Second thought. Fuggit. I backed it up and deleted it. It's better not to have a site for now. Better to wait until the development is at a stage where I'm ready to bring other people in. Besides, I don't want to feel obligated to keep updating the site during my development ... and it will only serve to draw annoying emails besides :P 

The funniest thing with Darkplaces is it completely doesn't work on my system (duron1000, 256mbddr333, gf2mx440 (with new drivers)), so it would be kinda sucky not to be able to play Obscurus if Mindy sticks himself to Darkplaces ;) 

I reckon the choice of engine isn't too important as long as the final product can be distributed standalone, with no need for the original quake to be installed whatsoever. 

'I wouldn't suggest using realtime lights, because I understand you don't want that plastic feel.'

That infamous look that we all experienced when we fired up Tenebrae the first time comes from the odd fact that engine defaults with every texture getting a full gloss pass. It isn't a real problem with real time lighting, just a poor design and aesthetic choice of the Tenebrae team. For a better fix on what well done RTS would look like, I would recommend the Dues Ex Invisible War screen shots. 

you can have dynamic lights without the gloss effect. it could be cool too. industri uses tenebrae and it's pretty awesome in terms of lighting... 

I'd just like to take this oppurtunity to express what an amazing, astounding, unbelievably awesome piece of work the Seal Of Nehahra was :)

I don't actually have any suggestions for this thread, I just wanted to say that. 

thumbs up for cut scenes!

SON was awesome, yes it was bloody long but the story was great! Even if you just did an hour story (heh, "only" an hour!) that would be great. 

not even suggesting that you repeat making a cinematic feature for Obscurus, or even that you use cut-scenes at all. I'm just saying Seal of Nehahra kicked so much ass it's unbelievable, no strings attached =) 

...was that it was better than Nehahra ;-) 

given the Func_borders involved in that project. I must say though, individual levels were better than the sum of the game.

Tronyn, MindCrime is still considered a God over on the Machinima forums. He is sort of the Thomas Pynchon of game cinematography. An excellent, but mysterious artist (I'm not so much kissing butt as I am trying to nudge him towards making another movie -- okay I'm kissing butt). 

it should matter who is involved. if xen truly believes that the movie was better than the game, than he should be able to say it.

i've never seen the movie, but i don't think nehahra was the greatest mod out there. it was really good, and is awesome because of it's size, but i liked Zer a lot more because of it's atmosphere and the general feel of the maps in there. (and the fact that you don't really win) just because alot of great mappers were involved in nehahra and mindcrime was responsible for it doens't make me shy to say what i think. 

The thing that spoiled Nehahra for me was the lack of consistency throughout the game. Most of the maps were individually great but not all of them fitted together that well imho. Plus I couldn't get used to the modified gameplay (ie. the monster strafing annoyed the hell out of me). That's just my opinion though; some share it, some don't. I preffered Zer also.

The movie however really is an undisputed object of beauty. I enjoyed it more than most 'real' movies.

Anyway... this thread isn't about Nehahra :-p 

but just wanted to make clear, 'ballsy' is a positive quality, not a negative one. 

if you are, being ballsy enough to call them apes in oversized jeans is a negative factor 

You have a point there. When I think of ballsy, I think of my pappy with his regulation crew cut walking up to the leader of a bike gang asking him for a light. Could've been negative. For the gang. 

I agree with xen, that the movie was better than the game for Nehahra. I also had the same issues; frustrating gameplay and lack of coherence among the maps. I'd even go further to say some of the maps were not individually great. I think OUM for example had a higher quality average map than Nehahra, and had more coherence in terms of progression and overall feel among the maps. Insomnia is another good example of an episode done better than Nehahra SP.

But Seal Of Nehahra.... I worship it. 

Have you considered using cinematics in your project to the degree they were used in Nehahra? 

And I hated Seal of Nehahra, but liked the mod very much. And tweaked monster AI was excellent. The only thing I disliked in Nehahra was that maps weren't connected to one another, but overall, this was the mod from top shelf.

Soul of Evil was cool! Gratz for Tronyn! 

erm, No. I wouldn't ever attempt something that ambitious myself; Mindcrime deserves every bit of praise he gets and then some for successfully pulling off such a cinematic approach in Q1.

I once considered a project which would have utilized cinematics, the storyline for that is in the arcane wizard thread, but it floundered due to lack of support and when I brought it back in its current form, it was more of a "just make a good map" thing.

which is pretty much my thing too right now; I just want to make massive maps and that's pretty much the limit of my ambition :)

MisYu: Thanks for the compliment. Looking back on SoE there were a lot of things I could have done better, but I didn't really know what I was doing as a project leader and though I thought I was holding off release a lot at the time, I now think I rushed it out the door before a lot of little things that would have added up to a lot could be added. 

