Posts by sock

sock · Q1 - In the Shadows sock December 9, 2012 at 9:41 PM

Finally after months of testing, tweaking and huge amounts of coding, drawing and level design I present version 1 of my MOD 'In the Shadows' which features three maps, two game play modes (vanilla/stealth) and a readme file packed full of hints to help ease your way into the MOD.

For people not familiar with the state of Quake 1 nowadays, there are several engine replacements that extend the original format so that more can be done. This MOD relies on the new engines to work with the old Quake 1 assets. You will need a full version of Quake 1 to get this working, so check out steam for a cheap copy. Then download the custom engine (links below) and setup a shortcut using the extra parameters I have specified in the readme file. Once that is done (I know, a bit complex and long winded) you can play the MOD and enjoy the new gameplay modes and have a good old fun journey down memory lane.

Things to note, this is old tech, monsters have square bounding boxes and simple graphics, when playing stealth be aware that hit detection will not be precise and try to learn what size monsters really are. If you are curious to see this in action, drop down the console and type 'r_showbboxes 1' and it will draw they hit detecton bounding box. This will be more apparent in stealth mode because you are trying to avoid waking up the AI and need to distract them with objects around them.

The MOD features, new maps, mapmodels, monsters, animations, texures, sounds, sprites and crazy amount of new code (quake scripting about 3-4K new lines) to create the new game mode, stealth. The maps all support new AI features and they are not the usual quake style, they will hunt you down and play more like DM style bots.

Please take the time to record some demo's with Fitz because this will be the perfect way for me to understand how you played the maps. If there any problems or things you think should be different, please let me know.

Download v1.1 Link (16.6mb)

Web Page v1.1 Readme Moddb

Recommended Engines:

Fitz0.85 Mark V

Game play video's on my youtube channel

External Content www.youtube.com

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Screenshots (1024x768)

[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/sp/its_demo_v1a.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/sp/its_demo_v1b.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/sp/its_demo_v1c.jpg]

sock · MOD - In the Shadows sock December 7, 2012 at 9:16 PM

I want to ask a favour...

ModDb are running their 'Mod of the Year' competition and I want to get my Quake MOD through to the top 100 and I need your help.

Please take some time to go over to the 'In the Shadows' mod page - http://www.moddb.com/mods/its and vote! sign up, tell your friends and lets get a Quake MOD into the top 100!

About me : I have been lurking here for sometime and creating stuff for years, check my website if you want more infomation on what stuff I have done over the years. (http://www.simonoc.com/)

The Project : Has been active for the last 6 months and getting very close to a public beta (fingers crossed should be before xmas) The primary focus has been gameplay mechanics with lots of 'under the hood' changes to AI and a new game play mode 'stealth'. Being an old engine (quake) the graphics are certainly not modern day standard but the gameplay is still fun and I would say the graphics fall under the heading of retro.

More Info : Currently there are two video's showing some gameplay elements and plenty of screenshots to show off the direction of the level design (new maps and updated graphics) I have included links below if you want to see what the MOD is about.

Video 1 - Steath Combat

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Video 2 - Stealth Mechanics

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Latest Screenshots : http://www.moddb.com/mods/its/images

A screenshot from the latest map

[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/sp/its015l.jpg]

Thanks

SimonOC

sock · The Edge of Forever (Q3) sock April 13, 2012 at 6:05 PM

Thanks everyone for the replies and interest in the article and project. Sadly that youtube playthrough is very dark (I was living in a cave when I recorded it) the map is a lot better in game. It was certainly was a cool experiment and the article is really the final piece of the project. If anyone has some questions about the project, let me know here.

sock · The Edge of Forever (Q3) sock April 7, 2012 at 7:43 AM

[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/articles/puzzlelogic1a.jpg]

I have always wondered about the idea of 3D scripting with the logic functions being defined as 3D shapes. A couple of years ago I started experimenting with a small set of entities to see what stuff I could create and the initial tests were a lot of fun.

Eventually the test maps turned into a huge single player puzzle map called Edge of Forever which consequently took forever to finish. Afterwards I was going to write an article about the puzzles in the map and then I realized, no one would be interested, the project was a crazy idea to start with!

After two years of avoiding the idea I recently found the time and energy to finish writing the article on puzzle logic I promised. Funny enough it turned out exactly how I imagined it would ... barking crazy!

http://www.simonoc.com/pages/articles/puzzlelogic1.htm

A big thank you to PJW for helping me with the proof reading of the document

sock · WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots! sock March 29, 2012 at 5:45 PM

Quote from generalvivi

Cheers guys, I had a lot of fun doing this. I can't wait to show you other small projects I've been working on.

It is not often I see modern day level design (block-outs and scripting) on forums and explained in detail as well. It certainly would make for a cool Level Design competition instead of the usual visual environment contests that I see on so many forums.

sock · WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots! sock March 27, 2012 at 9:17 PM

Quote from generalvivi

Hey guys, Just a bit of fun, I was sick on a Sunday and was playing Rage. I decided to script one of their mini games in UDK. It was a fun exercise!

Wow that is very cool, I especially like how you showed the kismet stuff. It is always cool to see the actual nuts of bolts.

sock · WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots! sock March 21, 2012 at 4:51 PM

Quote from seir

I wonder how much brushwork is here and how much models did you used...?

