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TwinBeast

Blaze

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This week I've been (speed) modeling weapons. More or less modelled all the weapons the game will have.

For now there's only going to be 8 weapons. Maybe I'll fill it up to 10 eventually, if/when I think of some non duplicated functionality for the 2.



They are:
Power Sword - Machinegun
Shotgun - Plasma Gun
Grenade Launcher - Rocket Launcher
Railgun - Plasma Storm

6 of them have moving parts.

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Decided to go for 10 weapons. There's now 1 "melee", 3 automatic, 2 "slow", 2 explosive and 2 "bfg" class weapons.

Here's half the weapons with some textures.



I'll improve the textures later. Now I just want to get them all textured (like these) and ingame for some testing/etc.

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Skins look good. I'm happy you went with more weapons.

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Those weapons kind of remind me of some of the weapons from Quake 2 and 3.

The bottom right one looks like a mix between Quake 2's railgun and rocketlauncher, the bottom left one looks like a mix between Quake 3's shotgun and Quake 2's chaingun, the middle right one looks like a mix between Doom's plasmarifle and Quake 2's hyperblaster.

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Yea, they're inspired of Abuse, Doom and Quake series weapons.

And here's the other half of the weapons textured.. the preview image has a bit weird colors...



Next I'll start doing some projectile models for them, and start adding these ingame. Maybe tomorrow or monday I might have some video recorded. I'll write some more stuff about the weapons then.

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All of these weapons look generic, but that doesn't matter at all, as long as their function/uniqueness will be distinct ingame. I like the direction where you're going with this game and its models. I'm interested in seeing the weapons in action million times more than reading about them. ;)

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scifista42 said:

All of these weapons look generic, but that doesn't matter at all, as long as their function/uniqueness will be distinct ingame. I like the direction where you're going with this game and its models. I'm interested in seeing the weapons in action million times more than reading about them. ;)


I think their old game style makes them ungeneric. But yeah all that matters is how they feel to shoot and what enemies do when shot.

There are actual videos of the older weapons in action.

The latest set of weapons look better than the originals. You could still put both in as an upgrade. Like bigger damage or something even if they don't do anything differently.

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geo said:

But yeah all that matters is how they feel to shoot and what enemies do when shot.

Indeed, this will be the major selling point. Despite being fairly generic the weapons and the colors themselves are aesthetically pleasing.

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I was sort of going for a look that's easy to recognize the purposes of the weapons. I wrote a list of weapons/attacks I wanted, and what kind of moving parts they might have. 8 of them have some moving part/s.

Then I just picked some weapon name from the list, thought about that name for a moment, stopped thinking, and started modeling whatever shapes came in an hour. I abandoned only a few models, but used some of their ideas/parts in some other weapons later.

This is pretty fun way to model stuff. Well, it works for other stuff too... like speed mapping.

--

Most weapons' functions will be different enough from each other, but there's a few that may have similar purposes or attacks.

Maybe some time I'll clear player's weapons, so player would have different sets of weapons during the game. Maybe in the final quarter of the game, player would have access to everything. Deathmatch levels would also have different weapon sets.

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I recorded that video. Didn't have time to do projectile models during weekend, so they're just placeholder particle trails. But maybe this way I know better what kind of models or sprites they need. They all have sounds, but some may be.. bad. They'll also need some impact sounds. Some of the functionality is a bit placeholder as well.

http://www.moddb.com/games/blaze/videos/weapons-demonstration

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Nice! I recommend making the weapons so that they'll lean back while in their shooting state. I mean, to appear closer to player's body / to the camera, actually to lower on the screen. And distinctly, the difference should be felt. Rapid fire weapons can stay close to the camera for the whole time they're shooting, other can just use a "kickback" (only visual, on the model).

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scifista42 said:

Nice! I recommend making the weapons so that they'll lean back while in their shooting state. I mean, to appear closer to player's body / to the camera, actually to lower on the screen. And distinctly, the difference should be felt. Rapid fire weapons can stay close to the camera for the whole time they're shooting, other can just use a "kickback" (only visual, on the model).


Do robots get kickback?

Weapon 1: I like the cooldown effect vs ammo. I might be alone when I say that, but that looks like a fun weapon to shoot. It needs to be just as fun when it damages enemies.

The spread gun looks like a lot of fun too :-)

The weapon after the spread gun, is that like a grenade launcher or a rail gun? I can't tell, but it does look like it kicks back.

The weapon that you shoot when on top of that platform. Does that do splash damage? It might be good to not only do splash damage, but do radius damage for X amount of seconds at the cost of a slower firing speed. It would also be a good weapon to illuminate darkness, but it all depends on how the engine works. Maybe light gasoline on fire for damage.

Will the fire blaster light anything on fire?

Have you tested them on enemies?

