Grimm: Quest for the Gatherer's Key v0.2 Released!

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

Hey guys! (and girls too!)

My name is Bastian, former member of the Hexen:Edge of Chaos mod and (far too old) Doom 3 modder. For the last year I have been working on a mod called Grimm:Quest for the Gatherer's Key which was released yesterday and is available as free download for everyone that owns Doom 3 and it runs on any platform (win/linux/mac/consoles) that can run doom3 mods. :)

This is not a commercial title, it is a Total Conversion mod like the Dark Mod or Hexen:Edge of Chaos and features around 4 hours of non-stop gameplay.

If you're interested then check it out over at my moddb profile
http://www.moddb.com/mods/grimm-que...e-gatherers-key

Gameplay videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/BloodRayne001?feature=mhee

Screenshots:
http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00026.2.jpg http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00080.1.jpg http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00079.1.jpg http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00072.1.jpg

http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00066.jpg http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00057.1.jpg http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00054.2.jpg

There are separate steam launch instructions.

- Unpack the downloaded file into the root directory where you Doom3 steam folder is located (e.g. c:\program files\steam\steamapps\doom 3\)
Make sure that your unpack program has the option set that allows it to create folders. If all goes well it should create a subfolder in your doom3 directory called 'grimm' (without the quotes of course).

- Go into the shortcut options for your doom 3 game (by selecting the properties for the game from the Steam Library) and add the following to the shortcut: +set fs_game grimm +set fs_basegame grimm +exec vintage when you want to play grimm.
You can also start grimm from one of the batch files in the grimm folder.

I hope I posted this in the right place, please let me know if I didn't and I'll try to fix my mess!

And I surely hope that you enjoy the mod and let me know if there are any issues! :)

ps: There are known issues with AMD cards that can easily be fixed. If you have an AMD/ATI card please read these instructions before running the game: http://www.moddb.com/mods/grimm-que...aphical-options

Last edited by BloodRayne on 11-04-12 at 19:05

08-14-12 07:19 #

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printz
CRAZY DUMB ZEALOT

Posts: 8137
Registered: 06-06

Wow, it looks quite interesting, I love the Quake-like theme. I wish I could try it now; I'll try when I get back home to the better computer. Note that you should fix all the links that appear with ellipsis, they're wrong.

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08-14-12 09:06 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

Thanks, Printz. I fixed them. Didn't even see that! :O

I hope you have fun with the mod, and let me know what you liked and disliked about it! :)

08-14-12 09:34 #

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Coopersville
Get Psyched!

Posts: 2904
Registered: 10-01

That actually looks really awesome. I'm going to have to give it a try at some point.

08-16-12 23:44 #

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DoomUK
Forum Spammer

Posts: 3649
Registered: 04-04

Haven't played the mod so I can't comment on anything except the visuals, but there's way too much bloom in some of these shots, in conjunction with some sloppy lighting. I know that it's fashionable amongst a certain sector of the community to have bloom in your Doom 3 mod these days, so maybe it's just a matter of personal taste, but there's no excuse for having large areas of completely unlit surfaces when the surrounding lighting wouldn't permit that pitch blackness in reality. And especially when there's light sources that don't appear to me emitting any light. Id got away with it because I believe they were being conservative with the number of lights per room, and back in 2004 no one cared because we were all enamoured with how pretty idtech4 looked otherwise.

Not sure if I'm nitpicking something that's WIP, and as far as the lighting goes I know things always look a little brighter in-game than they do in screenshots. But based on what I see I'm just being honest with you.

08-18-12 09:09 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

DoomUK said:
Haven't played the mod so I can't comment on anything except the visuals, but there's way too much bloom in some of these shots, in conjunction with some sloppy lighting. I know that it's fashionable amongst a certain sector of the community to have bloom in your Doom 3 mod these days, so maybe it's just a matter of personal taste, but there's no excuse for having large areas of completely unlit surfaces when the surrounding lighting wouldn't permit that pitch blackness in reality. And especially when there's light sources that don't appear to me emitting any light. Id got away with it because I believe they were being conservative with the number of lights per room, and back in 2004 no one cared because we were all enamoured with how pretty idtech4 looked otherwise.

