Some PSP project thing

[Cardinal]

There doesn't appear to be an option in Noesis to specifically assign textures, only a thing for additional textures which doesn't seem to do anything:



Qwalk won't even start, and I'd rather not use too many steps to convert to mdl, you lose accuracy with every conversion.

As for bones: would be really neat to have support for skeletal animation, but it's not a necessity as long as the animations I make are displayed correctly (which appears to be the case). Interpolation would be nice and I'm not sure if ProQuake has it, haven't checked yet.

The most important feature the game/mod would require is an animated first-person camera, combined with a cover mechanism a la Time Crisis. I believe this can be achieved with some trickery using camera paths in Quake (or so I've heard), but if those are similar to the ones in HL I'm afraid that it'll end up looking pretty bad/choppy. Exporting the maps to a modeling package and fully animating the camera by hand would be ideal, but since bones are not supported you cannot simply set the camera position/orientation to that of the animated camera bone. One would have to find a way around that. Another challenge would be having the ability to aim without changing the camera angle.

I'm not a coder, I'm just a knuckle-dragging slob who draws guns and stuff, having no in-depth knowledge of the Quake engine, so before I'll commit myself to this thing: are the features described above doable?

[golden_boy]

Let me get this straight, you want to convert from 3ds Max to mdl via noesis?

Looks like your texture didn't get loaded into Noesis (white model). In that case it can't be exported either. You need to UV unwrap the model and assign a material in 3ds Max or whatever you use and make sure Noesis finds it.

It should then look similar to this:

http://spawnhost.files.wordpress.com.../export222.png

Noesis should display the texture on the model normally.

I never played Time Crisis, hence I don't know what exactly the camera needs to do.

Oh, also animations in Quake are normally played at 10 fps. And I think most engines have interpolation.

[Cardinal]

I have a single texture (256 indexed bmp using the Quake palette, also a similar pcx) assigned to the models, stored in the same folder as the model and exported frames, will take a closer look at it tomorrow.

Time Crisis gameplay:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEyk22Jr8aQ]Time Crisis - Stage 1 - YouTube[/ame]

Starting 1.25

/e Looked at the exported models in Noesis, looks like the textures need to be in a certain path, but even if I put the texture there it still isn't loaded.

[MadGypsy]

You can try blender

blender 2.49b
blender 2.49 .mdl exporter script
Blender- Setting up Python + Quake 1 MDL exporter - YouTube

[Cardinal]

Calling it done





Back of grip and other misc. parts won't be textured since you won't ever see them.

/e



Now in Quake palette for your viewing displeasure.

Thank god for external textures.

[Cardinal]

882 triangles so far, a bit on the heavy side. Still lots of room to optimize if necessary.
Anyone know if the camera thing would be possible?

[golden_boy]

You would have to ask at inside3d about that camera thing. I have never seen it in any Quake mod I'm aware of.

If you still have registering probs at inside3d then you can also reach a lot of the people who post there on IRC, by going to irc.anynet.org and joining #qc. You can then simply post your question and wait for someone to answer it - it would be wise to post them that video as well.

The guys there should be able to help you. Personally I can't say if it's possible or not, it probably is but might require some coding.

The models look good

[MadGypsy]

What it sounds like to me is, you need a chase cam with something invisible to chase. Let's call it The Vied Piper. It's a completely invisible monster that has a designated path and never attacks anything.

Screw animating a camera, make it a slave to something that is much easier to animate.

right?

Gypsy

[Cardinal]

Well if anyone feels like building a proof of concept you are more than welcome.

[MadGypsy]

I actually have to quit working on Quake stuff cause I am super poor. I have some serious PHP, SQL and jQuery skills though so, I'm going to see if I can hustle up some web-related programming gigs and straighten out my finances.

