EntityPlus - A single player Q3 mod

[Bliccer]

Oh my this is so ace... Only the health meter for enemies is missing, then we could build up a Diablo 3D xD (Or Commander Keen 8 =))

@add: Seeing Hipshot's keys in the screenshot thread: Would it be possible to add some key riddles? Or well, that some gold keys are not fitting the gold lock with the three-typed key bit but with the two one? (hopefully I described it enough...)

[Plan B]

Fucking sweet, thanks eraser.
Think I'm going to have some fun with this in the easter weekend.

[Eraser]

Ok, dying just got a lot more interesting.

When in single player gametype, when you die, you drop a "Backpack" item. This item holds all the weapons, ammo and holdables you had at the moment you died. You respawn again with the default weapon loadout, presumably at the start of the level (but mappers can do some smart things with progressive spawning). Now you'll have to run to the point where you died to pick up your backpack. Of course the level will be in the state like it was when you died, meaning any defeated enemies are still dead and previously unlocked doors are still unlocked. As a level designer, you have to take this into account though, that a player might pass through an area twice, once in fact barely armed at all, so set up your triggers wisely.

The previously mentioned "progressive spawning" is basically where you use multiple info_player_start or info_player_deathmatch (doesn't matter, they're identical entities) and use triggers and target_disable to disable/enable certain spawnpoints based on the player's progress. I'm looking into smoothing out such a system a bit more, but it's possible to have a player spawn at a certain point deeper into the level if he dies after that point.

One problem though, currently the backpack uses the blue CTF flag as a stand-in model. So I need someone that could create a cool looking backpack model. Anyone interested in doing this?

[DaEngineer]

Anyone interested in doing this?

I'll try. Practice is a good thing. But I guess when it comes to texturing Obsidian will overrun me. But that's okay, all of us had to learn all this stuff first

[Eraser]

Oh, just a general announcement: if anyone feels like making models, effects and shaders and all that comes with it for new weapons, I'll be glad to implement them. In fact, if anyone can create non-EULA breaking assets for any of the Team Arena weapons, I could include those by simply removing some #ifdef lines in the code

[Eraser]

Another change in regards to respawning. The info_player_deathmatch entity has received some additional functionality that might prove crucial in "checkpointing" a player through the map. What I mean with that is that players, when they die, don't have to replay the entire map to get back to where they were but respawn at a checkpoint of sorts.

Each info_player_deathmatch entity can now be enabled or disabled by pointing at it with a triggering entity. When the trigger is fired, the spawnpoint is toggled on or off. When it's off (disabled) no one can respawn there. I've also added a complementary spawnflag named DISABLED so you can make spawnpoints that start off as disabled.

The last change is (and this is only true for the single player gametype) that players are respawned at the nearest enabled spawn point instead of the furthest like vanilla Quake 3 does.


Also: ending the game?
One thing I've been thinking about is how to end a game. I mean, a single player map needs a proper end-game state, right? What ideas do you guys have for this? A very simple and quick solution would be to have an intermission camera set up with some text appearing in the screen (customizable by the map author) but there's probably more interesting ways to do this.

[DaEngineer]

I guess statistics are always a good thing. What about these:

• shots fired
• shots hit
• secrets found (there really needs to be a triggerable entity that counts secrets the player has found)
• enemies killed (like: X of Y or X/Y)
• time needed
• deaths

Also, a loading screen (jpg or tga files) before and after levels would be nice. You could skip the screen with the fire button. On these screens the player could be informed about the story, his objectives and so on.

Right, objectives. A SP Mod without objectives is a bit dull. The score board you usually use to look up who leads the game and who's the bottom feeder could be replaced by objectives. The possibility to cross out completed tasks and add new ones while the player progresses would be nice.

Another topic: damage done to the player. In SP games, the player is usually much stronger than the foes he has to fight. This is not yet the case. Can the damage done by enemies be scaled? Maybe depending on the difficulty level? Otherwise the levels had to be stuffed with health over and over, and that's not very singleplayer-esque.

I'm making progress with the backpack by the way. Maybe I'll upload a picture this evening.

[Eraser]

I guess statistics are always a good thing. What about these:

~snip~

Also, a loading screen (jpg or tga files) before and after levels would be nice. You could skip the screen with the fire button. On these screens the player could be informed about the story, his objectives and so on.

Right, objectives. A SP Mod without objectives is a bit dull. The score board you usually use to look up who leads the game and who's the bottom feeder could be replaced by objectives. The possibility to cross out completed tasks and add new ones while the player progresses would be nice.

Yeah, these are good ideas. I had already written up an issue on the Google Code project page for replacing the scoreboard with an objectives screen.

Another topic: damage done to the player. In SP games, the player is usually much stronger than the foes he has to fight. This is not yet the case. Can the damage done by enemies be scaled? Maybe depending on the difficulty level? Otherwise the levels had to be stuffed with health over and over, and that's not very singleplayer-esque.

You're on to something here. I hadn't thought about that yet. Very good point.

I'm making progress with the backpack by the way. Maybe I'll upload a picture this evening.

Great. Can't wait to see it

[DaEngineer]

It's backpack time. The dimensions are 32x24x27 which looks very natural in-game. I've made no UV map so far - where can I get copyright free textures from? Making them by myself is one solution, but I don't have my camera at hand until next wednesday.
The backpack has 870 triangles; that's quite a lot, but I can't reduce them even more. But that shouldn't be too much of a problem nowadays.

[ShadoW_86]

Holy cow, it's starts to be really amazing . Can't wait to get new release into my hands, with bots spawn control, and "checkpoints" we can make sp map and missions now! Wow, after all those years it seems like we will have at last Quake III sp mod.

