After having played and enjoyed Nehahra several times, an anguishing question is bugging me: are they chances the new "all engine" release version will include MacNehahra? 

I don't know about a Mac port to the nehahra.exe... You would have to talk to Bengt. Find his page off the engines page on the nehahra website (his engine is the first listed). Engine stuff is not my department.

However, the new nehahra progs should run fine with the original EXE too... 

or Linux versions from me. But as Mindcrime says, older Neh versions should also work as there (so far) aren't any new engine requirements. 

What aguirRe said! 

http://macglquake.sourceforge.net/downloads.html

And darkplaces works on Mac too, you can compile it yourself or get it from Nexuiz.

Hi mindcrime! If you really have a complete hub system just waiting to be dropped into Nehahra, and it won't break other things, then why not go for it... I'm sure *somebody* would do something cool with it.

Actually, I'm curious as to how it works and what data is carried between maps. Health/armor/ammo I assume, but what about monsters killed and items picked up? Will they regenerate when I return to a level? and what about cross-level triggers or the multiple player starts needed in the hub? 

I hope no one is particularly fond of this monster as it is. I do not know what charm that modified Q1test model with the spikes and the weird skin had for me during Nehahra development the first time around, but it doesn't work for me this time. I'm going to change the concept of it a little, still retaining the weapon options. Model and sounds might be completely replaced.

Considering it was one of the least popular monsters.. I don't expect I'll hear many objections. 

Well, putting the hub system won't be as easy as a drag and drop.. but it wouldn't be overly difficult.

For that system, parms and info are smuggled/updated via cvars, stuffcmded aliases, and execing config files... Entering a map where you've already been is technically loading a saved game on a map, only the code catches the player as he reenters, updates items, accounts for some lost time, and repositions the player.

(I probably just gave a bunch of QC coders some bright ideas eh? :>)

Downside: No multiplayer. 

but the Tsemoch hunters were my favorite monsters to fight. 

Headthump: Would it bother you to see a different model and hear different sounds though? Tactically, AI-wise, I can't change them much. It would damage the integrity of the intended gameplay in neh1m9, for starters. 

i'll give one suggestion, and that would be to rework some (if not all) the new monster models, in particular, the jagger and gaunt/archgaunt models are pretty bad.
their animations are rather wooden (esp nehah.mdl but also max.mdl->walkanim), and in some cases, poorly timed (the gaunt's death animation).
also, skins could use a bit of work (the jagger's eyes... black circles with solid red pupils and paint.exe spraycan tool red for blood splatters)

also, completly agree, the hunter tsemoch is one ugly model (not even mentioning the skin)

and (i think you mentioned it?) the baron needs some work. his animations are really nice, but they've got some pretty bad vertex dancing in places and from the side, all his vertices look like they were rounded off to the nearest integer coordinate in a very coarse grid... remnants from the conversion process?

heh, hope i don't anger everyone by criticising the 'epic' quake mod of all time. :P

but yeah, i think with some clean models the monsters would really benefit.

cheers :) 

scratch that. i don't care if i anger anyone. XD 

It's the hunter AI and its fight combinations that sets the monster apart. Tweaking the monsters or redoing them from scratch is perfectly understandable. 

It's okay to critique, necros, especially in areas that have room for improvement.

Since you brought it up, I'll address the monsters you mentioned individually:

Gaunts and Archgaunts:

A lot of their animations were kinda meant to be stiff, but it's irrelevant to talk about. I'll be replacing both models. They'll look conceptually the same (gaunts have purple flesh, have a monk-like persona.. Archgaunts are tall, gaunt, prudish, have horns, and have green skin [the colorization intentional, as gaunt's skin pigmentation changes with age, not that this ever made it into the SON dialogue). I planned that from the beginning.

Max:

I might be replacing him. I have an orgy of sexier humanoid models. If I don't, I planned on tending to the walkanim. In fact, he's based off the hellknight model so just redoing him as he was the first time and keeping the hellknight walk might be the best choice. That walkanim is really only seen in cutscenes, the problems only blatant at certain angles which I tried to avoid when shooting the cuts.. but nonetheless.. I was inexperienced with animating walk frames (now I'd say I'm 'fair' to 'mediocre' at it)

Jaggers:

Here you might be knocking horns with most people, as most people like them as they are. I can say.. they might benefit from blood spatter. Sometimes models in Quake just don't look right without the blood :)

The jagger was based off the Blarg, but the Blarg skin was too divorced from the Quake feel and what I wanted. I did consider replacing the Nehahra jagger with the Obscurus jagger completely but too many people seem to like the jaggers as they are.

