At worst case, I/another coder could make a new quake map entity, moveCube or somesuch, which would move when it was shot or ran into. Of course, it would take Quake's friction (which can be changed for different surfaces) into account and slow down over time unless it ran into something. Of course, it would be possible just to make it a "living" entity (a bot if you will) which has no movement ability and looks like a cube.

@lnsu, on Sep 12 2008, 07:18 PM, said in Avara 2:

At worst case, I/another coder could make a new quake map entity, moveCube or somesuch, which would move when it was shot or ran into. Of course, it would take Quake's friction (which can be changed for different surfaces) into account and slow down over time unless it ran into something. Of course, it would be possible just to make it a "living" entity (a bot if you will) which has no movement ability and looks like a cube.

Interesting, due to my lack of knowledge on the subject, I had not known that. But yes, given this new information, I believe it will be possible to use the Quake 3 engine for this.

On a side note, the hector model is still complete in that I need to finalize my concept for the scout docking area.. thing.. hole..., and model it out.

Besides that, I need to model new versions of the parasites, guards, ufos, grenades and the like.

Take note that the guards and ufos will look pretty much the same, but there will be added detail.

As to the parasites... that's a whole 'nother matter.

As soon as I finish the modeling/texturing/rigging, I'm going to do some more research into the Quake 3 engine.

Also, to clarify, would you suggest that, using the quake 3 engine, this would be a stand alone game, or a mod?

This post has been edited by Daedalus969 : 13 September 2008 - 06:31 AM

As one more note.

**I plan on completing this. No matter what I need to learn, even if self-taught, I will complete this. I will not back out. I will not back down, no matter how long it takes.

As a note, the game Prey 2, based on the Quake 4 engine(I believe) was in developement for I think.. 14 years. I don't think this will take that long, especially since it is mostly going to be multiplayer centered, and the missions will mostly be copies.

**

I have the same opinion of Dawn of Infinity. ALL quake engine mods are stand-alone games. They aren't "plugins" in the typical ambrosia game sense, but because Quake 3 has an open-source engine, we will take the latest version of the working engine, and modify it to meet our needs. We don't need to pay Id (the original Quake 3 developer) anything for legal use of their engine, nether do we or our players need to buy Quake 3 to run the game.

Anyways, if you could get the Quake 3 engine to compile on your computer, it would be a great help for dawn of infinity.

@lnsu, on Sep 13 2008, 09:36 AM, said in Avara 2:

I have the same opinion of Dawn of Infinity. ALL quake engine mods are stand-alone games. They aren't "plugins" in the typical ambrosia game sense, but because Quake 3 has an open-source engine, we will take the latest version of the working engine, and modify it to meet our needs. We don't need to pay Id (the original Quake 3 developer) anything for legal use of their engine, nether do we or our players need to buy Quake 3 to run the game.

Anyways, if you could get the Quake 3 engine to compile on your computer, it would be a great help for dawn of infinity.

I'm pretty sure it's possible to compile on a mac(computer I'm using), because there exists Tremulous(a quake 3 mod), for the mac, along with other several things.

Anyways, as I have mentioned, I am rather new to this. What do I need to find if the engine will compile on my computer or not?

Umm... If you aren't already decently familiar with C programming and knowing how to compile it on your own, don't worry about helping the code side just yet. I'm having enough issues on my end and I (somewhat) know that I'm doing.

@lnsu, on Sep 13 2008, 05:03 PM, said in Avara 2:

Umm... If you aren't already decently familiar with C programming and knowing how to compile it on your own, don't worry about helping the code side just yet. I'm having enough issues on my end and I (somewhat) know that I'm doing.

Alright.. But when I do, I will.

Other than that, I still have much work to do on the art side of things.

In regards to the parasites, if any of you have opinions on how they should look, organic or non-organic, please describe your idea to me, and if possible, draw a picture.

The Quake 3 engine is nice since it's widely available and is known to compile on OS X, Linux and Windows, but what I was suggesting earlier dealing with freeSolids (the ice box cubes), is allowing things to tumble nicely. I've seen the Half Life 2 engine do nice collision in that respect, but I don't think I've seen the Quake 3 engine do it. Then again, that may simply be a matter of never having looked for it before.
Another issue that ties into the choice of game engine is fundamental map design and how it ties into the feel of the original game. Avara maps are a blank, limitless plane with objects added to create the map. I'm not sure how Havoc works, but all the Quake 3 maps I've seen have been pretty small, and appear to use the classic Quake style of passages carved out of solid space. The carved-out map is great for modeling interior spaces, but sucks if you want to make a natural looking outdoor area... You have to create retaining walls and panoramas of surrounding landscape and such. Some games use a simple mesh for landscape... Lugaru and Thinktanks come to mind, but interior modeling is limited in those cases. I guess a combination of the two would be best, but an engine that can support sufficiently large carved-out maps could emulate a mesh landscape.

