Quake: Nexus Aftermath Demo

A mod for ZDoom, GZDoom and Skulltag that Captain Toenail and I have been working on for the past year. After said year of blood, sweat, toil and bugs, here's the fruits of our labour thus far:

Download Link:
http://files.filefront.com/QNA+Demo+2/;13264871;/fileinfo.html

Main project page (On which screenshots are up): http://skulltag.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14375.

It works fine in Skulltag 97D2, but several features (None included in the demo) will need the eventually upcoming 97E. These features include the Strogg Roller Turret, the status bar (uses the default Doom one, for the moment), skill definitions and a few other myriad additions.

Just about nothing has been stripped out of the demo (Aside from actors and textures that are not in the map itself), but a few things have been changed for it, so expect this map to be different for the final release.

Features include:

-One relatively long map
-The 3 player classes: Soldier, Medic and Tech.
-KDiZD-style terrain sounds (clang when you fall onto a metal floor, for example).
-Over one-thousand textures from Quakes 2 and 4 (mostly cortousy of AfterGlow's Q2Tex.wad).
-Several ambient sounds from Quakes 2 and 4 and music from Quake 4.

I should encourage you all not to rip anything from this pk3. Once the main mod is released (which won't be as cool if everything in it is in a ton of other mods), I'll release several resource packs (Monsters, weapons, textures, decorations, etc.), including the mod's own resource, so people can make their own sub-mods, as though this were an IWad.

It has recieved a good review from the SkullStuff Reviewers (8/10, 9/10 and 10/10 from the three reviewers, and was decribed as "A MUST download. Seriously, stop reading this and get it NOW").

Edit: Demo 2 released (Links updated).

Changes:

• Map unlagged, so it can be played online with less network traffic
  
• Map fully deathmatch compatible (small bug with the deathmatch ACS script was fixed)
  
• Map difficulty adjusted for single player, without making it easier for multiplayer
  
• Light, Shotgun, Machinegun, Laser and Ripper Guards and Sentien re-ripped for better detail.
  
• Chaingun spin-up reworked so it fires slowly while spinning up.
  
• Humming sound added to railgun (the more subtle Quake 2 sound).
  
• Gauntlet-giving ACS script added in LoadACS for deathmatch modes.
  
• A few monsters have their health reduced
  
• Team-colored projectiles partially added (decorate-side, not ACS-side.)
  

You can use Rapidshare to upload your files.

In the other hand, nice screens. Seem you have made a hard work to recreate all Quake2 ambience.

i noticed you using Sprites made of Q2 models for ammo, medkits,etc... But, why you dont use models? If im not wrong, i think GzDoom support md2 (or mdl) models. Right?

I get that question a lot **. GZDoom supports md2s, and I think md3s and mdls, but ZDoom doesn't (I want this to be completely ZDoom compatible, too), and this has several monsters from Quake 4 (md5s), as well.

If someone wants to help convert Quake 2 and 4 models for use with this (as an optional add-on), I'll use them, and a good friend of mine is making a mod for Quake 2 and could certainly use some of the Quake 4 monsters.

Oh, there's also a ZDoom wiki page for it: http://zdoom.org/wiki/Quake_nexus_aftermath. It lists all weapons, powerups and monsters.

http://tango.startan3.com/other/QNADemo1.pk3

Let me know if you update it or anything.

Ok, i have tested your TC, and here goes some tips:

· The Shotgun (normal shotgun) usually kills a soldier in a only hit. You need to rise it's damage or increase the ammount of shots (better this one).

· I think Supershotgun makes a bit more damage

· The rocketlauncher gibs a soldier if hit directly or near them. I think you must rise it's damage.

· It would be nice you change the Hyperblaster's Lasers for it's original at Q2, instead those balls.

· You should change the hyperblaster. When shooting the hyperblaster, you dont need time to start shooting (like at chaingun). You only need a bit time at cooldown, but not before start firing.


And some cool things you can try to implement:

· You can recreate the "Mission Computer" sound when having a new mission.
· At original Q2, the Railgun makes a sound while not shooting
· You can try implement the machinegun backing movement when shooting

I've already increased the damage for the shotgun and super shotgun, and lowered the health for some of the monsters (Some of them were supposed to have less health than they did) for the next demo.

