Mr. Project DX

[CryoS]

do you have any polygon limit? for infested its round 1k per model maximum
dunno though. i can give a lamp a try to begin with

[CryoS]

something like this you had in mind?
[attachment=2796:sdf0004.jpg]

[Kurinn]

something like this you had in mind?
[attachment=2796:sdf0004.jpg]

Very yes. Looks perfect.

A1 can get iffy around high-poly-counts, so I try to keep things as simple as possible. The lamp looks fine in this respect, however.

[treellama]

You can do a lamp like that with just geometry, can't you?

[Kurinn]

You can do a lamp like that with just geometry, can't you?

I have a FEVER, and the only prescription... is more VERTICES.


Edit:
Quick sloppy hand-crafted implementation of in-game model prototype (cockers the fourth?)...
Nobody loves you when you're a polygon; Hence, no more shall you get birthday cards with 5$ tucked inside from Grandma...
Oh well-
Click below for BIG version.


Edit 2:
Okay, I am pretty much done with the rifle (MR-23B), so here is a render just to top off the rest of them...

[Kurinn]

The pistol has been fleshed out. So far, it looks pretty vanilla, so I can do whatever I want with it as things progress.
I am thinking strongly about implementing a Lua laser-sight for the pistol. That's as simple as placing a glowing little dot wherever the player is aiming inside of Triggers.idle()



I have some news which may sadden some of you, but there will be no double wielding of pistols in MPDX. This is to allow for a more interesting secondary trigger feature that I haven't decided on yet.

To make it up to you, here is some Rifled-barrel gratuity....

[L'howon]

I have some news which may sadden some of you, but there will be no double wielding of pistols in MPDX. This is to allow for a more interesting secondary trigger feature that I haven't decided on yet.

While dual wielding is somewhat iconic to Marathon (What with it being the first FPS to introduce it in gameplay), I doubt anyone is really going to lose sleep over the lack of it. The only problem I foresee is that you would need to ensure that either the damage, firing speed, clip size, or any combination of those attributes of the single pistol is upped to compensate.

[Kurinn]

While dual wielding is somewhat iconic to Marathon (What with it being the first FPS to introduce it in gameplay), I doubt anyone is really going to lose sleep over the lack of it. The only problem I foresee is that you would need to ensure that either the damage, firing speed, clip size, or any combination of those attributes of the single pistol is upped to compensate.

Yes, I do plan to address this. First off, the firing speed in Marathon only makes sense if you have never seen a semi-automatic pistol before (or if the recoil was such that even the cybernetically enhanced Marine couldn't do better without losing accuracy). That aside, the fact is that this is going to be a pistol which you can empty in a fairly short time. A fairly short time, even with the increased magazine size I want to put in there (something like 16 rounds).

As for damage, well, we'll see. I plan on using that as the final factor for balancing things out. I can promise you it will not become a nerf gun, however.

[CryoS]

the AR in hand looks neat, but you might want to add a specular to the scope atatchment. right now it looks like plain black.

the pistol is a very good start aswell.
you might want to add a few details to the upper part so it doesnt look all to plain.

[Meta]

I'm actually pretty happy about the no dual weapons thing. It's just unrealistic for a normal person to do outside of B-movie action flicks.

[Kurinn]

After not sleeping for an entire night, I ended up feeling comfortable with not working on this again for a while, and so, I present to you:

Der Shootin' Machine, 9mm
Also known as the M99, a portmanteau of two German handguns which show up in movies a lot.
It'll carry 16 rounds in the magazine, and fire them off as fast as you please.

[Kurinn]

A Few Words on Weapons in MPDX:

I've been discussing in piecemeal fashion some of the concepts I am thinking about for weapons design in MPDX, but I would like to go over it in a more comprehensive fashion just so I can get some solid opinions on what I am doing here.

So far, I have the first two weapons modeled, and am more or less satisfied with how they look, aside from minor tweaking of details which will inevitably come along down the road. I have it in my mind to follow the basic model of Marathon weapons, but at the same time to provide a more realistic and balanced set, based on the setting and the gameplay concept I am trying to establish.

