I know this has been brought up many times, but almost always as a sub-topic response. Why do we still have robots with stomachs?

I am fully willing to model some pistons, gears and springs for the Quark, but I need to know a few things:

Would the developers (I mean the people who publish it) be able to incorporate a model specific gib system? It couldn't be that hard of a matter to add a blue layer to the red blood to make it purple, or darken it to make it black oil.

Can I use alpha in my gibs, to make a clear piston or something?

Will someone help me get it to the right format... PLEASE. I can't get blender to import or export correctly, and I know there are definitely people who can.

Oh yeah, it would be awesome to have robots that explode into big lumps of metal, like plates, bolts etc. If they bled black oil instead of blood that would be cool, too.

And when you gib robots, they could literally explode, too, as you blow up their power source. You could even have parts of legs/ arms that kind of spasm about on the floor like parts of C3P0.

They could even have different damage effects- like when you shoot them, you can see sparks coming off them and hear bullets bouncing off the metal.

Thanks for replying, it's been a while since I posted.

Your idea about sound effects is good. It would be just as easy to incorporate sounds into the branch of the program relating to damage-I don't know how easy that would be, but it would be on the same if/then (if damage is applied to robot character... chech for death, play sound, add damage to health, add damage to armour)

Anyway, I think I'll get to work now making the robogibs. Since no one replied about the alpha, I'll just make it all opaque.

The explosion thing you mentioned might work, but it would be distracting, and it also couldn't be allowed to deal damage, or everyone would choose a robot to kamakazi.

No problem, it's a cool idea, I've had many similar thoughts myself.

I don't know if anyone intends to program this in, but if they don't, I'll probably end up doing it myself in a year or so. I bought a good book about programming C++ a few weeks ago, and I'm making some pretty good progress.

iSuck wrote:I don't know how easy that would be, but it would be on the same if/then (if damage is applied to robot character... chech for death, play sound, add damage to health, add damage to armour)

Different gibs/sounds are fairly easy to do, but there needs to be an additional file for each model that defines which gib-/sound-set it should use.
Replacing the blood might be a problem, i don't know if that could be done using the effectinfo.txt (i guess it is possible, but if it's not, it might require changes to the network protocol).

Anyway, I think I'll get to work now making the robogibs. Since no one replied about the alpha, I'll just make it all opaque.

Afaik you can use transparency on models, but just like on maps you have to use a shader to define which parts of the texture are transparent.

bengreenwood wrote:I don't know if anyone intends to program this in, but if they don't, I'll probably end up doing it myself in a year or so. I bought a good book about programming C++ a few weeks ago, and I'm making some pretty good progress.

There's no C++ involved here... The game code is entirely written in QuakeC. If you know how to use loops & conditionals in any programming language, you can learn qc in a few days... (finding your way around in nexuiz' gamecode however might take a bit longer)

I think the bots could explode in a nice shower of pretty sparks

leileilol wrote:I think the bots could explode in a nice shower of pretty sparks

Or in a mininova damaging anyone near it a little

It'd be really cool to blast away at an android with a machine gun and have masses of sparks coming off it. Maybe we could get some metal ricochet style sound effects like the ones in HL2.

BTW if Nexuiz is just Quake C, how do you do all the fancy graphics stuff? Is that just the Darkplaces engine? Also how the hell do you make bots in Quake C if it's really simple?

I think I'll have to have a go at it, once I've finished my C++ book.

bengreenwood wrote:BTW if Nexuiz is just Quake C, how do you do all the fancy graphics stuff? Is that just the Darkplaces engine?

I was talking about the game logic, to replace gibs you don't need to change the engine. Darkplaces is written in C of course (it will compile with a C++ compiler, but it doesn't use anything C++ specific).

Also how the hell do you make bots in Quake C if it's really simple?

pretty much like that:
http://svn.icculus.org/nexuiz/branches/ ... iew=markup
http://svn.icculus.org/nexuiz/branches/ ... iew=markup

bengreenwood wrote:It'd be really cool to blast away at an android with a machine gun and have masses of sparks coming off it. Maybe we could get some metal ricochet style sound effects like the ones in HL2.

