Nali Weapons 3 - Preview 2 (includes Nuclear Explosion)

[Creavion]

Only quickly comment the picture:
The "Ripper" made a "strange" change to NW2 already. Everything else just looks like typical (great) improvement of a (great) modder.
Well, good job, what else to say?

Ferali got ego strength. But Ferali`s ego strength can not be refilled. It is already full. Just kidding^^

aaah the Body Armor... could you make it a LITTLE BIT brighter????

[Metalfist]

Those different hands are funny, esp the nali hands are good imo.
Skaarj hands are not really matching the real ones tho, but I think thats hard to achieve with just a skin.
You should make a separate model for the skaarj hands then, bcs they r different and have a box at their wrists.
The pattern is different too and not all skaarj skins are green...
But I don't know if you think it's worth the effort to adjust that.

Further the body armor could be improved, now it's just an skin edit. Maybe a new model (like how the pickups have changed?) and more NW-like with some lights or effects?
Atm it's not really super exciting to see.

You can really see how much you have improved with those shots to compare. First NW there were skin changes, second one had new models and skins, third one has new models, skins and nice looking effects applied to them and are interesting to look at.

[Feralidragon]

@Creavion: The armor is a bit brighter in-game, plus it has a sort of aura/fog into it there. Other than that, I honestly like how it turned out (provided it was just a small skin improvement).
The ripper... well, I had no other models back then and my initial intention was actually to use the blade lol.

@Metalfist: About the skaarj hands, I thought in that too, but the problem is: I would have to make that model for every single weapon in the pack, and also for every new weapon I may release afterwards as a bonus pack. So I stayed with the same hand models, and gave new skins depending on the used model.
I tried to match the colors of the greenish/bluish skaarj hybrid, and give it a texture that somewhat matched what you would expect from a reptile kind of species (at least that's how I see it), and there are 2 other color variations for the 2 other skaarj hybrids in the game, so if you use the brownish skaarj, the hands will be brownish as well (which perhaps are the ones I should have posted instead lol), but truth to be told I am not completely happy with them either, so they may receive an overhaul later on during the beta phase.
But still, in a desperate attempt to look more skaarj-ish, the hands are little bit larger/more muscular though.

Also, players and admins can make their own custom hand textures for all or each different model/skin rather easily, so perhaps someone can do better skins later on (which would be awesome, as it was the first time I attempted such kind of skinning, so it has lots of room for improvement).

As for the armor, my original idea was to make a new one too, problem: the pack is taking forever to finish, and people are desperate. So, I opted to do a small improvement to the old armor, mostly to test the armor system of a new flexible pickups system I developed for NW3.
Perhaps I am going to do a new proper armor later on also in a bonus pack.

Thanks for your feedback.

[ASLY]

Awesome work Ferali!
Thats a lot of work only 4 one people, really nice!
Why dont work @ Epic Games?

[Metalfist]

Thought so that it would be too much work for such a minor thing.
Don't forget theres also a cyborg skaarj that has grey hands.

I'm still not totally sure about that armor pickup. I mean it's inconsistent now.
You adjusted the armor pickup, but not the rest of the minor pickups (tights, health vial, health pack).
Yeah, perhaps a minor pickup bonus pack.

[Feralidragon]

@ASLYE702: Thanks. Why you ask? The simple answer is that I am not a professional nor have their standards (in other words, in the actual industry I suck lol)
Besides, these days is just better to invest into an Indie game instead rather than entering in the big dogs territory, and that's what I am planning to do in the near future, using the UDK or something else.

@Metalfist: Yeah, I checked all skaarj hybrid and gave the hands the proper color.

As for the other pickups, I posted a picture with most of them in moddb and facebook, but forgot to post here, here they are:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/nali-weapons- ... s#imagebox
Should have shown that image here before that armor.

Except the thigh pads, those I also just made a similar skin improvement (a lesser improvement though, again mostly to test if my pickup system in fact worked correctly or not).