Before, I stated that ammo would be limited at the early accessible portions of the game. The idea being that at some point the player will undertake a set course of actions to unlock an armory or find some kind of caches along the way, depending on the paths taken and the level to which the player investigates the game-world. For this reason, the weapons themselves are going to represent this ammo-scarce environment in a congruent manner. Although they will allow for it, none of these weapons will outright encourage ammo-spitting behavior. All of the weapons in Marathon are geared towards shooting as much as possible, and while that works in the Marathon world, it won't work for MPDX. So, this means that the weapons will be a little more precise, and a little more realistic in the way they fire. The assault rifle will use 3 round bursts and have a full auto secondary fire. The pistol will have a slower delay for each shot, but maybe take a little longer to reload.


Here are some ideas for weapons that have not been created yet:

Rocket Launcher
In the real world, there are few rocket launchers designed to be reloaded over and over again. Most are just one-time shoot and discard tubes. I was fooling with the notion of giving the player a Russian RPG-7 or something like that, as they CAN be reloaded; But, having thought about this, I want to make rockets a lot more valuable to the player, since in a realistic environment, these are essentially one-shot-kill weapons. So, I am pretty much set on having a tube launched weapon which goes away after one use, which is a mechanism already used with the Alien Shotgun in Marathon. For this purpose, I guess I am going to pattern it on the RPG-18.

Directed Energy Weapon
Directed Energy Weapons aren't so far off these days. Then again, the setting is still in the future (albeit only about 20 years as opposed to more than 200), so I can do as I please here. If I could find a good way to make a "laser" with A1, then that would be groovy. I don't want to just shoehorn a plasma pistol into MPDX, because that doesn't really seem like I put much effort in, and it would pretty much unbalance the hell out of everything. Ammunition is another issue. Whatever I figure out for ammo, it's not going to be easy to come by.

Melee Weapon
Unfortunately, a crowbar is already taken, and I haven't seen a single crowbar inside of urban Japan yet so far, so that's out. Katana is a bit cliche too. I am thinking a blunt object might work, but it's just a matter of what. I might hold a vote on that at some point. In any case, I want to have an alternative to the typical fist, because the "fists" are going to be replaced with open hands in a ready posture. I have some ideas about what I might do with that, but anyway, There's going to be a "fist", and then an alternative melee weapon.

Submachine Gun
This will run off of the same ammo as the pistol. The idea here is that it fills the craving for throwing out lots of lead. You will probably not *need* this weapon to complete the game, but it will be there for you if you just want to rip the hell out of something.

Shotgun
If I put this in, it will be very, very hard to find. Kind of like an easter egg. I will put ammo for it EVERYWHERE though. Tucked into every nook and cranny where nobody will look, there will be a lonely, singular shotgun shell. People will go insane trying to figure out where the fuck I put he shotgun, and every time they think they've found it, they will only be rewarded with yet another vexing shotgun shell.

Grenades
I am still looking at ways to implement hand-thrown grenades into the game in a clever way. If I do this, they will be slightly more prevalent than rocket launchers. The engine doesn't support time-fusing of projectiles, so I am thinking of using Lua to emulate that kind of effect.


And that's about it for the layout of weapons. If you have any opinions or ideas, lay them on me.

[L'howon]

Alright, you wanted thoughts - I'll give you thoughts. Lots of thoughts.

First off - The pistol looks incredibly realistic (But don't think you can sneak that HL2 pistol back-end sight past me). Also, your pistol gun-barrel =
* Little known fact - if you ever think that the Doomsday Machine here resembles a windsock dipped in concrete, you're dead on. Because of budget restraints towards the end of filming that season of Star Trek, the crew had to scrap an elaborate Doomsday Machine model they were working on for something less ...expensive. One bucket of concrete, one windsock and a couple of cans of paint later, voila! Doomsday Machine. *

As far as the rest of your weapons go, you've obviously thought out exactly how the weapon balance is going to mesh with gameplay. I see no problems with what your proposing, though unless this is some sort of HL2 dystopian future I doubt shotguns would hide themselves like that. Regardless, please keep up the good work on MPDX. I hope the Pretty Committee gets back to you on a name sometime soon though.

On a more personal, curious note, in that screenshot of your computer what was the OS 9 menubar item for?

