Quake project: Dead.
Well, here I am. Again.
After getting to a mostly playable state, I found that my game just wasn't all that different or fun. I blame a lack of vision, and too much focus on Quakey details like fucking around with Blender to get models in, fucking around with Worldcraft, and AI wankery. My original plan of having a running-away focused game ala Penumbra got muddied somewhere along the way, and instead I came out with a very run-of-the-mill shooter with baddies that can climb walls and stuff. Correction, an extremely fugly run-of-the-mill shooter with baddies that can climb walls and stuff.
When it became clear that I really needed to refocus on a new gameplay point, and shift the game into a more doable direction artistically, once again Blender stood in my way and kicked me in the balls.
I can't express my hate for Blender quite enough. I explored changing model formats from Quake's native and throughly awful and archaic mdls to something more like Half-Life's skeletal animation driven mdls. This requires exporting into an .smd format from Blender. My pain started here.
After much searching I found a user-made smd exporter for Blender. My only problem? It didn't work for my version of Blender. "Easy solution!" I thought, "I'll just upgrade to the newer, and therefore better version of Blender!"... WRONG! The newest version of Blender completely changes the bloody interface into something new and remarkably unintuitive, rendering most of what I learned about getting around old Blender's remarkably unintuitive interface completely moot. Still, I fought on.
I then struggled with the fan made smd exporter, which struggled back at me even more. Still, I fought through the pain for several hours and exported a nice little test model.
The next part? Getting the thing into the game. Now, the format is fully supported, keep that in mind. Anywho, hours of googling and looking for a way to get my new format into the game reveal... Nothing. It appears that nobody has any light to shed on the matter. It has been done before, so I know that it is at least theoretically possible, but I sure as hell can't figure it out. Not that I gave all that much effort into trying. The Blender-to-dpm pipeline sucks shit, I have to run my model through two different exporters to get my dpm, so by then I have no idea where the problem lies.
Bottom line, I'm done. I'm pretty sure that if I bashed my head against the wall a bit more I really could figure it out and get it in game, but I'm just not up for it anymore. I'm tuckered out, and when the fun little project that I could add little bits onto here and there turned into a monster of a project that required serious effort to tackle, I knew it was time to call it quits.
I've learned a lot, but now it is about time to shoot this baby in the crib.
*bang*
Showing posts with label unnamed quake game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unnamed quake game. Show all posts
Friday, November 26, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
UPDATE: Changes are a-comin'.
Yeah, yeah. It has been awhile and all that. I won't bother throwing any excuses your way, I've mostly just been lazy. I've also been incredibly busy with school, sick, and working on a new SDL game that I haven't told you about.
So I guess I will bother throwing excuses your way. Whatevs.
Work on the Quake game has been nonexistant. There is a reason for this: I'm so bored with it! One of the little truths you discovier about game development is that the hardest part (and there are plenty of hard parts) is the very end, when all major development is done.
All of the major coding is done, the asset work is all done, and the map is finished. What remains is testing and tweaking, and MAN is it a drag. This last stage of development consists of tweaking some little value in the code or piece of the map, and then testing it out. Rinse and repeat a billion times. The only challenge is to your patience, and I guess lately I've been losing that battle.
That said, I really do want to get this game out and soon. With that in mind, I'm instituting something called "Quake Thursdays" around here.
Yes, every Thursday is now "Quake Thursday". I promise to work on the Quake game for at least a couple hours, at the end of which I'll post a bunch of screenshots here on the blog to show you what I'm doing. Hopefully this will see the game to a fairly quick release.
In other news, as I stated earlier I have started work on a new SDL game. I'll give more details soon, but for now I can say that it will be a little game that should be quick and easy to produce (coding wise, the assets are scaring me a bit), and will hopefully pretty fun. I'm toying with the idea of actually selling this one, so I'm pretty excited about it.
Hmm, what else? A gaming news site called Ultima Aiera has made its way into my list of daily must-visit sites. Specifically, it has news about the Ultima series of games and about the creators who had a hand in bringing the games to life.