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There is a human inside the suit. In some story idea I wrote some time ago, it's some janitor who was cleaning some armory when things went bad. The guards went mad and tried to kill him, but he got lucky and defeated them. Screams from outside made the janitor think he needs some more protection, so he donned the nearby prototype armor suit and grabbed a plasma power sword.

Also I thought this stuff would be happening on... Mars. Earth was destroyed by nuclear war and shit. People in the Mars colony were researching something that would allow them to clean up Earth, but there were some people with a different agenda for the research...

Player's character of course shows immunity to whatever bad shit is going on in the Mars colony...

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At the moment the kickback just tilts the weapons up. Earlier I had some other movement too, but it didn't have any interpolation. I'll probably redo it some way later. All the kickback effects are coded, so the same animations in the weapon models work for both first person view and in third person character's hands.

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It is railgun just after the shotgun. Grenade launcher when on the platform. The grenades burn for a moment after exploding. The fire blaster napalm blobs burn all the time as they fly/are onground.

Don't know yet if enemies/players continue burning after touching a fire. Probably easier to balance the damages if they don't. The napalm blobs are meant to be quite instant kill for most things...

The current weapon descriptions/plans are in this news post: http://www.moddb.com/games/blaze/news/guns-guns-guns-guns

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I tried the weapons for a bit against the Quake enemies, but there aren't enough enemies in the Quake levels... So I haven't tried them against large groups... and I'll definitely want some of that in this.

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The grenades explode on impact. The napalm blobs from the fire blaster could bounce from floors/walls/ceilings. Maybe they could spawn little fires in places they hit. I suppose the little fires could be attached to enemies as well.

Then they wouldn't just burn themselves, but others around them. There should be some limit how much the fire could spread, so setting 1 enemy on fire wouldn't set 100 others around it on fire (in less than a second).

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Jimi said:

The grenades explode on impact. The napalm blobs from the fire blaster could bounce from floors/walls/ceilings. Maybe they could spawn little fires in places they hit. I suppose the little fires could be attached to enemies as well.

Then they wouldn't just burn themselves, but others around them. There should be some limit how much the fire could spread, so setting 1 enemy on fire wouldn't set 100 others around it on fire (in less than a second).


Maybe have a max enemies on fire at once variable?

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I was thinking something like.. Napalm can spawn little fire that is equal to the grenade fire, and these fires can be attached to things. Maybe they can spawn tiny fires on things near them. The tiny fires would be so small that they would only damage one thing (and not be able to spread any further).

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Here comes some new stuff...

Treasures.. collect them for credits to buy stuff from automated shops. The shops could have different inventories, and some stuff could be only bought, and some only found.



And a monster! It's a small flying monster that tries to poke you full of holes, or spit acid from distance. May be generated by some larger monster.

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New enemy looks great, the poking holes and spitting acid does too. Dual purpose. I'm happy. Could always randomize shop inventories. The gems look simple and great. A touch that is nice to have even if not needed. You can have enemies drop gems, if they drop into lava or get shot, they're destroyed. If you destroy so many of them, you don't get to buy X. Gotta collect em all. Good for achievements too. Such as destroy all of the gem achievements rather than collect them.

Seeing your game develop gets my creative juices flowing for better or worse.

So with the flack gun, can you alt fire it to make the flack explode before it impacts? While a flack gun is ultimately impactful when you shoot it into a cluster of enemies, hitting the center of the cluster would be most impactful so the entire cluster gets damaged instead of the half you directly shoot at.

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I thought I have some presets for the shops, plus allow customizing them in the level editor.

No idea about destructible items, but enemies could get damage if they get thrown into lava or something. Maybe items would also get damage. Maybe a quick player would be able to get them before they're destroyed.

At the moment I don't have any alt fires. I'm a bit all or nothing with this. But the weapon attacks may get some changes.

And here's another monster, that was inspired of a gingerbreadman, but then I thought to make it a woman... Monster boobs are ok, right? I thought I'd cover them up with something, but I was getting tired and forgot. She's also a big monster. In melee she could give you the elbow or a kiss. Ranged attacks I haven't decided yet. One thought is that she could spit out small insects that home into her enemies and explode. I thought this kind of thing could be an attack for another creature that lays eggs on some corpses. After a while, the corpse is consumed and multiple small insects fly out... She wouldn't need the corpses, and maybe she does something else for the dead, like revive them.

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Damn, you're good at this. I'm really digging the pixel textures on higher poly model aesthetic. I've always wanted to see something like that, pixellated and paletted yet with more modern shaders and anisotropic filtering (better looking in the distance yet retaining the pixels.) I assume you're scaling the textures up in nearest before importing them into the game? And if so, how much? In my port of E1M1 to Postal 2, I've found 4x to be plenty, though maybe 8x could be better.

Also, have you considered doing even higher poly models and baking some normal maps from that on the game-detail models? I'm curious to see how that'd look.