As for the parasites, I'm thinking they would be like a kind of smart mine, laying dormant and blending in with the map, attacking machinery that wanders by. I would keep them as technological devices, but go for a somewhat organic look. Keep the original sort of egg-shaped body, but simplifying it more so it looks like a rock. Add a groove down either side (or three spaced out 120°) that glow when it activates... It's means of propulsion. Have the front open up into 6 grippers when it gets close to it's target, exposing the energy draining hardware. Once attached, have the propulsion grooves glow brighter as it builds a charge until it eventually detonates.

Kinda on a tangent, I always thought HECTORs were missing manipulator arms. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to worry about it in the original game, with its processing limitations and all, but pounding on switches with a volley of plasma doesn't really make sense, and how exactly did picking up goodies work? Further, arms could add some interesting mechanics, such as grabbing onto/hanging from objects. What brought this to mind was the parasites taking time to build up a charge before exploding... If the HECTOR had arms, you might be able to grab it and wrench it off the hull before it goes off. Of course, that would leave you holding onto an active parasite, disposing of which could also be interesting... Throw it and shoot it, or maybe stick it to an enemy or other power-producing device?

If the parasites are going to have levitation technology, it doesn't really make a difference, but I played around with an idea for a modified scout back when I still played Avara regularly: It consisted of a torus-shaped body, with a set of turbine-like blades in the middle opening, spinning in one direction and a second set around the outside edge spinning in the opposite. All the blades were angled to blow air downward, but since the two sets spun in opposite directions, the body would stay stationary, kinda like a twin-rotor helicopter.

This post has been edited by bobski : 16 September 2008 - 01:00 AM

@bobski, on Sep 15 2008, 10:56 PM, said in Avara 2:

As for the parasites, I'm thinking they would be like a kind of smart mine, laying dormant and blending in with the map, attacking machinery that wanders by. I would keep them as technological devices, but go for a somewhat organic look. Keep the original sort of egg-shaped body, but simplifying it more so it looks like a rock. Add a groove down either side (or three spaced out 120°) that glow when it activates... It's means of propulsion. Have the front open up into 6 grippers when it gets close to it's target, exposing the energy draining hardware. Once attached, have the propulsion grooves glow brighter as it builds a charge until it eventually detonates.

Kinda on a tangent, I always thought HECTORs were missing manipulator arms. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to worry about it in the original game, with its processing limitations and all, but pounding on switches with a volley of plasma doesn't really make sense, and how exactly did picking up goodies work? Further, arms could add some interesting mechanics, such as grabbing onto/hanging from objects. What brought this to mind was the parasites taking time to build up a charge before exploding... If the HECTOR had arms, you might be able to grab it and wrench it off the hull before it goes off. Of course, that would leave you holding onto an active parasite, disposing of which could also be interesting... Throw it and shoot it, or maybe stick it to an enemy or other power-producing device?

@bobski, on Sep 15 2008, 10:56 PM, said in Avara 2:

The Quake 3 engine is nice since it's widely available and is known to compile on OS X, Linux and Windows, but what I was suggesting earlier dealing with freeSolids (the ice box cubes), is allowing things to tumble nicely. I've seen the Half Life 2 engine do nice collision in that respect, but I don't think I've seen the Quake 3 engine do it. Then again, that may simply be a matter of never having looked for it before.
Another issue that ties into the choice of game engine is fundamental map design and how it ties into the feel of the original game. Avara maps are a blank, limitless plane with objects added to create the map. I'm not sure how Havoc works, but all the Quake 3 maps I've seen have been pretty small, and appear to use the classic Quake style of passages carved out of solid space. The carved-out map is great for modeling interior spaces, but sucks if you want to make a natural looking outdoor area... You have to create retaining walls and panoramas of surrounding landscape and such. Some games use a simple mesh for landscape... Lugaru and Thinktanks come to mind, but interior modeling is limited in those cases. I guess a combination of the two would be best, but an engine that can support sufficiently large carved-out maps could emulate a mesh landscape.

Couldn't we just make a big endless plane and put a ring of teleporters out a certain distance like they did for the original avara maps?

Quote

If the parasites are going to have levitation technology, it doesn't really make a difference, but I played around with an idea for a modified scout back when I still played Avara regularly: It consisted of a torus-shaped body, with a set of turbine-like blades in the middle opening, spinning in one direction and a second set around the outside edge spinning in the opposite. All the blades were angled to blow air downward, but since the two sets spun in opposite directions, the body would stay stationary, kinda like a twin-rotor helicopter.

Is it possible you could do a quick sketch of that? I can't quite picture it. I myself have been trying to come up with a slightly revised scout, to allow the Hectors to realistically ride it.

Besides that, I haven't thought of other responses yet.

This post has been edited by Daedalus969 : 16 September 2008 - 06:25 AM

@daedalus969, on Sep 16 2008, 07:24 AM, said in Avara 2:

Couldn't we just make a big endless plane and put a ring of teleporters out a certain distance like they did for the original avara maps?