Convince someone to mod up my idea though. There is no reason why it won't work. Chase cams exist just tell it to chase something else, something you can easily control the path of. Hell, you could probably make it chase 1 particle with an alpha of 0.

here is a page with a bunch of existing chase cam codes. just download one and look over the code. You should be able to isolate where the cam is "locked" to the player. From there you just need to make a model of nothing and clone the player (or one of the monsters) code in such a way that you can get it to appear on the map. Then using some map software GTKRadiant or whatever you can add the new player/monster as an entity. I believe there is a path tool. If not, look at the func_plat code and the path_corner entities for it. You could frankenstein a monster/player that utilizes func_plat "technology".

bam! pathable cam via franken_plat_a_player

http://www.quaddicted.com/files/idgames2/quakec/misc/

Michael

[Cardinal]

Might be a cool thing to actually include the links brah.

[MadGypsy]

I make mistakes too man....you know what? My life isn't gonna gt fixed in one night and whether I start in the hours left tonight or start this Saturdayy and work throughout the weekend, it's still gonna take me weeks to get my web idea rolling. I will spend between now and friday night attempting to POC this for you. It will be my last contribution to QuakeOne before I have to start taking my life a little more serious. If I actually get this nutty crap working, the only stipulation is that you have to call it Gypsy Cam - even if you modify stuff.

Michael

PS - email me a model of a dot (8x. Make it bright red. [email protected] It's my spam account but I'll look for it. Put "model" or something in the subject line. I see that model and it will be like you agree to the gypsy cam thing and I will try to make this for you.

[Cardinal]

I'd really appreciate that.

I know that the movement aspect can be done by disabling the movement keys and use func_trains with a path_corner at every "stop", possibly using a vertical door to duck/stand up. As you said, could also use a chasecam to follow a monster around in the map along a predetermined path without the platforms. The main problem is the camera orientation, I need to be able to set/key what the player is looking at when moving, otherwise you'd only be looking at one direction for the entire game.

I'll try making that cube model when I get back home and send it over.

[R00k]

Those models look extremely familiar. Where'd you get them?

Why do all PSP projects begin with modeling?

That video of that game looks pretty weak. After each kill it goes into a cinematic camera angle then slides back into the pov of the player, seems like you would get "sea sick" pretty quick playing this.

The camera can be done using SVC_SETVIEWPORT.

to jump to a camera set the self.movetarget entity to the cameras entity

self.flags 	= self.flags - (self.flags & FL_ONGROUND);
self.movetype = MOVETYPE_FLY;
self.solid 	= SOLID_NOT;
self.view_ofs 	= '0 0 22';
msg_entity 	= self;
WriteByte (MSG_ONE, SVC_SETVIEWPORT);
WriteEntity (MSG_ONE, self.movetarget);
setmodel (self, string_null);

setorigin(self, self.movetarget.origin);
self.angles = self.movetarget.v_angle;
self.v_angle = self.movetarget.v_angle;
self.fixangle = TRUE;

self.nextthink 	= -1;
self.think 	= SUB_Null;

then in player post think update the position with

setorigin(self, self.movetarget.origin);
self.angles = self.movetarget.v_angle;
self.v_angle = self.movetarget.v_angle;
self.fixangle = TRUE;

[Cardinal]

I modeled, textured and animated them myself, all the original source files are right here on my harddrive. I post on different forums under different names, you might've seen earlier work on those.

Though I can't speak for all PSP projects, this particular one starts with modeling, because that's simply what I do best and enjoy the most. I know a little bit of coding and am in contact with several very knowledgeable people who could help out, but I'm not yet familiar enough with the Quake engine and its quirks to effectively do it myself.

I've been modding games for about 8 years now. I'm not some idea guy or scrub who thinks he has a cool idea without keeping engine/hardware limitations in mind when designing a game, and then takes it upon himself to lead an inexperienced team and drive them right off a cliff.

There is an extensive design document almost ready, I'm just here to garner interest for this thing for people who might be willing to help out at some point in time, and to ask around to see if this can be effectively pulled off in the first place. If the concept is good, and you show that you have the skillset and dedication to go through will it, people will come to you. If this project would die in this stage, I'll be pretty much the only one affected. I don't like wasting other people's time, this is the reason I haven't explicitly asked for coders to dedicate themselves to this.

/e Thanks for the tip btw, I'll try to get Hammer working with Quake (or switch over to WorldCraft) and will build a simple test map to check things out in the next couple of days.