Quake3World

*bumping the thread with a new idea you'll might shake your heads over*
In the last time I played Bulletstorm and Borderlands quite a lot. Then I had one of these nostalgic moments and fired up Call of Duty 1. I loaded the last savegame and was right behind a knee-high wall, two foot soldiers and an MG shooting at me. I switched from crouching to standing, was hit, tried to hit the MG myself, failed, switched to crouching, waited for some seconds and tried it again. And I waited for my health to refill. Until I noticed that small bar that had to be green but had changed to dark yellow in the meantime. Right! There was an era of health pickups. Seems I'd forgot that.

After picking off some more enemies (and enyoing the fact that I can understand what both parties yell - being German is really useful sometimes) I found this old energy system slowed down the game quite a lot. There's not so much freedom to try out things. It's always the same F5-try-fail-F9 procedure. If you play a game with energy regeneration on hard difficulties, there's still enough room to fail, but if you don't die, you look for cover, think about why your way of handling the situation was stupid and try it another way.

I know that the entire Quake series uses the old health system. And it's not that I didn't like it when I played the games. But I've come quite used to the health regeneration systems new games have and thought about how it would fit a Quake 3 single player campaign. If this campaign will really exist some day - and I want to contribute at least one level to it, that's for sure - health regeneration could, in my eyes, open the gates for big fights with many foes instead of the old "jeez, these five guys were really mean - where can I get some health now?" question.

What do you think about it? Yes? No? Try it out? Make it optional and let the mapping guys put health pickups everywhere in their maps but add an option to the menu to let the player decide if he wants to use them or let them disappear and use regeneration instead? Or ban my acount for this ignominious thought of adding health regeneration to a Quake game?

Wow! THAT was a bit manic! I've, actually seen this question come up before. My own opinion, is to not mess with the health regen at all. I'm with the whole "yer gonna get better" at the game this way. There's still one or two games I never finished because I cannot get past a point without dying. Just my two bits, yah?

Peenyuh wrote:I'm with the whole "yer gonna get better" at the game this way.

agree, unless you made it like a global command, set damageregen 1 in worldspawn or something so the mapper can choose...

I personally hate the health regen system. There's no sense of danger with it. You don't actually have to think about the cons of jumping in to a fight or choosing to avoid it. All you have to do is hide behind a cardboard box for a couple seconds and jump back in.

Health pickups actually require you to manage your health and assess the situation instead of just blindly running in rambo style and spraying bullets at enemies while you take shells from tanks, lasers from alien spaceships, and get your face charred from several flamethrowers (but its cool, just hide behind some drying laundry, you'll heal in no time)

Silicone_Milk wrote:I personally hate the health regen system.

I don't know why this health system got as popular as it did. The only time I've found it really passable was in Portal. Beyond that, even the way Prey handled life/afterlife seemed kinda silly, and had the same effect on any combat related judgement as you mentioned.

It could be an option where players can choose. A key in the preferences of health packs an the player can choose what kinda experience of play he would like.

Perle wrote:It could be an option where players can choose. A key in the preferences of health packs an the player can choose what kinda experience of play he would like.

Another point I disagree with - giving the player a wide range of choices on how he'd like to experience a game.

A game designer's job is to design the game to provide a specific experience. Leaving it up to the player is lazy and irresponsible. You really shoot yourself in the foot when you try to play it safe and please everybody by giving them a choice of several mediocre directions rather than sticking to one and providing a single mind-blowing ass-kicking experience.

Might as well be like "well, lets let them choose if they want to play this game as a side-scrolling platformer or an FPS."

Developers need to have the balls to settle on a direction and to cut out options (even if they're great ones) that don't quite fit well with the experience they want delivered to the player imo.

Okay. Touchdown for you. :-)

Silicone_Milk wrote:I personally hate the health regen system. There's no sense of danger with it. You don't actually have to think about the cons of jumping in to a fight or choosing to avoid it. All you have to do is hide behind a cardboard box for a couple seconds and jump back in.

