no specific comments from me, but glad to hear you're still working. Hope to see this project turn out well. 

thanks for all the new information and interesting thoughts, ill probably update my site in the next few days and link to posts #116,117.

In a completely NON-LINEAR game, what is the ultimate pay-off for the player? What is the reward for your all your efforts? That's usually "winning the game", but can you win a game that doesn't ever end?

I agree with this worry completely. My suggestion is to make the overall structure of the game linear: a clear start and a definite rewarding end goal.

Inbetween, in other words the players path from start to end, can have elements on non-linearity to it.
But in general i am a classical kind of person and hence believe in and prefer the linear concept of player progression. 

anytime Mindcrime submits ideas or .plan like summaries.

I would like to see how a more non linear experience would work out in a FPS like Obscurus, but the feasibilaty really depends on how you plan to juggle all of the aspects of the design and the time management involved.
If you do a more non linear approach you will have to assert more control over the content of each mapper's level for the sake of continuity, and that could eat at your time, obviously. 

In that case, I think I would have to assert *some* control.. only to ensure there is connectivity... but I think that's equally true of the standard linear game.

As for eating at my time... one of the top ten reasons for waiting until so much is done before looking for a "team"... is so that my time can be focused on bug-fixing, adding new things mappers might want, and.. for lack of a better term.. "administration".

I expect very good things from this game, knowing that 100% of my focus is on THE GAME (which was, of course, not the case with nehahra ... divided resources and all that...)

Don't misinterpret that to mean that I have grievances with the Nehahra game. I couldn't be happier with the end product. It's just that MY end... could have been better. The mappers gave their best ... and I don't think I did. I don't think I could under those circumstances.

Then again, I've got a lot more experience now.

Anyhooo . . . 

Mindcrime, we all blame you for the abysmal failure that was Nehahra. :D 

In a completely NON-LINEAR game, what is the ultimate pay-off for the player? What is the reward for your all your efforts? That's usually "winning the game", but can you win a game that doesn't ever end?

Finishing the story is when you "win the game," but you are right in that you can't win something that does not have an end.

The pay-off for the player depends greatly. For some, it would be just having an enjoyable experience for half an hour (many people never even finish games, but just because they haven't "won" doesn't mean they have "lost.") For others, the pay-off will be completing the story. And for others, the pay-off might be in experiencing every gameplay scenerio in the game.

I think for non-linear games the pay-off should be observed on a per-situation basis, and not globally. Really, I think this is the way all people should think of games. 

u still need some global motivation be it linear game or not

and there is always only some relative degree of non-linearity anyway 

I know a game being NON-LINEAR does not mean that the game has no ending. My mention of that I guess was unintentional leak of something of my thoughts. Not plans, exactly. Just thoughts.

That is perhaps my personal holy grail, my final frontier, my larger vision ...

A game that evolves and does not end. I'm not going to elaborate. I don't need to really. Reading into that statement alone and using some imagination will certainly give you the picture.

That is perhaps a vision never to be realized on the Quake engine. Perhaps. Only the mildest execution of that idea is probably possible. Probably.

I consider that the strongest possible caliber of Non-Linear there is. It's my wet dream. 

> A game that evolves and does not end.

I'm thinking "quake" here -- but I know that's not what you meant... 

You obviously don't get it. Maybe it's too big for your wittle mind to handle :P

Anyway.. n/m that. I was only clarifying. As "Non-Linear", by itself, of course does not mean the game which it refers to does not end.

Moving on .... 

you are the least articulate professional writer i know :) 

Perhaps! Though I can expect I am, no doubt, the most eccentric professional writer you know...

I am just much more articulate about imaginary things than real ones ... and when I'm behind the keyboard writing ... well, my mind-set is different.

I might also add that while I can spell fabulously ... I cannot pronounce for shit :D 

you are the least articulate professional writer i know

You don't know very many, do you? Either that or I only know the least articulate of the least articulate. 

how things go??? :) hope everything o.k with the project and with you :)

chears Trinca 

Has anything been happening to the project? 

Is everything going smoothly? Expecting the release date.

And, I hope you wouldn't come up with a weapon system as terrible as that of Unreal/Unreal2's. Much weapons of these two games lay latent for most of the time I playing them. Different weapons are not fully differentiated. Personally, I do prefer a simple and straightforward weap system like that of quakes. 

A game that evolves and does not end.

