[Release] Gene-Tech: Before the Storm

[Nash]

Wow, I didn't realize that the story in this mod is actually based on real Quake 2 lore. Good stuff!

[Tux]

Man, I loved the plot twist at the end.

[Tormentor667]

OMG! AN ENJAY RELEASE!

[Zanieon]

OMG! AN ENJAY RELEASE!

You know that the wad is good when even Tormentor comes from the shadows to comment.

[Captain J]

otherwise, seal of fineness approved. and yes, this wad is made by bloody enjay, so i don't expect something bad from his any of wad.

[GhostKillahZero]

This reminds of quake 2, I miss playing that game on xbox.

[Enjay]

I'm really blown away by the reaction I'm getting to this. It's been really positive and I'm also really grateful to the people who have pointed out flaws and dislikes but have done so in a positive manner. Thank you all very much. It is all very much appreciated.


Some folks may be interested in a little more of what I was trying to do with the back story. I tried to thread a bit of plot through the map so that the player could legitimately get an idea of what might be going on before things were revealed. I like it when games/movies/books whatever do this. It means that they didn't "cheat" (i.e. there were always clues and stuff wasn't just sprung on people and even when the reveal still turns out to be a surprise (because it wasn't too strongly hinted at or the viewer simply didn't work things out) the producer of the work can legitimately say "there were some clues if you looked hard enough"). On a second run through it should be possible for a player to spot stuff and go "aha! I know why that's there now". I like being able to do that with games/movies/books whatever too. Also, you are supposed to be investigating Gene-Tech to find out what they are up to, so it would be unfair not to provide an opportunity for a player to at least get some hints.

Of course, it is intentionally possible to play the mod and ignore the plot elements entirely but I wonder how many of the hints and plot elements were picked up?

Firstly relating to the player etc.

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I mentioned in the first post the the player is a Global Defence Force operative and, although it's a pretty generic name, they are a Quake 2 universe organisation. The player model is the Quake 2 male player and, obviously, most of the player weapons and some enemy weapons are Quake 2 based. However, I could understand a player dismissing these things as just whatever the modder (me) decided to use (it's not exactly unusual for a modder to use sprites from other games and I guess that extends to models too).



As a side point, the main reason that I didn't use the Quake 2 blaster as the base weapon is that, quite simply, I don't like it much. I'm not that keen on how it looks, I find it feels ineffectual and its noise is annoying IMO. On the other hand, I've always loved the SiN Magnum. Also, the weapons are meant to be a bit different to those in Quake 2 to show that they are from a time before the war had gotten into full swing. Perhaps, by the time Quake 2 takes place, the blaster is a nice, cheap, mass-produced weapon to issue to the thousands of marines being mobilised to Stroggos. Perhaps this also explains why most of the weapons are in better condition (and sometimes more effective) than they are by the time they appear in Quake 2.

Stuff in the map...

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Not really clues...
Originally I had planned to keep some sort of track of how many clues the player had interacted with using ACS but I eventually decided that was unnecessary. There were already enough secrets and items for people who like to collect stuff and I felt that the addition of a formal acknowledgement of finding clues might even detract from the game. e.g. draw too much attention to the clues for people who want to work things out for themselves and be an annoyance for those who don't care.

So, related to that, there are a couple of things that were to be clues but are now really just atmosphere...

There are two microscopes that you can activate and look down. One shows an animation of heart cells being stimulated outside a body and the other shows blood flowing through capillaries. If I had gone for the more overt clue-counting system, these would have been captioned as "heart cells kept alive by electronic stimulation" and "nanites flowing in the blood" respectively.




A number of the computer screens show false-colour electron micrographs of things that could believably be technology/biology interfaces.




As for actual clues...

There is a solitary Strogg crate in amongst all the Gene-Tech ones in the open area quite near the map start.



In the nearby building, there is an open crate with Strogg mechanical limbs in it.



A bit more obscure; the green goop in the tubes and the pool of green stuff uses a Quake 2 Stroylent texture and this is further supported by something one of the NPCs tells you (see below). However, I'd be surprised if anyone got this clue.




This diagram of a human. It's not much when you see the first one but later on, the same poster has half of the human replaced with a Strogg Gunner.




More Strogg parts.



This poor sod is about to have his arm replaced with a gunner grenade launcher.



And these guys in the tubes have Strogg parts on their chests and faces. If you can see them from behind, they also have the characteristic Strogg metal spine but it's pretty hard to see.



There is also a Strogg crate on the conveyor belt.

Then there is the stuff that the NPCs say...

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Not much but this guy hints at the Strogg appearance and that the aliens might be people who have been converted. He also tells you that there is a portal in the big white room - which of course is where the first wave of Strogg that you encounter come from.




This guy is talking about the Stroylent. I appreciate that this is pretty obscure. Of course, he's also warning you that you will take damage from just diving in to the pool (and I'm sure most people will have found the rad suit near the pool allowing you to go into the pool and pick up the health bonuses).


Again, really not much more than a slight hint but (with hindsight) you can just about believe he is talking about the Stroggification process.



I didn't have it fully clear in my mind whether the "volunteers" were truly volunteers, or low-level Gene-Tech employees duped into being test subjects or maybe something such as criminals or other "undesirables" that were sacrificed or maybe terminally ill people desperate to try anything. Possibly it was some combination of all of those.

And after the reveal...

