[Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

[Galaxy_Stranger]

You're famous!!

[Captain J]

Nice to see this good ol' mod being spotlighted once again! I hope you're still active on ZDoom forum and the modding, Enjay! I wish you can make more great stuff like this. It's been good to play this mod again.

[Enjay]

You're famous!!

[video]

That is pretty cool. Thanks for highlighting it.

I hope you're still active on ZDoom forum and the modding, Enjay! I wish you can make more great stuff like this. It's been good to play this mod again.

Thanks. I don't have anything in the pipeline right now, but I am trying to get myself back into things. I've been far too quiet over the last few years because of real-life commitments and I want to try and reverse some of that at least.

[Rachael]

Congrats on the coverage, Enjay!

[TDG]

Hello Enjay

I just played and finished this mod and because I had not seen any spoilers yet I did not know that this was actually a Quake 2 prequel.
At first I thought you were just borrowing assets from other games such as Quake 2 and I think I saw some background objects from the Jedi Knight games.
But once I figured out during the mini campaign that the weapons were not just a coincidence and the Strogg started to show up I was rather pleasantly surprised. Good work.

BTW, I really like that model of the drop ship at the end and the closing images/stills.

Gameplay was a little to get used to and sadly I got my ass kicked a lot during "Normal" gameplay so I had to lower it to "Easy" (guess I am not such a hardcore Doom/Quake player as I thought myself to be).
As Mr Icarus mentions in his video, using the scenery as protection is very important as enemies with hit scan weapons can really tear you to bits very quickly.

One of my annoyances were those floaty drones as they could really surround me and kill me before I decided to stay away from them as much as possible.

I think this could have been released around the 90s as a prequel/setup for Quake 2 though of course some of the models and the use of effects are a bit more advanced than in that game.

[ReX]

You're famous!!

[video]

Very nice partial play-through, and (as usual) balanced comments. Kudos!

[Enjay]

Version with fixed MODELDEF and MAPINFO uploading right now. No need to download unless you really, really want to. The bugs did not prevent the mod running and only printed a couple of minor console errors. Nothing else has changed.

[Enjay]

I've just noticed this in another thread ( viewtopic.php?f=7&t=60647&p=1055255#p1055255 ) :

As per Rachael's request, I'm gonna post the edits I made to GeneTech that fix a few derps with some weapons' states. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1s9-Lx ... d5bjZzQZoC

If someone can let me know what the fixes are, I'll happily include them in an official build. StrikerMan's download seems to be the full mod so I can't just merge his changes into my files because I've made a couple of minor fixes elsewhere too.

Was it just changes to the weapon code? The only file I can see with a new modified date is the modelfdef for the magnum.

[edit] and the only difference I can see in the file is that an instance of NOINTERPOLATION has been commented out. Is that the only change? [/edit]

[edit2] I also see a minor change to the firing sequence in the DECORATE for the Magnum.

These changes do make the weapon animate a bit more smoothly, but they also make the weapon flash seem a bit more sluggish and it looks a bit more like a big yellow blob on the end of the weapon as a result - trying to avoid that is why the firing code and MODELDEF were set up the way that they were in the first place.
[/edit2]

[edit3]
OK, I can adopt the MODELDEF change and tweak the DECORATE code for the Magnum slightly differently to what Strikerman did and get what I think is a smooth animation without the weapon flash looking bad (just redistributing the frame durations very slightly). Once I find out if there are any more changes, I can upload a consolidated version with my other fixes (all minor stuff) and the Magnum animation tweak.
[/edit3]

[StrikerMan780]

I made changes to the states of the magnum, machinegun, and hyperblaster. (Made sure any 0 duration frames following non-zero duration frames have the next frame index, not the one before, preventing jitter.)

[Enjay]

Thanks, I'll check those out later on and chances are I'll incorporate what you did into my version and upload it to the original location. Thanks for doing this, I appreciate it.

@TDG - sorry, I only just noticed your post. Thanks for taking the time to play the mod and comment. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

On the difficulty setting thing, I guess the settings are meant to be harder than you'd find in Doom. I try to make my mods so that the easy settings are at least of some value. There can't be many people in the community who need maps as easy as the easiest setting in the original Doom these days. I have always tried to implement difficulty settings in my maps and I don't want to put in that (albeit minimal) effort for something that no one is going to need or want. So I try to set it up that "Normal" is just that - what I feel most people will be happy with. Harder settings should be for people who like more of a challenge and the easier ones should still be a viable choice for people who, for what ever reason, don't want to play on Normal or above. So I'm actually really quite pleased that you played on "Easy" because that's what it's there for.