BTW if Nexuiz is just Quake C, how do you do all the fancy graphics stuff? Is that just the Darkplaces engine? Also how the hell do you make bots in Quake C if it's really simple?

I think I'll have to have a go at it, once I've finished my C++ book.

If you want to mod Nexuiz read this:
http://tutorials.moddb.com/77/learning-qc-for-nexuiz-part-1/

It was written for nexuiz 1.5 i think but i think it all works.

Another alternative would be to have it less about gibs, and more just a massive blood splat. That looks cool, eg

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk7efPsCEfo

Obviously that's pretty basic, old sprite-based stuff but something that was more advanced and still just basically a massive blood splat would be cool.

I started working on a severed piston, but I'm having trouble animating it, and I can't get the unanimated one into the game at all, I get the "you have missing files" message when I change out the pk3's. I have a gib, it's not animated, and I can't get it in the game... Any Ideas?

iSuck wrote:I get the "you have missing files" message when I change out the pk3's. I have a gib, it's not animated, and I can't get it in the game... Any Ideas?

Well, don't change the pk3 then... Just drop your md3 in Nexuiz/data/models/gibs/

I don't have a models or gibs folder that isn't inside the pk3. I can only get things inside it with unzipping and rezipping.

You make a folder named such inside /data. Also, Macs don't natively have the ability to look inside .zip archives, unless you have a 3rd party app like stuffit.

I can unzip the pk3s and look inside, I have a stuffit version from the old G4 ibook I copied all my data from. And I can repack files with the archiver tool (native). Is there supposed to be a way that I could explore it without unzipping and then rezipping?

Don't try to rezip the pk3 with macos' native zip tool... From what i've seen when someone else here tried to create a pk3 that way, it'll either not work or you'll end up with a file that's almost twice the size of the original (or both in worst case).

So: don't try to repack the data*.pk3. Put your gibs in the folder i already mentioned with the filename of one of the original gib models (yes, i know that folder doesn't exist, so create it)

Any progress with this? It'd be awesome to see some new styles of gibbing in Nexuiz.

Someone posted this alternate gib style, I forget where, maybe IRC. The blood is more congealed in blobs. I personally don't like it as much as default, although I am interested in more gibs.

ftp://pavlvs.kicks-ass.net/nex/cfgs/zbloodtest.pk3

Thanks for replying, I did try making a folder, but whatever's in the pk3 overrides it, I need a pk3 without the default gibs or something. I always get the bloodyskull.pk3 model, never a piston.

Where do I put it? I can't get to /data, and I can't unpack the data2007....pk3. There must be some way to tell nexuiz which file to read, like when opening a map file.

This is a good idea and has been raised many times. Could it be added for next release?

I don't think I want to replace them... but with CSQC, we'll probably also need all new player models (to support up/down aiming too, for example). Then, why not also add player specific gibs.

Ok, so I downloaded the alternate rocket launcher, and put it right where you told me to put the alt gib folder, and it worked. I think the difference is the naming conventions, the RL mod was named qrl, I suppose this has a specific purpose, so what do I need to name the folder to link to alternate gibs?, I really want to test them.

the only significance the filename has is that pk3s are loaded in alphabetical order, so the filename has to be >= data*.pk3 in lexicographical order (if you want to get shure, prepend zzz_ to the filename), other than that it doesn't matter.
However if you put the model to Nexuiz/data/models/gibs/gib1.md3 it will always be loaded after all pk3s.

I know this is kinda skewing the topic a little, but speaking of player models, I'm trying to improve my skills by making one. I'm using blender, so I don't know how I'll get it into Nexuiz, but I can tell you a few things about the idea.
It's a centaur, as in a quadroped body with an upright torso
It looks like an ant/insectoid
I plan on parenting to legs (opposite eachother) to the same bone. to avoid changing the default bone layout.
I am a really bad texturer, and have no idea how to make this thing look realistic.

What should I consider my max. polycount? should it be polys or Tris?