Who's next?

[Chilvence]

Anyone here remember Battlezone fondly? I do. In the house I used to live, it was a daily staple on the home LAN. The mixture of strategy, dogfighting and covert sniping made it worryingly addictive, it was the first of its kind to throw so many ingredients into the mix (and make it work, beautifully :'). Not to mention, the secret Cold war in space plot managed to be wacky and yet strangely fascinating at the same time. A great deal of thought went into the story of that game, even though in a game its such a superficial element.

Ah well, when Harry made a Hover tank, I thought 'Hey, I could do that' so I did a couple of tests to see whether I could make anything any good. I'm not sure really where to go from this point, I'm just deciding whether I will re-model the lot of them and make a sort of hires upgrade patch, or use them in a mod, or just stop where I'm at now and go back to nostalgicly reminiscing about the game *grin* So, I didnt bother to skin them yet because thats harder than modelling...

The Grizzly (http://www.stateoftheworld.eclipse.co.uk/doom/stuffage/grizzly.jpg) No Mercy!

The Razor (http://www.stateoftheworld.eclipse.co.uk/doom/stuffage/razor.jpg) (already posted in the other thread)

[ToXiCFLUFF]

One of my favourite games ever. Voice acting was great, storyline was intriguing - the mission where you have to snipe a soviet pilot, steal his vehicle and go on patrol with the other commies remains one of the best game missions I've played.

Graphically it looked excellent and ran fast for the time. Getting to my multiplayer experiences with BZ, the strategy mode rules, and I've had perfectly (and I mean perfectly) smooth games with 400 ping. I'm guessing lots of stuff is done on the client-side or something.


Good models anyway, I especially like the Grizzly.

[Chilvence]

You've got my favourite mission right there, that whole ordeal was absolutely manic. What a rock hard mission. I always loved the fact that you werent completely hung out to dry if you ever lost your vehicle.

Yeah, the grizzly does look a lot more like it, doesnt it. I havent quite matched the curves of the Razor yet, theres lots of details in the video that I'm struggling to work out because of the horrible compression, and I think thats the only place where they used the CG version of it.

Ah well, I just finished cutting up all the seperate panels on the grizzly so it doesnt look so mushy when gouraud shading is used, see what a massive difference it makes:
http://www.stateoftheworld.eclipse.co.uk/doom/stuffage/soft.jpg
http://www.stateoftheworld.eclipse.co.uk/doom/stuffage/sharp.jpg
Thats actually quite a useful technique, I dont know if anyone else has tried it, but since md2 doesnt have support for bona-fide smoothing groups, you can cheat by unwelding all the vertices along the edge of what you want to sharpen.
I think its begging me to paint it

[ToXiCFLUFF]

Yes, paint Chilvence. Paint.

Heh, we seem to have very similar taste in games. Anyway, you know anything about BZ's model formats? I know it is possible to make new stuff for it, since I've played quite a few mods - I have no idea how easy it is though.

http://games.paradum.com/bzone/index_bz1tools.shtml

[Chilvence]

Ah we dont share the same taste so to speak, we just know which games are actually good ;)

Thanks for that link, I've actually been using a couple of utils from that site for my reference, but it was kind of you to point it out anyway ;). I dont know how hard it is to actually make the vehicles definitions themselves, but I think it will be pretty difficult getting my models into the GEO format in the first place since I dont have a copy of MAX lying around, heh. Maybe the plugin will work in GMAX if I'm lucky, I havent even investigated it yet. Bleh I havent even used GMAX yet, still cant wean myself off good old Q2MDL

I've definately decided to paint this one now, just to see if I can make it look amazing :)

[Harry]

That grissly looks BADDASS! 1,000,000 times better than mine :D

[Chilvence]

Yours is good too man, at least you came up with an original design, I just copied it ;)

[Harry]

hmmm. how many triangles has that grizzly got? I'll take a guess... 300-400 I'd say. A jolly good job :D

[Chilvence]

Your damn close, its almost in the middle at 363. I've almost finished mapping texture coords to it, now I just have to stare at them a while to make sure I'm absolutely happy with them :)

[Harry]

What are texture coords? I am curious, I knew they were something to do with 3d modeling, but I don't know what.