'How much news could there be about a series that has been dead for a decade?', I hear you ask. Well as it turns out, a pretty good amount of news can be generated about a series that has been dead for a decade. Dick. There are tons of remakes and updates to the series to be reported on, as well as hopeful (though ultimately futile) rumors of the series being continued or restarted again. But more important and interesting are the articles that showcase the old design documents and artwork from the venerable games. It makes for some good game design reading, if you are into that sort of thing.
Other cool things: In Por Ylem 2 has gone into beta, marking yet another experiment with unrestricted PVP in an MMO environment. These experiments always prove interesting. You get to see just how much crap regular players, who make up the bulk of the playerbase, can take from unabashed a-hole players, who exist for no other reason than to ruin the game experience of those regular players, before the regular players give up and leave. Once the normal players leave, the a-holes, having nobody else to torment other than eachother, themselves leave and the game collapses.
We've seen this countless times (the original UO, the original In Por Ylem, Shadowbane, Darkfall) before. Yet there is always some designer who wants to try the experiment again, I guess thinking that this time it will be different. Who can blame him? On paper the concept of near-completely unrestricted PVP is brilliant. Sadly, it just never works, mostly because there are too many players who will take advantage of the loose ruleset and use it to ruin the game for the other players.
Anywho, I don't want to get into that. So many other, better and more experienced than me, designers have gone into it before.
All I want to say is that Azaroth is taking another crack at In Por Ylem. He has brought some interesting design decisions with him, and hopefully some lessons learned from the original In Por Ylem. If anybody can get open pvp right, it's Azaroth with IPY2.
Oh, and I beat Ultima 8: Pagan. I've been playing this thing for over 15 years! Everybody will tell you about much much crap Ultima 8 was, and it does have its annoyances and plot holes. Still, it was always be my favorite (and first) Ultima, and one of the games that originally made me want to make games myself. Cheers, Pagan.
So I guess I will bother throwing excuses your way. Whatevs.
Work on the Quake game has been nonexistant. There is a reason for this: I'm so bored with it! One of the little truths you discovier about game development is that the hardest part (and there are plenty of hard parts) is the very end, when all major development is done.
All of the major coding is done, the asset work is all done, and the map is finished. What remains is testing and tweaking, and MAN is it a drag. This last stage of development consists of tweaking some little value in the code or piece of the map, and then testing it out. Rinse and repeat a billion times. The only challenge is to your patience, and I guess lately I've been losing that battle.
That said, I really do want to get this game out and soon. With that in mind, I'm instituting something called "Quake Thursdays" around here.
Yes, every Thursday is now "Quake Thursday". I promise to work on the Quake game for at least a couple hours, at the end of which I'll post a bunch of screenshots here on the blog to show you what I'm doing. Hopefully this will see the game to a fairly quick release.
In other news, as I stated earlier I have started work on a new SDL game. I'll give more details soon, but for now I can say that it will be a little game that should be quick and easy to produce (coding wise, the assets are scaring me a bit), and will hopefully pretty fun. I'm toying with the idea of actually selling this one, so I'm pretty excited about it.
Hmm, what else? A gaming news site called Ultima Aiera has made its way into my list of daily must-visit sites. Specifically, it has news about the Ultima series of games and about the creators who had a hand in bringing the games to life.
'How much news could there be about a series that has been dead for a decade?', I hear you ask. Well as it turns out, a pretty good amount of news can be generated about a series that has been dead for a decade. Dick. There are tons of remakes and updates to the series to be reported on, as well as hopeful (though ultimately futile) rumors of the series being continued or restarted again. But more important and interesting are the articles that showcase the old design documents and artwork from the venerable games. It makes for some good game design reading, if you are into that sort of thing.
Other cool things: In Por Ylem 2 has gone into beta, marking yet another experiment with unrestricted PVP in an MMO environment. These experiments always prove interesting. You get to see just how much crap regular players, who make up the bulk of the playerbase, can take from unabashed a-hole players, who exist for no other reason than to ruin the game experience of those regular players, before the regular players give up and leave. Once the normal players leave, the a-holes, having nobody else to torment other than eachother, themselves leave and the game collapses.