[Feralidragon]

Well, bad and good news:

Bad news:
1 - LAG COMPENSATION:
Lag compensation support was discarded. I implemented it, but due to tickrate, the way bots/players are updated/predicted in the world, and a few other factors, I would have to spend another month on this (and even then not get any better results), servers would have a higher tickrate (40+) and the system as whole would end up consuming some RAM and CPU.
It actually worked to an extent, but half of the times the bots/players were being predicted too much with all the dodging and what would happen is that 20% of the times I would either "miss and kill" or "hit and not kill", the first is weird, the second is frustrating the times it happens (I am still an active FPS gamer and I know the feeling specially in another game where hit registration has some problems at times), therefore it was discarded.
Plus, players are so used to ZP they would use that one alone anyway.


Good news:
1 - ZEROPING:
Although lag compensation was a failure, zero ping was the exact opposite. Therefore, the pack has ZP support as of now and it worked 100% of the times so far (I experimented with 300ms and 500ms of ping to actually see the difference and godlike bots since they dodge a lot). Of course I don't expect anyone actually playing with a ping of 500ms (omfg!), but I wanted to ensure it worked.

However, again, ZP is optional for both the player or the server, so if the server has ZP disabled, then only standard hitscan will be used regardless of the player ZP settings, if however the server has ZP enabled, then it goes down to the player to actually use ZP or not, depending on the taste. Also, ZP can be turned on or off either globally (all applicable weapons) or locally (only a specific weapon), so if you as server admin or a player want ZP in all weapons except one or another, you can disable ZP for that weapon alone, and vice-versa.

The affected weapons are the following: W.R.E., Bolt Rifle, Super Bolt Rifle, Vulcan and I.R.P.R.
The IRPR one however was a bit tricky to implement, since it's a sniper that shoots through people, and depending on the weapon settings, walls too.
Since ZP support was built into the actual NW3 core, this means new ZP weapons can be built later on with some ease.

I must also add that my version of ZP has nothing to do with current ZP versions around besides the name and concept themselves, as it's 100% my own code and none of it is based in the ZP you're used to.
This to say what exactly? That this ZP has some differences, such as:
- it has tons of server-side legitimacy checks (so before the ZP shot actually does any effect, it's checked first, for security), to not be (easily) exploited/cheated, as I check for the actual weapon, ammo, firerate, accuracy (2 steps of validation here), BSP, player and target locations, hit locations, trace length, trace start, player view angle, player view direction, ping limit, and more, and has server-side settings to tweak these validations (error margins, toggle certain validations, ping limit, etc). However, even with all these validations, keep in mind that ZP will never be 100% secure, but as long there are checks in the server, the possibility for someone exploiting this system lessens a lot;
- this ZP affects everything. For instance, it seems that the standard ZP (the one used currently in IG and such) doesn't work for RX, SLV, and any object that is not a player (unless there's some update around I am not aware about), however this ZP affects everything you see in your screen, be it a RX, SLV or just dead bodies and decoration.

This still needs to be tested between players though, but it seems to be working well so far.


2 - RELEASE:
The last real bottleneck during the development of the pack was ZP and lag compensation.
There are still a few things to be fixed/changed/added/enhanced, such as a few MH features (which I plan to do tomorrow) and some small other things, but nothing that takes much time to do since all the main things are essentially done.
So right now there are good perspectives for the actual release, and it's likely I will be able to finally release it already during this month, as long as the internal beta-testing goes fine and if there aren't major things to fix/change/add during that period.

[GenMoKai]

I hope the beta testing goes well and don't give any major problems, if so, just take the time to fix it but i love the news, well done

[iloveut99]

wow looks very good.

[AliveTillFragged]

please ferali if you could make a new preview video featuring the Ionizer in action. REALLY IN ACTION, not just stills. please, that would be just GREAT

[Feralidragon]

I plan to do better than that during this month, just hold on a bit further

[Sp0ngeb0b]

I'm as well really looking forward to it!
Currently thinking about launching a server with it. Really exciting!

[Feralidragon]

2-Nov-2012

[Sp0ngeb0b]

HELL YEAH!

[UnrealGGecko]

2-Nov-2012

What EVIL code is this?