 2, basically you blow up the vials in one of the hosues, setting it on fire. The soldiers will then run round to the house, you run the otehr way, and you ahve a clear route to the exit.

The svae/load, attack reuction I didn't know about...

[Sajt]

Ajay - the soldiers are fine ... I didn't blow up the house because I thought it made them come after me. So I just bunny-hopped past them

If you release the QC code, perhaps we could take a look and help fix some bugs (another one seems to include the soldiers shooting very slow-moving lasers sometimes, and the crash when you attack the fire in the house, and it's kind of hard to get out that house -- unless you strafe, it pops you back in)

[ajay]

I've fixed the save/load problem, you don't lose attack power now. Shooting the fire I never encountered in testing, 'cos I knew once I'd blown up the vials, it was time to get out and run back thru' the church and quick to the finish before the soldiers came round the other way! 'Cos I knwe the reason for it being there i.e. to attract the soldiers away from the exit, I never thought of shooting it It was a pain to get working in the first place, e.g. teleporting it in to replace the vials and appear on the roof, I'll take a look at it and try fix it.
I'll play around with some of the bugs, if I can't fix them I'll share the mess that pretends to be code, but I woudln't want to inflict it on anyone else quite yet

Edit
Yeh, I fixed the fire bug too! Boy I'm on a roll

[ajay]

Patch released:


Fixes:



Any other suggestions welcome