The Serpent Lord's News

It's amusing to see how many TCs get foxed, or just flop, or never get finished, yet some people never lose their enthusiasm for creating these things. So to everyone making TCs, for whatever reason, here's some advice:

"I have an original game idea and I want it to be free" - If this is your plan, you are ready to go, just make sure you have the time to finish it! Don't count on the help of volunteers - if you can't finish it with one or two dedicated people, your TC is probably too ambitious.

"We have a great team of talented people, and we want to make a TC to show what we can do" - I would seriously urge you to consider creating a stand alone game. I don't mean that you shouldn't make a TC, just keep it under wraps until you can find a publisher to license the engine. If you're TC isn't good enough to compete as a stand-alone game, it's definitely going to flop as a free or commercial add-on.

"I want to make a game about _____" If _____ is a character or setting from a book, movie, or anything else you didn't come up with yourself, you are going to get "Foxed." Of course you can always work WITH the copyright owner instead of trying to sneak around behind their back. But when dealing with zillion dollar franchises, be prepared to "go commercial". And if you do make a commercial game you will probably reach more people at a reasonable price with a stand-alone game than a TC.

1. TRUST NO ONE - Don't become dependent on the dedication of volunteers.
2. SELL OUT - Don't sell yourself short with a TC when more people will play a stand-alone game.
3. COPY RIGHT - Find out who owns your favorite settings and work with them.

April 21

QuArK 5 beta 1 is out! - QuArK 5 has some awesome new features like showing mdl and md2 models in your map edting view.

All you really need to do is make a point entity (like a player or monster) called "misc_tree", but for serious hackers there are some more tricks you can use, and even come up with custom trees

classname  misc_tree (everything else is optional)
model      an mdl, bsp, or sprite for the tree (defaults to progs/tree.mdl)
height     the height of the tree (in case you have multiple types of trees)
skin       just in case you have multi-skinned trees
frame      animation frame (or group)
style      the color (0..255) of particles that appear when the tree is hit

April 18

It's here! The finished version of Hack and Slash Quake, featuring new models and animation, a new map, and more flexibility. Just follow this link and get the minimum, full or QuArK installation. The minimum installation has no wads, source code, or qME extended MDL data, but it still has everything you need to play Hack and Slash (and it fits on one floppy disk!)

April 16

Daniel Salby - "A beasty thing with similar size and animation to player.mdl. If it has a different hand to hand weapon could I have a weapon model of it. And a Staff type weapon"

I added Hack and Slash models to the list - remember, you can donate your model to the Free Models Project, but if you just want the model to be used for Hack and Slash (or whatever) upload your model to another site (perhaps Walnut Creek's Quake section) and then tell me about it and I'll list it here.

April 15

HACK AND SLASH - It's close but I'm not going to release another beta. All that remains is to do is a skin, some entity placement, and text files.

WANTED MODELS - Bret Bussey wants a "Predator model for Quake 2 - scans head back and forth, throws weapons or has shoulder launcher." I'm sure Bret is not the only person who would be interested in such a model, but try to avoid attracting the attention of 20th Century Fox.

SKYPAINT - Wasabi Software has released SkyPaint, a 3D panorama painting tool, good for editing things like Quake 2 skies and it also supports formats for other 3D programs. It works as an Adobe Photoshop plug-in - which incidentally will also work with other painting programs like Paint Shop Pro.

Q2JAVA - For those who still believe that Java is not suitable for real-time games (as if you haven't seen Frag Island, with it's whole 3D graphics engine running in Java), check out Q2Java, the team that's porting the freely modifiable parts of Quake 2 (physics, weapons, rules, monster ai, and such) to Java.

Even if you aren't a big Java fan, consider some of the benefits. Java mods can be loaded dynamically and combined with each other, they are also platform independent and safer to use. Q2Java 0.3 (the current version) is actually a little more efficient in some ways than the standard Quake 2 dll, so you will have the security of Quake C combined with the flexibility of Quake 2 DLLs, and better speed than Quake C.

April 6

This mod has some very powerful features that I'm surprised aren't imitated more often. One of the main purpose of Hack and Slash is to influence other mods and if they are Quake mods they can just copy and paste my code.

One of these simple but powerful ideas exploits Quake's spawn functions and it's very handy conversion of map variables into quake c entity feilds. Spawn functions are functions with the same name as the item. In these spawn functions you can precache (load from disk into memory) any sound, model, or sprite, but normally each type of item only precaches a certain model. for instance "item_armor1" always precaches "progs/armor.mdl"

But this does not have to be so. A Quake map designer already has the flexibility to create entities with varying light levels, styles, and speeds, so why not give items variable models? Since most Quake C feilds are also valid in map files, I can add a specific key/value pair such as "model" "progs/boss.mdl" and now all I have to do is override the Quake C so that it will use the items "model" instead of the default. Here is an example

precache_model ("progs/armor.mdl");
setmodel (self, "progs/armor.mdl");

if (!self.model) self.model = "progs/armor.mdl";
precache_model (self.model);
setmodel (self, self.model);

This can be applied to almost any kind of Quake entity you can think of from making new types of armor that still work in unmodified Quake, to making the invisibility powerup look like disembodied eyeballs.

Better yet, once you have converted some items over to this kind of flexibility then the Quake C programmers work is done and the modelers and mappers can collaborate directly. I suspect the main reason you don't see more mods like this is that programmers tend to be an inbred bunch, more concerned about their "kung fu" than the convenience of the artists they are creating tools for.

I assume that this principle can be applied to most other modifiable games, so if you have tried it, let me know!

April 4

Lots of people have been asking about making new player models. They can be donated to the Free Models Project - but only do that if you want them to be useable for all sorts of other projects. If you just want to make a model for this mod or if you want people to ask permission to use them, you can simply upload the model to Walnut Creek CD-ROM's Quake FTP upload site ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/incoming/ or your own internet site. Then e-mail me and I will list your models on these web pages.

Most web browsers will let you upload files to an FTP site like Walnut Creek, so you don't have to donate your Hack and Slash models and maps and other creations to the Free Models Project.

If you program mods for other games you might want to consider porting Hack and Slash - it is a simple project (once you get the camera working anyway) You've already got my permission to do it. Some good ones might be Hexen2 (you can use Hexen C patches in QuArK and the camera is already partially done) Quake2 (already has multimodels and needs a hand to hand mod badly) and Jedi Knight (probably very easy) Of course you have the option of porting the mod partially or in steps.

Some things in the works for the non-beta Hack and Slash - multiskins (registered = skins * 100 + models), new models, and jumping animation (this will be the last addition to the frame count for a total of 64 frames and 6 simple scenes).

April 2

This is Quake the way we like it - no guns, no 1st person p-o-s view. Other amazing new features include multiple player models. There are only 2 in this beta version but more models are added just by changing one console variable! I'm sure you've never seen a Quake mod like this before - I know I haven't.

More importantly, the source code, models, and textures are free by the same basic rules as most of the Free Models Project models. Just include the text file and give us credit and you don't even need to ask for permission! This means you can re-use our chase-camera or multimodel code in your own mods.

How long did it take us to make this? Only a few days thanks to programs like qME and QuArK. The qME extended object and joint-track information is included with the models so you can copy the animation into your own models. The QuArK file contains all of the Quake C patches and new textures.

So now that you know what Hack and Slash is, download the beta and the QuArK file with textures and Quake C. If you like Hack and Slash, you can add more to it. If you hate it, you can tear it apart and just keep the bits you want!