Mindcrime, it sounds like you secretly want to drop the FPS paradigm altogether and create a true living world in computer space, where the monsters don't simply sit around and wait for you to come and blast them, but lead intricate personal lives and influence the world around them. Sure there are MMORPGS which are constantly evolving worlds (Second Life comes to mind) but you can't control the roles that the other actors play, or what they create, like you can for an AI. This, it seems to me, is the mapper's ideal: creating a place which, when experienced (played), extends beyond its initial parameters (emergent behavior or somesuch). Will Obscurus be anything like this? Only Mindcrime knows. But I think it can only be a good thing (for the sake of atmosphere and immersion) when the game world either seems or is larger than what the player immediately experiences.

I've always dreamt of creating a massively interconnected and convoluted medieval city, where the player could explore every nook and cranny and find detail, design, and activity. A city with a social structure, a purpose, inhabitants who go about doing something. The most recent incarnation is of my vision is being made for Nehahra because that's the only quake mod which possesses anywhere near the required features (all those AI flags are great... but there is potential for so much more, yes?)

Nonlinear hub designs are good for another reason: you can build a coherent place much larger than what the quake engine would normally allow.

Oh, and you should definitely keep the Jagger. He's such an atmospheric monster; just walks around and makes creepy noises. And he's a social monster to, to infer from the entities that control him. What kind of activity would go on in a Jagger colony? Females rearing young, and males hunting fish. And what if there were an artifact in the heart of the underground colony (I imagine it something like a beaver's nest, but much larger) that you had to retrieve, that the jaggers were very territorial about? Hmm, my mind wanders, but that'd be a really cool map.

Apparently this post keeps evolving and does not end. I think I've been reading too many architecture books lately. I found this one called "Shelter And Society" which has great pictures of indigineous architecture all over the world. Some Norweigan farming villages gave me good inspiration for using the Rune textures. ;)

OK now I'm really rambling. Bye now, and have a good rest-of-the-summer, everybody. 

...like you're describing what Stalker is supposed to be... if it ever comes out. O_o

:P 

For those who A) care, and B) haven't been paying attention [ and interesting combination ].. I've updated the Nehahra site. I have been updating it for a while now. I thought I'd mention it here as Nehahra doesn't have a thread of its own, to my knowledge. This is Obscurus related in a way as a partial merger between Obscurus and Nehahra occurred. But as for the rest of Obscurus... well... I do not know what will come of it... I hadn't planned a Nehahra Episode 4.. only a revamp... now there's both.

Anyhoo: http://www.planetquake.com/nehahra

And yeah, now that I'm around regularly (have been.. just not on the msgboard..) I'll take any questions, suggestions, insults, death threats, whatever :) 

Mindcrime dont makes us get water in our mouth...finish the work, for us to keep playing this great addon that u start many years ago... :) and many people keep loving it!


cheers my friend :)

Trinca 

I tried running quake with the extension -game obscurus and it got unhappy with me.

I demand you fix this problem immediately! 

dont use drugs... :) 

On the Ob subject, I had a brilliant epiphany about 2 months ago regarding Obscurus and Quake in general. One that's too irresistible not to implement, if I were to move forward on an 'Obscurus TC', but then to implement it means starting over in most of the ways that matter. Ripping everything out of code and starting from scratch. Because it changes the way I would do everything. It would also render a lot of the model content (monsters) obsolete, as it changes the way animation and monsters are handled. It changes too much, you could say.

When something amazing occurs to you though, it's very difficult to continue on as you were and try to pretend that you never had experienced said epiphany....

What it comes down to now is the Obscurus 'concept' and the Obscurus content.. whether those two will part. It is likely that the Obscurus content and much of its code will splinter (keeping the stuff that isn't obsolete, booting the stuff that is which will then be funneled into Quake stuffs and future Nehahra stuffs so long as it is conceptually and visually compatible (as has already started to happen, albeit on a small scale, and the fact that Obscurus was an indirect off-shoot of Quake/Nehahra universes from the start is certainly helpful).

This probably means good things for Quake in general--a lot of the Ob stuff coming out in other forms through the Quake channel.

If what I've said has confused anyone, that's okay. I'm confused too, because I've been left in a strange no-man's land between what I have done and what I want to do, which are no longer the same and in ways contradict. :D

People in the mod community are notorious for dumping mods midstream because of better technology that comes out, more advanced engines. Those who know me know that I'm not like-minded in this respect, but in this case, it is not the engine or technology that has gotten more advanced.. It's my mind that has.

As for the Nehahra revamp.. and especially Episode 4.. forget about Ob for now and concentrate on that.

I think it'll blow your balls off :) 

what means revamp? lol my english is to poor for this kind of words... 

Trinca

1. To patch up or restore; renovate.
2. To revise or reconstruct (a manuscript, for example).
3. To vamp (a shoe) anew.