And by "aliens", as those of a keen eye and mind have probably guessed, - since Doom-3 has demons and not "aliens", then i must be talking about the Strogg. And that, in turn - means Q2HM. That's right, ladies and gents: the next version of Q2HM has entered development. I've been mentioning that a few times here and there over the last year, and the moment has finally arrived. The currently available build of Q2HM (1.4) has a couple of mistakes and a couple of placeholders - all of which mar the overall experience. And i'll confess that i did those mostly due to running out of time and patience working on all the things that Q2HM does well, lol. Making 7 kinds of lasers (plus impacts) and 5 machineguns - did feel like a never-ending story toward the end, due to the weird ways that Q2 sound engine operates. So, i did put in a few placeholders to complete the project in time and save myself the frustration. Later, when working on Doom-3-Bravo, i realized that doing so was a mistake, but it was too late for that and other things were already taking priority. However, i did learn from the experience and would not allow myself anything of the sort in the future, which was already evident during the audio development cycle of Doom-3-Bravo.
At the moment, i have already fixed the two glaring placeholders in the mod: the Heavy Infantry and Gunner machineguns. Now they sound way better than they have any right to, lol. God damn stellar. You might even be tempted to bait them to fire, just to enjoy the SFX :-). Both characters also received other sounds overhaul, making the Gunner particularly imposing. A bad decision that resulted in the single shotgun sounding odd, compared to other weapons - has also been fixed: that sound has been remade. I intend to add more SFX to some other cast members, to make them more prominent on the battlefield, as well as currently compiling another alternative music set. This time going for the more atmospheric/electronic soundscape, as opposed to the classic metal one in the first Q2HM set (which will of course be there as well, no worries). So both Q2HM and Legend-9 now have to share development time.
And, as promised earlier, i have this little number for you. This video showcases the work i did for the Mage weapons, with side-by-side comparison to the HWR mod (and vanilla, for reference), which i have used as a modification starting point for these.
Map 27 is now complete, along with re-scripting and all that. Part of my plan was to make the ultimate weapons to be more prominent and to be more reasonable as to their use. In the vanilla game, they were almost always an overkill, but now there are situations which pretty much ask for it. And the entrance arena at the Monastery - is a perfect example of that.
The next logical step were maps 32 and 33. Both required significant stylistic interventions, compared to the previous iterations of these levels in the version 8.33. Map 32, remade as "Garden of Punishment" (no spoilers as to why) is much larger than its vanilla counterpart, and not only it remains as such - but i have built an additional forest-garden-ish section for it - making it even larger than it was. Just as before, its progression is going to be tied to the map 33 (ex-Refectory) via keys that unlock stuff across levels. I also did the complete ACS re-scripting for all events here and probably went the farthest in terms of ornamental design for this one. Due to the sheer size of the level - i had to create a lot of different set pieces and unique decorations. And i did :-) While it is not as intricately insane as the stuff i did in 7 Portals - it is not far from it, and takes the win through numbers alone.
A lot of the testing on these two levels was made using the Elf Class. And he consistently needed increases in damage potential, before he could hold his ground against Legend-9 enemies. And now - he can.
The second half of the level has the kind of "abandoned" aesthetics, but is extremely rich in detail with many different set pieces.