THIS.

that is why i said make it a worldspawn key in gtk. the designer can define the game health system.

Really good arguments. The missing feeling of danger mentioned by Silicone_Milk is why I thought "IF the mod will have the system available, everything else than the hardest difficulty is beyond question for me". Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of player who wants to win all of the time, that's boring and equals playing in God mode. I agree that health regeneration in general is too fast in modern games.
But since I posted the question, I thought about it again, read all of your statements and think, you're right about this. Especially this

Silicone_Milk wrote:A game designer's job is to design the game to provide a specific experience. Leaving it up to the player is lazy and irresponsible

is something that, I have to admit, I didn't think about. Serious Sam is the living example of a shooter with too many enemies to get a foot on the ground and the old health system at the same time. And it works.

---

Another thing came to my mind, concerning health. From time to time, you'll encounter passages in games where you have to try not to fall down abysses and work your way from the top to the bottom of a pit. It's impossible to make such a level with the current health system, as dropping down from a high position will always just deal 10 damage to the player. Nobody would take the long way down if he can jump down the entire 400m pit without dying. Is this something that should be changed or does the player benefit from it in your eyes?

Regenerative health doesn't work in Q3 (or entityplus for that matter). It doesn't work with the style of gameplay Quake games offer, both SP and MP. Oh, and taking on 12 cannonfodder bots at once is fun. Trust me, I know, and soon you will too ;-)

As for falling dmg, have to look into that. In the meantime, there's always trigger_hurt for preventing shortcuts into abysses.

Eraser wrote:As for falling dmg, have to look into that. In the meantime, there's always trigger_hurt for preventing shortcuts into abysses.

mod=MOD_FALLING in G_Damage() in game/g_combat.c. Up the damage to something ridiculously high and those pesky players will soon learn to stop jumping off things.

Maybe this is a bit an utopian idea about the regen system: Only the first difficulty level has health regen but as many enemies as the second. The second difficulty lvl has no health regen but as many enemies as the first. And in the third you don't have health regen, more enemies and even no crosshair.
Maybe the player is willing to learn in the first two difficulty lvls how to deal with the different situtations and the geometry of the level and using it in the third. Also a possibility is to add awards for each difficulty... For me the 100% are a must in a game I like. Hm...

The no crosshair (I know many here don't like the game): In CoD6 there is a mission in the single player campaign in which a EMP bomb detonates. Therefore you can't use the laser pointer on your gun anymore and need to get across the rest of the mission without cross and laser. It still works extremely well, because you learned how to deal with the weapons and the center of the screen in the missions before...

My 2 cents.

Don't alter the fall damage too much, remember that you still might wanna rocket jump (miss) and also when you land from JPs, etc.

Uh, I don't think it's a vise idea to alter the health system. It's still Quake - and today it could be considered a strong feature to have health pickups.

Yup, I'm not too fond about altering the health system either. As for falling damage, maybe it should scale differently or get rid of the 10 health cap. Wouldn't want to get 50 damage for jumping off a doorstop.

Maybe the cap could be extended to 50 or 75 instead of 10, that way you will feel the damage more when you fall longer.

If one really want to restrict the player, lava or whatever should be used.

here's a patch to get you started with AI waypoints: https://code.google.com/p/entityplus/is ... tail?id=53

Just uploaded vesrsion 0.5.1 of the mod to Google Code. I actually uploaded 0.5 yesterday but noticed there was a problem with some missing assets, but before I could fix it some people had already downloaded, so the 0.5.1 is the one you need.