Not sure if I'm nitpicking something that's WIP, and as far as the lighting goes I know things always look a little brighter in-game than they do in screenshots. But based on what I see I'm just being honest with you.

Thanks for your feedback, I'm going to reply honestly to you.

It's a pity that often people react to such small things that are such a small part of the experience of the game. Bloom is nothing in Grimm. It's just an option you can turn on or off, and then there are about 7 different properties you can configure about said bloom.. Did you know..there's also HDR, Glare, Parralax mapping, Screen Space ambient occlusion and many more visual options in Grimm?

Did you know? Incorporating these options, which are fully customizable and can be turned off completely, took me all of 30 minutes work. Making the rest of the game took me 800+ hours work.
Which area do you think interests me more to hear feedback about?

When you turn all that riffraff off you still have Grimm, with it's own unique old-skool gameplay identity. I so wish people would react on the gameplay instead of these kinds of nitpicks that are just.... irrelevant. It's just not important or relevant because you can configure it completely. Of course you can't make everybody happy. But I'd much rather get some feedback about the actual game than about configurable options and how they aren't configured correctly to such and so's taste.

Thanks anyway!
I do sincerely hope you find the time to play the 3 hours of gameplay that Grimm offers and feedback me on that. :)

Last edited by BloodRayne on 08-19-12 at 14:13

08-19-12 14:00 #

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DoomUK
Forum Spammer

Posts: 3649
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It's not just the bloom, though. There's some lovely architecture and detailing going on that the lighting isn't doing justice in some of the screens. In my opinion.

You're right though, maybe I should play the mod before criticising certain aspects of it. But when you post screenshots you're inviting feedback on the visuals of your work, not how it actually plays.

08-19-12 14:42 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

Yes that is true. It is the trade-off for getting attention to the game, if nothing is shown then certainly no one will look. Thanks for pointing that out. :)

When you create an entire game on your own it's hard to get all aspects perfect. I might certainly go over certain areas again to relight them or adjust lighting. On the other hand the Doom 3 engine simply doesn't allow for more than 2 lights to hit any area without a significant cost in performance. I am always limited to 2 lights per surface and the engine prefers that each surface it only hit by one light. This means that I have to sculpt the map around the lighting so I can manually split off brushes around lights. In that way I can make a wall with many torches while each surface is still hit only once. Lighting intricate details with multiple light sources is a very costly thing to do in this engine. And the larger an area is, the less lighting details can be added due to the fact that each area must have at least one overall light to create a somewhat natural lighting condition.

So I had to work outside the engine: All the lighting really is completely customizable now from the menus. There are no completely dark spots in the game, that is impossible due to the way all textures are created. So brightness, gamma and ambient light settings are there to configure the lighting of the game.

Then there's the whole issue with monitor calibration and whatnot. For that I will add a new screen to the menu soon for monitor calibration. Not everyone has their palette and gamma ramps set to desktop DTP work so many users will have too bright of a picture and many users will have too dark a picture. There is only one solution and that is to allow customisation. Not just in the form of one brightness slider that most games offer. There are 6 different aspects of lighting that you can control and several pre-defined configs are also given for the players leisure. Some bright and some dark set-ups are provided. :)

[edit]Should you be interested, I'd love to see some screenshots from when you do play the game with areas that could use improvement in lighting. :)

Last edited by BloodRayne on 08-19-12 at 15:33

08-19-12 15:00 #

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printz
CRAZY DUMB ZEALOT

Posts: 8137
Registered: 06-06

Just got to play it. I really like the Prince of Persia inspired atmosphere. I also like that in bottomless pits I don't have to restart the level if I fall off. Instead, health is like a lives system there. I really liked how you tweaked the gameplay here, instead of sticking to Doom basics. Unfortunately, when I got shredded by the very PoP spinner logs, I got the traditional Doom death and the level restarted. I'll probably enjoy these traps more if I save often. Maybe put this lives system there too?

Is there going to be wall-running like in PoP, or is it too late to redesign the maps for that?

The only actual "bug" (if you prefer) is that the armour still uses the Doom 3 sound :) It feels out of place.

