Gildoran

I like the tunnel-vision idea too... though I think it should only start to kick in when the player's air is less than a third. For good effect, we could also slowly reduce their FOV.

I have another small request. I've put an obj file up on the FTP... bubbles.zip Could somebody convert it to an LWO for me and put it somewhere appropriate on CVS? (it'll be used for the HUD) Thanks. Edit: Nevermind, I've figured out a way to work around it.

I might have an idea for a way to do the bubbles with a texture... I'll go see if I can bang something out. The effect will be similar to Thief, except instead of a line of bubbles, it'll be a patch of bubbles where there's fewer and fewer as your air drops. Edit: Unfortunately, apparently alphatest only works if you have a depth buffer, which isn't the case with GUIs, so my idea didn't work. I'll see if I can come up with anything else. Edit 2: It occured to me that I may still be able to achieve this idea with the modelrender def...

Whoops, I was so entranced with the nifty idea of combining the two meters into one that I completely forgot about colorblind people. I guess that rules out this idea. Then we'd have to scrap the whole water-zombie idea... Speaking of which, I had that happen to me at the bonehoard and it worked. I was exploring a pool, when a zombie suddenly fell in from a wooden plank above and started taking swipes at me. I've never seen myself struggle to get to a ladder so quickly and in such a panic before.

Ok, I've modified the HP-bar some... I've added a glow around the health-bar which makes its color visible, even if the solid part (your actual health) is tiny. I've also added the breath-meter via the color of the health bar, and it's set up with tables so that it's easy to tweak the colors (it may look too bright at the moment), and you can have it transition through any number of colors as the player's air drops.

I'd like to try fiddling with this some... if I come up with something that seems reasonable to me, mind if I upload it on CVS for other people to try out?

Just an idea for a breath indicator... you could use the coloring of the health bar. Eg, when the player is full of air, it'd be red, but as they get less and less air, it fades to a sickly blue. The health bar would be shown whenever the player is injured or doesn't have full air. You might also give the player tunnel vision at lower air amounts. I guess the disadvantage of that would be if they're low on health, they might not know how much air they have left.

Komag! You weren't supposed to let that slip. Now Assassin's Creed will be all over us for copyright infringment! I guess we'll just have to change the gameplay to a tactical shooter now. Hmm, I can picture it already... "Delta Squad! Ready your crossbows and prepare for Alpha-Tango!"

To be perfectly honest, they bother me too (in particular, the stone), but given that I can't do anything better, I'm trying to just ignore them.

Yes, stress management is now an important part of the game, since it decreases your chances of dying from a random heart-attack.

Ishtvan forgot to mention that we're planning on replacing rope-arrows with Quake-style rocket-jumping, since it turns out to be more versatile. (rope arrows aren't particularly effective for launching yourself across really wide chasms or blowing enemies to smithereens) We were also debating adding a jetpack, but we quickly decided that letting the player fly would interfere with the linear gameplay we've worked so hard to foster. We've also been paying careful attention to the user interface - we have a HUD that's so flashy and cool-looking, you'll have a hard time pulling your eyes off of it long enough to look at the levels. We are studying TDS, and by emulating Ion Storm's design decisions we're confident that we'll be able to appeal to a wider audience! (rest assured, catering to the 10-16 year old demographic is particularly important to us)

OGG files are good for longer sounds, but for sounds that are often used (such as footsteps), WAVs require less CPU, because you don't need to decompress them. Also, OGGs supposedly cannot be used to control screen shaking.

I'm not entirely convinced adding a heathaze would undo any other shaders, assuming it's rendered after everything else is rendered. (as opposed to being a part of the scene)

I concur that the ambients are great, though we could really use some help with sound effects.

Yeah, I think adding tinge over the whole screen would be bad, as not all water looks the same... some would be murky, others clear... some blue, others green or brown. Also, it would have the disadvantage that it doesn't change how much it's faded based on distance, which would look wrong.

Yeah, it's very much in the style of a SNES game... had it been released for the SNES, it surely would have become a classic.

http://www.caiman.us/scripts/fw/fadventure.html I particularly recommend Doukutsu Monogatari and Out of Order.

Could it be Katharine Hepburn?

I'm under the impression that the D3 engine does use bounding boxes. It only does detailed model collision detection if it intersects the model's collision box. From Q4's performance page:

Good lord I hated her. She sounded like an actor imitating somebody without acting experience. So damned hammy. I think TDS was aimed towards 13-year-olds, since they suddenly made Garrett a celebrity (after the previous two games where he worked damned hard not to be found out) and emphasized that he had the powerful 1337 sk1llz to kill people. They even gave him a groupie. (that one shopkeeper) Catering to 13-year-olds just so well explains all the design decisions of the game.

Yes, there is such behavior. As far as I understand, Ishtvan has added code that allows a mapper to set up several "teams", and control how each team regards eachother, possibly changing team relations during gameplay. (although D3 had "teams", it didn't fully implement them)

What makes you think such a cvar would be detectable to the map?

Heh, maybe I need to play RtCW...

Bookmark saves are only intended to address the issue of being able to continue where you left off. The reason I keep bringing them up is because people like ZylonBane keep saying "What if I need to quit and continue the game later? Then I'm screwed with limited saves!", which I don't consider a valid argument in light of bookmark saves. I have to admit arguments about crashes/etc are at least a valid, but depending on the map, a combination of approaches may be able to handle most situations fairly well. For example, consider a map that uses the nap-save idea to allow the player to save their progress in any place that's safe, in combination with autosaves before traps and at the start of dialog. The player can keep on saving their progress in appropriate spots as they go, and if they activate a trap or miss a line of dialog, the game has already provided them with more recent saves so that they don't lose much progress. Yet at the same time, they can't just quicksave right in the middle of looting a heavily patrolled vault. (though if they needed to quit and continue later, they could of course still use a bookmark save)

A bookmark save ends the current map when saved, and can only be loaded once (assuming the user doesn't back up the save file). In cases where you only want to quit the game and later continue without losing progress, it fulfills your needs perfectly. (and of course, you can stop and continue playing as much as you like) However, unlike a quicksave, it doesn't provide you with the ability to replay from an arbitrary state any number of times.