[obsidian]

Looks good. Let me know if you need help reducing tris and with the texturing (I can take a picture of my genuine WWII bag).

[EmeraldTiger]

Oh, just a general announcement: if anyone feels like making models, effects and shaders and all that comes with it for new weapons, I'll be glad to implement them. In fact, if anyone can create non-EULA breaking assets for any of the Team Arena weapons, I could include those by simply removing some #ifdef lines in the code

iirc OpenArena`s game assets are under the GPL license, you could ask them if you could use their TA weapon models. Up to you though, thought it would save some time though.

[DaEngineer]

Looks good. Let me know if you need help reducing tris and with the texturing (I can take a picture of my genuine WWII bag).

I just took a look at the model again. I think I can chop off some tris I didn't notice before. After that you can of course try to reduce them even more. Pictures of this bag of yours are highly appreciated! And some uv mapping help maybe too... I have to get used to this first.

[Silicone_Milk]

You could probably get rid of the strap geometry on the front of the pack and just draw that in to the diffuse.

[DaEngineer]

You could probably get rid of the strap geometry on the front of the pack and just draw that in to the diffuse.

Would be a solution if I create a LOD for this model. Eraser, if you already want to try out the model, grab it here. It has no real texture yet so I baked rendered ambient occlusion shadows into it until I can texture it.

But there's a strange effect I get on this model (I replaced the MG ammo with it to see it in-game). When you're very close to it, everything looks just fine. Walk some steps back, and a grey line appears where I've mirrored the model. There are no overlapping vertices or gaps. What's causing this? This grey seam appears also if I use the backpack as a static model, and it's independent of AA or AF.

Left: Seams, Right: No seams

[obsidian]

Did you actually weld the coplanar vertexes where you mirrored it? Are the UV's split right down the middle too?


BTW, what modeling program are you using? Wondering for compatibility reasons because importing certain formats between programs is usually a pain in the ass.

[spookmineer]

Did you actually weld the coplanar vertexes where you mirrored it?

This would be a cool line in a movie starring Nicholas Cage, maybe a sequel to "The apprentice".

I'm sorry, it just sounds so cool. Not knowing wtf you're talking about adds to the mystery.
If they add it to a script I doubt someone will notice, it comes right out of an ancient dark spell book, right...?

[Eraser]

Did you actually weld the coplanar vertexes where you mirrored it?

This would be a cool line in a movie starring Nicholas Cage, maybe a sequel to "The apprentice".

I'm sorry, it just sounds so cool. Not knowing wtf you're talking about adds to the mystery.
If they add it to a script I doubt someone will notice, it comes right out of an ancient dark spell book, right...?

I was thinking something along the same lines for a moment there when I read it

Oh DaEngineer, looking good btw

[Eraser]

This is a screenshot of work in progress with placeholder 2D assets for the scoreboard replacement.

[DaEngineer]

Did you actually weld the coplanar vertexes where you mirrored it? Are the UV's split right down the middle too?

I have, and they are. I found the reason for this glitch. It has nothing to do with the model itself, everything alright there. But the UV map is very blurry where the seam is and as the amount of details reduces when the player steps back, the empty areas of the texture leak into the colored ones. So just ignore this seam until there's a real uv map, it will be gone then.

BTW, what modeling program are you using? Wondering for compatibility reasons because importing certain formats between programs is usually a pain in the ass.

Blender 2.49. It's free and thus costs 3495 bucks less than 3ds max - my wallet instantly klicked the Like button. It's not that I didn't try out 3ds max yet. I did several times. But I like the layout of Blender way more (I find things!). 3ds max gave me the feeling the tool actually wanted the user to scroll down lists for 20secs before a certain standard feature shows up.

@ Eraser: that's a start! How do you plan to make the objectives window work when it's done? Will the text have to be typed in to an entity?

[Eraser]

Yeah there's a target_objective entity that can be triggered to set the primary or secondary objective for the player. At least, it does that server side, still have to figure out how to actually communicate that to the client to be displayed.

The objective text shown in the screenshot is hardcoded client-side

[Hipshot]

Obsidian, I take that I would need to export to md3 instead of ase for my items? I've been searching hi and low for one that works for max 2009. You know of any?

Those I've found, that should work for 2009, doesn't seem to work, gives me errors when I start the application. I also have an older max 8, but when I export md3 from that one, it gives me errors like the model needs a specific bounding box?

Edit: Solved it for Max 8. But it's really annoying having to export from max 2009 to max 8...

[obsidian]

DaEngineer: I like Blender and exports to virtually everything. I've used Max for some time before there even was a Blender, so I'm simply more used to it. I've toyed around with Blender a bit. I also really like Modo's interface but the learning curve between these programs is always fairly involved so it's hard switching.


Hipshot: Do it the way id Software did it, it's a simple conversion:

http://robotrenegade.com/articles/conve ... 3data.html

[Eraser]

Would be a solution if I create a LOD for this model. Eraser, if you already want to try out the model, grab it here. It has no real texture yet so I baked rendered ambient occlusion shadows into it until I can texture it.

I picked it up. Just a small request: could you put the model and the skin in the "models/powerups/backpack" folder and have the model refer to the texture in that location? It's more consistent with where the other models are.

[obsidian]

I've started a bit of preliminary work on the backpack texture. You'll have to tweak it to make it work with your UV's.

It's a Photoshop file with different layers, a base canvas texture, a strap, buckle, and some seams. You can use the bits as a base and modify as necessary to fit the model.

http://robotrenegade.com/temp/entityplu ... ck-psd.zip

Or if you would rather have me paint the texture, send the model to me as a .obj or .3ds file.