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Author Topic: Thematic consistency across players  (Read 20267 times)
fromhell
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« on: September 16, 2014, 05:08:28 PM »

You know how there's /model and /team_model?

What about /fantasy_model, /asia_model, /present_model and /future_model? and the map (or server override?) can determine which of these are used by a value key in worldspawn which game will read and pass on to cgame.

The menu player screen would have five rows of player model icon lists to pick a model for each theme, very cluttered.

Sounds excessive, but this would help solve some of the mixed direction things and it's only a theory right now.

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« Reply #1 on: September 16, 2014, 10:21:55 PM »

I hate it if servers mess with my settings.
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« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2014, 03:40:15 AM »

Just my 2 cents:

I can guess this may integrate with some previous idea of creating a "standard" for some (optional) "meta" info about maps (map authors may create a file where they do specify a description for the map such as "In an ancient era, the Dusty Castle was the core of a powerful empire. After centuries of oblivion, the castle has now found a new use, as a deadly arena.", suggested number of players, etc). Such infos may include a "theme" chosen between a few determined by Fromhell, such as "space", "gothic", "real", "futuristic", ecc...[1]

I think "auto-change-my-character" depending from map style may be nice, although may cause some confusion (e.g. you are playing a series of matches playing with the same people, and you see those people changing their models each match).
Maybe this may be disabled by default, allowing only "standard model" and "standard team model" items of the list to be available by default.... then the user checks "enable map-theme-related-model" (which sets a cvar to 1), and then the other items of the list (space model, space team model, gothic model, gothic team model, etc.) become active and can be edited.

I can guess the priority of this thing is low, but if you wish to implement, I can guess it's okay.  Wink

[1]Note: more map themes may share the same model theme: you don't need to add support for 10 model themes, to support 10 map themes: e.g. "futuristic" and "space" maps may share the same model theme.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2014, 03:43:19 AM by Gig » Logged

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« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2014, 05:02:20 AM »

I think players generally pick a model for themselves and prefer to stay that model, and don't really care if they are a robot in a magic castle or an elf in a space station.

If you were gonna pick a single theme for OA3, then I'd suggest fantasy -- seems to fit the assets (maps, models) you have already designed, and most other free FPSes do the futuristic theme.
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Neon_Knight
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« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2014, 06:22:57 AM »

I think players generally pick a model for themselves and prefer to stay that model, and don't really care if they are a robot in a magic castle or an elf in a space station.

If you were gonna pick a single theme for OA3, then I'd suggest fantasy -- seems to fit the assets (maps, models) you have already designed, and most other free FPSes do the futuristic theme.
I agree with this. There're already tons of futuristic FPS out there. OA is notable for being a non-futuristic FPS. If you want OA to be different to Q3, not only you have to stray away from satanic, but also from futuristic.
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fromhell
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« Reply #5 on: September 17, 2014, 06:29:47 AM »

yeah but some day, i'd like to tribute that '99/2000 techno  cyberpunk aesthetic' direction  with a map or two.  That's the kind of 'future' i'd want to do and it would be weird with dark elves running around it.


unless i pull off some sort of phantasy star-esque fusion to the setting


maybe I am overcomplicating everything.  I want dark elves and a badass cigar-chomping goldfish robot in the same game without looking that weird.  How else could I resolve this?
« Last Edit: September 17, 2014, 06:33:12 AM by fromhell » Logged

asking when OA3 will be done won't get OA3 done.
Progress of OA3 currently occurs behind closed doors alone

I do not provide technical support either.

new code development on github
Gig
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« Reply #6 on: September 17, 2014, 07:03:00 AM »

I want dark elves and a badass cigar-chomping goldfish robot in the same game without looking that weird.  How else could I resolve this?

Premise of Q3 was simple: fighters from all the galaxy put together by (semi-god?) Vadrigars people to fight for entertain them. You then had Sarge, Orbb, Tankjr, Patriot and Bones in the same place. Bones is a fluorescent lining skeleton with blood coming out from nowhere when it... but does this ruin the game? Not, IMHO.  Smiley

Playing Q3/OA, I don't care if people in the map look very different each other... it's a deathmatch, not a classic single player "campaign".
« Last Edit: September 17, 2014, 07:14:48 AM by Gig » Logged

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Peter Silie
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« Reply #7 on: September 17, 2014, 10:41:52 AM »

I dont care about model (sorry) as long as i have brightskins Grin
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Neon_Knight
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« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2014, 11:03:31 AM »

You should. OA3 is all about visibility. Any model, any skin, should be visible at any time in any map WITHOUT the need of brightskins, and this is a complete responsability of the mapper.

