Nexuiz Team Fortress - Concept Pics

[Flying Steel]

If this project gets started (which won't happen until coders and modelers join up), we should decide on what visual style to use, for instance utilitarian army, alien weirdness, sports arena, My Little Pony (as if), or something else — and stick to that style. The problem I have with the current Nex player models is the lack of coherence. Every model looks as if it comes from a different universe.

I am planning a set of a dozen models with class-based mutator(s) in mind (though they are also fully intended for use in core Nexuiz), each of which is intended to be paired with a particular one of Nexuiz' weapons when used as a character class, and each meant to have its own armor/health and movement physics stats, as well as special Nexuiz equipment (grappling hook, jetpack, portolaunch).

These dozen character models will be split into two distinct factions, and balanced against each other so that they could be used as such a way as we have seen in the battlefield, battlefront or quake wars series', as well as one faction being used by more than one team, or both factions combined so that the player can choose any character class he wants, depending on the Mutator.

The first faction (Terran Faction) is your "Utilitarian Army", comprised of Human(s), their Unmanned Combat Vehicles (robot warriors) and one or two other assorted helpers, like a Troodon Dinosaurs soldier for kicks.

The second faction (Nexuiz Faction) is your "Alien Weirdness", comprised of redesigned "Nexuiz's Soldiers" (I plan for them to be upright quadrupeds with a thick skin of some sort), a similarly built heavy walker robot, a UFO, maybe that wheel bot of Morphed's and various very strange Alien Auxilliaries (one most likely a cyborg, perhaps another brought over unaltered from Vega Strike) a la Star Control, Halo and Universe at War.

Some of these ideas are more solidified for me than others, so some of this is subject to change.

And as a heads up, try not to be shocked if you don't see a single humanoid character amoung these who isn't actually human. I seriously hate anthropomorphism.

[ai]

And as a heads up, try not to be shocked if you don't see a single humanoid character amoung these who isn't actually human. I seriously hate anthropomorphism.

Just remember that the bounding box is the same and it mustn't change as that would give advantages/disadvantages to using that model.

[Clueless Newbie]

If this project gets started (which won't happen until coders and modelers join up), we should decide on what visual style to use, for instance utilitarian army, alien weirdness, sports arena, My Little Pony (as if), or something else — and stick to that style. The problem I have with the current Nex player models is the lack of coherence. Every model looks as if it comes from a different universe.

I am planning a set of a dozen models with class-based mutator(s) in mind (though they are also fully intended for use in core Nexuiz), each of which is intended to be paired with a particular one of Nexuiz' weapons when used as a character class, and each meant to have its own armor/health and movement physics stats, as well as special Nexuiz equipment (grappling hook, jetpack, portolaunch).

These dozen character models will be split into two distinct factions, and balanced against each other so that they could be used as such a way as we have seen in the battlefield, battlefront or quake wars series', as well as one faction being used by more than one team, or both factions combined so that the player can choose any character class he wants, depending on the Mutator.

The first faction (Terran Faction) is your "Utilitarian Army", comprised of Human(s), their Unmanned Combat Vehicles (robot warriors) and one or two other assorted helpers, like a Troodon Dinosaurs soldier for kicks.

The second faction (Nexuiz Faction) is your "Alien Weirdness", comprised of redesigned "Nexuiz's Soldiers" (I plan for them to be upright quadrupeds with a thick skin of some sort), a similarly built heavy walker robot, a UFO, maybe that wheel bot of Morphed's and various very strange Alien Auxilliaries (one most likely a cyborg, perhaps another brought over unaltered from Vega Strike) a la Star Control, Halo and Universe at War.

Sounds good to me. Sounds like a lot of work, too. How about starting off by making a basic male human soldier (or something), and then use variants of the basic model for the different classes by varying the size and proportions - and the gear, of course. That way, we could have the models for a basic NTF relatively soon. Other styles and settings (like what you're suggesting) could be added as they are made.

Either way, does this mean we have a modeler on board? (please? )

Some of these ideas are more solidified for me than others, so some of this is subject to change.

And as a heads up, try not to be shocked if you don't see a single humanoid character amoung these who isn't actually human. I seriously hate anthropomorphism.

I'm with you on that one. Another thing I hate are the "chainmail bikini" models. If you make woman models, please make them realistic. Konoko, not Lisa Lipps.

I think the only thing that would actually shock me are goatse / tubgirl-themed player models..

[Clueless Newbie]

And as a heads up, try not to be shocked if you don't see a single humanoid character amoung these who isn't actually human. I seriously hate anthropomorphism.

Just remember that the bounding box is the same and it mustn't change as that would give advantages/disadvantages to using that model.

This touches on something I've often thought about when playing online games; how about taking the player mass into consideration? Every now and then, players bump into each other. The result is that both are blocked. But in this class-based game, if, say, a runner bumps into a heavy weapons guy, the runner should bounce off while the HWG wouldn't notice a thing. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with different bounding boxes being an advantage / disadvantage to a given class. If you're a HWG, you're an easier target.

There could be other advantages to having player mass, such as doors that can be smashed by HWGs and bridges that can only carry the lighter players.

Hmm.. (thinks out loud) maybe engies should be able to build light structures like bridges, barricades, and so on. First construction only stops / carries light classes and are easily smashed by HWGs and explosives, while reinforcements make the stuff increasingly durable... Might hurt the fps if a lot of stuff is built in large, open areas though..

[ai]

Yes, bounding boxed can be different but as you said. Then different advantages and disadvantages has to be taking into account in gameplay. Like the HWG is slow and tough with lots of HP, thus bigger hit area. While a spy or engineer has smaller box but they are much faster and stuff like that.

I just didn't know how you guys would plan it, so I just threw it out there for now. So until some plan is formed on what classes what they should do, how much hp, how slow/fast they are and so on, the bounding box has to stay pretty much the same for now. Having this info would of course greatly help the modeler.

[Flying Steel]

If this project gets started (which won't happen until coders and modelers join up), we should decide on what visual style to use, for instance utilitarian army, alien weirdness, sports arena, My Little Pony (as if), or something else — and stick to that style. The problem I have with the current Nex player models is the lack of coherence. Every model looks as if it comes from a different universe.

I am planning a set of a dozen models with class-based mutator(s) in mind (though they are also fully intended for use in core Nexuiz), each of which is intended to be paired with a particular one of Nexuiz' weapons when used as a character class, and each meant to have its own armor/health and movement physics stats, as well as special Nexuiz equipment (grappling hook, jetpack, portolaunch).

These dozen character models will be split into two distinct factions, and balanced against each other so that they could be used as such a way as we have seen in the battlefield, battlefront or quake wars series', as well as one faction being used by more than one team, or both factions combined so that the player can choose any character class he wants, depending on the Mutator.

The first faction (Terran Faction) is your "Utilitarian Army", comprised of Human(s), their Unmanned Combat Vehicles (robot warriors) and one or two other assorted helpers, like a Troodon Dinosaurs soldier for kicks.

The second faction (Nexuiz Faction) is your "Alien Weirdness", comprised of redesigned "Nexuiz's Soldiers" (I plan for them to be upright quadrupeds with a thick skin of some sort), a similarly built heavy walker robot, a UFO, maybe that wheel bot of Morphed's and various very strange Alien Auxilliaries (one most likely a cyborg, perhaps another brought over unaltered from Vega Strike) a la Star Control, Halo and Universe at War.

Sounds good to me. Sounds like a lot of work, too. How about starting off by making a basic male human soldier (or something), and then use variants of the basic model for the different classes by varying the size and proportions - and the gear, of course. That way, we could have the models for a basic NTF relatively soon. Other styles and settings (like what you're suggesting) could be added as they are made.

Actually, I think we will find the real work is going to come in getting any character models exported and working from Blender to Nexuiz, especially when using their own original skeletons and animations from what I understand (the current set of animations that all of the current Nexuiz player models use are not really that great imo).

