News | Forum | People | FAQ | Links | Search | Register | Log in
Q1SP: Forwards Compatible
Hot on the heels of LTHSP2 "Backwards Compatible" comes the sequel "Forwards Compatible", only seven years later!

Basically I made this about three years ago now, and never got around to really finishing it up in a way I was happy with. Still, it's playable from start to finish, and has a couple of moments I think are kinda neat.

It's a rubicon-themed map, like LTHSP2, with a couple of twists. There's a .lit file for those that like them, I like to consider the lighting "quite tasteful" as coloured lighting goes, though replaying it it obvious that the lighting could have been a bit more moody.

Anyway, the .map and .qc source are included, so feel free to fiddle with it.

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.random-productions.co.uk/quake/back2forwards.zip
(3mb)

SCREENS:
http://www.random-productions.co.uk/quake/
(screens have come out quite dark)

LTHSP2 (for nostaliga value):
http://www.random-productions.co.uk/quake/lthsp.zi
First | Previous | Next | Last
Bleh ! 
I found it a bit confusing in the same way as JPL's Slime Refinery Complex. It's the amount of corridors, and the amount of niches that could be doors but aren't, which is probably in the textures.

Well, if you don't like corridors and complex interconnect: you will not like my next project :P 
Played It 
pretty solid but unremarkable stuff. A few nice otuches as people have mentioned icnluding glass and new monsters and plantation.

Colored lighting is good but I played with and without and without could have definitely used better lighting. I know its meant to be played with colored lighting but a little more effort should have been made so that it looked good in regular quake too. 
JPL 
I like SRC after getting to know it, but in the beginning it was confusing to me. The early Bobs were rather tough, too and stifled the flow a bit.

But I like it as a map, I didn't mean to put it down. It was a map that needed to grow on me for some time. ;-)

The problem with recognizing doors has to do with custom textures, in idbase you immediately know a door when you see one, in rubicon not always, because not many maps use it. I didn't play Doom3 and thus the textures weren't immediately familiar.

That's all, no offense or shit talk intended. 
Gb 
I didn't took your comments as offense: don't worry :) I admit easily that be aware of what is a door, or not, is not that obvious in SRC, while there are colored trims around the SK/GK doors... I just took these comments as a "don't do that again" for next maps... but concerning interconnects, you will not be deceived... ;) 
JPL 
Looking forward to it :-) 
Exit... 
Can one exit from Backwards Compatible into Forwards Compatible? 
Not Likely... 
They use a different codebase. the ond one doesn't have the code that makes they key work (both the throw and the keep after use), and the new code doesn't have the yellow nail enforcers. There's also the issue of making the trigger_changelevel point correctly, but that's minor...

So I finally tried it. Died more than a few times, but eventually got to the end. Didn't get the secret, but was able to see what it was. The fiends were a fairly major battle. I think that the point could've been made with just 6 fiends instead of 10 (I played skill 1), and ammo is very tight to take them all down, even for a packrat like me.

End boss was a welcome reminder of his old maps, even though it was very tough, until I realised that you could stand in a place where you couldn't be shot, but could kill it easily. 600 health is a bit much for it, though, but as there's only one, it's not too bad. Was a little disappointing to not see the nail enforcers return, though... 
Finally Played It... 
nice map. Old-school mood and archicecture. Also the nonlinear layout was quite nice -- I think that may also qualify as old-school, becuase I don't remember playing a lot of newer maps that were this open.

The finale was fairly easy compared to the previous map I played (with 4 SNG guys in a big room.)

Nice mix of custom bad guys. 
Question About Alpha... 
i'm adding alpha support to fitzquake, and I can't tell what the "correct" appearance is supposed to be -- is the glass supposed to have lightmaps/shading, or is it supposed to be fullbright?

