RiftQuake

[Seven]

Hello Dutch,

If you want to open and walk through that door, be sure to put at least some ammo boxes at the beginning of the map.
You say that chton has 10.000 health points (Armagon had only 2.000).
If you survived the last map with a handful of shotgun shells and nails, it will be a long time to 'axe' down chton
I remember how ezzetabi also made something similar in his mod. He even coded a health bar with qc for chton (to get a 'feeling' for his extreme health).

But when you still can kill him with almost the same amount of Lightning shocks, I think everybody would go this way instead, because 10.000 hit points takes a bit longer.

Your pain animation is really great !
I love how you extend the Quake monsters animations.
Knowing that it is not easy to animate monsters (especially in .mdl format).
That is a very valuable skill of you !!
I am looking really forward of all the other things you will animate and do with the monsters.

Great job !

[talisa]

both the IQ-mod and runequake-coop have something similar implented for both chton and shubs, that instead of having to use the pylons and telefragging you instead have to shoot both bosses to kill them.

.

and RQ-coop gave shubs herself a bunch of attacks, including a huge homing spikeball which uses the telefrag spikeball, and she lobs exploding lava-balls at you in an arc

they really make her a much more intersting boss then the lame telefrag method you have to use in normal quake

[Dutch]

@gypsy thanks buddy! yeah totally agree. I was never happy with the original chthon fight, and he's such a badass boss monster i thought he deserved more.

@seven thanks for the feedback man. I thought about all the things you said. I gave him incredibly high health because I wanted him to be one helluva battle that makes you sigh in relief when he finally dies. But I also left the lightning coded in so mappers could decide how they want players to approach him. Straight up one-to-one fight to the death is more fun in my opinion, but I have seen some maps effectively use the lightning in challenging ways.

But when you still can kill him with almost the same amount of Lightning shocks, I think everybody would go this way instead, because 10.000 hit points takes a bit longer.

Well, yes and no. He hurls fireballs a lot faster with deadly leading accuracy. It's just as lethal and time consuming, if not more, to constantly run laps around him, as it is to make a stand. I am going to adjust his health based on skill though, instead of the lightning damage, to keep it consistent. I'm thinking 10,000 for Nightmare, 2,000 for easy, and the rest in between.

I'll be editing the original E1M7 map to add respawnable ammo.

I love how you extend the Quake monsters animations.
Knowing that it is not easy to animate monsters (especially in .mdl format).
That is a very valuable skill of you !!

Thanks! Still have a lot more to do on Chthon, but the shambler's up next.

I have a big list of more things to on Chthon, I'll keep y'all updated.

@talisa Yep Shubby's on the list too, she is about the biggest let down any boss has been. I'm basically going to completely re-model and re-code her. Only the name's staying the same.

[vegetous]

I like it! I always hated how all Quakes bosses are "puzzle enemies" and generally the puzzle is stupid.

(1)

Nice job with Chthon! Do you plan to give it the ability to chase the player a bit in the lava?

[Dutch]

Nice job with Chthon! Do you plan to give it the ability to chase the player a bit in the lava?

Thanks. I thought about adding some movement, but the problem with that is his animations will go through walls and look weird if he isn't centered up in the middle. He's going to have two or three new attacks though based on his health and skill level.

[JDSTONE]

Every time i see this pop up on the first page im hoping there is a download link... keep up the work dutch cant wate to play. it always pissed me off that you could not shoot the boss in quake!

POST 600 WOOHOO (i need to get a life)

[MadGypsy]

POST 600 WOOHOO (i need to get a life)

You need to get some glasses (560)

[webangel]

Very nice work Dutch.

Keep it on!

[Dutch]

Thanks a lot Stoner and webangel! Everyday I get a little closer to the end goal.

Since that video I posted up of RiftQuake's modified Chthon, I've added a helluva lot of new stuff.

*3 pain animations. The shortest is only called on if he is shot with the Scout Rifle, to stun him and buy players time.
*The other two are called on based on health. At 2/3 total health, a unique pain animation plays and he develops the first damage skin of fractured, glowing skin. At 1/3 health, he runs through his second (more severe) pain animation and develops the second (more severe) damage skins.
*Upon death, a series of explosions accompany his exploding animation. He develops the 3rd damage skin before finally partially gibbing, where he develops the death damage skin.
*Two new attacks that he will start using at 2/3 total health: three-ball hurls, where three slightly randomized fireballs are thrown simultaneously vs. just the one. The other attack is huge scatter shot of smaller fireballs that do significant radius damage. These two attacks are called on randomly, favoring the larger fireball hurls.
*No more lightning pylons. This has been entirely removed from the code. It was causing complications, and let's face it: fighting him man-to-monster is way more fun than just running laps around him.
*He has 2,000 health on easy, 4,000 on normal, 6,000 on hard, and 10,000 on nightmare.
*His fireballs hurl 40% faster on nightmare mode with deadly leading accuracy.
*Gibbed head and arm are incorporated into the death animation.

On Nightmare, he is close to impossible to defeat. It's do-able, but takes some skill and patience. I'm editing the E1M7 map to insert 1 Quad and a respawning ammo cache.

I beleive this is the boss monster Quake desperately lacked.