We've seen this countless times (the original UO, the original In Por Ylem, Shadowbane, Darkfall) before. Yet there is always some designer who wants to try the experiment again, I guess thinking that this time it will be different. Who can blame him? On paper the concept of near-completely unrestricted PVP is brilliant. Sadly, it just never works, mostly because there are too many players who will take advantage of the loose ruleset and use it to ruin the game for the other players.
Anywho, I don't want to get into that. So many other, better and more experienced than me, designers have gone into it before.
All I want to say is that Azaroth is taking another crack at In Por Ylem. He has brought some interesting design decisions with him, and hopefully some lessons learned from the original In Por Ylem. If anybody can get open pvp right, it's Azaroth with IPY2.
Oh, and I beat Ultima 8: Pagan. I've been playing this thing for over 15 years! Everybody will tell you about much much crap Ultima 8 was, and it does have its annoyances and plot holes. Still, it was always be my favorite (and first) Ultima, and one of the games that originally made me want to make games myself. Cheers, Pagan.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Stay on target...
Content is locked in and ready to move.
Time for some testing, where I can tweak the code (especially the AI stuff) to where it does everything I want it to. I also have to figure out and finalize entity placement in the level, which will also be sorted out during the test runs.
This shouldn't be heavy lifting, but you know how that goes. At any rate, a release shouldn't be very far off now. A week or two tops. I'll do a little advertising on the QuakeDB group before I release so that somebody - anybody - gives a shit and plays it a bit. Screenshots will come pouring in very soon, I promise.
Time for some testing, where I can tweak the code (especially the AI stuff) to where it does everything I want it to. I also have to figure out and finalize entity placement in the level, which will also be sorted out during the test runs.
This shouldn't be heavy lifting, but you know how that goes. At any rate, a release shouldn't be very far off now. A week or two tops. I'll do a little advertising on the QuakeDB group before I release so that somebody - anybody - gives a shit and plays it a bit. Screenshots will come pouring in very soon, I promise.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Checking in.
I'm looking to be 100% on all content by the end of the weekend. From there it is just a matter of testing and finalizing. The home stretch is finally here. Screens soon.
I'm still looking for a way to ditch Blender 3D, and really the entire Quake .mdl format. The thing about Quake .mdl models is that they don't use any bone information, they purely save vertex coordinates from frame to frame. This is... Unfortunate. It inherently means wonky animation, and eliminates the possibility for decent hitbox support and sockets on the model (for muzzle flashes, storing weapons, and other cool shit like that).
Worse, getting your .mdl animations into the game is a painstaking process. As I said, the .mdl saves vertex coordinate information, which means to get it in game I have to write a script to tell the game what animation is going on frame by effing frame. For example, when I want to code my death animation I have to look at the model itself and find out what frame the death animation I want starts at, say 46. From there I tell the game that frame 46 is death animation A's frame 1. Then I tell it that frame 47 is death animation A's frame 2. This goes on until the animation is finished. What. A. Nightmare. It gets really confusing when you are 120 frames in and have to remember that you are really on frame 13 of shoot animation c. And of course Blender is kicking you in the ass the whole time.
I miss the good old days of Half-Life's .mdl format modeling. Half-Life .mdls were a compilation of vertex info, texture info, and bone info. This made animating and getting a model in game an absolute dream. Any animations you did were self contained pieces of information, meaning you didn't have to get down and dirty and worry about frame numbers. You just made an animation called "shoot", and told the game to do "shoot" at the appropriate time and voila. And the tool of choice was Milkshape 3D. Ahh, Milkshape, how I loved you and miss you. Unlike Blender, Milkshape is incredibly easy to use, never crashes, and has beautiful pipelines to all of the major low poly model formats that used to be relevant at the time.