It's one of the reasons of why OA3 is being done, after all.
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« Reply #9 on: September 17, 2014, 11:36:07 AM »

yeah but some day, i'd like to tribute that '99/2000 techno  cyberpunk aesthetic' direction  with a map or two.  That's the kind of 'future' i'd want to do and it would be weird with dark elves running around it.


unless i pull off some sort of phantasy star-esque fusion to the setting


maybe I am overcomplicating everything.  I want dark elves and a badass cigar-chomping goldfish robot in the same game without looking that weird.  How else could I resolve this?

I think something like the techsoc, mitaman or philipk textures would be your friend.
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« Reply #10 on: September 17, 2014, 11:37:00 AM »

yeah but some day, i'd like to tribute that '99/2000 techno  cyberpunk aesthetic' direction  with a map or two.  That's the kind of 'future' i'd want to do and it would be weird with dark elves running around it.


unless i pull off some sort of phantasy star-esque fusion to the setting


maybe I am overcomplicating everything.  I want dark elves and a badass cigar-chomping goldfish robot in the same game without looking that weird.  How else could I resolve this?

I think something like the techsoc, lunaran, mitaman or philipk textures would be your friend.
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Peter Silie
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« Reply #11 on: September 18, 2014, 12:27:29 PM »

You should. OA3 is all about visibility. Any model, any skin, should be visible at any time in any map WITHOUT the need of brightskins, and this is a complete responsability of the mapper.

It is not because of a visibility problem.
it is more a problem regarding campers and FOV 180 players Cheesy

anyway: i realy, realy like what i saw inside the wipwipwip thread!
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andrewj
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« Reply #12 on: September 19, 2014, 02:45:14 AM »

An idea: "base mods" -- distinct from normal ("user") mods.  The engine can load one base mod and one user mod at a time.

Then: have a base mod containing the futuristic / steampunk version of the game, e.g. a plus-sized elf is replaced with a bulky robot, and possibly futuristic versions of some maps (e.g. how oa_dm5 used to look, compared with current version).

Could even place all 0.8.8 assets into a "historic OA" base mod (for size reasons not shipped with the final OA3).
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Gig
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« Reply #13 on: September 19, 2014, 03:37:07 AM »

Could even place all 0.8.8 assets into a "historic OA" base mod (for size reasons not shipped with the final OA3).
0.8.x assets being (separately) downloadable as an "OpenArena Classic" mod, when OA3 will be released, sounds nice to me.  Smiley

Of course, another way to allow people fond of the current game stuff to continue to play it by now and then, may be to keep both releases ("OA3" and the old "OA Classic" package) available for download, and make OA3 to use its own "appdata/homepath" folder (such as openarena3 or oa3) to prevent the two installations from interfere each other.  Smiley
« Last Edit: September 19, 2014, 06:35:09 AM by Gig » Logged

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Neon_Knight
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« Reply #14 on: September 19, 2014, 06:57:07 AM »

May be a good idea. Mods inside of mods.
However I don't like the idea of packaging 0.8.8 alongside OA3. At all. It defeats the purpose of OA3 being a content reboot.

OA3 is being done for a reason. And time after time I see the people missing the point about its existence.
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« Reply #15 on: September 19, 2014, 09:33:46 AM »

However I don't like the idea of packaging 0.8.8 alongside OA3. At all. It defeats the purpose of OA3 being a content reboot.

OA3 is being done for a reason. And time after time I see the people missing the point about its existence.
Please, don't misunderstand me.

OA3 aims to tie consistency in art style, higher overall quality, faster run. OA3 will be the "real" OpenArena, one day. But someone may still like to play with some maps or characters that OA3 will wipe out from existence, by now and then. Wanting some retro-gaming sometimes does not mean making new games is useless.

I know there are still players playing 0.8.1 and complaining about some of its defects which have been fixed in later versions, but they don't want to upgrade anyway for some reason. Only those few who (absurdly) complain about it do disturb... other players who like 0.8.1 at their home, do not disturb. "Hard" people will ever exist, and some will continue to use OA 0.x years after OA3 will be released (tons of third-party repositories will continue to show 0.8.x for who knows how long). We cannot completely avoid those "hard" people, but there are other people, more intelligent, who may like some retrogaming by now and then, without complaining about an unsupported game.

Of course, these are just my two cents, and this is "idea pit" forum (many ideas here are dismissed, that's not a problem). Decision will be of Fromhell.