Here's the list of changes since 0.4:

• [Added] health key to target_botspawn in entities.def.
• [Added] entities.def mentioning a wait key of -2 for func_button.
• [Added] message key to trigger_lock.
• [Added] target_objective displays "objectives updated" message in screen when triggered.
• [Added] count key and DARK_DEBRIS spawnflag to func_breakable so it can spew out debris without a target_debrisemitter
• [Added] New ep_example map which replaces the old entityplus map.
• [Added] EntityPlus manual for level designers
• [Fixed] target_print does not display any text in single player
• [Fixed] entities.def entry for shooter_bfg refers to shooting grenades.
• [Fixed] Game crashes when bots receive damage from world hazards (lava/slime/cratering/etc).
• [Fixed] light/color keys on func_ entities for proper use of constantLight
• [Changed] Suicide no longer subtracts a kill in single player mode.
• [Changed] Score plums are no longer shown in single player mode.
• [Changed] Items no longer respawn in single player mode unless a specific value for the 'wait' key was specified.
• [Changed] Shaders and icons for skeleton keys have been updated
• [Changed] Awards (humiliation/impressive/excellent) are no longer rewarded in single player mode for improved game immersion.
• [Changed] Improved description of target_logic in entities.def

It's basically some fixes and tweaks. No real big new features.

However, there's two interesting things. First, there's a manual. I quickly whipped up a document that describes all of the new features and things you need to know to start creating levels for EntityPlus. It's a PDF located in the "docs" folder.

The second is the new example map. It's a redesigned version of an old classic that you'll instantly recognize. I've reworked it into a single player experience. It features enemies, lock and key, breakable walls, objectives, relatively complex trigger systems, alarms, lighting effects and an end-game cinematic. Double click the "entityplus.bat" file that comes with the package and enjoy

https://code.google.com/p/entityplus/downloads/list

cyr wrote:here's a patch to get you started with AI waypoints: https://code.google.com/p/entityplus/is ... tail?id=53

That's awesome man. Thanks a lot, I'll take a peek at it soon.

Wow! Nice job on redesigning q3dm7. I must admit it was somewhat more challenging than most official Quake 2 maps I`ve played - not as much health or armor to keep you stocked, and the lack of ammo which means you have to be really careful to make your shots count. It was quite fascinating.

I`m thinking of making a Q2/Q4-based mission with your mod, where the player has to fight off Strogg. Only problem is the lack of any real Strogg-esque models in Q3, though Visor / Gorre / TankJr should do the job, and maybe a reskinned Bitterman to recreate the Tactical Transfers from Q4. I`m truly grateful that someone has produced a genuine single player experience for this great game, thank you so much Eraser! I need to convince the guys over at QuArK to add some support for your mod.

EDIT: Just figured, it would be nice to have a monster be able to use two weapons rather than just one.

You can spawn an enemy with multiple weapons but it's up to the bot AI to pick whichever he wants to use and I think the AI is pretty straightforward in that it just picks the weapon the bot prefers and sticks to that.

I've really come to the point where some bot AI tweaks are really needed, so I'm really grateful for the patch cyr posted.

As for the difficulty... I've been constantly testing with skill level 2 (g_spskill 2) and it's indeed still quite tough. It's really hard to strike a balance on that difficulty curve.

That's what I call a milestone. Thanks a lot for all the time and effort you put into this! The example map was fun to play, although I had to set the skill level down to 1. I think the damage could still be scaled down a bit, because the damage done to the player on skill level 1 feels almost fair, but the bots are by far too stupid on this difficulty to be fun. On the second difficulty, they behave alreay like I would SP bots expect to behave, but the damage they do is a too high for my taste.
But I'll test that out in some testing areas I'll prepare for myself and give you more detailed feedback later.


The PDF looks really nice. But there's one thing I would change in the install instructions in the readme. You wrote

You can either overwrite the existing entities.def or configure GtkRadiant 1.4 or ZeroRadiant 1.6 to use the entityplus folder as working folder

I never used a mod folder for mapping and thus had to find out what to do now. After uninstalling Radiant multiple times (errors, crashes and so on - things that happen when you do something very wrong) I figured out I only had to go to Project Settings, leave the basepath as it was (that was the mistake - I changed it to Quake 3\EntityPlus) and choose Custom Quake III Modification in the Select Mod field. Then, the only thing one has to do, is to type "EntityPlus" in the fs_game field. I think that is a mistake other people can do too, so you could add this information to the readme.