I think a good analogy for what Blender is to Milkshape is to think about what GIMP is to Paint.Net. GIMP tries to do all of the things that the big expensive retail product Photoshop does while Paint.Net just tries to keep the usability of Paint while adding some professional type features. GIMP ends up being an unintuitive, barely functional mess while trying to do all those fancy things. Meanwhile, Paint.Net does everything a shitty programmer-artist like me needs, and it does it painlessly and easily. In the same way, Blender 3D tries to do everything that Maya, 3D Studio Max, and Softimage XSI do, but does it all shitty while maintaining an obtuse user interface. Milkshape 3D just tries to be a super usable low poly modeling program for games like Quake and Half-Life, and it absolutely succeeds.
So, since Blender 3D has been making me weep so much in the last couple months, I've recently really been trying to find a solution in a new model format, preferably Half-Life's .mdls. So far the best I've been able to come up with it the Darkplaces engine's .DPM format. It uses .smds to separate vertex and bone information, like Half-Life, but is specific to Darkplaces. The only real problem is that few people use it, and even fewer know exactly how to use it. Still, I'm going to experiment with it in the future and see if it is a possible solution for me.
At any rate, for the time being I am going to grit my teeth and fight through the unbearable darkness that is Blender 3D to push out the last model or two I need. I'm too close to being ready now. Perhaps in the future I'll use the .DPM model format which will enable me to bring back my toon shading, as well as generally make my life much easier on the 3D modeling side of things.
I'm still looking for a way to ditch Blender 3D, and really the entire Quake .mdl format. The thing about Quake .mdl models is that they don't use any bone information, they purely save vertex coordinates from frame to frame. This is... Unfortunate. It inherently means wonky animation, and eliminates the possibility for decent hitbox support and sockets on the model (for muzzle flashes, storing weapons, and other cool shit like that).
Worse, getting your .mdl animations into the game is a painstaking process. As I said, the .mdl saves vertex coordinate information, which means to get it in game I have to write a script to tell the game what animation is going on frame by effing frame. For example, when I want to code my death animation I have to look at the model itself and find out what frame the death animation I want starts at, say 46. From there I tell the game that frame 46 is death animation A's frame 1. Then I tell it that frame 47 is death animation A's frame 2. This goes on until the animation is finished. What. A. Nightmare. It gets really confusing when you are 120 frames in and have to remember that you are really on frame 13 of shoot animation c. And of course Blender is kicking you in the ass the whole time.
I miss the good old days of Half-Life's .mdl format modeling. Half-Life .mdls were a compilation of vertex info, texture info, and bone info. This made animating and getting a model in game an absolute dream. Any animations you did were self contained pieces of information, meaning you didn't have to get down and dirty and worry about frame numbers. You just made an animation called "shoot", and told the game to do "shoot" at the appropriate time and voila. And the tool of choice was Milkshape 3D. Ahh, Milkshape, how I loved you and miss you. Unlike Blender, Milkshape is incredibly easy to use, never crashes, and has beautiful pipelines to all of the major low poly model formats that used to be relevant at the time.
I think a good analogy for what Blender is to Milkshape is to think about what GIMP is to Paint.Net. GIMP tries to do all of the things that the big expensive retail product Photoshop does while Paint.Net just tries to keep the usability of Paint while adding some professional type features. GIMP ends up being an unintuitive, barely functional mess while trying to do all those fancy things. Meanwhile, Paint.Net does everything a shitty programmer-artist like me needs, and it does it painlessly and easily. In the same way, Blender 3D tries to do everything that Maya, 3D Studio Max, and Softimage XSI do, but does it all shitty while maintaining an obtuse user interface. Milkshape 3D just tries to be a super usable low poly modeling program for games like Quake and Half-Life, and it absolutely succeeds.
So, since Blender 3D has been making me weep so much in the last couple months, I've recently really been trying to find a solution in a new model format, preferably Half-Life's .mdls. So far the best I've been able to come up with it the Darkplaces engine's .DPM format. It uses .smds to separate vertex and bone information, like Half-Life, but is specific to Darkplaces. The only real problem is that few people use it, and even fewer know exactly how to use it. Still, I'm going to experiment with it in the future and see if it is a possible solution for me.