Rapture was thick in atmosphere and beautiful texture/brush work and OUM had some interesting ideas and flowed together well. I remember e-mailing FC praise on OUM long before I started coming to func_.
I was part of a machinima team for most of last year, but it fell a part due to the sound guy (a very talented Austin based musician) quiting to get married and start a family. I wrote the screen play, designed the sets, and reskinned the zombies as the characters (a bunch of junkies).
Ultimately, mapping is an easier preoccupation. 

It is obvious, that you can polish up everything you do, however often we don't have enough (enought?) time or eyes to see everything. Anyway, Soul of Evil is cool and stop kicking yourself, the atmosphere (especially when two fiends approached in the dark canyon) rocked, I really liked your mod, respect. 

Och, and talking about mods, maybe it's kinda weird, but I don't call czg07 or some of Kona's releases as mods. Yeah, there are multimaps within, there is modified stuff, but overall, for me, big mod, big pack, big conversion is something with:
- long storyline
- big playarea (lots of maps/episodes)
Not only 2-3 maps included + stuff.

So, I think that OUM, SoE, Nehahra, Zerstoerer, Malice, Armagon, DoE, Beyond Belief, Alien Quake and other "big ones" should be trackted (is that a word?) as mods and packs. 

it would be 'treated' ;) 

Well, I don't know that I'd be jumping to do any more feature-length quake movies. Though, just between you and me, if some coder out there were to look at the Nehahra source and figure out what's wrong with the PAUSEDEMO feature ... and fix it ... and compile an EXE ... and send it to me to use ...

Welll, you never know. I might be persuaded to do ... well, something or other. Otherwise, the engine which Seal of Nehahra was made on is gone ... poof. There's a chance there's a Nehahra mapper out there still has old versions of the engine, and that one of those old versions might be the right one ... but that's a small chance.

Thanks for the compliments on Seal of Nehahra, though I don't know if it's worthy of such praise. Maybe as the creator when I watch it, I don't see the good things ... I only see the bad and what could have been done better.

((Actually the fact that I did a 4 hour movie in Quake seems a bit crazy in retrospect ... well, more than A BIT ...))

As for engines, I understand many lean toward Fitzquake ... however, unless it supports transparency (which metlslime may or may not be up for, that is, to do it properly) ... the prognosis on that isn't good. No, it's not the transparency on the brushes (i.e. for glass) that I care that much about ... but using it for other things ((one example would be the Nehahra Wraiths))...

Btw, you're all welcome to blabber about Nehahra here. Considering Obscurus may end up being a kinda-sorta quasi-sequel type thing ...

In other news, I did find a nehahra.exe with a fixed HUD that Ender did for me ... I never released it because the Sprite 32s were broken in it, but I forgot about the nospr32 cvar which reverts the quake explosions to the normal sprites ... and that ain't so bad ... I do rather despise the weak smoke trails in Nehahra though ... which Ender never fixed :|

- - - - - - - - - - -- - -- - -


I have 3 main Quake related things going:

A) Looking to overhaul/improve Nehahra.
This involves code fixes, some AI alterations, improvements in many of the func_'s ...

B) Obscurus
C) A teeny pet project in my quake/nehrev directory. This isn't what I call a totally serious project, or a big deal whatsoever, but a fun added extra ... perhaps ... If I release it when it's done, it will be a pretty small download ... just a big fat progs.dat file ... You start in Neh2m6.bsp and work your way backwards through the levels to Forge City :D Maps the same, entities and functions different, a lot of stuff "rewired" ... Anyway, it could be fun. I'm only one map into that. I just finished Neh2m6.bsp :>

Things I sometimes think about:

A) A purely PHIL movie ... :D Now this would be FUN ... it would not be work. Seal of Nehahra was largely work. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy ...

B) Neh4mX - Fourth and final episode, though I harbor great doubts there would be much interest from mappers to make it ((I have no doubt there will be interest from players to play it ... that's the silly thing :> )) 

Here's another thing to think about ... I remember when I came to this point in Nehahra too. Should Obscurus support Coop and Deathmatch? Are those two things cool? Sure. Will more than a handful of people even play those modes?

My current thoughts: multiplayer prolly ain't worth it ... and when you eliminate multiplayer and make it strictly Single Player ... welll, you have a LOT more legroom and have the ability to do things you otherwise couldn't.

Thoughts?