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Really freaky, dude! Yeah that monster reminds me of the lurker from Amnesia: the Dark Descent, in a good horror kind of way. :]

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TheCupboard said:

Really freaky, dude! Yeah that monster reminds me of the lurker from Amnesia: the Dark Descent, in a good horror kind of way. :]

I haven't played very much of Amnesia, but it reminds me a lot of the bugbeast from Thief: The Dark Project (which coincidentally was also modeled after a human female in an early draft).

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Cool, thanks :)

I don't do any scaling.. I bake/draw the textures the same size they will appear ingame. I don't draw them with the palette, but I do use it to select the base colors, so that the palette conversion work better. I'd try drawing with the palette more if Paint Shop Pro allowed me to keep the layers in a paletted image, and to use some of the "special" brushes without converting back to true color.

That stuff isn't so big problem with level textures, but with models I want to keep the UV map layer...

Texture sizes I've been using:
Tiny Items: 64x64
Tiny Monsters and Small Items: 128x64
Small Monsters and Bigger Items: 128x128
Player Weapons and Human Size characters: 256x128
Big Monsters: 256x256
Boss Monsters: 512x256? (but I haven't done any of these yet)

I'll mirror/overlap some parts, like arms and legs. So I'll avoid the mirroring artifacts in torsos and heads, but get a little bit more resolution.

Yea, and here's some bug the she-monster could spit out. Maybe the texture could use some tweaking to better match the colors on the she-monster? The green parts in the back will probably glow.



Should do some player/human size monsters next...

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It's another monster. This one's some Mutant Trooper. It could appear in a few different colors, each with a different ranged attack, some of the same as player's weapons. It could also have 2 spikes, or 2 guns, or the weapons mirrored.



Looks like this time I managed to hide the seams better. 928 tris. 256x128 texture.

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Does he spew fire or is it one of the acid throwers? That model looks good, the mutant woman looks good too.

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Looks awesome, in its Quake-styled aesthetical approach. It's specially great considering that you're doing it all yourself, at least I assume. This hard-work modeling, it keeps you very busy, right? I hope your output will turn out well and be successful, I'm also looking forward to it. So, good luck!

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Thanks.

So far it's been just me. But I'll be open for contributions. Hard-work.. mmm.. I've been doing this stuff in a speed modeling/texturing attitude. Maybe it's not exactly high quality, but at least it's fun. And having fun keeps me going, and then I know I'm going the right way with this.

This Mutant Trooper could use the Laser Rifle, Shotgun, Grenade and Rocket Launchers. But it could be something like the earlier Chemical Trooper too, although the acid ball was a bit useless. They hardly ever hit their target, and when they did, it was probably another enemy...

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Some new effects for the weapons. Or actually old effects.. I used this explosion sprite when I was doing this with Doom. Maybe it could have some more frames. Now it's just 3 frames. I made it more alive with random scaling in the code. I wanted it to rotate too, but that didn't work. The Plasma Storm is also the same sprite, but colormodded blue/violet and scaled up much more, worked better than I expected.

The weapon functions (and sounds) have been improved too. Rockets can be guided. Fireblast goes through enemies, slides on level geometry, slight bounce and is affected by gravity. Plasma Storm does about the same as the Fireblast, but isn't affected by gravity, and can be guided a little bit (rockets are more accurate). Shotgun is now more basic, it was getting a bit annoying with stuff flying in every direction. Other weapons are about the same as before. Some of them could have some changes.

Player's functions are somewhere back to what they used to be. So there's powerups, air control and respawns. The respawns are now limited (more respawns on easier difficulties, none at hardest). Respawning allows player to continue the level without losing all stuff and progress. If player dies too many times, then the level and player's inventory resets. Maybe there will be some checkpoints where player will respawn, so it's not always at the level start, or where player died (you don't want to respawn into the lava, or surrounded by a dozen enemies that just killed you).

Also done some GLSL shader that makes the game use 64 color palette. More colors made the framerate drop too much. The way I did it, is probably not the best way to do it, but I didn't know any better. Framerates below 100fps without V-Sync feel laggy. 64 colors is a little over 100fps at 1920x1080 resolution. Scenes that render below 200fps without the shader seem to render about the same rate with the shader. 1280x720 gives me almost 200fps with the shader.





RealTime lighting on the level above, makes the framerate drop to a nice 6fps. Too many lights for that, and the half-transparent liquid at the bottom isn't helping it either. So I'm thinking RT lighting can't be used...

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I've gotta say the weapon functions sound great. The 6 FPS doesn't. Maybe lessen the particle effect :-)

With the respawn idea, you could always do a Dead Souls lite where when you die, you don't lose everything, but just some things. Then you need to get them back unless you die. Then you lose a whole new set of things you had. Or have that as a difficulty choice.

About checkpoints. I'm happy to have checkpoints. Others might want the challenge of no checkpoints. Hopefully you can have a switch in the options, checkpoints or no checkpoints.

Just throwing out ideas.

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