PS: Many "free softwares" let their older versions available for download, just a couple of examples:
http://www.openoffice.org/download/archive.html
http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/files/inkscape/
« Last Edit: September 19, 2014, 09:57:00 AM by Gig » Logged

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fromhell
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« Reply #16 on: September 19, 2014, 05:01:36 PM »

I'm not thrilled about the "Classic content!" idea either.  You realize there's a lot of issues with that content right?  OA3 isn't done just for looks,  I see OA0.x as a tumor that would fit right on the gallery of GREENLIGHTGOLD


Applications are different from games in that a fragmented version divide doesn't hurt the community, but support instead
« Last Edit: September 19, 2014, 05:06:44 PM by fromhell » Logged

asking when OA3 will be done won't get OA3 done.
Progress of OA3 currently occurs behind closed doors alone

I do not provide technical support either.

new code development on github
Gig
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« Reply #17 on: September 20, 2014, 04:22:19 AM »

You realize there's a lot of issues with that content right? I see OA0.x as a tumor that would fit right on the gallery of GREENLIGHTGOLD.

OA 0.8.x is far less than perfect, of course, but calling it "a tumor" is too much, IMO. OA allows people to play a free version of Q3A, to keep its mods continue living after all. It has been ported to many OSs. It's not a mainstream game, and it is still a sort of "beta", but it's not to throw away completely.

What I wanted to say is that the anime-styled OA3 reboot will result in a game which will look quite different, almost another game. A better game, but more distant from Q3A than what it is now. I know your "we are not Q3" (content-speaking) idea, and that's okay... but as an old Q3 player, I also like playing with space marines by now and then. Smiley

Again, that's just my 2 cents... I don't want to "force" anything!

I thought a separate "appdata" folder name may have made the migration to OA3 cause less compatibility problems for players. However, I don't know how you did manage previous compatibilty-breaking versions: consider I started to play the game with 0.8.1/0.8.5. I don't know what happened when people started having their "homepath" folder mixing stuff from 0.7.x with 0.8.x, or 0.5.x with 0.6.x! The game survived to that, supposedly keeping the same folder name, but I don't know how things went.

PS: Sorry, I just gave a quick look about that "greenlightgold" tweeter page, and I haven't exactly understood what's that about... (it seems to show screenshots from many different games -unknown to me-, but I don't understand the link between them. Maybe they are "homemade" games?).
« Last Edit: September 20, 2014, 04:24:58 AM by Gig » Logged

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« Reply #18 on: September 20, 2014, 05:01:24 AM »

I'm not thrilled about the "Classic content!" idea either.  You realize there's a lot of issues with that content right?  OA3 isn't done just for looks,  I see OA0.x as a tumor that would fit right on the gallery of GREENLIGHTGOLD


Applications are different from games in that a fragmented version divide doesn't hurt the community, but support instead

I speak like Gig also as a Quake (3) player that the thematic al roots shouldn't be abandoned. The generation s of Quake always had something space/futuristic-like in their theme and the addition of gothic in Quake 3 was something brilliant and refreshing. Perhaps the cartoonish could involve both themes a little to get a nice effect.
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« Reply #19 on: September 20, 2014, 07:53:54 AM »

I love quake as well, but I say differently. OA should strive to be OA, and If that will be done in just art, then do it. Just because it's based off of quake does not mean it has to follow it. OA should do what it really wants to do, and strongly answer the question, ”why should I play OA rather than quake3?” In order to get the community to grow. OA may not last very long if it stays as a free compatible q3. My opinion of course...
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fromhell
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« Reply #20 on: September 20, 2014, 07:40:26 PM »

thanks for the encouraging words guys.


However the 'tumor' remark is about the burdening pressure effect it has on me daily.    Playing other, BETTER quality games makes me feel more inadequate about OA's current representation and it hurts, because I know I could do it better.   Doing stuff like 'classic content' is discouraging.

I've been trying to get OA3 off the ground for 5 years now, and the reason why it hasn't is because OA currently exists and is played, driving the motivation to contribute to the lowest levels ever, and artists don't want to contribute since they know it looks like this trainwreck.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2014, 07:45:04 PM by fromhell » Logged

asking when OA3 will be done won't get OA3 done.
Progress of OA3 currently occurs behind closed doors alone

I do not provide technical support either.

new code development on github
Neon_Knight
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« Reply #21 on: September 22, 2014, 09:40:07 AM »

Of course, these are just my two cents, and this is "idea pit" forum (many ideas here are dismissed, that's not a problem). Decision will be of Fromhell.
Fromhell has made the decision clear from the beginning.

PS: Many "free softwares" let their older versions available for download, just a couple of examples:
http://www.openoffice.org/download/archive.html
http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/files/inkscape/
Just because other softwares do that it doesn't mean that OA should do that as well.

About OA (not) being a futuristic FPS in the Q3 line, we shall follow the discussion in this topic: http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3512.0
About the older versions, we shall follow the discussion in this topic: http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4790.0
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