(The jaggers perhaps rank up there with 'most favorite monsters')

Whether the Ob jagger might come in and have a place of its own, we'll see...

Nehahra:

Oh.. I have things planned.. *wink*

Barons:

Already redone. 

actually, i didn't mean that the blood didn't belong there, but i was actually refering to the poor use of it. it just doesn't look good the way it is done atm. it's just basically one colour stuck on the ends, which looks kind of cheesy as opposed to say, the fiend, where the blood really looks splattered on-- the claws are completly covered with it, and it gradually gets less thick as you move away from them, not to mention using more than one shade of red to give some depth to it.

also, regardless of what others think, i think the animations are rather poor. :P the legs don't seem to bend much, and i suspect the model looks decent ingame only because of model interpolation whereas it could look truly cool if they were done properly with model interp on top of that.

/shrug again, just my opinions, really. also, keep in mind, i don't really have any problem with their behaviour/AI. iirc, they all acted/attacked etc in cool ways. it's really only the look of them that i'm concerned with at this point.

in response to the others:

regarding the gaunt stiffness, i can understand that they might be intended to look stiff and wooden when moving, but what it comes down to is: do you want them to be animated as you imagine them, and have them look poorly animated, or make some concessions, add a bit more character to the sequences, and have them look well animated. :)

I have an orgy of sexier humanoid models. lol XD
max is actually one of the better made ones, with a lot of expressive sequences (although the run looks a tad unnatural w/regards to shoulder movement), also, the sequences where he jumps back up from lying on his back, could probably do with more undulation. (heh, i'm just getting sidetracked with particulars atm, apologies. :P) 

What you can expect is that all aspects will be better. How much better, dunno, but better is better than nothing. I'll do the best I can with the skill (and time!) I have, and my best is all I can do ;) Given the five year experience gap between then and now, my best might be much better indeed.

(a whole lotta bests and betters in that paragraph)

In the end, we'll see what I come up with. 

that's all i can ask.
looking forward to it ^_^ 

To tell you the truth though, the bar really isn't all that high in Quake mods. But let's be frank here, Nehahra -- in its untouched form -- has better models than.. what.. 99% of conversions? Even if that's not saying much, it's saying something. It's all in how you choose to compare.

A lot of the time the really well-made models in mods and paks.. are of monsters that completely don't fit. I think I've always been of the mind where it's better to have a mediocre model that fits, than a great model that doesn't (which includes, but is not limited to, being unQuakey). Knowing what fits I suppose just takes the right set of eyes (a level of taste, that you either have or do not have).

Of course, skins greatly impact how a model is perceived. Bad skinmaps and bad skins can have a detrimental effect. But again, I would rather have a cut-and-paste skin that fits and suits the mood, than an elaborately detailed one that has no business being in the game. For me, what's most important, is how it looks in the game and how it wraps the model. I don't give a damn what it looks like if you look at the skin BMP itself. It's immaterial unless... we'll get to the 'unless' in a minute.

I mentioned that I reskinned and reskinmapped the baron. But let me use the original baron as an example. This is probably the favorite Nehahra monster (whether one of the new ones will challenge his title, we'll see).

The original skinmap was god awful. It was just his idle pose. However, because it was his idle pose, I could be sure that the skin pixels would land about where I wanted them to. What you see is what you get. The skin of course used pieces of the death knight skin. An artist I am not, but I knew how to make it fit. (You might notice the gaunt's faces are ripped straight from a classic Quake texture... Are you beginning to see how I think?)

In-game he was scary and a little grainy, but grainy is good.. grainy is crude and crude can be brutal if done right.

I did not receive one complaint regarding the baron in the game (other than the occasional 'why does his shape ripple sometimes?'.. it's arguable that the gentle wandering of his vertexes has almost become part of his identity now..) UNTIL people started looking at him in the model editor and at his skin.

Now, he worked for Nehahra. In the game, he just worked. He visually fit. Even those damned wandering vertexes gave him character from my standpoint. It made him look more alien. (Funnily I received an email complaining that I was going to clean him up).

Sometimes the best things happen on accident or unintentionally. Look at Quake itself.

He didn't become 'a problem' until people wanted to rip him out and stick in their own mods to reskin and rework as they saw fit (which I don't mind.. but is totally *not* my problem).

Ever since I started talking about redoing the models (most heavily then, but I did have them as early as the week after Nehahra was released), I've been getting emails from people saying you-should-do-this-and-that-and-this-and-that and that's fine. I welcome suggestions. I also have a tendency to answer emails. When I got some dialogue going with some, the motives behind the discussion seeped out. Most of them hadn't even played Nehahra. They only downloaded it so they could rip it apart for models, textures, sounds, and the like. I'm all for pillaging mods for good content and base stuff (though I am more inclined to do it myself for defunct mods rather than active ones.. because when you rip from a mod that is still active, you tread a line between tribute and disrespect ... and I suppose it's how you use it that will decide which sentiment was at play..).

