[Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

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Captain J
 
 
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by Captain J »

Enjay wrote:You could have a point about the armour. There isn't much. There are three regular (100 point) armour items but two of those are in secrets and the third is quite far through the map. There are three 200 point armours but two are in secrets and the third is in the final area and only on the easy setting. There is a Mega powerup (200 armour) in a secret near the end. There are also 10 of the 5 point armour bonuses but five of them are in the final arena and some of the enemies drop random numbers of armour shards (1 point each). So, although that is quite a long list, it's a big map and not much of the armour is available without finding secrets. Perhaps I should add some more easily-findable items. I'll have a look at where might be suitable.

As for the Boss' auto-railgun, it seems to have the exact effect that I wanted. Sure, it does actually do quite a bit of damage but it is nowhere near as powerful as people generally expect railguns to be. Also, the way he strafes it around makes it look impressive by filling the air with rail particles but you'd have to make a real effort and actually try to be hit as many times as possible from a single volley. The idea was to create something that made the player go "oh shit, his got an auto railgun", make it threatening enough that you don't want to be hit by it but not totally overpowering.
so no wonder why i freaked out when i encountered him first time, but hey. my fingers are better than his triggers. and i see about there's got useful secrets, but i couldn't found any secrets but one; to get a auto magnum. and other secrets were cryptic to be find in normal diff.

anyway thanks for understand, just only few regular armors or least useful items at first~or middle part of the game would be enough to balance.
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Enjay
 
 
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by Enjay »

OK, I looked at the armour situation and I decided that I agree with you: I had not been generous enough with it (at least not without finding secrets). There is now an additional regular armour out in the open (replacing one of the bonuses) reasonably early on in the map and I have bumped up the number of 5 point armour bonuses around the map by quite a bit. With them being 5 points each, you can collect quite a few and get a reasonable armour total even without grabbing a full armour vest.

I left the super armour as it is. With the armour vests that are out in the open, and with the number of bonuses that are lying around, it is possible to hit 200 armour without finding any of the advanced armour vest secrets. In fact, even if you only pick up armour bonuses and no vests, you could hit the 200 cap before entering the final room. Of course, the bad guys would be working against you by chipping your armour away, but it is at least theoretically possible. ;)

I hope that using the armour bonuses in this way means that finding secrets with full armour vests (regular or advanced) in them will still be valuable enough because you'll get a full 100 or 200 (super protection) in one go. I did consider making the armour bonuses no longer alwayspickup items and removing their countitem flag too rather than have the player waste them but I guess that, most of the time, the player is unlikely to be on 200 armour and so would not waste much armour by picking up a bonus whenever he finds it (if he is trying to get 100% of the items on the map).

Thanks for the feedback. Download has been updated. With any luck, this will be the last bit of tweaking required.

[edit]
You want secrets? Because this is how you get secrets. (Video)
Spoiler:
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Captain J
 
 
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by Captain J »

PLAY THE POWER, YOUTUBE POWER-

anyway much appreciated, now i can play and reveal some stuff.
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by insightguy »

using Gzdoom 1.9.something

Funny bug: kill a male civilian (the one that does not attack you) and he will forever dryhump the gound
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by Enjay »

insightguy wrote:using Gzdoom 1.9.something

Funny bug: kill a male civilian (the one that does not attack you) and he will forever dryhump the gound
Yes, this bug has been reported and (I hope) addressed. MaxEd spotted that I had missed a "Stop" instruction at the end of the crouched-down death sequence. This has now been added and the file online updated. I am assuming that you got the file a couple of days ago. The one that I uploaded last night should be OK. If it isn't, please let me know because that means the problem lies elsewhere.

I mentioned previously that I was having difficulty reproducing the bug. I'd only seen it once despite killing that actor many, many times. I think that it happens when the lack of "Stop" confuses GZDoom and it tries to interpolate the model between two frames (I'm guessing last and second last). The reason I haven't seen it recently is because I was using the latest versions of GZDoom for my testing and interpolation is broken in those so the bug in GZDoom was masking the bug in my DECORATE. At least, that's my guess. The only time I saw the bug was when I was using an older exe.
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by kmxexii »

hey, stopping by to say that i played this today and had a blast. shooting the bad guys who i wont spoiler feels like such an improvement when you can stunlock them properly. some of the stuff felt like it got out of hand on the UV-equivalent but after i took a step back and rethought stuff you always have some kind of an out for the player. being able to find secrets helps too.
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by Blue Shadow »

I'd just finished it. It was certainly a new (though not totally) experience for me in terms of the gameplay approach that I had to take, which is mostly taking cover while shooting things. I do do that while playing Doom, but not to this extent. I struggled a little at first, but steadily became adjusted to it. The game was a little challenging for me playing on the default skill setting, but nothing I couldn't handle. The final boss was a pain. I died 4 or 5 times before I was finally able to take it down -- it just absorbs a lot of punishment!