With "___START GRIMM Ultra HDR Mode.bat" I was able to play it fluidly (except when I first put those weirdos on fire; it paused a bit) on my 2010 desktop with GeForce. I'm happy :)

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Last edited by printz on 08-29-12 at 21:51

08-29-12 21:45 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

Thanks, Prinzt. I'm glad you like it.

I'm looking into the trap system, I really want to implement a autosave point system but it's been hard using script to get that to happen.

Yup the armor is the next sound to be replaced.. it was just one of those things I kept saying I'll do later.. :)

08-30-12 17:38 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

09-02-12 06:23 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

09-29-12 15:38 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

Hey there, not a lot of interest here I see, but I'll just keep posting. There must be someone who likes hack&slash games, despite all the BFG edition action going on currently, right? :)

Some bugs have been fixed and a lot of polishing has been done on a lot of aspects of the game. Newly additions were among others a secrets counter, a breakables counter (for those of you that have OCD) and a toggleable button counter, which is handy after saving a game and returning several days later. It's hard then to know how much buttons you still had to press at that point, making Grimm tedious which is not the point of the game.

Gameplay and Balancing
Monsters have been balanced and fine tuned since the last release. The Elite Ventril (those mine throwing tough bastards) have become a lit less tough and the kick from their mines has a bit less bite, making them a more balanced mini-boss in the game. A bug where monsters would wait several seconds before spawning has also been fixed.

Grimm Quest for the Gatherer's Key: News UpdateI've not been able to work a lot (at all actually) the last few weeks due to an insanely busy schedule, but I've received some good news last week which should promise me more time for the development of Grimm. In the mapping department, some new areas have been blocked out that were 'on the shelf' so to speak. Currently, if you play Grimm completionist style then there's about 3.5 hours of gameplay to be found in the game. It's getting pretty long which is making it far more interesting in terms of development. No more major adjustments from here on in, a big one could upset all the maps and gameplay within and could mean having to go back to do a lot of work. Grimm is all about balancing and there's yet a long way to go before I'll be completely satisfied with the way the game sets up tension in each skill level.

New Media!
For your pleasure I've updated the images section with ten new images.
If you 'watch' this mod on moddb (Why not? It's fun!) then you'll find the images section is updated at least twice a month with new images and regular media updates, actually... it's filled right now with a lot of media you may not have seen yet, so stop reading and pop over there to check it.. cllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiickk!

http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00021.jpg http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00022.2.jpg http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00013.2.jpg http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_300x150/shot00024.jpg

10-22-12 17:59 #

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Sodaholic
Banned

Posts: 2204
Registered: 04-07

This looks pretty awesome, actually. :)

10-22-12 18:44 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

Sodaholic said:
This looks pretty awesome, actually. :)

Hey thanks, Sodaholic. :)

10-22-12 20:16 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

Some major steps have been made towards going standalone in the last week or so. I've been going over the code and have been ironing out the last assets to replace. There's still some work to be done there in terms of the animation department. There are two major enemies that need to be re-rigged and reanimated because they make use of Vanilla Doom3 animations. After that is finished there are no ties whatsoever any more to Doom 3. Normally I don't do changelist updates, but because so much has been done, and because I want to share with you some of the progress that has been made, I've made an exception this once. Not sure when the next release will be, I'm planning for it to happen soon though, so stay tuned for news updates and more right here on Moddb!

Changes since the last major release:
- Increased entity limit
- Made several performance enhancements in the gamecode
- Moved breakables system to game code
- Implemented truly integrated skill settings for the world (traps) and combat (enemies) so players can now play Grimm in their own style.
- Skill levels were balanced further since last time, the elite Ventril is now a bit easier to kill
- Added new weapon: Cannon. Primary fire: a single cannonball with destructive power that bounces around. Alt fire: 6 small cannonballs with similar power in a large spread to quickly thin out enemy ranks.
- Moved clutter system to game code, increasing performance.
- Moved breakables system to game code.
- Removed all script hacks to add new CVars and moved all of them to proper implementations in gamecode.
- Made all traps solid for players
- trigger_hurt entity now can have damage defs set per entity type it touches
- Added several visual effects to item pickups
- Added screenflash to item pickups (configurable from the options menu)
- Added alternative attacks to all Scythe weapons, primary works the same as always (hold to charge the power, release at the right moment for a greatly charged attack). Alternative power: Repeat alternative attack at the right moment to gain power. When the powerbar is full (after 5 succesfull hits) use the primary fire for a charged attack that kills anything in the room. Difficult but very rewarding.
- Added new gameplay bonuses: 'Impressive' after 3 kills (or more) in a row, several shortcut paths and secret routes.
- Completely finished 6 maps, including lighting, detail and clip brushes.
- Made all breakables and gibs lifetime configurable from the options menu (g_gibslifetime, g_breakableslifetime).
- Remodelled and reanimated the Scythe weapons from scratch.
- Much... much... more...