This video was filmed on Godmode with Impulse 9 on Easy so I could fit all the new features into one 30 second clip.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAlR8kIRXXo]RiftQuake Chthon 2 - YouTube[/ame]

[talisa]

woah thats f-ing awesum dutch!

pain-skins are neat and so are the additional animations,
and the death-animation looks great with the added arm-gib

[MadGypsy]

totally excellent!

[Dutch]

Thanks guys! Working on some models now for ammo boxes. Then regrouping on the health boxes. Then the weapons. Then hopefully a break to switch back over to my original field of mapping, with MadGypsy's badass Virtuoso gamepack. I'll keep the updates coming to get some feedback.

I would like an opinion from everyone though. Since I went all-out on weapon detail (obviously still tweaking, but for example the manual-reload animations of the Scout Rifle) I'm seriously considering adding magazine reloads to all weapons. Like 30 round clips or whatever for the assault rifle, so on and so forth. There's obviously some pros and cons to this:

Pros: More realism, more strategy and decision in how you use your ammo during firefights, more animations for players and view weapon models, and would add more polish to the game experience itself.

Cons: Not traditional to Quake gameplay, will marginally slow down action, a shit-load of coding/modeling on my part.

If I were to do it, the reloads would be very fast (not like freaking Call of Duty where you have to piss around for 5 seconds and get shot to hell while you're doing it, we're talking a second tops for each weapon besides the Scout Rifle, which already has a 2.3 second reload to balance the insane damage it does). The Shotgun would have a detachable magazine for shells, not an ammunition tube. Same for the GL and RL.

This is obviously a ways away, but I want to gauge your opinions now. I can see the merit in both sides of the argument, and it's dangerous territory in my opinion. That's why I want all of yours. Thanks.

EDIT: This would also call for the creation of separate ammunitions for all weapons (something I wanted to do anyway) and some CSQC coding to display magazine ammo.

[MadGypsy]

I'd like to preface this by saying, I'm not trying to say this is some awesome way to do this or anything.

I've played games where a reload is accompanied by a reload bar. There is no animation model-wise. A little "splash screen" comes up that says RELOADING:[progress bar here]. Maybe this way isn't esthetically ideal but the bottom line feature that you are trying to create will still be accomplished - a small wait time to add strategy and a need for control of your weapon fire.

Maybe you could even skip the progress bar and have the magazine look like it's filling up in the HUD. Maybe each bullet (in the HUD magazine) could be worth 10 bullets. So, as each 10 bullets gets fired, one bullet from the HUD magazine disappears. When it's completely empty you have to wait for it to fill up to fire again.

You could also base your reload time on the amount of bullets a magazine accepts

offset*magazine_capacity = load time

Using a HUD magazine with the above mentioned load time example would be much much easier than trying to make each individual animation last that amount of time.

Anyway, that's just my little alternate idea for you. I know there are reasons why it's a little cheesy but I think it all depends on your creativity in handling the load graphic.

[talisa]

at your question about possible addition of reloading... YES!
absolutely add this, especially with some of the weapons you've shown it would make a lot of sense, and i like the touch of realism it adds.

reloading can slow down gameplay a little bit, but it also adds that you have to be a bit more tactfull and keep an eye on your ammo, which can be a lot of fun

the dukeplus mod for duke3D also adds reloading to all weapons and it works great there, it fits perfectly into the game and it feels natural.
and brutal doom for doom also adds reloading and it also feels natural there, and improves the game imo.

so i personally say totally add reloading, it adds a lot to a game imo to have reloading which adds a touch of realism and that you gotta be a lil bit more tactical about killing


i very much like gypsy's idea for hud indicators, dukeplus and brutal doom have these both and its extremely usefull to be able to keep track of magazine and knowing when to reload to make sure you got enough ammo left in magazine for the next enemies

[Dutch]

Awesome, thanks for the feedback you two.

I've played games where a reload is accompanied by a reload bar. There is no animation model-wise. A little "splash screen" comes up that says RELOADING:[progress bar here].

Yeah that would be a lot easier than going for the whole 9 yards in animation. But I won't be satisfied at all with it at the end of the day. The reloading thing has been done before on some mods with the original weapons, and I wasn't all that impressed in the way they were handled. Since it's been done before, it needs to really stand out. Just like the player models I made. Having them hold separate weapons has been done before, but I made sure to add serious polish to it when I did it. No two shooting animations from one weapon to the next are the same. Not even close.

Maybe you could even skip the progress bar and have the magazine look like it's filling up in the HUD.

I love that idea though. Like in Halo, where you have so many rounds in the mag and they disappear and fill up during firing/reloading. Awesome idea.

reloading can slow down gameplay a little bit, but it also adds that you have to be a bit more tactfull and keep an eye on your ammo, which can be a lot of fun

Right on, that's what I was thinking. Ok, as of now, the plan is to add reloading. Thanks for the feedback. I need to finish my item/weapon modeling first though. Here's an update.

I went back and swiped the table clean and started fresh on the health box. I trashed the first piece of garbage. Before and after pics below. Tomorrow, hopefully I will have time to texture it, but probly have to wait till Friday.

Before:



Now: