It’s good to do your homework

Again after looking up some reference material and reading about functions, I found some proof that the ideas I have will be possible.

Not only did I find that it is possible to use additional weapons, as in this case I found it working with as much as a total of 24 weapons.

Another thing that was implemented was a particle like weather system with snow and rain falling down, creating a more natural environment. Not sure how that would suit in to this project though.

Yet another awesome feature was the ‘flashbang’ grenade effect. It simulates the character being in a state of shock and renders the screen completely white for a few moments, which slowly fades away.

Thirdly, and probably the most appreciated feature was (as simple as it might sound) ladders. That you can in fact climb ladders in the Quake 3 engine, this is certainly a must.

Still there was more surprises for me, a recoil weapon system! This is exactly what I wanted as for The Manhattan Project. When you fire your automatic weapons, the cross-hair (aim) does not stay on one spot all the time, it moves upwards as you keep the fire button pressed. This is effect varies depending on what weapon is used.
Even nicer still, the ricochet effect which I simply love! Stand close to a wall, fire your machinegun and you will find yourself dodging bullets as the bounce off the walls randomly; just as in real life. And yes, you can shoot yourself.

Lastly, what I also did find implemented was the use of an experience point system (which seemed rather complicated) but with more research; could this be what I’m looking for?

However, what makes the reading worth the time it took, was the fact that everything has been released under GNU GPLv2 (not later) by Team Mirage. To checkout the source through SVN, simply type:

svn checkout http://ns-co.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ ns-co-read-only

Quake Rally

While doing research for The Manhattan Project I came across several features in the Quake 3 engine that I did not know about previously. Uninteresting as it might seem, but just what I was looking for, a mode where you control your character (or vehicle) in third-person view, control the actions with mouse side-ways, upwards and downwards to increase/decrease viewing field and a navigational arrow guiding you through the course. This is just what I was after considering the possibility to add spaceship fight sequences on certain maps.

The idea behind that is that you don’t control your character as a standard FPS-type of game, but instead while having entered your spaceship, you can choose if you want first-person, or third-person viewmode. This while controlling your spacecraft, weaponry and adjusting to the physics change and no-jumping mode (would be rather silly to jump while steering a spaceship).

Now the mod I found it in was called Quake Rally. And luckily enough they have release their source code, so here it is. Now while Quake Rally itself might not be my personal favorite modification to Quake 3, it certainly has some rather impressive, and useful, features within it’s source code.

To add some more icing on the cake, they also have a Maya -> md3 exporter script and top of it all, here is the Maya -> md3 exporter source, might be useful in a near future.

One last thing to add, Quake Rally does indeed work under Open Arena, but sounds are missing. Still, it’s worth a try and give it a good spin; it is harder than it looks.