Invasion Mod on OA?

Invasion is a mod for Q3A inspired by the Alien movies. Two fractions (marines and aliens) fight against each other and try to accomplish a certain goal, which for the marines can be destroying all alien eggs or grabbing an egg and getting to a teleporter. As players can chose among various marine types (armor and weapons) and alien races (different abilities) it's interesting if cooperative play is possible. All human players can join one team and bots will fill the opposing one, but don't expect a clever AI behind it. It works and that's important. Especially the aliens respawn all together, which leads into an aggressive bunch of foes approaching into the crowd of egg searching marines who cannot respawn.

Olivier asked me after reading my HUNT post if there is an option to get Invasion running on Open Arena. Besides the missing textures, which will hopefully be only a matter of time, exact replacements of Q3A playermodels won't be created. Unlike HUNT in Invasion, playermodels are fixed to the chosen armor class or alien race and are hard coded into the game logic.

On Open Arena it runs actually with default models at least if you enable cg_forcemodel and only the missing textures are a problem. If you are really into getting it working just get the sourcecode from the Invasion website and change the playermodels yourself. You will just miss a few nice skins for Orbb, Klesk and others.

Comparing its coop qualities I enjoy the fast gameplay, a nice HUD, and great weapons (no Q3A guns are used). A real Alien feeling emerges when playing Xenomorph and running across the ceiling, being the death from above. Too bad the places where eggs have to be destroyed are always the same so provided maps, which are great, get pretty repetitive. Anyway for me it is entertaining and I would prefer it over HUNT "Save the Universe". On the other hand the latter offers tons of randomized stuff you can never predict and especially "Escape from Hell" is my favourite, when it comes to coop.

Olivier did you check Tremolous and an Invasion mod for it? Maybe you will get what you are looking for. I have not tried any of these yet but I remember I had good times playing AvP1+2 multiplayer a long time ago.

oa_koth2 beta 3

download beta 3 release: http://cosmo.spaceboyz.net/openarena/oa_koth2_b3.pk3 (save target as ...)

Guys at OA forums gave me valuable hints. So here are my changes.

• candleholder models added. Updated my blender to latest version and discovered that the md3 exporter doesn't work anymore. Had to google for a different one which is not as good as the former exporter. :(
• BFG floats now and is reachable by rocketjumps and a harder to reach jumppad. I'm aware that there's now a 3rd way to reach the top floor from mid section of the map by a well executed rocketjump.
• BFG and Quad are now 'disconnected'
• green bobbing orb on top floor
• sound added to the orbs
• fixed 'squishing' respawn point
• replaced medkit with battlesuit so BFG usage is less dominating
• fixed problem of bots staying in front of closed door by adding donotenter brushes to the door sides.
• prevent bots from falling into abyss by adding donotenter brushes
• cobwebs. unsure to leave them in for final release. maybe a different shader would make them look better. need to discuss this.
• diamond blue shader problem solved
• reduced texture usage
• sky clipping. no more quad-proxy-mine-jumping out of the map. ;)
• tweaking compilation parameters: darker and moodier in certain spots.
• double domination gametype dropped

Most time went into mapmodel creation and texture painting. Less time was spend on testing as I state it mostly balanced now.

Give it a try. If I don't get more hints I'm releasing it as final with double domination support.

HUNT mod on OA

A wish for cooperative gametypes was stated on oa-forums so I remembered good old HUNT for Q3A.

This mod offers two new gametypes that bring coop experience and serious weapon changes. You shouldn't play this alone as it gets way harder then. One gametype is named Save The Universe which is played in normal FFA/TDM/CTF maps that come with Open Arena. The mission is collecting a certain amount of artifacts that are symbolized by the quad powerup.

The second coop gametype is called Escape From Hell and takes place in long, randomized maps where the goal is simply reaching the exit.

Of course both types of play are not easy as players are not alone in the maps and monsters of various sizes and skills try to stop them. That's where cooperative play comes in. There is a certain amount of lives players share for every map and respawn is only possible if at there is at least one player alive and there are enough lives left.

The mod runs out of the box except the default monster models which are set to Quake 3 player models (klesk, tankjr) and have to be changed. This can be done by HUNT options menu or via console. A small config could do this for you. This config is included in a small additional xoa_textures.pk3 file I created to solve a texture missing problem as one of the randomized maps that comes with HUNT uses Q3A textures.

A playable mod with all required files is downloaded when you connect to the running HUNT server if you enable automatic downloading on your client. If you connect a second time sometimes you get disconnected quickly without entering the game. This happens when connecting from standard Open Arena and can be fixed by launching the mod first (via mod menu) and making sure the right monster models are set (eg. '/exec autoexec.cfg' if you already have xoa_textures.pk3 in your HUNT folder) and then connect to the server.