Also, you have one object you set to alpha -1 in there... what is the -1 intended to do? 
Transparent 
-1 and possibly all negative values are meant to make the object entirely invisible and unrendered. 0 has to default to 1 so that all the entities are visible by default. I reckon that the more intuitive way of doing it would have been to just flip the direction of the alpha scale, so .alpha stores (1 - rendering_alpha), with 0 being fully visible and 1 being fully transparent. But the engines have a standard now, and this is it. 
Well I Think Lightmaps Will Look Better... 
...and 0 = fully transparent and 1 = opaque, for the key ".alpha". I am pleased to hear that FitzQuake will be supporting alpha for brushmodels!! I might actually put some glass into my maps now ;-P
Also, will you be able to have transparent enemies? I thought this would be cool - using progs hacks I could have a extra-tough semi-transparent glowing scrag for example.... You could implement ghosts into levels n' stuff! 
Thank You.. 
Finally played. I liked it a lot. Very pleasant on the eyes. Thanks. 
Thank You.. 
Finally played. I liked it a lot. Very pleasant on the eyes. Thanks. 
Ricky 
Transparent enemies will only appear transparent in engines that support it...

But assuming it does, just set "alpha" to some number below 1 (start with 0.5 and see how that looks) to make the monster transparent. Some models will look better than others. Same trick also works on items, if you want to be mean... 
Yeah... 
...I was kinda meaning "Will you able to have transparent enemies" - in FitzQuake now?
Also, for engines that do support alpha, isnt it ".alpha", with a stop? I heard this somewhere I think. Anyone who knows care to confirm, so we're all on the same page here?
(Ha: "Ricky - go and check the documentation")
:-P 
That's Right 
And as I remember if alpha can be applied to func's then it can be applied to entities as well, including monsters. I did it in my first map with a Vore that teleports in, smashing a wooden structure.

Problem was I had Gaunts in the map who can teleport to close with the player to any available point, with info_teleport_destination being top of their list. A messed with it a bit until the bbox of the Vore would smash the structure but the smaller Gaunt's wouldn't.

Kept the combat interesting though, since the player couldn't just leave all the enemies behind. 
.alpha Verses Alpha 
Keyvalues of an entity in a map correspond to fields of entities in the qc code. When referred to in the qc, it's called .alpha to make it clear that it is a field. The usage would go something like self.alpha = 0.5; for making the current entity called "self" have an alpha value of 0.5. But for the map keyvalue, you would simply use
"alpha" "0.5"

The same could be said of any of the standard fields, targetname is thought of as .targetname within the qc code, but as a keyvalue is just "targetname". alpha is probably mentioned as .alpha all the time because it's usually discussed by coders, who tend to think of it in terms of the qc definition. It also helps to make it clear that you are specifically talking about the per-entity field .alpha, and not the idea of alpha in a more general sense, where it can be applied to particle effects, water rendering, alpha channels on sprites, etc... 
Thanks For The Info Once Again Preach/Ijed 
so I could have:

"classname" "whatever"
"alpha" "0.3"

I mean I wouldnt have a clue about alpha on particles/sprites or anything like that. I know how to set transparent water in a level using Quoths info_command/trigger_command:

"classname" "info_command"
"targetname" "whatever"
"message" "r_wateralpha 0.4"

...would use the command "r_wateralpha 0.4" when triggered.

I just like the idea of having ghosts:

"classname" "monster_dog"
"effects" "4"
"alpha" "0.4"
"armortype" "1"
"armorvalue" "280"

This would give a dog which was transparent (ghostly), glowed orange (very ghostly) and was pretty tough for a dog.

And you could add the "alpha" key to any bmodels including doors, plats and trains?

:D 
Ricky: 
yeah, the plan is for alpha support in the next version of fitzquake. As for what it works on, theoretically it can be applied to any entity in the map file, with the exception of worldspawn. In practice, some engines only support it on some types of entity.

For example, I haven't added support to sprites yet, or static entities, or sky-textured polygons. 
Would Doing That 
For sprites allow eg. png transparency? More a question of format support since it currently has extra support for targa and pcx. 
Ijed 
like you say, that has to do with file format support, not an alpha field on map entities. 
 
I enjoyed the map. Fiend murdering was fun. Also the modified enforcers. I particularly liked the room with the three healths on the left and enforcers above a doorway, it made for cool logistics.

I concur with gb, I'm unsure about corridors, and I'm ashamed to admit I also had problems finding the second trigger for the final door ;) 
 
Is the final boss for this map bugged? and if so, was there ever a patch for it? 
Decent 
Some reason i never stumbled upon these map before. Unfortunatly for me not much opportunity for tricky runs. SO no demos today :)

final boss worked fine for me 
 
The final boss always fires into the ground 
First | Previous | Next | Last
You must be logged in to post in this thread.
Website copyright © 2002-2024 John Fitzgibbons. All posts are copyright their respective authors.