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From this point on, you have encountered the aliens (or at least after the portal room) and you know who they are. As a result, things are completely overt: there are a few more textures with a Strogg/Q2 appearance, some computers have the Strogg logo on them, there is a whole room full of Strogg crates, the music is Q2 music instead of system shock 2 and one of the NPCs mentions the Strogg by name. Also, you encounter more Strogg, including incomplete Strogg. If I'd had more time, there may well have been a map set on Stroggos itself or a very Stroggified section of the Gene-Tech base on mars with heavy use of Quake 2 metal (and other) textures, props (such as Stogg banners and so on) and iconic sloped corridors etc.




My basic idea was that the Strogg were taking advantage of the Gene-Tech willingness (or greed motivated short-sightedness) to enter into an agreement with them before anyone else got the chance. Sooner or later the Strogg would have been able to sort out the technology themselves (it's what they do after all) but Gene-Tech working on things certainly wouldn't hurt the Strogg goals and it also meant that they were able to get a little stealthy foothold in the Solar system before the full attack arrived.

Connection to Stroggos using the satellite model from Quake 2...
(Quite why Star Wars moisture vaporators are also there, only Gene-Tech knows - and they're not talking any more.)


Yeah, really silly abbreviations on the computer.


...and, of course, there is a frikken huge black hole generator that appeared just outside the base to justify the continued influx of Strogg


I may as well mention the appearance of "my" Strogg too. Like the weapons, they are deliberately altered to look a little different to the ones from Quake 2. This underlines that they are not meant to behave exactly like the ones in Quake 2, allows me to theme their colours slightly to more closely match the aesthetic of the rest of the mod and to represent the fact that they are supposed to come from a slightly different time period before the attack on Earth and, of course, the strike back at Stroggos later in the war that makes up the events of Quake 2. To get the different appearances, I tended to use skins from the expansion packs rather than the main game and did varying amounts of editing to colours and other features of the skins to make them a little different to the standard Quake 2 ones.

So, I wonder, how many of those clues and how much of that plot related stuff was spotted/worked?

[Zanieon]

Well, i talked with all NPCs there, that's why i got admired that you did a great prequel to Quake 2 in your own vision.

Btw i didn't looked much around the map to notice that Stroggs crates outiside the base in the beggining or the other in the conveyor belt but i noticed the guys stroggfied in the tubes and the other half-gunner on the wall.

Also...

I'm really blown away by the reaction I'm getting to this. It's been really positive and I'm also really grateful to the people who have pointed out flaws and dislikes but have done so in a positive manner. Thank you all very much. It is all very much appreciated.

Dude, you are kinda Valve in Doom community, delays alot to release something, but when do, it deserves the time spent on it.

[Blue Shadow]

I did get the general gist of what's going on, and found and/or observed most of what Enjay mentioned in his post (what did you think I was doing through these two hours? ). However, since I haven't played any of the Quake game series or even read about them, I didn't realize that the story tied to that.

[Zanieon]

I did get the general gist of what's going on, and found and/or observed most of what Enjay mentioned in his post (what did you think I was doing through these two hours? ). However, since I haven't played any of the Quake game series or even read about them, I didn't realize that the story tied to that.

I haven't played any of the Quake game series

My Reaction to this:

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You never got interest in take them to play? Really? Not even now?

It's understable not playing Descent series (cuz i know it didn't had a great fame as Doom did) but Quake? duuuuuuuuuuude... ahn... no comments...

[Captain J]

But doom, yeah. this forum is use to be major about doom.

[Kostov]

You never got interest in take them to play? Really? Not even now?

It's understable not playing Descent series (cuz i know it didn't had a great fame as Doom did) but Quake? duuuuuuuuuuude... ahn... no comments...

Really? More of this? Have you considered he may have bills, food or donations to use his money on instead, or would you prefer he pirate it?

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I despise when someone gets pointed out for not having played, watched something etc.

[Ed the Bat]

You never got interest in take them to play? Really? Not even now?

It's understable not playing Descent series (cuz i know it didn't had a great fame as Doom did) but Quake? duuuuuuuuuuude... ahn... no comments...

Really? More of this? Have you considered he may have bills, food or donations to use his money on instead, or would you prefer he pirate it?

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I despide when someone gets pointed out for not having played, watched something etc.

I agree. Sadly, the moderators don't seem to...

[Freaklore1]

If i have one thing to say about the Descent Series is this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWxh9lGOeqQ

Seriously the games are very addicting even tough you can get nausea if you are not used to it after awhile.

Never got the chance to play the original PC version of Quake 1 and 2 (i played the consoles versions),and im still trying to find the full version of Q1 instead of the shareware version.

Quake 3 arena on the other hand i did played it,had a grand wonderful time and enjoyed it a lots,once Revilution finish his levels for his mod (Hunter's Moon) im gonna have a blast.

The only Quake game i didnt played was the 4th one.

[Nash]

I appreciate all of the effort that went into the Quake lore in this mod, but I'm afraid I am also another one of those "not too familiar with Quake" type of person... and with regards to Quake 2 specifically; I was actually struggling with it (performance wise) back then with my 1997 Pentium 2 rig... it wasn't only until 1999 that I bought and installed my first 3dfx accelerator card and started enjoying those newfangled OpenGL/Glide games more... if it says anything, I don't think I've clocked more than 100 hours of gameplay for all the Quake games combined throughout these years... :S

EDIT:

It seems that the invisible cloak powerup will screw up the model rendering for the HUD model and also the player's model if you active the chasecam.

Also, I noticed that for the final boss' BFG attack, his entire texture changes to have a glow-like appearance... care to share your MODELDEF trickery? I'm pretty sure GZDoom doesn't allow an easy way to switch out model textures on the fly...