Reviving Transfusion...somehow..

General discussion relating to the Transfusion project.

Moderator: General Discussion Moderators

User avatar
I Live...AGAIN
Cabal member
Posts: 810
Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2004 05:33 am
Location: Detroit
Contact:

Post by I Live...AGAIN »

I normally use Mirc

http://www.mirc.com/

But there are easier to setup web clients out there like Mibbit that you can use in your browser.

http://www.mibbit.com/chat/


Just click the server button and use the address irc.anynet.org
Leave the channel option open because if you enter it there it seems to take you nowhere.

pick a nickname and hit "go"

once connected, click on the irc.anywhere.org tab on the top
then at the bottom, enter the command /join #transfusion and your there!
Last edited by I Live...AGAIN on Wed Apr 21, 2010 04:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Liberation
Axe Zombie
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2010 06:25 pm
Location: United Kingdom
Contact:

Post by Liberation »

Cheers mate, i be on at 9pm my time. :D
User avatar
Willis

Master of the Mask
Lead Programmer

Posts: 872
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2004 09:28 am
Location: Eau Claire, WI USA
Contact:

Post by Willis »

Liberation wrote:From what ive seen so far alot of the monster code is already in transfusion, Ive even seen some code for the zombies coming out the ground etc. As for AI that is something else to look at but we could maybe get away with using q1 type AI for the moment.

Ive got the cultist model loaded (well i just added the .psa to the .PAK) since the code from the SVN looks to be in the middle of a rewrite when it comes to .psa / .md3s. I've updating the Butcher code to take the .psa atm and looking into animations.

Also i've serched high and low for the HUD code with no succsess and im wondering if its in the DP engine itself.

There a few other things but ive got to get to work so i'll get on later .
Liberation wrote:Ok im getting the gist of the model code but the problem is that the models are incomplete, some parts are .psk format but then other parts are md3's, also skins are missing.


BTW, the Zombie was already fully coded with ai as well, hopefully i be able to use this to understand the new style animations, also from default he comes out of the ground!!
The HUD code was indeed in the engine and was never officially submitted to the DarkPlaces repository as I wasn't sure about possible network ramifications, and ultimately never reviewed it with LordHavoc. I do still have the code, however the Menus and HUD shouldn't really be done engine side; client-side qc (csqc) is better for this as the menu and HUD are specific to the game, not the engine. There have been significant improvements to csqc since the latest builds of Transfusion, though the documentation is less than desirable.

As for enemies and animations, I had started, primarily with the zombies, giving them ground-up animations and basic walking and attacking, however, their path code is incredibly weak, and their attack code is incredibly basic. Cultists should be the only other enemy with even beginning animation & skin work, but I'm sure I stopped somewhere short of attachments of the weapon & muzzle flashes.

I had found during testing of single player coding that the weapons were far to different from Blood (they were too quake-like) and that is where we shifted from 1.1betas back to 1.05 for multi-player without the focus of single player. The weapons in 1.05 are much much closer to Blood than any previous release, though at the expense of laggier networked gamecode... once again a point where csqc will help (weapon animations, etc right now are handled by the server). I had left off trying to do muzzle attachments, which I failed miserably at.

As I posted in the repurposing, I think there is too much flawed with the general gameplay to even bother focusing on single-player at the moment. Transfusion has too much Quake inspired game code in it that really hinders the overall feel of the game, which is why, as I stated, I moved back to the bloodbath tweaking towards the end.

As for models, there will always be a mix of psk and md3. The majority of objects will remain md3, however all significant models (players, weapons) with important animations would be best converted to psk (or one of the alternative model formats on the DP engine, iqm also appears to be gaining pretty heavy support, especially with Blender).

As for mapping, I really am not an authority on that, I know people have used hammer and worldcraft in the past, but the most current package currently even remotely supported is netradiant, and the move to q3bsp is incredibly incomplete.

That's a brief recap of what I recall.
User avatar
Liberation
Axe Zombie
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2010 06:25 pm
Location: United Kingdom
Contact:

Post by Liberation »

Thank you very much for the insight, it sound like the .iqm format is the way forward but thats not up to me.

Im intrested in making hud code, and i have a basic gist of how it works so maybe when the times right then I (or whoever) can rewrite that from scratch.
User avatar
Willis

Master of the Mask
Lead Programmer

Posts: 872
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2004 09:28 am
Location: Eau Claire, WI USA
Contact:

Post by Willis »

Well, right now, the HUD and the MENU are completely in engine code. There is a menu replacement via what is called MenuQC (see example in the Nexuiz/Xonotic projects), however, I still have little to no clue how to do the HUD in CSQC.

I can certainly provide the engine code for the Menu/HUD work I had done, however, it is much preferred that they go csqc if any improvements are to be made, however, the timing for the blood drops in the menu code should certainly be reused, as I spent a fair amount of time making sure that was pretty accurate.
User avatar
Liberation
Axe Zombie
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2010 06:25 pm
Location: United Kingdom
Contact:

Post by Liberation »

Willis wrote:I can certainly provide the engine code for the Menu/HUD work I had done, however, it is much preferred that they go csqc if any improvements are to be made, however, the timing for the blood drops in the menu code should certainly be reused, as I spent a fair amount of time making sure that was pretty accurate.
Any code will be very useful, Im keen to learn about menus so I be havin a look through there code for sure :D
Innomen
Rat
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 02:52 am
Contact:

Thank you!