[aside] For some reason, there still seems to be a bit of an attitude of "I only play ultraviolence" in some areas of the community regardless of whether the difficulty settings are set up anything like the original Doom ones or not. That's one of the reasons that I renamed the difficulty settings in this mod; to make it clear its not like ITYTD, HNTR, HMP, UV and Nightmare and so choices based on a perception of those might not be appropriate. For a long time I have considered releasing a mod where I have redefined the difficulty menu so that the first option is the hardest. Or maybe have a mod where the difficulty levels have slightly different effects so that the changes in difficulty also alter gameplay a bit more too - so it's not just a direct relationship between menu definition and enemy numbers/ammo availability etc. (I dunno, perhaps more exploring on some settings, more combat on others, more puzzle solving, more item finding - no idea really, just throwing out suggestions.) [/aside]

The floaty drones can close in a bit quickly and, if you get surrounded, surviving is difficult. I can't say they ever gave me any severe problems - but then I put them in the mod so I know exactly where they are and what to do about them in a fight.

[Enjay]

I made changes to the states of the magnum, machinegun, and hyperblaster. (Made sure any 0 duration frames following non-zero duration frames have the next frame index, not the one before, preventing jitter.)

I've had a look at the Hyperblaster and I now see exactly what you were doing (and why it made a difference). In fact, one of my other fixes elsewhere was very similar to fix a jitter in the idling frames of the worker enemies that made their heads suddenly snap to a new angle.

However, the machine gun DECORATE in the file I downloaded from the post you made is identical to the one in my file and both are dated from 2014. No matter, I'll look at the DECORATE for that weapon to see if a similar fix can be applied.

[edit] And I suspect I know why. Applying a similar fix to what you described to the DECORATE meant that the flash at the front of the gun (which is stored out of sight behind the weapon until it is needed) interpolated backwards becoming momentarily huge in the player's view. So, I've edited the model to change how the flash is stored when not in use (I've moved all the flash vertices to a single point at the tip of the gun). This has a couple of benefits; the DECORATE fix now works and the flash can be seen to get smaller at the end of the firing sequence, which looks quite good.

I'll give a few other things I noticed a check to see if I can address them and then upload a fixed version later today. [/edit]

Thanks again.

[Tormentor667]

Thanks. I don't have anything in the pipeline right now, but I am trying to get myself back into things. I've been far too quiet over the last few years because of real-life commitments and I want to try and reverse some of that at least.

YESYESYES!

[Enjay]

While I'm trying to fix things up, does anyone know what might be going on here?

---

For some reason, the bottom-right corner of the hyperblaster model shows those visual errors (more obvious when the weapon is moving around). I know that the MD2 model format is prone to all sorts of problems but I've had a good look at the model in my editor and I can't see anything obviously wrong in that area. Although the vertices do wiggle around a bit (as expected with a MD2 model) I don't see any planes passing through each other. I've tried messing with the facing of the normals (although that's limited in the editor I'm using - and I don't particularly understand how to fix normals anyway - I've "inverted normals" tried "normals face out" and "turned edges" on the faces) and I've moved the whole model to the left so it was almost centred on screen (which looked weird). It almost behaves as if the model coordinates are right at/beyond the position allowed by its spec and therefore it's acting a bit weird (which is why I tried moving the whole model to the left).

None of these seemed to fix the problem. I also tried re-extracting the model from Quake2 just in case I'd messed something up along the way but the freshly extracted model also showed the problem (of course, it didn't match up with my new skin but the visual glitches were still apparent). The model had looked fine in Quake2 and KMQuake2 so it seems to be something that happens GZDoom with that model but not in the vanilla or a modified Quake2 engine.

So, I'm kind of stumped on that one. It's not a deal-breaker by any means but it would be nice to fix it up if it's possible.

[edit] I also just tried converting the model to a MD3. It didn't fixed the wobbly vertices (as expected - they are already ruined by the MD2 format) but I hoped that it might change something about the way that bottom corner is rendered. It did not. [/edit]

[Nash]

Model polygons behave a little wonky when they get too close to the camera (regardless of file format)... could be a similar issue manifesting itself here. Just for tests, if you move the model "forward" so it's farther away from the camera, does the clipping glitch still happen?

[Enjay]

Aha! That does seem to make a difference. Of course, that does mean that it might not be fixable. I'll see if I can move it forward enough to fix the glitch but not so much that it looks bad for other reasons. If not, I guess it will stay as it is. Thanks.