The current Nexuiz models could work as stand-ins though, until we can get a solid content pipeline worked out.

Either way, does this mean we have a modeler on board? (please? )

Yes, I have been wanting and planning a class based Nexuiz mutator since I started playing in 2.3, and when I saw Psychcf was working on one, I finally stopped lurking and joined this forum to help push it along and make it happen on the content side- character models.

So to summarize, it looks there is a team made up of you as a mapmaker, Psychcf as a coder and me as a modeler (with texturing and animating coming as part of that, to be specific).

I'm with you on that one. Another thing I hate are the "chainmail bikini" models. If you make woman models, please make them realistic. Konoko, not Lisa Lipps.

I think the only thing that would actually shock me are goatse / tubgirl-themed player models..

Of course, this is Nexuiz, not Open Arena.

And as a heads up, try not to be shocked if you don't see a single humanoid character amoung these who isn't actually human. I seriously hate anthropomorphism.

Just remember that the bounding box is the same and it mustn't change as that would give advantages/disadvantages to using that model.

Yes, bounding boxed can be different but as you said. Then different advantages and disadvantages has to be taking into account in gameplay. Like the HWG is slow and tough with lots of HP, thus bigger hit area. While a spy or engineer has smaller box but they are much faster and stuff like that.

I just didn't know how you guys would plan it, so I just threw it out there for now. So until some plan is formed on what classes what they should do, how much hp, how slow/fast they are and so on, the bounding box has to stay pretty much the same for now. Having this info would of course greatly help the modeler.

Correct, I know and agree, all of my designs are meant to fit their main visual bulk into the standing bounding box and be able to crouch into the crouching bounding box. (This way they can also replace the aging current Nexuiz models in the unmutated game.)

Later on, we could experiment with maybe a cube shaped bounding box with the same volume, that'd be useful for character classes with less tall proportions. Or even bounding boxes of different total volumes. But this might make sense in a separate class based mutator from the one that uses standard characters/boundboxes.

[Flying Steel]

And as a heads up, try not to be shocked if you don't see a single humanoid character amoung these who isn't actually human. I seriously hate anthropomorphism.

Just remember that the bounding box is the same and it mustn't change as that would give advantages/disadvantages to using that model.

This touches on something I've often thought about when playing online games; how about taking the player mass into consideration? Every now and then, players bump into each other. The result is that both are blocked. But in this class-based game, if, say, a runner bumps into a heavy weapons guy, the runner should bounce off while the HWG wouldn't notice a thing. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with different bounding boxes being an advantage / disadvantage to a given class. If you're a HWG, you're an easier target.

There could be other advantages to having player mass, such as doors that can be smashed by HWGs and bridges that can only carry the lighter players.

I think you will want to follow this then:

http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=4156

And maybe the soccer version of Nexball where you 'bounce' the ball off of your own player bounding box to 'kick' it.

[Clueless Newbie]

Yes, bounding boxed can be different but as you said. Then different advantages and disadvantages has to be taking into account in gameplay. Like the HWG is slow and tough with lots of HP, thus bigger hit area. While a spy or engineer has smaller box but they are much faster and stuff like that.

I just didn't know how you guys would plan it, so I just threw it out there for now. So until some plan is formed on what classes what they should do, how much hp, how slow/fast they are and so on, the bounding box has to stay pretty much the same for now. Having this info would of course greatly help the modeler.

Hmm.. ok.. how's this:

Assume we stick with a human team for now, the average model would be the size of an average human. However, most of these guys would be carrying around a lot of gear and armor, and would be a bit wider than an average human. The Heavy Weapons Guy is huge, and would be maybe 5& taller than an average human and 10% wider (bulk + gear). The runner, assassin, hacker, and sniper are lightly equipped and would be completely average WRT hight and width. I don't know what kind of units one uses for speeds and so on.

Also, I made some more tweaks on the classes (including armor and hp):

---

ASSASSIN
Primary weapon: Knife
Secondary Weapon: Hook + grav bomb
Health: 75
Armor: 50
Speed: High
Special ability: Can kill with a single stab in the back. Can disguise self as enemy.