When I took a look at the map you made, I couldn't figure out how you trigger the lava drain when Klesk is dead. How did you do that?

//EDIT: Forget about that. Found it it was done by the trigger_death with the count set to 23.

//EDIT: Is there already a possibility to let bots drop (multiple) items on their death? Or trigger things when they die another way than with a trigger_death (to make things only happen when a certain bot dies, and not when a total amount of enemies is killed)? Could this be implemented by adding a key (for example "ondeath") and a value (targetname of the target_botspawn) in the trigger_death?


This evening I'll upload new models for wooden debris and modified old ones for stone (they'll be more angled and not as smooth as before - and have fewer polys).

DaEngineer wrote:That's what I call a milestone. Thanks a lot for all the time and effort you put into this! The example map was fun to play, although I had to set the skill level down to 1. I think the damage could still be scaled down a bit, because the damage done to the player on skill level 1 feels almost fair, but the bots are by far too stupid on this difficulty to be fun. On the second difficulty, they behave alreay like I would SP bots expect to behave, but the damage they do is a too high for my taste.
But I'll test that out in some testing areas I'll prepare for myself and give you more detailed feedback later.

Yeah the difficulty balancing is really... erm... difficult. I was continually testing at skill level 2 but I designed the level so I knew what was coming, which makes quite a difference because I could anticipate everything. I think it is indeed a good idea to scale down the damage even further.

DaEngineer wrote: The PDF looks really nice. But there's one thing I would change in the install instructions in the readme. You wrote

You can either overwrite the existing entities.def or configure GtkRadiant 1.4 or ZeroRadiant 1.6 to use the entityplus folder as working folder

I never used a mod folder for mapping and thus had to find out what to do now. After uninstalling Radiant multiple times (errors, crashes and so on - things that happen when you do something very wrong) I figured out I only had to go to Project Settings, leave the basepath as it was (that was the mistake - I changed it to Quake 3\EntityPlus) and choose Custom Quake III Modification in the Select Mod field. Then, the only thing one has to do, is to type "EntityPlus" in the fs_game field. I think that is a mistake other people can do too, so you could add this information to the readme.

Sure, I'll elaborate a bit further on that in the readme.

DaEngineer wrote: When I took a look at the map you made, I couldn't figure out how you trigger the lava drain when Klesk is dead. How did you do that?

//EDIT: Forget about that. Found it it was done by the trigger_death with the count set to 23.

//EDIT: Is there already a possibility to let bots drop (multiple) items on their death? Or trigger things when they die another way than with a trigger_death (to make things only happen when a certain bot dies, and not when a total amount of enemies is killed)? Could this be implemented by adding a key (for example "ondeath") and a value (targetname of the target_botspawn) in the trigger_death?

I was thinking of similar functionality as well. In my example map, if you decide to rush past a bot without killing it, you'll never be able to finish the map because of those trigger_death entities. I'll probably add additional functionality to the target_botspawn so you can trigger an entity when a bot that has been spawned by that botspawn dies and/or have the bot drop a specific item.

DaEngineer wrote: This evening I'll upload new models for wooden debris and modified old ones for stone (they'll be more angled and not as smooth as before - and have fewer polys).

Cool

Here are the new models *click me*

I've reduced the poly count of almost all old concrete debris models (some of them were already low-poly enough), added five wooden debris models (they don't have the dark edges you can see on the picture - that's caused by the lighting) and another three bright and dark big debris models; just in case you want to hunt down some bunker walls.



The texture I used for the wooden debris is a picture of a plank taken by me. So there are no copyright problems with it.