The map has 5500 Brushes, 390 models and 150 lights. Most stuff is models because of rotation and scale issues with Q3 and the editor. The crane map has no optimization, so the rspeeds are crazy (100K+). Lots of stuff could be turned into alpha textures and tons of models could be reduced in detail to make it playable, but the exercise was to see what the textures looked like with a map pushing Q3 to the limits.

Here is some links to showtris screens (massive images 2Mb+)

rspeed counters in the corner if you are curious.

http://%7Boption%7D[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/concept/indust_f01wd_wire.jpg]

http://%7Boption%7D[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/concept/indust_f02wd_wire.jpg]

sock · WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots! sock March 18, 2012 at 6:04 PM

Campaignjunkie, the scissor lift was originally made from patches and then converted to a misc model and rotated/scaled into place.

Algor, I wondered if anyone would notice the nuts! I slightly rotated all of them by 5-15 degrees because it looked odd when they were straight. The different image sizes is for people that want to view the images on iphone/ipad devices that don't have huge bandwidth. Most pc users should choose the large images for the wide screen format.

sock · WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots! sock March 16, 2012 at 9:36 PM

[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/…ndust_f03hd.jpg]

Finally had the chance over the weekend to finish off my environmental concept map - The Bridge Crane. If you want to see more screenshots (small/med/large formats) or fancy reading a bit waffle about how it was made, then check out the link below to my website. If you have any feedback, let me know.

http://%7boption%7d

sock · WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots! sock March 9, 2012 at 7:27 PM

Quote from _gb

When you make something like this, what is your general process? Do you start with concept art?

I started with some photo's of a Russian Aluminum Processing Plant and loved the epic scale of the place. I like to call it communist scale, where everything is so crazy super sized that it could probably do more than it was designed for. I wanted to create a large space and I needed something to tie it all together. Personally I believe that all levels should have a strong focal point, a way to describe the area in a couple of words what it is visually. If you cannot describe the area to someone else in a small sentence and they cannot visualize what it is, then you might as well be creating a bland corridor with pipes.

The selling point of this space was to be a bridge crane. It was going to be a strong connection from left to right on the screen and look like it could lift a building. I saw a documentary about CERN and how they used a bridge crane to transport parts of the large hadron collider down a mine shaft and that is what I imagined this space would be for. I even thought that it would be cool as a set piece for a player to use the crane as a means of travel from one side of the room to the other with various small combat/things to do around it. I imagined the crane as a simple environmental puzzle to give the player a chance to take in the epic scale of the place while doing something interactive and changing the environment.

I looked at various photo's of bridge cranes and eventually mashed all of them together in my head and produced a rough brush concept. Then I built the rest of the room around it and started adding flavour and life to the rest of the space. One thing I did overlook is that large spaces need large amounts of detail and that was something I under estimated badly.

For me this is like a concept, a drawing, except I created it out of 3D lines and textures instead of painting it on a flat canvas.

sock · WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots! sock March 9, 2012 at 5:15 PM

@zombie, yeah I have been struggling trying to get the upper area to feel brighter, the sky light is very dull and overcast. I will try out the dust/god ray idea from the skylight and see how it looks. I do produce the screenshots in widescreen, I just re-size them because I assumed most people would want a 4:3 aspect. When I am finished I will produce wide screen versions especially for you!

cincinnati, the mine shaft is not too deep at the moment, still lacking any detail. Need to fix that.

knj, yeah I have been searching for good mine shaft detail, this is a modern day industrial vibe so no wood beam stuff. I might just do the usual thing and loads of pipes and metal 'I beams'. If you have any ideas of detail for the lower area I would be interested.

_gb, The handrails are certainly not modern day round curvy things, I was going for a Russian industrial vibe like this : http://%7Boption%7D[Blocked Image: http://russos.ru/img/trip/2010-kazahstan/ind-wp-25.jpg]. I need to fix the mine shaft detail, very bland for sure.

insta, this is just a scene, my venture into environmental art! I picked an industrial scene because a friend of mine asked for some metal textures and also it seems more people love industrial stuff nowadays.

@seir, yeah, I am still working with the clunky Lego brick engine!

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far, I will add the final stuff and call it finished then.

sock · WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots! sock March 8, 2012 at 4:57 PM

I am getting close to finishing this scene (industrial crane above a large mine shaft) and I was wondering if anyone has any feedback for this? Too bright? Too dark? detail wrong? detail missing? anything you don't like about it? Nitpicks etc?

[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/indust9a.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/indust9b.jpg]

sock · WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots! sock February 4, 2012 at 3:01 AM

Quote from seir

Q3? No way... I like the architecture! Floor color is way different than others but I think it's not an issue, it will be good for guiding player I guess.

Yeah, it is the Q3 engine but with some new textures I created from my summer holiday. I know it is not crazy normal map popping stuff but I still like playing with simple toys ...Based on feedback I got from various forums I have re-created the lighting (it was bad), added a detail pass (dirt,dust and cobwebs, but not crazy industrial mine complex) and fixed a couple of texture issues on prefabs. A new angle to look at ...

[Blocked Image: http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/potguard4b.jpg]