ENGINEER
Primary weapon: Machine gun
Secondary weapon: None.
Health: 100
Armor: 100
Speed: Average
Special ability: Build turrets that fire bullets or rockets. 1st stage bullet turret = machinegun. 2nd stage = heavy machinegun. 1st stage rocket turret = hagar. 2nd stage = rocket launcher. 3rd stage = tag seeker. Can disarm explosives.
Can build structures such as walls, barricades, and bridges. 1st stage can be smashed by large players (HWG, fex). Explosive engy needed to remove 3rd stage objects.

EXPLOSIVES ENGINEER
Primary weapon: Grenade launcher
Secondary weapon: Land mine (limited number pr player)
Health: 100
Armor: 200
Speed: Average
Special ability: Can plant large explosive that clears the room — alternately destroys structures on map (if supported), and 3rd stage structures built by engy.

HACKER
Primary weapon: Crylink
Secondary weapon: Hacker hook
Health: 100
Armor: 50
Speed: Average
Special ability: Shoots hook at target. Stays connected to target with ray of some sort (maybe stream of dots). Connection broken if hacker is injured. Range is limited. Hacking takes 30(?) secs. Can be used on turrets (making them belong to hacker), door locks (to open door for team or lock it for enemy team), and enemy players. When used on enemy, entire team can read enemy communication. Hacker can encrypt team comm (undoing hack) by standing still for 30 secs without injury. Hacker can determine whether team comm has been hacked or not.

HEAVY WEAPONS GUY
Primary weapon: Heavy machine gun or rocket launcher, chosen between spawns
Secondary weapon: Primary weapon (as a club)
Health: 200
Armor: 200
Speed: Slow
Special ability: None.

PLASMA ENGINEER
Primary weapon: Electro
Secondary weapon: Emp gun.
Health: 100
Armor: 100
Speed: Average
Special ability: Can build turrets using plasma-based weapons. 1st stage = electro. 2nd stage = nex. Emp gun sets off mines and unused ammo (blows up all ammo carried by a player - also effects turrets), but PE spawns with only 3(?) rounds. Emp gun has limited range.

RUNNER
Primary weapon: Light machine gun
Secondary weapon: None
Health: 75
Armor: 0
Speed: Max
Special ability: Runs very fast. Hands out ammo and materials to other players.

SUICIDE BOMBER
Primary weapon: Light machine gun
Secondary weapon: Suicide vest
Health: 75
Armor: 100
Speed: Fast
Special ability: Suicide vest. 3 sec countdown when trigger is pulled. Massive, room-clearing blast. Can be set off by PE's Emp gun. Can disguise self like any other class at spawn (but keeps team colors).

SNIPER
Primary weapon: Sniper rifle
Secondary weapon: Jetpack
Health: 75
Armor: 50
Speed: Fast
Special ability: None.

---

If we do this, I suggest doing the classes by priority. The first group should be (IMO):

Engineer, Heavy Weapons Guy, and Runner.

Second group:

Explosives engineer, Hacker, and Sniper.

Third group:

Assassin, Plasma Engineer, and Suicide Bomber.

[Clueless Newbie]

Either way, does this mean we have a modeler on board? (please? )

Yes, I have been wanting and planning a class based Nexuiz mutator since I started playing in 2.3, and when I saw Psychcf was working on one, I finally stopped lurking and joined this forum to help push it along and make it happen on the content side- character models.

So to summarize, it looks there is a team made up of you as a mapmaker, Psychcf as a coder and me as a modeler (with texturing and animating coming as part of that, to be specific).

Sounds like we've got a project then.

(all I need to do now is figure out how to compile maps with NetRadiant)

[Clueless Newbie]

I think you will want to follow this then:

http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=4156

And maybe the soccer version of Nexball where you 'bounce' the ball off of your own player bounding box to 'kick' it.

Cool as that would be, I think it would be a lot easier to do something like "stage 1 barricade is destroyed by two running jumps from HWG, six from avg classes, or one rocket/nade," etc.