There are a couple of things that took a bit away from the otherwise great experience for me:
  • I play with keyboard only and autoaim enabled. This setup doesn't go well with weapon recoil.
  • The status bar/HUD cannot be scaled up on my in-game resolution of 800x600, which makes it a little too small. Yes, I know 800x600 is such a small resolution in this time and age, but this is my preferred, and I cannot go beyond 1366x768, anyway.
Despite those little niggles, I enjoyed the map, overall!
Spoiler:
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seedzhao
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by seedzhao »

this is a pro stuff, man...

have just one word for you: GROOVY!

and of course, a huge thank you!!
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by RastaManGames »

It. Was. AWESOME.
Nice models! Nice textures! Nice OST and Sounds!
I really like atmosphere and Q2-Moments!!!
It - BEST of GZD maps!

P.S. You think about Quake 2 ReMake on GZD? =^_^=
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by Enjay »

Thanks for the feedback and the positive comments. I'm glad that people are enjoying playing this. :D

The intention was that it should be familiar enough in style and weapon balance to Doom for people to feel reasonably at home but that the style of the map and enemy balance should be different enough that it felt like its own thing too. Judging by the comments, I managed to hit that reasonably well.

To comment on the points Blue Shadow raised (thanks for doing so)
Blue Shadow wrote:I play with keyboard only and autoaim enabled. This setup doesn't go well with weapon recoil.
Fair comment. I guess I'll just take that on the chin and say that the mod simply wasn't designed with that configuration/style of play in mind. However, I'm not a huge fan of large recoil effects myself and much of what I did was more of a visual effect than anything (i.e. the weapon recoils but is then set back to the same, or almost the same, pitch within the firing sequence). The machine gun still climbs a bit like it does in Quake 2 but this has been significantly nerfed compared to Q2.
Blue Shadow wrote:The status bar/HUD cannot be scaled up on my in-game resolution of 800x600, which makes it a little too small. Yes, I know 800x600 is such a small resolution in this time and age, but this is my preferred, and I cannot go beyond 1366x768, anyway.
I did test out a few resolutions but HUD scaling and the exact result does vary from resolution to resolution. Everything I tried looked OK to me (I don't recall if I tried 800x600) but then not everyone likes or needs the same thing. I guess the other option would be to use the Alt-HUD if my HUD doesn't work in a way that you like.
Blue Shadow wrote:What can I say, I'm a slow player. :P
Well, that probably is the longest time I'm aware of. ;) At least I kept you busy for a couple of hours. :)

Blue Shadow wrote:The final boss was a pain. I died 4 or 5 times before I was finally able to take it down -- it just absorbs a lot of punishment!
Well, it is a boss. ;)
I confess that I'm not a huge boss battle fan and often my "boss battles" don't feature a single boss but a tough fight with a lot of enemies, or an escape scenario, or something. So, balancing a boss fight is a bit tricky for me because I'm never sure what people like. In saying that, I can't say that the boss battle has ever given me much difficulty or even taken that long. I've even completed it a couple of times without taking a single point of damage. Of course, I know the actor and the battle inside out. I did actually get a comment that the battle was too easy and that worried me but now that I see further comments from people finding the opposite, perhaps that means it's at least close to being OK.

For a breakdown of how the battle plays out...
Spoiler:
How I approach it...
Spoiler:
Again, thanks for the comments. :yup:
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by Zanieon »

I played it right now and have only two letters to say: GG

You done a very well prequel to Quake 2, couldn't imagine something better to start the Strogg war.
Btw, i almost, ALMOST, did the same tactic you explained, in exception i wasted all my ammo missing shots, rofl.

I get trolled lots of times with Rocket Launcher because i'm accostumed with the RL of HM that is faster even in the speed of the rocket, i delayed alot to not try shot myself in a wall LOL.
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by Enjay »

Revilution wrote:I played it right now and have only two letters to say: GG

You done a very well prequel to Quake 2, couldn't imagine something better to start the Strogg war.
Btw, i almost, ALMOST, did the same tactic you explained, in exception i wasted all my ammo missing shots, rofl.
With this mod being so model-based, coming from someone as adept at using models in GZDoom as you, that really means quite a bit to me. Thank you.

As far as the story goes, I mentioned a while back that the idea had been sparked by an article elsewhere, specifically:

http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/War_against_the_Strogg

and these few lines in particular:
Quake Wiki wrote:There was also at this time a Human colony of some description on the planet Mars; indicating that interplanetary manned spaceflight was just beginning to develop....

A report from an unidentified news agency on Earth, broadcast just days the war erupted, indicated that the aforementioned Martian colony had been abandoned (for reasons yet unknown), and that plans were afoot to re-establish it. It went on to state that this had "nothing to do with the arrival of the mysterious aliens in the Solar System". The report may have been informed by a government press release, perhaps seeking to cover up the facts of the abandoned Mars colony's fate.
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by Zanieon »

Well i know the limitations of MD2 models especially the Quake 2 ones that you used, you made them act so exactly as they does in Quake 2, well in exception of the barrel rotation of Hyperbaster when shooting that i noticed it does not have interpolation.

I was never so deep into these Wikias, never get so much interest to take them to read (i tried do with Mass Effect wikia and stopped right in Charon Relay) but anyway you did it well without break the Quake aspects
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by seedzhao »

it´s a shame that´s just one map...
but real life matters are understandable...

excellent job!
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Re: [Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

Post by Blue Shadow »

Enjay wrote:How I approach it...
Spoiler:
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