R.I.P. MrLoathsome

[Dr.Flay]

Our honoured friend MrLoathsome has had his final respawn
He was struggling with cancer that spread to his brain and we knew time was short, but as he was such a private person I had no way to check up on him.
Hook posted at his forum as soon as he found out, so I thought I should share the official news.

Scott "MrLoathsome" Armitage died at the age 56 on Tuesday, April 2, 2019
https://www.peoriafuneral.com/notices/Scott-Armitage
You can leave messages on the page for his family and friends, which if you ever played on his servers or with any of his mods, I encourage you to do.

His last words to me and the regulars that listen to my radio show.

04:16 MrLoathsome: got more gamma knife surgery on Tuesday
04:16 ~Dr-Flay: whew. heavy going
04:17 ~Dr-Flay: how long did the effects last last time ? or I guess it may be hard to tell with the meds
04:18 MrLoathsome: they tested after 3 months and they had grown back, and some more were found
04:18 MrLoathsome: they gonna switch to some different meds also I guess
04:21 ~Dr-Flay: not going to be the same as last time then. I guess they will only do gamma treatment a few times
04:22 MrLoathsome: think it will be mostly the same. they gonna take MRI right before the surgery to get the latest pics they can
04:23 ~Dr-Flay: it's probably all caused by all the bitterness and bile inside you, but if they remove all that, you wouldn't be loathsome anymore
04:23 MrLoathsome: could be
04:23 ~Dr-Flay: maybe you do need to go through a mangle and squeeze out all the shit
04:24 MrLoathsome: I should look into that.
04:26 ~Dr-Flay: OK. I am done with my rum and bed is calling. will see you later maybe
04:27 Psyco: Peace
04:27 ~Dr-Flay: o/
04:27 MrLoathsome: if you are lucky
04:27 ~Dr-Flay: going to sleep through the cats breakfast time so hoping I dont get mauled
04:27 MrLoathsome: I should drift off myself....
Session Close (#15_Percent_Extra): Sat Mar 23 13:47:31 2019

That's it folks, you missed your chance to play on some of the finest monster themed games UT99 had to offer.
Move along, nothing to see

[UT Sniper (SJA94)]

RIP

[JackGriffin]

Fuck.


This legitimately hurts. I'd never seen Scott's face until the obituary and now that I have it's just waves of sadness and loss. And now I'm crying...dammit.

Upside down tentacles, sharks with fricken laser beams, zombies....You left one hell of a legacy my friend. Rest well, you earned it.

[Barbie]

Sad... He was just a few months younger than me - too young to die.
RIP

[Hook]

Thank you Doc Flay for sharing this here at UT99, as it should be.
I had planned to post it Here too, but things got crazy hectic today and I lost track of it.
Your posts both here and at my forum are very good Doc Flay - I loved what you shared with us about MrLoathsome!
Well done my friend.

I wish I had gotten to know him, Scott (aka MrLoathsome), better than I did.
Reading his obit I see we shared some passions.

Until we meet again! - "Hook" from Minnesota USA

[RetroEpoch]

I didn't know him, but a loss is always a loss.

RIP, my dear fellow UT player

[Carbon]

I also had never met or interacted directly with him, but his work is unavoidable, such that it was so extensive.

Wow. Our community is one smaller. Rest in Peace mate.

[Aldebaran]

I missed his co-op server already, one of the best ut99 monster server I ever played on.
Thank you for the great fun I had there over many weeks.
Rest in peace, MrLoathsome... Moo!

[memsys]

I can't say I knew him but it's clear that he will be missed. RIP

[Pileyrei]

Very sad and thank you for letting us know.

RIP MrLoathsome

[FraGnBraG]

Sad to hear this news. Thanks for posting Dr.Flay.
A memoir level sounds like a nice idea (for those that knew him...)

[papercoffee]

I worked with him together on his Laser Rifle project...

He had always a dark kind of humour.
But he was really nice and helped when He could.

Rest in Peace Scott "MrLoathsome" Armitage

[JackGriffin]

Loathe was a good friend and someone who's opinion I valued. Most of our talks centered around zombies and his improvements to my zombie improvements. I've been struggling in what to do that honors him, uses the zombies, but also isn't seen as a way to have the "last say" on them. How does this sound?

My idea is to make a Zombie king as sort of a level's end boss. I'll find a proper mesh to use and not just scale up an existing model. The kicker is the king is able to summon normal zombies from the earth to fight for him (using Scott's rising up code) but also if you or your friends are killed it will summon your body to fight against you using your weapon you died with (a la Game of Thrones:
ozkHwFG91AI
).

The Loathesome Zombie King.

[papercoffee]

What about a Zombie War-Cow... with a metal "Mooo" sound.
This would be totally unexpected to be the "King" of the Zombies.

[Dr.Flay]

Love the idea for a Zombie King. It fits well with some of the discussions we had. You know MrL would approve
I had pointed out there is a zombie mod for UT2004 that spawns 1 zombie per player death.
We discussed how it could logically work if the new zombies were a team in their own right and were comandable by a zombie leader (either a player or a bot).
Team orders could be available to a player controlled leader, but a bot leader would be far more basic without another coder working on the AI side of it.

I often used MrLoathsome as someone to bounce ideas around for concepts we can use in the new Chaos game. Monster or zombie modes are an essential in many games these days so I went to the person I knew with experience in team based monster action, and as a person I could bounce the most insane ideas around.
eg. my comment about making a Russian dolls effect using the dropper mod, is insane. I only use it as an extreme potential of what is possible. We joked with this idea because it was funny, not sensible or ever going to happen.
(Remember, MrLoathomes email name is Captain Insane).
Once you know how far is too far, you can easier set your goal to something that is sensible but will be a real challenge, rather than just big and a lot of health.
Out of those many crazy conversations came a few good ideas I then present to the Chaos team for a final kicking.
We burned through ideas at a rate most of you would hate, as it means ideas you really like get thrown away really fast, but out of that comes new ideas triggered by those you abandon.

One thing he wanted to do a while ago was make better use of spider_phys, as this problem feature really annoyed him.
We discussed a mod inspired by the previous hoard zombies, but using all the spiders and insects we could find. A mod to give you arachnophobic nightmares, as they climb up, around and over anything you foolishly thought was cover. An egg-laying, poison-spitting multi-legged hell.
I then suggested we use the old Chaos Chrek models which there are many skins for. They would have been officer type spiders.
From that a separate but similar concept emerged for a Chaos mod, which I hope will be how we bring back the Chrek in the full Chaos game.