But I then have to wonder ultimately.. who the hell am I really working for? For me, or for *them*. The baron worked for me and he worked for Neh and he fit. Should the fact that he doesn't work for someone else who wishes to use him for this or that even be a concern of mine?

A couple years after the release, looking back, I was somewhat glad the baron was almost completely unskinnable. Because I thought.. chances are.. I'd probably find myself downloading some quake mod and some map pack.. and find the baron again with some distasteful/unquakey skin and would then vomit all over the floor.

I have a similar response to reskinned knights and death knights (they are in fact a pet peeve of mine). Sometimes I can see a lot of effort was put forth to make them fit. All the colors are right. Yet it looks wrong. Well designed skin, yet it is dull to the eyes in the game and completely stripped of the 'brutal feel' death knights have that get your blood pumping and make you worry. (my pet name for the offenders are 'kiddie knights')

Ah, so ends my rant :) Ran out of steam.

My point: if it looks right behind the gun barrel, if it looks right in the game, if it feels right, it *is* right. 

like the skins in Neh, even if they are a bit wobbly or stiff. Standard Quake monsters have basically the same tech issues and they fit very well. The "crudeness" is a part of the game's personality.

It's the same reason why I usually prefer non-interpolated animations, it looks a bit weird. In Neh I think it's OK, since it's after all a specific conversion and interpolation can be turned off at will.

In the testing of my engines, I've plowed my way through a lot of PCs and TCs and most of their models are just awful (not to mention world texes). Apparently it's not easy to find or produce contents that fit together well. 

I actually like that model and the animations now that I've look at it. Some of their creepiness comes from their stiffness too perhaps. They move inhumanly (yet not robotically).

Not taking them off the list of things to change.. but I think I might kick them to the bottom of it :/ 

baron skin\UVm was a mess, especially considering how good the original EvilBastard's work looks.
animations are slightly worsened, but mostly same as original, but the skin is :\

and for me it was 2x fuckedup, cuase I played on voodoo3 - it auto scales all the textures down to 256 (afair baron has really wide skin, cause of the long sword taking rediculous space on the UVm) resulting look was very blurry

tsemoch skin is a grey-ish mess too

the ogre-enforcers were the best

oh, and funny u mention the pathetic 'modders' who were getting Neh just to rip its content

lazy fucks could have d/l the models from polycount - the are all the evilbastard` models with original skinmaps and hi quality skins by different artists in several styles 

Hehe. I agree. I was only using the original baron as an example though.

The conversion was much better this time (well, I'm much better this time...)

I might actually put up a screen of the newly done baron. The way things are looking I might allow one animation sequence that he calls from time to time while idle where the vertexes do shift around (some people thought the 'ripple effect' was neat, doh).

I'm glad you liked the ogre enforcers. Some people bitched about them. :) I'm not touching them though.

fyi, I developed Neh on a v3.

Almost all of the skins are 256x256 now, with a couple exceptions. One that I know of is 256x512. 

Oh, and yes.. they could download it from polycount (just like I did!). But then they'd have to do the conversion themselves (and know how not to fuck up the skinmap.. which I already admitted.. I didn't know in 2000), remove objects not need for the DDZ --> baron conversion, merge the sword with the model and animate the sword in his hand, and then add the extra baron-y animations. Lotta work.. and that's if you have any idea what you're doing to begin with.

And yes, Evilbastard rocks.. which is why I did the baron proper this time. 

Well, I'm not touching the models.. and the skin graphics. The skinMAPS are another story. 

I just knocked both 'ogre mutants' down to 256x256. While we lose some texture detail on the weapons, we gain plenty on the monsters, which is a tradeoff I can live with. I fixed a skin problem with the grunt too.

And tested them on my old PC with 64 RAM and a V3 :) hehe 

I'm going to assume from the lack of suggestions and comments, save for a few, that my notes on the revamp on the revamp page and here have sufficiently answered any questions or addressed any concerns and I'm in good shape. Of course, given Nehahra's initial release in 2000, there have been 5 years worth of comments and talk about Nehahra to go on when considering what to take a look at or change (at least, what things *can* be changed without breaking the .DEMs and affecting the intended gameplay in the 21 maps).

I only wanted to be sure that I lent an objective ear to those in the community who had something to say (so as not to be accused otherwise).

Thanks to those who offered a few cents both here and in the Ob thread re: Nehahra.

Good things in the future.

Cheers.