Alien Arena guns: New designs

Sage

I talked to Irritant about helping out with his game. These are the guns he told me to play with, so I made him some concepts and here is the progress so far. I modeled the standard gun so far. Let me know what you think.

Alex

JKMakowka

Not bad at all, but do they fit the 'universe'?

And another thing to keep in mind: they might have a good siluette for a 3rd person model, but the top looks kind of blank, even though this is the area that will be covering a lot of the screen space in 1st person mode.

P.S.: I would much rather see an improvment in the actual weapons handleing/code than the models

IceWolve

If the engine allows, then i would model parts of the gun seperatly to save a lot of polies. i.e. the barrel for one. You might also want to get rid of that seem.

Irritant

I'll delete polies in the first person view model that aren't seen by the player, and keep the 3rd person models intact.

Looks good, my only crits would be the piece sticking out on the side looks like it's sticking out a bit too much towards the front of the model, perhaps tapering it in some might look better, and maybe a slightly more rounded top portion.

Oh, and I should mention on the raygun, don't put a shoulder brace on it, because it will most likely wind up clipping badly through player models.

As far as fitting in the universe, the standard phaser and chaingun are human weapons, so most anything military works. The raygun, will fit when the skin is done for it. I'll be skinning these guys, so the art will remain consistent with what's in the game already.

Irritant

[ QUOTE ]
P.S.: I would much rather see an improvment in the actual weapons handleing/code than the models

[/ QUOTE ]

This patch is a prelude to the next version of the game, which will be released in the not to distant future, and includes new alt-fires(every weapon now has one), and greatly enhanced bot AI. Easy skill level bots are now considerably easier for the novices, and the harder skill level bots have been made even more intelligent, and will use alt-fires in the right situation, circle strafe with certain weapons, taunt you mercilessly, as well as rocket and strafe jump about the levels.

Get it at http://red.planetarena.org

Here are some more in-depth details:

Included in this update:

1. All weapons now have alt-fires.
2. Easy skill level bots are now much easier.
3. Hard skill(3) level bots now use alt-fires in appropriate situations.
4. Beamgun is now more responsive.
5. Weapon models that had hands on them, have had the hands removed.
6. Frag indicator and position now shown when you frag another player.
7. Bug fixed with dedicated servers running bots and crashing after long periods of up-time.

The alt-fires are as follows:

Blaster - fires quick but weak beam.
Alien Disruptor - sniper mode zooms in, charges up power.
Chaingun - fires large single burst of bullets.
Flamethrower - fires long range fireball that explodes and burns on impact.
Rocket Launcher - fires homing rockets, if you have cells as well.
Alien Smartgun - fires trip mines.
Alien Beamgun - fires rapid fire plasma balls.
Alien Vaporizer - fires large single plasma bomb.

Now regarding the easy skill level bots, if people can't beat them, I'm thinking that deathmatch is not so much for them

JKMakowka

Some direct download link in the news would help Especially one where you don't have to register yourself.

But I found it anyways, thanks for the update.

Sage

Here an update to the blaster, I added more detail to the top and side and made a few changes here and there. Let me know what you think. It has 726 poys.




Alex

Sage

Here is the raygun. The model isn't optimized, once that it is it won't have an edge down the middle. Let me know what you think. It's 509 polys.

Alex

Irritant

Oh hey I also meant to mention in the email I sent you, the top portion of the raygun, towards the front should probably be tapered some, so it's a little less square from the top view,and so that you can see the cannister and barrels a little more from the view model position.

That and a little more roundedness on those top portion of the main body would really improve it I think.

On the blaster, you really don't need to make the barrel hollow like that, as that should just be textured. That seems to be a high polycount for that model.

Otherwise, pretty sweet

Irritant

Mostly finished the Beamgun texture - excellent job with the model and unwrap btw, Alex.

I think it matches up pretty good with other pieces of the universe such as this guy..

Downsizer

So, you are like cheapy, only instead of gargoyles and furries, it's.... invaders from mars?

CheapAlert

[ QUOTE ]
So, you are like cheapy, only instead of gargoyles and furries, it's.... invaders from mars?

[/ QUOTE ]

you're like the 500th person to figure that out.

and i don't do furries.

JKMakowka

In fact they are both part of the same split personality I suspect
And KDR must be part of it too

Irritant

I'll have you ALL know, that I have only made 3 martian models in my time on Polycount which dates back to 2001

Irritant

Finished





Alex, I emailed you the 1024x1024 ver of the texture, let me know if you get it.

Irritant

I took the liberty of modeling a blaster based on Sage's concept, coming out a bit different than his. I'll still use his blaster, as a disruptor replacement.

(updated below)

odium

The main gripe i can see is while the models are ok for a low poly engine like Quake 2, the skins just look really really poor. I think its your base metal and your blood/rust/whatever it is. They are all just a bit to splotchy and it would really help if you kept them cleaner, but dirty in the right spots?

Sage

Irritant I really like the textures you came up with they are sweet. Kick ass I love the detail you put in there. You may want to desaturate the blood a bit though here and there. I did get your emails but I was out of town so I have not seen the texture.

Alex

Joao Sapiro

it seems "clouded" metal, like theres no lightsource, like the design thou

Wells

Hey, it all looks good to me, but you've really got to stop rendering it all on black backgrounds! You know better than that.

Irritant

[ QUOTE ]
Hey, it all looks good to me, but you've really got to stop rendering it all on black backgrounds! You know better than that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whoops...sorry, bad habit I guess(updated the beamgun render above too)

Oh I should mention I used Deep Exploration for the renders and it seems to saturate it slightly(affecting the blood especially).

Some more progress on the blaster...

(Updated below)

Michael Knubben

One thing that strikes me as being detrimental to these is the dodgey/burny look to it, which just screams 'amateur'. allthough i understand it to be part of your style, it might be worth looking into an other way of going about it, since it`s just not doing it for me. Ingame it`s even worse with the overbright stuff, i`m i remember correctly. It makes the shadows even more saturated, also.
Anyway, it`s really inspiring to see you continue to work on this.

steady

Hey Irritant, like Pea said, mighty hardcore of you to have gotten this far with your game project, it seems to have been a success thus far.
As for showing some renders, I recommend downloading Npherno's GL viewer which I use to take nice screenshots, it won't give you any saturation effect like Deep Exploration does. Just export the file as an md3 file and then load it up, then slap on the skin. Lemme know if you need any help using it.

Irritant

I think I have a copy of Npherno's lying around somewhere, I'll have to give that a look again.

Blaster - finished...



and the flat



Thanks for all the comments and input Much appreciated

I think I got the look I was going for, which may not be appealing to all(bloody, rusty pieces of battleworn space junk), but I do see where I can tone some things down in the future, at least on the Beamgun.