And there's a new gameplay video available!

http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/20/19216/thumb_620x2000/shot00043.jpg

11-18-12 09:07 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

Help Grimm into the top 100!

If you're interested, come check it out here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/grimm-que...e-gatherers-key

It's also been announced that it will be released as full length commercial title in 2013. :)

Last edited by BloodRayne on 12-02-12 at 11:21

12-01-12 20:33 #

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EvilNed01
Junior Member

Posts: 129
Registered: 03-11

This - looks - awesome.

Shame I only have the BFG edition... Otherwise I would have downloaded in a heartbeat!

12-06-12 00:25 #

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Clonehunter
Forum Staple

Posts: 2456
Registered: 03-10

Shit, this looks pretty badass, might have to check out, though when I saw the title I thought this was going to have to do something with John Grimm from the movie.

12-06-12 00:56 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

EvilNed01 said:
This - looks - awesome.

Shame I only have the BFG edition... Otherwise I would have downloaded in a heartbeat!

In 2013 I will release this as standalone. :)

Clonehunter said:
Shit, this looks pretty badass, might have to check out, though when I saw the title I thought this was going to have to do something with John Grimm from the movie.

I am thinking about that, but you are the first to have mentioned it. The thing is: Reaper: Quest for the Gatherer's key doesn't sound as good as 'grimm'.

I might take away one M though, so it'll just be 'Grim Quest for the Gatherer's Key'.

Thanks for the kind words guys, it's very appreciated!

12-06-12 17:42 #

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BloodRayne
Warming Up

Posts: 13
Registered: 08-12

Just an update close to the end of the year.
Grimm is going standalone and will be released as full length title soon(ish), hopefully via Steam and other digital distributors.

If you like these screenshots and videos, make sure to check out Grimm's moddb page here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/grimm-que...e-gatherers-key

You can also follow Grimm on twitter: https://twitter.com/grimmquest

I've implemented a new feature into Grimm:Quest for the Gatherer's key that I'm very excited about. It's simply called 'spray painting' and what it does is allow for mappers to run their map and spray paint the world with decals. No more tedious placing of single plane decals to create static blood, but 'real' painting of the world with decals. I can now run a map, think 'I'd like to have some blood spray there', paint the world with a single click, issue the command 'saveDecals' when I am happy with the result and the paint will be there permanently in the map.

To make this happen I have exposed a new script command via the SDK that calls 'projectDecalOntoWorld'.
I use this routine in a very simple entity called 'grimm_spray' which has several advantages over the regular func_spray.
The first advantage is that I can now use random paint decals, allowing for randomly looking worlds (which is what Grimm is all about).
The second is that players can turn the feature off, meaning that they can remove these decals for performance reasons, something that's not possible in a static map.

There's no real way to describe it unless you see it in action, so I've created a nice video to show off the effect!

Click image to play video
http://i48.tinypic.com/34jbry1.jpg

When painting mode is not set, the spray entities spawn during mapload and paint the world, after which they are automatically removed, this will leave only the paint decal.
Players can set paint density, to have either more or less paint in the world.

I'm pretty excited about this, I've managed to go over 6 maps in a matter of several hours and completely detailed them to taste with decals. This would have normally taken more than a week of careful placing of single decals by hand in the editor, with the added disadvantage of blood not spraying onto nearby objects and such.

12-29-12 20:11 #

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Doomworld Forums > Newfangled Doom > Doom 3 General > Grimm: Quest for the Gatherer's Key v0.2 Released!

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