At any rate, for the time being I am going to grit my teeth and fight through the unbearable darkness that is Blender 3D to push out the last model or two I need. I'm too close to being ready now. Perhaps in the future I'll use the .DPM model format which will enable me to bring back my toon shading, as well as generally make my life much easier on the 3D modeling side of things.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
quickie update...
I'm in the process of touching up/redoing a lot of the modeling bits. For the time being I'm going to drop the fake toon shading. In the vertex grouping process Blender was being a real bastard about all the flipped faces, so I have decided to sacrifice the shading for more control over my animations. Oh well, such is life when you have to work with shitty open source tools. The toon shading will have to be something that I'll hard code in on the engine side at a later date, in an update.
Speaking of Blender, it continues to be a gigantic thorn in my side. I can't for the life of me find a decent way of rigging a model. Weight painting is SUCH a pain in the ass and is so damn inaccurate. I always end up painting vertices that I didn't intend, or missing some that I did intend. Why can't I just go vertex by vertex and assign them to the bones that I want? I was doing that in Milkshape 3D ten years ago for gosh sakes. But as far as I can tell, my only options for rigging in Blender are weight painting and the easy but wildly inaccurate enveloping. Aarrgh. I'll try googling around/forum diving to help me not hate weight painting.
In the mean time, here is a revised list of things that are going to be in the first release:
Things that I'd love to have in the release but may or may not make it in time (they may still make it, but generally I'm not finished with them):
Things to think about for a future release:
Speaking of Blender, it continues to be a gigantic thorn in my side. I can't for the life of me find a decent way of rigging a model. Weight painting is SUCH a pain in the ass and is so damn inaccurate. I always end up painting vertices that I didn't intend, or missing some that I did intend. Why can't I just go vertex by vertex and assign them to the bones that I want? I was doing that in Milkshape 3D ten years ago for gosh sakes. But as far as I can tell, my only options for rigging in Blender are weight painting and the easy but wildly inaccurate enveloping. Aarrgh. I'll try googling around/forum diving to help me not hate weight painting.
In the mean time, here is a revised list of things that are going to be in the first release:
- One semi-long level.
- A pistol, smg, and screwdriver for weapons.
- One baddy type with custom AI that can climb/jump around the environment.
- A respawning baddy system that keeps the action flowing.
Things that I'd love to have in the release but may or may not make it in time (they may still make it, but generally I'm not finished with them):
- Buddy AI.
- Two other baddy types; a shotty badguy and a pistol baddy.
Things to think about for a future release:
- More levels, obviously.
- A shotty weapon for the player.
- A stamina system for the running and jumping.
- Reloading for the weapons.
- Scripted sequences.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Level 1 is in the can!
And it only took ~8 hours!
Everything works more or less how I want it to. Obviously, I don't know how to do a lot of the cool things I had in mind, so I had to tinker/find alternative ways of doing them, duct tape and bailing wire style.
At one point I had to duplicate a significant portion of the map. Worldcraft didn't like it at all and, while the map loads up and plays just fine, a big list of warnings fills the console before hand. I've looked it up and the answer seems to be "yeah, old versions of Worldcraft will do that. F##k you", so whatevs.
I'm going to look for a texture pack to use. Right now I am using Quake's stuff as a placeholder. I was intending to just go with it, but now looking back on the finished product it is just too ugly. Muddy dark browns don't translate well to modern office motifs. I could also stand to find some prefabs. Prefabs, for those who haven't dabbled in this sort of thing before, are self contained little models/textures for use in maps. Think computers, office chairs, desks, cars, that sort of thing.
Also, the scale in Quake is wonky. For the weird and wacky world that Quake is actually set in, this is fine and really barely noticeable. But when I try to bring things into the modern realistic realm everything either looks like it is made for giants, or midgets. I can't really find the sweet spot. Oh well. Better textures should hopefully help.
Everything works more or less how I want it to. Obviously, I don't know how to do a lot of the cool things I had in mind, so I had to tinker/find alternative ways of doing them, duct tape and bailing wire style.
