monsters

[LambentHammerBurst]

Hello bluntz,

Creating a new monster without changing the existing animations (=qc) is a hard task. I would even call it almost impossible.

It's damn hard. I've done it a couple times, never again.
Take a monster that's the closest to what you want - copy it and make changes from there. Easiest way to do it.

[bluntz]

It's damn hard. I've done it a couple times, never again.
Take a monster that's the closest to what you want - copy it and make changes from there. Easiest way to do it.

Doh!
I can't just make new animations an follow the naming and frame counts of an existing one?
I did not even realise the AI would be different too.
I wanted the snake to spew venom like a cobra,dam.
Is there a tut anywhere to do the qc for a monster?

[MadGypsy]

You probably chose the hardest possible monster to realistically recreate. There are just too many possible motions and shapes a snake could take for you to probably ever get this looking good. That's my honest opinion, but if you are committed, here is a possible solution.

--

use IQM format and Socks trigger AI method. You would have triggers that manipulate the actual bones of the snake. I unfortunately do not know how to do this. But this is probably the best possible solution. With a hell of a lot of work your snake could pick up information as to where it is and how it should move as it passes over triggers.

Using this method you could actually have your snake navigate the entire map, without ever getting stuck in a passage or ending up half in a wall. How cool would it be to have a boss that is moving around the map and you never encounter it in the same place twice (very often). Totally scary and creepy to know there is this huge snake somewhere and maybe it's looking for you or maybe you will just stumble upon it, but regardless you have no idea where or when that will happen.

Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling you are gonna find this to be waaay too complicated.

Alternately you could just make sure the thing never leaves one room, but you are still going to have a problem with chunks of it ending up inside the walls or even worse, blocked. Imagine if one lil piece of tail on a doorway was stopping your snake from being able to turn. It will also be interesting to see how you stop it from ever strafing. A snake primarily follows its victim with just it's head, but standard quake monsters move the entire model in the direction of the player, they also rotate the entire model in the direction of the player.

There are a whole lot of non snake-like things you have to overcome here. Consider if you were running circles around your snake, in quake logic your snake would be spinning like a top around its center. Snakes can't do that.

I don't want to deter you. I'm just being 100% realistic about the serious problems you have created for yourself with this monster. I think it would be awesome to fight a giant snake but how realistic is it to build one that actually works like a snake? If it's not realistic - what do you end up with? A retarded unrealistic snake that defies all the laws of being a snake?

[Henry]

That is a coool idea bluntz!
Why not make a boss monster like this

[bluntz]

Well the legend surrounding the oracle's temple centers on Apollo fighting Python and I thought it was a snake,however here is an engraving from 1581 that shows Python is actually a dragon.
Could I use the unreleased dragon from quake somehow?

[bluntz]

That is a coool idea bluntz!
Why not make a boss monster like this

Yes I had intended to do a gorgon like that in a future map release centering around Medusa.

[MadGypsy]

there is a dragon in hip or rogue (I forget which). Even if you didn't use the model the QC for it might be a good start. Actually maybe the model would even be a good base mesh to begin from.

[talisa]

@gypsy
the dragon is from rogue

[Syluxguy28O3]

The dragon was the coolest boss in quake imo.

[talisa]

yeah, he looks awesome. just a shame he was rather simple.
just stay behind him and he wont even attack you at all, and he just flies eights all the time.
if he does attack you high chance you're dead instantly, but if you manage to stay behind him he's quite easy

[Henry]

How many bosses are there in Quake and official expansions ?
--> chton, shub, armagon, dragon

Worst was shub. No interaction possible. No AI.
Killing her was almost like a secret with teleporter usage.

The dragon was the most passive one. His AI was also "not there".
He was flying in dumb circles in a far too small map and died the same way.

Chton was cool and active. His AI was better (at least he could turn)
Cool animations. Great lava splash during waking up.
He was good and a worthy ending for the shareware !

Armagon had the best AI, best weapons and neat features.
So he is the best boss monster so far.

And bluntz should pick up the pole right there.
Your gorgon should catch up with armagons level

[Syluxguy28O3]

yeah, i agree that the bosses have there problems, but since they are few and far between, im not complaining when i finally get to fight one!

[MadGypsy]

@splitterface -

1) I would have lost that bet. I was leaning towards hip
2) I was positive you had me on ignore So I guess I would have lost that bet too.

moral of the story: I have no business betting OR I suck at guessing

just stay behind him and he wont even attack you at all

I wonder if this has to do with things that I mentioned in my long post (above) about the complexity of giant, long mobile monsters. The dragon in Rogue just follows a path, like a func_train. To do it any other way (especially back then) would have probably created a never ending list of problems, I will speculate that many of those problems revolved around getting stuck somewhere.

I'm tempted to make some bullshit monster, like just a really long tube and spend some down time trying to make a system/AI for it to "realistically" navigate a map. Not a "mod" per se, more like an experiment that someone else can polish to be an actual mod.

[bluntz]

yeah, he looks awesome. just a shame he was rather simple.
just stay behind him and he wont even attack you at all, and he just flies eights all the time.
if he does attack you high chance you're dead instantly, but if you manage to stay behind him he's quite easy

Ok well he fights in his cave so you are forced to take him head on
MG can you give us custom entities in radient yet? I need a rogue model

[MadGypsy]

no sweat bro. You want the dragon? I'm assuming you have already compiled the dragon into your QC? That's step one. just go to quake navigator, get the rogue source, dump it in the folder that has all of your QC, add the name of that file to defs.qc after all monsters and compile.

It might not work entirely. You will know when you finish the compile (probably). There may be some extra stuff in the AI (or something). if this is all way too complicated, I'll do it for you, but if you are going to make a mod you really should learn how to do this stuff.

I'm frustrated with my fake youTube at the moment. Imma go fish around in roue and see what's going on.

im trippin, there is wrong info here just ignore this post. I'll have it for you in a 30 minutes