[Kurinn]

Alright, you wanted thoughts - I'll give you thoughts. Lots of thoughts.

First off - The pistol looks incredibly realistic (But don't think you can sneak that HL2 pistol back-end sight past me). Also, your pistol gun-barrel =
* Little known fact - if you ever think that the Doomsday Machine here resembles a windsock dipped in concrete, you're dead on. Because of budget restraints towards the end of filming that season of Star Trek, the crew had to scrap an elaborate Doomsday Machine model they were working on for something less ...expensive. One bucket of concrete, one windsock and a couple of cans of paint later, voila! Doomsday Machine. *

As far as the rest of your weapons go, you've obviously thought out exactly how the weapon balance is going to mesh with gameplay. I see no problems with what your proposing, though unless this is some sort of HL2 dystopian future I doubt shotguns would hide themselves like that. Regardless, please keep up the good work on MPDX. I hope the Pretty Committee gets back to you on a name sometime soon though.

Fascinating. I did not realize that they managed to pull that over on me with just a windsock, concrete, & paint. I'll have to watch that again.

As for the shotgun, it's a joke in two parts. For one thing, shotguns are the bread and butter of FPS games. Doom, Quake, etc... all are BUILT on shotguns. The WSTE-M is probably the most charming weapon in Marathon. Everybody loves shotguns, and hence I figure the one best thing I could do to hurt and confuse people who expected the same-old-same-old is to deprive everyone of their shotgun fix. Secondly, Japan is serious about gun control. The majority of the few people who privately own firearms (in a legal capacity) in this country are hunters. So, probably the most common firearm in Japan outside of those found with police or criminals, would be a simple twin-barrel shotgun. These are most commonly used to hunt crows in this country, where they are considered a plague unequaled by any other invasive species in Japan, save for your garden variety resident gaijin (yours truly). So, whereas you would expect to find a shotgun well before you find a military-restricted weapon like a rocket launcher, the absurd irony pretty much demolishes that. I guess it's fairly simple, but I am lacking sleep, so there is a good explanation. I guess if you were in Japan, the only three places where you would have any hope of finding heavy weapons would be the Police, the Yakuza, and the Military. That is probably going to be the best hint you could give anyone on how to discover and unlock the weapons caches in MPDX.

The menu is for Classic, which is how I use Forge and Anvil, along with whatever other pre-OS X applications I need or want to use. It's helpful for reminding me if I have Classic running or not, which is a question that comes up a lot given the instability of applications in Classic and the tendency they have to crash so horribly that it forces Classic to quit.

[Kurinn]

Opening remote connection...
Linked to secure net...
Connection Established

"Per Despero ad Extrarius"

[CryoS]

if you need a sniper rifle, or rifle of some sort i have one lying here, ill upload a pic in a min.
It's quite heavy, so if you want t ouse it in A1 you might consider depolyize it... (998760 polys)
EDIT:
here are the pics.
rifle gallery



also
the lamp i made got 270 polys.

[L'howon]

The menu is for Classic, which is how I use Forge and Anvil, along with whatever other pre-OS X applications I need or want to use. It's helpful for reminding me if I have Classic running or not, which is a question that comes up a lot given the instability of applications in Classic and the tendency they have to crash so horribly that it forces Classic to quit.

I should've probably stated what I was trying to say better, but I think I might've been distracted by studying. What I meant was what application were you using because unless your computer is running 10.3.9 w/ Classic emulator I don't know of any emulator that displays a menubar item (Basilisk, Sheepshaver.)

[treellama]

What I meant was what application were you using because unless your computer is running 10.3.9 w/ Classic emulator I don't know of any emulator that displays a menubar item (Basilisk, Sheepshaver.)

That menu bar item is the standard menu for Classic, which is also the application he said he was using. It uses that icon in 10.4 too.

[L'howon]

That menu bar item is the standard menu for Classic, which is also the application he said he was using. It uses that icon in 10.4 too.

Well call me a goat, I never realized it has that function. I never realized 10.4 can emulate OS 9 either - though that's more because my only experience with 10.4 is on Intel computers.

[Kurinn]

Well call me a goat, I never realized it has that function. I never realized 10.4 can emulate OS 9 either - though that's more because my only experience with 10.4 is on Intel computers.