At one point I had to duplicate a significant portion of the map. Worldcraft didn't like it at all and, while the map loads up and plays just fine, a big list of warnings fills the console before hand. I've looked it up and the answer seems to be "yeah, old versions of Worldcraft will do that. F##k you", so whatevs.
I'm going to look for a texture pack to use. Right now I am using Quake's stuff as a placeholder. I was intending to just go with it, but now looking back on the finished product it is just too ugly. Muddy dark browns don't translate well to modern office motifs. I could also stand to find some prefabs. Prefabs, for those who haven't dabbled in this sort of thing before, are self contained little models/textures for use in maps. Think computers, office chairs, desks, cars, that sort of thing.
Also, the scale in Quake is wonky. For the weird and wacky world that Quake is actually set in, this is fine and really barely noticeable. But when I try to bring things into the modern realistic realm everything either looks like it is made for giants, or midgets. I can't really find the sweet spot. Oh well. Better textures should hopefully help.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Worldcrafting
I'm starting to really get into a groove with Worldcraft. My maps still look assy, but they are coming along.
I'd really love to add in my own textures at some point. My maps are set in an office/industrial theme, and Quake's default texture set doesn't really lend itself to that. Still, I am going to put off those kind of additions until after I have a basic release, and if people still care.
Slowly but surely this thing is coming together.
Also, I have come up with a name for the game. I am leaning towards calling it "The Mondays", because it is set in an office with tons of cubicles and really sterile fluorescent lighting.
I'd really love to add in my own textures at some point. My maps are set in an office/industrial theme, and Quake's default texture set doesn't really lend itself to that. Still, I am going to put off those kind of additions until after I have a basic release, and if people still care.
Slowly but surely this thing is coming together.
Also, I have come up with a name for the game. I am leaning towards calling it "The Mondays", because it is set in an office with tons of cubicles and really sterile fluorescent lighting.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
The Feature List
Key:
Here we go.
Mapping:
Sounds:
What you will need to play the mod: You will need the two .PAK files from the original Quake game. If you don't have Quake you are out of luck. You can always buy the game, I think it is $10 on Steam or you can get it brand new and in a box from Amazon.com for less than $10. It is a classic as hell oldschool shooter and you owe it to yourself to own the thing anyways. I'll put all the relevant information on how to install the mod in a README file when I release the game.
- Items in black indicate something that is already in the game and working acceptably.
- Items in green indicate something that I've already started working on and is definitely going to be in the game at release.
- Items in yellow indicate something that I haven't started working on but will hopefully be in the release.
- Items in red indicate something that I would love to be in the game, but probably won't make it.
Here we go.
Mapping:
- An intro map, with a tutorial for getting around. Characters get introduced, and the story started off.
- The level where shat first starts to go down.
- A middle level where the main button-hunt gameplay most comes into effect.
- A finale level.
- Custom cartoony textures for everything.
- A main type of generic bad guy with an SMG.
- A pistol, smg, and shotty for the player.
- Another type of baddy with a shotgun.
- A pistol baddy.
- A boss.
- An AI buddy.
- Some friendly AI scientists.
- AI that is generally enhanced for getting around and not getting stuck on the geometry.
- A "dynamic" spawn system for pumping in enemies at least somewhat intelligently.
- Buddy AI.
- Some non-threatening scientist AI.
- Some sort of system for allowing scripted dialogue/sequences.
Sounds:
- My own sounds for the weapons.
- Sounds for pain, death, jumping, etc... For the player, the baddy, and the AI buddy.
- Some scripted Left-4-Dead-esq dialogue.
- Come up with a name for this thing.
What you will need to play the mod: You will need the two .PAK files from the original Quake game. If you don't have Quake you are out of luck. You can always buy the game, I think it is $10 on Steam or you can get it brand new and in a box from Amazon.com for less than $10. It is a classic as hell oldschool shooter and you owe it to yourself to own the thing anyways. I'll put all the relevant information on how to install the mod in a README file when I release the game.
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