I might implement the Railgun's idle sound, but that might make it too easy to spot someone with a railgun in deathmatch mode. The hyperblaster and blaster projectiles were meant to resemble the ones in the engine mod EGL. Lasers, also, are very hard to make look good in the Doom engine. The machinegun (code-wise) and objective displays are more meant to resemble the Q4 versions. The only way to make the machinegun kick back would be SetActorPitch adding a few points every time you fire, in ACS, and that would seem a lot more annoying than authentic.

I also haven't finished the gibbing effects, yet, so monsters don't gib at the moment. Several monsters will have unique gib chunks, like the Light Guard's helmet, Icarus' wing, or Berserker Tank's mace. I'll need some help with those, though.

The sprites for the Guards and Sentien (the things guarding the red key) have been re-ripped to me a little higher-res, by the way. They look much better now.

Do you still need mappers?

Ghastly_dragon said:

I should encourage you all not to rip anything from this pk3.

Seriously though?

Eternus: Absolutely! I'm mostly trying to coordinate the mappers on the Skulltag and ZDoom forums, but very few people have signed up.

Ralphis: I was going to release a ton of resource packs when the whole mod is done. It'll be much easier on people to rip stuff from there.

Yes, new mappers would be superb!

Currently it's just Ghastly Dragon and I working on maps and progress is very slow

There a wiki page here with more info about the project aswell:
http://zdoom.org/wiki/Quake_nexus_aftermath

Ugh, this was legendarily terrible. The model rips look horrendous, the gameplay is meh and the architecture looks more like some people got drunk and tried to map for Quake 2.

GZDoom (and skulltag?) support MD2 models. Spare yourself some trouble and use those instead of those god awful model rips. Use PNGS, the textures and monsters look terrible with the Doom palette. The weapon rips look really ugly and even worse with the choppy animations.

While the model rips are "less than awesome". I must say it's the best ones I've seen ripped out of Quake 2 to date...

The weapons though, I dunno how you managed to fuck them up like that. It's like you've sized them down to half their size, and then scaled them up again in indexed color mode. Kind of reminds me of playing Doom with "low detail".

Well, thank you for being honest. If anyone would like to convert some Quake 4 models to md2s (as I've suggested earlier in this thread), I would be happy to make an optional add-on model pack for this. I don't think model rips would look any worse than half of the monsters being models with the other half as sprites. I'll make it optional to keeps compatibility with ZDoom, and because there are several people who don't like/can't run models in the Doom engine.

As for your architecture comment, the map captures the Quake 2 style quite nicely. I've checked, by the way, and the Doom palette doesn't mess with anything that much.

The model rips of the Guards have been redone, by the way, and will be in the next demo.

Since I'm a huge fan of Quake 2, its my thought that you royally butchered it. I think this has now inspired me to put those MD2s into a mod somehow. Maybe if I make a modelpack, you guys can use that instead of those rips.

@Patrick: If you would, I'd be sincerely grateful. I apologize for butchering it, in your eyes, but at least it doesn't ruin the original game :P.

I think I might be able to re-rip the the railgun, rocket launcher, BFG and maybe grenade launcher for more fluid animations, but the blaster, hyperblaster, disintegrator, lightning gun and chaingun are about as good as they can get, and there's not much I can do for the machinegun (a muzzle flash would make it look much better, though). The nailgun and dark matter gun, also, might be really hard to rip again.

I'll also try to edit the hands on the nailgun, as well, since it has the Q4 marine hands. My little brother did that already, but it still needed some work, so I'll try to get him to finish it.

I've just finished recoding the chaingun spinup sequence, so it fires while spinning up (like the original). I didn't do that originally for fear of it bugging out if it ran out of ammo while spinning up, but I slapped a ton of A_JumpIfNoAmmo's all over it, just in case.

The next beta is finished and uploaded to ZShare and Megaupload. Links and list of changes are up on the first post.

Great wad,can't wait to see what it'll be like once it's finished

Just discovered this wad while browsing the forums. It's a brilliant wad that really captures the feel of quake 2.

Anyways, I'd love to make some maps for this project. Is there a
resource pack out there that works with doombuilder?

Please look at the date of the last post in a thread before you post. Try contacting the author directly if you're interested in a project that does not seem to be currently active, instead. He enabled both email and PM, as can be seen at the bottom of each post.