To have a little coop challenge this server creates a HIGHSCORE of each map played. So the fastest missions and the highest scores appear in these tables. I'm curious who will appear there over time. :)

oa_koth2 beta 2 released

My time went into texture editing. After adding leaves to cover the boring walls it's time for some playtesting as much has changed since beta 1.

Download: http://cosmo.spaceboyz.net/openarena/oa_koth2_b2.pk3 (Save target as ...)

Things to come:

• better lighting outdoors
• candleholder mapmodels
• more wall decoration
• more wrackage

oa_koth2

As we were talking about game content creation and which old maps would be a nice remake in Paris we stumbled across good old Transfusion and it's Blood spirit. Back in those days we enjoyed deathmatch in a tower map. OA already has it's CTF bases maps which are inspired by Blood so why missing this one?

Astro had his own idea of it so I didn't go with any of his suggestions. A first unnoticed beta release was done in November. The maps structure and gameplay was too plain. I fear I was not creative enough to use all possibilities the layout gave me.

For next release a lot of changes go into this one:

• chaingun added, 1 railgun removed
• trims, ledges, lots of foilage and details
• possible to reach every level of the tower from the inside
• a ladder and glowing orbs
• 2nd rocket launcher, personal teleporter
• creating lots of new textures

Bots do fine 'cept finding their way out of the void. Map is damn cool in Elimination gametype (8).

Reload and rewrite

I was able to show Astro the last progress of ctf_gate1 which I tested several times but stopped working on as nasty licence issues and bad treatment of talented artists occured. Seems he likes it but had his own oppinion about the pillars. Leaving me thinking about them on my way home. Anyway as I returned from my vacation Gerbil did a run through my last release of this map and gave me several good hints how improvements could be done. I appreatiate that and as leilol asked for an updated singleplayer file I suggested a while ago I knew that release of OA 0.81 will be soon.

Two hours later I fixed things Astro and Gerbil mentioned and retextured the whole map. I'm not so pleased with my outcome as I created everything regarding to the textures I was given and OA lacks versatile and themed textures again after the ban.

I want the map to be in 0.81 and I hope it will be more accepted then my last two ctf maps as it offers a different gameplay. Still I fear it's relies too much on jumping skills. The next one won't I promise. :)

I rearanged the OA singleplayer maps to be more themed in their tiers but there is still work to be done. A lot of finetuning and tourney maps should be part of that.

Texture issues, ctf_inyard updated and new mapmodel

Okay,
time to get some things done. I created a new mapobject helping me to illuminate in blender although I have no map to put it in yet. ;)
I guess Armageddonman does.

TRaKs textures are gone now and lei didn't put the rest of the new additions for OA 0.81 to SVN yet. It's a bit hard for me to use it now.

New fixes on ctf_inyard:
- nailgun and shotgun switched places (I hope it improves balance)
- banned textures replaced
- different lightning parameters for mapcompile.

Updated version will be in OA 0.81

Symmetry and Jumping

I cannot deny that my last maps (especially ctf_inyard and ctf_gate1) are jump-intensive as the player has to be able to jump periodical to travel through the map. This can be a problem for new players and it distracts from the main gameplay as you have to concentrate on your movement and less on your foes and you're more prone to railshots as your movement gets more predictable. On the other hand I'm sure it helps improving skills.
Future maps will include less forced jumping.

In ctf_gate1 it seems my pillars are still too heavy in details and are not subtle enough as they are the only thing that catches the eye. I'm thinking about to break this symmetry a bit to have one or two pillars different and to move the top level gateentrance less centered. I shall test this in various ways.

Anyway I added missionpack gametypes support and various items.
Gameplaywise I think those special missionpack items (Guard, Doubler, Speed) are wrong in ctf_gate1. I'm not sure about the nailgun. First I'm going to remove the Speed item.

Texture Issues and Weapon balance

Licence issues killed OA 0.8 and force me to retexture ctf_gate1 and ctf_inyard as I'm using his in the former map exclusively and two of of them in the unreleased improved version of the latter. As I'm not done with all the balancing and missionpack support of both maps I'm trying to give ctf_gate1 an equal look with given OA textures before I'm about to do new ones.
Although I've to state TRaKs texturepack was awesome.

Weapon balance: The nailgun which is typical for missionpack is the most beloved weapon of OA 0.8 but I don't feel good about it as for my taste it's overpowered most times. I need further gametesting on ctf_gate1 to see if I should add it in several gametypes. I shall post my experiences here...