should Surreal re-release Drakan as freeware?

[ASSASSIN]

Well, here are some closer plans on the tweaking.

-- WEAPONS, AND OTHER INVENTORY MISC STUFF --
Since Quake does not really have Drakan like inventory, I'll first start off from the good-old-quake like systems and see what can I do with it; and later, to replace it.
So far, the idea is this:

Weapons will be broken down to numbers as in any FPS.
Number: Weapon
1: Short sword / Long sword / Twohanded
2: Mythrilsword/ Magic sword / Magic twohanded
3: Fire sword / Flaming sword / --
4: Ice sword / Sword of Ice / --
5: Axe of Fire / Icy Axe / Lightning Axe
6: Lifebringer / Soultaker / Mace of crypt
7: Bow w arrows/ Bow w poison arrows
8: Bow w firearrows/ Bow w explosive arrows
9: Ground pounder / Dragonstrife

As you might have noticed, these are pre-definied weapons. I will have to think of a way to make this modified Quake2 engine load the weapon abilities of a certain file and not use pre-loaded ones; hope I can do it. :/

Bonuses will be the usual quake bonuses: extra damage, invulnerability, health up, invisibility. (I wonder if I can get speed boost into the game. :/)

Misc items are not really working atm; but who knows, I might get it sorted (just started editing, heh )

-- MULTIPLAYER STUFF --
First of all: QUAKE2 SUPPORTS NPCS IN MULTIPLAYER. So there can be matches where players gotta slay beasts, in co-op or for score. I can even make types where you can see your allies HP and their benchmarked distance from you (hope it'll work :/)

I am not sure if I can get QoD programmed into the Quake2 engine, but I'll rather check how to get Dragons working first. lol

CTF is also supported by Quake2.

-- SINGLEPLAYER --
Well, bad and good news here too. If everything works as planned, we could finally make maps where you plays as a dragon himself/herself. Bad news is for a human+dragon map I have to develop a dragon AI, which seems tough atm but I'll see what can I do.

Another not very good piece of news is that the lack of inventory and the user definied objects would be a huge problem for Singeplayer maps in this type of game, so I am not sure what to say here. I think we could tweak it really well (Quake2 can also be tweaked) but it will need a really deep insight. I will be working on it...

Basically, if I could get the inventory and player-edited objecting done, we could have a true copy of Drakan singleplayer. I will try to get to the bottom of it, but this two seems to be the biggest problem so far.


Well, here is it, broken down to pieces. It's a very complex project, and doubtlessly it will take loads of time and patience. (And I have doomsday going too :S eeek. Hopefully I can get that done as soon as I want...)

EDIT:
Tweaking news for today:
+added FPS counter into the game
+added 3rd view perspective
+added 32bit graphics support
+added melee attack/object type
+added jetpack support (tweaked way: fuel is unlimited - we want dragons and they dont run outta fuel )
+added zoom feature (don't know how will it work with 3rd view though).

More changes are in plan; I gotta see how this thing works though once I get close to a C++ compiler :/

[AXE]

You guys are crazy, hehe, but it sounds soooooooo cool![8D]

[ASSASSIN]

Hehe, I take that as a compliment lol

[The Darklord]

Like... .
That's a LOTTA work you're gettin' into... but I guess the whole community will bow down to you if you succeed...
...or hang you if you fail [:D]

[ASSASSIN]

LOL @ Darklord

Good point! [:D] One more reason to not fail I guess [;)]

More ideas on the rise!! D:TAG like magic and experiencing system, even in multiplayer! [:D] Let's hope it will work as I expect it to do :/ lol

Oh, and help would be welcomed. I am in need of concept arts for HUD display; it should display the following:
-health bar
-mana bar
-current weapon/magic in use
-kills
-current powerup(s) in use
-ingame chat
Showing experince too would be good but not neccesity.

If you have any idea how should a HUD showing all these look like, please make an image of it and post it here, or send it to my mailbox (dobos_andras@hotmail.com).

[kypster]

wow your really getting behind this its just damn great.

Its a pity I can't be of any help with the coding but I found out I can import my uncompiled maps from GTK radiant into the quake 2 editor Quake Army Knife (well not really import it can take the file) but I then have to add the textures in the Quake Army Knife editor.

I will try and email you a concept of the hud although it will most likely be a day or so as I
won't be home at all tomorrow.

I'd also like to give a go at some of these monster bash co-op multiplayer modes, mapping I mean. Would you think we should design a map that is linear or more free to go where you want type map.

If we make a website i'm thinking we should go on www.sourceforge.com becasue they give free hosting to those people developing open source games what do you think.

if you need to email me its kypdurron14@hotmail.com

...or hang you if you fail
(regrets ever coming up with the idea)

[ASSASSIN]

Well, maps. I'd rather say freestyle ones rather than the linear type (you can play them for much longer).

HUD can wait a little - no rush... this thing will take a while to do I think :/ But, it worths trying lol

Question: what is the level of realism we want? lol Specifically: I wonder to implent stamina or not (if you run, your stamia drains, if you rest it grows. Stronger characters have more stamina ofc)?

[kypster]

well if we're going to put the experience system in that is a good idea.

For the experience in multiplayer shall we have it like you can put as many maps as you wan't on your server into a campaign (repeating maps should also be implemented). and when you play on the server your experience points move over to the next map and so on and on untill either the campaign ends or you log off.

Is it possible to enable models with large polygon counts in Quake 2, I suppose that would involve fiddling around with the actual engine because I was making a model of rynn before all this came up and I just finished, but its a rather large (for old games anyway)at 1780 polygons and I know for sure that the quake 2 engine straight off can not support that, Or should I model a new one with a poly count of say 600.