[Chilvence]

They're the layout for the skin - IE what you were making with lithunwrap (although I use Npherno's skin tool, its all the same thing)

[Amazon_Death]

reminds me of Total Annihilation

[MasterOfPuppets]

i played Battle Zone: Rise of the Black Dogs (meh) and that model of yours Grizzly model blows the real thing away.

[ToXiCFLUFF]

i played Battle Zone: Rise of the Black Dogs (meh) and that model of yours Grizzly model blows the real thing away.Is this the N64 version?

[Chilvence]

Apparently so. They must have done something really bad to that one, since I cant find a nice word about it. Nice box art though *grin*

[Chilvence]

http://www.stateoftheworld.eclipse.co.uk/doom/stuffage/half.jpg

[DaniJ]

Looks great Chilvence. Got any plans for it or is it just for fun?

Now you need to beat it up with lots of dust and scratches.

[ToXiCFLUFF]

Awesome! The end of the cannon looks a bit too flat to me, but looking great apart from that.

As an aside, what did you think of BZ2?

[jls23]

BZ2 failed to capture the addictiveness and feel of the original, but still good.

[Harry]

Looks great, but like Dani said, you need to beat it up with dust and scratches:p
Can't wait to see the razor!

[Chilvence]

Thanks, I'm quite pleased it didnt turn into a dull grey brick, cos basically that would be the thing that stopped me from trying any others. First I'll finish all the many small details on this one, and then I'm tempted to do either the Soviet Golem or the Flanker, or maybe even the Grendel Bomber, we'll see. If I can manage to make a fair few, then I might try and see about getting them into either BZ1 or 2 :) At the moment I'm doing it purely for the fun of it.


As an aside, what did you think of BZ2?

It was a good game I think, and it did improve the game system itself in many ways, but it just didn't feel like the same thing without the Soviets and the NASA/NSDF conspiracy. There was a kind of strange buzz that came from blowing up the dirty commies or crushing the imperialist American scum under the feet of your walkers, that I personally find strangely addictive (I much prefer Red Alert 1/2 over any other top down strategy game as well) The Scions were pretty bleh, I remember thinking they looked pretty goood when screenshots were coming out, but then I saw the silly recycler and heard the Dalek voices and thought "unh"

edit: Oh and they completely fucked up the mouse input in sniping mode and for that I could repeatedly stab them until dead

[ToXiCFLUFF]

I had some similar qualms actually. They completely fucked up movement on foot in my opinion; it just didn't feel right to have such a strict limit on turning speed when simply running around or trying to shoot at something.

I dunno, I haven't played it in ages because it doesn't run on my computers, but somehow it just didn't feel as good to play to me. Repeatedly hammering someone with dual SP-Stabbers until they died lacked the same punchy feel as the first one, where explosions sent you reeling.

And I can't even remember the story.

[Chilvence]

I dont know if it was an actual limit imposed on your turning speed, since you can up the mouse sensitivity so its right up there with Quake, etc; its just there seemed to be a tiny threshold that you had to move the mouse faster than to actually move the crosshair, which made it impossible to fine tune your aim. Almost like mouse smoothing was forced on at the engine level. I've done a little bit of tweaking, and disabling triple buffer + vsynch at least reduces the lag a bit, but that layer of mud is still there :(

I think as far as the feeling of the game goes, the colour scheme was the only thing that ruined it. Everything in Bzone1 was gritty and dull, whereas Bzone2, everything is bright and multicoloured, every weapon is a primary colour etc. Desaturate everything on the screen and suddenly it feels a whole lot more familiar :)

TERRIBLE PLOT SPOILER FOR ANYONE WHO DIDNT WANT TO KNOW ENSUES


Furies were actually born of the mutilated Black Dog squadron by and created secretly by General Armond Braddock; left do distant solar system and formed the Scion race, obviously when they returned, they needed to be crushed into scrap metal before anyone could know the truth. So I think its actually a pretty cool story, and its definately intresting that you are fighting an enemy of human creation as in BZ1 - its just that the Scions dont feel as creepy and overpowering when theyre not 10 times your size, 100 feet in the air and frying you with arc lightning, heh

Theres also a bit of discontinuity there, because when I remember Battlezone 1 it was the Soviets who actually used the fury technology and made the first furies. Were there different endings/paths you could take?

