Tario Saga: Road To Araboth

Discuss and unveil current Marathon projects.
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The Man
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Looks cool. Definitely captures the feeling of being a part of a much larger conflict in a way a lot of Marathon scenarios don’t, and there’s a sort of trench warfare feeling to some of it that I don’t often see.

A couple notes:
  • I forgot to mention that the default Aleph One video export is ridiculously low quality. You should go into your preferences file and change movie_export_video_quality from 50 to 100. Make sure your text editor doesn’t change the regular quotes to curly quotes, or A1 will overwrite your prefs with the defaults. (It might be worth backing it up just in case.) The location of your preferences file will vary depending upon your OS. Up to you whether it’s worth re-rendering the above video with the correct preferences, but it will look immeasurably better.
  • Might want to slow down the loon in the third level. It sounds like it plays every two seconds right now. Change it to seven or ten, maybe.
Other than that, I’m pretty disoriented watching it, but that’s probably largely because I don’t have any idea what’s going on and what a lot of the items do. And I assume a lot of that was intentional. I like a lot of the sounds in particular, and the plant scenery is particularly cool.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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WeirdoYYY
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The Man wrote:Looks cool. Definitely captures the feeling of being a part of a much larger conflict in a way a lot of Marathon scenarios don’t, and there’s a sort of trench warfare feeling to some of it that I don’t often see.

A couple notes:
  • I forgot to mention that the default Aleph One video export is ridiculously low quality. You should go into your preferences file and change movie_export_video_quality from 50 to 100. Make sure your text editor doesn’t change the regular quotes to curly quotes, or A1 will overwrite your prefs with the defaults. (It might be worth backing it up just in case.) The location of your preferences file will vary depending upon your OS. Up to you whether it’s worth re-rendering the above video with the correct preferences, but it will look immeasurably better.
  • Might want to slow down the loon in the third level. It sounds like it plays every two seconds right now. Change it to seven or ten, maybe.
Other than that, I’m pretty disoriented watching it, but that’s probably largely because I don’t have any idea what’s going on and what a lot of the items do. And I assume a lot of that was intentional. I like a lot of the sounds in particular, and the plant scenery is particularly cool.
Yeah I didn't realize that for the quality, will do that for next time. Also yeah the Loon is looped and I haven't fixed that yet haha, it's very annoying.

Glad you enjoyed it though. The sound effects are either self made or just freebies dug up around the internet. I want to get some voice overs maybe for the other sounds but otherwise it's not too necessary since it's not "alien" and I don't think there's a need for guys to be going "HEY!" everytime they are activated.

The items are pretty straightforward. The Trench Rifle has a "scope" to it which sort of imitates sights and critical hits. The thing I am trying to figure out is how to get it so that a "charged" shot doesn't count for more than 1 round.

On the level where the video ends, you get a Shotgun/Grenade launcher combo which is probably my favourite one as it causes a lot of carnage. There's a minigun for really tough opponents and big groups, a rocket launcher, and an "alien" weapon from the game's past which can be found in various levels.
"He looked at his hands, but the fire in his eyes made him blink."
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The Man
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Thanks for the explanations.

You can probably fix the charged shot thing with Lua. IDK enough about the specifics of the scenario’s mechanics to write a script right now, though.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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ravenshining
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You could conceivably handle the sniper by giving the primary trigger a burst count of 3, I think, and zero error. Then it looks like you're firing one shot, but really you're firing 4. Then cut the damage on the shot created by primary to 1/4 (or re-use a shot from a wimpier gun). A side effect (besides the 0 error) is that shots might sometimes appear to go through a kill, but that may be desirable for firing a powerful round at short range. Also, make sure Horizontal and Vertical wander are turned off for the shot.
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WeirdoYYY
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ravenshining wrote:You could conceivably handle the sniper by giving the primary trigger a burst count of 3, I think, and zero error. Then it looks like you're firing one shot, but really you're firing 4. Then cut the damage on the shot created by primary to 1/4 (or re-use a shot from a wimpier gun). A side effect (besides the 0 error) is that shots might sometimes appear to go through a kill, but that may be desirable for firing a powerful round at short range. Also, make sure Horizontal and Vertical wander are turned off for the shot.
Might try this. Would just need to fix the HUD which was a bit of a bitch to get set up right.
"He looked at his hands, but the fire in his eyes made him blink."
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WeirdoYYY
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Hello everyone, this project isn't dead. I have just taken some time off from it and doing life things in the process.

While tweaking physics and what not, most of the work lately has gone into redoing some levels. Simply put, a good four out of the twenty just didn't look or feel right. I've finished three and have one more before I stop myself from adding anymore shit to levels that I probably don't need. My ultimate goal now is just to get it to a playable state so I can open it up to people and get feedback/assistance before putting it out in it's final form. I've had a lot of fun making this and it's been a bit of an obsession for the past year and a half now so I hope it pays off enough that it leads me to create more content or continue the story in some capacity.

So what's left...

I have made much better looking gun models as I get slightly more proficient at Blender. I will redux most if not all of the weapons so none of these are final as far as I'm concerned.

Sprites will face a similar overhaul over time but I think they're mostly okay. I do intend to fix what my friend has called the "Dick Snake". While I find this hilarious, I would like my snake to look less like a dick if possible so I'll probably just redo him completely. The player sprites are currently in a bad state but they're low priority obviously since this is all single player. I might also add a bug or two for some general ambiance.

There are still some scenery things to implement. I have to turn off the transparency for what was once the "blood" scenery object if anyone knows how to do that. I'd like to add some more vegetation, some rubble, and maybe some stuff like flags.

Sounds are mostly done, I need to fix some of the outdoor ones and add a couple things to some specific door types. Music is still on the agenda but may be something for down the road as the tracks are kind of in purgatory right now. Another thing I need to implement is a control over the "teleport in" and "teleport out" sounds. Basically the "teleportation" is mostly done by helicopters (Think Damage Inc.) but some levels don't make sense for that to be the case so I need to find a way to script in turning it off for some levels and not on others.

Textures still occasionally get tweaked and I'm still fixing a couple spots on maps that I find need fixing but these are things I'll probably need feedback on. In the future as well it would be nice to do HD textures if I am able to pull it off. Also HD weapons, HUD, etc..

Maps as I said are pretty much all done however I am looking to maybe make some survival maps for the future or open it up to anyone if they want to make some multiplayer stuff but that's not my forte so that won't be for awhile.

If anyone can or wants to help I am open to fielding these things. For now, here is some more screen caps.

The exposition level looks way better without sunshine...
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The Dick Snake also fails to simply make sense as a sprite and frequently dips into the ground. He's just not very menacing right now...
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Overhauled a bit of the church level although I need to retexture it in the main area.
Image

Replaced a level with some geometry that makes a bit more sense. Here, you're infiltrating a temple and clearing it of all hostiles.
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"He looked at his hands, but the fire in his eyes made him blink."
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