10.4 can do whatever you want it to, just as long as you ask nicely.

[Kurinn]

if you need a sniper rifle, or rifle of some sort i have one lying here, ill upload a pic in a min.
It's quite heavy, so if you want t ouse it in A1 you might consider depolyize it... (998760 polys)
EDIT:
here are the pics.
rifle gallery
also
the lamp i made got 270 polys.

Thanks, but there just won't be a sniper rifle in the game. There is no point, because of what I mentioned earlier. If you can make a "sniper shotgun", it might be fun though.

All the same, that is a very nice rifle, and you obviously put a lot of care in the modeling of such. I hope that sometime eventually I will be as good at this as you are.

The lamp is proof of your artistry as well. 270 polys is way more than we need though. If you can cut it down, say by removing the cross-bars in the middle of the lamp's sides, and just have the inwards-extruded rice paper areas against the wooden frame, we can fake the rest with texture. The places where I would put the lamps like those in the game are going to be somewhat juicy in terms of 3d scenery objects, so we want to be very resourceful.

If you don't mind, would you be interested in making one of these?


It fits the theme, and more importantly, I can make the bedframe just by using map geometry and one of my wood textures. There are several things to keep in mind though, mainly that the poly count wants to stay as low as possible, and also that the overall outline of the object must be as close to a rectangle as possible so it doesn't look weird when it's laid on top of the map geometry. Since "BAD THINGS" happen when a 3d scenery object overlaps the edge of a map poly in Aleph One, I'm going to try to tweak the shape and size of the poly this thing will sit on as closely as possible, so if it is in a (mostly) rectangular shape, it saves time and poly count on the map.

That's my request, and I think it suits your skill level a lot better than some lamp or other beginner object I can do myself. I would be honored if you would join the project, on whatever basis of time and effort you would like.

[CryoS]

Thanks, but there just won't be a sniper rifle in the game. There is no point, because of what I mentioned earlier. If you can make a "sniper shotgun", it might be fun though.

Yeah i figured. since i dont use it for anything i am trying to give it to someone that might need it.

I hope that sometime eventually I will be as good at this as you are.

I have modelled almost constantly for 2 ½ years now. so learning by doing, you'll get there eventually

The lamp is proof of your artistry as well. 270 polys is way more than we need though. If you can cut it down, say by removing the cross-bars in the middle of the lamp's sides, and just have the inwards-extruded rice paper areas against the wooden frame, we can fake the rest with texture. The places where I would put the lamps like those in the game are going to be somewhat juicy in terms of 3d scenery objects, so we want to be very resourceful.

since i used some uneccesary extruding, i got some extra polys, wont be hard to scale down at all. ill do it when i get some free time.

EDIT:
[attachment=2803:sdf0005.jpg]
so far its down to 208 polygons

If you don't mind, would you be interested in making one of these?

*IMAGE*

It fits the theme, and more importantly, I can make the bedframe just by using map geometry and one of my wood textures. There are several things to keep in mind though, mainly that the poly count wants to stay as low as possible, and also that the overall outline of the object must be as close to a rectangle as possible so it doesn't look weird when it's laid on top of the map geometry. Since "BAD THINGS" happen when a 3d scenery object overlaps the edge of a map poly in Aleph One, I'm going to try to tweak the shape and size of the poly this thing will sit on as closely as possible, so if it is in a (mostly) rectangular shape, it saves time and poly count on the map.

i can make a lowpoly bed for you, it wont be hard at all. i can put some depth in the cloth when its done, using spare polygons too. also i made the "paper" on the lamp partially transparent, and a soft shader inside it, so it does actually look like a lamp ill post a screenie in a min.

That's my request, and I think it suits your skill level a lot better than some lamp or other beginner object I can do myself. I would be honored if you would join the project, on whatever basis of time and effort you would like.

I would be delighted to join the project. but have in mind that syndicate and nova goes on forehand. (mainy since those 2 projects are on my top list)

nice talking to you.

[L'howon]

10.4 can do whatever you want it to, just as long as you ask nicely.

<insert mandatory technological device insertion joke here.>

[Kurinn]

SMG is fleshed out. I got a little creative with this one.

[CryoS]

looks like a good start, keep up.