Post by Innomen »

Just a random stranger and very big fan of Blood here to voice my support for the quick and dirty anything single-player approach to generate interest.

I hope I'm not intruding by posting this given my inability to contribute anything except perhaps testing.

Even a simple square filled with whatever weapons are handy plus respawning zombies would be fun.

Really just about anything people can easily download and play by themselves.

As a total enduser newb and non multiplayer fan, maybe you could just for purposes of getting people interested have "new game" launch something like skirmish mode in rts games? Matches with bots?

Anyway, numbskull suggestions aside, just again want to say thanks, and that it does my heart good to see recent thought being aimed in this direction. :)

I patiently look forward to the day when I can once again lob a stick of dynamite into a crowd of zombies and play kick ball with the remains.

(Seriously I was a surgeon with those things. hehe)
User avatar
I Live...AGAIN
Cabal member
Posts: 810
Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2004 05:33 am
Location: Detroit
Contact:

Post by I Live...AGAIN »

Welcome to the forum Innomen!
User avatar
I Live...AGAIN
Cabal member
Posts: 810
Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2004 05:33 am
Location: Detroit
Contact:

Post by I Live...AGAIN »

Willis wrote:As I posted in the repurposing, I think there is too much flawed with the general gameplay to even bother focusing on single-player at the moment. Transfusion has too much Quake inspired game code in it that really hinders the overall feel of the game, which is why, as I stated, I moved back to the bloodbath tweaking towards the end.
I have been pondering this as well. Also the recent, and somewhat stable GoG release has me thinking that maybe SP Transfusion should take a back seat to clean and innovative multiplayer.

Thinking out loud...........
Innomen
Rat
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 02:52 am
Contact:

Pity...

Post by Innomen »

Just chalk it up to another great game lost to innovation thanks to intellectual property law. Oh well. Caleb would probably approve. He was always complaining anyway :)

Good luck with he multiplayer thing, I'm sure you guys and like 4 other people will enjoy it. The rest of the Internet will have sadface. :shrug:

That hope was short lived.

I guess I'll just goto GoG and buy it... *wait for it* "Againnnn...." *Caleb impression.*

:)
User avatar
zZaRDoZz
Acolyte
Posts: 413
Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2008 03:13 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by zZaRDoZz »

Ummmmmm...

What!?!?
Innomen
Rat
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 02:52 am
Contact:

What do you mean what.

Post by Innomen »

He's right, the fact that there is a stable modern version somewhere is in all possibility the death knell of the project. I've seen this before, but by all means prove me wrong.

It's a bad marketing call to focus on multiplayer. (for lack of a better word) It didn't work the first time, and it's not going to work now. In my opinion of course.

I could just be over reacting, hope I am. I just would REALLY like to play blood with nice modern graphics hehe. Not a reboot but a remake, the same exact game just updated.

:shrug:
User avatar
I Live...AGAIN
Cabal member
Posts: 810
Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2004 05:33 am
Location: Detroit
Contact:

Post by I Live...AGAIN »

Like I said in my above post. "thinking out loud".

It's pretty much my opinion, but I don't speak for Transfusion. I was just trying to spark a discussion to see what others thought. I feel that what Willis said is an interesting take and one that has not been explored.

There is no one out there who would want to see a working singleplayer release more than I do, but is it attainable?

Innomen has made his feeling pretty clear on the matter which is awesome. That is what these discussions are for. Thanks Innomen. :D

It seems alot have strong feeling about TF in one way or another so lets get them out and see where we stand.
User avatar
Corbin
Zealot
Posts: 158
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2008 09:48 pm
Location: california
Contact:

Post by Corbin »

Those monster models, why were they broken up with Unreal format and then Quake 3 format? I would be willing to combine everything into one (I heard PSK/PSA is what you guys prefer) to make it easier if it's too complicated to switch between them. Just a thought.

Single-player does sound cool, doesn't it?

I also looked through a lot of the monster code in your SVN, it all looks like its ready to go. Why don't we try spawning the entities in a map to test it all out or something?
User avatar
zZaRDoZz
Acolyte
Posts: 413
Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2008 03:13 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by zZaRDoZz »

Aint' it remarkable how history repeats itself?
Someone says 'singleplayer' in regards to transfusion. Everyone gets excited. Someone else says multiplayer is the responsible approach. Silence reins and glaciers begin to form.

2010 is the new 01.

Why is it that people mistrust multiplayer? It's can't be a question of disliking MP, I'm sure most people can name their top 5 deathmatch games in a heartbeat. It has to be the networking thing. Getting soilid netcode is a huge amount of work and it's never perfect.
All I can say is to people who think single player should come in second is you need to stop saying the 'M' word. Terms like Bot games are far less threatening to people.
Last edited by zZaRDoZz on Thu Apr 29, 2010 01:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Post Reply