Yeah, I guess, though the original maps used a single tele for the border... It just had a null zone setting that creates a hole in the center of the teleporter's sphere in which it selects targets, forming a thick-walled bubble. Unfortunately, flawlessly flat endless planes are both boring and unnatural-looking, so support for some other mode would be nice. A mesh could allow for nice variations in slope and material (traction behavior and step sounds and such) and could even blend down to the basic plane at the edges. You could make a plane in a hollowed-out solid space map, but you would still have to put walls at the edges. Really, if we could just get nice per-polygon collision detection, one could make terrain objects - big complex models that you could walk on and through, placed in the basic endless-plane environment. That is, assuming the polygons of the models could be colored/textured/traction/sound mapped individually.

@daedalus969, on Sep 16 2008, 07:24 AM, said in Avara 2:

Is it possible you could do a quick sketch of that? I can't quite picture it.

Here's a render of a low-poly model I threw together in meshworks and imported to infini-d back in '04:

Aside from completely reworking it so it looks decent, you could throw a cage over the blades to make it surfable, assuming the HECTOR's feet don't block the airflow too much.

This post has been edited by bobski : 16 September 2008 - 08:38 PM

Wait, how why would a hector ride a scout?
It is possible to ring the playing field with teleporters in Quake 3. Also, Havoc costs money. Quake 3 GPL does not.
It is also possible to make an outdoor map with hills and fields and trees and such in quake (and it has been done), as well as it is possible to make avara-style maps, with mostly flat ground and objects stuck in. Quake has a pretty good per-polygon collision detection system, but usually in traditional quake games, if your close enough to the opponent that polygon overlap becomes an issue, one of you should be dead already.

@lnsu, on Sep 16 2008, 07:33 PM, said in Avara 2:

Wait, how why would a hector ride a scout?

You obviously never played much Avara.

<snip>

This post has been edited by Consul Bob : 16 September 2008 - 11:27 PM

@lnsu, on Sep 16 2008, 04:33 PM, said in Avara 2:

Wait, how why would a hector ride a scout?

It happened during many games that I played, mostly on the map "A Bridge Too Far." Quite a favorite of mine that map was, but yes. Players found a way to park the scout by calling it back, crouching, then canceling the call back, making the scout available to jump on by the Hector, after which players flew around the level, or, if they had fallen and survived, get back on the bridge.

This post has been edited by Daedalus969 : 17 September 2008 - 12:16 AM

@bobski, on Sep 16 2008, 12:56 AM, said in Avara 2:

The Quake 3 engine is nice since it's widely available and is known to compile on OS X, Linux and Windows, but what I was suggesting earlier dealing with freeSolids (the ice box cubes), is allowing things to tumble nicely. I've seen the Half Life 2 engine do nice collision in that respect, but I don't think I've seen the Quake 3 engine do it. Then again, that may simply be a matter of never having looked for it before.

Unity 3d is probably more realistic of an engine, since it has a much lower cost on entry than Source and the id Tech 3 is at least 5 years in the past. It also supports both OpenGL and DirectX, and multiple browser plugins.

I know this may be viewed as a pretty stupid question, but I need to know the general scale of the Hector in comparison with a Human. This is mainly for map scale issues.

HECTORs are approximately 2 meters tall IIRC.

yes, but unity still costs money. And although ioquake3 is "officially" five years old, it hasn't been sitting stagnant. Its been continually improved with bugfixes, updates to run on newer hardware, a new and better format for 3d models was added, and mumble audio support is being added, IIRC. Not to mention that now sounds sorta come from where they are "originating" in game. And probably many other improvements I've forgotten about. If anyone wants to buy the unity license, go right agead and code avara 2 in it.

@daedalus969, on Sep 13 2008, 05:57 PM, said in Avara 2:

Anyways, as I have mentioned, I am rather new to this. What do I need to find if the engine will compile on my computer or not?

A programmer?

Sorry to be cynical, and don't get me wrong, holys### am I excited, but I'm pretty sure I speak for the remaining 'Avara community' (if you can even call 8-10 people that are split up into little groups a community) when I say that we've definitely heard promises of Avara II accompanied with screenshots before.

I actually carry around a thumbdrive, and on this thumbdrive, besides obvious stuff like IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS, there also resides a 68k mac emulator loaded with an Avara hd image. If you still need more concept art and/or examples from the original game, I'm your man! ( andy dot halstead at gmail dot com )

Also: Avara using the q3 engine would be interesting , perhaps even playable , but you may need to look into something less restrictive if possible

again also: this will be the third Avara II "developer" I've given my email to, to personally offer my help...

Avara Manual said:

...The vehicle you control in the world of Avara is a Hostile Environment Combat and Transport Operations Remote unit, affectionately known as the H.E.C.T.O.R. The HECTOR stands two meters high and is equipped with an array of weapons, a scout, and a video camera so you can see things from the scout's point of view.

HECTORs come in three hull types ...

Oh, and one more thing, hotline://avaraline.net is still up, and while it has a limited amount of files related to avara, a couple of the level designer greats (and the developer of jAvara, dead dead dead) still idle there

hotline clients