I also thought of another idea would it be possible to put in more vechiles (animals really) other than Arokh that would make multiplayer more fun if you could also ride horses and maybe a horse and cart to carry more than one soilder.

And I was thinking could we implement a battlefield 1942 type gameplay with capture points around the map the more points you control the faster the tickets of the other team go down and the slower yours do. The person who runs out of tickets faster looses.
We coulds make it so you have the Dark Union Vs The Order and instead of having unit types to select people could you'se the experience points to create a character to there liking as the campaign goes on. so if you wanted an archer you could mainly use archery in the feild and by the end of the campaign you'll end up with a fully flegged Archer.

[ASSASSIN]

I was thinking of transferring experience from match to match in MP, but that has a big issue: some players could get much stronger than others and then noone could beat them - and that's no good. So I'll stay at resetting every stat when changing map on server...

As for the engine itself - I'll use an improved version of Quake2 engine, will see what is that capable of. But, I don't really need Rynn hand modells as the game will be 3rd person perspective as I plan. I don't know if I will let people roam in first person view, that will depend later.

Got your mail too btw, and I took a look at the stuff you sent.
The HUD looks nice, I've compared it with my ideas and here is what I have come up with. Thanks, and what do you think of this?

Main menu: the layout of the menu looks nice, I'll prolly try to copy that. As for the moving background... I don't know if it is possible with this engine. I'll try to check it, but I am not entirely sure what to do with it. Maybe I can get an AVI played there, but I don't know yet.

Vehicles: IF I can get it done, I will surely use it. Will see that.

As for the game type in Multiplayer. I am not working on new MP gametypes as long as I need to work on the game itself... it just wouldn't make much sense writing MP for a game which is not ready.
Players wont be able to mix campaign with multi, sorry - it would mean a so high possibility of cheating I can't risk of putting in. Instead of that, I imagine it this way:
As you gain XP in multi, you can spend your skills on 3 skills: melee combat, magic, archery. Each will change your statistics a bit (like increase/decrease HP, alter speed, damage you do, stb) and will vary the types of weapons you can use.

P.S.:is your email addy your MSN addy? It would be more convient to chat in MSN than here lol

[kypster]

yes it is feel free to add me that would be a lot better. (forgive me if I drop of, I'm trying to get ADSL)

Oh and the model isn't of hands that was just the save name, The model is off Rynn I just save my models in stages so when I add the legs I save it as Rynn legs and the hands were the last thing I saved so yeh.

All your reasons are sound about what you want to do I can understand what you mean but Enemy Territory has experience points that go over maps but then you can only make a 3map campaign, so if you join during the campaign it really isn't that long before the next one.

I like your huds design much less obtrusive on the screen then my one is. When it comes to the size of the objects that is.

[ASSASSIN]

Thanks about the HUD - I liked the layout of yours though, tried to copy that.

Downloaded the modell now, I see. As for the multiplayer - I will likely implant level voting system, so I don't think I can make servers have preset list of maps....

[kypster]

sorry about that Assassin my family's main computer is a dogs dinner in the software department at the moment and dropps of very often, so basically what I was saying before I dropped off was I'm not sure how well the Quake 2 engine will handle Drakan like enviroments but I'm sure we could come up with a solution to this that doesn't mean changing engine.

[ASSASSIN]

Well... it should work I think, but I guess we will see.

Judging by the fact Drakan was a REALLY low-polygon engine, I don't think Quake2 would be worse than it; but if it would be, we will have to mess with engine code too - I am not a pro in that, but maybe Drakon Rider can help us out... he could do miracles with the Drakan engine too...

[ASSASSIN]

http://www.geocities.com/assassinhun/te ... edemo1.JPG
(CLICKING ON LINK MAY NOT WORK!! copy and paste the URL into an explorer window)

A base idea. HUD is not complete yet, but show the extense of editing possible on Quake2

[ASSASSIN]

Without stamina bar:
http://www.geocities.com/assassinhun/te ... hedHUD.JPG

and with stamina bar: http://www.geocities.com/assassinhun/te ... edHUD2.JPG

Here is the finished HUD; the bar in the top middle of the screen is the experience bar, below it is the stamina meter (yes, I know it's not really good there and I am wondering where to place it, lol). Stamina will be what all players will hate. As you move, it decreases, and you can move slower - if you are outta stamina, you move at 44% of your top speed. And yes, I got the Drakan:TAG like experiencing done! It works flawlessly now. Suggestions on skill/exp systems are welcomed though.

Current base idea:

The starting experience needed for 2nd level is 100; afterwards, it grows with a 300 each level (so you need to gather 400xp for 3rd level; 700xp for 4th; 1000xp for 5th; etc etc). Each levelup will increase your maximal mana, stamina and your HP by 10.

If you increase melee skill, your HP will increase by 15 but your mana will decrease by 10; magic works backwards (+15mana, -10HP), while ranged skill level increases both HP and mana by 1, and the maximal stamina by 10.
Some weapons/spells may require certain levels of these skills; and having high skill level may result in bonuses:
-from 4 melee skill points your HP automatically regenerates; from more than 10 skill points the regeneration speeds up
-spending points on magic skill will speed up the regneration rate of your mana
-the skill bonus for the ranged combat is not decided yet. The most likely solution is that archers will get +5% initial armor duration bonus at the ranged skill of 3, and each skill point will add +1% to that (up to the max 20%).

Opinions, thoughts, ideas are welcomed.