[ToXiCFLUFF]

Hmm.... I'm sure I remember a turn speed limit. Was this removed in a patch?

But yeah, I remember some of the last US campaign missions when you were constantly being attacked by Furies. The odds felt so stacked against you, being besieged from the sky all the time - I remember feeling like I'd won an impossible battle after finally finishing the first of those maps.

[Chilvence]

I dunno, foot movement was just bad all over, you could say many things about it.

I just got the old one working on my other computer again and I've been playing it all morning :D I'm missing the interface improvments and all that, but its still clearly the stronger game. Theres only about 4 or 5 missions in BZ2 that I really enjoy, but I havent got bored so far on my replay of BZ1. The graphics somehow seem better as well, theyre obviously less advanced, but the wakes of dust and the explosion effects in large_assets just look so much more polished.

What is it that makes a good game great?

[Harry]

The graphics somehow seem better as well, theyre obviously less advanced, but the wakes of dust and the explosion effects in large_assets just look so much more polished.

Yeah, that is what I think, I keep wondering why BZ1's graphics are better than that of BZ2.

[ToXiCFLUFF]

The large assets explosions are actually some of my favourites ever. So chunky and full of debris, awesome stuff. The way the BZ explosions throw your view around makes them feel really powerful as well.

Graphically, I thought BZ2 was better than the first (especially the self-shadowing/rain/specular stuff etc) - but stylistically, I thought it was much worse. And the style is ultimately what determines whether I like the look of something or not.

//Edit: As a final note, the self-destruct ejection is one of the most visceral actions ever in a game. Goddamn it feels liberating to just throw yourself a hundred meters into the sky. Slamming CTRL-B when surrounded and losing all threats below you as you fly off in the air is awesome.

//Edit2: As for what makes a good game great, it's a tough question. I find it's similarly hard with a film, or especially a song.. You can point to this reason and that reason as to why something is or isn't good, but fundamentally it's not something so tangible.

[Harry]

AAAAARRRRGGHH, I have to install that game again!!!!!

[Chilvence]

In that case, you may need this, if you have trouble with it: http://www.bzuniverse.com/battlezone/faq.php ;)

[Chilvence]

I'm going across country for a week now, but when I get back I'll finish the rest of this:

http://www.stateoftheworld.eclipse.co.uk/doom/stuffage/legs.jpg

For the sake of a Sasquatch that doesnt look silly *grin*

[Chilvence]

Ah well, my brother had to work and I got bored in his house so I grabbed a copy of q2mdl and did a bit more: http://www.stateoftheworld.eclipse.co.uk/doom/stuffage/stupid.jpg

I wanted to do something stylistically completely different to the original, but still keep an obvious resemblance. So I kept the same rough shape and the tiny head and worked some curves around it. All that's left now is to plug the holes and do the spine and back

[DaniJ]

mmmm... sasquatch, glaaaarrrrrr.

Looking very nice, don't forget to setup seperate smoothing groups for the different parts though:)

[Chilvence]

Smoothing groups *grin* ? I do them manually with cut and paste, heh. But I never thought about creating the groups and then cutting them up after, that will probably come in handy if I ever actually upgrade from mdl.exe.

glaaaarrrrrr.

You've hit it right on the nose, in fact, thats pretty much what the pilot voice samples sound like.

[DaniJ]

Smoothing groups ? I do them manually with cut and paste, heh. *sick*

Heh, you should get yourself a copy of gmax.

[Chilvence]

I have got a copy :) I just really like q2mdl for some reason. The camera control is perfect and I find it really easy to draw a model out of a bunch of vertices. Its probably because I always draw lots of reference doodles when I'm on it; much easier way to work details out than fiddling with clumsy 3d controls.

I just wish the actual programs code wasnt so crap, I could probably write an eleven page rulebook on how to completely avoid making it crash heh *grin*